Monarchies in the Americas

There are 12 monarchies in the Americas, being either sovereign states or self-governing territories that have a monarch as head of state. Each is a constitutional monarchy, wherein the monarch inherits his or her office according to law, usually keeping it until death or abdication, and is bound by laws and customs in the exercise of their powers. Nine of these monarchies are independent states; they equally share, as monarch of each, the person of Charles III, who resides primarily in the United Kingdom, making them part of a global personal union known as the Commonwealth realms. The others are dependencies of three European monarchies. As such, none of the monarchies in the Americas have a permanently residing monarch, though the Commonwealth realms each have a resident governor-general to represent King Charles III and perform most of his constitutional duties in his name and a high commissioner represents the Queen of Denmark and the Danish government in Greenland. Additionally, each of Canada’s 10 provinces functions as a subnational constituent monarchy, with the constitutional powers vested in the King exercised at the provincial level by a lieutenant governor.

These crowns continue a history of monarchy in the Americas that reaches back to before European colonisation. Both tribal and more complex pre-Columbian societies existed under monarchical forms of government, with some expanding to form vast empires under a central king figure, while others did the same with a decentralised collection of tribal regions under a hereditary chieftain. None of the contemporary monarchies, however, are descended from those pre-colonial royal systems, instead either having their historical roots in, or still being a part of, the current European monarchies that spread their reach across the Atlantic Ocean, beginning in the mid 14th century.

From that date on, through the Age of Discovery, European colonization brought extensive American territory under the control of Europe's monarchs; though, the majority of these colonies subsequently gained independence from their rulers. Some did so via armed conflict with their mother countries, as in the American Revolution and the Latin American wars of independence, usually severing all ties to the overseas monarchies in the process (today, none of the Latin American nations that were former Spanish colonies share a personal union with the Spanish monarchy). Others gained full sovereignty by legislative paths, such as Canada's patriation of its constitution from the United Kingdom. A certain number of former colonies became republics immediately upon achieving self-governance. Haiti, Mexico, and Brazil formed constitutional monarchies with their own resident monarch, though all eventually became republics, and, for places such as Canada and some island states in the Caribbean, sharing their monarch with their former colonial power in the aforementioned personal union, the most recently created being that of Saint Kitts and Nevis in 1983.

## Current monarchies

### Independent monarchies

While the incumbent of each of the independent monarchies of the Americas is the same person and resides predominantly in Europe, each of the states is sovereign and thus has a distinct local monarchy seated in its respective capital, with the monarch's day-to-day governmental and ceremonial duties generally carried out by an appointed local viceroy.

#### Antigua and Barbuda

The monarchy of Antigua and Barbuda has the roots in the monarchy of Spain, which initially founded the colony in the late 15th century and later the monarchy of the United Kingdom, of which the islands were later a Crown colony. On 1 November 1981, the country gained independence from the United Kingdom, retaining the then reigning monarch, Elizabeth II, as monarch of the newly created monarchy of Antigua and Barbuda. The monarch is represented in the country by the Governor-General of Antigua and Barbuda, Sir Rodney Williams.

Elizabeth and her royal consort, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, included Antigua and Barbuda in their 1966 Caribbean tour, and again in the Queen's Silver Jubilee tour of October 1977. Elizabeth returned once more in 1985. For the country's 25th anniversary of independence, on 30 October 2006, Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex, opened Antigua and Barbuda's new parliament building, reading a message from his mother, the Queen. The Duke of York visited Antigua and Barbuda in January 2001.

#### The Bahamas

The monarchy of The Bahamas has the roots in the monarchy of Spain, which initially founded the colony in the late 15th century and later the monarchy of the United Kingdom, of which the islands were later a Crown colony after 1717. On 10 July 1973, the country gained independence from the United Kingdom, retaining the then reigning monarch, Elizabeth II, as monarch of the newly formed monarchy of The Bahamas. The monarch is represented in the country by the Governor-General of the Bahamas, currently Cynthia A. Pratt.

#### Belize

Belize was, until the 15th century, a part of the Mayan Empire, containing smaller states headed by a hereditary ruler known as an ajaw (later k’uhul ajaw). The present monarchy of Belize has its roots in the Spanish monarchy, under the authority of which the area was first colonised in the 16th century, and later the British monarchy, as a Crown colony. On 21 September 1981, the country gained independence from the United Kingdom, retaining the then reigning monarch, Elizabeth II, as monarch of the newly formed monarchy of Belize. The monarch is represented in the country by the Governor-General of Belize, Her Excellency Froyla Tzalam.

