Dictionary

composite monarchy en · NOUN

Etymology

Coined in 1975 by German-born British historian Helmut Koenigsberger and popularised by Sir John Huxtable Elliott.

Meanings

1. (historical) A type of monarchy, common in Europe during the early modern period, in which a single ruler governed several territories as if they were separate kingdoms, each with its own local traditions and legal structures.
   • Composite monarchy offered Machiavelli a vision of polity that did not enslave its territory, as Florence, operating the dictates of empire, invariably did. Contra empire, early modern monarchy offers a vision of cities and territories coexisting on equal footing. is there a way to combine composite monarchy and republic to build a new kind of state? 2015, Alissa M. Ardito, Machiavelli and the Modern State, Cambridge University Press, page 195:
   • These historians have rediscovered what J. R. Seeley realised a century ago: that England, just like France, was a composite monarchy, just as Britain, just like the Spanish Monarchy, was a multiple kingdom.⁷⁰ In the former, a diversity of territories, peoples, institutions and legal jurisdictions is cemented under a single, recognised sovereign authority; in the latter, various kingdoms were ruled by a single sovereign, while they maintained varying degrees of autonomy. 2000, David Armitage, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire, Cambridge University Press, page 22:
   • 1995 [Routledge], Conrad Russell, Chapter 8: Composite monarchies in early modern Europe, Alexander Grant, Keith Stringer, Uniting the Kingdom?, 2003, Taylor & Francis e-library, page 133, All multiple kingdoms are composite monarchies, but not all composite monarchies are multiple kingdoms.

Forms

Synonyms

personal union (several territories governed by a single ruler) · composite state (several territories governed by a single ruler)

wikipedia: John Elliott (historian) · wikipedia: Helmut Koenigsberger