The Windsor Dynasty 1910 to the Present

'Long to Reign Over Us'?

Matthew Glencross, Judith Rowbotham, Michael D. Kandiah, Matthew Glencross, Judith Rowbotham, Michael D. Kandiah, Matthew Glencross, Judith Rowbotham, Michael D. Kandiah

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781137564559
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

This book explores the recreation and subsequent development of the British Monarchy during the twentieth century. Contributors examine the phenomenon of modern monarchy through an exploration of the establishment and the continuing impact of the Windsor dynasty both within Britain and the wider world, to interrogate the reasons for its survival into the twenty-first century. The successes (and failures) of the dynasty and the implications of these for its long-term survival are assessed from the perspectives of constitutional, political, diplomatic and socio-cultural history. Emphasis is placed on the use of symbols and tradition, and their reinvention, and public reactions to their employment by the Windsors, including the evidence provided by opinion polls. Starting with George V, and including darker times such as the challenge of the abdication of Edward VIII, this collection considers how far this reign was a key transition in how the British royal family hasperceived itself and its role through examination of the repackaging for mass consumption via the media of a range of state occasions from coronations to funerals, as well as modernization of its relations with the military.

© The Author(s) 2016

Matthew Glencross, Judith Rowbotham and Michael D. Kandiah (eds.)The Windsor Dynasty 1910 to the PresentPalgrave Studies in Modern Monarchy10.1057/978-1-137-56455-9_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Matthew Glencross¹ , Judith Rowbotham² and Michael D. Kandiah¹

(1)

Institute of Contemporary British History, King’s College London, London, UK

(2)

School of Law, Plymouth University, Plymouth, UK

Matthew Glencross (Corresponding author)

Email: [email protected]

Judith Rowbotham (Corresponding author)

Email: [email protected]

Michael D. Kandiah

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

Background

This volume fills in a gap in the current historiography of the twentieth century, promoting a better understanding of why the British monarchy, currently under the House of Windsor, has not only survived, but also flourished, at time when other monarchies, globally, have disappeared to be replaced by a variety of non-monarchical systems. Scholarship on monarchy in the modern era went through a period when it was regarded as being largely irrelevant to the concerns of modern historians, who have concentrated instead on the emergence of post-monarchical systems in Europe after 1918. This has meant that where monarchy has been addressed it has been seen as a background to the development of successor systems. Books in English on both monarchy as a modern form of government and on individual monarchs as political and diplomatic agents have been few and far between in the last half century of substantial historical writing. Recent exceptions have been Douglas-Home and Kelly’s study of twentieth century monarchy and, focusing on the present reign, Philip Murphy’s work on monarchy in Britain in the post-imperial era of the Commonwealth.¹ Otherwise, comments on the post-1914 British monarchy as a political force have generally been found in texts written by constitutional experts such as Vernon Bogdanor rather than by leading political historians.

There have been biographies, of course, often written by popular, rather than academic, historians—but biography has remained an area of academic historical writing that continues to be under-appreciated in terms of the contributions it can make to the understanding of the past, socio-economically and politically. Essentially, this is a product of the traditional Whig approach to history where there is a notion of an end-point which implicitly suggests that there will come a time when the monarchy will become totally irrelevant, and so be disposed of. In seeking to open the debate further, by challenging this underlying Whiggish certainty of the end of monarchy, the book seeks to test the potential for endurance of the monarchy within the British political system, and within the popular support offered to the institution by the population of the United Kingdom as a whole.

