Feudalism Monarchies And Nobility

Stories of pageantry associated with kings, queens, and the upper class have long captivated readers of all ages. The reality behind how these entities have operated within set governmental systems has not always been as glamorous as these tales, but it retains an allure of its own nonetheless. This book provides a firm grounding in the historic political, social, and economic implications of rule by monarchy, including the prevalence of the feudal system in medieval Europe. Modern monarchies and the role of the aristocracy in every age are also detailed.

Stories of pageantry associated with kings, queens, and the upper class have long captivated readers of all ages. The reality behind how these entities have operated within set governmental systems has not always been as glamorous as these tales, but it retains an allure of its own nonetheless. This book provides a firm grounding in the historic political, social, and economic implications of rule by monarchy, including the prevalence of the feudal system in medieval Europe. Modern monarchies and the role of the aristocracy in every age are also detailed.

Professor Major's aim in these articles has been to stimulate new assessments of the political, constitutional and social history of France in the 15th - 17th centuries. The first group examines the nature of the Renaissance monarchy, its strengths and its weaknesses and lack of effective controls. The next group explores the issue of why the Estates General, and some of the provincial estates, failed to develop in France, in marked contrast to the triumph of representative government in England. Finally, the author turns to the question of how the nobles succeeded in remaining the dominant social class. On the one hand, he traces the evolution of a patron-client relationship which compensated for the decay of the feudal ties of the Middle Ages; on the other, he challenges assumptions made of a decline in nobles' incomes, and contends that, so long as they held on to their lands and could escape the depredations of war, for most of the period they actually benefited from a marked increase in real income.

This essay provides a rapid but careful survey of the principal events connected with the accretion of territorial bases and development of institutional foundations for three of the great political sovereignties of modern Europe.

A study of the paradoxical position of French nobility just before the French Revolution

Scholars of early modern France have traditionally seen an alliance between the kings and the bourgeoisie, leading to an absolute, centralized monarchy, perhaps as early as the reign of Francis I (1515-47). In From Renaissance Monarchy to Absolute Monarchy, eminent historian J. Russell Major draws on forty-five years of research to dispute this view, offering both a masterful synthesis of existing scholarship and new information concerning the role of the nobility in these changes. Renaissance monarchs, Major contends, had neither the army nor the bureaucracy to create an absolute monarchy; they were strong only if they won the support of the nobility and other vocal elements of the population. At first they enjoyed this support, but the Wars of Religion revealed their inherent weakness. Major describes the struggle between such statesmen as Bellivre, Sully, Marillac, and Richelieu to impose their concept of reform and includes an account of how Louis XIV created an absolute monarchy by catering to the interests of the nobility and other provincial leaders. It was this "carrot" approach, accompanied by the threat of the "stick," that undergirded his absolutism. Major concludes that the rise of absolutism was not accompanied, as has often been asserted, by the decline of the nobility. Rather, nobles were able to adapt to changing conditions that included the decline of feudalism, the invention of gunpowder, and inflation. In doing so, they remained the dominant class, whose support kings found it necessary to seek.

According to Alexis de Tocqueville’s influential work on the Old Regime and the French Revolution, royal centralisation had so weakened the feudal power of the nobles that their remaining privileges became glaringly intolerable to commoners. This book challenges the theory by showing that when Louis XVI convened assemblies of landowners in the late 1770s and 1780s to discuss policies needed to resolve the budgetary crisis, he faced widespread opposition from lords and office holders. These elites regarded the assemblies as a challenge to their hereditary power over commoners. The king’s government comprised seigneurial jurisdictions and venal offices. Lordships and offices upheld inequality on behalf of the nobility and bred the discontent motivating the people to make the French Revolution.

Articles originally published 1954-1987.