Global Monarchy: Royal Encounters in the Age of Empire

Abstract

Monarchy is one of the oldest truly global social structures. On the eve of the imperial age, most of the world was governed by monarchs. But as the European empires expanded, this order was radically transformed. During the long nineteenth century, most non-European monarchies were conquered by imperial powers. Often, European imperial powers abolished them, imprisoning, killing, or exiling local rulers; in other cases, the imperial powers incorporated the conquered monarchies into new imperial orders of indirect rule. Yet, there were some monarchies that survived Europe’s imperial expansion. In fact, every country that retained its independence in the era of high imperialism was ruled by a monarch: Ethiopia, China, Japan, the Ottoman empire, Persia (Iran), and Siam (Thailand). To some extent, these monarchs lived in the same social worlds as their European counterparts, forming a global, status-based community. This article offers some observations on the relationship between the world’s monarchs in the age of empire by focusing on encounters between European monarchs and those of the few non-European countries that retained their independence.

I

Monarchy is one of the oldest truly global social institutions.¹ On the eve of the imperial age, most of the world was governed by hereditary rulers. As the European empires expanded, this order was radically transformed. Most non-European monarchies were conquered. In many cases, from the Aztec empire to the Zulu kingdom, the European imperial powers abolished them, imprisoning, killing, or exiling local rulers.² In other cases, though, the imperial powers incorporated these monarchs into new imperial orders of indirect rule. The list of these subject potentates is long and includes the monarchs of Indonesia, the rulers of the Indian princely states, the Malay sultans, the kings and emperors of Indochina, the monarchs of Africa, the khans of Central Asia, the monarchs of Tonga, Tahiti, and Samoa, and so on. Bolstering the imperial state, these colonized monarchs became part of the European empires. They interacted with the aristocrats of Europe within a complex imperial hierarchy.³ Many of these non-European rulers even visited the imperial metropolises to pay tribute to their European suzerains. At the same time, some monarchs of conquered kingdoms toured Europe to plead their case to regain independence. The most famous of them was the exiled Zulu King Cetshwayo, who visited London in 1882 to ask Queen Victoria, unsuccessfully, for the return of his realm.⁴

Yet, there were some monarchies that survived Europe’s imperial expansion. In fact, every country outside Europe that was not ruled, directly or indirectly, by the European empires or, in the independent settler colonies, by elites of European background in the era of high imperialism was governed by a monarch: Ethiopia, China, Japan, the Ottoman empire, Persia (Iran), and Siam (Thailand). The same is true for those countries that held out long against imperial encroachment but ultimately failed to maintain their sovereignty, such as Hawai‘i, Johor, Korea, Madagascar, and Morocco. To some extent, these monarchs lived in the same social worlds as their European counterparts, forming a global, status-based community (Figure 1). In the age of steam and telegraph, the world’s sovereigns forged connections though royal correspondence, the exchanges of gifts and orders, and, ultimately, royal visits.

Figure 1. British postcard showing ‘Ruling Monarchs’, including portraits of the king of Siam, the Ottoman sultan, the Meiji emperor of Japan, and the Guangxu emperor of China, 1908 (Alamy).

To be sure, the political framework in which these interactions took place was marked by the increasing global hegemony of the European empires and the relative decline in power of the non-European monarchical states. Royal relations, in fact, became a crucial part of the non-European countries’ struggles for sovereignty. This became most obvious in the actual encounters between European and non-European monarchs.

Visits of non-European monarchs to Europe’s capitals became a recurrent phenomenon in the years of high imperialism. It was a time when royal visits emerged as a crucial part of foreign affairs in Europe, providing a distinct instrument of relations between states.⁵ Over the course of royal visits, monarchs, personifying their countries on the international stage, visualized relations between states.

In 1846, Ahmad Bey of Tunis, one of the most powerful potentates of the Ottoman realm, was received with great pomp in Paris. He was the first Muslim ruler to visit Christian Europe in peacetime. In 1866, Abu Bakar, last sovereign ruler of Johor, made the first of several trips to Europe where he was received at major courts and even the Vatican; he also visited India, Java, Hongkong, Japan, and China.⁶ One year later, the Ottoman Sultan Abdülaziz, accompanied by his son Şehzade Yusuf Izzeddin and his two nephews Murad (later Murad V) and Abdülhamid (later Abdülhamid II), together with Egypt’s Khedive Ismail, visited Europe, attending the Universal Exposition in Paris, accompanied by Napoleon III, and enjoying a reception with Queen Victoria in Windsor, King Leopold in Liège, Wilhelm I in Koblenz, and Franz Joseph in Vienna.⁷

As early as 1824, Hawai‘i’s King Kamehameha II and Queen Kamāmalu visited London but died there after catching measles to which they had no natural immunity.⁸ In 1849–50, two Hawaiian princes – the future King Kamehameha IV and his brother, the future King Kamehameha V – journeyed across royal Europe.⁹ They were followed by the widowed Queen Emma of Hawai‘i, who toured Europe in 1865–6.¹⁰ In 1881, King Kalākaua of Hawai‘i, the first reigning monarch in history to circumnavigate the world, enjoyed receptions with the emperor of Japan, the king of Siam, the king of Italy, the queen of England, the king of Belgium, and the king of Portugal.¹¹ His wife, Queen Kapiʻolani, and his sister, Princess Liliʻuokalani, who later became the last queen of Hawai‘i, travelled to Europe six years later.¹²

King Chulalongkorn of Siam (Rama V) toured Europe in 1897, visiting France, Britain, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Italy, Russia, Denmark, and Sweden, and returned, more informally, in 1907.¹³ The Siamese ruler met with Nicholas II in St Petersburg, William II in Berlin, Franz Joseph in Vienna, and Edward VII at Windsor. His son, Crown Prince Vajiravudh – later the sixth Chakri monarch of Siam – also frequented the courts of Europe.¹⁴ Many other Siamese princes found themselves in Europe as well, often for extended periods of education or military training. The most famous among them was Prince Chakrabongse who stayed at the St Petersburg court for no less than eight years, where he was treated like a member of the family and married a Russian noblewoman.¹⁵

Japan, too, sent several princes to Europe.¹⁶ Among them was Prince Komatsu Akihito who, when he first went to England as a student, met with Queen Victoria in 1871; later, in 1886–7, he made an extensive journey across Great Britain, France, Germany, and Russia, also attending Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, and returned in 1902. Prince Arisugawa Takehito journeyed to Europe in 1881, meeting with Victoria at Osborne House; in 1889, as part of his world tour; in 1897, attending the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee; and in 1905, at the height of the Russo-Japanese War, when he attended the wedding of the German Crown Prince Wilhelm and met the English king in London. Prince Fushimi Sadanaru undertook a journey in 1885–6, touring France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, and England; he also attended Nicholas II’s coronation in 1896, visited Edward VII in 1907, and met with the newly crowned George V in 1910. The Ethiopian emperors, too, would send family members to Europe, although less frequently. The most notable example is the European tour of Rās Makonnen, Haile Selassie’s father, in 1902, on the occasion of the coronation of Edward VII at which he representing his cousin, Menelik II.¹⁷

