The Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) was the last ruling dynasty in Chinese history before the formation of the Republic of China.

Despite introducing many modernizing reforms by the early 19th century, the state financial system still relied heavily on borrowing from European financial institutions and during this time incurred a large amount of debt to finance other projects.

The French Estates General was comprised of three groups: the First, Second, and Third Estates (each Estate can be compared to a congressional section within a modern legislative body). Over the course of the late 1780s and early 1790s, the Third Estate would emerge as the single most influential sociopolitical force in pre-Revolutionary France.

In nineteenth-century Europe the political philosophies of conservatism and liberalism emerged and dominated political discourse. Conservatives favored very gradual change over time, they abhorred any challenges to the status quo and favored the preservation of traditional power systems. Liberals, on the other hand, favored radical change in a relatively short period of time and the replacement of traditional power systems. These terms are still in use today, although their meaning has changed slightly over time.

The French monarchy and government, led by King Louis XVI, was in a very difficult financial spot in the 1780s. The national treasury was basically depleted, the national debt was increasing at an alarming rate, and the government found itself unable to collect enough taxes and/or revenues to remedy the situation. To make matters worse, France’s financial crisis was not at all new – the country had been experiencing ongoing economic instability ever since the 1760s. At first, King Louis XVI and his financial advisors had attempted to stop the economy’s downward spiral but when neither the King, his advisors, nor the nobility could agree on a solution, the King (whether out of panic or confused apathy) retreated. Louis XVI secluded himself within his palace, continually fired and hired and re-hired advisors, and essentially abdicated from any attempts to resolve his nation’s financial crisis. Unsurprisingly, this approach only made the economic situation even worse and so finally, the new royal Minister of Finance, Charles Alexandre de Calonne, met with the Assembly of Notables (top-ranking clergy and aristocrats) to take matters into their own hands. But by this point, the Notables had lost all patience with the King’s tentativeness and no longer trusted him or Calonne. So, the Notables forced the King to reconvene the Estates General, an archaic legislative institution which hadn’t met at all over the last one hundred and seventy-three years! This might seem counterintuitive – why summon an essentially defunct legislative body? – but this measure speaks volumes as to the dire extent of the Notables, the King, and the entire French government’s desperation.

The Qing dynasty, which succeeded the Ming Dynasty, durably lasted for over 300 years and expanded to the area that is roughly the territorial boundaries of modern China. Ruled as an absolute monarchy, it was defeated during the Xinhai Revolution in 1912.

Prussia emerged as the most powerful of the German states in the eighteenth century and only grew in power in the nineteenth century after a series of successful wars against France and Austria. It was under Prussian leadership, specifically the leadership of Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, that German unification was achieved in 1871.

Wars between competing Daimyos had been common before the Tokugawa period (which begins at the end of the sixteenth century). After the unification of Japan and the beginning of the Tokugawa Shogunate, however, conflicts between competing landowners became increasingly less common.

The political machinations for control over the Estates General began before that body had even had a chance to hold its first official meeting. As the King and the entire membership of the Estates General knew, the legislative body’s first order of business would have to be the establishment of an organized structural system and voting procedures. The aristocrats in the Second Estate were determined to limit the influence of the Third Estate as much as possible, because they believed that any power wielded by the Third Estate would automatically come at the expense of their own power. Accordingly, the Second Estate devised a two-part scheme to suppress the Third Estate: first, they intended to make sure that each Estate would have the exact same number of members (regardless of the respective population sizes that each Estate represented). Secondly, they began to urge that internal Estate voting procedures would be carried out on the basis of “one Estate = one vote.” Such an electoral setup would all but guarantee that the First and Second Estates could combine their two votes and overrule the Third Estate whenever they so desired. Naturally, when news of this plan leaked to the public, the Third Estate, as well as many members of the public, were livid – it appeared as though the Second Estate was already trying to subvert fair play and equitable dealings, all before the Estates General had even held its first assembly. Eventually, the public outcry became so loud that the French government was forced to take countermeasures: they passed a resolution guaranteeing that the Third Estate would include twice as many representatives as the other two Estates.

The three sections of the Estates General were structured and separated according to social class. The First Estate was entirely made up of members of the clergy, while the Second Estate was comprised of hereditary aristocrats. In theory, the Third Estate was supposed to include representatives from every other sector and class of the French population, but that was inherently impossible in a society as rigidly classist as France. Instead, the Third Estate ended up being filled by prosperous professionals (such as lawyers and doctors), mid-ranking career military men, and wealthy tradesmen, merchants, and other well-off businessmen. This was hardly a representative sample of the general French population, but nevertheless, the Third Estate more accurately strove to represent their fellow countrymen than did the self-centric members of either the First or Second Estates.