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Monarchy: Crowns and Contexts, Thrones and Dominations

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Abstract

We are sometimes told, by those who believe that their prime scholarly task is to study ‘history from below’, that it is a mistake to concern ourselves with kings and queens, courts and coronations, art-patrons and palace-builders, flummery and mummery, because the whole glittering yet tawdry subject is at best elitist, and at worst boring. But throughout most of the human past, peoples, tribes, nations and empires have organized themselves, or have been forcibly organized, on the basis of royal rule, sovereign authority and hereditary succession.2 Moreover, most monarchies have been generically male, and most monarchs have fulfilled a remarkable and powerful range of generically masculine roles, as god, priest, lawgiver, judge, warrior, philosopher, patron and benefactor, which have significantly influenced the societies over which they have presided.3 If, then, we are to come to any settled understanding of the ancient, medieval and early modern history of Europe, to say nothing of the longer-term history of the majority of the globe beyond, we should recognize the importance of monarchy, and we need to study it – not as a wearying and meaningless succession of names and dates and roman numerals, but with all the varied insights and diverse approaches that have been developed by historians, and by those working in neighbouring disciplines, during the last half century.

This chapter began life as my inaugural lecture as Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother Professor of British History, which I delivered in the Beveridge Hall of the University of London Senate House on 12 January 2004. I am grateful to Charlotte Alston for essential research assistance, and to my former undergraduate students at the University of Cambridge and Columbia University, New York, with whom I discussed many of the thoughts and ideas that appear in these pages during the 1980s and 1990s. An abridged version of this lecture appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, 23 January 2004, pp. 11–13, which gave rise to a lively subsequent correspondence (TLS, 6 February 2004, p. 15; 27 February 2004, p. 17). I also record subsequent and special thanks to Walter Arnstein and Derek Beales.

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Notes

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© 2008 David Cannadine

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Cannadine, D. (2008). Monarchy: Crowns and Contexts, Thrones and Dominations. In: Making History Now and Then. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230594265_3

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