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http://dx.doi.org/10.17104/1611-8944-2017-2-280
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Article
* I would like to thank Andreas Eckert and Friedrich
Lenger, as well as the participants of the symposi-
ums in Berlin (Stefan Rinke, Sebastian Conrad),
Bern (Stefan Rebenich, Christian Windler), Kons-
tanz (Jürgen Osterhammel) and Passau (Benjamin
Hasselhorn, Marc von Knorring) for the discus-
sions on this text.
1 The London Declaration of 1949 declared the Bri-
tish Queen as the «symbol of the free association of
its independent members and as such the Head of
the Commonwealth». This formulation enabled the
inclusion of India in the Commonwealth despite
the fact that it had declared itself a republic. Today,
the majority of the Commonwealth states are repu-
blics (32). 5 of the Commonwealth’s 21 monarchies
have indigenous dynasties. Essential reading on
this topic: P. Murphy, Monarchy and the End of Em-
pire. The House of Windsor, the British Government,
and the Post-War Commonwealth, Oxford 2013.
2 For more detail on this point, see D. Langewiesche,
«Monarchie und Republik im Europa des 19. Jahr-
hunderts», in: U. Daniel / C. K. Frey (eds.), Die preu-
ßisch-welsche Hochzeit 1913: Das dynastische Europa
in seinem letzten Friedensjahrzehnt, Braunschweig
2016, 16–25. From a dierent perspective, the
peace agreements of 1919 represented the destruc-
tion of the «rewall» that the Peace of Westphalia
had erected between international and inner-state
politics, of which the state form was also a part.
A. Tooze, The Deluge. The Great War and the Re-
making of Global Order, London 2014, 8.
In 1793, the republic was presented to the world as the mortal enemy of the monarchy
with the beheading of the French royal couple in Paris; today, the British queen pre-
sides over a union of 53 states, the majority of which are republics. The republicanis-
ation of the Commonwealth under the crowned head began with the accession of
India in 1949. Monarchy and republic had reconciled as forms of the state.1 Just two
decades earlier, it was still a dierent story. For the losing side, the First World War
culminated in the downfall of its monarchies. The republic was part of the victors’
dictate of democracy, although, Great Britain, the world monarchy, was among the
victors, and monarchies also featured among the successor states of the Habsburg
and Ottoman Empires.
The republicanisation of monarchical states as a condition of peace was a revoca-
tion of nineteenth-century Europe.2 The latter had learnt to enable two mutually
exclusive state forms to attain mutual acceptance through a conictual process.
Whether or not the head of state wore a crown no longer decided on the alliances.
However, the revocation was not permanent. In addition, if senior British ocials
had had their way, the revocation would never have happened. Douglas Haig, the
Dieter Langewiesche
Monarchy – Global.
Monarchical Self-Assertion in
a Republican World*
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3 R. Blake (ed.), The Private Papers of Douglas Haig
1914–1919. Being Selections from the Private Diar y
and Correspondence of Field-Marshal the Earl Haig of
Bemersyde, K.T., C. C. B., O.M., etc..., London 1952,
252. (28.8.1917).
4 D. Cannadine, «Thrones: Churchill and Monarchy
in Britain and Beyond», in: idem, In Churchill’s Sha-
dow. Confronting the Past in Modern Britain, London
2002, 45–84, 58.
5 J. Whidden, Monarchy and Modernity in Egypt: Poli-
tics, Islam, and Neo-Colonialism between the Wars,
New York 2013, 188. The British government was
also later involved in the regulation of succession in
Egypt. Cf. M. T. Thornhill, «Informal Empire, Inde-
pendent Egypt and the Accession of King Farouk»,
in: The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth His-
tory (JICH) 38 (2010) 2, 279–302.
6 W. S. Churchill, «Will the World Swing Back to Mo-
narchies? (Pearson’s Magazine, January 1934)», in:
The Collected Essays of Sir Winston Churchill, vol. 4,
London 1976, 268–272, 269.
7 Quoted after Cannadine, «Churchill and Monar-
chy», 72.
8 Winston Churchill, The Struggle for Survival 1940–
1965. Taken from the Diaries of Lord Moran, London
1966, 372–373.
British commander-in-chief on the Western Front, would have preferred to leave the
Hohenzollern monarchy intact so as not to destabilise Europe’s system of states.3
Like Winston Churchill, who, with a view on saving the peace, unsuccessfully sought
to win the prime minister’s support to hold a conference of European monarchies in
1914.4 In 1921, as Colonial Secretary at the Cairo Conference, Churchill contributed
to the establishment of two new kingdoms under British patronage in the mandate
territories of Transjordan and Mesopotamia. The Protectorate in Egypt was also
transformed into a kingdom in Egypt in 1922. It was demonstrated once again here
that «the language of monarchy» and «the paternalistic ideology of British colonial-
ism» were tailored to each other.5 Churchill saw the destruction of the monarchies in
Germany and Austria under the inuence of President Wilson as one of the worst
mistakes of the Paris Peace Conference. As late as 1934, Churchill was still hoping for
a «swing back to monarchies» on the European continent. At the time, he spoke of
the global «holocaust of crowns» he had experienced in his lifetime: the losses in
Brazil, China, Russia, Turkey, Portugal, Austria-Hungary, Greece, Spain and the end
of all of the German monarchies.6
The developments after the two world wars had fully convinced Churchill that
«any king is better than no king».7 He expressed this view in even more ebullient
terms when Elizabeth II was crowned: «No institution pays such dividends as the
monarchy.»8 However, what dividends were yielded, and for whom? What did the
global presence of the European states mean for the monarchy as an institution in
Europe, in the imperial territories and in the context of decolonisation? The question
as to the legitimacy assigned to and claimed by the institution of the monarchy can
be adopted as an analytical guide to explaining this. The focus is on the British Em-
pire as the most geographically extensive, most politically and culturally powerful
one. My thesis is that the European monarchy can only be adequately captured as an
institution through the perspective of its global connections. While this goes without
saying for the golden age of the Portuguese and Spanish Empires, it does not apply
to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. References have even been made to a
«global trend towards the downfall of monarchy» that was mainly «counteracted
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9 J. Osterhammel, Die Verwandlung der Welt. Eine Ge-
schichte des 19. Jahrhunderts, München 2009, 838.
10 Max Weber-Gesamtausgabe I, 23, Tübingen 2013,
453; the English translation is M. Weber, Economy
and Society. An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, edi-
ted by G. Roth / C. Wittich, Berkeley/LA 1958, 215.
11 For an essential contribution, see M. R. Lepsius,
«Das Modell der charismatischen Herrschaft und
seine Anwendbarkeit auf den ‹Führerstaat› Adolf
Hitlers (1986)», in: idem, Demokratie in Deutsch-
land. Soziologisch-historische Konstellationsanalysen,
Göttingen 1993, 95–118.
12 L. Riall, Garibaldi. Invention of a Hero, New Haven
2007; A. Scirocco, Garibaldi. Citizen of the World,
Princeton 2007. On Caudillo as a replacement mo-
narch in the republic, see R. Graham, Independence
in Latin America, New York 1972, 125–131; on his
role in the limitation of violence, see M. Zeuske,
Simón Bolívar. Befreier Südamerikas. Geschichte und
Mythos, Berlin 2011, 64–66.
through political symbolism».9 I argue dierently in this study: What is involved here
is a process of institutional self-assertion through transformation.
As a starting point, it should be noted that 44 of the 193 United Nations member
states are still monarchies today. Most of these (21) belong to the British Common-
wealth. Great Britain was already the main pillar of the institution of monarchy dur-
ing the colonial period. 28 of today’s 44 monarchies emerged from the British colo-
nial empire and only two from its French counterpart (Cambodia and Morocco). Of
the 44 states with monarchs as their heads, 13 are located in Asia, 12 in Europe (in-
cluding The Vatican), 9 in Central America, 6 in Australia and Oceania, 3 in Africa,
and 1 (Canada) in North America.
1. On the Legitimacy of Monarchy and Republic — Europe.
Max Weber distinguished three ideal types of legitimate authority from one another
based on the following: (1) rational grounds and being indebted to «a belief in the
legality of enacted rules», from which the right to rule is derived; (2) traditional
grounds «resting on an established belief in the sanctity of immemorial traditions»,
and the authority that is derived from them; (3) charismatic grounds that rely on the
«devotion to the exceptional sanctity, heroism or exemplary character of an individual
person» and the «normative patterns or order revealed or ordained by him».10 The
modern form of the republic, for which its legitimacy is rooted in the sovereignty of
the people, tends to follow the rational rule, however charismatic elements can also
feature, particularly in times of crisis that completely overwhelm the legality of en-
acted rules. This was the case with the National Socialist «Führer state».11 Charis-
matic elements can be observed in numerous US presidents, caudillos in nine-
teenth-century Latin America, as well as the Italian republican Giuseppe Garibaldi.
Garibaldi learnt the art of warfare while operating in the service of the Republic of
Uruguay against territorial attacks by the dictator in the neighbouring Republic of
Argentina. He was subsequently involved in the destruction of several thrones in It-
aly, through which he paved the way to the formation of the monarchical nation state
there. As a «hero of two worlds», the Latin-American-republican and the Europe-
an-monarchical ones, Garibaldi contributed unintentionally to the reconciliation of
the monarchy and the republic.12 Due to Garibaldi’s failure as a republican, the cha-
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13 H. Gollwitzer, Weltpolitik und deutsche Geschichte.
Gesammelte Studien, edited by H.-C. Kraus, Mün-
chen 2008, remains an extremely stimulating read.
For a more recent take, see Langewiesche, Die Mo-
narchie im Jahrhundert Europas., Heidelberg 2013.
14 Private Papers of Douglas Haig, 341.
risma he acquired in the national war of unication did not have to be proven in his
daily routine. It suited his contemporaries to transform him into a hero of national
foundation, to whom dierent political orientations could later refer to present their
objectives as nationally unfullled.
The monarchy of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was able to partake in all
three types of authority. The traditional legitimacy forms the basis as is embodied in
the dynastic inherited charisma. However, the success of the constitutional state, the
increase in the power of parliaments, the democratisation and secularisation pro-
cesses, which ran contrary to the inherited claims of divine grace, demanded enor-
mous exibility from monarchies in Europe until the First World War. The monarchy
as an institution survived this challenge.13 Europe remained a continent of monar-
chies with just a few republican particles, and whether France would eventually be
one of them appeared to be an open question for a long time. All new states, without
exception, received a crowned head.
Although the institution of the monarchy was successful, the form that it would
take in the future in Europe remained undecided until 1914. The spectrum ranged
from the parliamentary monarchy in Great Britain and other states (namely Belgium,
the Netherlands and the Scandinavian states) to the autocratic state in Russia, with a
variety of intermediate forms in between, for example in Germany (with its regional
monarchies) and in Austria-Hungary. Changes were made everywhere that aimed to
impose stronger limits on the monarchical rule than before; however, it remained
unclear until 1914 exactly how far this trend would develop in the individual states.
The decision was made during and through the war. It emerged once again that mon-
archs could be made to pay with their thrones for their defeats in wars. Thanks to
parliamentarisation, which meant a loss of monarchical power and a simultaneous
exoneration from responsibility for government policy, it is impossible to know
whether or not the British monarchy would have survived a defeat in the war. Its
commander-in-chief on the Western Front rmly believed that it would not have sur-
vived: «If the war had gone against us, no doubt our King would have had to go, and
probably our Army would have become insubordinate like the German Army.»14
After the First World War, the prole of both forms of the state – as they had de-
veloped in the nineteenth century – became more disparate in Europe. Democratic
self-assertion was to be found on both sides, as well as the path to dictatorship. Since
the transatlantic republican shock of the late eighteenth century, the European mon-
archy as an institution had legitimised all forms of authority between democracy and
dictatorship, and it had also proved itself to be extraordinarily adaptable in relation to
social policy. The full extent of the willingness to annihilate, which was associated
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15 S. Malinowski, Vom König zum Führer. Deutscher
Adel und Nationalsozialismus, 2nd edition, Frank-
furt/ M. 2004, 509.
