Group items tagged

American administrations were often stocked with Southerners in key positions like secretary of state, secretary of the navy and president, and they refused to take serious action against the foreign slave trade. Thus they tacitly allowed the Stars and Stripes to be used as a cover. In the absence of a treaty the British were reluctant to interfere with American shipping; only American naval ships could stop this practice, and even when they acted officers would usually detain a ship only if slaves were on board (thus ships heading to Africa, even if they were obviously slavers, were let go).

The use of the American flag ended only after the Civil War began. In 1862, with Southern politicians finally gone from national politics, the United States at last signed a treaty with the British providing for mutual right of search on the high seas, an equipment clause and joint Anglo-American joint courts (called Courts of Mixed Commission) for adjudicating detentions. The fact that those courts never heard a single case detracts not at all from their impact.

Britain and France already had some significant interests in the region between the Mediterranean Sea and Persian Gulf, but a victory offered a great deal more. Russia as well hungered for a piece.

From November 1915 to March 1916, representatives of Britain and France negotiated an agreement, with Russia offering its assent. The secret treaty, known as the Sykes–Picot Agreement, was named after its lead negotiators, the aristocrats Sir Mark Sykes of England and François Georges-Picot of France.

Its terms were set out in a letter from British foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey to Paul Cambon, France's ambassador to Great Britain, on May 16, 1916.

Russia's change of status, brought on by the revolution and the nation's withdrawal from the war, removed it from inclusion. But when marauding Bolsheviks uncovered documents about the plans in government archives in 1917, the contents of the secret treaty were publicly revealed.

After the war ended as planned, the terms were affirmed by the San Remo Conference of 1920 and ratified by the League of Nations in 1922. Although Sykes-Picot was intended to draw new borders according to sectarian lines, its simple straight lines also failed to take into account the actual tribal and ethnic configurations in a deeply divided region. Sykes-Picot has affected Arab-Western relations to this day.

Another important goal of the era, creating “Kurdistan,” never actually happened. The 1920 Treaty of Sevres left an opening for a referendum on Kurdish independence. Problem one: the referendum only included plans for Kurds outside of Syria and Iraq. Problem two: the referendum never happened, a victim of fighting that saw the Turkish people separate themselves from the remains of the Ottoman Empire and fight for two years to prevent the dismantling of what is now modern Turkey. The result was 20 million Kurds scattered across parts of modern Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria.

Out of the new negotiations will have to emerge a Kurdistan, with land from Turkey, Iraq, perhaps Iran, and Syria. Assad will stay in power as a Russian proxy. Iran’s hold on Shi’ite Iraq will strengthen. A Sunni homeland, to include the political entity Islamic State will morph into, will need to be assured via a strict hands-off policy by Baghdad.

At risk for not acting: an empowered Islamic State, thriving on more chaos. An explosive dissolution of Iraq. A Russian-Turkish fight that could involve NATO. The shift from a Saudi-Iranian proxy war to a straightforward conflict between the two countries. A spark that forces Israel to act. A mini-world war, in the world’s most flammable region, that will create its own unexpected and uncontrolled realignment of power, and leave behind a warehouse of the dead.

This situation would change dramatically in the modern period, for the advent of the nation-state after 1868 and the establishment of universal education in 1872 would eliminate the variety of potential experiences women had, and replace them with a uniform education deemed appropriate to women. In short, after 1872, a greater number of women had access to education than ever before, but the content of this education was more circumscribed than it had been in the past

The overturning of these treaties was one of the main goals of the Japanese state after 1868, a goal achieved by the mid-1890s. This focus led to considerable discussion and reform across several decades. Government officials, intellectuals, reformers in the Japan and across East Asia focused on the “woman question” as a critical part of modernization, necessary to build a strong state and attain equal status with the western powers. Strikingly, they tended to accept the idea that the status of women in East Asia was low. In the process, commentators of all stripes painted a picture of women’s status in the premodern East Asian past that was static and uniform, a view not at all in line with the richness and diversity of the past, a past where some women were highly educated and produced masterful works of art and literature and others had political power and influence.[4]

Let us turn briefly to the period before Japan’s transition to modernity. Until quite recently, scholars have tended to see the preceding Edo/Tokugawa (hereafter Edo) period (1600-1868) as representing the nadir of women’s status. Scholars assumed that warrior rule and Neo-Confucian discourses led to an unparalleled subordination of women. Recent studies have challenged this view and revealed a more complicated and nuanced picture, one where women’s lives varied widely by status, age, locale, and time period. In short, scholars have demonstrated that gender ideals promoted by male scholars that stress women’s inferiority tell us little about the lives of the vast majority of women. Moreover, research shows that merchant women enjoyed more property rights than women of samurai (warrior) and peasant backgrounds.

One example that demonstrates the variety of women’s experiences lies in the area of education. Access to education grew dramatically during the Edo period. Particularly notable are the growth of what are sometimes called temple schools, where girls and boys learned basic reading and arithmetic. As a result of this development, Japan had one of the highest literacy rates in the early modern world. Moreover, some women of means had access to quite elite forms of education equivalent to those available to elite men

Western visitors drew on the writings of Charles Fourier (1772-1837) and others and used the “low” status of women among other “barbaric” Japanese practices to justify the previously-mentioned series of unequal treaties.

Modern times saw concrete changes in gender roles within households especially in urban settings. In the Edo period, households in villages were productive units where husbands and wives shared labor

But as some people moved to the cities—a trend that accelerated in the modern period—husbands went out to work leaving middle class wives at home. Urban families increasingly lived in nuclear units, rather than in extended family groups. In the process, middle class women’s lives increasingly became defined in terms of motherhood, something that had not been highly valued in the Edo period. From the turn of the twentieth century on, middle class women in particular were called upon to be “good wives and wise mothers” (ryōsai kenbo)

For poor women, work in the textile mills and sex work continued to be the main occupations as they had in the preceding period. Some scholars have pointed out that Japan’s successful industrial transformation in the nineteenth century was accomplished on the backs of poor women, especially those who toiled in the textile mills. Meanwhile, some women from the middle class were able to pursue a limited number of professions including work as physicians, nurses, and teachers. As Sally Hastings has demonstrated, state policy actually supported these limited opportunities for women because the work was deemed appropriate to their gender. We should not imagine that all Japanese women before 1945 were wives and mothers; professional women existed in the prewar era. In fact, this group of professional women in the 1920s and 1930s played a role in the prewar suffrage movement. They also helped authorize a public role for women and laid the groundwork for women’s enthusiastic participation in political life in the immediate post World War II years.

