Absolutism reaches a peak in seventeenth-century
One should remember the collapse of feudalism and the rise of the early modern state, which gradually pushes the prince/king towards a status of exception.
Against the feudal principle of primus inter pares (firs among equals), the early modern state centralizes power in the hands of the monarch.
Much of the fifteenth century is devoted to the consolidation of royal power:
Most of the issue revolves around the rights to taxation. The early modern state is predominantly a fiscal project, which aims at mobilizing taxation resources in order to finance the new ‘technology’ of the state, bureaucratic and military.
Absolutism will also try to exert its influence over the religious institution, both by trying to challenge the pope’s authority and creating a ‘national’ church, and by acquiring a form of religious legitimization through the ‘divine right of kings.’
Let us not forget that despite all negative connotations, absolutism is a form of modernity that lays some of the foundations of what will eventually become the nation state: territory, standing army, integration through law and taxation…
Absolutism has its own ideologues, such as Jean Bodin in the sixteenth century, and, most characteristically, Thomas Hobbes in the seventeenth, whose Leviathan justifies absolutism on the assumption that ‘man is a wolf to man’ (homo homini lupus)
Louis XIV, as the most perfect architect of absolutism, uses all sorts of symbolic images and propaganda to promote his own power and system; but he also develops a form of ‘social engineering’ aimed at neutralizing the nobility/aristocracy by opening up its ranks to the bourgeoisie and thus turning a power elite into a group of individuals who owe their power and prestige to their services to the king.
Absolutism is costly and requires that the economy be controlled to a large extent by the state. Mercantilism, as an economic policy is typical of this trend, which sees the economy and industry as ‘cows to be milked’ and makes it difficult for the economic elites to gain autonomy.
The financial attraction created by absolutism is a typical example of the harm done to the economy: By making political and social investment attractive, the system is responsible for the diversion of capital from potentially productive areas of the economy.
