Absolutism was once a certainty, a distinct form of monarchy that dominated Europe and defined an entire age. In the light of later scholarship however, this certainty has been shattered, as the glorified myth of almighty monarchs has given way to a more sober and mundane reality. So what was Absolutism?
Why did it arise? And what ideas did it rest on? In this video... These questions will be answered as we take a deep dive into the history of absolute monarchy and deconstruct the myths surrounding it.
The early modern era was a dynamic period in European history, witnessing several revolutionary events. such as the Reformation and the Scientific Revolution. Among these novelties was the emergence of the modern state, characterized by institutions that persisted beyond the reign of individual monarchs.
The rise of the state drastically changed the balance of power in many places in Europe, as the kings and queens, which in feudal society simply had been the leader of the aristocracy, grew more distant and distinct from it. As the centuries passed, more power was handed to the crown, and by the late 17th century, absolute monarchies had, with a few notable exceptions, become the way most countries in Europe were governed, marking the age between the end of the Thirty Years' War and the French Revolution as an age of absolutism. Why did this...
political transformation take place. The transition from feudalism to royal absolutism was the result of several factors, among which was the establishment of standing armies, enabling the crown to suppress old warrior aristocracies, as well as the increased replacement of old legal relationships with codified law, which emphasized a common subordination to an increasingly depersonalized state. However, while these factors are important in explaining the rise of the European state, they're not sufficient to explain the rise of absolutism.
After all, several early modern states like England and Holland saw high degrees of state centralism and did not end up as absolute monarchies. So why did absolutism become so prevalent in so many other states? One of the main reasons for the rise of absolute monarchies, especially in the 17th century, was due to the ability of absolutism to work as a response to crisis.
Not only a political crisis, but an intellectual one as well. Throughout the 16th and 17th century, new intellectual currents like Protestantism and modern science shattered the medieval political orthodoxy. which had been centered around the Aforti of Aristotle and the papacy. As the old ideas lost their power, and religious strife broke out all over Europe, culminating in the Thirty Years' War, many churches chose to give up their independence to the crown in exchange for help in crushing their confessional rivals.
In addition, new political philosophies would rise amidst the chaos. which emphasized the role of a powerful monarch in providing safety for his subjects. Because of these developments, absolutism was able to rise as a solution to the political and intellectual crises of the 16th and 17th centuries, and as a result, absolute monarchies would come to dominate Europe after 1648. providing the peace and stability that many desperately craved. But what exactly does it mean for a country to be an absolute monarchy?
While absolutism in theory is easily understood as a doctrine of unlimited authority vested in a monarch, in practice, it's better understood as a tendency. There has never been any declaration or constitution that has established a system of absolute power. Instead, what historically has happened, is that many so-called absolute monarchs were able to gradually free themselves from restraints imposed on their power.
No monarch, however, was able to achieve a complete freedom in exercising power, and one could even argue that constitutional states, in some aspects, were more powerful than their absolutist counterparts. A traditional break on the crown's power were the states, like the nobility, clergy and the bourgeoisie. These groups could tolerate the exercise of royal power, but only insofar as it didn't hurt their own privileges and interests. In order to impose their will, kings and queens either had to work together with the estates or find a way around them.
Kings who are seen as absolute monarchs were often those who were good at playing off the different estates against each other. An example of this is the Swedish King Gustav III, who established royal absolutism in Sweden in 1789, when he managed to get the states to accept the Union and Security Act. The act removed several important restrictions on the king's power, such as enabling the king to declare war without the state's approval, but it also expanded many of the nobility's privileges to the peasants and the bourgeoisie. thereby making them support the act against the will of the nobility who despised it. In this sense, absolute monarchs were not monarchs who didn't face restraints under power, but rather monarchs who were good at getting around those restraints.
In some instances however, this would prove to be nearly impossible, which is clearly seen when it comes to the ability of absolute monarchs to tax the nobility. Throughout the 18th century, the French kings were unable to tax the nobility, and when Louis XVI attempted to introduce new taxes on the noblemen, he was unable to do so due to the way the estates were set up. In contrast to the French government's inability to tax the noble estate, the English government was able to tax the nobility rather easily by establishing a land tax in 1693. through which the English crown managed to tax both the nobility as well as other landowners indiscriminately.
