European Civiliization (1648 1945) with John Merriman: 2. Absolutism and the State ( Yale)

European Civilization, 16481945 (HIST 202) The rise of absolutism in Europe must be understood in the context of insecurity attending the religious wars of the first half of the seventeenth century, and the Thirty Years War in particular. Faced with the unprecedented brutality and devastation of these conflicts, European nobles and landowners were increasingly willing to surrender their independence to the authority of a single, allpowerful monarch in return for guaranteed protection. Among the conseque