The most spectacular of these visits were the European tours of the Persian monarchs. In the summers of 1873, 1878, and 1889, Nasir al-Din Shah embarked on three European tours.¹⁸ Travelling by train and steamship, he and his entourage journeyed from one end of Europe to the other. The shah dined with the tsar at the Winter Palace of St Petersburg, and enjoyed receptions given by King Leopold II in Brussels, King Umberto I in Turin, and banquets with the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph at Schönbrunn Palace. He also saw the World’s Fairs in Vienna (1873) and Paris (1878 and 1889). On his first visit to the French capital, endless crowds lined the Champs-Elysées as the Persian progress moved through the Arc de Triomphe. No less splendid were his receptions in Victorian Britain, where the Persians lodged at Buckingham Palace and exchanged insignia with Queen Victoria at Windsor Castle (Figure 2). The shah visited steel mills, attended the great naval reviews in the English Channel, enjoyed Madame Tussauds’s wax museum and performances at the Royal Opera. In Berlin, he discussed grand strategy with Chancellor Bismarck, witnessed an assassination attempt on Wilhelm I, and watched military manoeuvres with Wilhelm II. Some years later, the shah’s son and successor, Muzaffar al-Din Shah, followed in his father’s footsteps. He, too, was received at European courts and mingled with Europe’s aristocracy at glamorous royal galas, banquets, and parades during three European tours in 1900, 1902, and 1905.

Figure 2. The reception of Nasir al-Din Shah at Windsor Castle, 20 June 1873, watercolour by Nicholas Chevalier from 1874 (Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 920788).

The visits of non-European royalty have often been portrayed as expensive leisure trips of despotic potentates. Certainly, amusement and adventure were among some of the guests’ motivations. And yet, there is some evidence to suggest that the monarchs also had a political interest in mingling with European royalty. All of them, in fact, emphasized the political nature of their visits.¹⁹ Nasir al-Din Shah, for instance, gave two major reasons for visiting Europe. First, ‘meeting the great kings of Europe for the consolidation of good relations and the enhancement of friendship and mutual cooperation’.²⁰ Second, ‘collecting all information and gathering experiences, which can be valuable for the Iranian government and nation’. The shah’s grand vizier, Mirza Husayn Khan (Mushir al-Dawlah), one of the architects of the journey, emphasized in a letter to his monarch: ‘This royal effort is not merely for tourism; it is a great main road that will lead to Iran’s progress.’²¹ Muzaffar al-Din Shah gave similar reasons at the outset of his first European journey.²² King Chulalongkorn, in a memorandum, mentioned three motives for his European travels: to establish friendly relations with Europe’s monarchs and make his country known to the world; to study European administrational, legal, military, and educational innovations; and to repair Franco-Siamese relations which had been tarnished by a military confrontation in 1893.²³ The Siamese monarch declared ‘the advancement of royal friendships’ as a pillar of a new era of his country’s global diplomacy.²⁴ Privately, he explained that his tour was important in Siam’s struggle for sovereignty.²⁵ Sultan Abdülaziz, too, claimed to have educational and political-dynastic motives.²⁶ King Kalākaua of Hawai‘i also emphasized the political reasons for his journey.²⁷ Additionally, the visits could have a domestic function in that rulers could demonstrate to their subjects that Europe’s monarchs considered them as equals.

In Europe, the visiting sovereigns and their ministers tried to engage in diplomatic negotiations, hoping for legal and military guarantees that would secure their countries’ integrity and interests in a world dominated by expanding European powers, a world in which the few countries outside Europe that remained nominally independent faced the threat of European imperialism. Often, the visitors used their stays in European capitals to broker military agreements and to give out economic concessions in order to modernize their countries in the hope of catching up. These deals, of course, could make their states even more dependent on European powers.

Yet, there was another aspect of the state visits that made them even more significant to the guests – their ceremonial splendour. A formal royal reception in a European metropolis offered non-European monarchs the opportunity to present themselves on the same level as European rulers. Their participation in the rituals and ceremonials of a state visit gave expression to the guests’ dynastic legitimacy and their country’s sovereignty. To a certain extent, the ceremonial aspects of the visits could symbolically level asymmetrical power relations. State visits thus offered non-European potentates a way of integrating themselves and their countries into a system of international relations that was dominated by the European powers.

In order to enter this system, though, it was important for the non-European monarchs to interact within the social framework – etiquettes – of the European courts. To gain recognition, the staging of the visits had to meet a European standard that was, in the eyes of the dominant European powers, considered the ‘standard of civilization’. Meeting this very standard seemed to be a key condition of becoming accepted as a legitimate and sovereign member of the international community. We should not forget that notions of civilization, political legitimacy, and territorial sovereignty were closely connected in most contemporary European legal theories. In fact, statesemen, diplomats, and legal experts routinely distinguished between different degrees of civilization when dealing with non-European countries. Usually, the world was divided into three parts: the ‘civilized’, the ‘uncivilized’ (which could be colonized), and the ‘half-civilized’. The independent non-European countries were thereby routinely considered among the ‘half-civilized’. But as the concept of ‘civilization’ itself was not clearly defined, European policies towards non-European states did not follow clear lines, but were often ad hoc. And yet, although unpredictable, this international system left some room for action on the part of the few independent non-European sovereigns. The extensive European tours they undertook helped them to demonstrate their sovereignty and consolidate their countries’ global political position.

Overall, non-European and European monarchs interacted without too much difficulty at Europe’s courts. The relations between Europeans and non-Europeans can, however, not exclusively be understood in terms of a simple adaptation of the non-European monarchs to a set European standard of courtly practices of royal visits.²⁸

The visits occurred at the same time as visits among European royalty emerged as a major phenomenon. Encounters between European and non-European monarchies were part of the general nineteenth-century evolution of the courtly world.

In some cases, the guests were indeed confronted with unfamiliar courtly manners that resulted from a specific European ‘civilizing process’, described by Norbert Elias.²⁹ The non-European monarchs would then often adapt to their powerful hosts’ customs through preparation or ad hoc imitation. Yet, at times, though less commonly, they would reject these customs. And sometimes, compromises were reached through negotiations and renegotiations that allowed the hosts and guests to engage with each other in a hybrid ‘middle ground’.³⁰

In other cases, however, European and non-European monarchs shared aristocratic practices that made interaction easy. Indeed, European and non-European court cultures were not always a priori different from each other. Throughout the modern period, courtly practices had converged around the world. European and non-European monarchs, to some extent, both inhabited the same global social world.

More generally, it would therefore be misleading to characterize these royal visits per se as intercultural encounters, as this would be to assume (or construct) that the monarchs were separated by (two) discrete cultures. We should not assume that global spatial separation necessarily meant cultural separation. Culture is not always spatially determined. Social formations, with their intrinsic cultures, could cross global boundaries. The story of these royal visits will problematize culturalist scholarship that examines global encounters in terms of inter-cultural, trans-cultural, or cross-cultural relations, assuming an essentialist cultural difference between actors from different parts of the world. It is impossible to reduce the royal visits to encounters between East and West, Orient and Occident, or North and South. The story of these global royal meetings often transcends such binaries, blurring boundaries which are often assumed to be crucial.

Also, it is also worth adding that the very distinction between ‘European’ and ‘non-European’ monarchies is not always straightforward. The European monarchies, despite remarkable similarities, could differ significantly from one another, just as the non-European monarchies were in many respects very different from each other, and therefore neither European nor non-European monarchies necessarily formed clear entities. And, as mentioned, there could also be similarities across the European and the non-European worlds. In short, it is often difficult, if not impossible, to draw a clear line separating the European from the non-European royal world. Moreover, (European and non-European) monarchical practices were of course never static but evolving.

