The Myth of Absolutism: Change & Continuity in Early Modern European Monarchy

by Nicholas Henshall

Conventionally, ``absolutism'' in early-modern Europe has suggested unfettered autocracy and despotism -- the erosion of rights, the centralisation of decision-making, the loss of liberty. Everything, in a word, that was un-British but characteristic of ancien-regime France. Recently historians have questioned such comfortably simplistic views. This lively investigation of ``absolutism'' in action -- continent-wide but centred on a detailed comparison of France and England -- dissolves the traditional picture to reveal a much more complex reality; and in so doing illuminates the varied ways in which early-modern Europe was governed.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

One of the enduring tropes of early modern European history is that of the absolute monarch, a figure who ostensibly possessed near-total authority within their realm. Placed on their thrones by God and no longer constrained by the medieval corporate structures, they ruled their lands with the aid of the newly-emergent centralized bureaucracies and were answerable to none but their own consciences. It is a concept visible in the art of the era, with portraits of such gorgeously bedecked figures as the French king Louis XIV standing regally before the viewer, exuding complete confidence in their right to rule however they saw fit.

It is this trope that is the target of Nicholas Henshall’s book. His goal is nothing less than the total abandonment of absolutism as a political concept of the period in favor of a more nuanced, period-based assessment of state power and the limits monarchs of the era faced in wielding it. To that end, he begins with a summary of French government over the course of the early modern period that demonstrates the limits of state power during that period. As he explains, French monarchs continued to operate with many of the same parameters that limited their medieval ancestors, and only enjoyed success to the degree that they had navigated successfully the delicate relationships that had to be maintained in order to exercise their power.

But if the French monarchs – the most prominent examples of royal authority in the early modern era – were not the absolute rulers that many believed, then from where did such misconceptions arise? Here Henshall points to the pernicious influence of English polemicists, who exaggerated the power of French kings so as to emphasize the contrast with the more limited power of English monarchs. As Henshall notes, this also included downplaying the formidable scope of power enjoyed by the latter even after the “Glorious Revolution” supposedly slapped constraints on its use. In his recounting, the similarities stand out just as much as the contrasts, demonstrating the fallaciousness of the assumptions on which so much of absolutism has rested.

In the process, Henshall does a good job of detailing the limits European monarchies faced even during the era of their greatest scope. Yet for all of the merits of his argument, his book suffers from a straw person fallacy that exaggerates the concept of absolutism into something that would have been unrecognizable to early modern political theorists. In his effort to define it, he leaves out altogether the medieval contest of the struggle between church and state in Europe for which the idea of absolutism initially emerged. His framing of absolutism also leaves out the mass of subjects governed by monarchs, confining his focus exclusively to the world of the elites. These issues detract from the value of Henshall’s book as an accessible study of monarchical power in early modern Europe, one that overstates the problem he is addressing in order to more easily prove his point.

[JR Roach · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anyone who has studied the origins of the French Revolution immediately encounters the fact that the supposedly "absolutist" French monarchy operated under all kinds of constitutional restraints - from the parlement of Paris to the regional estates. Montesquieu in fact made the presence of these intermediary bodies central to his conception of the French monarchy, and warned that their absence in England made parliamentary government all too capable of lapsing into despotism. Nonetheless conventional images of the early modern monarchies of France and England depict a contrast between an all-powerful absolute Bourbon monarch, who has gathered executive, legislative, and judicial powers into his personal hands and the parliamentary monarchy of England, where parliamentary's increasing predominance over the monarchy secured a limited and constitutional government.

Nicholas Henshall helpfully explodes this myth in a pithy and eminently readable, albeit polemically overstated, single volume. He emphasizes that early modern monarchy in France, England, and the rest of Europe operated by consent between monarchs and elites. The mechanisms of this consent varied between countries, but fundamentally early modern monarchs lacked the ability to interfere with subjects' life, liberty, or property without working through estates, parliaments, and courts. And in fact, far from operating as checks on monarchical power, consensual corporate bodies in fact operated to strengthen monarchical power, by giving regular mechanisms to incorporate elites into policymaking and administration. The real contrast between the French and English monarchies was that the English monarchy had managed to centralize these consultive mechanisms into one single body - the Houses of Parliament, that brooked no regional obstacles to their measures. As a result, the English monarch was vastly more powerful than his French cousins, able to use a relatively quiescent Parliament managed by royal patronage to raise armies and taxes and suppress religious dissent across the entire country. And when this centralized, absolutist power was challenged by revolt in Scotland and Ireland, the British state crushed it with force. In France, the proliferation of a wide-range of different regional consultive bodies made securing elite consent and cooperation far more difficult, and French monarchy's inability to effectively work through these bodies ultimately contributed to the fiscal crisis and eventual collapse in the Revolution.

Henshall is a classical Tory historian, with all the strengths and weaknesses that entails. He delights in exploding Whig myths of ancient liberties and constitutions and in exposing the patronage and power politics behind ideological masks. But like many Tory historians, this leaves him with a deeply impoverished picture of politics as one of pure self-interested competition for power, shorn of the religious and ideological architecture that motivated so much political action and division in these regimes. By emphasizing an endless and continuous competition for power, he significantly minimizes his ability to explain discontinuity, especially in a case like the French Revolution. Nonetheless, I cannot think of a better starting point for escaping the myths that bedevil early modern Europe.

[Charlotte Knight · Rating 5 out of 5]

most helpful book for my essay

[Victoria · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is deliberately reacting to the 1980s trend of conducting history from the bottom up (which I like), and to the entire tradition of Marxist history (which I hate). In a highly readable format, Henshall deconstructs our assumptions about the absolutist state in France and England, arguing that the monarchies of these states were remarkably similar, and that if we are to apply the absolutist label to the one (France) then we must apply it to the other (England). However, 'absolutism', in the sense that it is currently understood (that is, as a form of autarky), scarcely matches the reality of the monarchical systems in either France or England; and while contemporaries may have used the word 'absolutism' to describe what was going on, it held vastly different connotations for them than it does for the modern reader. Henshall urges historians (of the Baumgartnerian tradition, I suspect) to resist this categorization, and rather to treat the politics of the era on their own terms. Absolutism as it is understood today, Henshall says, "is forever too autocratic, too despotic, and too bureaucratic to catch the subtle balances and compromises of the old order before 1789." (p. 211)

Indeed.

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 4 out of 5]

An eminently readable and often humorous deflation of the stale notion of "absolutism" in pre-Revolutionary France and the idea of "limited monarchy" in post-Revolutionary England. Demolishing the term, Henshall points out that no mnarch was ever truly absolute or limited during this period. Instead, the ennobled, the masses, and the king were all part of an intricate network of clientelage and patronage which was much more checksy and balancy than historians have usually held. Simply put: kings had some power, parlements had some power, and most power was very local- or urban-focused.
Also interesting is Henshall's tracing of how the idea of 'absolutism' evolved in historiography. Cool book, his thesis should be held up to an Ottoman light, probably with interesting results.

[Илья Дескулин · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes apologetic