Christian IV	Federick III	Christian V

The main motif of early-modern Danish foreign policy  was the rivalry with Sweden. The two countries fought six times - 1563-1570, 1611-1613, 1643-1645, 1657-1660, 1675-1679 and 1709-1720. Denmark was forced to cede the rich province of Scania with its 200,000 people in the Peace of Roskilde 1658. Although the subsequent Treaty of Copenhagen restored some of Denmark's losses, it was undoubtedly the loser of the series of wars.

Danish defeat produced a constitutional crisis, of which Frederick III took advantage to replace the old aristocratic system of government with royal absolutism. The Royal Law ("Kongelov") of 1665 (drafted by Peder Schumacher, Count Griffenfeld, and kept officially secret for some years afterwards) afforded the crown the sovereign rights that theorists such as Jean Bodin and Henning Arnisaeus had attributed to monarchs.

The Danish economy was based on large farms owned by noblemen: it exported about 50,000 head of livestock a year, until rising butter prices in the second half of the 17th century stimulated domestic dairy farming. By the end of the 17th century, the capital, Copenhagen, had a population of about 50,000.