The 1920s saw the rise of a vibrant women’s rights movement in Japan, one related to the movement for women’s suffrage in the west after World War I when American and British women finally gained the vote. The Japanese government reacted to women’s demands with a gradualist approach. In 1925, it granted universal manhood suffrage and by 1930 and 1931, the lower house of the Diet (legislature) passed bills granting women’s suffrage at the local level. However, as the political situation abroad changed dramatically in the 1930s and the Japanese military began a war in China, the movement to grant women’s political rights went by the wayside. Women’s rights advocates mostly supported the state during the period, hoping that their loyalty would enable them to influence policy on mothers and children.

Women’s political rights were granted after the war in 1945. But the story of how they came to be deserves some attention. The main issue here is what Mire Koikari has called the “myth of American emancipation of Japanese women,” for this period has often been misunderstood. In the fall of 1945, the head of the Occupation (SCAP) General Douglas MacArthur presented a list of demands to the Japanese government, including the demand that women get the vote. However, feminist leader Ichikawa Fusae and her fellow activists had already been lobbying the Japanese cabinet to grant women’s suffrage even before the Occupation arrived. Ichikawa did not want a foreign power to be responsible for granting women the right to vote. The Japanese cabinet was supportive of her initiative. Nevertheless, the subsequent course of events—a revised electoral law granting women the right to vote and stand for office was passed in December 1945—meant that the Occupation could take credit for enfranchising women. This view overlooks the efforts of Japanese women as early as the 1920s as well as their activities in the immediate aftermath of war, as well as the Japanese government’s support of their demands.

Most familiar to western audiences is the story of Beate Sirota Gordon’s role in proposing the gender equality clauses in the postwar Japanese constitution (Articles 14 and 24). At the time, Gordon, who was born in Vienna to Russian-Jewish parents but grew up in Japan, had returned to work for the Occupation as a naturalized American citizen. She was part of a group of Americans charged with the task of rewriting the constitution. Gordon later published her memoir The Only Woman in the Room (1997) relating her critical role in writing this legislation. She has been celebrated in some western and Japanese circles ever since. Yet Gordon’s story has also been subject to critique from several angles. For example, Mire Koikari sheds lights on Gordon’s participation in “imperial feminism,” since Gordon portrayed herself and was portrayed by others as liberating Japanese women. As Koikari adds, “In drafting women’s rights articles, Gordon tapped into her childhood memory where the Orientalist imagery of oppressed and helpless Japanese women predominated.”[7]

The point here is not to ignore Gordon’s contribution to the constitution for she did indeed draft the gender equality legislation, but rather to place her work in a larger context. In fact, as we saw, Japanese women had been working for political rights for decades. The granting of women’s political rights and guarantees of gender equality cannot be seen as a case where a progressive west granted passive Japanese women political rights.  (On a different but related note, acknowledging the agency of Japanese women also means recognizing their complicity in wartime militarism and nationalism, as Koikari emphasizes.)

To oppose this, the League of Augsburg was formed on July 9, 1686, by Emperor Leopold, the electors of Bavaria, Saxony, and the Palatinate, and the kings of Sweden and Spain

he planned a short French invasion of the Rhineland

Louis sent his forces into the Palatinate

Louis’s inveterate opponent, William of Orange, stadtholder of the United Provinces of the Netherlands, would be preoccupied with his coming attempt to overthrow James

Many German princes were aroused by Louis’s actions and feared French annexations

William had been quickly and completely successful in expelling James II from the English throne (January 1689), and the Jacobite counterrevolution that Louis supported in Ireland was crushed by William (now William III of England) at the Battle of the Boyne (July 1690)

Instead of a short venture in Germany

France was now forced to fight a nine-year-long, worldwide war

the members of the Grand Alliance responded with alacrity when Louis XIV in 1695 opened secret, separate negotiations

A movement for a general peace culminated in the Treaty of Rijswijk in September-October 1697

The rise of England and Austria as effective counterforces to France and the development by William III of the strategy of building and maintaining the Grand Alliance stand out as the significant features of this war

built in 1020 by Werner

in the Aargau

in what is now Switzerland

rebelled against the German king Otto I in 950

Rudolf II of Habsburg (died 1232)

Rudolf III’s descendants, however, sold their portion, including Laufenburg, to Albert IV’s descendants before dying out in 1408

Albert IV’s son Rudolf IV of Habsburg was elected German king as Rudolf I in 1273. It was he who, in 1282, bestowed Austria and Styria on his two sons Albert (the future German king Albert I) and Rudolf (reckoned as Rudolf II of Austria). From that date the agelong identification of the Habsburgs with Austria begins

the most formidable dynasty was no longer the Habsburg but the Bourbon. In the War of the Grand Alliance (1689–97) the rising powers that 100 years earlier had been Habsburg Spain’s principal enemies and feeble France’s most fluent encouragers

Apart from the Bourbon ascendancy

The physical debility of Charles II of Spain was such that no male heir could be expected to be born to him

his crowns would pass to the electoral prince of Bavaria, Joseph Ferdinand, son of his niece Maria Antonia, daughter of the emperor Leopold I.

