What exactly is the difference between absolute monarchy and feudalism?

Prior to the French Revolution, France had an absolute monarch. And yet, the country still had feudal lords with their old privileges more or less intact.


So what I'm not getting is, what's the difference here?

What made this form of absolute monarchy different from feudalism?

I suppose what I'm asking is... How did the role of the feudal lord change under an absolute monarchy?

Or is the distinction arbitrary?

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Originally Posted by MonkeySage

Prior to the French Revolution, France had an absolute monarch. And yet, the country still had feudal lords with their old privileges more or less intact.


So what I'm not getting is, what's the difference here?

What made this form of absolute monarchy different from feudalism?

I suppose what I'm asking is... How did the role of the feudal lord change under an absolute monarchy?

Or is the distinction arbitrary?

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The distinction you are looking for is who has to say please.
In true pure feudalism, the monarch goes to his feudal lords and say "Please let me be king," and then the feudal lords say "Yeah OK" or they say "Lol no" and kill the king.
In the absolute monarchy you think of, the feudal lords go to the king and say "We're not useful anymore, but please let us still be rich and stuff" and then the king says "Yeah alright for old times' sake" or he says "Lol no" and takes away their stuff.

Of course these are two very broad terms, and every historical application of it will be different - they are concepts to describe the situation, not a strict set of guidelines. So the overly simple explanation is that a feudal king was very much dependent on the support of feudal lords, while the absolute monarch could probably survive without them.

I use the terms as such: Feudalism is a social structure of which absolute monarchy is a subset. For example, in England they had feudalism where the nobles had obligations to the King; but not absolute monarchy as per the Magna Carta, the King had obligations to the nobles. Sometimes a King is considered "First among Firsts".

In other realms the power of the King is unrestrained by his vassals (until he abuses it to the point of rebellion); therefore both feudal and absolute.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MonkeySage

Prior to the French Revolution, France had an absolute monarch. And yet, the country still had feudal lords with their old privileges more or less intact.


So what I'm not getting is, what's the difference here?

What made this form of absolute monarchy different from feudalism?

I suppose what I'm asking is... How did the role of the feudal lord change under an absolute monarchy?

Or is the distinction arbitrary?

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They are different developmental stages according to Whig or Marxist history (which are similar in believing in absolute progress and different in believing where we are going).

Feudalism was considered to be a developmental period after conquest and centralization where local entities pulled back against a central figure, justifying this by creating a system of priveleges which would pave the way for rights doctrines.

Essentially a conquest gives the conquerer absolute theoretical power, but to reward their followers and pacify the population they spread out priveleges and property. As time goes on it behooves the nobles to agree to not follow anyone who would deny these priveleges, turning the nobles from a description into a class.

Once guns are invented paying for an army when your revenue is tied up in noble hands becomes impossible, so the absolute monarch distributes power to plutocracy to undermine the nobles. The nobles are now courtiers, and gain their power through proximity to the king. However as the king needs someone to back him and the nobles are now toothless, he distributes noble-like priveleges to the rich. This is the true origin of civil rights.

That is a summary of the whig/Marxist argument, it is actually much more complicated of course. It also is no longer widely subscribed to in academic circles, but by the time that it dies in public awareness the analysis model we use now will be dead in academia as well.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MonkeySage

Prior to the French Revolution, France had an absolute monarch. And yet, the country still had feudal lords with their old privileges more or less intact.


So what I'm not getting is, what's the difference here?

What made this form of absolute monarchy different from feudalism?

I suppose what I'm asking is... How did the role of the feudal lord change under an absolute monarchy?

Or is the distinction arbitrary?

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Part of the problem is that "feudalism" is a vague term retro-fitted onto a whole host of different systems which often didn't have a lot in common, rather than an actual system of government.

On a simple level the difference is generally to do with who has control of military (and consequently, "real") power. In a feudal system, the lords raise troops from their own demesnes, and the king's authority rests on how large his personal demesne is and many lords he can sway to his side. Money works similarly. In an absolute monarchy there is generally a substantial, permanent, centralised, standing army, loyal to the king.

