The European Enlightenment

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(1660-1789), beginning with Louis XIV and ending with the French Revolution.
Crises and tragedies primarily motivated absolutism of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Absolute monarchies were originally proposed as a solution to the bloody civil and religious wars erupting as a result of the Reformation. These absolutists argued several important roles of the national government should solely be in the hands of the monarch: the military, judicial system, and tax collection. Powers such as these normally belonged to the aristocracy and local government now required the formation of a national civil bureaucracy that only answered to the king. This bureaucracy had to stand against powerful forces opposing the king such as the church and nobility as well as other regions. In order to centralize the administration of the state, the government had to develop ways to take the political authority away from aristocracy.
The monarch that fully grasp and developed these ...

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