Charles II’s next natural heirs were the descendants (1) of his half-sister, who had married Louis XIV of France, and (2) of his father’s two sisters, of whom one had been Louis XIV’s mother and the other the emperor Leopold I’s

Critical tension developed: on the one hand neither the imperial Habsburgs nor their British and Dutch friends could consent to their Bourbon enemy’s acquiring the whole Spanish inheritance

Charles II in the meantime regarded any partition of his inheritance as a humiliation to Spain: dying in 1700, he named as his sole heir a Bourbon prince, Philip of Anjou, the second of Louis XIV’s grandsons. The War of the Spanish Succession ensued

To allay British and Dutch misgivings, Leopold I and his elder son, the future emperor Joseph I, in 1703 renounced their own claims to Spain in favour of Joseph’s brother Charles, so that he might found a second line of Spanish Habsburgs distinct from the imperial

Sardinia, however, was exchanged by him in 1717 for Sicily, which the peacemakers of Utrecht had assigned to the House of Savoy.

Charles remained technically at war with Bourbon Spain until 1720

Meanwhile the extinction of the Spanish Habsburgs’ male line and the death of his brother Joseph left Charles, in 1711, as the last male Habsburg. He had therefore to consider what should happen after his death. No woman could rule the Holy Roman Empire, and furthermore the Habsburg succession in some of the hereditary lands was assured only to the male line

he issued his famous Pragmatic Sanction of April 19, 1713, prescribing that, in the event of his dying sonless, the whole inheritance should pass (1) to a daughter of his, according to the rule of primogeniture, and thence to her descendants; next (2) if he himself left no daughter, to his late brother’s daughters, under the same conditions; and finally (3) if his nieces’ line was extinct, to the heirs of his paternal aunts

The attempt to win general recognition for his Pragmatic Sanction was Charles VI’s main concern from 1716 onward

By 1738, at the end of the War of the Polish Succession (in which he lost both Naples and Sicily to a Spanish Bourbon but got Parma and Piacenza

acknowledged the Pragmatic Sanction. His hopes were illusory: less than two months after his death, in 1740, his daughter Maria Theresa had to face a Prussian invasion of Silesia, which unleashed the War of the Austrian Succession

Bavaria then promptly challenged the Habsburg position in Germany; and France’s support of Bavaria encouraged Saxony to follow suit and Spain to try to oust the Habsburgs from Lombardy

The War of the Austrian Succession cost Maria Theresa most of Silesia, part of Lombardy, and the duchies of Parma and Piacenza (Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1748) but left her in possession of the rest of her father’s hereditary lands

her husband, Francis Stephen of Lorraine, who in 1737 had become hereditary grand duke of Tuscany, was finally recognized as Holy Roman emperor, with the title of Francis I. He and his descendants, of the House of Habsburg–Lorraine, are the dynastic continuators of the original Habsburgs

An Austro-French entente was subsequently maintained until 1792: the marriage of the archduchess Marie-Antoinette to the future Louis XVI of France (1770) was intended to confirm it

the Habsburgs exerted themselves to consolidate and to expand their central European bloc of territory

when the emperor Francis I died (1765), his eldest son, the emperor Joseph II, became coregent with his mother of the Austrian dominions, but Joseph’s brother Leopold became grand duke of Tuscany

The northeastward expansion of Habsburg central Europe, which came about in Joseph II’s time, was a result not so much of Joseph’s initiative as of external events: the First Partition of Poland (1772)

The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars brought a kaleidoscopic series of changes

On Napoleon’s downfall the Congress of Vienna (1814–15) inaugurated the Restoration, from which the battered House of Habsburg naturally benefitted

a brother of the Holy Roman emperors Joseph II and Leopold II, had in 1771 married the heiress of the House of Este; and Napoleon’s Habsburg consort, Marie Louise

The history of the House of Habsburg for the century following the Congress of Vienna is inseparable from that of the Austrian Empire

German, Italian, Hungarian, Slav, and Romanian—gradually eroded. The first territorial losses came in 1859, when Austria had to cede Lombardy to Sardinia–Piedmont, nucleus of the emergent kingdom of Italy

Next, the Seven Weeks’ War of 1866, in which Prussia, exploiting German nationalism, was in alliance with Italy, forced Austria both to renounce its hopes of reviving its ancient hegemony in Germany and to cede Venetia.

Franz Joseph took a step intended to consolidate his “multinational empire”

he granted to that kingdom equal status with the Austrian Empire in what was henceforth to be the Dual Monarchy of Austria–Hungary.

The ardent German nationalists of the Austrian Empire, as opposed to the Germans who were simply loyal to the Habsburgs, took the same attitude as did the Magyars

Remote from Austria’s national concerns but still wounding to the House of Habsburg was the fate of Franz Joseph’s brother Maximilian: set up by the French as emperor of Mexico in 1864

In 1878 Austro-Hungarian forces had “occupied” Bosnia and Herzegovina, which belonged to declining Turkey

World War I led to the dismemberment of the Habsburg Empire. While Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Romanians, Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, and Italians were all claiming their share of the spoil, nothing remained to Charles, the last emperor and king, but “German” Austria and Hungary proper

We are starving

In 1635 Guadeloupe and Martinique became and, after several changes, remained profitable French possessions

The French, unlike the British, also established themselves on Hispaniola, Spain’s largest, most prestigious and administratively most important island in the area.

Just before the last Habsburg King of Spain died, the French presence in the Spanish mare nostrum generally, and in Hispaniola in particular, was given international recognition in the treaty of Ryswick of 1697

The Most Serene King of Great Britain, his Heirs and Successors, shall have, hold and possess for ever, with full sovereignty, ownership and possession, all the lands, regions, islands, colonies and dominions, situated in the West Indies or in any part of America, that the said King of Great Britain and his subjects at present hold and possess

The recognition of the new status quo, distressing but realistic so far as Spain was concerned, while being a considerable political and commercial boon to Charles II’s government

the peace of Utrecht was in reality only an uneasy truce

Thus with the restoration of Charles II and the almost simultaneous taking up of the reins of government by the young Louis XIV, Britain and France stood poised in the Caribbean facing each other from positions of great potential wealth, strategic advantage and political power. Both monarchs had triumphed over their enemies at home, but equally they had both come into an inheritance accumulated by their predecessor

