States that failed to centralise were crushed, on what basis do you make that claim?
This is a well-worn historical theme.
From:
http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761570768_10/Europe.html
The Age of Absolutism
In the aftermath of the Thirty Years’ War, absolutism began to take recognizable form;
the secular, centralized state replaced feudal political conceptions and institutions as the instrument of worldly power and influence. Through the efforts of Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin, France had emerged as the first great modern power. In 1661, when Louis XIV assumed control of the country’s affairs, he understood that new territories could be won only by mobilizing the economic and military resources of the entire nation. The series of wars that he visited upon Europe failed to transform his boldest dreams into realities, but the effort itself would have been impossible without the mercantilist economic policies of Jean-Baptiste Colbert and the creation of a large standing army. The vast military and civil bureaucracy that was the inevitable concomitant of Louis’s unbridled territorial ambition soon began to take on a life of its own, and although the king may have believed that he was the state, he had in fact become its first servant. A similar fate overtook the French aristocracy. As feudal diversity fell victim to bureaucratic rationality, aristocrats were obliged to surrender political power to bureaucratic officers called intendants.
The Centralized State
Perceiving that power was trump,
other European monarchs were quick to emulate French absolutism. Tsar Peter the Great devoted his energies to transforming Russia into a major military power. As part of his program of Westernization he created a standing army and a navy, encouraged the study of Western technology, and insisted that nobility be defined by service to the state. Moreover, he took steps to rationalize government administration.
These efforts were crowned with success when Russia defeated Sweden in the Great Northern War (1700-1721). Ensconced in their new capital at Saint Petersburg, Peter and his successors could no longer be left out of Europe’s political equation. Nor could Prussia, where the historical pattern was similar to that of most centralizing states: War and the expansionist impulse dictated the concentration of power, the standardization of administrative procedures, and the creation of a modern standing army.
The price to be paid for failing to centralize power was political decline, as manifested by the histories of Poland and the Ottoman Empire. The persistence of aristocratic independence so weakened Poland that it was finally devoured at three separate feasts (1772, 1793, 1795) by its neighbors Austria, Prussia, and Russia. The Turks, once the feared conquerors of southeastern Europe, were unable to prevent their Janissaries and provincial officials from usurping power that had once belonged to the sultan. As a result, the Ottoman Empire was on its way to becoming the “sick man of Europe” before the end of the 18th century.
Out of the wars that ravaged Europe between 1667 and 1721, a state system emerged that by and large survived until 1914. At the beginning of the period, France stood unchallenged as the greatest military power in Europe; by the second decade of the 18th century, however, England, Austria, Russia, and Prussia were all powers to be reckoned with. Instead of a French imperium, Europe was organized as an equilibrial group of great powers. Balance of power became the fundamental principle of European diplomacy and an effective counter to any aggression that had for its aim continental hegemony.
pleas send the corrected text to me someone :wacko: )