Historian Alert

[desertvixen]

 Fellow history buffs/geeks on my f-list, your assistance is requested.

 My current class is History of Modern Europe.  We have to write a 12 or so page paper on a topic we get to pick.  I sent the professor 2 ideas, hoping that she would say one was really spiffy.  She liked both of them however, so I'm looking for more input while I try to make my decision.

 1) Impact of Mary Wollstonecraft and Vindication of the Rights of Woman on female suffrage

 2) "Nationalization" of the British monarchy pre-WW1, becoming more associated with their country and less with monarchy/nobility as a class - ie, things like the name change to Windsor, the family tensions prior to WW1, refusal to evacuate Nicholas II and Alexandra.

 Opinions?

 DV

Comments

[cynthia1960.livejournal.com]

Re: 2) Some of the family tensions prior to WW1 had to do with how the Germans treated Queen Victoria's oldest daughter Victoria (Wilhelm the 2nd's mother). She was never really accepted (die Englanderin, don't have an umlaut handy) by the Germans, and she waited a long time to become Empress, only to be widowed right after her husband became Emperor. There's a pretty gothic tale about how a bunch of Victoria's papers had to be smuggled out of Germany after her death. She wasn't close to her son the Emperor at all. I've got some books at home with information about her.

[cynthia1960.livejournal.com]

Ah, checked the main book out once I got home, and the Empress managed to get her papers smuggled out right *before* she died. The book is An Uncommon Woman, the Empress Frederick, Daughter of Queen Victoria, Wife of the Crown Prince of Prussia, Mother of Kaiser Wilhelm by Hannah Pakula (ISBN 0-684-84216-5).

[desert-vixen.livejournal.com]

I got through her story in Christopher Hibbert's bio of Queen Victoria, and Victoria's Daughters.

The dysfunctionality of royal families is its own very heavy book.

DV

[cynthia1960.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah, I have those books too. Royal families often don't put any fun in dysfunctional, even though people joke that it's good to be Queen.

[betray802.livejournal.com]

<< Royal families often don't put any fun in dysfunctional, even though people joke that it's good to be Queen. >>

In a related theme, there's an article in next week's TV Guide about Matt Lauer's interview with Princes Wills and Harry. Talk about Dysfunction Junction.

Music: Numbers by Bobby Bare

[atomicsappertom.livejournal.com]

You might want to check the timing (July 17, 1917) on the name change to Windsor as to being pre-WW1.

See Heraldica: http://www.heraldica.org/topics/britain/britstyles.htm#1917

[desert-vixen.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link - that website could eat up some of my free time. :)

I thought it was pre-WWI because of the remark from Wilhelm II about watching the Merry Wives of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha as opposed to the actual Shakespeare play.

DV

[atomicsappertom.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Heraldica is an awesome website, even if it hasn't been updated much in awhile.

[kishiriadgr.livejournal.com]

The second, because I really, really dig the history of European royal families starting with Victoria. Robert K Massie, whoohoo!

[desert-vixen.livejournal.com]

I have another bio of Victoria ordered from Amazon, along with a life of Mary Wollstonecraft. I have the big Christopher Hibbert one (Half-Price Books, how I love thee!)

There's also Victoria's Daughters by Jerrold M. Packard, and Born to Rule by Julia P. Gelardi about five of her granddaughters, including Alexandra.

DV

[cynthia1960.livejournal.com]

The Gelardi book is nice because it picks some of the granddaughters that are pretty obscure, not just Alexandra. There's also a book called Princesses by Flora Fraser about the daughters of George III if you want stories from an earlier era.

[desert-vixen.livejournal.com]

Princesses I have read, and have. It was better than her book on Queen Caroline, which was just too detailed, and it killed the subject for me.

The Hanoverians did family drama well.

DV

[cynthia1960.livejournal.com]

Was that The Unruly Queen?

[desert-vixen.livejournal.com]

I think. I sent my copy of it to celticdragonfly because it was just too detailed for a person I wasn't that into.

DV

[oilhistorian.livejournal.com]

"Nationalization" of the British monarchy is more a function of WWI than anything else. The tensions within the "family" before the war were more the result of Wilhelm's boorish behavior than identification with England. The refusal to evacuate the Romanovs was more a political decision than a statement of class identification -- Parliament in particular was opposed to the Autocrat of all the Russias finding refuge in Britain.

The "nationalization" you're looking for is largely a function of WWII: Princess Elizabeth serving in the military, the Royal Family stying in London during the Blitz, Lord Mountbatten commanding in the CBI.

[desert-vixen.livejournal.com]

The refusal to evacuate the Romanovs was more a political decision than a statement of class identification -- Parliament in particular was opposed to the Autocrat of all the Russias finding refuge in Britain.

But it was still a decision to act for England and not for their family - they were cousins, and reportedly close.

Thanks for the comments about focusing more on WW2 and giving some more examples. I could do WW2 as well.

It's basically going to depend now on how my prelim research goes.

DV

[oilhistorian.livejournal.com]

It had little to do with England and more to do with self-preservation. Parliament called the shots in this case. Labor wanted no part of the Romanov dynasty in Britain. The Tories were also fairly ambivalent. Remember, in 1917, the Bolshevik Red Terror had yet to occur. At the time, the name Romanov was synonymous with brutal tyranny and a police state. It's only during the Cold War that the Romanovs begin to look like tragic figures. The tsarist Okrana was every bit as brutal as the Bolshevik Okrana/NKVD/KGB. The tsar was widely loathed throughout the world: so much so, in fact, that Wilson believed the American people would not support US entry until and unless the tsar was deposed. Nicky might have been a fairly decent human being but he did preside over a government that ruled with an iron fist and committed horrible atrocities in his name.

[desert-vixen.livejournal.com]

True. Much of what I've read about Nicky gives the impression that he didn't want to be Tsar, but he was sort of stuck.

DV