Abolishing Monarchy.... Who is next?

Throughout history monarchies have been abolished either through legislative reforms, coups d’etat, or wars.

One example is the overthrow in 1649 of the English monarchy by the Parliament of England, led by Oliver Cromwell. The monarchy was restored in 1660. Another is the abolition of the French monarchy in 1792, during the French Revolution. The French monarchy was later restored several times until 1871. The ancient monarchy of China ceased to exist in 1912 after the revolution of Sun Yat-Sen. The last emperor of Korea lost his throne in 1910 when the country was annexed by Japan. After the death of the last khagan in 1924 Mongolia became a republic.

In 1893 foreign business leaders overthrew the Queen of the Kingdom of Hawaii. They established a republic, which joined the United States in 1898. The monarchy of Portugal was overthrown in 1910, two years after the assassination of King Carlos I.

World War I led to perhaps the greatest spate of abolition of monarchies in history. The conditions inside Russia and the poor performance in the war gave rise to a communist revolution which toppled the entire institution of the monarchy, executed the Tsar and implemented a proletarian dictatorship. The defeated empires of Germany, Austria and Turkey saw the abolition of their monarchies in the close aftermath of the war. During the war, monarchies were planned for the Grand Duchy of Finland (to have a Finnish King), and for Lithuania (Mindaugas II of Lithuania), with a protectorate-like dependency of Germany. Both intended kings renounced their thrones after Germany’s defeat in November 1918.

In 1939 Italy invaded Albania and removed the existing King Zog and instated the Italian King as its new monarch. Italy, along with the other eastern European monarchies of Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania joined with Germany in World War II against the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the western allies and the Soviet Union. As the axis powers came to a defeat in the war, communist partisans in occupied Yugoslavia and occupied Albania seized power and ended the monarchies. Communists in Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania removed their monarchies with strong backing by the Soviet Union, which had many troops and supporters placed there during the course of the war. The King of Italy had switched sides during the war in favour of the western allies, but a referendum in 1946 saw the monarchy ended there as well. A unique feature of the war was the Japanese Emperor who had held a debated but important role in Japan’s warfare against the allied powers, being reduced in stature from a divine monarch to a figurehead one by the occupying United States, instead of being abolished altogether.

In Greece the king was forced into exile after a coup d’état in 1967 and the republic was proclaimed in 1973 (confirmed by referendum in 1974).

The monarchies of India, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe were abolished when, or shortly after, they became independent of the United Kingdom, while remaining within the Commonwealth in the middle of the 20th century or later. That of Ireland was not abolished when Ireland became independent of the United Kingdom in the 1920s, but was abolished by the Republic of Ireland Act of 1948, which came into force in 1949. Pakistan became a republic in 1956. The monarchy in South Africa was abolished in 1961 by referendum. The latest country to become a Commonwealth republic was Mauritius in 1992.

That of Egypt and Sudan was abolished in 1953, after the revolution of 1952; that of Tunisia in 1957, that of Iraq in 1958, that of Libya in 1969, that of Iran was abolished by the Islamic revolution of 1979. In Ethiopia the emperor lost his throne in 1975 due to a communist takeover. Communist revolutions put to end the monarchies of Indochina after World War II: Vietnam in 1955, Laos in 1975 and Cambodia in 1970. Later the monarchy was restored in Cambodia under Norodom Sihanouk in 1993.

Brazil rejected an attempt to restore its monarchy in the 1990s, while efforts to restore the monarchies of some of the Balkanstates in the former Eastern Bloc continue. In Bulgaria, Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, who was deposed from the Bulgarian throne in 1946, was elected and recently served as the Prime Minister of his country from 2001 to 2005. In a 1999 referendum, the voters of Australia rejected a proposal to abolish their monarchy in favour of a specific republic model. The proposal was rejected in all states, with only the Australian Capital Territory voting in favour.

On December 24, 2007, the Nepalese government decided in an accord to abolish the monarchy after the elections to be held in April, 2008. The Nepalese monarchy was formally abolished on 28 May, 2008.

WHO IS NEXT?