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Negotiating French “Absolutism” in Europe 1625–1715
from Part II - France: Law, Sovereignty and Revolution
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2021
In 16th-century France, absolutism was initially written in the legal idiom of sovereignty by a group of lawyers concerned to find a way to end the religious conflicts. This effort was translated in the following century by Cardinal Richelieu and his jurists into precepts for the practice of ruling designed to limit and coordinate the privileges of the great nobles as well as economic actors (merchants, bankers, financiers etc.) with the interests of the court. As a result, the state in France turned into more or less stable oligarchic arrangements that united the interests of French elites under the sovereignty of the king, as exemplified in the massively expanded system of office venality. In the end, however, the Sun King’s exorbitant interest in glory on the battlefield undermined the search for a stable system to exploit the realm’s resources; by the time of the Peace of Utrecht (1713), French elites were desperately looking for something new.
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