rder to find a more accurate and meaningful definition of the monarchies of the era under study. Again, however, he openly admits that he is essentially bringing together the sources which have been available to all historians, but adds that he is re-analyzing it comprehensively and in detail in order to recast the portrait of the era and its monarchies:
What follows is scarcely an insurrection against orthodoxy. Recent scholarship has exposed all these propositions as misleading descriptions of what early modern European monarchs actually did --- or tried to do. The edifice of 'absolutism' is cracking and the old cliche is repeated without conviction . . . The relevant research and articles have to be pursued in many corners of the discipline and yet no one has yet assembled the materials for demolition (p. 2).
Again, although his work is meticulously and voluminously documented, the materials consulted are not newly discovered. He is simply returning to all available sources in order to see what is actually there in order to break the habits of myopic historians.
His ultimate argument with respect to "absolutism" is that it is
beyond repair: no amount of cutting or rewriting can save it. The plot is too sensational, the colors too strident and the setting too lurid. The time has now come to lower the curtain on the obsessions of the last century. To retain the title of 'absolutism' while removing most of the content is a hopelessly confusing half-measure . . . With the loss of its autocrats and its bureaucrats, its theory and its practice, 'absolutism' should heed the old advice. Kindly leave the stage (pp. 211-212).
One important sub-argument of the book is that monarchs were much more adept at managing than most historians have indicated. These other historians have come to take f
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