From the middle of the nineteenth century until recently, the only acceptable way to discuss political developments in early modern Europe was in terms of the rise of absolutism. “Absolute monarchy” was the political theory of early modern states formulated by ideologues of their respective regimes. Later historians accepted this ideology as the way these monarchies operated and formulated a model called “absolutism,” which posits a monarch who accrues power at the expense of the nobility. During the last three decades, however, a number of historians, whose studies focus on elite politics, have undermined this historiographical model. Through their archival research on the operation of regimes in early modern Europe, these historians have instead described an interlocking relationship between ruler and nobility in which the ruler acted as legitimizer of the nobility and adjudicator of differences among its members.Adamson has described the emerging pattern of understanding this way: “At the most ‘absolutist' of courts, the exercise of authority was always in some sense a negotiation founded, in the final analysis, upon the community of interest between the crown and the noble elites. The court, far from being an instrument whereby monarchs could weaken the nobility, as was once supposed, provided the forum in which that compact could be subjected to a regular process of revision and renegotiation.” John Adamson, “The Making of the Ancien-Régime Court 1500–1700,” in The Princely Courts of Europe 1500–1750, ed. John Adamson (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999), 39. Then, in a strongly argued book, The Myth of Absolutism, Nicholas Henshall delivered what many specialists consider to be the coup de grâce to the absolutism model as a worthwhile way of discussing early modern European governments.Nicholas Henshall, The Myth of Absolutism: Change and Continuity in Early Modern European Monarchy (London: Longman, 1992). See also Henshall “The Myth of Absolutism,” History Today 42 (June 1992): 40–47. He pointed out that “absolutism” is a term coined in 1823 to apply to the contemporary ruler Ferdinand VII of Spain, and argued that it is an anachronism for us to apply it to earlier centuries.