About Absolute Monarchy
Absolute monarchies have been a form of government for centuries and although they are somewhat rooted in the past, kings and queens still retain control as the head of state and government in many countries.
Over the centuries, the abuses of power by certain monarchs was equal to the strong leadership a position of absolute authority offered.
Other People Are Reading
-
Function
-
An absolute monarchy is a form of government in which an individual figure controls the government through the single authority defined by themselves, traditionally a king or queen.
The monarchy has no constitution or limits to their power and they rule by decree and laws that they themselves deem necessary or prudent. They have complete power over their people and the land, usually including the aristocracy and the clergy.
Sometimes, the absolute monarchy will find their powers are limited due to one of the two groups, through a forced parliament or other body, however this tends to lead to a constitutional monarchy.
A constitutional monarchy limits the powers of the king or queen into a canon of laws and the country's real power resides in a parliament or some other legislative body. This system is used by the United Kingdom and Luxembourg.
Features
-
During the Middle Ages, absolute monarchs would retain control of their lands by controlling the two prime groups of the upper class, the aristocracy and the nobility. The aristocracy of the time controlled much of the wealth and commerce, while the nobility was generally in charge of wars and national security. This was predominant in European and Asian countries.
The clergy usually attempted to limit the powers of the monarch by creating their own laws derived from church doctrine. This was sometimes successful and occasionally led to the overthrow of a king or civil war between factions devoted to the church.
It also could cause the church to lose power, as it did in England when King Henry VIII established the official Church of England so he could get an annulment of his marriage in 1534.
-
Significance
-
The divine right of kings is a principle guiding factor in the power of an absolute monarchy. This system operates under the belief that the person acting as king or queen has the God-given right to do so and as such has been raised from birth for the position.
This connection between an individual's power and the belief that that power descends from a deity has led to many abuses of power in many past absolute monarchies.
History
-
The prime example of an absolute monarch in history is Louis XIV, King of France from 1654 to 1714. He is often credited in explaining the level of his power in the statement of "L'État, c'est moi" meaning "I am the state." He exemplified the level of power a monarch could achieve by ending feudalism and consolidating the nation's power into the capital. He was known as the Sun King because as the planets rotated around the sun, so did the nation revolve around him.
England was ruled for many years by absolute monarchs, but the aristocracy eventually forced the king to sign the Magna Carta in 1215, which limited his powers and created the first constitutional monarchy.
The tsars of Russia were the longest ruling absolute monarchy, from the reign of Ivan the Terrible until the 1905 Russian revolution that established the tsars as a constitutional monarchy.
After the American and French revolutions, the absolute monarchy was slowly disbanded over the next century and by the time World War I was over, the rule of a single leader with divine rights had given way to democracy and totalitarianism.
Effects
-
Today, there are few absolute monarchs left in existence. Most notabe are the Saudi King and the King of Swaziland. These leaders maintain power in the modern era of democracy by balancing their absolute power with the will of their people.
The country of Nepal has gone through several incarnations of government in the past decades, going from constitutional monarchy to parliamentary to an absolute monarchy and back to a national assembly in 2008.
-
