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Parliament of Ireland
Long title An Act for the Union of Great Britain and Ireland
Citation 40 Geo. 3 c.38
Introduced by John Toler[1]
Dates
Commencement 1 January 1801
Status: Amended
Revised text of statute as amended
Constitutional documents of the UK
Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom (HM Government).svg
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The Acts of Union 1800 (sometimes referred to as a single Act of Union 1801) were parallel acts of the Parliament of Great Britain and the Parliament of Ireland which united the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland (previously in personal union) to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The acts came into force on 1 January 1801, and the merged Parliament of the United Kingdom had its first meeting on 22 January 1801.

Both acts remain in force, with amendments, in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland,[2] and have been repealed in the Republic of Ireland.[3]

Contents
1 Name
2 Background
3 Passing the Acts
4 Provisions
4.1 The first parliament
5 Union flag
6 References
6.1 Sources
6.2 Citations
7 Further reading
8 External links

Spain recognises the independence of the Dutch Republic
Spain retains the Southern Netherlands
Creation of the Dutch colonial empire
Belligerents
United Provinces
England
Scotland[a]
France
Spain Spain
Portugal Portugal[b]
Commanders and leaders
Dutch Republic William the Silent †
Dutch Republic Maurice of Orange
Dutch Republic Frederick Henry
Kingdom of England Elizabeth I
Kingdom of England Robert Dudley
Kingdom of EnglandKingdom of Scotland James VI and I
Kingdom of EnglandKingdom of Scotland Charles I Stuart
Kingdom of EnglandDutch Republic Roger Williams
Spain Philip II
Spain Philip III
Spain Philip IV
Casualties and losses
c. 100,000 Dutch killed[1] (1568–1609) Unknown
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Dutch Revolt
(Eighty Years’ War)
The Eighty Years’ War (Dutch: Tachtigjarige Oorlog; Spanish: Guerra de los Ochenta Años) or Dutch War of Independence (1568–1648)[2] was a revolt of the Seventeen Provinces of what are today the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg against Philip II of Spain, the sovereign of the Habsburg Netherlands. After the initial stages, Philip II deployed his armies and regained control over most of the rebelling provinces. Under the leadership of the exiled William the Silent, the northern provinces continued their resistance. They eventually were able to oust the Habsburg armies, and in 1581 they established the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands. The war continued in other areas, although the heartland of the republic was no longer threatened. This included the origins of the Dutch colonial empire, which began with Dutch attacks on Portugal’s overseas territories, which at the time was conceived as carrying overseas the war with Spain due to Portugal being in a dynastic union with Spain. The Dutch Republic was recognized by Spain and the major European powers in 1609 at the start of the Twelve Years’ Truce. Hostilities broke out again around 1619, as part of the broader Thirty Years’ War. An end was reached in 1648 with the Peace of Münster (a treaty part of the Peace of Westphalia), when the Dutch Republic was definitively recognised as an independent country no longer part of the Holy Roman Empire. The Peace of Münster is sometimes considered the beginning of the Dutch Golden Age.

King of Norway (1818–1905)
“By the Grace of God King of Norway”
Estate(s) Sweden, Norway
Deposition Norway: 1905 Dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden
The House of Bernadotte[a] is the royal house of Sweden, which has reigned since 1818. Between 1818 and 1905, it was also the royal house of Norway. Its founder Charles XIV John of Sweden, born a Frenchman as Jean Bernadotte, was adopted by the elderly King Charles XIII of Sweden, who had no other heir and whose Holstein-Gottorp branch of the House of Oldenburg thus was soon to be extinct.

Contents
1 History of the Royal House
1.1 Bernadotte
2 French origins
3 Kings of Sweden
4 Kings of Norway
5 Entire royal house
6 See also
7 Notes
8 References
9 External links
History of the Royal House
Following the conclusion of Finnish War in 1809, Sweden lost possession of Finland, which had constituted roughly the eastern half of the Swedish realm for centuries. Resentment towards King Gustav IV Adolf precipitated an abrupt coup d’état. Gustav Adolf (and his son Gustav) was deposed and his uncle Charles XIII was elected King in his place. However, Charles XIII was 61 years old and prematurely senile. He was also childless; one child had been stillborn and another died after less than a week. It was apparent almost as soon as Charles XIII ascended the throne that the Swedish branch of the House of Holstein-Gottorp would die with him. In 1810 the Riksdag of the Estates, the Swedish parliament, elected a Danish prince, Prince Christian August of Augustenborg, as heir-presumptive to the throne. He took the name Charles August, but died later that same year.

