More than Mere Spectacle

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18th century
19th century
act of homage
budapest
case studies
Category=NHB
Category=NHD
conferred legitimacy
coronation ceremonies
cultural significance
democracy
diplomacy
early modern europe
elaborate coronations
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
europe
european history
family
habsburg dynasty
habsburg monarchy
historical
historical phenomenon
history
inaugurations
kings of europe
medieval europe
modern governance
new rulers
nobility
political
political power
realistic
revolutionaries
royalty
world history

Product details

  • ISBN 9781836953654
  • Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
  • Publication Date: 01 Nov 2025
  • Publisher: Berghahn Books
  • Publication City/Country: GB
  • Product Form: Paperback
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Across the medieval and early modern eras, new rulers were celebrated with increasingly elaborate coronations and inaugurations that symbolically conferred legitimacy and political power upon them. Many historians have considered rituals like these as irrelevant to understanding modern governance—an idea that this volume challenges through illuminating case studies focused on the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Habsburg lands. Taking the formal elasticity of these events as the key to their lasting relevance, the contributors explore important questions around their political, legal, social, and cultural significance and their curious persistence as a historical phenomenon over time.

Klaas Van Gelder is a postdoctoral researcher at the State Archives in Ghent and at Ghent University, Belgium. He is the author of Regime Change at a Distance: Austria and the Southern Netherlands following the War of the Spanish Succession (1716–1725) (Leuven, 2016).