Heirs to the Throne in the Constitutional Monarchies of Nineteenth-Century Europe (1815-1914)

Heirs to the Throne in the Constitutional Monarchies
of Nineteenth-Century Europe (1815-1914)

Project Summary

Research Questions

This research project explores one of the most eye-catching and dazzling success stories of
nineteenth-century Europe: its constitutional monarchies. By 1914, more than 120 years had passed
since King Louis XVI of France had died on the scaffold; people now used telephones, X-ray machines
and motorcars, but on the eve of the First World War Europe was still a continent of monarchies.
Only three sizeable states were republics in 1914: France, Portugal and Switzerland. It is true that
ever since 1688/89 and 1789 the power of Europe's royal sovereigns had gradually been restricted
by constitutional arrangements. Autocratic or neo-absolutist regimes had become increasingly rare
exceptions to a general rule. The concept “Constitutional Monarchy”, though, whose different
manifestations reflected national peculiarities, had established itself as a successful Pan-European
norm. It continued to weave the continent's different nation states into a network of royalty. This
had happened against the background of a dramatically changing environment: revolutionary
upheaval; growing literacy; an expanding public sphere created, served and sustained by a variety of
media; modern political parties appealing to dramatically enlarged electorates; spectacular changes
in Europe's social, economic, intellectual, technological and religious life; imperial expansion and
globalization. That monarchical systems had survived and even flourished throughout a century of
such profound transformation was testament to the strength, suppleness and resourcefulness of
these institutions.

The biological realities at the heart of hereditary rule meant that heirs to the throne were a crucial
component of monarchical systems. At every point in the nineteenth century, millions of Europeans
knew with a high degree of certainty the identity of the next holder of the most exalted office in the
land. While heirs anticipated the end of the current reign, they embodied both dynastic continuity
and the inevitability of change at the very apex of the system. Depending on the specific political,
cultural and constitutional contexts as well as on the individuals involved, crown princes and
princesses could either consolidate or undermine the status quo, play momentous or insignificant
roles, appear high-profile or almost imperceptible, embody change or continuity.

This research project will offer new insights into the politics and political cultures of Europe during
the Long Nineteenth Century by analysing the heirs to the continent's many royal thrones. The

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overarching objective guiding this project will be: to investigate comparatively and systematically the
contribution made by the heirs to the thrones of Britain, France, Spain, Italy, the German lands and
Austria-Hungary to the functioning and malfunctioning, rigidity and suppleness, successes and
shortcomings of the constitutional monarchies whose future pivoted on them. These heirs will be
used as prisms to explore the politics and political cultures of Europe's monarchical systems, the
institutions, agencies, groups and individuals engaged in either sustaining or challenging them as
well as the societies and cultures within which they existed and operated.

Rather than proceeding biographically, the project will pursue thematic questions across different
states and societies:

1. In what ways did heirs to the throne impact on the stability and long-term viability of
    monarchical regimes? Did they stabilise them by supporting the political status quo, by acting as
    vehicles of hope for future change or as safety valves? Or were they corrosive of the current
    monarch's reign by crystallizing opposition?

2. How were heirs presented to the relevant narrower and wider publics when they were children
    and adolescents and what use was made of them? What roles did they play during those stages
    of their lives?

3. What roles did heirs play within international diplomacy (e.g. through dynastic marriages,
    attendance at functions, travel, public diplomacy etc.) or as military leaders and governmental
    functionaries?

4. Did heirs act as intermediaries between the sovereign and governmental authority on the one
    hand and the people on the other? How important, in this context, were new styles of
    monarchical comportment (popularity, embourgeoisement), proximity to the public and the
    dissemination of a particular public image (“celebrity”) through the media?

5. How can the roles played by heirs be categorised in terms of Bagehot's distinction between
    “dignified” and “efficient” parts of the state?

6. How did heirs operate as public personae? How did they interact with different publics, parties,
    parliaments and the media? What use – if any – was made of their high public profile for the
    transmission of political messages? Being denied direct access to the “hard power” of
    government and sovereign action by their inferior positions, did heirs succeed in accumulating
    and controlling a measure of “soft power”?

7. To what extent were heirs effective as generational representatives?

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8. Finally, did the roles played by individual heirs to the throne comply with a broad European
    pattern or did they rather reflect national peculiarities?

