Napoleon Bonaparte crowned himself Emperor of the French. My understanding as a complete layman is that this was partly because declaring himself King of France was politically untenable (the revolution having removed the king) and partly a foreign policy decision aimed at establishing himself as the equal of the Emperor of Austria and the Tsar of Russia.
However, I am curious to know why Louis XIV, whose stated ambition was absolute power and who surrounded himself with all the trappings thereof, who sought to make France the dominant military, economic and political power in Europe and wanted to expand France's influence around the world via the establishment of colonial holdings in America and India, never officially declared his realm an empire and himself an emperor.
Were there domestic or foreign policy considerations which discouraged him from doing so? Were there cultural issues (of which I am certainly ignorant) at play?
I understand roughly why the King of Spain never proclaimed himself as "Emperor of Spain", because to the best of my knowledge, during the period of the most extensive Spanish colonial expansion, the Spanish royal family were a branch of the House of Habsburg, who were the Holy Roman Emperors at this time.
But why not the Sun King?
Being an emperor in medieval and modern Europe did not mean simply being a very powerful king. It is not a 'power-up' that can be unlocked by military might or overseas possessions. In general, no title of nobility could be created except by the pope or at most by the emperor. Louis XIV could not invent a new kingdom out of thin air.
Still less could he invent an empire. There could only be two Christian emperors until Napoleon. One for the Catholic West and one for the Orthodox East, heirs of the Christian emperors of Rome. Their purpose is in theory to be the temporal summit of the entire community of believers, although in practice their power will never really be that extensive. Even in the East, the Russian empire proper only came into being when Constantinople fell to the Turks. Only then can they say in Moscow 'the Orthodox empire is dead, long live the Orthodox empire'.
It is a deeply religious title, to the point that with geographical explorations, Europeans will attribute the title of emperor to those they identify as the strongest rulers of a particular religion. The Turkish Caliph for the Sunnis, the Shah of Persia for the Shiites, the Grand Moghul for the Hindus, the Ethiopian Negus for the Monophysites... to the point that when European kings conquered these kingdoms they inherited the imperial title. Queen Victoria was an empress, but 'only' of India and not of the British empire in general, which remains only a historiographical definition.
What Napoleon did was an almost sacrilegious violation of the world order considered normal until then. But then again, he was a monarch who was a product of the Revolution. Calling himself emperor is partly a joining of the great European dynasties, but on the other hand it is also founding a new type of kingship, echoing the Roman emperors who were not yet Christian. Napoleon no longer reigned 'by the grace of God', but 'by the will of the people', a kind of 'first among equals' answerable only to the French nation. In this, his title 'emperor', while taking up an ancient term, was much more similar in concept to 'Duce' or 'Führer' or 'Caudillo'.
It is only when Napoleon breaks 'the spell' that emperor becomes NOW a kind of 'promotion' for a king. Then you have the Emperor of the French next to the Emperor of Austria next to the Germanic Emperor next to the Emperor of all the Russias next to the Emperor of Mexico...
Speaking within the parameters of established European legalism, there already was a “legal” Emperor in the form of the Holy Roman Emperor. Had Louis XIV declared himself an emperor, he would struggle to surmount the fact that it was an illegitimate claim. Western European monarchies were intensely legalistic and prerogative-centered, especially by age of burgeoning absolutism—more so in France. Napoleon was able to declare himself “Emperor of the French” in the wake of more than a decade of upheaval because he followed an event of catastrophic and monumental precedent-shattering proportions: the French Revolution. Even then however, the next decade would be dominated by the fact that Napoleon’s claim was sharply illegitimate in the eyes of the rest of Europe.
Hey there,
Just to let you know, your question is fine, and we're letting it stand. However, you should be aware that questions framed as 'Why didn't X do Y' relatively often don't get an answer that meets our standards (in our experience as moderators). There are a few reasons for this. Firstly, it often can be difficult to prove the counterfactual: historians know much more about what happened than what might have happened. Secondly, 'why didn't X do Y' questions are sometimes phrased in an ahistorical way. It's worth remembering that people in the past couldn't see into the future, and they generally didn't have all the information we now have about their situations; things that look obvious now didn't necessarily look that way at the time.
If you end up not getting a response after a day or two, consider asking a new question focusing instead on why what happened did happen (rather than why what didn't happen didn't happen) - this kind of question is more likely to get a response in our experience. Hope this helps!