The Royal Nation in Global Perspective

Adopting transnational and global history methodologies, this book suggests that the relationship between monarchies and nation-state formation has often been a symbiotic one, and that this can only be adequately explained through a global perspective, going beyond the local histories of particular state systems. While the nation-state has been the most influential concept of political community in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, royal dynasties have, however, often provided a centralized administrative-juridical-cultural locus around which a national community has crystallized itself. Monarchic rulerships have played a central role in the emergence of modern nation-states, which forms a crucial, if hitherto inadequately appreciated, aspect of modern global history.