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Looking at France under its last three absolute rulers, this study sets the political history of the period within a social framework, drawing on recent research into the institutions, social structure and economy. An analysis of the changes made to the traditional monarchy under Louis XIV is the foundation of an analysis over the entire period of the machinery of government, dealing with the development and progressive rationalization of central and local administration, the growing importance of field agents of the central government, and the social characteristics of the servants of the Bourbon monarchy. The monarchy faced the perennial difficulty of finding ways of using its strength to impose obedience, attract loyalty, and protect its subjects. In assessing the measure of its success, attention is paid to crime, policing, state security, favouritism and the working of family, clientage and patronage in the state, the Church, and in cultural life as well as the ways in which these factors sometimes interfered with, but often reinforced, state power. All of these issues, as well as considerations of finance and economic development, the ideology of monarchy, function and fall of ministries - are integrated into a political narrative for the period 1715-89, offering an interpretation of the Bourbon monarchy within its own time - and not merely as a prelude to the regime that took its place in 1789.