#### Canada

Canada's aboriginal peoples had systems of governance organised in a fashion similar to the Occidental concept of monarchy; European explorers often referred to hereditary leaders of tribes as kings. The present monarchy of Canada has its roots in the French and English monarchies, under the authority of which the area was colonised in the 16th–18th centuries, and, later, the British monarchy. The country became a self-governing confederation on 1 July 1867, recognised as a kingdom in its own right, but did not have full legislative autonomy from the British Parliament until the passage of the Statute of Westminster on 11 December 1931, retaining the then-reigning monarch, George V, as monarch of the newly formed monarchy of Canada. The monarch is represented in the country by the governor general of Canada (Currently Mary Simon) and in each of the provinces by a lieutenant governor.

#### Grenada

The monarchy of Grenada has its roots in the French monarchy, under the authority of which the islands were first colonised in the mid 17th century, and later the English and then British monarchy, as a Crown colony. On 7 February 1974, the country gained independence from the United Kingdom, retaining the then reigning monarch, Elizabeth II, as monarch of the newly created monarchy of Grenada. The monarch is represented in the country by the Governor-General of Grenada, currently Dame Cécile La Grenade.

#### Jamaica

The monarchy of Jamaica has its roots in the Spanish monarchy, under the authority of which the islands were first colonised in the late 16th century, and later the English and then British monarchy, as a Crown colony. On 6 August 1962, the country gained independence from the United Kingdom, retaining the then reigning monarch, Elizabeth II, as monarch of the newly created monarchy of Jamaica. The monarch is represented in the country by the Governor-General of Jamaica, Sir Patrick Allen.

Former Prime Minister of Jamaica Portia Simpson-Miller had expressed an intention to oversee the process required to change Jamaica to a republic by 2012; she originally stated this would be complete by August of that year. In 2003, former Prime Minister P.J. Patterson, advocated making Jamaica into a republic by 2007.

#### Saint Kitts and Nevis

The monarchy of Saint Kitts and Nevis has its roots in the English and French monarchies, under the authority of which the islands were first colonised in the early 17th century, and later the British monarchy, as a Crown colony. On 19 September 1983, the country gained independence from the United Kingdom, retaining the then reigning monarch, Elizabeth II, as monarch of the newly created monarchy of Saint Kitts and Nevis. The monarch is represented in the country by the Governor-General of Saint Kitts and Nevis, currently Sir Tapley Seaton.

#### Saint Lucia

The Caribs who occupied the island of Saint Lucia in pre-Columbian times had a complex society, with hereditary kings and shamans. The present monarchy has its roots in the Dutch, French, and English monarchies, under the authority of which the island was first colonised in 1605, and later the British monarchy, as a Crown colony. On 22 February 1979, the country gained independence from the United Kingdom, retaining the then reigning monarch, Elizabeth II, as monarch of the newly created monarchy of Saint Lucia. The monarch is represented in the country by the Governor-General of Saint Lucia, currently Sir Errol Charles.

#### Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

The present monarchy of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines has its roots in the French monarchy, under the authority of which the island was first colonised in 1719, and later the British monarchy, as a Crown colony. On 27 October 1979, the country gained independence from the United Kingdom, retaining the then reigning monarch, Elizabeth II, as monarch of the newly created monarchy of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. The monarch is represented in the country by the Governor-General of Vincent and the Grenadines, currently Dame Susan Dougan.

### European monarchies with territory in the Americas

#### Denmark

Greenland is one of the three constituent countries of the Kingdom of Denmark, with Queen Margrethe II as the reigning sovereign. The territory first came under monarchical rule in 1261 under the King of Norway; by 1380, Norway had entered into a personal union with the Kingdom of Denmark, which became more entrenched with the union of the kingdoms into Denmark–Norway in 1536. After the dissolution of this arrangement in 1814, Greenland remained a Danish colony, and, after its role in World War II, was granted its special status within the Kingdom of Denmark in 1953. The monarch is represented in the territory by the Rigsombudsmand (High Commissioner), Mikaela Engell.

