absolute state
nounEtymology Compound of absolute + state.
1
A state with absolute sovereignty and authority, in contrast with e.g. a feudal state.
- In France, where originally the king had only a very small estate, no power, and no army except his personal followers, the absolute state did not exist before the sixteenth century; for the French parliaments were still powerful in the fourteenth century, as we see by their records.1898, Henry Gaullieur, The Paternal State in France and Germany, Harper & brothers, page 45:
- The theory of sovereignty was an invaluable weapon in the hands of the monarch in his contest with the other claimants to authority; it gave a theoretical foundation for the emerging national absolute state, and it clearly forecast the line that political evolution was to follow.1922, Hugo Krabbe, The Modern Idea of the State, M. Nijhoff, page xix:
4 more examples
- The truly absolute state, organized without regard for privilege and tradition, disposing over the property and life of all its subjects according to its own interests, was established not under the monarchies, but by the modern democracies.1968, Gerhard Ritter, Frederick the Great: a Historical Profile, University of California Press, page 2:
- Roman Law recognized the absolute state and the individual's private rights; it did not acknowledge the legal inviolability of group life.1991, Jacques Kornberg, “Dilthey's Introduction to the Human Sciences: Liberal Social Thought in the Second Reich”, in In the Presence of the Past: Essays in Honor of Frank Manuel, Springer Science+Business Media, page 258:
- Tribal states, which existed for instance in early medieval European society, differed from the absolute state which developed since the late Middle Ages and had its zenith in the absolute monarchies of the seventeenth century.1999, Henk van Dijk, “State Borders in Geography and History”, in Nationalising and Denationalising European Border Regions, Springer Science+Business Media, page 21:
- Although several subsidiary subjects have been touched upon, the central problem throughout has been to explain the rapid creation of a centralized, absolute state after the Meiji Restoration (1868), and the growth of an industrial economy under conditions of state patronage and control.2000, E. Herbert Norman, Japan's Emergence as a Modern State: Political and Economic Problems of the Meiji Period, University of British Columbia Press, page 3: