After two world wars, monarchies across the world collapsed. Why did Britain's survive?

At the end of the 19th century, monarchy was still one of the world’s most familiar forms of government.

Across Europe, dynasties ruled vast empires: the Romanovs in Russia, the Habsburgs in Austria-Hungary and the Hohenzollerns in Germany. Beyond Europe, too, hereditary rulers still governed in parts of the Middle East, Asia and Africa.

But as the 20th century progressed, new challenges arose, and monarchies the world over succumbed to the weight of upheaval.

“It’s certainly the case that across the 20th century, monarchy around the world wasn’t exactly a growth industry,” says historian David Cannadine, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast.

So why, at a time when monarchies were falling across the globe, did the British monarchy survive?

The collapse of monarchy in the age of war

The greatest blows to global monarchies came with the two world wars.

“The First World War saw the end of the great monarchies of Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Germany,” Cannadine explains.

In each case, military disaster triggered a political collapse. In Russia, the revolution of 1917 swept away Tsar Nicholas II and ended centuries of Romanov rule. In Germany, defeat forced Kaiser Wilhelm II to abdicate, clearing the way for a republic. In Austria-Hungary, the Habsburg monarchy disintegrated as the empire itself broke apart into successor states.

The aftermath of the Second World War also proved fatal to many thrones.

In Italy, the monarchy was abolished by referendum in 1946 after the fall of fascism. Elsewhere in the mid-20th century, monarchies in states such as Egypt and Iraq were overthrown amid coups, revolution and the rise of assertive nationalist politics.

Across much of the world, the trend was quite stark. Monarchy was retreating, and often doing so under pressure of war, defeat and an appetite for political instability.

A rare survivor

The British monarchy wasn’t the only one to survive the century. Other European states, especially in Scandinavia, as well as Belgium and the Netherlands, also retained their royal houses.

But in broader global terms, monarchy was plainly in decline.

“The survival of the British monarchy stands out against the general trend,” says Cannadine.

One of the most important reasons for its survival is quite straightforward.

“I think part of the answer is that it was a fluke that Britain was on the winning side in both the First and the Second World Wars,” Cannadine says. “The reason the Austro-Hungarian and the German monarchies disappeared was because of spectacular military defeats.”

Clearly, in the 20th century, monarchies were especially vulnerable when military defeat destroyed confidence in the political order and made subsequent change more possible.

Britain, by contrast, emerged from both wars victorious. That outcome strengthened, rather than shattered, confidence in the state and its institutions. The monarchy, as one of those institutions, benefited accordingly.

Inertia, loyalty and the difficulty of abolition

Wartime success, however, is only part of the story. Another is institutional inertia.

Long-established institutions often survive because abolishing them is politically difficult. That is especially true of monarchy, which is woven into the legal, ceremonial and symbolic fabric of the state.

Cannadine points out that predictions of royal collapse are a recurring feature of British public life. “We are constantly told that whatever the latest crisis is could spell the end of the House of Windsor,” he says. As it stands, such predictions have rarely amounted to much.

“What would it take to get rid of the British monarchy?” Cannadine asks. In practice, there is no clear answer.

Monarchy in a democratic system

The British monarchy’s endurance also reflects the way it fits into the country’s constitutional order.

Over the course of the 19th century, Britain evolved into a parliamentary democracy in which real governing power rested with elected politicians rather than monarchs. In this new political world, the monarch became a primarily ceremonial head of state.

That arrangement can seem contradictory. How can a hereditary office survive in a democratic political culture?

One classic answer was offered by the 19th-century writer Walter Bagehot, who distinguished between the “dignified” and the “efficient” parts of the constitution. Government and parliament carried out the practical work of rule, while the monarchy embodied continuity, ceremony and national identity.

“It’s probably a better arrangement to have a head of state and a chief executive… and for them not to be the same person,” Cannadine explains.

In presidential systems such as that of the United States, those roles are combined, meaning there is no head of state who transcends the turbulence of political disagreement. In the British context, the prime minister operates in the contested world of party politics, while the monarch stands outside it, symbolising the nation state without directly running it.

“The chief executive is chosen by the people … and if you want a head of state who is separate from that world and above that world, then why not make it hereditary?”

Naturally, not everyone finds that logic persuasive.

Elizabeth II and the power of continuity

If geopolitics and constitutional structures explain part of the story of the British monarchy’s continued existence, personality explains another crucial aspect – above all in the case of Elizabeth II.

“What became very important was that she was around for so long,” Cannadine explains.

Her reign lasted from 1952 to 2022: seven decades in which Britain changed profoundly. The empire disappeared, old assumptions about class and deference weakened, and Britain’s place in the world order shifted repeatedly.

Through all this, to some it seemed like it was monarchy alone that remained a constant anchor. “There was that sense that she provided some kind of stable reassurance as so much else changed. That became enormously important,” Cannadine says.

Her style of monarchy mattered, too. She avoided overt political controversy, rarely gave away personal views, and maintained a disciplined public neutrality that helped preserve the monarch’s role as a unifying national figure sitting above the ebb and flow of politics.

Crisis – and resilience

None of this means the monarchy moved through the 20th century untouched by crisis.

“There were some pretty sticky patches,” Cannadine acknowledges.

The Suez Crisis of 1956 exposed Britain’s declining global power. Later decades brought repeated waves of criticism directed at the royal family itself, especially in the 1990s, when marital breakdown, media scrutiny and the aftermath following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales prompted serious questions about the institution’s future.

That resilience points to another reason for the endurance of the British monarchy: its ability to adjust without fundamentally changing its core role. It’s changed with the times but recognisably remains the same institution.

It’s these factors, Cannadine says, that – when taken together – help to explain why, in a century marked by the fall of thrones elsewhere, the British crown has kept itself alive.

David Cannadine was speaking to Danny Bird on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.