SOURCE: Boesche, Roger. “Fearing Monarchs and Merchants: Montesquieu's Two Theories of Despotism,” Western Political Quarterly 43, 4 (1990): 741-61.

In this essay, Boesche looks at the theories of despotism present in Montesquieu's De l'Esprit de lois and The Persian Letters. Caught between fear of a too-powerful sovereign and a too-selfish merchant class, Boesche argues, Montesquieu contradicts himself in presenting two significantly different portraits of a despotic society.

Although he did not invent the word despotism, Montesquieu more than any other author established it in that lexicon of political and politicized words—words such as capitalism, socialism, individualism, and bureaucracy—invented in the last three centuries in response either to specific political necessities or to more general political goals. In this case, the opponents of Louis XIV's arbitrary uses of power apparently invented the French word despotisme in the 1690s. The root of this word is, of course, Greek in origin, and...