Introduction

In a collection that consciously seeks to establish that the ‘history of monarchy’ is more – much more – than an episode in some whiggish history of civilization’s progress along the road to western-style democracy, this first part of the volume might appear to be an anomaly. ¹ As Elena Woodacre’s general introduction has demonstrated, this is a volume dedicated to monarchy on a global scale. Yet in this first part of the book Europe appears to stare down from its throne – serenely or smugly, depending on your point of view – surveying the court of chapters assembled before it. Capetians and Plantagenets mingle there with Castilian kings and German emperors. Of the court’s future visitors, most will, doubtless, look away from the throne itself preferring to focus their attention on those in attendance. Others – inevitably the minority in an age of chapter downloads – will consider the assembly as a whole. Some, less inclined to either politeness or deference, and finding there to be a ‘wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command’ emanating from the throne, will express outrage. ² Taken as a whole, does Part I of this volume not embody not-so-subtle traces of a division, to borrow Niall Ferguson’s characterization, between the west and ‘the rest’? ³ Such an approach to exploring models of rulership would seem particularly at odds with a growing interest in applying the ‘global turn’ to the discipline of history. ⁴ The latter approach, which informs this volume as a whole and is exemplified in relation to monarchy in the work of historians such as Jeroen Duindam, seeks, at the very least, to place Europe in its wider context, and to remind us more generally that there is a history beyond the continent’s shores. ⁵