Finally, we need to acknowledge that the historical actors themselves, both inside and outside of Europe, regularly (not always) understood the visits as encounters between a European centre and a non-European periphery. They considered the idea of a European standard of great importance, a yardstick, and acted accordingly. We thus need to distinguish between the historical concepts used by contemporary actors to make sense of their world and the analytical concepts which we as historians use to analyse the past. We need to take seriously the actors’ conceptualizations of the encounters. And yet, we, as historians, also need to be careful not to uncritically reproduce historical concepts – such as the idea of a ‘standard of civilization’ – in our studies.

The European powers, on the other side, usually also had some interest in the visits. Some had political and economic stakes in the countries of the visiting monarchs, using the stays as opportunities to establish, maintain, and fortify their influence. Moreover, the European courts could also benefit from the royal spectacle of receiving monarchs from far-flung places. The situation of the monarchy in the late nineteenth century – under pressure from both a politicized proletariat and an increasingly powerful bourgeoisie – was weakened. It is worth remembering that the age of empire, a perilous time for monarchs in the world outside Europe, was also a revolutionary age and the golden age of the bourgeoisie, a perilous period for monarchs in Europe (and beyond). Royal visits offered European royalty an opportunity to assert their socio-political position and to emphasize the political relevance of the monarchy. The receptions of royalty from other parts of the globe, in this context, could give expression to the universality of the monarchical order.

Scholars have long shown relatively little interest in the global history of monarchy. Historians of royalty have conventionally primarily studied (European and non-European) monarchies within state borders, examining royal politics (and institutions) as well as royal ritual and court ceremonial.³¹ There is some excellent comparative scholarship, however, that examines monarchy as a global phenomenon.³² Among the earliest of these works are Clifford Geertz’s comparative study of royal practices in the early modern world and Reinhard Bendix’s global comparative history of the fall of kingship.³³ Encounters between monarchs, however, have been systematically (comparatively) studied primarily within Europe, most notably by Johannes Paulmann, and within the European empires, by David Cannadine and others.³⁴ This is surprising, given that monarchies are a genuinely global phenomenon.

II

The ceremonies employed for the non-European monarchs during their visits did not differ much from those usually provided for European royalty. Although general rules of protocol for royal visits were not formally institutionalized in the nineteenth century, by mid-century essential ceremonial procedures had been established by repetitive practice, and Europe’s courts employed them when receiving sovereigns from beyond Europe.³⁵

The encounters were only possible since European royalty accepted non-European monarchs, based on their status, in principle, as equals. It was in fact crucial that the European courts were willing to consider their guests’ royal status as more important than their ethnic origin – ‘crown above colour’, as David Cannadine put it.³⁶ (We should not forget that this was a time when other non-Europeans were put on display in European zoos.³⁷) The Europeans thereby followed a pre-racial view which dated back to European pre-Enlightenment perceptions of non-European aristocrats. The monarchical order was considered universal. The Europeans, in a way, distinguished between the (foreign) physical body and the (royal) symbolic body of the sovereign.³⁸ (It is worth adding that we can make the same observation for gender, as it was status that determined the powerful position of ruling royal women, such as Queen Victoria, at the time, and not their gender, and age, as minors could be monarch.)

This became obvious, for example, when Queen Victoria noted in her diary about a meeting with Queen Emma of Hawai‘i: ‘The lady looks rather like an uncivilised savage, but is, on the contrary, peculiarly civilised & well mannered, very pleasing & clever.’³⁹ A few years later, Prince Albert, the prince of Wales (later Edward VII), insisted on giving King Kalākaua precedence over the German Crown Prince Friedrich, countering German objections by ranking status over ethnicity: ‘Either the brute is a king or else he is an ordinary black nigger, and if he is not a king, why is he here?’⁴⁰

Moreover, despite the nationalization of the European monarchies after the Congress of Vienna, a sort of solidarity among monarchs remained strong in the nineteenth century, a phenomenon that has been described as ‘fraternity of monarchs’ or ‘royal cosmopolitanism’.⁴¹ Generally, the non-European monarchs benefited from these European conceptions, despite the weakness and foreignness of the countries they represented.

As a consequence, during the visits, the guests were provided with modern means of transport, like trains or steamships, often accompanied by a guard of honour, and usually, during the official part of their visit, accommodated in palaces. Sultan Abdülaziz was pleased in 1867 when his Paris cortège consisted of the same ten royal carriages that had been provided for the recent visits of the Russian tsar and the Prussian king – the imperial carriage from the time of Louis XIV (Figure 3).⁴² The main streets of Europe’s capitals were decorated with the guests’ colours and the hoisting of their flags, symbolizing the monarchs’ authority and their countries’ sovereignty. Also, the guests’ coats of arms usually became part of the ceremonial iconography.

Figure 3. Sultan Abdülaziz I and Napoleon III in Paris, 1867, engraving from 1868 (Brown Digital Repository, Brown University Library).

At the heart of the sojourns were the official ceremonial receptions with Europe’s monarchs. The personal meetings at times created emotional bonds. The most striking example is the encounter between Queen Emma of Hawai‘i and Queen Victoria at Windsor on 9 September 1865. Victoria noted in her diary:

After luncheon I received Queen Emma, the widowed Queen of the Sandwich Islands or Hawaii, met her in the Coridor & nothing could be nicer or more dignified than her manner. She is dark, but not more so than an Indian, with fine features & splendid soft eyes. She was dressed in just the same widow’s weeds as I wear.⁴³

Enchanted, Emma wrote to King Kamehameha V: ‘I have this moment returned from Windsor Castle where the Queen received me most affectionately, most sisterly.’⁴⁴ Queen Victoria invited Emma back, and to remain at Windsor overnight, subsequently commenting on the ‘good Queen Emma’: ‘She was amiable, clever, & nice, in all she said, speaking of her own country.’⁴⁵ The widowed queens became friends; a life-long correspondence between the two followed.⁴⁶ Similarity, Tsesarevich Nicholas, when visiting Siam in 1891, forged a lasting friendship with Chulalongkorn. After arriving in Russia in 1897, the Siamese sovereign noted in one of his letters home the warm welcome he had received at the court of his friend, who was now Tsar Nicholas II: ‘The mother of the Tsar even calls me “my son” and I told her that she was like my mother. She gives me a kiss every day and today I really feel like being her son, so I offered her my check to be kissed.’⁴⁷ The photographs taken of the monarchs during the visit, resembling family pictures, visualized their bond of friendship (Figure 4). The images were, to be sure, also of political significance. Chulalongkorn apparently even wanted to publish one of them in all countries he was to visit to show the world that he was a legitimate member of the global community of monarchs.

Figure 4. King Chulalongkorn, Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna, and Tsar Nicholas II, sitting in the centre, at Alexander Palace, south of St Petersburg, 1897. The Siamese king links arms with the tsar’s younger sister, Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna (Alamy).