It would be premature to anticipate specific findings of this project, but it aims to invite a
reconsideration of prominent older interpretations which emphasize the allegedly pre-modern,
feudal, manipulative or oppressive elements of monarchical Europe.1 The explanation for the
survival of the continent’s monarchies may not primarily have lain in their ability to arrest change
and preserve their position, but in their capacity for keeping pace, for reinvention and for continuing
to point to the future during a most dynamic age. In their different ways, figures as diverse and
memorable as Frederick William of Prussia, Edward Albert Prince of Wales, the Archdukes Rudolf
and Franz Ferdinand of Austria or the Prince Imperial Louis Napoleon reflected and shaped their
political cultures as well as contributing to the successes (and setbacks) of the crowns they were
expected to inherit. The project will revise and renew our understanding of nineteenth-century
Europe by engaging with the flexibility, resourcefulness, media acumen, communication skills and
societal integration of the monarchical systems.

Research context

This project draws on and will contribute to a significant body of recent work in the fields of cultural
and political history, media history and transnational history which has explored dimensions of
nineteenth-century monarchy. Much has been achieved since Clifford Geertz complained in 1980
that ceremonial and ornamental forms of authority had been “left to drift in an indefinite world of
excrescences, mysteries, fictions, and decorations” instead of being subjected to rigorous
investigation.2 Taking its cue from David Cannadine's and Linda Colley's work on loyalty,
performance and ritual3, research on the monarchy of nineteenth-century Britain, for instance, has
tackled cultural production4, the role of the media5, the impact of monarchical functionaries6,
challenges to monarchy7 and the overall evaluation of the linkages connecting monarchy, nation and
society.8

1
  Mayer: Persistence (1981); Hobsbawm/Ranger: Invention (1983); Wehler: Kaiserreich (1973).
2
  Geertz: Negara (1980), 122.
3
  Cannadine: Context, Performance and Meaning (1983); Colley: Apotheosis of George III (P&P, 1984). (1983).
4
  Homans: Royal Representations (1998).
5
  Plunkett: Media Monarch (2003).
6
  Kuhn: Democratic Royalism (1996); Kuhn: Henry and Mary Ponsonby (2002).
7
  Williams: Contentious Crown (1997); Prochaska: Republic of Britain (2000).
8
  Olechnowicz (ed.): Monarchy and British Nation (2007); Craig: Crowned Republic (HJ, 2003).

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The monarchies of continental Europe have been subjected to similar kinds of analysis. Research on
nineteenth-century Germany and Austria has examined media-generated scandals9, the celebration
of jubilees10, cult and ceremonies11, the mechanism of defensive state-building employed by the
smaller monarchies12, epistolary communication13, the integration of monarchical myths into a
context of material culture14 and the process of Germany's “de-monarchification” in 1918/19.15
Post-modern scepticism has been brought to bear on the extravagance of courtly life in Napoleon
III's France while the monarchy of Umbertian Italy has been analysed within the context of a national
politics of culture.16 Through Kirsch's work on France's constitutional monarchy, Paulmann's study of
monarchical encounters, McLean's investigation of royal diplomacy and Urbach's volume on dynastic
networks17, the ground has also been prepared for comparative and transnational approaches. The
study of Europe's nineteenth-century monarchies has been further enriched by recent biographical
work on the German emperors Frederick III and William II18, France's Napoleon III19, Crown Prince
Rudolf of Austria20 and his father Emperor Franz Joseph.21

A second body of research relevant to this project revolves around the concept of political culture as
a “system of empirical beliefs, expressive symbols, and values, which defines the situation in which
political action takes place.”22 Though contested and somewhat blurred,23 this notion and the
methodological apparatus derived from it have informed numerous valuable studies which are
relevant to the proposal outlined here but tend – as a rule – not to focus specifically on the
institution of nineteenth-century monarchy.24

