While the general trend in seventeenth-century Europe tended toward the stagnation of representative institutions and the consolidation of monarchical power, England chose a different path. The Stuart kings, who succeeded the powerful Tudor dynasty in 1603, were unable to convert their pretensions to absolutism into real power. James I (r. 1603-25) authored tomes on the divine right of kingship, but was wise enough not to put his ideals into practice. His son, Charles I (r. 1625-49), proved much less wise. After a series of fractious parliaments in the late 1620s, Charles tried to rule without the legislative body for a period of eleven years. If his experiment had succeeded, England may well have gone the route of Louis XIV’s France. Financial difficulties caused by a revolt in Scotland, however, forced the calling of the famous Long Parliament in 1640. Determined to redress the balance of power in England, the Long Parliament fought two civil wars against Charles and finally executed him in 1649. Although the monarchy was restored in 1660 in the person of Charles II (r. 1649-85), it returned at the bequest of Parliament. When Charles’s brother James II (r. 1685-88) used high-handed methods to promote Catholicism in Protestant England, the political nation again rebelled and invited the Dutch William of Orange and his wife Mary to reign in his stead. For the second time in under fifty years an English monarch had been deposed. The mystique of kingship was severely diminished and the prestige of parliament enhanced. Two political parties, the Whigs and Tories, emerged. After 1688 no English monarch could afford to ignore the wishes of the political nation as expressed in the Houses of Parliament.

Historical sociologist Norbert Elias argues that French Absolutism, as put into practice under Louis XIV, created an environment in which the nobility competed with one another for the privilege of serving the king in honorable functions. This competition, Elias argues, was powered by "civilizing" norms of behavior, which were internalized by the nobles and then trickled down to become the behavioral standards and even the emotional barometer for members of modern western society. Historian Peter Burke makes use of Elias's argument in his monograph on The Fabrication of Louis XIV. Burke suggests that modern propaganda was invented during the reign of Louis XIV, and that in reality there is little difference in substance between the rhetoric that promoted reverence for the king and the use of mass media in political discourse today. It is hoped that the sources below will allow students to reflect on these scholarly arguments and to form their own opinions on the relationships between seventeenth-century France and contemporary social and political life.

Peter I (r. 1682-1725), known as Peter the Great, founded an imperial, Europeanized era of Russian history. While he certainly built on existing trends in Russian society, Peter nevertheless attempted to reform virtually every aspect of the Russian state, society, economy, and culture. His rule, often referred to as a "revolution," attempted to remake Russia into a modern state, and his efforts have captivated (and often angered) Russians ever since. For some Peter represented the ideal warrior-tsar, artisan-tsar, transformer, and revolutionary who made Russia into a powerful, European state. Others have viewed Peter as the Antichrist, the first Bolshevik, and the personification of a totalitarian-style dictatorship. Literally and figuratively (he was nearly seven feet tall), Peter the Great dominates modern Russian history, and his legacy continues to provoke spirited debate.