The Fall of Crowns

In 1870, every sizable country in Europe (except Switzerland) was a monarchy. From the imperial Ottoman Empire in the southeast to imperial Britain in the northwest, from the kingdom of Portugal in the southwest to Tsarist Russia in the northeast, Europeans were the subjects of emperors, kings, grand dukes, dukes or princes. One hundred and thirty years later, only ten monarchies survived, and of the eight with populations of more than a few thousand, only one, Spain, was in southern Europe. With only small or short-lived exceptions, Europe had been a continent of realms for two thousand years, ever since the Roman republic had given way to the imperial aspirations of Augustus Caesar. Today, it is a continent of republics, in which only two states of more than ten million people still acknowledge a sovereign (and both of them had periods as a republics).

Ironically, the modern European movement towards republics began outside Europe; in the American colonies of what is today the World's most famous monarchy, Britain. The Americans were, by no means, the first peoples to revolt against an outside ruling power, but they were the first major population of modern times to invoke the enlightenment principles of equality and reject not only an outside monarch, but monarchy itself. In different circumstances, but inspired in thought by the same revolution, the French followed suit a few years later, but installed an emperor 15 years later, followed by two further regimes of kings, another republic and another empire over the next half century.

Despite its returns to monarchy, the republican tradition survived in post-revolutionary France, and when the empire of Napoleon III fell to Prussian military might in 1870, the French people restored a presidency, although a restoration of the Bourbon royal dynasty was considered. Despite subsequent upheavals, the French have never seriously considered restoring the monarchy since.

The rest of Europe remained monarchical, though. When Prussia defeated France in 1870, it initiated the establishment of a new German Empire, a monarchy over monarchies. When the Balkan nations were liberated from Ottoman rule, they installed new kings. When Norway split from the Swedish Crown in 1905, it adopted a Danish prince as its king. But twenty years later, Russia, Germany, Austria, Portugal, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Finland and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were republics.

The twentieth century fall of monarchies began with a revolution in Portugal in 1910, but the most dramatic revolution of all was to come seven years later, in Russia, which was an attempt to overthrow the entire order of existing society in favour of socialism as defined by Marx, Engels and Lenin; a new order in which there was no place (supposedly) for hereditary privilege. Events led not only to the removal of the Tsar, but the cold-blooded assassination of him and his family.

The Russian imperial throne was the first monarchical casualty of the most catastrophic conflict to date in European history, the First World War. The war was a conflict of old powers fighting with devastating new technology in a World of changing values, where the needs and aspirations of common citizens, or subjects, were becoming impossible to ignore. When nations were crushed and humiliated by defeat, their regimes were held accountable to the new popular forces of democracy. The emperors of Germany and Austria paid for their failure with their thrones, and were replaced not by new sovereigns, as may have happened previously, but by republics. The victorious monarchies survived.

Between the wars, internal conflicts brought down two more crowns (Spain and Greece), although both were subsequently restored, in name at least (the Spanish monarchy wasn't restored in practice until 1975), but it was another world war which precipitated the second big fall. The Italian monarchy was discredited by its association with Mussolini and defeat in war, and fell in a referendum in 1946. The Balkan monarchies (Bulgaria, Romania, Yugoslavia and Albania) were pushed out by the advance of Soviet power into their territories. Iceland, effectively free of the Danish Crown while Denmark was occupied during the war, voted to formally sever its ties and establish a republic in 1944. Around the same time, although not a consequence of the war, in 1937 the Irish Free State adopted a constitution which was republican in all but name, and officially became in 1949.

Only one European monarchy has fallen since the 1940s - that of Greece, after the rule of the Colonels, who had seized power in 1967. Other than Spain, which was a "kingdom without a king" under Franco, and restored the Borb�n dynasty in 1975, no new European monarchy has been created and none has been restored. The fall of Communism raised the hopes of monarchists in eastern Europe, but those hopes have not yet been realized. There is one extraordinary case, though - in Bulgaria, King Simeon II, who was deposed by the Communists when he was nine, now governs as Simeon Saxecoburggotski (Saxe-Coburg Gotha), Prime Minister of the Republic of Bulgaria, democratically elected, and answerable to the President of the Republic.

Those monarchies which have survived have done so largely by not being associated with national disaster, and by gradually and peacefully surrendering their real power to democratic institutions and becoming largely symbolic institutions with only residual powers. They embody a national tradition which is harmless as long as it is powerless, and are retained and popular for that reason, rather than because constitutional monarchy is seen as a preferable form of government (although it may well be). The modern view of monarchy appears to be "if it ain't broke, don't fix it; but if it is broke, still don't fix it - throw it out".

- Paul James