Most taxes were due on each year on 1 September, and levied from individual landowners by decuriones (decurions). These decurions, analogous to city councilors, were responsible for paying from their own pocket what they failed to collect.[273] Diocletian’s reforms also increased the number of financial officials in the provinces: more rationales and magistri privatae are attested under Diocletian’s reign than before. These officials represented the interests of the fisc, which collected taxes in gold, and the Imperial properties.[229] Fluctuations in the value of the currency made collection of taxes in kind the norm, although these could be converted into coin. Rates shifted to take inflation into account.[271] In 296, Diocletian issued an edict reforming census procedures. This edict introduced a general five-year census for the whole empire, replacing prior censuses that had operated at different speeds throughout the empire. The new censuses would keep up with changes in the values of capita and iuga.[274]

Italy, which had long been exempt from taxes, was included in the tax system from 290/291 as a diocesis.[275] The city of Rome itself, however, remained exempt; the “regions” (i.e., provinces) South of Rome (generally called “suburbicarian”, as opposed to the Northern, “annonaria” region) seem to have been relatively less taxed, in what probably was a sop offered to the great senatorial families and their landed properties.[276]

Diocletian’s edicts emphasized the common liability of all taxpayers. Public records of all taxes were made public.[277] The position of decurion, member of the city council, had been an honor sought by wealthy aristocrats and the middle classes who displayed their wealth by paying for city amenities and public works. Decurions were made liable for any shortfall in the amount of tax collected. Many tried to find ways to escape the obligation.[273] By 300, civilians across the empire complained that there were more tax collectors than there were people to pay taxes.[278]

Currency and inflation

A fragment of the Edict on Maximum Prices (301), on display in Berlin

Part of the prices edict in Greek in its original area built into a medieval church, Geraki, Greece
Aurelian’s attempt to reform the currency had failed; the denarius was dead.[279] Diocletian restored the three-metal coinage and issued better quality pieces.[280] The new system consisted of five coins: the aureus/solidus, a gold coin weighing, like its predecessors, one-sixtieth of a pound; the argenteus, a coin weighing one ninety-sixth of a pound and containing ninety-five percent pure silver; the follis, sometimes referred to as the laureatus A, which is a copper coin with added silver struck at the rate of thirty-two to the pound; the radiatus, a small copper coin struck at the rate of 108 to the pound, with no added silver; and a coin known today as the laureatus B, a smaller copper coin struck at the rate of 192 to the pound.[281][Note 14] Since the nominal values of these new issues were lower than their intrinsic worth as metals, the state was minting these coins at a loss. This practice could be sustained only by requisitioning precious metals from private citizens in exchange for state-minted coin (of a far lower value than the price of the precious metals requisitioned).[282]

By 301, however, the system was in trouble, strained by a new bout of inflation. Diocletian therefore issued his Edict on Coinage, an act re-tariffing all debts so that the nummus, the most common coin in circulation, would be worth half as much.[283] In the edict, preserved in an inscription from the city of Aphrodisias in Caria (near Geyre, Turkey), it was declared that all debts contracted before 1 September 301 must be repaid at the old standards, while all debts contracted after that date would be repaid at the new standards.[284] It appears that the edict was made in an attempt to preserve the current price of gold and to keep the Empire’s coinage on silver, Rome’s traditional metal currency.[285] This edict risked giving further momentum to inflationary trends, as had happened after Aurelian’s currency reforms. The government’s response was to issue a price freeze.[286]

The Edict on Maximum Prices (Edictum De Pretiis Rerum Venalium) was issued two to three months after the coinage edict,[279] somewhere between 20 November and 10 December 301.[284] The best-preserved Latin inscription surviving from the Greek East,[287] the edict survives in many versions, on materials as varied as wood, papyrus, and stone.[288] In the edict, Diocletian declared that the current pricing crisis resulted from the unchecked greed of merchants, and had resulted in turmoil for the mass of common citizens. The language of the edict calls on the people’s memory of their benevolent leaders, and exhorts them to enforce the provisions of the edict, and thereby restore perfection to the world. The edict goes on to list in detail over one thousand goods and accompanying retail prices not to be exceeded. Penalties are laid out for various pricing transgressions.[289]

