Those states like France and Spain in the late seventeenth century that are commonly spoken of as “absolutist” were, as we will see, considerably weaker in their power to tax and mobilize their societies than was the state of Qin in the third century B.C. When would-be absolutist monarchs began their state-building projects, they were checked by other well-organized social groups: an entrenched hereditary aristocracy, the Catholic church, a sometimes well-organized peasantry, and independent, self-governing cities, all of which could operate flexibly across dynastic boundaries.
