Word Finder - monarchies

definition

A government in which sovereignty is embodied within a single, today usually hereditary head of state (whether as a figurehead or as a powerful ruler).

definition

The territory ruled over by a monarch; a kingdom.

definition

A form of government where sovereignty is embodied by a single ruler in a state and his high aristocracy representing their separate divided lands within the state and their low aristocracy representing their separate divided fiefs.

definition

States based on a system of governance headed by a king or a queen.

An enormous gap severs the pre-monarchical period from this age, and while the tribal schemes and tribal traditions can hardly be traced during the monarchies, the inclusion of Judah among the " sons " of Israel would not have originated when Judah and Israel were rival kingdoms. Yet the tribes survive in post-exilic literature and their traditions develop henceforth in Jubilees, Testament of the XII Patriarchs, &c.

About the beginning of the 6th century B.C. the settled country between the Himalaya mountains and the Nerbudda river was divided into sixteen independent states, some monarchies and some tribal republics, the most important of which were the four monarchies of Kosala, Magadha, the Vamsas and Avanti.

Before the year 300 B.C. two powerful monarchies had thus begun to act upon the Brahmanism of northern India, from the east and from the west.

In Palestine, on the other hand, the downfall of the old monarchies and the infusion of new blood gave fresh life to the land.

Antiochus Theos (grandson of Seleucus Nicator) and Asoka (grandson of Chandragupta), who ruled these two monarchies in the 3rd century B.C., made a treaty with each other (256).

Financial organization makes its earliest appearance in the great Eastern monarchies, in which tribute was regularly collected and the oldest and most general form of taxation - that levied on the produce of land - was established.

Instead of the comparatively simple expedients of the barbarian monarchies, as indicated above, the Athenian city state by degrees developed a rather complex revenue system.

The Maoris and other Polynesian peoples are perhaps the best examples of a race which has risen far above the savagery of Bushmen and Australians, but has not yet arrived at the stage in which great centralized monarchies appear.

The movement from the south, which seems to account for a considerable cycle of the patriarchal traditions, belongs to the age after the downfall of the Israelite and(later)the Judaean monarchies when there were vital political and social changes.

On the other hand, the need for political and social order involved the necessity for a disciplined and homogeneous religious body; the exercise of power, moreover, soon transformed the democratic Christianity of the earlier churches into a federation of little conservative monarchies.

There were no longer two rival monarchies in France; the feudal equilibrium was destroyed, to the advantage of the duchy of France.

France had not escaped any of these conflicts; but Philip the Fair was the initiator or the instrument (it is difficult to say which) who was to put an end to both imperial and theocratic dreams, and to the international crusades; who was to remove the political axis from the centre of Europe, mueh to the benefit of the western monarchies, now definitely emancipated from the feudal yoke and firmly organized against both the Church and the barons.

This at once provoked war between the two monarchies, English and French, which, including periods of truce, lasted for a hundred and sixteen years.

His good fortune soon led him from conquest to spoliation, and he complicated his master-idea of the grand empire by his Family Compact; the clan of the Bonapartes invaded European monarchies, wedding with princesses of blood- royal, and adding kingdom to kingdom.

The literary problems of the books of Samuel are those of the writing of the history of the monarchies from different points of view; and the intimate connexion of the books with my those that precede and follow shows that a careful consideration of the internal literary and historical features of these also is necessary.

He made one attempt to reconcile the disputes between the army and the politicians by a conference, but ended the barren discussion on the relative merits of aristocracies, monarchies and democracies, interspersed with Bible texts, by throwing a cushion at the speaker's head and running downstairs.

It is true that Puritan austerity and the lack of any strong central authority after Oliver's death produced a reaction which temporarily restored Charles's dynasty to the throne; but it is not less true that the execution of the king, at a later time when all over Europe absolute monarchies "by divine right" were being established on the ruins of the ancient popular constitutions, was an object lesson to all the world; and it produced a profound effect, not only in establishing constitutional monarchy in Great Britain after James II., with the dread of his father's fate before him, had abdicated by flight, but in giving the impulse to that revolt against the idea of "the divinity that doth hedge a king" which culminated in the Revolution of 1789, and of which the mighty effects are still evident in Europe and beyond.

The modes of government amongst civilized peoples have little influence on political geography; some republics are as arbitrary and exacting in their frontier regulations as some absolute monarchies.

Monarchies with any real, significant power are just waiting out the clock.

For many of the same reasons as monarchies, dictatorships are inherently warlike.

The meaning in French is "lily flower," and the design resembles a lily.The symbol can be seen on flags and coats of arms throughout Europe and is often associated with monarchies, especially the French.

It is, however, to be noticed that absolute monarchies are confined to the east of Europe and to Asia, Japan being the only established constitutional monarchy east of the Carpathians.

Limited monarchies are (with the exception of Japan) peculiar to Europe, and in these the degree of democratic control may be said to diminish as one passes eastwards from the United Kingdom.

From this purest type of nobility, as seen in the aristocratic commonwealths, we may pass to nobility as seen in states of greater extent - that is, for the most part in monarchies.

Whilst Russia, Austria, Prussia and France were becoming powerful monarchies with centralized administration, Poland had remained a weak feudal republic with an elected king chosen under foreign influence and fettered by constitutional restrictions.

