A Comparative Perspective: The Problem of Monarchical Authority in National Historiography in Nineteenth-Century Ireland and Germany
A Comparative Perspective: The Problem of Monarchical Authority in National Historiography in Nineteenth-Century Ireland and Germany
This chapter proposes a comparative study of how ideas of monarchical rule and authority were conceptualised in historical narratives produced by nationalist writers in Ireland and Germany during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. For Irish and German nationalists, the historical reality of monarchical authority was not always compatible with the historical narratives they wished to articulate; this form of authority needed both to be nationalised and in certain circumstances ‘written out’ of the national(ist) past as something illegitimate or contrary to the authentic national community. In broad terms, the engagement with monarchical authority in the Irish past among nationalists contributed to a political culture that was anti-monarchical even if not philosophically republican, just as in Germany it created within nationalism on the Right (centrist or authoritarian) a political culture that was at best sceptical of and at worst hostile to republicanism, and amenable to the rule of a dictator.
Keywords: Germany, Ireland, nationalism, historiography, monarchy, comparative history
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