When royals marry among themselves, it brings an unexpected peace dividend
Torsten BellThe more monarchies across Europe were intertwined, the fewer wars there were
Millennia of stationary bandits marrying off daughters to the sons of the stationary bandit next door. One the ground that if his son is fucking my daughter then perhaps he’s less likely to come kill me. You know, one grandpops killing the other is a bit tricky to explain?
People deliberately created such familial networks in order to achieve such peace. For millennia.
Got to hand it to the Resolution Foundation. They have caught up eventually.
World War One would like a word…
Not quite.
Marriages were about forging alliances.
These alliances were often temporary : a generation later and Princess Maria Theresa Dorothea has died and once more the Grand Duchy of Shitholen am Rhein is at wat with the Principality of Snottebukketland.
Wars became less frequent because they became too difficult, complex and costly to undertake and politicians didn’t like them.
Yeah Jonathan. I understand it was Kaiser Bill’s envy of the British fleet and desire to outbuild it that led to the 2nd Reich adding the UK to its French and Russian enemies.
I am a convinced Fischerist and believe that Germany engineered the July Crisis specifically to undertake its desire to ‘deal with’ Russia.
It gambled on British neutrality and indeed once Britain had won the Arms Race in 1912 there was quite a rapprochement between the two.
The British Army under Wilson practised war with Germany from 1908, true , but the real potential enemy was still seen to be Russia on the North West Frontier. If the war had remained on land or in the Baltic, then I think Britain would have stayed neutral.
The invasion of Belgium and possibility of the Channel ports coming under German control changed all that.
At least with WWI our cabinet had serious discussions and several of those who lost the argument resigned.
Contrast with the pathetic cabinet response to Covid. Once Boris had buckled to the spurious Science there was no resistance from the cabinet. Needless to say there was none from the opposition either. Hang the fuckers!
Henry VII (1485- 1509) had 3 kids who made it to adulthood.
Eldest, Margaret married James IV of Scotland
Youngest, Mary, married Louis XII of France.
You can’t fault Henry VII for trying, but this hardly stopped England trying to kick 7 bells out of Scotland and vice-versa (remember that Scotland would have been about 3 to 1 on to win the English at Flodden).
Unless the Resolution Foundation is saying, ah, but wait, his great grandson who was already King of Scotland by then became King of England by the the laws of succession in 1603, so the wars between them stopped happening as the same dude was in charge of both. But they didn’t stop having armed conflicts until about 1745, when the House of Hanover was in charge, but by then it was notional as Parliament (both houses) had taken effective control.
Is there a moral. Don’t have royals with real power, imv.
He’s not heard of the War of the Austrian Succession (750,000 dead and wounded), the War of the Spanish Succession (700,000 to 1.25 million), the War of the Polish Succession (97,000) the War of the Bavarian Succession (20,000) and others.
@ANNRQ
Those numbers make the English Civil War (~200,000 dead) look rather pedestrian.