Editing Absolute monarchy (section)

==Scholarship==
There is a considerable variety of opinion by historians on the extent of absolutism among European monarchs. Some, such as [[Perry Anderson]], argue that quite a few monarchs achieved levels of absolutist control over their states, while historians such as Roger Mettam dispute the very concept of absolutism.<ref>Mettam, Roger.  ''Power and Faction in Louis XIV's France'', 1991.</ref>  In general, historians who disagree with the appellation of ''absolutism'' argue that most monarchs labeled as ''absolutist'' exerted no greater power over their subjects than any other ''non-absolutist'' rulers, and these historians tend to emphasize the differences between the absolutist [[rhetoric]] of monarchs and the realities of the effective use of power by these absolute monarchs.  Renaissance historian [[William J. Bouwsma|William Bouwsma]] summed up this contradiction:
{{blockquote|Nothing so clearly indicates the limits of royal power as the fact that governments were perennially in financial trouble, unable to tap the wealth of those ablest to pay, and likely to stir up a costly revolt whenever they attempted to develop an adequate income.<ref>Bouwsma, William J., in Kimmel, Michael S. ''Absolutism and Its Discontents: State and Society in Seventeenth-Century France and England''.  New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1988, 15</ref>|William Bouwsma}}

[[Anthropology]], [[sociology]], and [[ethology]] as well as various other disciplines such as [[political science]] attempt to explain the rise of absolute monarchy ranging from extrapolation generally, to certain [[The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon|Marxist explanations]] in terms of the [[class struggle]] as the underlying dynamic of human historical development generally and absolute monarchy in particular.

In the 17th century, French legal theorist [[Jean Domat]] defended the concept of absolute monarchy in works such as ''"On Social Order and Absolute Monarchy"'', citing absolute monarchy as preserving natural order as [[God]] intended.<ref>{{cite web |author=Domat, Jean |author-link=Jean Domat |date=18 April 2009 |title=On Defense of Absolute Monarchy |series=Cornell College Student Symposium |place=Mount Vernon, IA |publisher=[[Cornell College]] |url=http://symposium.cornellcollege.edu/2009/04/18/jean-domat-on-defense-of-absolute-monarchy/ |access-date=12 May 2015 |archive-date=28 October 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201028234633/https://symposium.cornellcollege.edu/2009/04/18/jean-domat-on-defense-of-absolute-monarchy/ |url-status=dead }}</ref> Other intellectual figures who supported absolute monarchy include [[Thomas Hobbes]] and [[Charles Maurras]].