ABSTRACT

The eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries brought upheaval and radical political change for European monarchies. Their ideological basis changed from divine right to social contract, and the status of the monarch correspondingly from ruling by grace of God to being the first servant of the state in charge of improving the welfare of his subjects. Furthermore, state administration to a large extent shifted from court nepotism to a meritocratic bureaucracy. Indeed European monarchies experienced an even more serious crisis: the American Revolution demonstrated that state-building was possible without any monarch at all, and the French Revolution not only introduced a new political system but even saw the abolition of monarchy in 1792. The ensuing Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars meant radical transformations of the European map as many old monarchies and long-established dynasties fell and were replaced by new ones with new names, new territorial extents and new rulers. The chapters in this section deal with the Scandinavian monarchies from different aspects, describing how they were theoretically based and functioned in practice and how they were affected by the above-mentioned developments. This introduction will summarize and put into perspective the main results, and it will make comparisons between the Danish and Swedish monarchies.