The visits gave the guests the opportunity to mingle in aristocratic high society at garden parties and soirées, banquets and gala dinners, operas and theatre performances. On such occasions, they would also meet with other foreign monarchs. This was particularly the case at major events such as jubilees or universal exhibitions. The Ottoman sultan attended the prize ceremony at the Universal Exhibition in Paris’s Palais de L’Industrie, where he sat on a throne, between the emperor and the empress, surrounded by foreign royalty, including the khedive of Egypt, the younger half-brother of the last Tokugawa shogun, Tokugawa Akitake (though not royalty), Prussia’s Crown Prince Friedrich (later German emperor), Prince Umberto of Italy (later king of Italy), and Britain’s Princes Albert and Arthur, the prince royal of the Netherlands, and Italy’s Prince Amadeo (later briefly king of Spain).⁴⁸ The Persian shahs frequently mingled with a cosmopolitan group of European and non-European royalty at courtly functions.⁴⁹ Attending a garden party during the festivities of Queen Victoria’s Jubilee Week in 1887, Liliʻuokalani recalled: ‘The procession moved along the gravelled walks of the palace garden, led by the great and good lady whose jubilee year we were celebrating. It was made up of kings and queens, princes and princesses, from most of the reigning families of the world.’⁵⁰

III

The visiting sovereigns, for their part, performed the ritualized (European) choreography of a state visit almost perfectly. There are several reasons for this. First, they had no problems coping with aristocratic practices which resembled those of their own courts. In fact, Europeans and non-European aristocrats shared much ceremonial ground. The list of examples is long.

Hunting, for instance, gave the guests an opportunity to present themselves according to European custom without difficulty. In most parts of the world, hunting excursions were common practice among the aristocracy. Muzaffar al-Din Shah in particular impressed the European courts with his shooting talent – although some envious European aristocrats made negative remarks about his marksmanship, which they claimed was vulgar.⁵¹

Also, the custom of exchanging gifts and decorations during visits, a common practice in the European context, was familiar to most monarchs around the globe. Orders, which were rooted in the European medieval orders of chivalry, were increasingly used as a sign of aristocratic authority and legitimacy around the world.⁵² Throughout the age of empire, non-European sovereigns created orders to align their honours systems with those of the European dynasties. European and non-European monarchs exchanged decorations via diplomatic missions and, more importantly, at royal visits. The reciprocal acts established bonds between the courts. The practice did not only involve the monarchs but members of their entire courts. The non-European courts were fully aware of the hierarchies of decorations; the European courts, on their part, spent significant time determining the right order appropriate for the rank of the monarchs’ entourages. John Breen, who studied the phenomenon in the case of imperial Japan, described these practices as ‘ornamental diplomacy’; yet for the monarchs they had not only a political but also a social function.⁵³

The Persians, for example, carried boxes of medals with them to Europe.⁵⁴ One of the highest Persian decorations, the Order of the Lion and the Sun (nishan-i shir va khurshid), had already been founded by Fath ‘Ali Shah in 1808, initially with the intention of honouring foreign officials.⁵⁵ Nasir al-Din Shah created, among other decorations, the Order of the Imperial Effigy (nishan-i timsal-i humayun), which, in Europe, was given to sovereigns. On the eve of his first European tour, Nasir al-Din Shah established the Order of the Sun (nishan-i aftab) for ladies. Nasir al-Din Shah, in turn, received the Belgian Order of Leopold, the German Order of the Black Eagle with diamonds and even the Order of the Garter, Great Britain’s highest order of chivalry. When Muzaffar al-Din Shah visited England in the summer of 1902, and was only offered a portrait of King Edward set in diamonds instead of the Order of the Garter, he refused it and, deeply upset, left the country. In fact, the episode led to serious tensions in Anglo-Persian relations – eventually, a special British delegation had to be sent to Tehran to give him the order.⁵⁶ The episode was followed as far away as Tokyo, where the Meiji emperor was himself eager to receive the order.⁵⁷

In 1867, Sultan Abdülaziz was also bestowed the Garter.⁵⁸ The traditional ceremony for conferring the order, which would have required the sultan to deliver his sword to the bishop at St George’s Chapel, had to be renegotiated to be acceptable to the Muslim ruler and caliph. The queen invested the sultan with the order at a ceremony on the royal yacht Victoria and Albert, decorated with Ottoman flags and Union Jacks, at Spithead (Figure 5). The investiture was not uncontroversial: Prime Minister Edward Smith-Stanley, Lord Derby, had recommended the Star of India. Considering the Garter unsuitable for non-Christians, the queen had agreed. Yet, the sultan was set on the order, as it had already been given to his predecessor, Sultan Abdülmecid, in Constantinople in 1856. Victoria reluctantly conceded, noting in her journal following the ceremony that she had ‘given the Sultan the garter, which he had set his heart upon’ although she ‘should have preferred the Star of India, which is more suited for those who are not Christians’.⁵⁹ She observed that the sultan was pleased, and had hailed the order as both ‘a public mark of friendship & as a personal souvenir’.⁶⁰ Evangelical circles at Windsor were pushing hard in the late nineteenth century to convince the court that only Christian rulers were to be honoured with the order. Abdülaziz also received the Royal Order of the Legion of Honour (Ordre Royal de la Légion d’Honneur) with brilliants from Napoleon III.⁶¹ In Prussia, he conferred upon Wilhelm I the Order of Osmani (nişan-ı osmani) with brilliants, while he himself wore the Order of the Black Eagle (Schwarzer Adlerorden).⁶² He also presented Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary with the Order of the Mecidi (nişan-ı mecidi) with brilliants, while receiving the Order of Saint Stephen (Sankt-Stephans-Orden), the highest Habsburg decoration.⁶³

Figure 5. Queen Victoria invests Sultan Abdülaziz I with the Order of the Garter on board the royal yacht Victoria and Albert, 17 July 1867, watercolour by George Housman Thomas from 1867 (Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 450804) (Alamy).

It was the king of Hawai‘i, however, who made the most prolific use of orders when visiting the courts of Europe.⁶⁴ William Armstrong, the son of American missionaries who served as Hawai‘i’s attorney general and, during the journey, royal commissioner of immigration, even claimed in his travelogue that obtaining more ‘insignia of military orders given to him by European sovereigns’ was ‘one of the objects of his tour’.⁶⁵ In his letters, Kalākaua left no doubt about their social and political importance at foreign courts. His government spent significant sums on the production of Hawaiian medals, most importantly the Order of Kamehameha, manufactured in Europe, even diverting state funds allocated for other purposes. ‘The only large expense that we have to undergo, is the exchange of Decorations with the several nations that we are most likely to make exchanges’, he informed his foreign minister at the beginning of his tour.⁶⁶ ‘All the advances of exchange will be made by them and it is natural we should return the same compliment.’ The expenses mounted quickly. At one point, when in Europe, Kalākaua instructed his sister, Liliʻuokalani, ‘not to order any more orders to be made in Paris’ since ‘they are now being made in England much cheaper than in Paris’.⁶⁷ He also introduced a more sophisticated classification system for his orders so that foreign officials could be honoured according to their rank.⁶⁸ In a letter to his chancellor, Charles Coffin Harris, he explained that this would help ‘to have our Orders and Decorations valued abroad’ while visiting foreign courts. Hawaiian medals proved to be quite popular across Europe. In return, Kalākaua received some colourful European orders, from the Portuguese Grand Cross of the Order of the Immaculate Conception (Ordem de Nossa Senhora da Conceição), presented to him by King Luís I of Portugal, to the German Order of the Red Eagle (Roter Adlerorden), given to him by Prince Karl of Prussia. Queen Victoria conferred on him the Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George as Honorary Member; thrilled, he wrote to his sister that ‘the honour confered [sic] upon me by Her Majesty the Queen is the highest honor I have received yet’ during his tour.⁶⁹ ‘While the King was decorated with many Orders, there was none which he sought so earnestly as those of the British Queen’, Armstrong explained in his diary.⁷⁰ It is worth noting, however, that he never received orders of the same grade, as monarchs of major non-European empires, like the Ottoman sultan, the Persian shahs, or the king of Siam. The calibration of orders, in fact, reinforced political (and ‘civilizational’) hierarchies among the powers.