The difference in the ability to raise taxes put the finger on an important difference between absolute and constitutional monarchies, which is that constitutional monarchies in the age of absolutism, in many aspects, both were more powerful and efficient than their absolutist counterparts. One way in which this was the case was as mentioned the ability to efficiently tax the whole country, enabling the English government to collect around twice as much tax revenue per person as the French government. Another way in which constitutional states were more powerful than absolutist states were in their ability to override local laws and privileges. While the early modern period is generally characterized by the replacement of local laws with state laws, this tendency was much stronger and efficient in constitutional monarchies than in absolute monarchies.
In absolute states like France, the king was seen as responsible for protecting local customs rather than challenging them, which can be seen in how the French monarchs, at the time of their coronation, and when annexing a new territory always swore to respect local laws and customs. In England on the other hand, following the revolution of 1688, the crown and parliament were much more efficient in overriding local laws and customs. While being a constitutional state, England's government was far from democratic.
Political power in English society was intimately and inextricably connected with the possession of property, particularly landed property, which meant that English economic policy was heavily influenced by the country's elites. This gave the English government a strong legitimacy in steamrolling individual property owners who were opposed to having their lands enclosed, or canals and turnpikes built on it. The parliamentary supremacy also legitimized the English government's ability in breaking up old social structures to create an environment in which domestic market liberalism and industrialization could flourish. This increased the country's economic prosperity and enabled the government to mobilize resources in a way that was not possible in France.
In addition, absolute estates like France also faced mounting challenges when it came to exercising executive power. Due to the concentration of executive power in the hands of the monarch, the king or queen was faced with the near impossible task of overseeing all the government's business, which left much room for corruption and inefficiency among the government's administration. Moreover, could the practice of referring decisions to the crown paralyze the government if the monarch was unwell, away, or just incompetent.
The thinking associated with absolutism can generally be divided into two lines of thought. One which was more prevalent in France and Spain, and another which was more prevalent in Prussia. The first of these streams of thinking has its roots in the idea of the divine right of kings. According to this stream of thought, all power comes from God, who has ordained the king as his lieutenant on earth. As such, the king was responsible for upholding true religion in the realm, something which was considered very important in the context of the Reformation.
Because of the emphasis on the monarch's responsibility in upholding and defending the state religion, the personal piety of the king was considered crucial for the well-being of the realm and its people, while the king's will was considered the expression of the wine will, The king himself was dependent on God's grace for his power. If a monarch did not fulfill his religious responsibilities, divine rights adherents thought it would lead to the kingdom facing hardships, and the king to lose his power. While the first streams of absolutist thought were closely associated with religion, the second stream laid more emphasis on the practical functions of the monarch. and had a close relationship with the idea of natural law. Adherents to this philosophy, the most famous being the German philosophers Samuel Pufendorf and Gottfried von Leibniz, argued that there exists a social contract between the prince and his subjects, in which the people band together and voluntarily accept a degree of subordination to the monarch, in exchange for protection and promotion of the common good.
By grounding the justification of absolute monarchy in rationality rather than theology, the adherents of this line of thinking stressed that it was not sufficient for the king to prevent evil, but that he also needed to strive to actively promote improvement. In addition to the idea of natural law and the divine right of kings, there existed a copy of other common ideas that were central in early modern absolutist philosophy. One of the most important of these was the notion of Arcana Imperii, also known as the mystery of the state.
While groups like the peasants, the nobility and the bourgeoisie squabbled over their own self-interests, the king was fought to be elevated over his subjects by the virtue of his office. And as a result, able to get a clear picture over the kingdom's greater interests, and thus understand the mysteries of the state. This way of thinking was very controversial in early modern Europe, since it justified the use of secrecy and to some degree even deceit by the monarch.
After all, if the subjects gained knowledge of the true intentions behind a royal decree, they may oppose it for their own narrow interests, thereby jeopardizing the interests of the state. One final part in absolutist thinking that's necessary to cover is the relationship between the monarch and the state. In popular imagination, absolute monarchs are often thought of as identical to the state, famously expressed in the words of Louis XIV, I am the state. The real King Louis, however, never said these words, and this oversimplified cliché doesn't reflect on how neither absolute monarchs nor their adherents viewed them. For absolute thinkers like Bishop Bosset and Pufendorf, a king is not born for himself, but for his realm.
