The Rise of Female Kings in Europe, 1300-1800
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8. Evgenyi Anisimov's detailed biography of Anna (Moscow, 2002) remains untranslated, and his account of her reign in Five Empresses is extremely negative. Compare Mina Curtiss, The Forgotten Empress: Anna Ivanovna and Her Era, 1730–1740s (New York, 1974); also Marker, “Sacralizing Female Rule,” 180–81, and Ansimov, Five Empresses, 95, 100.
9. Frederick II, Mémoires, ed.. Boutaric and Campardon, 2 vols. (Paris 1866), 1:40.
10. Catherine II, Sochineniia, ed. A. N. Pypin (1907; reprint, Osnabrück, 1967), 586–88.
11. Anisimov, Five Empresses, 81.
12. Georg Wolfgang Krafft, Description et representation exacte de la Maison de Glace, construite à St. Petersbourg au mois de Janvier 1740, et de tous les meubles qui s'y trouvent (St. Petersburg, 1741); Anisimov, Five Empresses, 91–92. On her medals, see Béatrice Coullaré, ed., Médailles russes du Louvre, 1672–1855 (Paris, 2006); none celebrated Anna's most important foundation, the Noble Cadet Corps, or her ballet school.
13. Gesprach in Raum der Todten zwischen Elisabetha Königin von England und Irland und Anna Ivanowna, Kaiserin und Selbsthalterin aller Russen (Frankfurt, 1741), 111–12. Another German dialogue of the dead began with the newly arrived Anna, seated in the underworld with Catherine I, receiving a petition sent from Siberia by her favorite, Biron: Allerwichtig Curioseste Staats-Handel im Reich der Todten: Geheim Unterredung (Frankfurt/Leipzig, 1741), 1–20.
14. Anisimov, Five Empresses, 127–70. Because of her husband, the regent was also known as Anna Karlovna.
15. Francine-Dominique Lichtenhahn, Elisabeth Ire de Russie: l'autre impératrice (Paris, 2007). The first edition (1986) of the best modern Russian biography is available in English: Evgeny Anisimov, Empress Elizabeth: Her Reign and Her Russia, 1741–1761 (Gulf Breeze, Fla., 1995); Anisimov's revised version of 1999 has not been translated into English.
16. Lichtenhahn, Elisabeth, 106–19; Anisimov, Elizabeth, 164–66.
17. Krönungs-Geschichte, oder Umständliche Beschreibung des solennen Einzugs, und der hohen Salbung und Krönung Ihro Kayserl. Majest. der allerdurchlauchtigsten, grossmächtigsten Fürstin und grossen Frau Elisabeth Petrowna Kayserin und Selbstherrscherin aller Reussen etc. (St. Petersburg, 1745); Lichtenhahn, Elisabeth, 212–14, 260–61.
18. Solid diplomatic account by Francine Lichtenhahn, La Russie entre en Europe (Paris, 1997); also her Elisabeth, 38. As late as 1781 contested diplomatic protocol held up a military alliance for several months between two so-called enlightened despots of imperial rank, Catherine II and Joseph II of Austria, because Joseph refused to sign a copy that named the Russian first; Catherine finally evaded the problem through an exchange of private letters: see Isabel de Maradiaga, “The Secret Austro-Russian Treaty of 1781,” in Slavonic and East European Review 38 (1959–60), 114–45.
19. Compare Coullaré, Médailles russes, with P. Ricaud de Tiregale, Médailles sur les principaux événemens de l'Empire de Russie, depuis le règne de Pierre le Grand jusqu'à celui de Catherine II (Potsdam, 1772), #111, 77–90.
20. Anisimov, Elizabeth, 67–72; Lichtenhahn, Elisabeth, 316–19.
21. James F. Brennan, Enlightened Despotism in Russia: The Reign of Elisabeth, 1741–1762 (New York, 1987), 66, 163–64, 180, 182–83; Anisimov, Elizabeth, 59–66.
22. Lichtenhahn, Elisabeth, 224–33.
23. Virginia Rounding, Catherine the Great (New York, 2006), 110; Catherine is the ultimate source of this reported exchange, but in July 1753 the English ambassador noted, “There was nothing [Elisabeth] desired more than to be at war with that prince [Frederick II].” After both women had died, an Austrian propagandist compared the lives and government of the two empresses: Maria Theresien und Elisabeth im Reiche der Todten: Ein Gespräch zwischen diese beeden Kaiserinnen (Vienna, 1781).
24. Brennan, Enlightened Despotism, 246; Lichtenhahn, Elisabeth, 386; Simon Sebag Montefiore, Prince of Princes: The Life of Potemkin (New York, 2000), 39n.
