Baroque & Rococo Architecture
Prentice-Hall International | 1961 | ISBN: N/A | English | 136 pages | PDF | 21.3 MB

The seventeenth century saw the founding of the modern "absolute state" and the dissolution of the fragmented allegiances of the previous century. The developing concept of an autocratic monarchy tended to vest all power in the hands of a single ruler, who was able to oversee the total organization of a nation and direct it toward a single goal. Since France was the first nation to reap the benefits of absolutism, European history of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is largely concerned with French expansionist policy and the efforts of various international alliances to thwart French desires. For two centuries France was the political, social, and economic heart of Europe