Methodological Approaches

Thus the starting point for the contributions to this volume has been a revisiting of the modern British monarchy inspired by a conviction that as a system and an aspect of the political state, monarchy has been undervalued by British scholarship since Walter Bagehot’s work on the constitution. Bagehot’s conclusions have been used as a way of writing off the monarchy as a serious player in Britain’s political and diplomatic history.² Recent scholarship has, however, started a process of rehabilitation by using the approaches of socio-cultural history to provide insights into the importance and impact of monarchy in Britain. David Cannadine’s work has already shown that, when it comes to domestic British politics in the nineteenth century, Bagehot’s explanation of how monarchy works is practically flawed.³ Vernon Bogdanor’s work has also shown, through his study of domestic political history in the twentieth century that Bagehot’s model does not work for that period either.⁴ Looking more widely, this volume will also suggest where monarchy has continued to play a significant part in Britain’s external relations—both with its former colonies and with other global powers. In other words, Bagehot’s suggestion that the British monarchy has not had any political or socio-cultural relevance in modern history is not automatically sustainable.⁵

A better understanding of the significance of symbolism and how monarchy has epitomised that symbolism to reinforce national identity at individual state level has come from studies on European monarchies in the modern era, particularly the nineteenth century. Johannes Paulmann’s work has been widely credited with prompting a rethinking of the importance of royal diplomacy and politics within European states, and is drawn on as a significant influence here.⁶ As Karina Urbach points out, the association of a dynasty with a national identity was by no means straightforward or easy, given the essentially international nature of royal familial relations.⁷ However, what this volume explores is how George V and his successors have managed to anglicise very successfully a dynasty which was, in the nineteenth century, still seen—both by its incumbents and by its critics at least—as being German as much as British, and part of a wider royal network.⁸ The importance of ceremonial, and the symbolism derived from that, to underpin this link between British royalty and British national identity will be shown here to have been a crucial tool. Moreover it is one very consciously used by all the Windsors, from George V on.

This is not to argue that—as Paulmann also shows—nineteenth-century monarchs and their early twentieth-century successors were unaware of the value of ceremonial and its significance for ‘Britishness’ when performing their monarchical functions, both domestic and international.⁹ In Britain, monarchic ceremonial was lower key in the last forty-odd years of Victoria’s reign, because of her emphasis on her widowed status. But it would be a mistake to assume that it was not important to the way in which the monarchy was identified as being important to the British populace as a whole—the wild popular success of Victoria’s Golden and Diamond Jubilees underlines this.¹⁰ In terms of a revival and also a modernisation of monarchical ceremonial in Britain, it has tended to be Edward VII who has been credited with a re-inventing of royal pomp, especially in terms of state visits overseas, for instance.¹¹

However, to emphasise this is to miss the point of the modern monarchical reality as created first by George V and subsequently nuanced and expanded by his successors. Up to the creation of the Windsor dynasty, the individual personality of the monarch was intrinsically intertwined with—and arguably the most prominent part of—the public face of monarchy. Within British history, however, the Crown had been gradually developing as a symbol with a life of its own outside that individual monarchical personality, thanks to the long evolution of constitutional monarchy.¹² The existence of the Crown as symbol was something which was consciously capitalised on by George V, who understood it differently to his father and grandmother—and his elder brother. Never expected to inherit the throne, George had instead been trained to consider himself as a servant of the Crown even though a royal himself. As a serving naval officer, he had become accustomed to a largely unquestioning loyalty to the symbol of the Crown, in a way that those brought up to inherit the throne would not have considered. He saw his duty to the Crown as being preeminent, and did not lose that perspective when he assumed the role of heir apparent. It shaped how he understood the monarchy as an institution, and how he modelled his behaviour when he became King. It also shaped how his successors were educated to consider their roles as heirs apparent—with an emphasis on duty to the Crown and all it stood for, rather than on the privileges of royalty. Essentially, there was a solemnity to George V’s perspective on the monarchy: it was a serious commitment that he took seriously. It is an exploration of how this commitment to monarchy as a solemn dedication to duty, rather than an inherited privilege, has worked out in practice for the Windsors as a ruling dynasty, and how this has manifested itself in terms of relations between the Windsors and the British people that underpins the explorations in this volume.

