GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS

In the sixteenth century Europe entered the era of classic absolutism, which for most countries lasted until the second half of the eighteenth century. The Fürstenstaat (‘state of the prince’) of the Ancient Regime, which lasted for three centuries, was characterized by the unbridled rule of kings who were not bound by national laws, and by the sovereignty of the nation states, which were not subjected to any supranational jurisdiction. These liberated states, which chose their political course arbitrarily and in function of their own interest, became more and more menacing as their economic and military strength grew. In the twentieth century the European and world wars caused by this unfettered behaviour led at long last to the realization that unlimited sovereignty was a recipe for disaster.

On the internal level royal absolutism meant that the will of the monarch was law: he could not be bound by laws, as otherwise he would bind himself. The Roman expression princeps legibus solutus or absolutus, which we have already encountered, is the etymological origin of the term ‘absolutism’. This basic principle of autocracy (from the Greek autos, self, and kratein, to dominate) was widely recognized in the sixteenth century and was supported by Roman public law and the writings of Roman-inspired political thinkers such as Jean Bodin, author of the Six livres de la république (1576). Here république did not stand for the republican form of government, but for the state, and the book was in fact an apology for strong monarchy.