Monarchism
군주주의
Monarchism is the advocacy of monarchy, a form of government in which one person is the source of the state's authority, and of its preservation or restoration. A monarchist supports the institution independently of any particular monarch; a royalist supports a particular monarch or dynasty. It became a distinct political movement after the Enlightenment and the American and French Revolutions weakened Europe's monarchies, and divided over the kind of monarchy sought (divine-right, absolute, constitutional, parliamentary) and over which dynasty was legitimate. Examples include French Legitimists and Orleanists, Spanish Carlists, Russian monarchists before and after 1917, the Hungarian legitimists of 1921, and in China Kang Youwei's Protect the Emperor Society and Zhang Xun's restoration of Puyi in 1917.
In depth
Definition and varieties
French usage defines monarchism as the doctrine advocating monarchy, a form of government in which one person grounds the authority of the state, and as the opinion of its partisans; the monarch need not be hereditary, as elected emperors and Polish kings show. English usage separates the monarchist, who supports the institution independently of any monarch, from the royalist, who supports a particular monarch; the opposite position is republicanism. Monarchists divided over divine-right, absolute, constitutional and parliamentary monarchy, and over which dynasty was legitimate.
Royalists against revolution: France and Spain
The Enlightenment produced anti-monarchist ideas, and the American and French Revolutions weakened Europe's monarchies. French Legitimism arose in 1830 against Louis-Philippe, supporting the senior Bourbon line of Charles X and the Count of Chambord; 53 Legitimist deputies resigned rather than take the oath. Opposed to Orleanism and Bonapartism, the movement broke up after Chambord's death in 1883, when most royalists rallied to the Orleanist claimant, whose doctrine evolved towards Charles Maurras's integral nationalism. Spanish Carlism arose from a succession dispute, fought liberalism in the Carlist Wars and joined the Nationalist side in the Civil War.
Restoration movements after 1917
Russian monarchist organisations appeared from the 1880s; between 1905 and 1917 the Union of the Russian People defended autocracy while the Union of 17 October backed constitutional monarchy. After 1917 they were banned and the émigrés split into Kirillovites, supporters of Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich and the Young Russia movement. In Hungary Charles IV returned twice in 1921 with legitimist support; in October Antal Lehár served as defence minister of a counter-government and marched with Gyula Ostenburg-Moravek's gendarmes on Budapest, but was defeated at Budaörs on 23 October. In 1920s Germany monarchists gathered around the DNVP, and in post-war Italy a referendum narrowly chose a republic.
East Asia
After the Hundred Days' Reform of 1898, Kang Youwei and others founded the Protect the Emperor Society in Victoria, British Columbia, in July 1899 to restore the Guangxu Emperor and turn China into a constitutional monarchy. After the Qing fell, General Zhang Xun seized Beijing and restored Puyi from 1 to 12 July 1917, until republican troops reversed it. Under Japan's Meiji Constitution of 1889 the emperor held considerable power; the 1947 constitution made him a symbol of the state.
Marxist analysis and neighbouring currents
In The Eighteenth Brumaire (1852) Marx argued that what divided Legitimists and Orleanists in the Party of Order was not only fleur-de-lis and tricolour: under the Bourbons big landed property had governed, under Orleans capital, so that the legitimate monarchy expressed the rule of the lords of the soil. Monarchism often overlapped with conservatism but is not identical with it; Bonapartism opposed Legitimism, and Hitler staunchly opposed monarchism, the Nazi government suppressing monarchist activity in Austria after 1938.