Monarchies 1000-2000

Book excerpt: "Monarchies 1000-2000 surveys a form of government whose legitimacy rests not on voluntary consensus but on age-old cutsom, heredity and/or religious sanction. Global in scope, and comparative in approach, W.M. Spellman's survey establishes connections between monarchy as idea and practice in a variety of historical and cultural contexts across a millennium when the system was without serious rival. Spellman examines the intellectual assumptions behind different models of monarchy, tracing the ways in which each of these assumptions shifted in response to historical factors including expanding litercay, the development of modern science and the growth of rationalism, and the decline of institutional religion. While no human institution has retreated as rapidly as monarchy in the modern period, the system's remarkable longevity invites us to weigh the significance of hierarchy, subordination and dependence as constants of the human experience." --book jacket.