16 H. Sundhaussen, «Die Königsdiktaturen in Südost-
europa. Umrisse einer Synthese», in: E. Oberländer
et al. (eds.), Autoritäre Regime in Ostmittel- und Süd-
osteuropa 1919–1944, Paderborn 2001, 337–348 (this
volume provides overviews of all the southeast Eu-
ropean states); P. Miquel, Les derniers rois de l’Europe,
Paris 1992. Miquel relates monarcho-fascism to
Yugoslavia, Romania and Bulgaria. A polemical
concept, monarcho-fascism is contemporary and
was mainly deployed as a battle cry by communists;
W. Loth / W. Wippermann (eds.), «Faschismus» –
kontrovers, Stuttgart 2002, 23. W. Schieder, Der itali-
enische Faschismus 1919–1945, München 2010, re-
fers to «monarchischen Faschismus» (95).
17 Churchill, Collected Essays, 4, 270.
18 Cannadine, «Thrones», 50.
19 D. Cannadine, Ornamentalism. How the British Saw
their Empire, Oxford 2001, 3.
20 R. Robinson, «Imperial Theory and the Question of
with the new type of Weltanschauung dictatorships that emerged in the twentieth
century, was only visible in the states in which the monarchies had been destroyed,
namely Russia and Germany. With the murder of the royal family, the new Russia
broke away from the old, and since then the strict anti-monarchy stance of the Soviet
Union never changed. As opposed to this, the monarchical circles and the house of
Hohenzollern up to Wilhelm II and his second wife pinned their hopes for the resto-
ration of the monarchy in Germany on National Socialism. However, this «mésalli-
ance between the house of Hohenzollern and the NS movement» failed before the
National Socialists came to power.15 Hence, the radical break with the past as forced
by Stalinism and National Socialism with their variously based policy of annihilation
is not connected to the institution of the monarchy. However, to qualify, it must also
be noted that these regimes did not oer it any possibility for participation either. As
demonstrated by the attempts to survive as royal dictatorships or «monarcho-fas-
cism», the monarchy proved that it understood how to t in with fascist regimes in
south and southeast Europe.16
2. Monarchical Legitimacy — Global
In his 1934 article titled «Will the World Swing Back to Monarchies?», Churchill re-
sponded to the omnipresent «chorus for the strong man» with a reference to the
wisdom of the «English conception of a limited monarchy». He identied the core of
the latter as lying in «the separation of pomp from power».17 As much as he valued
the magic of the crown as a symbol of political freedom and social integration, he
remained consistently resolute in his support of a «minimalist doctrine of kingly
power», as David Cannadine described it.18 However, as an imperial institution, in
terms of power politics, the monarchy did not present itself minimalistically in any
way until well into the twentieth century. Its trademark was far more one of pomp
and power.
Cannadine’s concept of «ornamentalism» aims to focus the attention on the Brit-
ish Empire as a cultural creation – an «imaginatively constructed artefact».19 How-
ever, it was also always the geopolitical power structure that the pomp did not conceal
in any way; instead the pomp made it possible to experience this power structure on
a visual level. Cultural enactment as the attempt by the metropole to export its own
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Imperialism after Empire», in: JICH 22 (1984) 2,
42–54, 48. Cf. «colonialism-on-the-cheap» by
M. Kilson, Political Change in a West African State. A
Study of the Modernization Process in Sierra Leone,
Cambridge/MA. 1966, 24. For a stimulating ap-
proach to this question, see A. G. Hopkins, «Rethin-
king Decolonization», in: Past and Present 200
(2008), 211–247.
21 T. R. Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj, Cambridge 1998,
221.
22 R. Jerey, «The Politics of ‹Indirect Rule›: Types of
Relationship among Rulers, Ministers and Resi-
dents in a ‹Native State›», in: The Journal of Com-
monwealth and Comparative Politics 13 (1975), 261–
281, 266.
23 V. Bogdanor, The Monarchy and the Constitution, Ox-
ford 1995, sees the modern parliamentary monar-
chy as being realised with the end of the Victorian
era. Prince Albert is reported to have wanted a «pre-
sidential monarchy» (37).
24 Ibid., 69.
25 Murphy, Monarchy and the End of Empire, 187.
order of values through a variety of communication routes and to shape the empire
on the basis of this image was one of the types of action of indirect rule. However, this
«empire on the cheap»20 did not rely on the constitutionally tamed monarch who had
been stripped of power by parliamentary means. The remote, absent British monarch
was present in the pomp of the empire as a powerful ruler. When Empire Day was
introduced in 1904, a senior British ocial in the Bengali administration decreed
that, as the baseline for all associated acts, everything should be focused on the per-
son of the «King-Emperor as the centre of the British Empire».21 Indirect rule had
functioned in extremely dierent ways across the broad expanse of the empire and
over the course of time, but it had to remain clear at all times where the power lay22:
The power was identied with the crown. To put it bluntly, the monarchy was stripped
of power in the European centre earlier than in the global peripheries. It took consid-
erably longer to constitutionalise the representatives of the British monarch in the
empire than to «parliamentarise» the monarchy in the imperial metropole.23
As long as the hierarchical order of the empire withstood decolonisation, the Brit-
ish monarchy remained one of its most important pillars of legitimacy and, here too,
it proved itself once again to be an institution with an enormous capacity for adapta-
tion. It legitimised this process by adapting itself in the conversion of the Empire into
a republican-monarchical Commonwealth. As the head of the Commonwealth, the
monarch was even able to act discreetly both for and against the British government.
When Prime Minister Macmillan spoke of the «wind of change» in his sensational
address to the South African parliament in 1960, for which Macmillan deserves rec-
ognition whether one likes him or not, Elizabeth II made her agreement known – an
unusual act of political intervention in the business of government.24 It was also
known that Elizabeth did not agree with the refusal of the Thatcher government to
support the Commonwealth sanctions against the apartheid regime in South Africa.
When she discovered that Nelson Mandela with a delegation of the African National
Congress was in Harare in 1991, she invited Mandela to the banquet she was hosting
for the heads of government. Mandela, who originated from a collateral line of a royal
family, was seated close to her table at the banquet.25
The British crown had long relinquished its imperial status by this time. Eliza-
beth was no longer the queen of a global empire but of individual Commonwealth
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26 P. Boyce, The Queen’s Other Realms. The Crown and
its Legacy in Australia, Canada and New Zealand,
Annandale 2008, 2, 11 («localised monarchies»).
27 D. Cannadine, «From Biography to History: Wri-
ting the Modern British Monarchy», in: Historical
Research 77 (2004) 197, 289–312, 310.
28 B. Pimlott, «Some Thoughts on the Queen and
Commonwealth», in: The Round Table 87 (1998)
347, 2.
29 P. Murphy in a review, in: JICH 37 (2009) 4, 633.
30 Cf. Murphy, Monarchy; Boyce, The Queen’s Other
Realm; L. Lloyd, Diplomacy with a Dierence: The
Commonwealth Oce of High Commissioner, 1880–
2006, Leiden 2007. K. Fedorowich / C. Bridge, «Fa-
mily Matters? The Dominion High Commissioners
in Wartime Britain, 1938–42», in: JICH 40 (2012) 1,
1–23, shows how, as war Premier, Churchill also im-
posed the «limited monarchy» vis-à-vis the High
Commissioners.
31 A. C. Mayer, «Perceptions of Princely Rule: Perspec-
tives from a Biography», in: T. N. Madan (ed.), War
of Life. King, Householder, Renouncer. Essays in Ho-
nour of Louis Dumont, New Delhi 1982, 127–154,
130–131; for the current status of research, see
F. Groenhout, «The History of the Indian Princely
States: Bringing the Puppets Back onto Centre Sta-
ge», in: History Compass 4 (2006) 4, 629–644;
C. Keen, Princely India and the British, London
2012; M. Balzani, Modern Indian Kingship. Traditi-
on, Legitimacy and Power in Rajasthan, Oxford 2003.
B. Schnepel, Die Dschungelkönige. Ethnohistorische
Aspekte von Politik und Ritual in Südorissa/Indien,
Stuttgart 1997 provides an excellent combination of
theoretical conceptualisation and eld research.
32 Mayer, «Perceptions of Princely Rule»; similarly,
M. Pernau-Reifeld, Verfassung und politische Kultur
im Wandel. Der indische Fürstenstaat Hyderabad
1911–48, Stuttgart 1992, 55f. It should also be consi-
dered that people of high nobility and those from
royal families also held high positions in the em-
pire. Cf. S. R. Ashton, «Mountbatten, the Royal Fa-
mily and British Inuence in Post-Independence
India and Burma», in: JICH 33 (2005) 1, 73–92.
states, and her representatives there were selected by the governments there. The
«shared monarchy» under an undivided imperial crown, elevated with the Indian
title of «emperor» until 1947, was dissolved into national regional monarchies.26
This «downsizing»27 of the imperial British monarchy to a «multi-state Monarchy»28
under a «divided crown»29, which also represented the republics in the Common-
wealth, was embedded in multi-tiered separation processes. Separate citizenships
were created, national honours systems replaced that of the empire-Commonwealth
from the 1960s, and even the Queen’s English relinquished its social signicance in
the shifting of power away from the former metropole.30
It was all dierent in the nineteenth century and in the rst-half of the twentieth
century when the imperial monarchy stood for power and was embodied in every
British ocial. When the last Maharaja of the older line of Dewas, one of the small
Indian princely states, was asked by a British anthropologist in 1978 how he per-
ceived his own authority, he characterised it as being unbound by constitutional pol-
itics but still positioned under British paramountcy, which was represented by a po-
litical agent. If the latter said, «‹Your Highness, it might be better if you didn’t do it›,
[...] you’d better mend your ways».31 When his grandfather had failed to heed this rule
in the second-half of the nineteenth century, the British Central India Agency nomi-
nated a superintendent to bring the state nances into order. According to the Maha-
raja, the British authority dened what constituted order.32 It always presented itself
in the name of the monarchy, which was visually omnipresent in the empire and was
also successfully marketed on a commercial level.
In the course of their expansion in Asia and Africa, the European states encoun-
tered many dierent forms of authority, but the majority of them were monarchical.
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33 V. Lieberman, Strange Parallels. Southeast Asia in
Global Context, c. 800–1830. Vol. 2: Mainland Mir-
rors: Europe, Japan, China, South Asia, and the Is-
lands, Cambridge 2009, in particular chapter 3. On
the central role of kings in the Southeast Asian state
and empire building, see H. Kulke, Kings and Cults.
State Formation and Legitimation in India and Sou-
theast Asia, New Delhi 1993, 262–293.
34 J. Ilie, Af ricans. The History of a Continent, Cam-
bridge 1995, 164.
35 On Asian regions with long traditions of weak state
formation up to the present, see H. Beattie, «Negot-
iations with the Tribes of Waziristan 1849–1914.
The British Experience», in: JICH 39 (2011) 4, 571–
587; R. Johnson, «‹Mizh der beitabora Khalqui-i›: A
Comparative Study of Afghan/Pashtun Perspecti-
ves on Negotiating with the British and the Sovi-
ets», in: ibid., 551–570.
