Dynastic rulership and nationhood are often considered as providing fundamentally different principles or sources of justifying political authority and power. It is assumed that dynastic rule, where the ruler and the ruling dynasty are hierarchically arranged above subordinated strata of subjects, has been replaced or overwritten by the idea of the national body politic, constituted by free and equal citizens, as the principal source of political legitimation in most parts of the world. However, there are in fact many cases in which dynastic rulership and nationalist politics co-exist and even complement each other. Such juxtapositions and symbioses need deeper conceptual reflection, especially from ‘global’ and ‘connected history’ perspectives, going beyond the traditionally regional scope of studies on modern monarchies.

Socio-political transformations of the nineteenth century, brought about by national state-building and the adaptation strategies pursued by monarchic regimes in response to nationalist activism, have led to the emergence of new landscapes and alignments of monarchical societies. Until today the relationship between nations and ruling dynasties continues to be re-arranged and re-negotiated in large parts of the world. Challenges from national political cultures and the pressures exerted by local as well as transnational public spheres continually modify and re-define ideas of rulership. The contours of the national body politic are in turn profoundly imprinted with notions of territoriality, religion, cultural identity, and historicity inherited from dynastic/monarchic regimes.

This volume will concentrate on relationships between royal dynasties and nation-states in the nineteenth and twentieth century. It will analyse correlations, interdependencies, and interactions of royal dynasties and the historical or on-going processes of building nation-states. Presumably, in these relationships, political ideas played as much a role as questions of representation, performance, and media. The central questions that this anthology seeks to address include: how did ruling dynasties position themselves in the age of nation-states? What were the challenges that they faced, and how did they respond to those? What advantages and disadvantages did these adaption strategies of nations and dynasties have for the actors involved in these processes? How did these trajectories transform the various communities and individuals concerned? How did non-royal actors (e.g. politicians, civil society activists, intellectuals, priests and religious literati, journalists, artists, representatives of working-classes and peasant groups) contribute towards transforming notions of rulership?

We see the inter-dependence of dynastic/monarchic rule and nation-construction as a global phenomenon. Therefore, the proposed volume also seeks to interrogate the manner in which the participants in these nation-making processes took (and continue to take) part in transnational networks and conversations, selectively adapting institutions and ideas from other societies, while also exporting their own exemplars into other parts of the world. These analyses will help to address the broader conceptual question as to whether one ought to think in terms of a simple diachronic transition from dynastic/monarchic rule to the age of nation-states (as conventional narratives about nationalism often suggest), or whether, one ought to think in terms of a more complex globally-entangled affair where examples of rulership from different spaces and times were/are used to conceptualize ‘modern’ communities with the ruler and the ruling family often remaining a nucleus of public identity and debate.

Prospective authors are encouraged to interrogate source materials bearing in mind that the aim of the volume is to focus on transnational histories of dynastic- or monarchy-inflected nation-state construction in the modern world. Especially welcome are analyses which go beyond the histories of specific states, by (for example) foregrounding the impact of ‘foreign’ exemplars on the political system being studied by the author, or analysing the manner in which the regime being studied left an imprint on other societies. Since terms relating to monarchy, dynasty, or nation-state have been subject to extensive debates and translation schemes, conceptual analyses of these terms, as pertinent to the specific case studies in a chapter, are welcome. Authors may choose to focus on political thought, rituals and ceremonies, institutions, media, representations, architecture, or anything else pertinent to the volume’s broad focus. We encourage chapters that interrogate a rich variety of primary sources, while also embedding the specific case studies in broader theoretical arguments.

The volume will be submitted to the Palgrave Studies in Modern Monarchies series (Palgrave Macmillan) edited by Frank Lorenz Müller, Heidi Mehrkens, Heather Jones and Axel Körner, with planned publication in mid-2016. Chapters should be around 7,000 words. In order to be considered for the volume, chapter proposals of 500 words, accompanied by a short biography and summary of research interests (maximum 250 words), must be submitted to the volume editors via e-mail to royalnation.book@gmail.com by 15th April 2015. Accepted authors will be notified by May 2015, and final submissions are due in December 2015.