On Absolutism: Arbitrary Taxation and Overcoming the Limits on French Royal Power

On Absolutism: Arbitrary Taxation and Overcoming the Limits on French Royal Power engages with the debate on the limits of French absolutism and the meaning of 'absolutism' itself. It examines how arbitrary taxation empowered French kings and analyses the war-driven evolution of taxation and its entrenchment under Charles VII. It addresses the perceived inefficiencies of the arbitrary tax system in its relation to royal power and the insurmountable costs of war. It shows through the use of four case studies taken from the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries how these inefficiencies could be overcome by clever tactics. It shows how, despite its inefficiencies, the tax system allowed French kings to act in a fashion which should be classified as absolutist. The thesis then attempts to redefine 'absolutism' more accurately than it has been in the past in order to rehabilitate it as an analytically rigorous historical term.