Travel by European and ‘native’ monarchs and other royals between Europe, Asia and Africa developed as a new form of personal and international politics in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The pageantry and politics of royal tours during the age of empire provides great insight into modern monarchy, colonialism and transnational cultural encounters.

Royals on Tour explores visits by European monarchs and princes to colonies, and by indigenous royals to Europe in the 1800s and early 1900s with case studies of travel by royals from Britain, France, Portugal, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Japan, the Dutch East Indies and French Indochina. Such tours projected imperial dominion and asserted the status of non-European dynasties. The celebrity of royals, the increased facility of travel, and the interest of public and press made tours key encounters between Europeans and non-Europeans. The reception visitors received illustrate the dynamics of empire and international relations. Ceremonies, speeches and meetings formed part of the popular culture of empire and monarchy. Mixed in with pageantry and protocol were profound questions about the role of monarchs, imperial governance, relationships between metropolitan and overseas elites, and evolving expressions of nationalism.

Introduction1. Empire Tours: Royal travel between colonies and metropoles - Robert Aldrich and Cindy McCreery2. Royal tour by proxy: The embassy of Sultan Alauddin of Aceh to the Netherlands, 1601–1603 - Jean Gelman Taylor3. French imperial tours: Napoléon III and Eugénie in Algeria and beyond - Robert Aldrich4. Something borrowed, something blue: Prince Alfred’s precedent in overseas British royal tours, c.1860–1925 - Cindy McCreery5. Royalty, loyalism, and citizenship in the late nineteenth-century British settler empire - Charles V. Reed6. The Maharaja of Gondal in Europe in 1883 - Caroline Keen7. Performing monarchy: The Kaiser and Kaiserin’s voyage to the Levant, 1898 - Matthew P. Fitzpatrick8. Colonial kings in the metropole: The visits to France of King Sisowath (1906) and Emperor Khai Dinh (1922) - Robert Aldrich9. Tensions of empire and monarchy: The African tour of the Portuguese crown prince in 1907 - Filipa Lowndes Vicente and Inês Vieira Gomes10. Belgian royals on tour in the Congo (1909–1960) - Guy Vanthemsche11. Royal symbolism: Crown Prince Hirohito’s tour to Europe in 1921 - Elise K. Tipton12. The Throne behind the Power? Royal tours of ‘Africa Italiana’ under fascism - Mark Seymour13. Strained encounters: Royal Indonesian visits to the Dutch court in the early twentieth century - Susie Protschky14. The 1947 royal tour in Smuts’ Raj: South African Indian responses - Hilary SapireIndex

Royals on Tour explores visits by European monarchs and princes to colonies, and by indigenous royals to Europe in the 1800s and early 1900s with case studies of travel by royals from Britain, France, Portugal, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Japan, the Dutch East Indies and French Indochina. Such tours projected imperial dominion and asserted the status of non-European dynasties. The celebrity of royals, the increased facility of travel, and the interest of public and press made tours key encounters between Europeans and non-Europeans. The reception visitors received illustrate the dynamics of empire and international relations. Ceremonies, speeches and meetings formed part of the popular culture of empire and monarchy. Mixed in with pageantry and protocol were profound questions about the role of monarchs, imperial governance, relationships between metropolitan and overseas elites, and evolving expressions of nationalism.