#### Netherlands

Aruba, Curaçao and Sint Maarten are constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and thus have King Willem-Alexander as their sovereign, as do the islands of the Caribbean Netherlands. Aruba was first settled under the authority of the Spanish Crown circa 1499, but was acquired by the Dutch in 1634, under whose control the island has remained, save for an interval between 1805 and 1816, when Aruba was captured by the Royal Navy of King George III. The former Netherlands Antilles were originally discovered by explorers sent in the 1490s by the King of Spain, but were eventually conquered by the Dutch West India Company in the 17th century, whereafter the islands remained under the control of the Dutch Crown as colonial territories. The Netherlands Antilles achieved the status of an autonomous country within the Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1954, from which Aruba was split in 1986 as a separate constituent country of the larger kingdom. The former Netherlands Antilles was dissolved in 2010; two of its islands became constituent countries in their own right (Curaçao and Sint Maarten), while the other three became integral parts of the Netherlands (i.e., the Caribbean Netherlands). The monarch is represented in the constituent countries by the Governor of Aruba, Alfonso Boekhoudt, the Governor of Curaçao, Frits Goedgedrag, and the Governor of Sint Maarten, Eugene Holiday.

#### United Kingdom

The United Kingdom possesses a number of overseas territories in the Americas, for whom King Charles III is monarch. In North America are Anguilla, Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Montserrat, and the Turks and Caicos Islands, while the Falkland Islands, and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands are located in South America. The Caribbean islands were colonised under the authority or the direct instruction of a number of European monarchs, mostly English, Dutch, or Spanish, throughout the first half of the 17th century. By 1681, however, when the Turks and Caicos Islands were settled by Britons, all of the above-mentioned islands were under the control of Charles II of England, Scotland, and Ireland. Colonies were merged and split through various reorganizations of the Crown's Caribbean regions, until 19 December 1980, the date that Anguilla became a British Crown territory in its own right. The monarch is represented in these jurisdictions by: the Governor of Anguilla, Dileeni Daniel-Selvaratnam; the Governor of Bermuda, Rena Lalgie; the Governor of the British Virgin Islands, John Rankin; the Governor of the Cayman Islands, Martyn Roper; the Governor of Montserrat, Sarah Tucker; and the Governor of the Turks and Caicos Islands, Nigel Dakin.

The Falkland Islands, off the south coast of Argentina, were simultaneously claimed for Louis XV of France, in 1764, and George III of the United Kingdom, in 1765, though the French colony was ceded to Charles III of Spain in 1767. By 1833, however, the islands were under full British control. The South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands were discovered by Captain James Cook for George III in January 1775, and from 1843 were governed by the British Crown-in-Council through the Falkland Islands, an arrangement that stood until the South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands were incorporated as a distinct British overseas territory in 1985. The monarch is represented in these regions by Nigel Phillips, who is both the Governor of the Falkland Islands and the Commissioner for South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands.

## Succession laws

Before 28 October 2011, the succession order in the Commonwealth realms, as well as those British overseas territories in the Americas, adhered to male-preference cognatic primogeniture, by which succession passed first to an individual's sons, in order of birth, and subsequently to daughters, again in order of birth. However, following the legislative changes giving effect to the Perth Agreement, succession is by absolute primogeniture for those born after 28 October 2011, whereby the eldest child inherits the throne regardless of gender. As these states share the person of their monarch with other countries, all with legislative independence, the change was implemented only once the necessary legal processes were completed in each realm. Those possessions under the Danish and Dutch crowns already adhere to absolute primogeniture.

## 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.

### Barbados

The monarchy of Barbados had its roots in the English monarchy, under the authority of which the island was claimed in 1625 and colonised in 1627, and later the British monarchy. By the 18th century, Barbados became one of the main seats of the British Crown's authority in the British West Indies, and then, after an attempt in 1958 at a federation with other West Indian colonies, continued as a self-governing colony until, on 30 November 1966, the country gained independence from the United Kingdom, retaining the then reigning monarch, Elizabeth II, as monarch of the newly formed monarchy of Barbados. The monarch was represented in the country by the governor-general of Barbados.

In 1966, Elizabeth's cousin, Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, opened the second session of the first parliament of the newly established country, before the Queen herself, along with Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, toured Barbados. Elizabeth returned for her Silver Jubilee in 1977, and again in 1989, to mark the 350th anniversary of the establishment of the Barbadian Parliament.