25. Brennan, Enlightened Despotism, 248; Liechtenhahn, Elisabeth, 377–78.
26. Hélène Carrère d'Encausse, Catherine II: Un âge d'or pour la Russie (Paris, 2005). A pamphlet printed at Riga in 1764 called her die allerdurchlauchtigste, grossmächtigste Kaiserin und Frau Catharina Alexiewna, Selbstherrscherin aller Reussen etc. als unserer von Gott geschenkten allerhuldreichsten Landesmutter; one from Tallinn twenty years later extolled der Regierungszeit der grossen Catharina der IIen.
27. Anisimov, Five Empresses, 293, 316; Katherine Anthony, trans., Memoirs of Catherine the Great (New York, 1935), 326; on her papers, see Alexander Kamenskij's overview in Claus Scharf, ed., Katharina II, Russland und Europa: Beiträge zur internationalen Forschung (Mainz, 2001), 565–69.
28. Isabel de Madariaga's classic Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great (London, 1981) was later condensed as Catherine the Great: A Short History (New Haven, 1990). In addition to Scharf's volume, other published bicentennial proceedings include Eckhard Hübner, Jan Kusber und Peter Nitsche, eds., Russland zur Zeit Katharinas II (Cologne, 1998), and Anita Davidenkoff, ed., Catherine II et l'Europe (Paris, 1997), along with an exhibition catalogue: John Vrieze, ed., Catharina, die Keizerin en de Kunsten; uit de schatzkammers van de Hermitage (Zwolle, 1996).
29. Anisimov, Five Empresses, 277–83.
30. De Madariaga, Russia, 115–17.
31. Anisimov, Five Empresses, 298–300.
32. An eighty-page pamphlet commemorated him: Histoire de la vie de George de Browne, comte du Saint-Empire, gouverneur général de Livonie et d'Esthonie, général en chef des armées de Sa Majesté l'impératrice de toutes les Russies (Riga, 1795; also in German [Vienna, 1795]).
33. Anisimov, Five Empresses, 295.
34. Robert Werlich, Russian Orders, Decorations and Medals (Washington, 1981). After the partitions of Poland, Catherine's Russia also absorbed the honorary Polish orders of the White Eagle and St. Stanislaus, founded by Stanislas Poniatowski in 1765. Grieg's commemorative pamphlet lists all his major honors: Kanzelrede, bey der feyerlichen Beerdigung Seiner Excellenz, des hochgebohrnen Herrn Samuel Greigh, Ihro Russischkayserlichen Majestät hochbetrauten Admirals, Oberbefehlshabers der Russischen Flotte in der Ostsee, Mitglieds des Admiralitätscollegii und der Academie der Wissenschaften, Ritters des H. Andreas, des H. Alexander-Newsky, vom grossen Kreuze des Heiligen Georgs, erster Klasse des H. Wladimirs und des H. Annen Ordens, gehalten in der Ritter- und Domkirche zu Reval, den 31sten October 1788 (Reval, 1788).
35. De Madariaga, Russia, 267.
36. John T. Alexander, Catherine the Great: Life and Legend (Oxford, 1989), 180–82.
37. Paul Dukes, ed., Catherine the Great's Instruction (Nakaz) to the Legislative Commission, 1767 (Newtonville, Mass., 1977); also see above, pp. 38–39.
38. Anisimov, Five Empresses, 294; De Madariaga, Russia, 151; Alexander, Catherine, 101.
39. De Madariaga, Russia, 277–91, 487, 586 (quote); Alexander, Catherine, 190–91.
40. Evgenia Shchukina, “Catherine II and Russian Metallic Art,” in Magnus Olausson, ed., Catherine the Great and Gustav III (Stockholm, 1999), 313–19; Coullaré, Médailles russes. Both British medical medals are in the British Museum. The preface to Ricaud de Tiregale's Médailles claimed that, like the ancient Romans, his own age had perpetuated “the exploits and great deeds of illustrious men [sic]” in metal.
41. B. F. Brekke, The Copper Coinage of Imperial Russia, 1700–1917 (Malmö, 1977), 109.
42. Her memoirs only recently appeared in their original language: Princess Dashkova, Mon Histoire, ed. Alexandre Woronzoff-Dashkova (Paris, 1999) (quote, 157).
43. C.-F.-P. Masson, Mémoires secrets sur la Russie (Paris, 1800), 2:116 (the Comte de Ségur tells the same story about Dashkova in his memoirs); Dashkova, Mon Histoire, 224, 226.
44. Marie-Liesse Pierre-Dulau, “Trois artistes lorrains à Saint-Petersbourg au XVIIIe siècle,” in Davidenkoff, Catherine II et l'Europe, 156. St. Petersburg's Russian State Museum contains a full-size bronze model of Collot's head of Peter.
