What is Absolutism?
Absolutism is the belief that a state works best when one person holds the last word. That person, usually a hereditary king or queen, writes the laws, picks the officials, raises the taxes and leads the army. No parliament or court has the right to say no. Supporters saw this as the cure for chaos. In the 1500s and 1600s, Europe had been torn by wars of religion and by fights between kings and nobles. A single unchallenged ruler, they said, was the only way to keep the peace. Most absolutist writers did not think the king was free to do anything he liked. They said he still answered to God and to natural law. They just denied that any human body could force him to obey.
Core beliefs
- Supreme power cannot be split. It must sit in one pair of hands.
- The king makes the law, so the king is not bound by ordinary law.
- Subjects owe obedience and may not rebel, even against a bad ruler.
- In the divine right version, the ruler gets his authority from God, not from the people.
- Strong central rule is the surest way to prevent civil war.
- Rank, church and custom are the glue of a stable society.
History
The idea was shaped by the wars and upheavals of early modern Europe. In 1576 the French lawyer Jean Bodin argued that every state needs one lasting and supreme source of law. In the early 1600s James VI of Scotland, who also became James I of England, wrote that kings are God's lieutenants on earth. Later in the century the French bishop Bossuet preached the same view at the court of Louis XIV. The English thinker Thomas Hobbes took a different road in Leviathan (1651). He said people should hand power to one sovereign because life without one is violent and short. Louis XIV, who ruled France from 1643 to 1715, became the classic example. He built a big royal bureaucracy and army, and he kept the great nobles busy at his palace at Versailles. England went the other way. A civil war in the 1640s and the Glorious Revolution of 1688 left Parliament as a rival power.
Variants
There are three main strands. Divine right absolutism used religion to justify the throne. Hobbes offered a secular case based on safety and reason. Enlightened absolutism appeared in the 1700s. Prussia's Frederick II, Russia's Catherine II and Austria's Joseph II kept total power but used it to modernize law, schools and government, and in some cases to widen religious toleration. The Russian tsars held on to autocratic rule until 1917, long after most of Europe had moved on.
Criticisms
Critics say that rule with no check invites abuse. John Locke argued that people lend power to a government and can take it back if their rights are broken. Montesquieu argued that freedom needs power to be divided between separate bodies. Historians point to cases of harm, such as Louis XIV's decision in 1685 to cancel the Edict of Nantes, which ended legal protection for French Protestants and drove many into exile. Others note that the label can mislead. Even strong kings needed money from nobles, loyalty from the church and cooperation from local elites, so real power was often more limited than the theory claimed.
In practice
Absolutist rulers did leave lasting tools of government: standing armies, paid civil servants, national tax systems and royal academies. The French Revolution of 1789 began the collapse of the old order, and over the next century most European monarchies accepted written limits on their power. A few states, such as Saudi Arabia, are still often described as absolute monarchies. On the 12 axes, absolutism scores at the extreme on Authority and strongly toward Religious on Religion, with high marks for Order on Security.