36 I do not go into the inconsistent terminology used
to describe African rulers on the dierent levels of
action. This is not something that distinguishes
them from European princes. «King» refers here to
the leader based on the dynastic tradition in states
or state-like amalgamations. An overview of termi-
nological questions and the gradations in the tradi-
tional terms – «chief» is a colonial designation – is
provided by J. K. Adjaye / B. Misawa, «Chieftaincy at
the Conuence of Tradition and Modernity: Trans-
forming African Rulership in Ghana and Nigeria»,
in: International Third World Studies Journal and
Review 17 (2006), 1–10. A general denition of mo-
narchy but related to Africa is provided by R. Lemar-
chand (ed.), African Kingships in Perspective. Political
Change and Modernization in Monarchical Settings,
London 1977, 8–9.
37 Max Weber Gesamtausgabe, I, 22–4, Tübingen
2005, 470. Translation from Max Weber: Essays in
Sociology, edited with an introduction by
H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills with a new preface
by B. S. Turner, London 2009, 251.
The process of colonisation and imperialism did not lead to a global struggle between
monarchy and republic. This is also true of the earlier periods. In his major longitu-
dinal comparison of Southeast Asian and European empires up to the rst-third of
the nineteenth century, Victor Lieberman discovered an abundance of parallel devel-
opments.33 They included expansive states under monarchical leaders as the driving
forces of the empire-building process and as the ones who also determined the events
in Africa.
Even if you agree with John Ilie in identifying «the lack of an overall continental
trend» as «a major feature of the nineteenth-century Africa»,34 it is admissible to in-
clude the formation of new dominions and the reformation of old ones combined
with the increasing territorialisation of authority among the basic developments.
These warlike processes were continued in the colonial penetration of Africa by Eu-
ropean imperial powers. In general, it was more dicult to develop colonial struc-
tures in areas that lacked monarchical authority.35 Irrespective of how they were
termed, kings were also central in the African forms of authority.36 This conrms
something once noted by Max Weber with characteristic acuity: «The king is every-
where primarily a warlord.»37 Comparable developments in Europe and Africa can be
observed in the nineteenth century; however, systematic comparisons between them
have yet to be carried out. They present commonalities that have rarely been dis-
cussed up to now and will now be the focus of my attention, starting from Europe.
The continental territorial order of the Congress of Vienna built on the destruc-
tion of traditional forms of authority. In the entire history of Europe, so many states
and their thrones had probably never been destroyed over such a brief period. The
princes who survived with their states claimed traditional legitimacy; however, the
formation of their states was based on breaks in legitimacy. The revolutionary repub-
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38 Explored in greater detail in Langewiesche, «Kon-
gress-Europa in globalhistorischer Perspektive», in:
Zeitschrift für Weltgeschichte 16 (2015) 2, 11–30.
39 On the monarchy in sub-Saharan Africa, which is
the focus here, see, in particular, L. Mair, African
Kingdoms, Oxford 1977; Lemarchand (ed.), African
Kingships; P. C. Lloyd, «The Political Development
of West African Kingdom», in: Journal of African
History 9 (1968) 2, 319–329; D. Forde / P. M. Kaber-
ry (eds.), West African Kingdoms in the Nineteenth
Century, Oxford 1967; I. Wilks, Forests of Gold. Es-
says on the Akan and the Kingdom of Asante, Athens
1993; L. Harding, Das Königreich Benin, München
2010; C.-H. Perrot / F.-X. Fauvelle-Aymar (eds.), Le
retour des rois. Les autorités traditionelles et l’État en
Afrique contemporaine, Paris 2003 (going back to
the nineteenth century); M. R. Doornbos, The Anko-
le Kingship Controversy. Regalia Galore Revisited,
Kampala 2001; A. Eckert, «Ausbeutung und Glanz.
Afrikas Monarchien», in: Kursbuch 105 (2002),
99–106; R. von Weichs, Die Rückkehr der Könige von
Uganda. Politische Kultur und Moderne in Afrika,
Bielefeld 2013; a good source of information on Af-
rican kings are also these survey studies: E. Isichei,
History of West Africa since 1800, London 1978; Ge-
neral History of Africa, vols. VI-VIII, Berkeley 1998,
1990, 1999.
40 «African» and also «Black Bonaparte», this much-
cited designation for Mirambo (see, for example
http://www.blackpast.org/gah/mirambo-ca-1840
-1884) probably originated from H. M. Stanley, How
I found Livingstone. Travels, Adventures, and Discove-
ries in Central Africa. Including Four Months Resi-
dence with Dr. Livingstone, London 1872, 296, 299,
504. A photo of Mirambo in: General History of Af-
rica, vol. VI, 95.
41 R. J. Reid, Warfare in African History, Cambridge
2012, 116–117; ibid., «Mutesa and Mirambo:
Thoughts on East African Warfare and Diplomacy
in the Nineteenth Century», in: The International
Journal of African Historical Studies 31 (1998) 1, 73–
89; N. R. Bennett, Mirambo of Tanzania 1840?–
1884, New York 1971, 37: «Mirambo» means «corp-
se», a reference to his outstanding performance as
a warlord.
licans and anti-revolutionary monarchies all moved in the same direction: the estab-
lishment of legitimacy through the destruction of legitimacy, made possible by vic-
tory in war. The war destroyed thrones and erected new ones. That had always been
the case everywhere. There was no solidarity among monarchs. Because he was a
successful warlord, Napoleon Bonaparte, who was a minor Corsican nobleman and
not at all socially acceptable among royals, rose to the rank of emperor, and put his
relatives on thrones that he created. He was also recognised by Europe’s monarchs
and accepted into their exclusive circles through marriage connections. The fact that
his military achievements was not institutionalised in the long term was his doing
and was not due to the refusal of the hereditary monarchs to recognise the legitimacy
of his authority. They completed the territorial princely revolution together. Their
main victims were the minor rulers. The same process was repeated fty years later
with the formation of the Italian and German nation states. Once again, the process
involved the destruction or subordination of monarchical states by monarchs, but
this time in close association with the idea of the «nation», which was equally open to
the republic and monarchy. In a variation on Thomas Hobbes, the development can
be characterised as rex regi lupus.38
The same happened in Africa.39 There were numerous African Bonapartes, one
of whom was Mirambo (Mbula Mtyela), the son of a Nyamwezi chief.40 As a trader
and warlord he established a kingdom in today’s Tanzania with periodic hegemony
over neighbouring territories. The basis of his success was his ability to surprise his
opponents in rapid marches with his highly mobile young warriors, who were trained
in the use of European weapons and were generally very disciplined.41 A contempo-
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42 Baron A.-H. de Jomini, The Ar t of War, translated by
Capt. G. Mendell and Lieut. W.P. Craighill, Philadel-
phia 1862, 101.
43 J. Ilie, A Modern Histor y of Tanganyika, Cambridge
1979, 62–63.
44 See, in particular, E. A. Eldredge, The Creation of the
Zulu Kingdom, 1815–1828, Cambridge 2014; idem,
Kingdoms and Chiefdoms of Southeastern Africa, Ro-
chester 2015, ch. 8, 185–206. The best overview of
the developments to the present and of the compre-
hensive research is provided by the 2011 nal report
of the KwaZulu-Natal-History of Traditional Lea-
dership Project, submitted by Human Sciences Re-
search Council Democracy and Governance (http://
www.researchgate.net/publication/2734 84698_
KwaZulu-Natal_history_of_traditional_leadership_
project_nal_report). The report also provides an
overview of the wide-ranging denominations of the
entities and leaders in the Zulu society.
45 An account of the current status of research on the
invention and reinvention of the systems of rule
can be found in R. J. Reid, A History of Modern Afri-
ca, Chichester 2009, 217–220.
46 Cf. in particular: Perrot / Fauvelle-Aymar (eds.), Le
retour des rois; von Weichs, Rückkehr der Könige von
Uganda; and E. A. B. van Rouveroy van Nieuwaal /
D. I. Ray (eds.), «The New Relevance of Traditional
Authorities for Africa’s Future», in: Journal of Legal
Pluralism and Unocial Law (1996), special issue.
rary expert had paid similar tributes to Napoleon as a superior master of the fast
marches: «The lightning is not quicker than Napoleon.»42 Like Napoleon, Mirambo
led his soldiers in person into war and was worshipped by them. If the name
«Mirambo» were replaced by Napoleon in John Ilie’s study on the history of Tanza-
nia, only a few changes would have to be made to the characterisations.43 Something
else that Mirambo and Napoleon had in common was that they were unable to insti-
tutionalise their authority in the long term.
There were numerous African military leaders of royal lineage or social climbers
who exploited the opportunities oered by war to expand existing kingdoms or build
new ones. One of the best known is the Zulu kingdom established by Shaka, the son
of a Zulu chief, around 1820. Shaka became the epitome of the warring prince, the
military reformer and the state builder. The state structure that he created continued
to exist in its basic form until the Zulu kingdom was forced militarily to become part
of the British colonial regime in South Africa.44 As a century of radical upheaval in
states, empires and stateless societies, the nineteenth century also became a century
of monarchy in Africa – as was the case in Europe. Colonial rule reinforced the
pre-colonial structures of rule and also created hierarchical orders with chiefs, kings
and «tribes» in places where they had not previously existed in such forms.45
Today, references are being made to the return of the kings in Africa.46 Nassirou
Bako-Arifari and Pierre-Yves le Meur identied four forms of state policy against the
cheeries in sub-Saharan Africa from the colonial period to the present day: integra-
tion, controlled participation, exclusion and «informalisation» beyond politics. The
transitions between these forms were smooth, and the states altered their courses.
The authors, who studied the development of Benin in detail, dene the cheerie as a
civil-society institution that is supported both by the government and non-govern-
mental organisations such as Africa Culture, which aims to foster indigenous tradi-
tion. Meanwhile, there is a «véritable ination de ‹rois› au Bénin», and people try to
dierentiate between hereditary kings from the pre-colonial period and the chefs de
canton, who were established later on. However, the chambre nationale des chefs, which
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47 N. Bako-Arifari / P.-Y. le Meur, «La cheerie au Bé-
nin: une résurgence ambiguë», in: Perrot / Fau-
velle-Aymar (eds.), Le retour des rois, 125–143. For a
detailed account of today’s chef traditionnel as medi-
ator between tradition and the present, state and
society, see E. Adriaan B. van Rouveroy van Nieu-
waal, L’État en Afrique face à la cheerie. Le cas du
Togo, Paris 2000; idem / R. van Dijk (eds.), African
Chieftaincy in a New Socio-Political Landscape, Ham-
burg 1999.
48 Cf. D. M. Gordon, «(Dis)Embodying Sovereignty.
Divine Kingship in Central African Historiogra-
phy», in: The Journal of African History 57 (2016) 1,
46–67. Reid, Modern Africa, refers to the period
from 1880 to 1920 as an «an era of ‹histories in the
making›», during which African groups and states
established their positions in the colonial system
(167).
49 On the following, cf. J. Willis, «A Portrait for the
Mukama: Monarchy and Empire in Colonial Bun-
yoro, Uganda», in: JICH 34 (2006) 1, 105–122;
G. Prunier, «Les restaurations monarchiques en
Ouganda», in: Perrot / Fauvelle-Aymar, Le retour des
rois, 343–359; H. Mèdard, «La légitimité au-delà des
échecs. La force du mythe d’un roi norricier et pro-
tecteur au Buganda (Ouganda)», in: ibid., 361–379;
F. Iroko, «Rois et chefs en République du Bénin
(1960–1999)», in: ibid., 111–123; D. A. Low, Fabrica-
tion of Empire. The British and the Uganda Kingdoms,
1890–1902, Oxford 2009 (on the numerous king-
doms in the territory of Uganda); C. Johannessen,
«Kingship in Uganda. The Role of the Buganda
Kingdom in Ugandan Politics», paper read at Ma-
kerere University, 2005; von Weichs, Rückkehr der
Könige von Uganda; Doornbos, Ankole Kingship Con-
troversy, on the dierent assessments of the institu-
tion of the monarchy in the Ugandan regions.