45. Q
uoted in Natalie Bondil, ed., Catherine the Great: Art for Empire (Montreal, 2007), 64.
46. Michael Raeburn, Ludmila Voronikhina, and Andrew Nurnberg, eds., The Green Frog Service (London/St. Petersburg, 1995).
47. Fullest discussion in Alexander, Catherine, 201–26.
48. On their possible marriage, see Sebag Montefiore, Potemkin, 138–40; de Madariaga, Russia, 566.
49. On her reactions to revolutionary France, see Carrère d'Encausse, Catherine II, 529–57 (quote, 557). The Russian National Library has nine printed lists of French men and women taking this oath after February 1793: Rossica 13.VIII.2. nos. 365–73.
50. L'ombre de Catherine II aux Champs-Elysees ("Kamchatka,” 1797); an almost identical version was entitled Conferences de Catherine II avec Louis XVI, le grand Frédéric et Pierre le Grand, aux Champs-Elysées ("Moscow,” 1797). Its author remains unidentified, but his familiarity with both Prussia and Russia suggests the Comte de Ségur.
51. Catherine II, Sochineniia, 583–94.
52. Alexander, Catherine, 97.
Chapter 8. Female Rule After 1800
1. Charles-François-Philibert Masson, Les Helvétiens, en huit chants, avec des notes historiques (Paris: an VIII [=1800]; this account uses his Mémoires secrets sur la Russie, 2d printing, 2 vols. (Paris, 1800).
2. Masson, Memoirs, 1:78–83, 2:128.
3. Ibid., 1:135–36.
4. Compare epigraph with Eileen McDonagh, “Political Citizenship and Democratization: The Gender Paradox,” American Political Science Review 96 (2002), 535–52.
5. Isabel Burdiel, Isabel II: No se Puede Reinar Inocentemente (Madrid, 2004); Ester de Lemos, D. Maria II (A Rainha e a Mulher) (Lisbon, 1954).
6. Rebecca Howard Davis, Women and Power in Parliamentary Democracies: Cabinet Appointments in Western Europe, 1968–1992 (Lincoln, Neb., 1997), 17.
7. Blema Steinberg, Women in Power: The Personalities and Leadership Styles of Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, and Margaret Thatcher (Montreal, 2008); Katharine Anthony, trans., Memoirs of Catherine the Great (New York, 1935), 325.
8. J. B. Almeida Garrett, “Tratado de Educaçaõ,” in Obras completas, ed. T. Braga, 2 vols. (Lisbon, 1904), 2:310; Walter L. Arnstein, Queen Victoria (New York, 2003), 9.
9. Alain Lanavère, “Zénobie, personnage du XVIIe siècle?” in J. Charles-Gaffiot, H. Lafange, and J.-F. Hofman, eds., Moi, Zénobie, Reine de Palmyre (Milan, 2001), 139–42.
10. Mary Hamer, Signs of Cleopatra: Reading an Icon Historically, 2d ed. (Exeter, 2008), xiv; Hans Volkmann, Kleopatra: Politik und Propaganda (Munich, 1953), 222–23. G. H. Möller's Beiträge zur Dramatischen Kleopatra-Literatur (Schweinfurt, 1907) preceded George Bernard Shaw's play of 1913, which has influenced many subsequent adaptations.
11. See Jonathan Clements, Wu (Sutton, UK, 2007), 188–96. Wu also served as the centerpiece of a television series in 1984 featuring numerous Kung-Fu episodes.
12. John T. Alexander, Catherine the Great (Oxford, 1989), 329–41; John Vrieze, ed., Catharina, die Keizerin en de Kunsten; uit de schatzkammers van de Hermitage (Zwolle, 1996), 277–80.
Bibliographical Essay
Because female rulers have been so rare throughout recorded history, they have almost always been treated as isolated individuals. To the best of my knowledge, no previous work has tried to examine the political record of every female monarch throughout Europe across several centuries and attempt to discover long-term trends of female rule in European civilization. There is a useful resource, constantly updated, for identifying all sorts of politically influential women throughout history—
Recent attempts by Charles Beem and the late Thierry Wanegffelen (2009) to place women rulers into broader historical contexts offer contrasting merits and defects. In The Lioness Roared: The Problems of Female Rule in English History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). Beem examined “the long view of female rulership as a particular category of English kingship” from the twelfth century to the twentieth, and he also introduced the useful phrase “female kings.” The greatest defect in his work is the limiting adjective “English” insularity prevents Beem from placing any of his subjects in the context of other contemporary female rulers throughout Europe. Wanegffelen's Le Pouvoir contesté: souveraines d'Europe à la Renaissance (Paris: Payot, 2008) reverses both Beem's shortcomings and his virtues; it offers a more cosmopolitan approach to a period that was unusually rich in female monarchs and regents, but it lacks Beem's chronological depth. Furthermore, because Wanegffelen remains centered in France, the most important kingdom in Europe to prohibit female inheritance, he (like Jansen) paints early modern Europe's widespread experiences with female rule in essentially negative colors. For very different reasons, neither Beem nor Wanegffelen pays much attention to the most important female sovereign of this era, England's Elizabeth I.