For the absolutists, the prince is to serve the state, not the other way around. and is thus required to forego pursuits that are not in line with the interests of the realm. The king in this sense, according to absolutists, is the first servant of the state, rather than the state itself.
Well reflected in the words, Louis XIV is recorded to actually have said while he lay on his deathbed, I go now, but the state will remain forever. While absolute monarchs once dominated Europe, the age of absolutism would not last forever. In the 18th century, the philosophical movement known as the Enlightenment emerged, carrying with it a strong emphasis on progress and reform. While the absolutist thinkers of the 17th century had allowed for innovation, or at least emphasized it to some degree, Enlightenment thought, in many regards, pushed the notion of progress to the point where it breached the contract between the crown and its subjects.
As Enlightenment thought became prevalent in Europe, it gained influence among Europe's governments, giving rise to what have come to be known as Enlightenment despots, like Joseph II of Austria and Catherine the Great of Russia. These monarchs Marx retained a high degree of power over the government but used their power to promote enlightenment and liberal reforms. In doing so, however, they would in several aspects erode the foundation on which the rule was legitimized.
One example of this is regarding the question of religious tolerance. The right to freely choose and practice one's religion was seen by many enlightenment thinkers as a right. and also something that would create less violence and conflict in society. In addition, freedom of religion was also thought to benefit a country since it increased immigration from countries with other religions, thereby increasing the nation's taxpaying workforce as well as the recruitment pool for the army. At the same time, did the tolerance of people of other faiths contradict the alliance between church and state?
on which the legitimacy of many European monarchs traditionally had rested on. After all, a Catholic prince could not claim to be the upholder of true religion if he allowed the practice of Protestantism within his realm. Another example of the incoherence between Enlightenment thinking and absolutism is in regard to economics. An important stream of Enlightenment thinking was the doctrine of physiocracy. strongly promoted in the late 18th century by King Louis XVI of France and his minister of state, Turgot.
According to physiocrats, material prosperity came from agriculture, and in order to make agricultural productions efficient, the government needed to establish free market competition on the food market, in order for private actors to spur innovation. With this idea in mind, The French government carried out many radical economic reforms throughout the second half of the 18th century, including the abolishment of regional tariffs and the division of common lands. The reforms drew fierce resistance from the French aristocracy, who saw their ancient privileges come under attack, as well as from the common folk, who in many parts of the country faced starvation due to skyrocketing bread prices.
As a result, pre-revolutionary France saw heavy outbreaks of peasant insurgency, known as the Flower War, as the tensions between Enlightenment values and the foundation on which absolute monarchs traditionally had legitimized their rule on helped in undermining the crown's legitimacy. In addition to resistance from the nobility and the peasants, Enlightenment despots also saw an increased opposition from the Enlightenment thinkers, whose ideas they claimed to be adherents of. Many philosophers and statesmen recognized that an Enlightenment reform program that was carried out in an absolute monarchy always was dependent on the will of the crown.
If a king changed his mind or passed away, the whole program would be in jeopardy. Many thinkers also noticed the strong, innovative and dynamic nature of England and the Dutch Republic, which in contrast made the absolute states on the continent look backward and inefficient. While some monarchs like Frederick II of Prussia were able to carefully balance the interests of the common folk, their traditional elites and enlightenment philosophy, others like Louis XVI were not. The tensions between the conflicting ideas came to a breaking point in 789, when they, together with severe economic challenges, exploded in revolution, causing France to become a constitutional monarchy in 791, and later a republic in 1792. When the Napoleonic wars later swept across Europe, many of the continent's old institutions disappeared, And while many of the royal dynasties that had reigned prior to 1789 remained in power, it was monarchy that had survived, not absolutism. Written constitutions, however limited, came to define the extent of royal power more clearly than before, and the ideas from which the crown claimed legitimacy shifted, becoming more secularized, and incorporating new elements like nationalism which previously had been absent.
With this in mind, Enlightenment Absolutism can stand as a distinct phase in history, as well as a first step to the downfall of absolute monarchy itself. Today I hope you learned something new about the history of Absolutism.