M. Karlström, «Imagining Democracy: Political
Culture and Democratisation in Buganda», in: Afri-
ca 66 (1996) 4, 485–505. is an excellent eld study.
50 Reid, Warfare, ch. 5, 108.
51 Ibid., 137, 139; J. Beattie, Bunyoro. An African King-
dom, New York 1960, 20–24; Low, Uganda King-
doms, ch. 7; cf. Mair, African Kingdoms, 18–19.; on
subsequent developments, see C. Wrigley, Kingship
and State. The Buganda Dynasty, Cambridge 1996;
C. Young, «Buganda», in: Lemarchand (ed.), Afri-
can Kingships, 193–235; on the reorganisation of the
administration and impact on the institution of the
king and chief, see D. E. Apter, The Political King-
dom in Uganda. A Study in Bureaucratic Nationa-
lism, Princeton 1961.
52 For a detailed account of sub-imperialism, see
L. H. Gann / P. Duignan, The Rulers of British Af rica,
1870–1914, London 1978, inter alia 359 on the kings
and great chiefs of Lozi, Buganda and Basutoland.
was eventually established, is not an indication of mere «re-traditionalisation», but
represents new dynamics that are linked to the reference to the past. The conseils des
rois du Bénin supported this by funding scientic conferences, among other things.
Politically, the institution of the local and cantonal chefs helps to decentralise the state
of Benin – which emerged from a large number of heterogeneous pre-colonial terri-
tories, including a myriad of kingdoms.47 We may refer here to the «invention of
tradition». Numerous «entrepreneurs politico-culturels», including anthropologists
who study such traditions, are involved in this process.48
Bunyoro, one of ve regional monarchies with cultural and political roles in the
Republic of Uganda today illustrates just how enduring African monarchies can be
despite all kinds of setbacks.49 Once the main power in the vast lake territory in the
sixteenth century, it remained a powerful state thereafter, with its Mukama («King»)
Kabarega succeeding in contributing to the African military revolution of the nine-
teenth century.50 However, Kabarega’s troops were defeated by the (mostly African)
troops led by British ocers who were allied with the neighbouring state of Buganda,
and the struggles culminated in a bloody guerrilla war.51
Just as a monarchical «community of accrued gain» formed militarily in post-
1800 Europe, and its states or empires expanded against and with Napoleon, similar
military alliances arose between European imperialists and African sub-imperial-
ists.52 The European «scramble for Africa» was matched by an African «scramble for
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53 G. L. Caplan, The Elites of Barotseland 1878–1969. A
Political History of Zambia’s Western Province, Berke-
ley 1970, in particular, ch. 3: «The Scramble for Pro-
tection».
54 A. Eckert, Herrschen und Verwalten. Afrikanische Bü-
rokraten, staatliche Ordnung und Politik in Tanzania,
1920–1970, München 2007, 21.
55 M. Krämer, «Vom administrativen zum konkurren-
ziellen Häuptlingstum. Anmerkungen zur Legiti-
mität und Transformation neotraditionaler Herr-
schaft in Namibia und KwaZulu-Natal, Südafrika»,
in: Sociologus 59 (2009) 2, 173–198 discusses the
controversial literature on this; cf. Adjaye / Misawa,
«African Rulership in Ghana and Nigeria».
56 Cf. the case studies by Jerey, «Politics of ‹Indirect
Rule›» (on Travancore) and by J. McLeod, «‹A Nu-
merous, Illiterate, and Irresponsible Bhayat›: The
Maharaos of Kutch, their Nobles and the British
Paramount Power, 1816–1947», in: JICH 35 (2007)
3, 371–391.
57 Beattie, Bunyoro, 22.
58 Weichs, Rückkehr der Könige von Uganda, 82–85.
protection».53 However, unlike in Europe, the sequence of state destruction and state
formation in Africa was not legalised through an agreement that copper-fastened the
gains of those who had cooperated in the wars and established a recognised state
system. The stronger power prevailed, and it was the European one. Nonetheless, the
European power remained reliant both militarily and administratively on the help of
the indigenous people, and above all, the indigenous elites, which included the kings.
Both, the elites and the kings, were also needed as «cultural brokers»,54 particularly
as the «intermediate rulers» between the local population and the colonial state, in
which they were assigned the role of the administrative elite.55
When Bunyoro’s King Kabarega was forced into exile on the Seychelles in 1899,
the British continued to build on the authority of the institution of the monarchy.
They also maintained the blood-based right to rule when they appointed two sons of
the banished king in succession. However, their rule was interrupted when the bor-
ders of Buganda were dened in the Uganda Agreement of 1900. This military ally
of the British was allocated a considerable proportion of Bunyoro and its chiefs were
able to occupy positions in the remainder of the kingdom. It was an agreement be-
tween the victorious kings, namely an African one and the British one, at the expense
of the inferior king. The symbolic language of the agreement made it clear where the
power laid. The Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, Empress of India was repre-
sented by «Her Majesty’s Special Commissioner, Commander-in-Chief and Con-
sul-General for the Uganda Protectorate and the adjoining Territories».
The removal of King of Bunyoro from power disrupted the established system of
patronage, in which the king and his chiefs had their permanent places and were ul-
timately not replaceable. For this reason, the British administration changed its rules
repeatedly as it did in many parts of its empire, including in the Indian principali-
ties.56 In Bunyoro, it upgraded the position of the king again in the 1920s. When a
British anthropologist spent time there working on eld research in the 1950s, the
people still expressed the belief that Kabarega had done what a good king must do,
that is, defend his country and people, and maintain their rights.57 Kabarega Day has
been celebrated in the reconstituted regional kingdom of Bunyoro-Kitara since 1999;
meanwhile, Kabarega is seen in Buganda as a king who failed to recognise the signs
of the time.58
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59 H. Nicholls, South Africa in my Time, London 1961,
43.
60 For a detailed account of this and the following, see
Willis, «Portrait for Mukama».
61 Eckert, Herrschen und Verwalten, 44 (the position of
the then-Governor Donald Cameron).
62 For a penetrating account, see Willis, «Portrait for
Mukama»; J. Lonsdale, «Ornamental Constitutio-
nalism in Africa: Kenyatta and the Two Queens»,
in: JICH 34 (2006) 1, 87–103.
63 Lonsdale, «Ornamental Constitutionalism», 88.
On questions of gender in monarchy research, see
The British administration relied repeatedly on the functions and authorities of
the king over the course of the twentieth century, but it had not actually designated
him with such characteristics for a time. While the Uganda Agreement of 1900 had
no reservations about translating the traditional designation Kabaka with «King» – as
could be seen when Edward VII greeted the Litunga of Barotseland with «Your Maj-
esty» at his coronation in 190259 –, a erce struggle surrounding the K-word started
in the 1920s.60 Although the representatives of the British crown wanted indirect
rule, they did not rely entirely on the «veneration of monarchs without monarchical
power».61 Instead, they attempted at times, in Africa at least, to strip the indigenous
rulers of their monarchical aura in order to demonstrate their distance from the Brit-
ish monarch. However, it was not possible to adhere to this strategy consistently. The
Bunyoro Agreement of 1933 treated the Mukama of Bunyoro de facto as king, and it
even dened the line of succession in detail for the rst time. In 1938, the British
District Commissioner warned Mukama of Bunyoro against repeatedly referring to
the «Kingdom of Bunyoro»: There was only one king – King George. However, the
British lost this struggle for the monopoly on monarchy in their empire. The British
symbolic idiom had been mastered in the protectorate and was used when high rep-
resentatives ceremoniously greeted the remote overlords. The kings, whom the Brit-
ish administration did not want to call «kings», appropriated the British ritual and
assigned themselves the position of kingship. The «ornamentalism», through which
the metropole wished to impress its value system on the entire empire, became a
political weapon in the self-assertion of the African kings and the order that they
represented.62 They occasionally played the British monarchs o against one another
in the process. Take, for example, the representatives of the Kikuyu, who lived in
segmented societies and were assigned a paramount chief for the rst time under
British administration so that they could be «governed». They met with the judge Sir
Morris Carter and the Kenya Land Commission in 1932 and they wanted to know why
the land that had been «stolen» from them by the white settlers had not been re-
turned to them after the First World War, and when the return of the land would
happen. One of their spokesmen, Andrew Gathea, a member of the Anglican Church
asked: «Is the rule of King George one and the same as the rule of Queen Victoria?»
Had this queen not stated that whoever came to her country would live with them
side by side as friends? He then used a modern gender-based argument: Was Victoria
unable to assert herself because she was a woman? Would they be given back their
land as the queen had promised, now that a man ruled as king?63
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for Africa the studies published in: F. E. S. Kaplan
(ed.), Queens, Queens Mothers, Priestesses, and Power.
Case Studies in African Gender, New York 1997; for
Great Britain before 1914, see C. C. Orr, «The Femi-
nization of the Monarchy 1780–1910: Royal Masculi-
nity and Female Empowerment», in: A. Olechnowi-
cz (ed.), The Monarchy and the British Nation 1780 to
the Present, Cambridge 2007, 76–107; D. Thompson,
Queen Victoria. Gender and Power, London 2001.
64 N. Parsons, King Khama, Emperor Joe and the Great
White Queen. Victorian Britain through African Eyes,
Chicago 1998, 60. Since Botswana’s independence,
members of the royal family have repeatedly held
senior state oces, including that of president.
65 Quoted after L. de Kock, «Sitting for the Civilization
Test: The Masking(s) of a Civil Imaginary in Coloni-
al South Africa», in: Politics Today 22 (2001) 2, 391–
412, 406. De Kock sees this above all as the attempt
to defend the idea of a shared «civility» for Africans
and Europeans against «a racist colonial society».
S. Dubow, «How British was the British World? The
Case of South Africa», in: JICH 37 (2009) 1, 1–27, 12,
also presents solid arguments as to why such hopes
on the part of «South Africa’s black Victorians»
should not be dismissed as naive or misplaced. It
should also be noted that equality before the king
was part of the African idea of kingship. Cf.
Karlström, «Imagining Democracy», 489–490.
66 Cf. F. Prochaska, Royal Bounty. The Making of a Wel-
fare Monarchy, New Haven 1995.
