Del absolutismo francés al despotismo ilustrado en España: Influencia francesa y moderna

Abstract

French influence in Spain predates the advent of Felipe V to the throne, the first Spanish Bourbon, even before the “Louis XIV century”. Indeed, Richelieu, as a forerunner of the Nation-State, left an imprint on other European kingdoms. In the case of Spain, this influence deepened from the first Bourbon reforms and became more acute through the centralist measures of the enlightened ministers. Thus, the innovations of the so-called “enlightened despotism” recognize their precedent in state utilitarianism and absolutism, initiated in theory by Machiavelli and brought to political practice by the famous French Cardinal. All in all, although said absolutism has a sort of French stamp, in reality its originality lies in the principles of modernity that affected, although to a different degree, both France and Spain due to the fact that both kingdoms, at least since the eighteenth century, they were part of a common world.