Global Royal Families: Concepts, Cultures, and Networks of International Monarchy, 1800-2020

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Global Royal Families: Concepts, Cultures, and Networks of International Monarchy, 1800-2020

Organizer
Dr Falko Schnicke (GHIL); Dr Cindy McCreery (University of Sydney); Prof Robert Aldrich (University of Sydney)
Venue
German Historical Institute London
Location
London
Country
United Kingdom
From - Until
16.01.2020 - 18.01.2020
Website
https://www.ghil.ac.uk/global_royal_families.html
By
Falko Schnicke

Monarchies, by definition as hereditary institutions, are defined by their familial context. Other than for a very few examples of monarchical titles that survived without them (such as the papacy or the Holy Roman Empire until 1806), the families of sovereigns are crucial to succession to the throne, and to the survival and legitimacy of a dynasty. While royal families are usually celebrated as icons of nationalism, they have often maintained a global presence. Both in and beyond Europe, royal families have developed and maintained sustained international connections, for example by marital strategies, royal tours, royal diplomacy, the practice of sending heirs abroad for education or military training, correspondence and gift-exchange with relatives in foreign dynasties. Such practices accelerated in the nineteenth century, with the rise of European imperialism in the Asia-Pacific and Africa, and new technologies of communication and transportation, as well as necessary responses to the challenges of republicanism and democratisation. In the case of non-Western royal families, there was also the challenge of resisting colonial conquest or accommodating new colonial overlords, and adapting European conventions of monarchy to assert the position of non-European sovereigns as peers of European monarchs.

The familial nature of monarchy in global terms thus commands analysis. Members of royal families, as well as the sovereign head, played important roles in public life. The ‘virtual’ global families of monarchies who granted mutual recognition of status (or, for the colonisers of countries outside Europe, often manifestly did not do so), remained in regular contact, and assimilated influences concerning monarchical roles and performances from around the world. This conference will investigate these themes from a global viewpoint in carefully selected case studies ranging from the early nineteenth century to the present.

Programm

Thursday, 16 January 2020

Welcome & Opening Remarks
Christina von Hodenberg (Director of the GHIL)
Cindy McCreery (Sydney) and Falko Schnicke (London)
Robert Aldrich (Sydney), Family Matters: Global Royal Families in History and Historiography

Session 1: Royals in International Affairs and Diplomacy
Moritz A. Sorg (Freiburg), Strangers in Their Own Kingdom: The First World War as a Crisis of Transnational Monarchy
Michael Kandiah (London), The British Royal Families as Diplomats, 1952 to the Present Day

Session 2: The Windsors and Foreign Royal Houses
Falko Schnicke (London): Family Diplomacy: Using the British Royal Family as a Rhetoric Asset in Twentieth-Century State Visits
Hilary Sapire (London), The Zulu Royal House and the British Monarchy in the Early Twentieth Century

Keynote
Frank Mort (Manchester), Democracy, Diplomacy and Populism: A History of the Modern British Monarchy from Below

Friday, 17 January 2020

Session 3: The Global Reach of the British Monarchy
John R. Davis (London), British Royal Attitudes to India in the Nineteenth Century and the Influence of German Philology
Christian Oberländer (Halle-Wittenberg), The British Royal Family as a Model for Japan’s Imperial House in the Twentieth Century

Session 4: Royal Travel
Javier Moreno-Luzón (Madrid), The Majesty of the Race: The Spanish Royal Family and America (1902-1931)
Aglaja Weindl (Munich), Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria – An Unexpected Global Royal

Session 5: Global Encounters
Judith Rowbotham (Plymouth), ”…to be cheered vociferously by the crowd” – Royal Trips to the Colo-nies: Reaching Out to the Empire, 1875-1914
Cindy McCreery (Sydney), Meeting the Global Royal Family: The 1881 Visits of King Kalakaua of Hawai’i and Princes Albert Victor and George of Great Britain to the Meiji Emperor of Japan

Session 6: Letters and Advice Between Royals
Susanne Bauer (Trier), Writing to Influence: The Correspondence of the Prussian Queen and German Empress Augusta (1811-1890)
Mary T. Duarte (Milwaukee), Royal Marriages, Royal Advice: Instructions from Queen Mothers

Keynote
Irene Stengs (Amsterdam), The Politics of Thai Royal Ritual and the New Reign: Historical and Anthro-pological Perspectives

Saturday, 18 January 2020

Session 7: Regional Dynasties and Transnational Royal Families
Aidan Jones (London), Anglo-Russian Royal Family Connections: A Transnational Prince and the Diplomacy of a Dynastic Marriage
Priya Naik (Delhi), Gadgets, Goods and Technology: Consumption of Indian Royal Families (1920-1948)

Session 8: International Influence and Evolution of Models of Monarchy
Nicholas Miller (Lisbon), Kalakaua of Hawai’I and Abu Bakar of Johore: Indigenous Kingship, Contract Labour and pan-Malay Overtures in the Late Nineteenth-Century Asia-Pacific
Charles Reed (Elizabeth City), Princely Tourists: Gaekwads of Baroda in Britain before and after the End of Empire

Reflections on the Conference & Closing Discussion

Contact (announcement)

Falko Schnicke

German Historical Insitute London

schnicke@ghil.ac.uk

https://www.ghil.ac.uk/global_royal_families.html
Editors Information
Published on
13.01.2020
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