67 Lonsdale, «Ornamental Constitutionalism», 91.
68 J. Loughlin, «Royal Agency and State Integration:
Hence, societies that did not have any kings were also able to adopt the image of
the powerful British monarch, which was disseminated in many ways in the Empire,
and make claims of unfullled promises and ancestral rights as they placed them-
selves under the protection of the ruler. This was a very common argument. For exam-
ple, as «the children of the Great Queen», the kings of the three Botswana states
claimed imperial protection against colonisation by the British South Africa Com-
pany. When the three kings travelled to London together in 1895, they repeatedly pre-
sented their claim to the British public to remain «under the Government of the Great
Queen», as stated in a petition.64 This claim for protection could also be made in reli-
gious terms by referring to the British king as «Defender of the Faith», as the British
monarch is still ocially called today. When Elijah Makiwane, President of the Native
Educational Association, launched a severe attack on the idea of the general superior-
ity of the Europeans in a speech made in colonial South Africa in 1885, he hailed Vic-
toria not only as the queen but also as a mother. He couched this eulogy in Biblical
English to appeal to Victoria as «a queen of equality and civil rule in the philanthropic
sense of the word»: «Long may she live. Oh, Queen Victoria, thou shalt never know
how many hearts even in the far o Africa thou hast cheered in their passage through
‹the wilderness of this world.› Thou art not only a Queen, but a Mother. Prosper thou
in all places; prosper thou in South Africa.»65 This appeal may be identied as an Af-
rican adaptation of the welfare monarchy; however, it could equally refer back to Afri-
can traditions. From the point at which it was forced to surrender its power to parlia-
ment and government, the image of a monarchy that looked after the societal
well-being and welfare became one of the pillars of the legitimacy of the British mon-
archy – and not just the British one.66 The trust in the imperial monarchy and its duty
of care could also be transformed into the rhetoric of human rights.67 However, as the
epitome of «ornamentalism» in Africa, the British monarchy initially continued to
present itself as a power institution. This corresponded entirely with Victoria’s self-im-
age as a queen with «an almost medieval idea of her own personal authority».68
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Ireland, Wales and Scotland in a Monarchical Con-
text, 1840s-1921», in: JICH 41 (2013) 3, 377–402,
382. Loughlin refers here to the contemporary as-
sessment by E. Gosse, «The Character of the Queen
Victoria», in: Quarterly Review 3 (1901), 321–350. Cf.
Bogdanor’s assessment in Monarchy and the Consti-
tution.
69 Lonsdale, «Ornamental Constitutionalism», 99;
A. A. Blomeld, «East Africa Correspondent», in:
The Telegraph, 30.7.2004.
70 R. Craggs / H. Kumarasingham, «Losing an Em-
pire and Building a Role: The Queen, Geopolitics
and the Construction of the Commonwealth Head-
ship at the Lusaka Commonwealth Heads of
Government Meeting, 1979», in: JICH 43 (2015) 1,
80–98, 95.
71 Cf. Mair, African Kingdoms, ch. VII: «The Balance
of Power».
72 Lonsdale, «Ornamental Constitutionalism», 99.
On the «subversive subtext», see H. Sapire, «Afri-
can Loyalism and its Discontents: The Royal Tour
of South Africa, 1947», in: The Historical Journal 54
(2011) 1, 215–240.
73 S. Constantine, «Monarchy and Constructing Iden-
tity in ‹British› Gibraltar, c. 1800 to the Present», in:
JICH 34 (2006) 1, 23–44.
74 W. Bagehot, The English Constitution, and Other Po-
litical Essays, New York 1889, ch. III: «The Monar-
chy», 101–156. Cf. D. C. Craig: «Bagehot’s Republi-
canism», in: Olechnowicz (ed.), Monarchy and
British Nation, 139–162.
The image of the powerful monarch did not die with the empire. In a letter trans-
mitted in due form by its chairperson via the British High Commissioner, in 2004,
the Kenya African National Union asked Queen Elizabeth to eliminate the blockade
of the negotiations of a new constitution for Kenya. «We respect the maturity of Her
Majesty,» it stated. As «the head of the Commonwealth and elder among elders», she
would be in a position to chair a conference to regulate the unresolved issues, which,
according to the authors, included the demands for reparations for the cruelty com-
mitted during the war by the colonial entities.69 From the perspective of those re-
questing her help, as Head of the Commonwealth, the British Queen was not a
«crowned non-entity».70 In a similar way to the functioning of the consultation cir-
cles of African rulers,71 they ascribed capacities to her that went beyond the statutory
rights. At the same time, they invoked the claim of an imperial trusteeship, which
had been repeatedly propagated by the colonial administration, and based the de-
mand for aid in the form of authority and money on it. According to John Lonsdale,
this promise of trusteeship was historically rooted in the image of the «globalising
Mother-Queen, Victoria the Good» and renewed in a form that was tailored to the
specic situations in many individual locations.72 In the European context, the resi-
dents of Gibraltar displayed a similar attitude in basing their demand for protection
against Spain on their expressions of loyalty to the British crown.73
3. Why have Monarchies Survived?
Monarchy is easy to understand; the republic is not. Walter Bagehot saw this as the
most important advantage of the monarchical form of the state in his lifetime.74 His
famous formulation to the eect that the constitutional monarchy has three rights –
to be consulted, to encourage and to warn – is the result of an unsparing diagnosis.
According to this diagnosis, unlike the republic, the constitutional monarchy could
succeed with people at the top and the very bottom of society who did not really un-
derstand what was going on in the state. To rely on a hereditary capacity to govern
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75 Bagehot, Constitution, 122.
76 Ibid.
77 Cf. T. Fujitani, Splendid Monarchy. Power and Pa-
geantry in Modern Japan, Berkeley 1998.
78 To indicate the spectrum of actors involved: What
Cannadine presents as «ornamentalism» on many
levels in the metropole and in the empire is put for-
ward by W. M. Kuhn, Democratic Royalism. The
Transformation of the British Monarchy, London
1996 as the creation of a «renewed ceremonial style
both ew in the face of historical experience and was dangerous. The monarch could
acquire and transmit useful knowledge, but this could also be achieved without him
if the parliament assumed the responsibility for nding a capable government. The
true value of the monarch was that he was a permanent xture. His most important
task was to conceal what «our real rulers»75 did from the masses.
This view clearly reects Bagehot’s elitist scepticism of the democracy of the
masses: «The masses of Englishmen are not t for an elective government.»76 How-
ever, he also refers to a core function of the monarch and not just that of the consti-
tutional one. Unlike the head of the republic, who is elected for a certain period, the
monarch can authenticate both political and societal upheavals with the legitimacy of
his oce, which is based on longer periods of dynastic continuity. If the monarch
participates in breaking with tradition either passively or actively, he sets a high
threshold of resistance for those who do not agree with such decisions. For this rea-
son, the cooperation of established kings equally facilitated the imposition of impe-
rial rule in Asia and Africa, the paths to fascist dictatorship in Italy in 1922 and the
dictatorship of Primo de Rivera in Spain in 1923. On the other hand, the king was
often the focal point of resistance. Whatever the king would do, he could ensure not
only the survival of the monarchy but also its destruction if it had the misfortune to
be on the losing side. This did not ultimately depend on the monarchy but on many
dierent development factors, one of which is and was the monarchy itself.
The nineteenth and twentieth centuries were shaped by the emergence and de-
struction of states and empires. The institution of the monarchy successfully asserted
itself in these processes in many parts of the world – but not everywhere. The reasons
for this were highly complex; however, it is possible to identify certain basic princi-
ples, three of which I would like to highlight here:
(1) Monarchy as an Emotional Centre of Nation and Empire
As an institution, the monarchy was best positioned to integrate itself into the com-
prehensive transformation of politics, society and culture, as well as to assert itself
when it became the emotional centre of national and imperial expectations. Japan’s
transformation into a centralised nation state after the Meiji Revolution is an example
of the monarchy’s successful repositioning of itself.77 Among the crowned heads of
the great empires, the British monarchy was uniquely successful because its success
as an empire was also one of a kind. The monarchy contributed here as one actor
amongst many. Victoria as the embodiment of Greater Britain was the creation of
many – in Great Britain and in the Empire.78 Her image as «the matriarch of the
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for the monarchy» (141) by individuals. J. Perry,
«Whig Monarchy, Whig Nation: Crown, Politics
and Representativeness 1800–2000», in: Olechno-
wicz (ed.), Monarchy and British Nation, 47–75,
argues convincingly that the altered political con-
text had a greater inuence on the image of the mo-
narchy and its transformation than royal behaviour.
Another important actor in the transformation of
the image of the monarch is the media, which are
examined in many studies; cf. J. Plunkett, Queen
Victoria. First Media Monarch, Oxford 2003.
79 D. Bell, «The Idea of a Patriot Queen? The Monar-
chy, the Constitution, and the Iconographic Order
of Greater Britain, 1860–1900», in: JICH 34 (2006)
1, 3–21, 16. Cf. D. Bell, The Idea of Greater Britain.
Empire and the Future of World Order, 1860–1900,
Princeton 2007. For the African perspective, see
Parsons, King Khama, Emperor Joe and the Great
White Queen.
80 J. Moreno-Luzón, Modernizing the Nation. Spain du-
ring the Reign of Alfonso XIII, 1902–1931, Brighton
2012.
81 C. Brice, Monarchie et identité nationale en Italie
(1861–1900), Paris 2010; she examines inter alia
the regions in which memorials to Victor Emanuel
II were erected and which of the myriad associa-
tions were monarchical, republican or socialist in
their orientation. On the active ceremonial role of
Queen Margherita, see Brice, «Queen Margherita
(1851–1926) ‹The Only Man in the House of Sa-
voy›», in: R. Schulte (ed.), The Body of the Queen.
Gender and Rule in the Courtly World, 1500–2000,
New York 2006, 195–215; A. Schwarzenbach, König-
liche Träume. Eine Kulturgeschichte der Monarchie
von 1789 bis 1997, München 2012.
82 On the following, cf. C. Duggan, «Francesco Crispi,
‹The Problem of the Monarchy, and the Origins of
Italian Nationalism›», in: Journal of Modern Italian
Studies 15 (2010) 3, 336–353, 350–351, 337; Duggan,
Francesco Crispi, 1818–1901. From Nation to Nationa-
lism, Oxford 2002.
83 S. Sonnino, «Torniamo allo Statuto», in: Nuova an-
tologia, 1.1.1897, 9–28, 25–26.
British nation» and as the representative of the empire were intertwined with each
other, and this enabled her to become the «patriot queen».79 The basis for this was
the success of the British Empire, which oered its monarchy new roles. Both factors
combined – namely the loss of political power in the metropole and the representa-
tion of imperial power – established an unassailable position for the British monar-
chy. Weak nation states and weak empires were unable to do this. Although the Span-
ish king had himself named Alfonso the African, he did not become an imperial
identication gure. Instead, the war in Morocco in 1911 led to a republican mutiny
in the navy and a general strike against the regime. The weakness in the remaining
colonial empire destabilised Spain. Although Alfonso XIII legitimised Primo de Ri-
vera’s military putsch in 1923 and referred to him as «my Mussolini», the institution-
alisation of this dictatorship was unsuccessful. It could not be dismantled by the
monarch either. The election of 1931 had the eect of a negative plebiscite on the
monarchy that no longer enjoyed the support of the army.80
Under both the Spanish and Italian systems of government, the monarch was
required to make political decisions. The king was also presented as the embodi-
ment of the nation and the empire in Italy;81 however, the ministers and members
of parliament expected him to correct the defects of the Italian parliamentarism,82
as described by Sidney Sonnino, who in a controversial article of 1897 called on the
king to nally take political action.83 Despite being long associated with Mazzini,
Francesco Crispi vaunted the monarchy as the guarantor of Italian unity in contrast
to the republic. However, he noted in private that while they had put their faith in
the House of Savoy as a family of soldiers, in reality they were left with a bourgeois
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84 Duggan, «Crispi», 66.
85 L. Machtan, Die Abdankung. Wie Deutschlands ge-
krönte Häupter aus der Geschichte elen, Berlin
2008.
