3.8 Comparison in the Age of Absolutism and Constitutionalism

Comparison means explaining how two things are similar, different, or both, and ideally why. Constitutionalism is government where the ruler's power is limited by law and shared with a representative body like a parliament. A constitutional monarchy has a king or queen limited this way; a republic has no monarch at all.

• Every state was building bigger armies and bureaucracies to compete in war.
• Every state relied on landowning or merchant elites; no system gave ordinary people real power.
• All used mercantilist policies to grow national wealth.

Poland-Lithuania shows what happened when nobles kept the upper hand. Its nobles elected the king and could block any law with the liberum veto, so the crown could not build a strong army or tax system. Neighboring absolutist states, Russia, Prussia and Austria, then partitioned it out of existence by 1795 (see 3.6). Mentioning Poland can strengthen an argument about why rulers believed centralized power was necessary for survival.

England had a strong, long-established Parliament that controlled taxes, and a gentry with local power. When Stuart kings pushed absolutism, they triggered civil war and the Glorious Revolution. The Dutch had a merchant elite that won independence from a king and did not want a new one.

In France, the nobility was divided, the Estates-General was weak, and the Fronde showed that disorder was worse than royal rule. In Russia, the tsar faced no tradition of representative assemblies like England's, and a service nobility depended on the state.

One interesting result: Britain's Parliament could borrow more cheaply than absolute France, because lenders trusted a parliament of property owners to repay. That fiscal advantage helped Britain win wars in the 1700s (see 5.3).