Writing About Modern Monarchy: The Windsors as Case Study

Nobody questions the importance of a study of the Tudor monarchs, or various successors up to Queen Victoria, nor of their European counterparts.¹³ Yet until recently, when the work of scholars like Johannes Paulmann, Frank Müller and Heidi Mehrkens has provided a more substantive appreciation of modern European monarchy, it was largely taken for granted that monarchies in the twentieth century rate discussion only as a factor leading to the rise of alternative systems of government.¹⁴ Adam Kozuchowski, for instance, seems puzzled by the inter-war (and more recent) nostalgia for the Hapsburg Empire in his study.¹⁵ In contrast to the substantial studies by scholars working on British history up to the start of the twentieth century,¹⁶ modern British monarchy as a significant practical element in modern British constitutional evolution has too rarely benefitted to date from any extensive scholarly consideration by historical scholarship. With exceptions such as the works of Douglas-Home and Kelly, and Murphy, the passing mentions in much contemporary history of the Windsors as a factor in Britain’s socio-cultural and political evolution seems rooted in assumptions of monarchy’s ornamentalism and practical irrelevance in the modern era.

This comparative neglect of monarchical studies as a part of twentieth-century-focused political, constitutional and cultural histories of Britain fits into the approach taken for much of the last half of the twentieth century to other European monarchies. Especially, the bulk of the work on the Russian and German monarchies during the early part of that century relates strongly to explorations of how and why the last incumbents of these thrones were that. In exploring why these monarchies ended, there has been an implication that it was not just the individual monarchs, but also the monarchical system, that had failed.¹⁷ However, such assumptions about the inherent flaws of any monarchy as part of a modern political state system and its culture are now being revisited (if not always in English) by European scholarship. Revisiting the modern British monarchy thus forms part of that wider challenge. It is, however, a very ‘British’ challenge, because generalisations about the ways in which European monarchies have evolved and operated cannot be readily used to interpret and understand the English/British monarchy. For instance, working with parliaments that had active and substantial powers was no new thing for British monarchs even by the nineteenth century: yet it was a challenge that the restored French monarchy failed to respond to effectively as the events of 1830, 1848 and finally 1870–1871 underline.¹⁸ Other European royal families into the twentieth centuries have subsequently faced the challenge of working with a ‘modern’ democratic system that could give a voice to ‘the people’, as works on the newly-unified Germany from 1871 underline.¹⁹

By contrast, English, and later British, monarchs had, from the time of Magna Carta, to face significant challenges that altered the relationship between rulers and subjects in ways that were unfamiliar (and, as James I and George I certainly thought, unpalatable) to other European rulers. Increasingly, laying claim to the English throne for late medieval and early modern monarchs involved the consent of Parliament for successful succession to the throne.²⁰ The Civil War of 1642–1649 can be interpreted, amongst other things, as a conflict between King and Parliament which was only resolved with the consent of the latter to the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660—which in turn involved an acceptance by Charles II of the right of Parliament to have their advice followed by the monarch on certain key issues. The abdication of James II and succession of William and Mary in 1688, and the succession of the Hanoverian dynasty in 1714 under George I, further emphasise the extent to which British monarchs ruled with the consent of Parliament, and that that consent increasingly involved the active management of government by politicians, though still in the name of the monarchy.

The increasing involvement of elected politicians in the government of the realm has led many to assume that by the start of the twentieth century the monarchy had become an elaborate and expensive cloaking device for a form of constitutional democracy. This accounts for the wealth of work that was published in the 1980s and 1990s which predicted, as an inevitable outcome, the imminent death of the British monarchy as an ‘absurd anachronism’ which had outlived its purpose.²¹ Antony Taylor, in 1999, pointed to what he hoped would prove to be a terminal state of ‘disillusionment with the throne’, with the ‘fairy-tale of the British monarchy’s relationship with the public’ having ended.²² The resultant debate over the House of Windsor would, he and a number of other commentators an...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• 1. Introduction
• 1. Setting the Scene
• 2. Establishing the Windsor Brand
• 3. Marketing the Windsor Brand
• Backmatter