The monarchs who had been bestowed with an order made sure to wear it as a sign of honour during meetings to confirm the mutual bond. Yet, medals were not the only material objects exchanged during the visits.

Gift-giving, too, had an important function in building bonds between courts during monarchical meetings. The act of gift-giving was part of a complex cultural system of obligation to give, receive, and reciprocate based on self-interest and solidarity that was indeed, in its basic form, a global historical phenomenon. The gift was, as Marcel Mauss put it, ‘in theory voluntary, disinterested and spontaneous’ yet ‘in fact obligatory and interested’.⁷¹ It created a situation in which members were indebted to each other, morally and materially. Overall, politically, gift-giving could have a wide range of functions, ranging from gifts exchanged between equals as signs of legitimacy, loyalty, and amity to tributary gifts exchanged between patrons and clients. In the world of royalty, it symbolically connected European and non-European members of the global courtly community, strengthening political and dynastic ties. The quality of the gift was of course also to some extent a display of the quality of relations. The choice of an appropriate gift could be a delicate issue, as an inadequate gift could offend the recipient, thereby damaging the relations. Ultimately, gift-giving could also show the wealth, generosity, and power of the giver. The gifts were also often demonstrations of the craftsmanship and artistic capabilities of their countries, projecting civilizational greatness.⁷² Some of the gifts offered by the visitors were quite exquisite. In 1887, The Illustrated London News reported about Kapiʻolani’s encounter with Victoria:

The Queen of Hawaii has presented to the Queen a piece of work made entirely of the feathers of a very rare bird (the oo bird) from the Sandwich Islands. It appears that there are only two of this particular feather in the bird, and it has taken some thousands of feathers to make the wreath, which is the work of the Hawaiian Queen’s own hands. It has been mounted on royal blue plush, set in a frame of gold, with the Royal arms and the arms of the Queen of Hawaii on either side, the whole being again surrounded by a border of royal blue, set with golden stars with eight points representing the eight islands of the Sandwich group.⁷³

Nasir al-Din Shah and Muzaffar al-Din Shah brought paintings, porcelain, and other gifts; in 1878, the Persians even presented an Arab stallion to Germany’s Crown Prince Friedrich.⁷⁴ In Qajar Persia, gifts (tuḥfah, hadiyah, ‘inayat, and, in a tributary sense, pishkish), and the ritualized ceremonies associated with their exchange, had long been central in Iranian political life and constituted a pillar of the Qajar state.⁷⁵ King Chulalongkorn gave in 1907 to the grand duke of Baden flame-painted screens (among other gifts).⁷⁶ They all received various gifts, in return, from cigarette cases to vases. It was not the gift alone but also the act of the exchange that mattered. At times, the entire procedure was shattered by the improper conduct of one of the monarchs. Chulalongkorn, for example, reported in a letter to his daughter that King Edward VII had ‘handed me a gold cigarette case with his initials set in diamonds beneath an enamel crown’, but, rather rudely, ‘would not wait for any thanks, but hurried me off to dinner’.⁷⁷

Military displays like parades and manoeuvres, which were held during royal visits in late nineteenth-century Europe to affirm the stability of alliances (and to demonstrate military might), were also comprehensible to the guests. In countries from Meiji Japan to Ottoman Turkey, military reviews could involve thousands of troops, demonstrating the authority and power of the monarchy. When Chulalongkorn visited Germany in 1897, he attended several military parades, manoeuvres, and espaliers with Wilhelm II in Potsdam. Impressed by the discipline and synchronized marches of the troops, he had some of his sons educated militarily in Germany.⁷⁸ Abdülaziz attended massive military reviews on the Champs-Elysées.⁷⁹ In Koblenz, he watched a review of 7,000 men.⁸⁰ The Habsburg emperor invited him to review an artillery regiment in Vienna, and an infantry regiment, an artillery battery, and the corps of Pioneers at the Danubian town of Klosterneuburg.⁸¹ In England, he attended the great naval review at Portsmouth which was to have been the largest ever naval spectacle, although rough seas prevented its full execution.⁸² The Persian shahs attended military reviews in Potsdam, at Paris’s Champ de Mars, and at Windsor Great Park.⁸³ Kalākaua, too, was impressed when seeing the queen’s annual Windsor Great Park review of no less than 50,000 military volunteers. At times, such spectacles could send overt political-military messages to the world, such as in 1905 when – at the height of the Russo-Japanese War during which London maintained the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902 – Japan’s Prince and Princess Arisugawa Takehito during their stay in England visited Vickers shipyard at Barrow-in-Furness to launch Japan’s battleship, Katori, and Princess Arisugawa met with a group of British and Japanese women who offered knitted woollens for Japanese soldiers.⁸⁴

Finally, also in terms of sartorial standards, the monarchs fit in remarkably well in Europe. Those contemporaries who had expected (hoped for) the guests to wear exotic garments were surprised (sometimes even disappointed). Most of the non-European monarchs wore Western dress, most commonly the European-style military uniform. Most of their countries had introduced European-style attire – especially European military dress – over the course of the nineteenth century.⁸⁵ Sometimes, these new costumes, through a process of hybridization, incorporated local designs. Often, for example, the monarchs combined their military uniforms with non-European headgear, such as the red fez, in the case of the Ottomans, or fur hats, in the Persian case.

In the end, all these shared practices helped the non-European rulers to interact with European royalty and gain recognition as ‘civilized’ monarchs in the global community. There are several reasons for the similarities in courtly practice. Some parts of monarchical culture, such as gift-giving, hunting, and military exercises, were part of global pre-modern courtly practices that were similar among royal elites around the world. Other parts of court culture had converged globally throughout the modern age. In the imperial age, courts around the world increasingly emulated European court culture, both for diplomatic and domestic reasons, as could be observed in dress codes, table manners, orders, and so on.

To be sure, there were of course significant variations in the forms of kingship. Yet, these were variations, not differences in principle. When Sultan Abdülaziz visited Great Britain, the court was eager to demonstrate that a parliamentary monarchy was as strong and splendid as an absolute monarchy.⁸⁶ Richard Lyons, London’s ambassador to the Sublime Porte, stressed during the preparations that it was important to generate as much splendour as possible, and that the loyalty of the subjects to the queen was visible. Siam’s Chulalongkorn commented on the lack of splendour of the monarchy when visiting Windsor. ‘Atmosphere at the English Court is very much like in an ordinary home, not so royal and formal as on the continent’, he noted in a letter to his favourite daughter, Princess Nibha, adding:

It must be pleasant to be a British King, so long as one does not want to have too much of one’s own way. One must let others do the work. They usually come and tell you about it before, and if you have any ideas of your own you can always state them. But if they persist in having their own way you must let it go, otherwise it might lead to a disastrous quarrel. This system works well in England, and this King knows very well how to make it work. He knows when to give way, yet he is clever enough to win respect.⁸⁷

Edward VII was well equipped to work that system, he thought: ‘He is large-hearted, a sportsman, and so very gay. I am most impressed with him, and no wonder he is so popular.’