Although abundant scholarship surrounds Europe's most successful female rulers, all of whom have useful and often superb biographies in English, these women have nearly always been treated in isolation from each other. Only one author, Katharine Anthony, ever published well-researched and well-written biographies of two extremely successful European female monarchs from different countries and centuries, and she did so over eighty years ago. Both her Catherine the Great (New York, 1925) and her Queen Elizabeth (New York, 1929) have sold more than a hundred thousand copies, and both have been reprinted within the last decade (2003 and 2004). Neither biography mentions the other woman. The remainder of this survey lists the works—overwhelmingly biographies of individual women rulers—that I have found most useful for discussing the more important women rulers featured in each chapter. This selection privileges titles in English and French, although occasional titles in Spanish and German are included when they offer invaluable information not available elsewhere.
Chapter 1
The best study of the first truly historical female sovereign is Joyce Tyldesley's Hatchepsut: The Female Pharaoh (New York: Viking, 1996). Her Ptolemaic successor Cleopatra VII (r. 50–30 B.C.) ranks among the world's best known (if not necessarily best understood) female rulers, with new studies about her appearing almost annually. Two recent biographies, Duane Roller's Cleopatra: A Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010) and Stacy Schiff's Cleopatra: A Life (Boston: Little, Brown, 2010), provide serviceable introductions, while Joyce Tyldesley's Cleopatra: Last Queen of Egypt (New York: Basic Books, 2008) examines her from an Egyptologist's perspective. Recent exhibitions, especially Susan Walker and Sally-Ann Ashton, eds., Cleopatra Reassessed (London: British Museum, 2003), also offer useful information on her reign, and Mary Hamer, Signs of Cleopatra: Reading an Icon Historically, 2d ed. (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2008), is informative on her representations.
On China's only female empress, Jonathan Clements, Wu: The Chinese Empress Who Schemed, Seduced and Murdered Her Way to Become a Living God (Stroud: Sutton, 2007)
, is lively and informative, but there is more political context in R. W. L. Guisso, Wu Tse T'ien and the Politics of Legitimation in T'ang China (Bellingham, Wash., 1978). On Japan's early female tennos, see Joan R. Piggott, The Emergence of Japanese Kingship (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997). On Byzantium, Judith Herrin, Women in Purple: Rulers of Medieval Byzantium (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), offers the best introduction. Fatima Mernissi, The Forgotten Queens of Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), provides a valuable introduction to women rulers in Islamic history. It must be supplemented by the essays in Gavin Hambly, ed., Women in the Medieval Islamic World: Power, Patronage, and Piety (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998).
Historians of art and architecture have provided the most valuable approaches to the Christian female monarchs of the high Middle Ages. The most useful introduction to the reign of the Greek Orthodox Tamar of Georgia is Antony Eastmond, Royal Imagery in Medieval Georgia (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998). For medieval Latin Christendom, the most enlightening work is Therese Martin, Queen as King: Politics and Architectural Propaganda in Twelfth-Century Spain (Leiden: Brill, 2006). A small bibliography has grown up around Martin's central figure, Urraca of Castile-León, since Bernard Reilly's The Kingdom of León-Castilla under Queen Urraca, 1109–1126 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982); those who read Spanish can profit from Maria del Carmen Pallares Mendez, La Reina Urraca (San Sebastian, 2006).
Chapter 2
The last author to attempt any general discussion of female rulers in Western history was Mrs. [Anna] Jameson, whose two-volume Memoirs of Celebrated Female Sovereigns (which she admitted might have been more properly entitled “Comparative Studies”) appeared at London in 1831. It intended “to present, in a small compass, an idea of the influence which a female government has had generally on men and nations, and of the influence which the possession of power has had individually on the female character” (ix–x). After 180 years, Jameson's choice of twelve major female monarchs still seems excellent: her first volume reached from Semiramis to Elizabeth I, and her second began with Christina of Sweden and ended with Catherine II. However, Jameson's questioning how far any woman sovereign could “render [her] inseparable defects as little injurious to society, and [her] peculiar virtues as little hurtful to herself, as possible” (xiii) predicted Queen Victoria almost perfectly but seems badly outdated today. I have tried to provide a general criterion for isolating de jure female rulers in states above the level of duchies in “Gendered Sovereignty: Numismatics and Female Rule in Europe, 1300–1800,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 41 (2011), 533–64.