Coup d’État at the Age of Formation of the Early Modern State

Abstract

In the 1980s the concept of “État modernе” gained more and more ground in the French historiography, and conventional statist concepts came in for severe criticism. The debate centred around not only general approaches concerning continuity of political processes from Antiquity to Modern times, but also around more specific issues, which, nevertheless, required serious reconsideration. With regard to this, the phenomenon of coup d’État and its interpretation in accordance with the development of État modernе is of exceptional interest. In the Early Modern time, there were no mechanisms of the dialogue between rulers and political communities. The absence of dialogue didn’t mean the absence of conflict, therefore, the only remaining means of resolving such conflicts was political cataclysm (including a coup d’état), and it was absolutely ordinary and imperative in the existing framework at the time. In order to outline the main features of coups d’État during the period of genesis of État moderne, it‘s necessary to systematize this phenomenon and to consider concrete examples of this classification. The most frequent form of coups d’état, and historically the first one at the time, was usurpation, which was quite natural — as the power was physically represented in the body of the sovereign. The second form of coups d’État typical of the period of the genesis of État modernе were extraordinary actions in the course of dynastic crises. The third form of coups d’état in the period of the genesis of État moderne were coups disguised as the struggle against conspiracy.