86 C. de Spiegeleer, «Royal Losses, Symbolic Politics
and Media Events in Interwar Europe: Responses
to the Accidental Deaths of King Albert I and
Queen Astrid of Belgium (1934–1935)», in: Contem-
porary European History 24 (2015) 2, 155–174, quota-
tions taken from 159, 160, 162. M. van Ginderach-
ter, «Public Transcripts of Royalism. Pauper Letters
to the Belgian Royal Family (1880–1940)», in: J. De-
ploige / G. Deneckere (eds.), Mystifying the Mon-
arch. Studies on Discourse, Power, and History, Ams-
terdam 2006, 205–222.
family, which was too small for Rome because, as the capital city of the world, it
needed a major monarchy.84 Crispi had the German emperor and Bismarck in mind
here. In this political environment, the monarchy could not grow into a role like
the British one – shielded from government policy and, therefore, not responsible
for it. The fact that the monarchy failed in Italy was not due to the individual inability
of the kings to full their role, but to the developments that were beyond their con-
trol.
The same cannot be said for the German monarchies. Up to and during the First
World War, the Prussian-German emperor in particular adhered to the ction rein-
forced by the national wars of unication of the military prince, who determined the
fate of the nation on the battleeld.85 However, after Napoleon Bonaparte, the era of
the military king, who led his troops into war and commanded them, had passed in
Europe. A monarch who did not realise this – in contrast to the German emperor, the
Russian Tsar took over the supreme command in person in 1915 – paid for the defeat
in the First World War with his throne. From the entry of the USA into the war both
sides had re-agged the war into a ght amongst two opposing concepts of state.
However, the complex environment here was also the deciding factor as there were
monarchies on both sides of the warring parties. Russia withdrew from the alliance
with the western powers because the rule of the tsar had been terminated through
revolution. It is impossible to know whether, in the absence of the peace conditions
imposed by the allied victors, the German monarchies would have survived the defeat
in the war as an institution and opened up to full parliamentarisation. Despite the
fact that the ction of the kingly commander-in-chief had been played out there too,
the monarchy in militarily inferior Belgium emerged stronger from the First World
War. However, Belgium was on the side of the victors, and because he had stood by
his troops, it was possible to honour Albert after his death as the king-soldier even
though he died in a fatal mountain-climbing accident. His wife Elisabeth also found
a role as «queen-nurse» and her daughter-in-law Astrid, who died in a trac accident,
as «mother of the nation». Hence the civil deaths did not hinder the war-related her-
oisation of the royal family. All of these images arose from carefully designed staging,
but as demonstrated by letters among other things, they elicited a response from the
population. Accordingly, the imagination of the monarchy was a national collective
eort in this case too.86
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87 Cf. C. D. Cowan, The Origins of British Control in
Malaysia, 1867–1878, London 1955; B. W. Andaya /
L. Y. Andaya, A History of Malaysia, London 1982,
ch. 4–5.
88 Cf. S. C. Smith, «‹Moving a Little with the Tide›:
Malay Monarchy and the Development of Modern
Malay Nationalism», in: JICH 34 (2006) 1, 123–138,
quotation taken from 125; A. Milner, «‹Identity Mo-
narchy›: Interrogating Heritage for a Divided Ma-
laysia», in: Southeast Asian Studies 1 (2012) 2, 191–
212; W. R. Ro, The Origins of Malaya Nationalism,
New Haven, London 1967.
89 F. Holst, «Das föderale System in Malaysia: Starker
Schein und schwaches Sein?», in: Jahrbuch des Fö-
deralismus (2013), 437–447. Holst denes Malaysia’s
system of government as competition authoritaria-
nism. The sultans have considerable rights of code-
termination in all Islamic institutions.
90 A. Harding, The Constitution of Malaysia, Oregon
2012.
The complex environment was the main factor that decided on the monarchy.
This is also evident in imperially ruled states and societies. While Great Britain per-
manently destroyed Burma’s monarchy by annexing the country and integrating it
into the administration of British India, it allowed the sultanates of Malaysia to re-
main in place and amalgamated them into several protectorates, including the Fed-
erated States of Malaya.87 Although a colonial ocial referred to these sultans as
«unhappy dummies» who agreed with everything suggested to them, they were al-
lowed to remain in oce, and their positions were stabilised and strengthened, a
development that enabled them to become the focal points of a specic Malaysian
identity in the long term.88 After independence (1963), they developed into a symbol
of national unity in the context of serious domestic-political disputes about parlia-
mentarisation, federalisation and the status of ethnic-religious minorities. Today,
Malaysia is a federal parliamentary elected hereditary monarchy with a politically
dominant federal level.89 The king of the Federation – whose period of oce is
strictly limited to ve years – is selected by the nine regional monarchs from their
circle. Eight of these are hereditary monarchs (seven sultans and one raja) and the
ninth is elected by the council of district chiefs from the princes in his federal state.90
There is probably no other monarchy in the world with a more exible constitutional
structure. In terms of its self-image, it sees itself as being deeply rooted in the past;
however, according to one of the crown princes in 2004, it was «re-invented» as a
supra-ethnic combination of monarchy, democracy and Islam. The religious ethni-
cisation of politics is a central problem, however. The crown prince ascribes a central
role to the monarchy here by valuing it as a symbol of national unity and as an ethnic
bridge-builder: «
... a kind of invisible social glue helping to bind us. It is true that it
is a potent symbol of this being the ‹Land of the Malays› and is thereby primarily a
bastion of Malay culture helping to identify the Malays as the denitive people. But it
is not exclusive. The Monarchy is extended to Malaysians of all ethnic groups who
accept its constitutional identity and live comfortably with its Malay-oriented social
dimension. The Monarchy, by its very nature, is a force for moderation over extrem-
ism. It can be seen as a bedrock of the constitutional process.»
Democracy provides the avenue by which the various constituencies can give
voice to the way they choose to be governed. It is government by consent and compat-
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91 Public Lecture by His Royal Highness Raja Nazrin
Shah Ibni Sultan Azlan Shah, Crown Prince of Per-
ak Darul Ridzuan: The Monarchy in Contemporary
Malaysia, Singapore 2004, 4–5.
92 A penetrating analysis can be found in J. Fong,
«Sacred Nationalism: The Thai Monarchy and Pri-
mordial Nation Construction», in: Journal of Con-
temporary Asia 39 (2009) 4, 673–696.
93 A. Whittacker, Abortion, Sin and the State in Thai-
land, New York 2004, 79 (in the 1980s the commis-
sion formulated twelve desirable and ve undesira-
ble values).
94 K. Hewison, «A Book, the King and the 2006
Coup», in: Journal of Contemporary Asia 38 (2008)
1, 190–211, shows the extent of the palace’s involve-
ment in the military coup of 2006.
95 Balzani, Modern Indian Kingship. For Orissa, Har-
denberg conrms the demise in the signicance of
rituals, however the idea of kingship still oers an
ideology for many that is a source of orientation in
everyday life. R. Hardenberg, König ohne Reich. Ri-
tuale eines Königtums in Orissa, Berlin 2008, 239f.
ible with Constitutional Monarchy. The Ruler [that is, the Sultan] plays an important
and eective role in maintaining a democratic parliamentary system by remaining
politically neutral and being seen to be unbiased.91
Another kind of national identity with the monarchy at its core developed in Thai-
land. Here too, it arose from the specic history of an old kingdom that was never
colonised by European states. The monarchy is presented as the only institution that
the country has to thank for this anti-imperialistic self-assertion while simultane-
ously embodying a link with the country’s own imperial past. The monarchy is staged
in many forums as the incarnation of a Thai nation with its very own «Thai way of
democracy»,92 using a complex system of ceremonies and rituals, which is coordi-
nated – successfully up to now – by a National Identity Board based on the maxims of
nation, religion and monarchy.93 Under King Bhumibol, who was in oce from 1946
until his death in 2016, the institution of the monarchy has not only survived numer-
ous military coups, political upheavals and constitutional changes unscathed, it ap-
pears to be far more stable today than in the early years of the king’s reign when the
transition to a new constitutional form was still uncertain following the collapse of
the absolute monarchy in 1932. The institution of the monarchy gave the military
governments historically rooted legitimacy,94 and it obtained from them the neces-
sary means to strengthen the monarchy as the cultural heart of the nation. It has yet
to face a democratic challenge.
The numerous principalities in India did not oer any point at which the national
independence movements could have taken a foothold. They created new symbols of
unity that were republican in their orientation. In particular, monarchies were not
available as an integrating force in the parts of India that were directly administered
by Great Britain. Nonetheless, the regional princes also remained culturally impor-
tant in India, where all monarchical rights and titles were rescinded by law in 1971.95
(2) Monarchy as a Polycentric System of Authority
In the research on early modern Europe, it has proved useful to work with concepts
such as «composite monarchy» and «conglomerate empires». In Germany, the anal-
ogous term zusammengesetzter Staat was still widely used by legal scholars in the
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96 Cf. H. G. Koenigsberger, «Dominium Regale or Do-
minium Politicum et Regale. Monarchies and Parli-
aments in Early Modern Europa», in: idem, Politici-
ans and Virtuosi. Essays in Early Modern History,
London 1986, 1–25; J. H. Elliott, «A Europe of Com-
posite Monarchies», in: Past and Present 137 (1992),
48–71; H. Gustafsson, «Conglomerates or Unitary
States? Integration Processes in Early Modern Den-
mark-Norway and Sweden», in: T. Fröschl (ed.), Fö-
derationsmodelle und Unionsstrukturen. Staatenver-
bindungen in der frühen Neuzeit vom 15. bis 18.
Jahrhundert, Wien, München 1994, 45–62; D. Lan-
gewiesche, «Der europäische Kleinstaat im 19.
Jahrhundert und die frühneuzeitliche Tradition des
zusammengesetzten Staates», in: idem (ed.), Klein-
staaten in Europa, Schaan 2007, 95–117.
97 P. Cardim et al. (eds.), Polycentric Monarchies. How
did Early Modern Spain and Portugal Achieve and
Maintain a Global Hegemony?, Eastbourne 2012.
98 http://www.verfassungen.eu/dk/
99 Cf. J. Coakley, «Kingdoms, Republics, and People’s
Democracies: Legitimacy and National Identity in
European Constitutions», in: National Identities 13
(2011) 1, 267–285.
100 D. Lowry, «The Crown, Empire Loyalism and the
Assimilation of Non-British White Subjects in the
British World: An Argument against ‹Ethnic Deter-
minism›», in: JICH 31 (2003) 2, 96–130, 116.
nineteenth century: It is based on older terms such as respublica mixta and respublicae
compositae.96 The term «polycentric monarchies» has been used recently in relation
to the early modern Spanish and Portuguese empires.97 These historiographical
terms and social science studies relating to present times contest the idea of a uni-
formly organised and acting state. This opposition to the image of the unitarian cen-
tral state is inherent in the institution of the monarchy. As an institution, it predates
the centralisation-based bureaucratic state – even if it adapted to it and acted as a
driver of its development.
Although royal titles no longer have any kind of political signicance, the diversity
of the monarchies that emerged over the course of history is conserved in their long-
term endurance, in some cases to the present day. For example, the Danish parlia-
ment allowed the constitution that was passed in 1953 to be proclaimed by Frederick
IX, «by God’s grace King of Denmark, the Wends and Goths, Duke of Schleswig,
Holstein, Stormarn, Ditmarschen, Lauenburg and Oldenburg».98 This did not repre-
sent any threat of war against Germany and Sweden because the Swedish king also
referred to himself as King of the Wends and Goths until 1973. The British king did
not refrain from using the title «King of France» until 1801, and right up to the end
of the Habsburg Empire, its monarch’s lengthy title listed all crown lands, including
those that had been lost to other states. The title «King of Jerusalem» was also
«shared» by the Habsburg emperor and some other pretenders in Europe.99
The royal titles provide a record of the territorial diversity of monarchical author-
ity. They are reminiscent of the ability of the monarchy to link together territories that
are independent in terms of their legal and military order or even in their religious
and ethnical structure. For this reason, the secret behind the imperial success of the
British monarchy has been identied as the establishing of «conicting and contra-
dictory allegiances across the empire».100 With regard to the empires, the monarchy
proved to be an institution that was endowed with the appropriate historical experi-
ence for dominion over territories that could not be administered centrally. The com-
parative research carried out on this topic up to now has been concentrated on Eu-
rope and the European empires in South America. The diversity of the African state
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Monarchical Self-Assertion in a Republican World
101 J. Ilie, Honour in African History, Cambridge
2005, 84. Autobiographically: A. A. Boahen et al.