But there's a lot of overlap and the definition isn't foolproof. England, for instance, had a tradition that there would be no royal standing army and even the most absolutist kings didn't possess one before the Civil War. One of the reasons for the overthrow of Richard II was his maintenance of what amounted to a private army out of the royal exchequer, and one of the triggers for the Civil War was the (probably illusory) prospect that Charles I would bring a personally loyal army into England to fight for him.

Absolutism also contains a number of other conotations which may or may not be present in feudalism: in particular it suggests an element of rule by decree rather than rule by consent of the governed. Feudalism has an element of both: the king needs the consent of the most powerful lords but otherwise rules by decree, and the lords themselves rule by decree. But then again some feudal monarchies also had successful parliaments (most obviously, Barcelona/Aragon). This is one of the reasons why the "feudal system" as such is relatively meaningless.

Ultimately, the two are not mutually contradictory. They perhaps represent different directions on a certain spectrum but you can have systems which possess a blend of what we would call both "absolute" and "feudal" qualities; indeed, that was probably the norm.

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Originally Posted by MonkeySage

Prior to the French Revolution, France had an absolute monarch. And yet, the country still had feudal lords with their old privileges more or less intact.

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The Ancien Régime wasn't an absolute monarchy, it was a textbook case of feudalism at every conceivable level of society. There were hamlets with maybe a dozen families with ancestral rights no-one could legally touch. The French kings had tried to become an absolute monarchy (and indeed, the move to Versailles was meant to produce this result by effectively forcing the nobles into bankrupting themselves to be near the center of power), but the process was unsuccessful: when those same kings tried to extract concessions from the nobles, or restrict their ancient rights, they didn't have the power to force those changes through.

In many ways, an absolute monarch is one that is above the law, and thus can change the law, of every level of its society, while a feudal king has a very cozy set of rights, but has no power to change the rights of everyone else.

Grey Wolf

I'm not sure how you would describe Louis the XIVth as anything else than an absolute monarch, he's the poster child for it... But I would agree that the institutions he set up had withered pretty badly by the time Louis the XVIth (his great-great grandson I believe) took the throne.

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Originally Posted by thorgrim29

I'm not sure how you would describe Louis the XIVth as anything else than an absolute monarch, he's the poster child for it... But I would agree that the institutions he set up had withered pretty badly by the time Louis the XVIth (his great-great grandson I believe) took the throne.

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I don't disagree he individually held absolute power, but he didn't make France into an absolute Monarchy. He only feels like he did because the guy lived freakin' forever (74 years - close to 4 generations), but the fact that the moment he died, the government went back to the Status Quo from before he ascended to the throne means that even though he is the poster boy for absolutism, the bottom line is that France wasn't an absolute monarchy.

Let me put it another way: there is plenty of "Empires of a Thousand years" created by great generals, who fall apart the moment the guy dies, going all the way back to Alexander the Great and including some of the most famous generals in history (Genghis Khan springs to mind). But while the multinational entities they created are sometimes called Empires , the fact that they fell apart means they weren't true empires. There must be some continuity for the concept of government type to make any kind of sense.

I feel the same way about absolute monarchs. Having a blip in the succession were one guy through sheer personal charisma dominates the nobles into abject obedience is not enough to call the government an absolute monarchy. Only when there is a strong central government dictating laws and policy to the entire population even after switching heads of government a few times can you really talk about an established absolute monarchy (or democracy, or theocratic regime, or anything else).

TL;DR: I make a distinction between the head of government and the government itself. Hopefully that makes sense.

Grey Wolf

Fair enough. He also had the massive help of taking personal power soon after the successive rule tenure of two of the greatest statesmen in french (and arguably european) history in Richelieu and Mazarin.

In practical terms, centralization of power allowed by improving transportation and communications technology.

When passage of people and information is slow, the lower levels of government have to act with more independence and iniative, as the monarch's influence is limited.

As transportation and communications improve, the area of influence by the monarch also grows.

Sheriff: Real world politics is not permitted on this forum.