The commercial activity of the king and the picture of intercourse and wealth are quite in accordance with what is known of the ancient monarchies, and could already be illustrated from the Amarna age.

The feeling of national unity between north and south would require historical treatment, the existence of rival monarchies would demand an explanation.

Both in Europe and in Asia small feudal or aristocratic states tended to consolidate themselves into monarchies, but whereas in Europe from the early days of Rome onwards royalty has often been driven out and replaced temporarily or permanently by popular government, this change seems not to occur in Asia, where revolution means only a change of dynasty.

They were absolute monarchies, but the power of the king was tempered by the extraordinary influence possessed by the hereditary sacerdotal class or Brahmans.

Finally, a distinction is drawn between "elective" and "hereditary" monarchies.

Of the former class the most conspicuous was the Holy Roman Empire; but in Europe all monarchies were, within certain limits, originally elective; and, after the introduction of Christianity, the essential condition of the assumption of sovereign power was not so much kinship with the reigning family as the "sacring" by the divine authority of the Church.

But the Third Crusade, unlike the First, does not spring from the papacy, which was passing through one of its epochs of depression; it springs from the lay power, which, represented by the three strong monarchies of Germany, England and France, was at this time dominant in Europe.

At this period Athens was altogether overshadowed in material strength by the great Hellenistic monarchies and even by the new republican leagues of Greece; but she could still on occasion display great energy and patriotism.

The Hellenistic monarchies rested, as all government in the last resort must, upon the loyalty of those who wielded the brute force of the state, and however unlimited the powers of the king might be in theory, he could not alienate the goodwill of the army with impunity.

It was thus that when Rome became a world-empire, it found to some extent the forms of government ready made, and took over from the Hellenistic monarchies a tradition which it handed on to the later world.

Thus, at the very time when the modernization of the means of national defence had become the first principle, in every other part of Europe, of the strongly centralized monarchies which were rising on the ruins of feudalism, the Hungarian magnates deliberately plunged their country back into the chaos of medievalism.

At the age of eight he is said to have written a history of Schaffhausen, and at eleven he knew the names and dates of all the kings of the four great monarchies.

A subsidy treaty with the sea powers (April 1 9, 1 794) filled his coffers; but the insurrection in Poland that followed the partition of 1793, and the threat of the isolated intervention of Russia, hurried him into the separate treaty of Basel with the French Republic (April 5, 1795), which was regarded by the great monarchies as a betrayal, and left Prussia morally isolated in Europe on the eve of the titanic struggle between the monarchical principle and the new political creed of the Revolution.

The inscriptions seem to indicate that the monarchies of South Arabia were hereditary, the son generally following the father, though not seldom the brother of the deceased came between, apparently on the principle of seniority, which we find also in North Arabia.

Poland, indeed, was far less able to cope with the Turks than compact, wealthy Hungary, which throughout the 15th century was one of the most efficient military monarchies in Europe.

There is only one answer; the principal cause of this complete and irretrievable collapse is to be sought for in the folly, egotism and selfishness of the Polish gentry, whose insane dislike of all discipline, including even the salutary discipline of regular government, converted Poland into something very like a primitive tribal community at the very time when every European statesman, including the more enlightened of the Poles themselves, clearly recognized that the political future belonged to the strongly centralized monarchies, which were everywhere rising on the ruins of feudalism.

But now that Poland lay utterly helpless and surrounded by the three great military monarchies of Europe, nothing could save her.

His great reputation and his diplomatic experience gave a special weight to the attacks which he published on the policy of the continental allies, two of his works attracting special attention, Du Congres de Troppau ou Examen des pretentions des monarchies absolues a l'egard de la monarchie constitutionelle de Naples (Paris, 1821), and Les Cabinets et les peuples depuis 1815 jusqu'd la fin de 1822 (Paris, 1822).

The isolation of the Teutonic churches from the vast system with which they had been bound up, the conflicts and troubles among themselves, the necessity of fixing their own principles and defining their own rights, concentrated their attention upon themselves and their own home work, to the neglect of work abroad.8 Still the development of the maritime power of England, which the Portuguese and Spanish monarchies noted with fear and jealousy, was distinguished by a singular anxiety for the spread of the Christian faith.

If in this matter Louis Philippe had seemed to sacrifice the international position of France to dynastic interests, his attempt to re-establish it by allying himself with the reactionary monarchies against the Liberals of Switzerland finally alienated from him the French Liberal opinion on which his authority was based.

Gibbon defines the great Logothete as "the supreme guardian of the laws and revenues," who "is compared with the chancellor of the Latin monarchies."

Not only did the Galatian tribes take large tracts towards the north of the plateau in possession, but they were an element of perpetual unrest, which hampered and distracted the Hellenistic monarchies.

The Viking raids were one of the determining causes of the establishment of the feudal monarchies of western Europe, but the untameable freebooters were themselves finally subdued by the Church.

The great powers of the late 16th and early 17th centuries were to be the strong, highly centralized, hereditary monarchies, like France, Spain and Sweden.

The people were divided into clans, many of them governed as republics, more or less aristocratic. In a few cases several of such republics had formed confederations, and in four cases such confederations had already become hereditary monarchies.