(eds.), Otumfuo, Nana Agyeman Prempeh I, T he His-
tory of Ashanti Kings and the Whole Country itself,
and Other Writings, Oxford 2003.
102 I. Wilks, Asante in the Nineteenth Century. The Struc-
ture and Evolution of a Political Order, Cambridge
1975, 371–373; M. Mamdani, Citizen and Subject:
Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonia-
lism, Princeton, 1996, refers to indirect rule as «de-
centralized despotism». Lange, «State Formation»,
123, suggests that it hampered the post-indepen-
dence establishment of a rational bureaucratic
state.
103 On the Provincial House and the continuing signi-
cance of the traditional Zulu chiefs, see the
KwaZulu-Natal-History of Traditional Leadership
Project; A. S. Mackinnon, «Chiey Authority, Lea-
pfrogging Headmen and the Political Economy of
Zululand, South Africa, ca. 1930–1950», in: Journal
of Southern African Studies 27 (2001) 3, 567–590;
S. Marks, «Natal, the Zulu Royal Family and the
Ideology of Segregation», in: ibid. 4 (1978) 2, 172–
194. The fact that the inuences beyond state bor-
ders in the decolonisation phase can also be made
visible through the monarchies is demonstrated by
L. Cantwell, «Chiey Power in a Frontline State:
Kgosi Linchwe II, the Bakgatla and Botswana in the
South African Liberation Struggle, 1948–1994», in:
ibid. 41 (2015) 2, 255–272.
104 The Wikipedia article on monarchy (viewed on
18.1.2016) lists 38 «subnational monarchies», of
which 16 are African, located in republics. The gu-
re of 38 is considerably underestimated. There
are far more than 16 regional monarchies in Africa
– there are even more than 16 in Cameroon alone.
See, for example, the long list of «cheerie» or
«fondom» in Cameroon in the Wikipedia article
«Cheerie traditionnelle au Cameroun» (https://
fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheerie_traditionnelle_au_
Cameroun, viewed on 26.1.2016). D. Quigley (ed.),
The Character of Kingship, Oxford, New York, 2005,
2, stresses that one country – one monarchy was
never the rule in Asia, African and the Pacic.
and empire formations could also be analysed from this perspective. This does not
have to involve focusing a European-South American light on Africa; independent
African developments could be adopted for intercultural comparisons. If the Asante
Empire of the nineteenth century is described by experts using categories such as
«confederate chiefdoms» with hereditary rulers101 or «unity in diversity» embedded
in the dynastic structure, and the capacity to adapt to rapid change is explained by the
structure,102 it should be clear that the concepts developed on the basis of European
and South American history can correspond to African experiences. Current repub-
lics with regional monarchies such as Uganda and Botswana, as well as other African
states with parliaments that include a House of Traditional Leaders, could be inte-
grated into comparative analyses without referring to external criteria.103
Africa presents a particularly suitable area for the study. Although only three of
the African states (Lesotho, Morocco and Swaziland) are among the 44 monarchies
included in today’s 193 UN member states, the majority of the numerous regional
monarchies that exist in the world are located in African republics.104 Hence the rec-
onciliation between the monarchy and the republic is also an African phenomenon
of the recent post-colonial period. Even if religious-spiritual tasks assume a more
prominent role than others in Africa, the regional African kings do not in any
way limit themselves to these areas. For example, in the minds of the people, King
Ngwa’fo III of Mankon, one of the numerous micro-kingdoms in the western high-
lands of the Republic of Cameroon, embodies their state, culture and history right
back to its mythical beginnings. The term «embody» should be understood here in
the literal sense as explained by the anthropologist Jean-Pierre Warnier. He refers to
King Ngwa’fo accordingly as a «pot-king» («roi-pot»), ascribes sacrality to him and, in
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105 «... [T]he ‹skin› of the king, the palace, the city»;
J.-P. Warnier, The Pot-King. The Body and Technolo-
gies of Power, Leiden 2007 (Régner au Cameroun:
Le roi-pot, Paris 2009), 161–162. The name of the
current king is written as King Angwafo III on the
kingdom’s website (http://www.mankonkingdom.
org/Dynasty.html). Recordings of him speaking on
various occasions abroad can be viewed on Youtu-
be, for example his speech at the Watson Institute
at Brown University in 2007 (https://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=kVVZe1T-J0k). In this speech, he re-
ports on the progress made in his kingdom since
he succeeded his father in 1959. He praises the
kings of Cameroon as defenders of the peace both
within the state and between states. In a lm of the
festivities marking the 50th anniversary of indepen-
dence in 2009 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v
=Z4BSOg_B5q4), in his address, the governor of
the north-west region of Cameroon refers to the
«chief of Mankon» and the «traditional leaders». In
the lms of his speeches presented abroad, Angwa-
fo III is always referred to as «King» and he also
refers to himself as such. Warnier uses the terms
«chief», «king» and «fo» synonymously. His as-
sessment is based on decades of eld research in
Cameroon.
106 Karlström, «Imagining Democracy»; Karlström,
The Cultural Kingdom in Uganda. Popular Roya-
lism and the Restoration of the Buganda Kingship»
(PhD dissertation), Chicago, 1999.
107 V. Sellin, Gewalt und Legitimität. Die europäische Mo-
narchie im Zeitalter der Revolutionen, München,
2011, ch. 3.
108 H. Kuper, The Swazi: South African Kingdom, New
York 21986, 162.
109 This common designation was repeated innumera-
ble times in newspaper reports on Elizabeth II’s
«record» 63 years on the throne, for example, by
a variation of Ernst Kantorowicz’s two-body theory, refers to the three bodies of the
Mankon king.105 The current king, who was born around 1920 and has been in oce
since 1959, does not restrict himself to religious-spiritual tasks and, as a political
representative, is also politically active. In addition, he is a successful businessman.
He is a qualied agricultural engineer and sees himself as a moderniser in his royal
position, which links him and his people with the past. In Buganda, the largest of the
revived kingdoms in the Republic of Uganda, the traditional structure of the relation-
ships amongst king, clans and the individual is at the root of the current state organ-
isation. This made it possible for an individual concept of democracy to emerge.106
(3) Monarchy as the Institutionalisation of Permanence in Transformation
The institution of the monarchy promises permanence, and it is reliant on perma-
nence in and through transformation. Disputes about succession repeatedly gave rise
to wars; however, as the numerous dynastic wars of succession in the history of Eu-
rope have shown, these disputes did not necessarily undermine the monarchy.107
Dynastic succession regulations provided no insurance against disputes; however,
from the nineteenth century, they stemmed conicts. Nevertheless, Spain and Portu-
gal remained European crisis areas. In 1870, one of these crises led to the Ger-
man-French war, from which the German nation state emerged. In contrast, in places
where the monarch decided on his own successor (as is the case in many Asian king-
doms) or where the task was assigned to selection bodies (as is the case in the major-
ity of African kingdoms), violence was constantly used as a means of resolving con-
icts. A song praising King Mswati II of Swaziland (1840–1868) ends as follows: «No
king is installed without violence.»108 This was partly a result of polygamy, which
heightened the competition for succession (and hence also the chances of success in
the «genetic lottery»109). However, in many African societies, the idea of the neces-
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B. Bumbacher in Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 25.3.2015.
See J. St einberg, Bismarck. A Life, Oxford 2011
about Frederick the Great: «A genius king must be
an unlikely outcome of the genetic lottery» (15).
110 Mair, African Kingdoms, ch. IX, provides a cursory
overview. More detailed insight into the rules and
processes of en- and de-thronement in the King-
dom of Akan (in south-east Ghana) is provided by
M. Gilbert, «The Person of the King: Ritual and Po-
wer in a Ghanaian State», in: D. Cannadine / S. Po-
wer (eds.), Power and Ceremonial in Traditional So-
cieties, Cambridge 1987, 298–330. P. C. Lloyd,
«Sacred Kingship and Government among the
Yoruba», in: Africa. Journal of the International Afri-
can Institute XXX (1960) 3, 221–237, 228 demonst-
rates for the Yoruba kingdoms how special training
by the chiefs could form part of the enthronement
process. Warnier, The Pot-King, adopts a strictly pra-
xeological approach in analysing the selection and
enthronement in the twentieth century in the King-
dom of Mankon (Cameroon).
111 A. Olechnowicz, «‹A Jealous Hatred›: Royal Popula-
rity and Social Inequality», in: Olechnowicz (ed.),
Monarchy, 291.
112 Gilbert, «Person of the King». On the controversy
regarding the sacrality of African kings, see L. de
Heusch, «Forms of Sacralized Power in Africa», in:
Quigley (ed.), The Character of Kingship, 25–37;
L. Scubla, «Sacred King, Sacricial Victim or Frazer,
Hocart, Girard», in: ibid., 39–62; de Heusch, «A
Reply to Lucien Scubla», in: ibid., 63–66.
sary violence was also due to the fact that the monarch had to be selected by a com-
mittee composed of representatives of the royal lines, which had the right to assume
candidates for the oce of the king. The regulations varied considerably,110 but they
all aimed at eliminating unsuitable candidates and optimising the selection. «Blood»
and «character» were the factors that dictated one’s suitability for the royal oce in
the Kingdom of Akan (Ghana), which is a well-documented example of this process.
The candidates for the oce of the king and the (usually not biological) queen mother
were selected from the royal clans; the non-royals were involved. Interests that op-
posed the election body’s selection could be introduced to and negotiated during the
process – including with the help of violence. The process would go on until the
election body eventually found an individual, who had been scrutinised and approved
of – also in relation to his physical inviolability. A complex ritual with religious and
secular elements transformed the selected candidate into an elected one – a king with
religious and political powers. Transcendent ideas about the position of the monarch
are not unknown in modern Europe either. In surveys carried out in Great Britain in
the 1950s and the 1960s, a sizeable minority of approximately 30 per cent believed
that their queen was «specially chosen by God».111 When enthronement with reli-
gious elements took place in African societies, dethronement involving ritual desa-
cralisation was also possible in the case of serious transgressions, the criteria for
which were exible, and in the event of serious illness.112 One of the common fea-
tures of monarchy throughout the world is that kings can also be deposed through
murder.
The rational processes that were permeated by religious elements, which are ex-
plained here based on the example of African monarchies, corresponded to the crite-
ria ascribed by Max Weber to the parliamentary monarchy in Great Britain: «a selec-
tive admission to actual power» based on one’s qualication as statesman. Weber
dierentiated this from «kingships on the Continent», where «mere birth-right
equally endows the fool and the political genius with the pretensions of a sover-
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113 MWG I, 22–4,562–563. Translation: From M. Weber,
Essays in Sociology, Translated, edited, and with an
introduction by H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills,
New York 1964, 264. Weber relates the «selection»
here to the parliamentary monarchy, in which the
hereditary king does not select those who govern.
114 T. Ranger, «The Invention of Tradition in Colonial
Africa», in: E. Hobsbawm/Ranger (eds.), The Inventi-
on of Tradition, Cambridge 1983, 211–262, 229–236.