The Netherlands had in fact been the first country deliberately to challenge the power of the King of Spain on his own ground in the Indies

No wonder that in 1609 Philip III offered these irrepressible heretics a twelve years’ truce, which implied a preliminary recognition of independence

Rich in ships, men and money -the days of the Dutch sea-beggars were over -the company, parent and model of all future companies of this type, pursued an ambitious programme. Not content like the British and French to settle on the smaller islands of the Caribbean neglected by Spain, they attacked the mighty colony of Brazil itself since until 1640 the crowns of Portugal and Spain were united in personal union under the Habsburgs

With the Treaty of Westphalia we enter in the West Indies on the violent but passing era of the buccaneers, when Englishmen like Henry Morgan

This uncontrollable anarchy in the Caribbean and along the coasts of Central and South America was exceeded only by the savage cruelty with which these accomplished but coarsened sailors pursued their greedy aims, and the spectacle was viewed with mounting disfavour by the governments at Whitehall and Versailles

The first opportunity to root out this barbarous nuisance came during the negotiations at Utrecht and elsewhere for a settlement to end the War of the Spanish Succession. In 1713 the Bourbons were accepted as Kings of Spain and the Indies

Spain, weakened by Protestant aggression and incapable of adapting its rigid and creaking caste system to the new realities of maritime and economic life

In the French islands, les grands blancs, among whom the family of the future Empress Josephine at Martinique was perhaps the most celebrated example, ruled on the basis of the code noir, introduced by Louis XIV and subject to various reforms and modifications in subsequent reigns, especially that of Louis XVI

Where in the French islands absolutist rule was maintained by the conseils supérieurs appointed by the King at Versailles, in the British possessions political power was vested in a Governor sent out from England by letter-patent together with a handful of other political and administrative officers

In the south another ex-slave presently proclaimed himself Emperor of Haiti, while in 1811 the black titan of the North, Jean Christophe, became King Christophe I of Haiti

It might fairly be asked why the Emperor Charles V did not dispose of the Valois challenge more quickly.

In 1519 he was elected Holy Roman Emperor, ruler of Germany

Francis, in turn, harboured a deep-seated resentment against Charles

The kingdom had recently been consolidated by the incorporation of great provinces like Burgundy and Brittany

This explains why the history of the Habsburg-Valois rivalry is one where intensive periods of bloody fighting were followed so often by stalemate and financial exhaustion

The two kings [Henry II and Philip II] realised that if they attempted to mount another campaign in 1559, they might stretch their finances and the loyalty of their subjects to breaking point

In waging war he could only really rely on the financial support of the Netherlands and Castile, and as the Habsburg-Valois wars persisted he, and his successor Philip II, found himself plundering both territories to their absolute limits

Francis's successor, Henry II, had spent three years as a hostage of the Habsburgs in Spain, after the Treaty of Madrid, and as King of France from 1547 he exhibited an animosity to the Habsburgs that perhaps exceeded even that of his father

Much of the Habsburg-Valois rivalry revolved around rival ambitions in Italy

Habsburg-Valois conflict to an end was that the conflict was essentially a dynastic one; the rivalry was between two proud ruling families who were determined to protect the achievements of their forbears and to enhance the reputation and power of their family, or dynasty

This helps to explain why the House of Habsburg and the House of Valois persisted for so long in their conflict with such a disregard for the damaging consequences to their lands and peoples

In the mind of the young Charles V, no family ambition loomed larger than that of recovering his ancestral lands of Burgundy from the French

Charles believed that he had triumphantly achieved his great dynastic dream in 1526, when the defeated and captive Francis I agreed to surrender the territory in the Treaty of Madrid

The impression is often given that Charles abandoned his claim to Burgundy in the Peace of Cambrai in 1529

Thus for Charles V his personal rivalry with Francis I was overlaid by a sense of injustice at what he perceived to be the theft of his family's Burgundian inheritance by the Valois kings

It was also here that the deeply felt dynastic rivalry between the Houses of Habsburg and Valois was at its most acute. Throughout the long conflict the French chafed at Habsburg control of the kingdom of Naples

Charles V consequently acquired Naples when he inherited the kingdom of Aragon in1516

Francis and his successor Henry II continued to press French claims to Naples

The House of Valois did periodically renounce its claim when peace with the Habsburgs was expedient or unavoidable

Francis I's successor, Henry II, continued to uphold the Valois claim and in 1557 launched a final and unavailing assault on the kingdom.

The House of Valois felt strongly that they had the strongest dynastic claim to the Duchy of Milan

When Charles V had acquired his extensive empire by 1519 he regarded Milan not only as a satellite of the Empire

The Habsburg-Valois wars were, then, to a very significant extent, an unremitting struggle for mastery over Milan

The conflict between the Habsburgs and the Valois appeared at times to escalate into something approaching a general European war. The German Protestants, the lesser powers of Europe and even the superpower of the Ottoman empire were all drawn into the fray at various times

Henry VIII of England took a distinctly opportunistic view of the conflict. When he was anxious to undermine Habsburg predominance in Europe he sided with the French

The continuation of the Habsburg-Valois conflict was also a tremendous boon to the Ottoman Sultan. He aimed to extend Muslim Ottoman power into Europe. The major obstacle to expansion were, firstly, the Austrian Habsburg lands in central Europe, ruled by Charles V's brother Ferdinand, and, secondly, the military and naval presence of the Habsburgs in the Mediterranean

the Sultan was brought into an anti- Habsburg alliance by the French firstly in 1536 and, later, in 1542

establishment of an equality of trade conditions

national armaments will be reduced

adjustment of all colonial claims

the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight

The evacuation of all Russian territory

7. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and restored

restore confidence among the nations

All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions restored

the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted, in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all

A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy

occupied territories restored; Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea

The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development

An independent Polish state should be erected

A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity

On Oct. 3–4, 1918, Prince Maximilian of Baden, the German imperial chancellor, sent a note, via Switzerland, to President Wilson, requesting an immediate armistice and the opening of peace negotiations on the basis of the Fourteen Points

