Crown: State-building

Just as historians have revised interpretations of the changes that occurred within the early modern nobility, so they have offered alternative and more finely nuanced analyses of the construction of the early modern state. Over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, central government struggled, ultimately with a measure of success, to extend its authority from the center to the periphery of the realm. This was not a steadily deterministic process, and there were major setbacks along the way, not the least of which were decades of religious and civil war that tore the country apart at its very seams. The expansion of monarchical authority brought central government into direct conflict with the many groups, duly constituted bodies, and regions in whose interest it was to oppose and obstruct the process of state-building. Within these various expressions of regionalism, constitutionalism, and traditionalism, aristocratic voices clearly resonated. Indeed, the provincial nobilities of France figured prominently in the great episodes of conflict and resistance to reform. Finally, their complicity made possible the relations with central government that have subsequently been called absolutism.