115 An analysis of the «juxtaposition of British pomp
and Arab picturesque» is provided by A. Clarkson,
«Pomp, Circumstance, and Wild Arabs: The 1912
Royal Visit to Sudan», in: JICH 34 (2006), 71–85, 71.
116 D. Schönpug, Die Heiraten der Hohenzollern. Ver-
wandtschaft, Politik und Ritual in Europa 1640–1918,
Göttingen 2013, oers a more detailed insight into
the dynastic marriage circle in Europe (which is not
obvious from the title) and the confessional bounda-
ries. Cf. Schönpug, «One European Family? A
Quantitative Approach to Royal Marriage Circles,
1700–1918», in: K. Urbach (ed.), Royal Kinship. An-
glo-German Family Networks 1815–1918, München
2008, 25–34. On the Coburg Dynasty whose marria-
ge policy was particularly successful, cf. J. Davis,
«The Coburg Connection. Dynastic Relations and
the House of Coburg in Britain», in: ibid., 97–115. A
contemporary account can be found in C. Radziwill,
The Royal Marriage Market of Europe, New York 1915.
117 The fact that political «dynasties» are also formed in
today’s republics is worth a study of its own. This
has mainly been examined up to now for autocracies
in the form of republics. Cf. J. Brownlee, «Hereditary
Succession in Modern Autocracies», in: World Poli-
tics 59 (2007), 595–628. However, it has not been
eign».113 The practice in pre-colonial Africa already aimed to prevent the hereditary
fool from assuming the throne. In addition to the right by blood (Geblütsrecht), there
was a regulated selection procedure, which was admittedly often pervaded by vio-
lence or the demonstration of the candidates’ worth as warlords. As was the case
everywhere else, success in war could make a legitimate king. European states in
Africa also engaged in the religious and mystical celebration of their kings, most of
all Great Britain.114 Throughout the entire British Empire, it adapted its monarchs
«ornamentally» through their integration into the relevant culture in a way that pre-
sented them as being powerful, even if they were constitutionally tamed or already
parliamentarily dethroned.115 This exibility consolidated the institute of the monar-
chy in both worlds, at home and in the Empire. However, it never went as far as Eu-
ropean royal families marrying into Asian or African ones. Monarchical marriage
circles in the global empires also remained culturally separate.116 The reasons for this
have not yet to be studied.
Thus, as can be established through comparison, two dierent paths were histori-
cally adopted in Europe, Asia and Africa to regulate succession of the monarch’s oce
in a way that enabled the institution of the monarchy to full its task of facilitating
permanence in transformation. Ways of regulating succession had to be developed
that could function within the relevant system of rule. In Europe, this meant that the
person of the monarch gradually relinquished his or her signicance in the process of
constitutionalisation and, nally, parliamentarisation. However, the individual suita-
bility to the oce did not become unimportant by any means, particularly in times of
war. Nevertheless, the parliamentary monarchy can live with a hereditary fool if neces-
sary because it does not govern the country. In contrast, the kings in Africa and Asia
did not relinquish their central roles in the system of rule. For this reason, the institu-
tion of the monarchy would not have been able to endure a strictly dynastic system of
succession, and procedures were developed in order to enable the selection of the
monarch based on competence within the framework of blood right.117
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Monarchical Self-Assertion in a Republican World
possible to establish enduring dynastic continuity,
which is the main characteristic of monarchical le-
gitimacy, in republics.
118 Lonsdale, «Ornamental Constitutionalism», 91.
119 Loughlin, «Royal Agency», 381.
120 E. Shils / M. Young, «The Meaning of the Coronati-
on», in: The Sociological Review 1 (1953) 2, 63–81;
P. Barker et al., «The Meaning of the Jubilee», Insti-
tute of Community Studies (ICS), Working Paper 1,
London 2002, 1–25; J. Neuheiser, Crown, Church
and Constitution: Popular Conservatism in England,
1815–1867, New York 2016.
121 Cf. Pimlott, «Thoughts on the Queen and Com-
monwealth»; on Australia, Canada and New Zeal-
and, see Boyce, The Queen’s Other Realm. For the
perspective of a staunch Australian republican, see
M. McKenna, This Country. A Reconciled Republic?,
Sidney 2004.
4. Monarchy – Republic: Approaches to a Performance Review
The «ornamental mask of majesty», as John Lonsdale describes it,118 altered the im-
age of the imperial monarchy – in Great Britain too -, but it was limited in its eects.
These were most clearly visible in Ireland. Victoria, the embodiment of Greater Brit-
ain, was also known as the «famine queen» among the Irish, albeit more among the
Irish diaspora than within the country itself.119 The signicance of the huge audi-
ences attending royal visits and coronations is disputed;120 it is dicult to say whether
the next British king would be elected as the head of the mostly republican Common-
wealth nations, and how long the citizens of Australia, New Zealand and Canada
would want to see their states being represented by a distant monarch.121 It would
probably depend on how long people would consider the monarchical dividend as
outweighing the republican one. Many factors come into play here and the assess-
ments are shifting. From a historical perspective, however, all of the evidence would
oppose the assumption that the modernity dividend of the republican form of the
state has generally exceeded that of the monarchical form in the last two centuries. A
general performance review may shed some light on this.
What is involved here is an assessment that takes up the perspective of people
around the turn of the twenty-rst century to ask what kind of changes arose in their
lifetimes and those of their parents and grandparents, and whether these changes
were dierent in the republics and the monarchies. Did the republics stand on the
side of «modernity» (however it might be dened); did they oer the individual
greater possibilities of inuencing state developments; were they more open to the
participation of citizens; were they able to accelerate or dilute general processes; and
were they more peaceful in their actions?
Up to the First World War, the political order in Europe’s states developed in the
direction of civil society; the possibilities for the participation of male citizens in the
state, in particular, were extended considerably. The precondition for this was the
increase in the signicance of the parliament, and the emergence of more eective
political parties and special interest organisations. The progression of these pro-
cesses in the European states varied considerably, however, and the questions as to
how quickly they happened, how far-reaching they were, and at which point the pos-
sibilities of civil participation were extended to women, cannot be answered on the
basis of the alternative assignations of monarchy and republic. To put it more bluntly,
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122 An incisive comparison can be found in J. Go, Pat-
terns of Empire. The British and American Empires,
1688 to the Present, Cambridge 2011; the nding is
conrmed from a global perspective in W. Rein-
hard, Kleine Geschichte des Kolonialismus, Stuttgart
2008; J. Burbank / F. Cooper, Empires in World His-
tory. Power and the Politics of Dierence, Princeton
2010. A brief assessment can be found in A. Eckert,
«Spätkoloniale Herrschaft, Dekolonisation und in-
ternationale Ordnung», in: A. Kruke (ed.), Dekoloni-
sation, Bonn 2009, 3–20.
123 Murphy, Monarchy and End of Empire, 13–14.
while the republic could be distinguished from the monarchy as the epitome of polit-
ical progressiveness in the late eighteenth century, this was no longer the case at the
end of the nineteenth century and – due to the experience with the dierent forms of
dictatorship in the form of republics – certainly not in the course of the twentieth
century. This observation in relation to the twentieth century also applies to Africa
and Asia.
Neither does a monarchy provide a yardstick for measuring the capacity for
change in relation to societal dynamics and economic development, the establish-
ment and further development of the education system, and the changes in the social
order and emergence of the welfare state. Or a yardstick for establishing how vio-
lently or peacefully the modern state had emerged and assumed a role in the control
of societal processes. The range on both sides was wide.
This also applies to the empires and their dissolutions. Anyone looking back at
the end of the nineteenth century would ask how Europe’s states performed in the
global imperialistic power play. There were winners and losers, and again, it had
nothing to do with the monarchy-republic divide. Monarchies were among the losers,
but they also featured at the top of the empire league table. Republics were no more
protective than monarchies in their approach to the building and defence of empires,
and the same applies to decolonisation.122 There was no greater commitment to ra-
cial equality in republics than in monarchies either.
The alternative nation state or the state of nations (Nationalitätenstaat) remains
one of the major unanswered questions from the nineteenth century to the present.
Monarchy and republic stood and stand for both, the nation state and the state of
nations, and both could be delegitimised through failure.
Despite the general and incomplete nature of this assessment, it indicates why,
irrespective of the person of the monarch, the state forms of the republic and the
monarchy are no longer as loaded in terms of representing a particular ideology as
was still the case in Europe, North and South America around 1800, when dierent
visions of the future were associated with them. This kind of debate appears to have
only started in Asia and Africa in the processes of decolonisation, when British poli-
tics also considered whether the republic could be a more suitable state form for Af-
rican states than the monarchy.123 All forms of the state are ultimately judged by
people on the basis of their performances. The First World War was the great lesson
for the European monarchies that had failed to understand this. However, the subse-
quent decades held more and far bloodier lessons with the global experience of how
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Monarchical Self-Assertion in a Republican World
124 D. Diner, Cataclysms. A History of the Twentieth Century
from Europe’s Edge, Wisconsin 2008, 205, 200; Diner’s
translation of Das Jahrhundert verstehen. Eine universal-
historische Deutung, Frankfurt/M. 2000, 258, 251.
ideological dictatorships, which were new in historical terms, arose in the form of
republics. This experience completely negated the promise of progressiveness asso-
ciated with the republic, and which had once been assigned to the republic as an al-
ternative to the monarchy. This further defused the monarchy-republic opposition.
Furthermore, it was not re-ignited by the post-1945 «universal civil war of ideologies
and values», just as the «translatio imperii of our time» from the British Empire to the
USA did not touch on the question of the republic or the monarchy.124 Regional mon-
archies within a republic are possible in Africa today and, should the European Un-
ion develop into a state, this is also the route that could be taken in Europe.
Monarchy – Global.
Monarchical Self-Assertion in a Republican World
In 1793, the French republic saw the guillotining of two royal heads. In 1934,
Winston Churchill spoke of the «holocaust of crowns» within his lifetime. Today, the
British Queen presides over the Commonwealth, which comprises mostly republics.
At the same time, there have been calls a return of the kings to republics with
respect to Africa. How is this astonishing self-assertion of the institutional monar-
chy to be explained, and why has the antagonism between the monarchy and the
republic disappeared? This will be discussed in a paper through a global per-
spective. Churchill was convinced: «No institution pays such dividends as the mon-
archy.» What dividends were earned, and for whom? What has the global presence
of European states meant for the institution of the monarchy in Europe, in imperial
spaces, and in decolonisation? In order to be able to analyse this issue, our study
questions the legitimacy which had been both accorded to and claimed by the insti-
tution monarchy. Does monarchical legitimacy differ in Europe, Asia and Africa?
Why did monarchies survived while other states and empires were created and then
destroyed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries? The study places three areas
in the center of our consideration: the role of the monarchy as the emotional center
of the nation and the empire; monarchy as a polycentric rule; and lastly, monarchy
as the institutionalisation of permanence in change. Finally, the study will discuss
how a comparative assessment and review of the performances by the monarchy
and the republic might look.
Dieter Langewiesche
Universität Tübingen
Philosophische Fakultät
Seminar für Neuere Geschichte
Wilhelmstraße 36
D–72074 Tübingen
dieter.langewiesche@uni-tuebingen.de
ABSTRACT
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JMEH 15 / 2017 / 2
Am 15. März 1942 begann die „Aktion Reinhardt“. Die deutschen
Besatzer deportierten die Juden aus den Ghettos im besetzten Po-
len und vergasten sie in den Vernichtungslagern Bełżec, Sobibór
und Treblinka. Bis November 1943 ermordeten sie annähernd
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Lehnstaedt legt die erste Gesamtdarstellung der „Aktion Rein-
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Ermordung der polnischen Juden.
C.H.BECK
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