, Vol. II
(1887).
PART II
DYNASTIC AND COLONIAL RIVALRY
In the seventeenth century and in the greater part of the eighteenth,
public attention was directed chiefly toward dynastic and colonial
rivalries. In the European group of national states, France was the
most important. Politically the French evolved a form of absolutist
divine-right monarchy, which became the pattern of all European
monarchies, that of England alone excepted. In international affairs
the reigning family of France--the Bourbon dynasty after a long
struggle succeeded in humiliating the rulers of Spain and of Austria--
the Habsburg dynasty. The hegemony which, in the sixteenth century,
Spain had exercised in the newly established state-system of Europe was
now supplanted by that of France. Intellectually, too, Italian
leadership yielded to French, until France set the fashion alike in
manners, morals, and art. Only in the sphere of commerce and trade and
exploitation of lands beyond the seas was French supremacy questioned,
and there not by declining Portugal or Spain but by the vigorous
English nation.
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