IV

Still, certain parts of the social practices exercised in the European aristocratic domain were new to the visiting monarchs. The non-European guest had thus to adapt, reject, or renegotiate courtly practices; yet, given the asymmetric power relationship, the weaker non-European sovereigns were usually expected to accept them. Most of the non-European sovereigns were not accustomed to sitting through long royal banquets, balls, ballets, and operas, listening to music alien to their ears. But still they all showed a remarkable willingness to adapt to these customs.

Their adaptability to unfamiliar European-style rituals was also demonstrated throughout the reception and farewell ceremonies. They proved their ability to meet European standards in the ritual of the handshake, which was unfamiliar to many. The political meaning of the connecting handshake was deemed by Nasir al-Din Shah to be something strange, but clearly important in the European context.⁸⁸ In England, he would even perform the gesture of hand-kissing when meeting Queen Victoria. In his diaries, he frequently referred to these greeting rituals as ta‘aruf, a traditional Persian concept of politeness, the custom of exchanging courtesies without any liability. Abdülaziz, too, learned how to perform the handshake. When Franz Joseph saluted him, he was apparently so moved by this show of respect that he clasped the emperor’s hand in both of his.⁸⁹ Sometimes, the monarchs would even embrace each other. When the king of Portugal tried to bid Kalākaua farewell with a hug, his head hardly reached Kalākaua’s shoulder; towering over him, Kalākaua simply patted his back.⁹⁰

An equally difficult obstacle was table rituals (Figure 6). Some of the guests did not know how to eat with European cutlery. Three months before his first visit to Europe, Nasir al-Din Shah, who was accustomed to eating with his hands, learned how to eat with the European fork and knife. At European courts, the shahs even adjusted to the ritual of toasts, and raised their glasses to kings, queens, and emperors. This adaptation was anything but easy for the non-European monarchs. Muzaffar al-Din Shah described the rituals in his diary as something unusual. His father’s notes similarly reflect how confused he sometimes was by courtly table rituals, how he imitated European behaviour, and how hard it was, for instance, ‘to give a speech in front of so many people who were staring and observing us, the more so as I am not used to giving such speeches on such occasions. It was difficult.’⁹¹ All other visiting monarchs engaged in similar table rituals. Wilhelm II, in 1897, raised his glass to Chulalongkorn, celebrating the ‘ties of friendship’ between the countries, followed by a toast made by the Siamese ruler.⁹² Sultan Abdülaziz, in his 1867 speech at the London Guildhall, announced that establishing familiarity with the crowned heads of Europe would contribute to the ‘peaceful coexistence’ of Ottomans and Europeans.⁹³ Welcoming him as an ‘enlightened Sovereign’, the speech addressed to the sultan, given by the Recorder, Russell Gurney, expressed the wish that the visit would strengthen Anglo-Ottoman ties.⁹⁴ At the banquet given at the London Guildhall in 1881, the lord mayor rose to propose the health of King Kalākaua. Kalākaua had his table speech, which was to express his gratitude to the British empire, carefully prepared by Armstrong, who later recorded in his travelogue:

At his request I prepared the outlines of a speech which he attempted to memorise while dressing for the banquet; but late hours had made him sleepy, and his excellent memory was sluggish. I noticed that during the banquet he closed his eyes several times…When he arose to respond to the toast, he began, – ‘Your Royal Highness, my Lord Mayor, and gentlemen – ’ Then he hesitated; he had forgotten the prepared speech, and was adrift in an open boat on the squally and dangerous sea of an impromptu talk. He looked around the room, at the ceiling, at the three hundred guests who watched him, but was imperturbable as usual. He began by thanking the Royal Family and the Colonial Governors for their hospitality, and declared that no event in his tour around the world had given him more pleasure than his reception in London. Upon this there was much applause, and he instantly took courage for more speech…He continued for a few moments longer, and sat down with much satisfaction to himself and amid loud applause. His Royal Highness nodded pliantly to him across the broad form of the Lord Mayor, who sat between, and the King looked at me as if he said: ‘You see, I am able to take care of myself.’⁹⁵

Figure 6. Nasir al-Din Shah at a luncheon at the London Guildhall, engraving of 1889 (Alamy).

Finally, the presence of ladies at official events could cause difficulties. The sultan and the shahs, in particular, struggled.⁹⁶ In contrast to the homo-social, gender-segregated milieu of the Qajar and Ottoman courts, in Europe noblewomen took part in many official court activities. Male–female intimacy in the courtly sphere, such as a man leading a woman by the arm or public dancing at balls – habitually even with another man’s wife – was new to Qajar and Ottoman nobles. Differences were most explicitly exemplified in the physical appearance of court ladies – in the public display of the female body in low-cut ball gowns. Yet, despite all these problems, both Persians and Ottomans learned very quickly how to cope with the unfamiliar gender roles and how to interact appropriately with European ladies at court. Both regularly even escorted queens and empresses by the arm. The European courts, too, had little reservations about these encounters.⁹⁷ More challenging, in fact, was the question of a reception of a non-monogamous ruler – such as the monarchs of Persia, Siam, and the Ottoman empire – at European courts. The polygamous ruler would usually travel unaccompanied or, at times, be joined by one wife only to avoid quarrels over protocol.

In the end, in all these instances, the visiting sovereigns acted almost naturally in the European courtly sphere. The monarchs’ satisfactory performance in Europe was of course entirely in their own political interest. Although their very adaptation to European etiquette implied recognition of European hegemony, proper receptions at the courts across Europe helped them to promote the image of their countries and to present themselves on the world stage.

The European hosts routinely explicitly remarked on the ‘civilized’ conduct of their guests. Monarchs across Europe, including Queen Victoria, judged the shah ‘civilised’ after their European tour.⁹⁸ Charmed by the Hawaiian king, the English queen characterized him in her diary as ‘gentlemanlike & pleasing’.⁹⁹ ‘Our stay in London has been very successful’, the king wrote back home.¹⁰⁰ William Armstrong concluded: ‘So in kingly behaviour he was, and proved to be, the peer of any monarch he met on his tour.’¹⁰¹ Yet, even the emphasis on the civilized conduct of the visiting monarchs implies alterity, as the civilizational question itself would never have been brought up in the first place during encounters among European royalty. Overall, the encounters were never fully free of racism, exoticism, and discrimination, as will be discussed later.

V

Royal visits were not without risk for the foreign monarchs, since they could also expose cultural differences leading to exclusion. In some cases, the visitors simply could not cope with European social customs. Sometimes, they lacked the skills; sometimes, they did not know what was expected; sometimes, European courtly practice clashed with their own ceremonial which was important in asserting authority and power within their own court. Indeed, the list of anecdotes about the visitors’ improper behaviour is long.

