Publisher's Synopsis
Monarchy has been man's natural form of government in almost every civilisation since the dawn of recorded time. Yet, over the past two hundred and fifty years, this historic system has entered into seemingly irreversible decline in favour of the republic across almost all of the world's cultures and regions. Hugh Williams follows and analyses a truly remarkable series of events which started with the American and French revolutions in the late 18th century and which still have not yet run their course. The enduring personal popularity of monarchy, as evidenced by media hunger for royal headlines of any sort, indeed remains a puzzle for today's republican revolutionaries wherever they are. Books on royalty tend to be confined to biographies or specific historical episodes, and rarely has the ongoing monarchy/republican divide been seriously examined as a serious social and political trend in its own right. "Monarchy or Republic" has been written as an in-depth study of the causes of monarchy's decline and why the republic is now the default form of government for most countries. Pen portraits of many of the characters involved in this story are given to lighten up the narrative, but this is essentially a serious book. The book has been written as a continuous read about one of the most striking cultural and political shifts in recent history. hw 30/11/2016