Former Prime Minister Owen Arthur called for a referendum on Barbados becoming a republic to be held in 2005, though, the vote was then pushed back to "at least 2006" in order to speed up Barbados' integration in the CARICOM Single Market and Economy. It was announced on 26 November 2007 that the referendum would be held in 2008, together with the general election that year. The vote was, however, postponed again, due to administrative concerns. On 20 September 2021, just over a full year after the announcement for the transition was made, the Constitution (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill, 2021, was introduced to the Parliament of Barbados. Passed on 6 October, the Bill made amendments to the constitution of Barbados, introducing the office of the president to replace the Barbadian monarch as head of state. The next week, on 12 October 2021, incumbent Governor-General of Barbados Dame Sandra Mason was jointly nominated by the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition as the sole candidate for the first president of Barbados and was subsequently indirectly elected on 20 October. Mason took office on 30 November 2021.

### Endemic monarchies

#### Araucania and Patagonia

The Kingdom of Araucania and Patagonia was a short-lived attempt at establishing a constitutional monarchy, founded by French lawyer and adventurer Orelie-Antoine de Tounens in 1860. Nominally, the "kingdom" encompassed the present-day Argentine part of Patagonia and a small segment of Chile, where Mapuche peoples were fighting to maintain their sovereignty against the advancing Chilean and Argentine armed forces. However, Orélie-Antoine never exercised sovereignty over the claimed territory, and his de facto control was limited to nearly fourteen months and to a small territory around a town called Perquenco (at the time mainly a Mapuche tent village), which was also the declared capital of his kingdom.

Orélie-Antoine felt that the indigenous peoples would be better served in negotiations with the surrounding powers by a European leader, and was accordingly elected by a group of Mapuche loncos (chieftains) to be their king. He made efforts to gain international recognition, and attempted to involve the French government in his project, but these efforts proved unsuccessful: the French consul concluded that Tounens was insane, and Araucania and Patagonia was never recognized by any country. The Chileans primarily ignored Orélie-Antoine and his kingdom, at least initially, and simply went on with the occupation of the Araucanía, a historical process which concluded in 1883 with Chile establishing control over the region. In the process, Orélie-Antoine was captured in 1862, and imprisoned in an insane asylum in Chile. After several fruitless attempts to return to his kingdom (thwarted by Chilean and Argentine authorities), Tounens died penniless in 1878 in Tourtoirac, France. A recent pretender, Prince Antoine IV, lived in France until 2017. The previous pretender renounced his claims to the Patagonian throne, even though a few Mapuches continue to recognise the Araucanian monarchy.

#### Aztec

The Aztec Empire existed in the central Mexican region between c. 1325 and 1521, and was formed by the triple alliance of the tlatoque (the Nahuatl term for "speaker", also translated in English as "king") of three city-states: Tlacopan, Texcoco, and the capital of the empire, Tenochtitlan. While the lineage of Tenochtitlan's kings continued after the city's fall to the Spanish on 13 August 1521, they reigned as puppet rulers of the King of Spain until the death of the last dynastic tlatoani, Luis de Santa María Nanacacipactzin, on 27 December 1565.

#### Brazil

Brazil was created as a kingdom on 16 December 1815, when Prince João, Prince of Brazil, who was then acting as regent for his ailing mother, Queen Maria, elevated the colony to a constituent country of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves. While the royal court was still based in Rio de Janeiro, João ascended as king of the united kingdom the following year, and returned to Portugal in 1821, leaving his son, Prince Pedro, Prince Royal, as his regent in the Kingdom of Brazil. In September of that same year, the Portuguese parliament threatened to diminish Brazil back to the status of a colony, dismantle all the royal agencies in Rio de Janeiro, and demanded Pedro return to Lisbon. The Prince, however, feared these moves would trigger separatist movements and refused to comply; instead, at the urging of his father, he declared Brazil an independent Nation on 7 September 1822, leading to the formation of the Empire of Brazil, a constitutional monarchy.