Problematic, for example, was the fact that some of the monarchs could not converse in French, the lingua franca of European royalty. These linguistic deficiencies resulted in conversations that were often reduced to a few ‘merci’s, ‘oui’s, and ‘non’s, and since their French was often not sufficient for a proper conversation, overall they spoke very little. This could be observed best during the tours of the Persian shahs.¹⁰² In fact, the language barrier was a real burden to the shahs and made the visits appear unusual in a European context. The sultan had similar troubles. The queen’s private secretary, Charles Grey, informed the prime minister, Lord Derby, that a ‘passing visit’ of the sultan ‘would be the most agreeable to all parties, as he is said not to be able to speak a word of anything but Turkish!’¹⁰³ Others coped better. Hawai‘i’s Queen Emma, who spoke English fluently, learned French during her long journey across Europe. Chulalongkorn and Kalākaua could speak English, though very little French. Queen Victoria had ‘asked particularly where I learnt English as my accent was perfect’, Kalākaua proudly wrote to his sister.¹⁰⁴ ‘We learned’, Armstrong, recorded in his travelogue, ‘that the Queen had been in excellent humour during the King’s visit; it pleased her especially that he spoke the English language so easily and with an English accent; no other foreign sovereign who had visited England spoke it as fluently.’¹⁰⁵ This was a major advantage in the global world of royalty: ‘The King’s use of the English language gave him a great advantage over some visiting monarchs.’¹⁰⁶ Still, knowledge of English could not replace French at every court in Europe. Chulalongkorn related that when meeting Grand Duke Michael of Russia, who spoke only a little English, in Baden, they were reliant on a interpreter: ‘In the beginning, communication was certainly a bit laborious and halting, but later it was quite fluent.’¹⁰⁷ The lack of language skills, assumed essential at European courts, made the meetings appear alien to Europe’s courtly world.

Moreover, in some cases, the European sense of ritualized and ordered ceremony would clash with the guests’ informality. Many did not stick to the minutely detailed schedules that characterized the royal visits of nineteenth-century Europe. The European press – used to a proper ceremonial performance from their monarchs – frequently took offence at the disorganized behaviour of some of the guests. There were also numerous rumours circulating about the misconduct of the visiting royalty and their entourage. The most colourful tales circulated during the visits of the shahs, ranging from reports about secret prostitute parties to stories about the wild slaughter of animals in their suites. William Armstrong noted with satisfaction that his Hawaiian monarch ‘did not exhibit the habits of the Shah of Persia, who, while occupying Buckingham Palace, turned one of the drawing-rooms into a slaughter-house for chickens, because it was the custom in Persia to kill and cook in the presence of the ruler, in order to remove the risk of being poisoned’, a story which was a fabrication of the press.¹⁰⁸

The Europeans too were responsible for some changes. The courts regularly exoticized their guests. This was reflected in the introduction of exotic decorations to the ceremonial space. On the occasions of the visits of the shahs, for instance, parts of the decorations articulated stereotypical patterns of oriental taste which were mostly a creation of the European imagination and had little to do with Persian reality.¹⁰⁹ Palms, Persian carpets, and colourful pillows were arranged. In Berlin, a ‘Persian marquee’ was built at the train station to welcome the shah in 1889, and that year in London a gigantic oriental papier-mâché palace was constructed on the façades of some of the houses on the road to the guildhall. Usually the shahs, presented with these odd sights, could not understand quite what the hosts were intending to signal. Similarly, when Japan’s Prince and Princess Arisugawa Takehito had dinner at London’s Savoy Hotel in 1905, parts of the grounds were changed to mimic a Japanese garden.¹¹⁰

Also, a look at the shahs’ itineraries in Berlin shows that their visits to the theatre were special as they only saw plays on oriental themes, most of them penned by Europeans.¹¹¹ In 1873, Nasir al-Din Shah watched the ballets Aladdin and Sardanapal. Both pieces are set in the Orient and articulate Orientalist stereotypes. In 1878, he visited the ballet Morgana, which incorporates pieces from the Arabian Nights. And in 1889, he attended Vincenzo Bellini’s ballet The Buccaneer, ‘with its oriental images and fantastic, colourful dances’, as a newspaper put it. Similarly, in London, Japan’s Prince Komatsu Akhihito, in 1886, was shown the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera The Mikado at the Savoy Theatre.¹¹² Later, officials in London became more sensitive. Shortly before the arrival of Japan’s Prince Fushimi Sadanaru in Great Britain in 1907, the court learned that a new D’Oyly Carte production of The Mikado was to open at the same time.¹¹³ To avoid offending the guests, the Lord Chamberlain’s Office moved to suspend it.

The European monarchs at times made no secret of the fact that they considered their guests exotic aliens. Queen Victoria pressed Queen Emma, for example, about her people’s dress (and lack thereof): ‘How do your people dress?’, she asked, to which Emma responded: ‘Like common people in England.’ Victoria, not giving up: ‘But before that?’ Emma: ‘Very little dress indeed – cloth round body and neck covered with leaves and flowers.’ Victoria laughed.¹¹⁴ Armstrong noted that during a reception given by Earl and Countess Spencer to the prince and princess of Wales in the Kensington Museum, ‘we heard the comments made upon the King: “I am told he has thirty wives.” – “He carries himself well.” – “The Prince has taken him up.” – “Where is his country; is it near America?” – “Was his grandfather a cannibal?”’¹¹⁵ He observed that although the Hawaiians mingled ‘with the superior beings who constitute the highest class’, there was also

evidence of the fact that exaltation of rank does not remove the unpleasant environments of life; that the prince and the pauper have much in common; in fact, one who was familiar with the court life told me that it was full of annoyances and tribulations in spite of the sweet air of adoration which pervaded it.¹¹⁶

The press, meanwhile, offered an ambivalent interpretation of the visits, at times emphasizing equality and at times difference. Overall, however, the newspaper coverage tended to become increasingly racist, exoticist, and imperialist over time (Figure 7).

Figure 7. King Kalākaua’s ‘royal amusement’ in Vienna, caricature by L. Appelrath, printed in Humoristische Blätter, 1881 (Alamy).

In short, status was not more significant than ethnicity in every situation. In fact, considerations of class and ethnicity were always situational. Although the visitors’ royal status was crucial in most official situations, prompting the European courts to provide a European ceremonial, in some situations their foreignness could also matter. The very fact that the non-European monarchs had to deal with this uncertainty made their situation more tenuous – less privileged – compared to those of the European monarchs who visited the courts of Europe. The visiting monarchs moved in both a monarchical world and a racist world.

It is also worth mentioning that these encounters could also reveal inequalities in status and power. The most extreme examples are Prince Khosrow Mirza’s visit to St Petersburg, where he apologized to the tsar for the murder of the Russian diplomat Aleksandr Griboedov by a Persian mob in Tehran, and the visit of the eighteen-year-old Chinese Prince Chun, who was sent to Europe after the Boxer rebellion in 1901 to offer regrets for the murder of the German diplomat Clemens von Ketteler.¹¹⁷ The line between the royal visits of non-European sovereigns and the visits of subjugated rulers within the empire could be thin.