Germans would later argue a “betrayal” when faced by the harsher terms of the Armistice and the Treaty of Versailles

By the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), Victor Amadeus II (reigned 1675–1730) was raised in 1713 from duke to the status of a king as ruler of Sicily

During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1792–1815), only Sardinia remained free of French control, but in 1815, Victor Emmanuel I (reigned 1802–21) added Genoa to the family’s holdings

At the beginning of the Risorgimento, the territory of the house of Savoy, centred on Piedmont, was unique among Italian states for its freedom from foreign influence and for its relative military strength. A liberal revolution in 1821 forced Victor Emmanuel I to abdicate in favour of his brother, Charles Felix. On the death of the latter in 1831, Charles Albert, of the Carignano branch of the family, obtained the throne. He contributed to the cause of unification under Piedmont’s leadership by modernizing his government

and fighting against Austrian power in Italy in the First War of Independence of 1848–49. Under his son Victor Emmanuel II (reigned 1849–1878, king of Italy from 1861), who supported Piedmont’s prime minister, Count Cavour, in the diplomatic maneuvering immediately before unification, the Kingdom of Italy was formed with the house of Savoy at its head

Victor Emmanuel III (reigned 1900–46), who remained as figurehead king during the Fascist regime, abdicated in 1946, at the end of World War II, in favour of his son Umberto II in an attempt to save the monarchy, but the Italian people voted in a referendum of June 2, 1946, for a republic, ending the rule of the house of Savoy

No longer royal, the Savoy family moved abroad, and the monarchist movement, strong in the 1950s, went into decline

The Angouleme family was a cadet branch of the royal house of Valois. Francis' father, Charles, died on January 1st, 1496, and in 1498, the boy became heir presumptive to the reigning monarch, Louis XII

Louis XII died leaving no surviving son and Francis succeeded him as king on January 1st, 1515. Francis's accession was greeted favourably by the French nobility

His mother, Louise of Savoy

He was determined to avenge the defeats which Louis XII had suffered there and to capture the duchy of Milan which he regarded as his inheritance

On September l4th, 1515, at the Battle of Marignano, Francis defeated a large Swiss army allied to the duke of Milan and so regained the duchy. He secured his prize by a concordat with Leo X and, later, by treaties with the Swiss, with Charles of Spain and with the Holy Roman Emperor, Maxmillian

In 1533, Francis concluded a marriage alliance with Clement VII which he hoped would detach the pope from his allegiance to Charles V and thus help both him and Henry VIII

The young Tudor's great role-model was Henry V and he regarded northern France as his inheritance, rather in the way Francis saw Milan

In 1513, Henry had invaded France in alliance with the pope, the emperor and the king of Spain

Nevertheless, these victories and the subsequent peace treaty with Louis XII, allowed Henry to feel that controlling France was a great way of demonstrating his own impressive royal power

In England, Francis found an ally in the person of Anne Boleyn who virtually replaced Wolsey as the lynch-pin in Anglo-French contacts

Like Wolsey before her, Anne encouraged continued exchanges between the two monarchs and she also patronised English scholars in France

Henry VIII's accession in 1509 had generated the same kind of excitement as witnessed in France in 1515. The two kings did indeed have many personal similarities and rivalry between them was almost inevitable

Henry then allowed himself to believe, incorrectly, that Francis approved of these claims

Against this background and despite the difficulties, Anglo-French contacts were maintained and Francis constantly sought Henry's financial and military support against Charles V

Francis spent increasing amounts of time in Paris and at Fontainebleau where his steadily expanding artistic collections and library were shown to all important visitors

During the 1540s, Henry VIII also insisted, more than ever, that his was an imperial kingship

Much of this augmentation work was undertaken by the same John Leland who had witnessed Bude's work for Francis in the 1520s

Francis discussed Henry's building ideas with his ambassador, Sir John Wallop, to whom he also gave a guided tour of his private gallery and baths at Fontainebleau.

Henry's personal Psalter, in which he is depicted as King David, his second great role-model after Henry V, was produced by Jean Mallard who had been Francis I's court poet in the 1550s

In July 1544 thirty-one years after his first invasion, Henry once again crossed the Channel to set about the conquest of France. He managed to capture Boulogne

Francis I died on March 51st, 1547, barely two months after Henry VIII's death in January

that of the king as the warrior-leader whose greatness lay in military success and the distribution of largesse to his elite companions

Henry VIII's concept of his kingship was centred on the same ideal and his efforts to make his monarchy conform to it, partly through competition with France, pre-dated the start of Francis I's reign

This sophistication was particularly evident in Francis's artistic and intellectual patronage and it is here that his 'Renaissance' influence on Henry VIII is most apparent

On May 6th, 1994, after opening the Channel Tunnel jointly with President Mitterand, the Queen observed that Britain and France, 'for all their ages-long rivalry, complement each other well, perhaps better than we realise'

Five years later he had attempted to manipulate the outcome of the marriage of Isabella II of Spain against French interests in order to align Britain with a liberal Spain

In February 1848, a new revolution in Paris threatened to upset Anglo-French relations altogether

he Second Republic was therefore seen as unstable and potentially militaristic, and Palmerston’s reaction was to issue a confidential  paper outlining government preparations for an imminent invasion of Britain

There was considerable relief in London, then, when in October the political body in France agreed to usher in a republic under the authority of a president elected for four years by universal adult manhood suffrage. The future of Anglo-French relations would now hinge  on the identity of the new president

In December, Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, nephew to the great defeated enemy of England, was elected first president of the Second Republic, gaining 74.3 per cent of the 7,449,471 votes cast in metropolitan France

In Britain, initial reaction to the news was mixed. Louis-Napoléon had spent three years in exile in England between 1831 and 1848, and over five separate visits had acquired a respect for, and knowledge of, the country unrivalled among European heads of state

The sepoy revolt in India in May 1857 could hardly be blamed on Napoleon III, but in some quarters the suggestion was made that he was secretly helping them. A short visit to Osborne in August to meet the Queen and Palmerston put the matter straight (though none there had believed it).

