Re: Ten Monarchies Survive In Europe

In article <hql7m1pkh36a30tco4c5r9056aa4hkqgre@xxxxxxx>, Francois R. Velde
says...
>
>In medio alt.talk.royalty aperuit Guy Stair Sainty <guy@xxxxxxxxxx> os suum:
>
>>In article <vvv6m1pvbpmh5pqrcv4uvt82j90ioa7ttr@xxxxxxx>, Francois R. Velde
>>says...
>>>
>
>You said that monarchies bring stability, which is essential for prosperity.
>Therefore, monarchies should, at least some of the time, bring prosperity; but
>republics, which (presumably, in the monarchist argument) cannot bring
>stability, will never be prosperous. But I showed you data that, even
>restricted to the post-1948 period where the set of monarchies is pretty much
>unchanged, there is no difference in growth rates between the two groups (even
>throwing in the people's republics!). If monarchies do bring greater stability,
>they don't do so to the extent that it has any noticeable impact on prosperity:
>so, either they don't bring stability, or else stability isn't essential to
>prosperity.

Of course I am not suggesting that republics cannot or do not bring stability;
the US is an excellent example. What I question is whether republics bring
greater stability than monarchies; I believe the reverse to be true where
countries have had traditional monarchist governments during most of their
history.

The great problem is restoring a monarchy after a substantial interval of
republican government. The special circumstances of Spain are rather unique and,
unfortunately, unlikely to be repeated elsewhere. But nonetheless I would
suggest that there are certain countries - and Serbia is one of them - where I
believe that the restoration of the Monarchy would bring greater benefits than
the maintenance of the republic.

I do not suggest that some 135 years after France last had any kind of Monarch,
and 175 years after she had a legitimate one, it is possible to restore a
monarchical system of government. Aside from all other considerations when
dynasties are deposed for long periods of time they often lose what is needed to
make them suitable candidates for a restoration (and the French candidates are a
good example).
>
>> and these states which
>>had emerged from centuries of domination by Turkey had inevitably a long
>>way to go before finding any kind of enduring security.
>
>You can't blame the Turks for Alfonso XIII's Primo de Rivera or Vittorio
>Emanuele III's Mussolini. Greece and Romania had been free of the Turks for a
>hundred years, which is getting a little long for passing the buck back to
>Mahmud II. You could explain the disappearance of the Hohenzollerns and
>Habsburgs on losing WWI, but where does that leave the Romanovs?

I blame the French, of course! Spain was fatally destablised by the Bonapartist
usurpation, leading to the conflicts between conservatives and liberals that led
to the Carlist wars, the revolution of 1868 and the political compromises of the
post 1876 era. The later 19th century conflicts between capital and labour that
charcaterised the relations between strongly opposed political groups was
fatally destablising across Europe. Interestingly these conflicts existed in
both the UK and the US, but the electoral system made it far more difficult for
small political groups to gain power. In the US the rise of anarchist and
extremist labour groups was constrained (often quite brutally) but in Spain and
Portugal these groups, associated with strong anti-clericalism instituionalised
in France which encuraged these movements in its neighbours, were determined to
bring down their respective monarchies. They did not want to do so by the ballot
box, but by violent demonstrations. They succeeded in 1910 in Portugal and in
1931 in Spain; in Italy Victor Emmanuel III grossly over-estimated the strength
of Mussolini's neo-socialist fascist movement and with a weak government in
power failed to use the powers he had to confront Mussolini.

My suggestion is though, that in all three instances, a republic would have been
in far worse straights far earlier. The discord in Italy was only prevented from
fracturing earlier because of the Monarchy. When Portugal became a republic in
1910 the new government, in strong contrast to the liberal monarchy which had
preceded it, was violently anti-clerical (thus oppressing large segments of the
population) and was so unstable that there were multiple changes of government
ultimately leading to a right-wing dictatorship. In Spain the republic was
equally oppressive of the monarchist and Catholic groups, and tolerated gross
abuses including the murder of priests, monks and nuns and the burning of
churches and religious houses. Just five years of republic led to a terrible
civil war.
>
>> But surely the citizens
>>of all these countries were better off in every sense under their Monarchies
>>than under the post WWII communist republics?
>
>Well, pick your measure of being "better off". I doubt that, say, the HDI of
>the Warsaw Pact countries was lower in 1989 than in 1939: GDP per capita grew by
>a factor of three, the other components were undoubtedly higher as well. It
>would be probably more sensible to use some relative measure: were the countries
>better off relative to others. In 1938, the average GDP per capita of Hungary,
>Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania and Yugoslavia was 54% of the European
>average (excluding the USSR); in 1989, it was 44% (less of a fallback than I
>would have expected, to be honest). I suspect that the other indicators
>(education and health) would show much less relative decline.

Better off is not simply an ecomonic measurement. Political freedoms, freedom of
expression, the rule of law, equal justice for all may be more important than
purely economic development. Furthermore, in the communist countries economic
progress was achieved at much higher environmental cost than in Western Europe
with the price for these excesses being paid by succeeding generations. Thus one
may well question the reality of these figures when stated in what I would
suggest are simplistic terms. One might achieve tremendous short term economic
progress while destroying any hope of ever meeting those targets in the future.
>
>But proving that Ceausescu was worse than Carol II is not exactly a resounding
>victory for the superiority of the monarchical system.

Nonetheless I would suggest that the monarchy of Carol II (and of the other
Hohenzollern kings) was vastly better for the people of Romania; again, the
appalling social costs of the Ceaucescu regime, with vast areas of historic
Bucharest destroyed and replaced with poorly built post-Stalinist monstrosities,
with the life of the agrarian peasants devastated by pollution and deranged
agricultural planning, with a culture of social irresponsibility leading to the
abandonment of thousands of orphans, along with numerous other mailaises from
which Romanian society will take decades to recover.

Economists surely must look beyond short or medium term growth rates to judge
whether a society is healthy? The Romania monarchy was far from perfect, but
Bucharest was developed into a magnificent city under Hohenzollern rule, a
cultural mecca in the region and indeed the home of one of the greatest 20th
century sculptors, Brancusi, who although based mainly in Paris (and exclusively
there from World War II), was just one of many extraordinarily talented artists,
musicians and writers who emerged after the Turks were kicked out. All
intellectual innovation was brutally oppressed under the communists. The same
could be said for Bulgaria, Serbia, and Croatia, during the post-1945 era.
Whatever the failings of the monarchical system, and these were not perfect, the
subsequent republican period was a time of true horror.

There were contraints of personal freedoms under these monarchies - just as
there were in Hungary, Poland, the Baltic states and Finland during the same
period, even though these were republics - but they were minor compared with the
oppression of the communist regimes. As I have written before when we have had
these exchanges, it was far easier to suborn the French fourth republic in 1940
than it was to delegitimise the monarchist governments of Belgium, the
Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, Norway, Greece, and Yugoslavia after the
Germans invaded and took over.


--
Guy Stair Sainty
www.chivalricorders.org/index3.htm
.

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