Final answer:
Absolute monarchs aimed to consolidate power and wealth through mercantilism, utilizing policies that favored their state's economic and military expansion. Mercantilism emphasized a positive balance of trade and accumulation of gold and silver, extensively aligning with the goals of absolute monarchies like those of France and Britain in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
This correct answer is none of the above.
Step-by-step explanation:
The aims of an absolute monarch were to centralize power and control over the state, promote economic growth and control trade, maintain a strong military and expand the empire, and not to establish a constitutional monarchy or specifically protect individual rights.
The connection between royal absolutism and mercantilism is that under the absolute monarchy, economic policies were directed to strengthen the state's power and wealth. Mercantilism supported this goal by encouraging a favorable balance of trade, the accumulation of precious metals like gold and silver, and economic self-sufficiency through strict trade policies, tariffs, monopolies, and colonial exploitation for raw materials.
One example is Jean-Baptiste Colbert's mercantilist policies under Louis XIV's absolute monarchy in France, which aimed to reduce imports and boost French manufacturing and exports.
The British empire also employed mercantilist strategies to benefit from commercial ties with its colonies by controlling trade and accumulating wealth. Monarchs wielded their absolute power to enact policies that would increase the wealth and might of their nations, with mercantilism being a prominent economic system that facilitated this goal during the absolutist era.
This correct answer is none of the above.