When the French navy was not seen to be steaming up the Thames the panic dissipated, but the fears were resurrected after Louis-Napoléon’s coup d’état of December 2nd, 1851, dissolving the National Assembly and declaring a new constitution. Opinion polarised both in France and Britain; on the one hand Louis-Napoléon was declared a ‘saviour of society’ and on the other the ‘Antichrist’

even the Queen hoped that Louis-Napoléon’s enemies abroad would remain ‘perfectly passive’. But the press and its public were united in bitter condemnation. By January 1852, the poet Coventry Patmore had persuaded nineteen friends to form the first Rifle Club as part of a nation-wide army of volunteers to repel, as he put it later, ‘the threats of the French colonels and by suspicions of the intentions of Louis-Napoléon

The second invasion panic did not subside until a formal alliance was established in March 1854, preceding the Crimean War. In April 1855 the Emperor Napoleon III (as Louis-Napoléon had declared himself in December 1852) enjoyed a successful state visit to Britain, reciprocated by an equally successful visit by Victoria to Paris in August. Throughout the Crimean War, Napoleon III allowed Britain to lead affairs

personal relations between Palmerston and Napoleon III continued to deteriorate throughout the early 1860s

The incident most dangerous to Franco-British relations occurred on January 14th, 1858, when an attempt was made to assassinate Napoleon III in the streets of Paris, the plot hatched in London by political refugees

But popular opinion in England remained suspicious of the Second Republic, and the economic upturn was accompanied by the first of three intense ‘invasion panics’, which recalled to mind those set in motion many years earlier by Napoleon I

Outright war between France and England might have resulted had two different players been involved: Napoleon III apologised to Lord Cowley, Britain’s ambassador in Paris, for having overlooked the jingoistic pronouncements in Le Moniteur universel, while Palmerston attempted to introduce a Conspiracy Bill, which would have elevated the crime of conspiring to murder persons abroad from a misdemeanour to a felony.

To Napoleon III from Queen Victoria’ promised to him in 1855 but somehow ‘forgotten’. The entente had been saved by an imperial whisker

In the wake of the assassination attempt Napoleon III was keen to demonstrate that his improvements to the naval base at Cherbourg were not a threat to Britain, and in August 1858 he invited Victoria and Albert, several politicians and naval men, to inspect them as a mark of trust.

The third invasion panic, the following year, originated in Napoleon III’s military attempt in May 1859 to oust Habsburg influence in Italy and prepare the peninsula for some form of unification and self-government

France’s annexation of Nice and Savoy in 1860 as a reward from Piedmont-Sardinia following the war in Italy was wholeheartedly approved by the local populace in a referendum

Napoleon III’s attempt to set up by direct intervention a European monarchy in Mexico from October 1861 (when a French, Spanish and British naval fleet worked in concert to extract the payment of debts from a corrupt Mexican administration) was approved by Palmerston but again vigorously opposed by Albert and all the royal family – and was unpopular in Britain, although offset by several other actions. Napoleon III’s vigorous support of free trade resulted in the pioneering Cobden-Chevalier Treaty of 1860 which, while it undoubtedly harmed a minority of trades, vastly improved the majority, increasing prosperity and mutual trust

Napoleon III was careful to appear subservient, enabling Palmerston to acknowledge that the British ‘throughout had their own way and ... led the way’

The Duruz were the aggressors in this instance, and thousands of Christians were killed during a period resolved only through French diplomacy, Turkish aid and Algerian sympathy

Napoleon III reacted by sighing that once he used to say ‘avec Lord Palmerston on peut faire les grandes choses’ but now he seemed determined to prevent him doing anything at all

The most bizarre was that Napoleon III was looking for the nephew of Marie Cantillon, a man who had attempted to assassinate the Duke of Wellington in Paris in 1818, to pay him money Napoléon I had bequeathed Cantillon in his recently published will

Napoleon III’s attempt to set up a European monarchy in Mexico was his only independent action undertaken in the 1860s to meet with Palmerston’s general approval, but only for what the scheme potentially meant for British trade

Following military defeat by Prussia and deposition by Parisian ideologues in 1870, Napoleon III died in England on January 9th, 1873.

Gladstone soon came to terms with the new Third French Republic, and the rest of Europe again took Britain’s lead in officially recognising the new French regime

The Napoleonic wars did not end at Waterloo, but in Paris in the hands of Napoleon III. Punch stated why on January 18th, 1873

he enlisted in the French army

supporter of the Revolution

Bernadotte first met Napoleon Bonaparte in 1797 in Italy. Their relationship, at first friendly, was soon embittered by rivalries and misunderstandings

In November 1799 Bernadotte refused to assist Bonaparte’s coup d’état that ended the Directory but neither did he defend it

When, on May 18, 1804, Napoleon proclaimed the empire, Bernadotte declared full loyalty to him and, in May, was named marshal of the empire

he was invited to become crown prince of Sweden. In 1809 a palace revolution had overthrown King Gustav IV of Sweden and had put the aged, childless, and sickly Charles XIII on the throne. The Danish prince Christian August had been elected crown prince but died suddenly in 1810, and the Swedes turned to Napoleon for advice.

he respected his military ability, his skillful and humane administration of Hanover and the Hanseatic towns, and his charitable treatment of Swedish prisoners in Germany

Bernadotte was elected Swedish crown prince. On October 20 he accepted Lutheranism and landed in Sweden; he was adopted as son by Charles XIII and took the name of Charles John (Karl Johan). The Crown Prince at once assumed control of the government and acted officially as regent during the illnesses of Charles XIII. Napoleon now tried to prevent any reorientation of Swedish foreign policy and moreover sent an immediate demand that Sweden declare war on Great Britain

