The Routledge History of Monarchy

Elena Woodacre, Lucinda H.S. Dean, Chris Jones, Zita Rohr, Russell Martin, Elena Woodacre, Lucinda H.S. Dean, Chris Jones, Zita Rohr, Russell Martin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351787307
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The Routledge History of Monarchy draws together current research across the field of royal studies, providing a rich understanding of the history of monarchy from a variety of geographical, cultural and temporal contexts.

Divided into four parts, this book presents a wide range of case studies relating to different aspects of monarchy throughout a variety of times and places, and uses these case studies to highlight different perspectives of monarchy and enhance understanding of rulership and sovereignty in terms of both concept and practice. Including case studies chosen by specialists in a diverse array of subjects, such as history, art, literature, and gender studies, it offers an extensive global and interdisciplinary approach to the history of monarchy, providing a thorough insight into the workings of monarchies within Europe and beyond, and comparing different cultural concepts of monarchy within a variety of frameworks, including social and religious contexts.

Opening up the discussion of important questions surrounding fundamental issues of monarchy and rulership, The Routledge History of Monarchy is the ideal book for students and academics of royal studies, monarchy, or political history.

PART I

MODELS AND CONCEPTS OF RULERSHIP

INTRODUCTION

Chris Jones

In a collection that consciously seeks to establish that the ‘history of monarchy’ is more – much more – than an episode in some whiggish history of civilization’s progress along the road to western-style democracy, this first part of the volume might appear to be an anomaly.¹ As Elena Woodacre’s general introduction has demonstrated, this is a volume dedicated to monarchy on a global scale. Yet in this first part of the book Europe appears to stare down from its throne – serenely or smugly, depending on your point of view – surveying the court of chapters assembled before it. Capetians and Plantagenets mingle there with Castilian kings and German emperors. Of the court’s future visitors, most will, doubtless, look away from the throne itself preferring to focus their attention on those in attendance. Others – inevitably the minority in an age of chapter downloads – will consider the assembly as a whole. Some, less inclined to either politeness or deference, and finding there to be a ‘wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command’ emanating from the throne, will express outrage.² Taken as a whole, does Part I of this volume not embody not-so-subtle traces of a division, to borrow Niall Ferguson’s characterization, between the west and ‘the rest’?³ Such an approach to exploring models of rulership would seem particularly at odds with a growing interest in applying the ‘global turn’ to the discipline of history.⁴ The latter approach, which informs this volume as a whole and is exemplified in relation to monarchy in the work of historians such as Jeroen Duindam, seeks, at the very least, to place Europe in its wider context, and to remind us more generally that there is a history beyond the continent’s shores.⁵

The Ottomans, with some justification, might claim to have re-invented the model of monarchy in the Muslim world. The sixteenth-century sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (r.1520–66), who, as part of a broader claim to universal sovereignty, declared himself to be ‘Caesar of all the lands of Rome’, represents the pinnacle of Ottoman success.⁶ Yet neither he nor any other members of the dynasty of Orhan, appear as part of this discussion. Where is the Mughal emperor Akbar (r.1556–1605) who attempted to create new arguments for the legitimacy of rulership by blending Islam, Hinduism and countless other religions into what was arguably his own unique ‘faith of God’ (Dīn-i Ilāhī)?⁷ The worlds of the Ottomans and the Mughuls offer only two stunning examples of alternative models of monarchical rulership that are not discussed here. One could easily find others. The unique challenges offered by models of monarchy in China are not explored.⁸ And where are the Mongols? The emperors of Ethiopia?

The first point to make, then, is that for all Europe’s tendency to dominate, this part is actually conceived as two case studies: western Europe is one; the Muslim world is the other. Two of the eight chapters address the world beyond western Europe, even if the continent’s shadow is hard to escape entirely. Pascal Buresi’s discussion of the Almohads involves, at least in part, Iberia, while David Mednicoff considers modern Arab kingship as a reaction to western colonialism. Secondly, however, it is worth underlining that Part I is intended to be read in the context of the volume as a whole; it was not conceived with the intention of making a case for exceptionalism, western European or otherwise. It is worth noting that Kim Berqvist and Trond Isaksen’s chapters, which follow in later parts of the book, are among those that encourage us to consider western Europe itself within a broader European context.⁹ This is not, in short, a part of the volume in search of Ferguson’s ‘killer apps’.¹⁰ And it might be noted that the fate of Shelley’s Ozymandias awaits every civilization; western Europe, whose throne has, in any case, appeared more painted plasterboard than granite of late, is unlikely to prove an exception in the long run. Why, then, is Europe allowed such prominence here? In essence, a narrow focus is an attempt to both avoid tokenism and to enable the drawing of meaningful comparisons.

