The Age of Absolutism

The Age of Absolutism describes a period of European history in which monarchs successfully gathered the wealth and power of the state to themselves. Absolute monarchy or absolutism meant that the sovereign power or ultimate authority in the state rested in the hands of a king who claimed to rule by divine right.

Louis XIV is the poster image of the absolute monarch. When he said "L'etat c'est moi" (I am the state) he was to a great extent correct. France was powerful and prosperous and represented that which all European monarchs aspired to.

Countries with Absolute Monarchs

Russia:

Until 1905, the Czars of Russia also governed as absolute monarchs. Peter I the Great reduced the power of the nobility and strengthened the central power of the Czar, establishing a bureaucracy and a police state. This tradition of absolutism, known as the tsarist absolutism, was built on by Catherine II the Great and other later Tsars. Although Alexander II made some reforms and established an independent judicial system, Russia did not have a representative assembly or a constitution until the 1905 Revolution. However, the concept of absolutism was so ingrained in Russia that the Russian Constitution of 1906 still described the tsar as an absolute ruler. Still, Russia became the last European country to abolish absolutism and the only one to do it as late as in the 20th century.