Charles John was anxious to achieve something for Sweden that would prove his worth to the Swedes and establish his dynasty in power. He could, as many Swedes wished, have regained Finland from Russia, either by conquest or by negotiation

the conquest of Norway from Denmark, based on a Swedish alliance with Napoleon’s enemies. An alliance was signed with Russia in April 1812, with Great Britain in March 1813—with the British granting a subsidy for the proposed conquest of Norway—and with Prussia in April 1813. Urged by the allies, however, Charles John agreed to take part in the great campaign against Napoleon and to postpone his war with Denmark. The Crown Prince landed his troops at Stralsund, Ger., in May 1813 and soon took command of the allied army of the north

conserve his forces for the war with Denmark, and the Prussians bore the brunt of the fighting

After the decisive Battle of Leipzig (October 1813), Napoleon’s first great defeat, Charles John succeeded in defeating the Danes in a swift campaign and forced King Frederick VI of Denmark to sign the Treaty of Kiel (January 1814), which transferred Norway to the Swedish crown. Charles John now had dreams of becoming king or “protector” of France, but he had become alienated from the French people, and the victorious allies would not tolerate another soldier in charge of French affairs

Charles John conducted an efficient and almost bloodless campaign, and in August the Norwegians signed the Convention of Moss, whereby they accepted Charles XIII as king

At the Congress of Vienna (1814–15), Austria and the French Bourbons were hostile to the upstart prince, and the son of the deposed Gustav was a potential pretender to the throne. But, thanks to Russian and British support, the status of the new dynasty was undisturbed

Upon the death of Charles XIII on Feb. 5, 1818, Charles John became king of Sweden and Norway, and the former republican and revolutionary general became a conservative ruler.

His foreign policy inaugurated a long and favourable period of peace, based on good relations with Russia and Great Britain

The supposed humiliation of attending the sack of Liege by the Burgundian army cost him little; and he avoided the second condition imposed by Charles—the award of Champagne and Brie to Charles de France—by persuading his brother to accept the more remote province of Guyenne in their place

Yet Philip the Good felt himself increasingly isolated by French negotiations with Frederick III and the Swiss cantons. The opportune arrival of the Dauphin allowed him to reassert his influence at the French court and to arbitrate between father and son

Louis XI appeared to represent all the forces of feudal and Burgundian reaction

The independent duchy of Brittany possessed its own governmental institutions, and its ruler, Francis II, refused anything but simple homage to both Charles VII and his successor

If his royal connections and foreign ambitions had induced this capricious and luxury-loving prince to avoid open conflict with the crown, his impetuous son, John of Calabria, was foremost in every plot and affray

Louis XI might dismiss his father’s favourites; but he could not afford to reverse his policy. He refused support for John of Calabria’s ill-fated venture in Italy, quarrelled with Philip the Good, and disputed the right of Francis II to control the church in Brittany.

The King did indeed learn much from the League of the Common Weal

He took advantage of a misunderstanding between his ineffective brother and Francis II to recover Normandy, and at the same time distracted Burgundy by encouraging the revolt of the cities of Dinant and Liege. Having bought off Brittany and Charles de France, he sought to detach them from their Burgundian alliance by revealing the details of their defection

Louis XI also anticipated later methods of economic warfare. He deprived his Burgundian enemy of specie and procured the withdrawal of the support afforded him by the Medici bank. His concessions to English, Swiss and Hanseatic merchants were designed to detach them from Burgundian commerce

In these years Louis XI was conducting equally complex negotiations in Aragon and England

Charles VII exiled him to his government in Dauphiné. The nine years he spent there were occupied with strengthening the provincial administration and resisting the authority of the Crown

Pot-bellied and spindle-shanked, Louis XI was an unlikely figure, either as a monster of vice or, as he described himself, as the restorer of the splendours of Charlemagne and St. Louis

Louis employed the agents of the former financier, Jacques Coeur, whose condemnation under Charles VII he declared invalid. From Tours he drew the merchant financiers of the Beaune and Briçonnet families, and from Berry the Bochetels, who founded a notable line of royal secretaries

It is doubtful whether Louis XI had any general plan to transform the social order, but he found the middle classes his most convenient allies against the forces of disorder from above and below

In the towns Louis XI accelerated the trend to the formation of urban patriciates. He widened the special form of ennoblement available to municipal councillors.

From the number of national assemblies convoked by Louis XI it is sometimes conjectured that his government proceeded by consultative methods. But of the twelve such bodies convened by the King only one was a full Estates General, the others being merely assemblies of notables

The Estates General of Tours in 1468 was skilfully won over to the royal cause, and persuaded that to grant Normandy to the King’s brother would be to detach it from France and expose it to English and Burgundian influence

Trade prospered under Louis XI, but the recovery of agriculture was slow in the aftermath of the Hundred Years War. Choisnet had written in the Rosier des Guerres that “the King should see for himself the condition of his people, and should watch over them as a good gardener does his garden.”

While Louis won over Warwick, and reconciled the King-Maker with Margaret of Anjou to secure the brief Lancastrian restoration of 1470, the Burgundian Duke responded by publicly welcoming the return of Henry VI, and secredy promoting the triumph of his Yorkist brother-in-law, Edward IV.

As Charles VII had promoted the trade fairs of Lyon to ruin Geneva, so Louis established fairs at Caen and Rouen to challenge those of Bruges and Antwerp

Charles the Rash pursued chimerical schemes in Alsace, and clashed with the German Emperor. His preoccupation with affairs in the electorate of Cologne prevented him from supporting an English invasion of France in 1475, and Louis bought off Edward IV with the Treaty of Picquigny

Maximilian, the son of Frederick III, married the Burgundian heiress, Mary, and defended her lands against France until the Treaty of Arras brought peace in 1482. In all his calculations the Spider King could not have foreseen that Philip, the issue of this match, would marry the daughter and heiress of Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile— an alliance which itself was in part a response to Louis’ policy in Catalonia

A new France had been nurtured by measures that seem at times not merely generations but centuries in advance of their age. Yet for all the surprising modernity of his policies, the manner in which Louis died revealed the extent to which he was still in thrall to the forces of the past.

