Thursday 21st April 2016 at 5.30pm – A Global Queen
To mark the 90th birthday of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, David Cannadine, eminent Professor of History at Princeton University explores the worldwide role and significance of the British monarchy.
Starting with the Queen’s accession in 1952, David Cannadine looks at Her Majesty’s many world tours to her dominions and former colonies across more than 60 years on the British throne, and assesses her role as Head of the British Commonwealth of Nations.
240 years ago, however, another long-lived and long-reigning British monarch, George III, was having severe problems with his own global role, as sovereign of the 13 British colonies in America. They were up in arms about new taxes being imposed by the British government and the mood in the rebellious provinces was revolutionary.
David Cannadine travels to New York with city historian Barnet Schecter. He hears how, in that fateful year of 1776 when the American Declaration of Independence was proclaimed, a mob, enflamed with revolutionary fervour, descended to the southern tip of the island of Manhattan and, at the Bowling Green, tore down the gilded statue of the King. This symbolic act marked the end of George III’s power in America.
David also explores his own archive of memorabilia of another long-reigning British monarch, Queen Victoria. Victoria RI as she was proclaimed – Victoria Regina et Imperatrix (Queen and Empress) – ruled India in pomp and splendour, and in 1897 celebrated her own Diamond Jubilee in the presence of colonial representatives from all over the British Empire.
With the assistance of Princeton British colonial history specialists Martha Groppo and Adrian Young, David examines the very different world roles of these three very long-lived British sovereigns.