The chronological focus, although covering the last 1000 years, is, in a certain sense, as narrow as the geographical. Those in search of discussion of the bretwalda, a – possibly mythical – conception of royal overlordship associated with the early medieval Anglo-Saxon world, will find it as disappointingly absent as an exploration of the process by which Isma‘il I (r.1501–24) lay the foundations for Safavid Persia.¹¹ Instead, the eight chapters that comprise this part provide an opportunity to delve deeply into three key themes that are critical to shaping monarchical rule, and that illustrate its vibrancy and adaptability as a model of rulership. All three overlap and are interwoven throughout, although some themes feature more prominently in some chapters than others. Europe’s transition from the later Middle Ages into the early modern era, marked by seismic shifts in the structures of society, politics and the economy, offers, in this context, a perfect Petri dish for examining these themes. The same is true of the Almohad caliphate and the modern Arab monarchies, both of which emerged amid a staccato burst of bewildering social, political and economic changes.

The first theme concerns the image of the ‘ideal’ ruler. Or, to put it another way, it concerns the question of the template on which rulership was modelled. This was as complex an issue in the medieval and early modern west as it was – and is – in the Muslim world. The ideal ruler was never a fixed concept; his or her features ebbed and flowed as they underwent a constant process of readjustment to suit contemporary society. What constituted the model ruler evolved over time and responded to a range of changing factors. The image of the ruler shared this characteristic with the institutional framework within which rulership operated. The second theme explored here, then – aspects of which are also considered in Part II ‘Ritual and representation’ – is the way in which the institution of monarchy underwent a process of constant evolution to accommodate the demands of these ever-changing social, political and economic factors.

Monarchy, as a normative model, is commonly envisioned in the twenty-first century as incorporating hereditary succession, usually via primogeniture, to the rule of one people in one, clearly defined, contiguous territory; other forms are, by definition, departures from the norm. The precise mechanisms by which succession could operate are explored in more detail in Part III ‘Dynasty and succession’. It is worth highlighting, however, that what has come to be regarded as the normative model was particularly suited to those in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries whose interest lay in establishing the ‘naturalness’ of modern nation-states. It not only drew a distinct contrast with the empires those states often replaced but imbued what was essentially a new type of political organization with the useful trappings of historical roots: nation-states ‘restored’ peoples to their ‘natural’ kingdoms while simultaneously rebooting their political formats from an autocratic and hereditary model to a representative, if not necessarily democratic, one.¹² As Trond Isaksen, Christoph de Speigeleer and Mikolaj Getka-Kenig’s chapters in Part II ‘Ritual and representation’ illustrate, this process left nineteenth-century monarchies facing a number of challenges when it came to ceremonies such as coronations and funerals or architectural representation.¹³ As late medieval and early modern Europe demonstrate par excellence, the reality that had inspired the original ceremonies and architecture was far from the normative model beloved of modernity’s nationalists. In fact, monarchy enjoyed a bewildering variety of structures. More often than not, kings and queens inherited composite monarchies while dynasts succeeded in a hereditary manner to theoretically elective positions.

As the institutions of monarchy and the image of the ideal ruler continuously developed to meet the needs of changing circumstances, monarchs and those they ruled were presented with a paradox. How could supposedly timeless, unchanging institutions evolve? Part I’s third theme concerns the perennial challenge of how the legitimacy of the monarchical model was established. The success with which the legitimacy of monarchical power was sustained in the face of continual societal change is one of the most remarkable features of both the case studies examined here. There exists in each a fundamental tension between the dominant intellectual framework, informed by, respectively, interpretati...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on Contributors
• Understanding the Mechanisms of Monarchy
• Part I Models and Concepts of Rulership
• Part II Ritual and Representation
• Part III Dynasty and Succession
• Part IV Exercising Authority and Exerting Influence
• Index