Monarchies in The Americas

There are 13 monarchies in the Americas, that is: self-governing states and territories in North and South America where supreme power resides with an individual, who is recognised as the head of state. Each is a constitutional monarchy, wherein the sovereign inherits his or her office, usually keeps it until death or abdication, and is bound by laws and customs in the exercise of their powers. Ten of these monarchies are independent states, and equally share Elizabeth II– who resides primarily in the United Kingdom– as their respective sovereign, making them part of a global grouping known as the Commonwealth realms, while the remaining three are dependencies of European monarchies. As such, none of the monarchies in the Americas has a resident monarch.

These crowns continue a history of monarchy in the Americas that reaches back to before European colonisation. Both tribal and more complex pre-Columbian societies existed under monarchical forms of government, with some expanding to form vast empires under a central king figure, while others did the same with a decentralised collection of tribal regions under a hereditary chieftain. None of the contemporary monarchies, however, are descended from those pre-colonial royal systems, instead either having their historical roots in, or still being a part of, the current European monarchies that spread their reach across the Atlantic Ocean, beginning in the mid 14th century.

From that date on, through the Age of Discovery, European colonisation brought extensive American territory under the control of Europe's monarchs, though the majority of these colonies subsequently gained independence from their rulers. Some did so via armed conflict with their mother countries, as in the American Revolution and the Latin American wars of independence, usually severing all ties to the overseas monarchies in the process. Others gained full sovereignty by legislative paths, such as Canada's patriation of its constitution from the United Kingdom. A certain number of former colonies became republics immediately upon achieving self-governance. The remainder continued with endemic constitutional monarchies– in the cases of Mexico, Brazil, and Haiti– with their own resident monarch, and for places such as Canada and some island states in the Caribbean sharing their monarch with their former metropole, the most recently created being that of Belize in 1981. With the possible exception of Jamaica, there is no major campaign to abolish the monarchy in any of the ten states.