In the most basic terms, the edict was ignorant of the law of supply and demand: it ignored the fact that prices might vary from region to region according to product availability, and it ignored the impact of transportation costs in the retail price of goods. In the judgment of the historian David Potter, the edict was “an act of economic lunacy”.[290] The fact that the edict began with a long rhetorical preamble betrays at the same time a moralizing stance as well as a weak grasp of economics – perhaps simply the wishful thinking that criminalizing a practice was enough to stop it.[291]

There is no consensus about how effectively the edict was enforced.[292] Supposedly, inflation, speculation, and monetary instability continued, and a black market arose to trade in goods forced out of official markets.[293] The edict’s penalties were applied unevenly across the empire (some scholars believe they were applied only in Diocletian’s domains),[294] widely resisted, and eventually dropped, perhaps within a year of the edict’s issue.[295] Lactantius has written of the perverse accompaniments to the edict; of goods withdrawn from the market, of brawls over minute variations in price, of the deaths that came when its provisions were enforced. His account may be true, but it seems to modern historians exaggerated and hyperbolic,[296] and the impact of the law is recorded in no other ancient source.[297]

Social and professional mobility
Partly in response to economic pressures and in order to protect the vital functions of the state, Diocletian restricted social and professional mobility. Peasants became tied to the land in a way that presaged later systems of land tenure and workers such as bakers, armourers, public entertainers and workers in the mint had their occupations made hereditary.[298] Soldiers’ children were also forcibly enrolled, something that followed spontaneous tendencies among the rank-and-file, but also expressed increasing difficulties in recruitment.[299]

Diocletian’s reign stabilized the empire and marks the end of the Crisis of the Third Century. He appointed fellow officer Maximian as Augustus, co-emperor, in 286. Diocletian reigned in the Eastern Empire, and Maximian reigned in the Western Empire. Diocletian delegated further on 1 March 293, appointing Galerius and Constantius as Caesars, junior co-emperors, under himself and Maximian respectively. Under this ‘tetrarchy’, or “rule of four”, each emperor would rule over a quarter-division of the empire. Diocletian secured the empire’s borders and purged it of all threats to his power. He defeated the Sarmatians and Carpi during several campaigns between 285 and 299, the Alamanni in 288, and usurpers in Egypt between 297 and 298. Galerius, aided by Diocletian, campaigned successfully against Sassanid Persia, the empire’s traditional enemy. In 299 he sacked their capital, Ctesiphon. Diocletian led the subsequent negotiations and achieved a lasting and favourable peace.

Diocletian separated and enlarged the empire’s civil and military services and reorganized the empire’s provincial divisions, establishing the largest and most bureaucratic government in the history of the empire. He established new administrative centres in Nicomedia, Mediolanum, Sirmium, and Trevorum, closer to the empire’s frontiers than the traditional capital at Rome. Building on third-century trends towards absolutism, he styled himself an autocrat, elevating himself above the empire’s masses with imposing forms of court ceremonies and architecture. Bureaucratic and military growth, constant campaigning, and construction projects increased the state’s expenditures and necessitated a comprehensive tax reform. From at least 297 on, imperial taxation was standardized, made more equitable, and levied at generally higher rates.

Not all of Diocletian’s plans were successful: the Edict on Maximum Prices (301), his attempt to curb inflation via price controls, was counterproductive and quickly ignored. Although effective while he ruled, Diocletian’s tetrarchic system collapsed after his abdication under the competing dynastic claims of Maxentius and Constantine, sons of Maximian and Constantius respectively. The Diocletianic Persecution (303–312), the empire’s last, largest, and bloodiest official persecution of Christianity, failed to eliminate Christianity in the empire; indeed, after 324, Christianity became the empire’s preferred religion under Constantine. Despite these failures and challenges, Diocletian’s reforms fundamentally changed the structure of Roman imperial government and helped stabilize the empire economically and militarily, enabling the empire to remain essentially intact for another 150 years despite being near the brink of collapse in Diocletian’s youth. Weakened by illness, Diocletian left the imperial office on 1 May 305, and became the first Roman emperor to abdicate the position voluntarily. He lived out his retirement in his palace on the Dalmatian coast, tending to his vegetable gardens. His palace eventually became the core of the modern-day city of Split in Croatia.