Make Up Assignment for our "Dog Day" **GREENWOOD ONLY**

Yes he did remain ruler of the Netherlands. He was not only the ruler of Netherlands, but the ruler of England, Ireland, and Scotland. He ruled all of them together until his death. But the question is kind of a trick question. He was the Stadtholder until he died so he did have all the power and at the same time he was the king of all those other countries.

Why was the middle class in Russia and Prussia so small but also so big in England, Northern Italy, and the Netherlands?

(Going back to the question from Molly) I still dont understand why the nobles in England, Prussia, or France weren't involved with commerce and werent always wealthy? That doesn't make sense to me. If they weren't wealthy then why were they nobles? Was it because of the name? And secondly, why werent the "nobles" in this area involved with commerce? How did they make any money? I just dont get how it is possible to be considered a noble even if you dont have great wealth and you arent involved with the any sort of commerce.

(answer to my question)
The answer to this question I think is because England, Italy and, Netherlands had lots of trade which attracted lots of the middle class people trying to get in on the trade industry.

Yes, i think Eric is right about this. Remember, the Netherlands was the biggest trading country in Europe during the 17th Century. They basically beat out every other nation in all markets, including, beating Portugal in the spice trade. The traders were mostly merchants, and the merchants were what made the middle class.

He says that it was considered "slummming", i'm assuming this means that it wasnt really respected, for the nobles to be participating in commerce. He also says that most of the wealthy people were landowners whose wealth came from the land they owned.

Commenting on Hollies question, I think that there are so few nobles in this time because first of all noble meaning having noble blood means that being a noble was hereditary and that people don’t just become noble because they want to. Another factor would be that of the rising importance of the merchant class who challenged the nobles economically even to the point that nobles would marry into wealthy merchant families diluting their noble bloodline. In mot places merchant was the dominant class not noble.

What exactly were some of the technologies that they used in the Netherlands to get to advances and do as much trade as they did Also, how would absolutism keep a country from having a larger middle class

At Eric. Yeah, he said that they were getting to a time where it was noble to do nothing essentially. "...they let their nails grow long to show their nobility, being noble meant doing nothing"

To answer Katie's question, I'm pretty sure that once William became king of England he no longer ruled the Neherlands. But I don't know if the stadtholder got more power or not.

To answer my question, I'm starting to wonder if the Northern half of Europe went bythe philosophy of fending for yourself. Maybe each family went out and tried to find food for their home. Or, maybe there were people who were paid to trade with other countries and sell food locally.

Considering Alexander's responseto Holly's question, I was wondering... What caused nobles to want to marry merchants? I know that merchants often had more money than nobles, but everything that belonged to nobles was passed down their bloodline. why would they want to risk screwing up the royal bloodline for some extra cash??

Nobles wanted to marry merchants because the merchants were beginning to trade across the Atlantic and this brought in money. Nobles could gain a higher standing in society by paying the rulers of their country to get up to a higher position in their hierarchy, making them more of a person, more of what they already are. So in result, the more money they had the more greater of a person they were. This could give them more power and make them more respectable in their society.