ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to take the 'revisionist' argument one step further in an attempt to incorporate an understanding of political change. Warfare and its impact on the absolutist state is a topic that continues to merit investigation. The institutions and structures of absolutism, they argue, raised the costs of borrowing well beyond what France's rivals paid to finance war, and the proliferation of privilege erected political barriers to increasing taxation and reforming political institutions. Old-regime France was a society of privileged corporations. In juridical and financial matters, inequality was the rule of law, as the French crown sat atop an incalculable number of legally distinct groups, or corps. A common socio-economic foundation underpinned the elite. This group of the 'politically powerful' lived either directly, or indirectly, from the produce of the peasantry. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
