Former Monarchies
Most pre-Columbian cultures of the Americas developed and flourished for centuries under monarchical systems of government. By the time Europeans arrived on the continents in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, however, many of these civilizations had ceased to function, due to various natural and artificial causes. Those that remained up to that period were eventually defeated by the agents of European monarchical powers, who, while they remained on the European continent, thereafter established new American administrations overseen by delegated viceroys. Some of these colonies were, in turn, replaced by either republican states or locally founded monarchies, ultimately overtaking the entire American holdings of some European monarchs; those crowns that once held or claim territory in the Americas include the Spanish, Portuguese, French, Swedish, and Russian, and even Baltic Courland, Holy Roman, Prussian and Norwegian. Certain of the locally established monarchies were themselves also overthrown through revolution, leaving five current pretenders to American thrones.
Read more about this topic: Monarchies In The Americas
Famous quotes containing the word monarchies:
“If our vaunted “rule of the people” does not breed nobler men and women than monarchies have done—it must and will inevitably give place to something better.”
—Anna Julia Cooper (1859–1964)
“The descendants of Holy Roman Empire monarchies became feeble-minded in the twentieth century, and after World War I had been done in by the democracies; some were kept on to entertain the tourists, like the one they have in England.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)