The European seventeenth century saw the seeming resolution of two great conflicts. Through the nightmares of the Thirty Years War and the British civil wars, the murderous religious hatreds that had dominated the previous period finally burnt themselves out.

Through the growing power of the centralized state, monarchs seemed to be able (with striking exceptions) to hold the reins to even greater power at the cost of semi-democratic institutions. This triumph of Absolutism (personified most clearly by Louis XIV) seemed to be complete and unassailable, and the handful of Protestant powers who offered an alternative model (the United Provinces and England) were essentially on the defensive.

Dr Spellman studies all the great political theorists of the century (dominated inevitably by Hobbes) and also some of the lesser known, occasional writers and pamphleteers. This book will be invaluable for anyone studying seventeenth-century European history - it allows those studying the thought of the period to understand the historical context, and those studying the military and political events to understand their intellectual underpinning.