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Article: The Birth of Absolutism: A History of France, 1598-1661.
- Article from:
- The Historian
- Article date:
- January 1, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 Phi Alpha Theta, History Honor Society, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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By Yves-Marie Berce. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996. Pp. viii, 262. $19.95.)
Written in a sprightly, engaging style, this fresh and reflective study argues that royal absolutism was not necessarily the destiny of Bourbon France. At any number of points, seventeenth-century France could well have adopted an English-style limited monarchy or imploded into full-blown civil war. Obviously this did not happen. But Yves-Marie Berce, author of more than a dozen books on early modern France, suggests that historians have been too quick to canonize the political skills of Henry IV, Richelieu, and Mazarin and have underestimated the malleable character of French ...