The arcana of kingship which he bad penetrated were not of this kind. The first of modern national rulers went to his death surrounded by all the trappings of magic

Francis married Claude in May 1514 and, in October of the same year, Louis XII married the young and beautiful Mary Tudor, the sister of Henry VIII. Had she conceived a son, all Francis' hopes would have been dashed. Yet, less than three months after his marriage, Louis XII was dead and the 20-year-old Francis was proclaimed king of France on January 1st, 1515

He inherited Charles VIII's claim to the Kingdom of Naples, which included Sicily and most of southern Italy. He claimed certain territories along the ill-defined border between France, the Netherlands and the Holy Roman Empire, whose Habsburg overlord was the future emperor, Charles V. Francis also wanted the city of Tournai, conquered by Henry VIII in 1513, to be returned to France. For roughly 20 of his 32 years as king, Francis was preparing for war, active in it, or managing its consequences in expensive and convoluted diplomacy

Barely nine months after his accession, in September 1515, Francis conquered Milan, after defeating a Swiss mercenary army at the battle of Marignano

He secured this prominence through peace treaties and alliances, culminating in his inclusion in the 'Universal Peace' of 1518, agreed in the name of Pope Leo X but actually organised under the auspices of Henry VIII, who felt a keen and life-long rivalry with Francis

Francis had hoped to impress and intimidate Henry into committing himself as an ally against Charles V, whose power in Italy unnerved Francis

appreciated that securing and maintaining the support of interest groups, particularly the nobility, was vital to effective kingship

He made an ill-advised pre-emptive strike against imperial territory in the Netherlands and Spain in early 1521

Disappointed by Charles V's lack of support for his own claim to France, Henry once more turned the tables on the emperor. A renewed Anglo-French alliance enabled Francis to repudiate the treaty of Madrid and led indirectly to a more acceptable agreement

Francis maintained peace with his English counterpart until 1542

He never finally secured Milan from Charles but he did, nevertheless, maintain his dynastic rights against the emperor's potentially overwhelming power. This he did in part by allying with the papacy, with various Italian states, with the heretical Henry VIII and with the Ottoman sultan Süleyman the Magnificent. These last two alliances scandalised Catholic Europe, but keeping Charles' enemies close for as long as he could assisted Francis in projecting royal power well beyond the borders of the French state throughout his reign

Another important factor in Francis' capacity to project this power was his widespread reform of crown fiscal administration after his return from Spain in 1526. These were prompted first and foremost by the need to pay huge debts incurred in the war and in securing peace with Henry and Charles

His sale of judicial offices set up long-lasting difficulties for the monarchy

Francis was taken to Spain as the emperor's prisoner. France was left vulnerable to its enemies and to internal dissent, which Louise de Savoie, as her son's regent, had much to do to overcome while trying to secure Francis' release. She immediately sought the assistance of the English and sympathetic Italian states, who were wary of the immense power of Charles V in the wake of his triumph at Pavia

Daily life there was never as elaborately choreographed under Francis as it would be under his successors. He is perhaps second only to Henry IV in his reputation for informality and spontaneity as a French king.

The 'big boy' had come close at times to ruining everything, but had also made France a power to be reckoned with and made his own mark on its history

Under Francis, the court of France was at the height of its prestige and international influence during the 16th century.

After the Yorkists had captured Henry at Northampton (July 1460), it was agreed that Henry should remain king but recognize York, and not his own son Edward, as heir to the throne. Although York was killed at Wakefield (December 30, 1460), and Henry was recaptured by the Lancastrians at the second Battle of St. Albans (February 17, 1461), York’s heir was proclaimed king as Edward IV in London on March 4. Routed at Towton in Yorkshire (March 29), Henry fled with his wife and son to Scotland, returning to England in 1464 to support an unsuccessful Lancastrian rising.

A quarrel between Edward IV and Richard Neville, earl of Warwick, led Warwick to restore Henry to the throne in October 1470, and Edward fled abroad. But he soon returned, defeated and killed Warwick, and destroyed Queen Margaret’s forces at Tewkesbury (May 4, 1471). The death of Prince Edward in that battle sealed Henry’s fate

Charles also felt threatened by the personal union of England and the United Provinces begun under William III in 1688, and he maintained Sweden’s virtual neutrality during the War of the Grand Alliance (1689–97).

Charles desired an alliance with Edward, which so frightened John that he made another peace with Charles on Sept. 10, 1355.

John’s other bitter enemy was Charles II the Bad, king of Navarre, to whom John gave his daughter Joan as an offer of alliance; the enmity still remained strong

John further irritated Charles by giving the new constable of France, Charles de La Cerda, lands that were claimed by Charles of Navarre.

John signed a new truce with England on Sept. 12, 1351, but broke it by supporting the partisans of Charles of Blois (a pretender to Brittany, then held prisoner by Edward)

John took his revenge on Charles by having him imprisoned

Edward’s son Edward, prince of Wales (later called the Black Prince), attacked southern France. Unable to halt the English invasions because he lacked funds, John gathered the States General to seek money and to impose an unpopular salt tax.

The French army was decimated, and John was taken prisoner.

John was taken to London in April 1357, where he was lodged in the Savoy palace; there he concluded treaties (January 1358 and March 1359) so harsh that they were repudiated in France.

fixed John’s ransom at 3,000,000 gold écus and surrendered most of southwestern France to Edward. On Oct. 9, 1360, John was released to raise a ransom that France could not afford to pay, and hostages were accepted in his place. When one of the hostages (John’s own son) escaped, John, feeling dishonoured, returned to England on his own volition as a prisoner.

Charles ascended the French throne on April 8, 1364, on John’s death. He then challenged the King of Navarre over the succession of Burgundy.

When war broke out again with England in 1369 over France’s failure to abide by its treaty obligations, Charles followed du Guesclin’s military advice, winning for the French so many victories that, by 1375, the settlement of 1360 was virtually nullified. In 1378, after learning of plots of the King of Navarre, Charles dispossessed him of all his French lands except Cherbourg.

reorganizing the army, creating a new navy, instituting tax changes, and bringing Flanders, Spain, and Portugal into French alliances,