Courts and Monarchs

Dynastic Courts in Europe and the Middle East

Date/time:
4 October 2012 - 28 February 2013
Thursdays, 10.45am - 12.45pm
Venue:
1 Berkeley Street, London W1J 8DJ
Lecturer:
Philip Mansel
Fees:
Full course (5 lectures) £185.00
Single lecture £42.00
(Includes morning coffee, biscuits and refreshments)

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Courts can be defined as ruling dynasties, their households and palaces. Until 1918 they were keys to power and creativity, and to the growth of countries, cities and armies. Dynastic marriages helped create Spain out of Castile and Aragon, Britain out of England and Scotland. In the nineteenth century the Prussian monarchy and army conquered or united Germany, as the Piedmontese conquered or united Italy. For four centuries the Ottoman dynasty and its servants united the Balkans the Middle East and North Africa in the Ottoman Empire. In Courts and Monarchs Philip Mansel focuses on the dynamic role played by courts in Europe and the Middle East, particularly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Europe continued to be linked by networks of courts, and court cities, until 1914.

Course outline

04
Oct
2012
Friend or Foe? The Ottoman Empire and Europe, from Mehmed the Conqueror to Ataturk

Rather than being the enemy of Europe, from Mehmed the Conqueror's conquest of Constantinople in 1453 the Ottoman Empire was part of it, both diplomatically and economically. The French-Ottoman alliance, lasting from the 1530's to 1914, was one of the most successful in history, with immense political, cultural and economic consequences. Britain was another ally of the Ottoman Empire, intervening in its defence five times after 1798, most spectacularly during the Crimean war. Pictures commissioned by European ambassadors in Constantinople, from Jean-Baptiste Vanmour and others, form an incomparable record of the city, of the Sultans' receptions of ambassadors in Topkapi palace, and of the Ottoman Empire's diplomatic links with Europe.

01
Nov
2012
Grand Tourists in the East: from Liotard to Disraeli

From 1700, as communications improved, many Grand Tourists travelled on from Italy to Constantinople and the ports of the Levant. They were drawn by the desire to see the monuments of antiquity and to study the Ottoman Empire. They included the great portraitist Liotard; architects like "Athenian" Stuart and Wood and Dawkins, who first published books of engravings of Palmyra and Baalbek; and men with literary and political ambitions like Thomas Hope, Byron and Disraeli. The Grand Tour in the Ottoman Empire reached its peak in the early nineteenth century, when Italy could not be visited owing to the Napoleonic wars. The Grand Tour helped form attitudes which strengthened later French and British support for the Ottoman Empire.

29
Nov
2012
Splendours and Catastrophes of the French Monarchy: from Louis XV to Napoleon III

As French monarchs faced increasing opposition, in order to win support they launched a golden age of court patronage, in every art form: painting, architecture, literature and music. This lecture shows how many great painters worked for the French court, including Hubert Robert, David, Baron Gerard and Ingres. Court composers included Cherubini, Berlioz and Auber. The French court increased in size and splendour: Charles X had a larger household than Louis XVI; the Tuileries palace in Paris was better attended than Versailles before 1789. If Paris ended, after the fall of the Second Empire in 1870, as a city without a court, it was as a result of dynastic deaths and military defeats, rather than popular hostility.

17
Jan
2013
Clothes and Power: from Louis XIV to Wilhelm II

Whether they wore embroidered silk like Louis XIV, or shabby military uniforms like Frederick the Great, monarchs used dress as a message to convey power and prestige. Dress was also a weapon, to bind subjects to their rulers, and encourage national industries. Monarchs knew how easily dress and uniforms could satisfy their subjects' vanity. As Oscar Wilde wrote, "it is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances'. Dressing for court was compared to a military campaign, as it took so much time and cost so much money. Louis XVI failed to use dress as a weapon; Napoleon I and Wilhelm II overused it. Until 1917-8 Berlin Vienna and Saint Petersburg were cities of uniforms, in which clothes were a major industry.

28
Feb
2013
The Courts of Europe: the Nineteenth Century Resurgence

The nineteenth century was a golden age of court cities as well as nationalism and industrialisation. Thanks to Napoleon, Venice, Genoa and Amsterdam lost their autonomy and aquired royal palaces. In London, Paris, Brussels, Vienna and Cosntantinople royal and imperial palaces expanded. Monarchs and princes collected voraciously and helped create museums like the Louvre, the Hermitage and the Victoria and Albert. Writers like Chateaubriand and Tennyson, composers such as Liszt and Wagner, architects like von Klenze (who rebuilt Munich and Athens), painters like de Laszlo, were inspired and employed by courts. For their part Balkan states developed new court cities. Courts also remained centres of military and political power. The 1914 war began as a dynastic war, to protect the Austrian empire against the expanding kingdom of Serbia.