Ultimately, it was the European monarchs, as hosts, who decided whether a meeting took place at all. Some of the monarchs had to struggle to be granted access to Europe’s courts. Victoria, for example, tried to avoid the meeting with Abdülaziz in 1867 and Wilhelm II tried to reject Muzaffar al-Din Shah in 1902.¹¹⁸ Kalākaua regularly struggled to be received by his European counterparts.¹¹⁹ At times, it was politicians, concerned about their country’s foreign relations, who had to convince their monarchs to receive the foreign crowned heads. The British foreign secretary, Edward Stanley, Lord Stanley, lamented in his diary in spring 1867: ‘Queen writes, hoping that I will prevent the Sultan’s visit. How is that possible?’¹²⁰ ‘We shall have enough to do to induce her to be decently civil to the Sultan’, Edmund Hammond, permanent under-secretary of state for foreign affairs, wrote to Henry Wellesley, Lord Cowley, the crown’s ambassador to Paris, even considering putting pressure on her through parliament and the press.¹²¹ The queen, who at the time was still secluded in deep mourning after the death of the prince consort in 1861, in the end, consented. Yet, according to the initial arrangements, she would not receive the Ottoman ruler until the naval review on day five of his visit; and even this encounter she hoped to keep brief, on board the Osborne.¹²² Lord Derby had to bring up the ‘distasteful’ but ‘important’ matter before the queen.¹²³ And although she let him know that she found it ‘extremely inconvenient’ and ‘very annoying’, she agreed to stay at Windsor a few days longer than planned to receive the sultan there the day after his arrival.¹²⁴ To avoid being snubbed, some of the non-European monarchs travelled incognito in Europe, at least for parts of their journeys, while keeping the option for official receptions open.¹²⁵

Some monarchs from the lands beyond Europe simply could not get an invitation to the European courts, no matter how hard they pressed. When New Zealand’s weak Maori monarch, King Tawhiao, visited London in 1884, he spent four months sightseeing in London waiting for an audience with the queen, which in the end was not granted.¹²⁶ Likewise, in 1895, King Khama from southern African (today’s Botswana) was denied a meeting with Queen Victoria; he and his entourage were in fact treated rather rudely by the secretary of state for the colonies, Joseph Chamberlain, who was assigned to take care of them.¹²⁷ European monarchs were eager to keep the social field of the global aristocracy as exclusive as possible. In some cases, they simply denied non-European aristocrats physical (let alone symbolic) access. To the end, the social sphere of the global aristocracy was dominated by Europe’s hegemonic courts.

It is also noteworthy that the European powers usually only sent diplomats, and almost never their own rulers, to the non-European courts.¹²⁸ The only European monarchs who journeyed to an independent non-European country in the era of high imperialism were Habsburg Emperor Franz Joseph and French Empress Eugénie who, in 1869, visited Sultan Abdülaziz in Constantinople; Wilhelm II, who paid state visits to Sultan Abdülhamid II in 1889 and in 1898, and to Sultan Mehmed V in 1917; and the last Habsburg ruler, Karl I, who, together with his wife Zita, visited the Ottoman monarch in 1918.¹²⁹ It was mainly Europe’s princes who at times ventured beyond Europe’s borders.¹³⁰ Among them was Prince Albert Edward (later Edward VII), Queen Victoria’s eldest son, who, in 1862, toured the Ottoman empire; in Jerusalem, he had a cross tattooed on his arm. His brother, Prince Alfred, Queen Victoria’s second son, went to Hawai‘i, where he was received with all pomp by Kamehameha V, and to Japan, where he met the Meiji emperor, in 1869. Prince George (later King George V) and Prince Albert Victor, the sons of Prince Albert Edward, were received in Tokyo in 1881, where the future British king attained a tattoo of a blue and red dragon and his brother a tattoo of a few storks. Prince Arthur of Connaught, Edward VII’s nephew, visited Japan in 1890, when on world tour, in 1906, when he invested the Meiji emperor with the Order of the Garter, and in 1912, when he attended the funeral of the emperor. Germany’s Prince Heinrich, the younger brother of Wilhelm II, visited the Japanese court in 1879, during his world tour as a naval cadet, and returned in 1912, to attend the emperor’s funeral. Tsar Alexander II’s fourth son, Grand Duke Alexei Aleksandrovich, met with the Meiji emperor in 1872. The tsar’s oldest son, Grand Duke Nicholas (later Nicholas II of Russia) in 1891 visited Japan, where he survived an assassination attempt (and got a dragon tattoo), and Siam. Italy’s Prince Tommaso, the duke of Genoa, who was King Umberto I’s cousin and brother-in-law, visited Tokyo during his world tour in 1879. Prince Waldemar, the youngest son of King Christian IX of Denmark, often visited the court in Siam, forging a personal friendship with King Chulalongkorn. Still, encounters between European and non-European monarchs usually took place in Europe, which reflected the increasing power asymmetry between the countries they represented.

Finally, it is worth pointing to the rare phenomenon of royal visits among non-European royalty in the age of empire. Nasir al-Din Shah paid a visit to the Ottoman sultan on his return journey from Europe in 1873, King Kalākaua, on his global journey, toured the courts of Japan, China, Siam, Johor, and Egypt in 1881, Prince Komatsu Akihito met Sultan Abdülhamid II in Constantinople in 1887, and Muzaffar al-Din Shah visited the Ottoman court after his European tour in 1900.¹³¹ Strikingly, here too, interactions were in part based on European etiquette, from the handshake to the exchange of decorations. Global royal solidarity was shown during Kalākaua’s visit to Japan: he recalled that when a telegraphic message arrived announcing the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, the courts went into mourning.¹³² ‘The King, as required by etiquette, went into retirement and grief over the loss of his Royal Russian Brother for the rest of the day’, he noted. Kalākaua was in shock: ‘This threw a solemn gloom over the Court and more so to all our arrangements and enjoyments for the rest of the day. The Ball given by the Masonic Fraternity at Yokohama to take place that evening was given up as well as the Ball at the Yenriokwan.’¹³³

To conclude, in the age of empire, European and non-European royal families created networks across borders. Monarchical meetings could thereby reveal cultural alterity but also remarkable similarities in terms of social structure. They reflected the emergence of the modern royal sphere as a global social milieu (Figure 8 and Figure 9).

Figure 8. Portrait of world sovereigns (Sejō kakkoku shaga teiō kagami), showing, besides European royalty, Persia’s Naser al-Din Shah, China’s Guangxu Emperor and Empress Dowager Cixi, and Japan’s Meiji emperor and his wife Empress Shōken, Japanese woodblock print by Yōshū (Hashimoto) Chikanobu, 1879 (Metropolitan Museum, New York, and Alamy).

Figure 9. Leaders of sixteen countries in a gathering envisage a desirable future world, showing the Meiji emperor (16), Queen Victoria (1), Queen Wilhelmina (2), Wilhelm II (3), Alfonso XIII of Spain (4), Christian IV of Denmark (5), Chulalongkorn (6), Guangxu Emperor (7), President William McKinley (8), Nicholas II (9), Oscar II of Sweden (10), President Émile Loubet (11), Franz Joseph (12), Gojong of Korea (13), Leopold II (14), Umberto I of Italy (15), Japanese illustration by unknown artist, 1903 (Public Domain).

The weaker non-European rulers employed these royal connections in the hope that they would help their monarchies improve relations with the dominant European great powers. To be sure, they regularly had to struggle with an environment that degraded, even infantilized, them. At times, it was the guests’ weakness and foreignness, rather than royal parity, that characterized the visits. Moreover, in some cases, the non-European courts had to learn that, ultimately, in Europe’s capitals, political, strategic, and economic concerns were considered more important than personal royal connections. And yet, overall, royal visits offered the rulers of the independent non-European world an opportunity to gain recognition of their country’s sovereignty and their monarchical legitimacy. It was not just military and economic might that determined the fate of powers in the imperial age.¹³⁴ The importance of monarchies – which shared culture and social status globally – should not be discarded. In the end, the colourful royal pageantry allowed non-European princes to mask their actual political weakness, which was considered vital in their struggles to keep European imperialism at bay.