In this context of warfare, economic crisis, and demographic decline, European monarchs took urgent measures to restore order and rebuild their states. In some states absolutist models of government prevailed. In others, constitutionalist forces dominated. Despite their political differences, all these states sought to protect and expand their frontiers, raise new taxes, consolidate central control, and compete for colonies and trade in the New and Old Worlds. In so doing, they followed a broad pattern of state-building and consolidation of power found across Eurasia in this period.

Rulers who wished to increase their authority encountered formidable obstacles, including poor communications, entrenched local power structures, and ethnic and linguistic diversity. Nonetheless, over the course of the seventeenth century both absolutist and constitutional governments achieved new levels of power and national unity. They did so by transforming emergency measures of wartime into permanent structures of government and by subduing privileged groups through the combined use of force and economic and social incentives. Increased state authority may be seen in four areas in particular: a tremendous growth in the size and professionalism of armies; much higher taxes; larger and more efficient bureaucracies; and territorial expansion both within Europe and overseas.

Over time, centralized power added up to something close to sovereignty. A state may be termed sovereign when it possesses a monopoly over the instruments of justice and the use of force within clearly defined boundaries. In a sovereign state, no nongovernmental system of courts competes with state courts in the dispensation of justice. Also, private armies present no threat to central authority. While seventeenth-century states did not acquire full sovereignty, they made important strides toward that goal.