Wilson Peter H. Absolutism in Central Europe

New York; London: Routledge, 2000. — 188 p.Absolutism was once a certainty. It was seen as a distinct form of monarchy that dominated the European continent and defined an entire age. It coordinated and centralised power, pushing political development towards the modern state. While broadly associated with the defence of aristocratic privilege, it nonetheless fostered the conditions for social and economic change, assisting in the monumental transition from feudalism to capitalism. It was personified by self-confident monarchs, stamping their mark on their nations’ histories. High in the firmament was Louis XIV, the dazzling ‘Sun King’, builder of Versailles and archetype of all absolute monarchs, but competing for the attention of posterity with the representatives of the later ‘enlightened’ rule, like Frederick the Great or Joseph II. If such figures lent colour and grandeur to their countries’ pasts, they also served as symbols of despotism and authoritarian rule; the sort of power that right-thinking Britons had so gloriously overthrown in the seventeenth century and which the French were to do in 1789, ending the age of absolutism and starting modern history.