Despotismo ruso y absolutismo borbónico: Apuntes para un debate sobre la forma de gobierno en la España de la Ilustración

Abstract

The irruption of Russia in Eighteenth-Century Europe turned the new superpower into a laboratory of ideas for the political philosophy of the Enlightenment. Associated with Russia, the concepts of “civilization,” “reform,” “emulation,” “happiness,” “freedom,” “despotism,” “autocracy”, found a fertile field of discussion among the French philosophes. Faced with the giant protagonists of this debate –Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Diderot, D’Alembert, Raynal and Baudeau, among others– the Spanish Ilustración seemed to remain on the sidelines. While discussion about Russia has been the object of great attention in the international historiography of the Enlightenment, references to Spain are scarce. However, many of the ideas about Russia that occupied French philosophers also appeared amongSpanish observers. In this contribution, we focus on the debate at the time on the form of government: to what extent were the tsars “Asian despotism” different from the Bourbon regime in Spain? If Charles III of Spain shared with Catherine II of Russia the same enlightened and reformist spirit, what was the difference between the two monarchies?