9
  Kohlrausch: Monarch im Skandal (2005).
10
   Mergen: Monarchiejubiläen (2005).
11
   Unowsky: Pomp (2005); Büschel: Untertanenliebe (2006); Schwengelbeck: Politik des Zeremoniells (2007);
Unowsky/Cole: Limits of Loyalty (2007).
12
   Green: Fatherlands (2001).
13
   Marburg: Europäischer Hochadel (2008).
14
   Giloi: Monarchy (2011)
15
   Machtan: Abdankung (2008).
16
   Baguley: Napoleon III and his Regime (2000); Körner: Politics of Culture (2008); see also Mack Smith: Italy
and its Monarchy (1989).
17
   Kirsch: Monarch und Parlament (1999); Paulmann: Pomp und Politik (2000); McLean, Royalty and Diplomacy
(2001); Urbach (ed.): Royal Kinship (2008).
18
   Müller: Our Fritz (2011, forthcoming); Röhl: Wilhelm II, 3 vols (1993-2009); Kohut: Wilhelm II (1991); Clark:
Kaiser (2009).
19
   Anceau: Napoleon III (2008); Sagnes: Napoleon III (2008).
20
   Hamann: Kronprinz Rudolf (2006).
21
   Beller: Francis Joseph (1996).
22
   Verba: Political Culture (1969), 513.
23
   Rohe: Politische Kultur (HZ, 1990); Street: Political Culture (BJPS, 1994); Formisano: Concept of Political
Culture (J.Int.disc.H., 2001).
24
   E.g. Rose & Kavanagh: Monarchy in Contemporary Political Culture (Comp. Pol., 1976); Anderson: Practising
Democracy (2000); Schwaabe: Modernitätskrise (2005); Vernon: Politics and the People (1993); Kahan:
Liberalism in the Nineteenth-Century (2003); Hall/McClelland/Rendall: Defining the Victorian Nation (2003);
Biskup/Kohlrausch (ed.): Erbe der Monarchie (2008)

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The research project proposed here will build on the methods employed and findings produced by
these works. By focusing on the roles played by heirs to the throne within their respective
monarchies and by comparing these roles across several European monarchies the project will break
new ground: no studies exist that focus specifically or systematically, let alone comparatively on the
contribution made by heirs to the throne. The project will add a number of innovative approaches to
established research perspectives on the history of monarchy: international comparison, transfer,
soft power, generation and celebrity. The project will generate new insights by treating the systems
of nineteenth-century monarchy as a pan-European phenomenon manifesting a variety of specific
national responses to broadly similar challenges. It will drill more deeply into the strengths and
limitations of the model “Constitutional Monarchy” and offer a reassessment of the connections
between state, power, authority, media, society and culture in Europe throughout the Long
Nineteenth Century.

Research Methods

The intellectual agenda for this project arises from a research project recently completed by the
Principal Investigator: a biographical study of the Prussian-German crown prince and emperor
Frederick III (1831-1888) within the political and public cultures as well as the power political
machinations of his age (to be published by Harvard University Press in 2011). The research
undertaken for this book effectively worked as a “pilot study” for this wider proposal as it involved a
detailed investigation of the role of a (well-nigh perennial) crown prince. This identified a number of
key issues which point to the importance of his role for the working of the monarchical systems in
Prussia and the Reich as well as his close connection with the political culture that surrounded him:

   the creation of the popular figure “Our Fritz” by the media and the crown prince himself

   the ascription to this figure of a whole catalogue of perpetual and contemporary virtues

   the crown prince's public behaviour in accordance with a set of societal expectations and norms

   the crown prince's awareness of the power of the media and public relations

   the orientation towards the crown prince of political forces dissatisfied with the status quo

   the frequent identification of the heir with a new generation waiting for its historical hour

   the identification of the crown prince with certain “soft” policy fields: culture, museums,
    philanthropy, emergency relief

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The systematic and comparative analysis of these issues (as well as others explained above) across a
number of selected countries and across several individual heirs will form the core of the proposed
project.

The central methodological issue that needed to be confronted for the completion of this study –
and also for the project proposed here – is the selection of suitable sources from amongst the
superabundance of material offered by nineteenth-century Europe. The following five categories of
sources have proved accessible, plentiful and rewarding:

1. the correspondence, diaries and other writings of the crown prince(s) in question and of their
    circle of confidants (archival material, editions of letters etc.)

2. journalistic texts (newspapers, periodicals etc.) selected through a matrix of key dates
    (anniversaries, significant birthdays, remarkable events etc.)

3. popular (hagiographical, patriotic) accounts of the dynasty and/or the individual in question
    (incl. textbooks for schools, children's books, ephemera etc.)

4. parliamentary and party political sources (debates, election material, correspondence amongst
    politicians)

5. visual sources (portraiture, photography, monuments, prints, architecture, museum displays)

The project is designed to function collaboratively with a team of researchers at various stages in
their careers completing discrete tasks which will produce results that can stand alone but will add
up to an overall outcome that is greater than the sum of its parts.

   Two doctoral researchers will explore the systemic roles played by heirs to the throne in a
    particular country.
   A postdoctoral researcher will investigate a crucial theme (such as, for instance,
    childhood/education, media involvement, opposition/counter-courts) across two or more
    countries.
   Two workshops organised in the course of the project will invite and integrate contributions
    from the research community beyond the project team.
   The PI will write a pan-European synthesis built on his own further research and the findings
    generated by the project.

                                                                              Frank Lorenz Müller
                                                                                     August 2011

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