Monarchisms in the Age of Enlightenment: Liberty, Patriotism, and the Public Good

There are too many misleading clichés and stereotypes about monarchy and monarchism in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and this volume is designed to contribute to the process of correcting them. Especially in the United States, there is almost no recognition that there ever was any redeeming value in monarchy or monarchism. When reminded that more than half of the richer and more modern countries in Europe (and Canada) are still monarchies, both Americans and Europeans will deny that they are really monarchies and claim that this is just pageantry. Many take it for granted that a real monarchy must be socially backward, politically repressive, intellectually unjustifiable, the last gasp of feudalism, and fit only for the dustbin of history. But, as the chapters in this book make clear, to many otherwise 'Enlightened' thinkers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, monarchy was the answer to serious problems with republics, and the home of liberty, patriotism, and the public good.