Scholars of modern France have traditionally seen an alliance between the kings and the bourgeoisie, leading to an absolute, centralized monarchy. In this study, the author disputes this view, offering differing information concerning the role of nobility in these changes.

Scholars of early modern France have traditionally seen an alliance between the kings and the bourgeoisie, leading to an absolute, centralized monarchy, perhaps as early as the reign of Francis I (1515-47). In From Renaissance Monarchy to Absolute Monarchy, eminent historian J. Russell Major draws on forty-five years of research to dispute this view, offering both a masterful synthesis of existing scholarship and new information concerning the role of the nobility in these changes. Renaissance monarchs, Major contends, had neither the army nor the bureaucracy to create an absolute monarchy; they were strong only if they won the support of the nobility and other vocal elements of the population. At first they enjoyed this support, but the Wars of Religion revealed their inherent weakness. Major describes the struggle between such statesmen as Bellievre, Sully, Marillac, and Richelieu to impose their concept of reform and includes an account of how Louis XIV created an absolute monarchy by catering to the interests of the nobility and other provincial leaders. It was this carrot approach, accompanied by the threat of the stick, that undergirded his absolutism. Major concludes that the rise of absolutism was not accompanied, as has often been asserted, by the decline of the nobility. Rather, nobles were able to adapt to changing conditions that included the decline of feudalism, the invention of gunpowder, and inflation. In doing so, they remained the dominant class, whose support kings found it necessary to seek.

Publisher:

Johns Hopkins University Press

ISBN:

9780801856310

Publication date:

June 1997

Length:

229mm

Width:

152mm

Thickness:

29mm

Weight:

789g

Pages:

444

Illustrations:

geneal. table, map

Readership:

Age: From 17

This is likely to become the standard account of the origins of French absolutism for the next generation. Times Literary Supplement Major has already presented historians with noteworthy studies of political institutions in Renaissance and early modern France, but this is his chef-d'oeuvre, the culmination of years of fruitful research and analysis. The book is a forceful statement on the evolution of the French monarchy into the Ludovican absolutism of the late seventeenth century. Historian For over four decades, J. Russell Major has pursued a research agenda of exceptional coherence and importance, as this book clearly demonstrates. American Historical Review