Prince Pedro became the first Emperor of Brazil on 12 October 1822, with the title of Pedro I (on that date, he was formally offered the Throne of the newly created Empire, accepted it, and was acclaimed as monarch), and his coronation took place on 1 December 1822. After Pedro abdicated the throne on 7 April 1831, the Brazilian empire saw only one additional monarch: Pedro II, who reigned for 58 years before a coup d'état overthrew the monarchy on 15 November 1889. There are two pretenders to the defunct Brazilian throne: Bertrand of Orléans-Braganza, head of the Vassouras branch of the Brazilian Imperial Family, and, according to legitimist claims, de jure Emperor of Brazil; and Prince Pedro Carlos of Orléans-Braganza, head of the Petrópolis line of the Brazilian Imperial Family, and heir to the Brazilian throne according to royalists.

The Brazilian constitution of 1988 called for a general vote on the restoration of the monarchy, which was held in 1993. The royalists went to the polls divided, with the press indicating there were actually two princes aspiring to the Brazilian throne (Dom Luiz de Orleans e Bragança and Dom João Henrique); this created some confusion among the voters.

#### Haiti

The entire island of Hispaniola was first claimed on 5 December 1492, by Christopher Columbus, for Queen Isabella, and the first Viceroy of the Americas was established along with a number of colonies throughout the Island. With the later discovery of Mexico and Peru many of the early settlers left for the main land, but some twelve cities and a hundred thousand souls remained, mainly in the Eastern part of the Island. Through the Treaty of Riswick in 1697, King Louis XIV received the western third of the Island from Spain as retribution and formalized the first French pirate settlement in existence since the mid-1600s, with the colony administered by a governor-general representing the French crown, an arrangement that stood until the French Revolution toppled the monarchy of France on 21 September 1792. Though the French government retained control over the region of Saint-Domingue, on 22 September 1804, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, who had served as Governor-General of Saint-Domingue since 30 November 1803, declared himself as head of an independent Empire of Haiti, with his coronation as Emperor Jacques I taking place on 6 October that year. After his assassination on 17 October 1806, the country was split in half, the northern portion eventually becoming the Kingdom of Haiti on 28 March 1811, with Henri Christophe installed as King Henri I. When King Henri committed suicide on 8 October 1820, and his son, Jacques-Victor Henry, Prince Royal of Haiti, was murdered by revolutionaries ten days later, the kingdom was merged into the southern Republic of Haiti, of which Faustin-Élie Soulouque was elected president on 2 March 1847. Two years later, on 26 August 1849, the Haitian national assembly declared the president as Emperor Faustin I, thereby re-establishing the Empire of Haiti. But this monarchical reincarnation was to be short lived as well, as a revolution broke out in the empire in 1858, resulting in Faustin abdicating the throne on 18 January 1859.

#### Inca

The Inca Empire spread across the north western parts of South America between 1438 and 1533, ruled over by a monarch addressed as the Sapa Inca, Sapa, or Apu. The Inca civilization emerged in the Kingdom of Cusco, and expanded to become the Ttahuantin-suyu, or "land of the four sections", each ruled by a governor or viceroy called Apu-cuna, under the leadership of the central Sapa Inca. The Inca Empire eventually fell to the Spanish in 1533, when the last Sapa Inca of the empire, Atahualpa, was captured and executed on 29 August. The conquerors installed other Sapa Inca beginning with Atahualpa's brother, Túpac Huallpa. Manco Inca Yupanqui, originally also a puppet Inca Emperor installed by the Spaniards, rebelled and founded the small independent Neo-Inca State in Vilcabamba, and the line continued until the death of Túpac Amaru in 1572.

#### Maya

The Maya civilization was located on the Yucatán Peninsula and into the isthmian portion of North America, and the northern portion of Central America (Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and Honduras) comprised a number of ajawil, ajawlel, or ajawlil – hierarchical polities headed by an hereditary ruler known as a k’uhul ajaw "divine lord" (the Classic Maya term for a sovereign leader).

Despite constant warfare and shifts in regional power, most Maya kingdoms remained a part of the region's landscape, even following subordination to hegemonic rulers through conquest or dynastic union. Nonetheless, the Maya civilization began its decline in the 8th and 9th centuries, and by the time of the arrival of the Spanish, only a few kingdoms remained, such as the Peten Itza kingdom, Mam, Kaqchikel, and the K'iche' Kingdom of Q'umarkaj. On 13 March 1697, the last Maya king—Kan Ek’, of the Itza Maya—was defeated at the Itza capital Nojpetén by the forces of King Philip IV of Spain.

#### Mexico

With the victory of the Mexicans over the Spanish imperial army in 1821, the Viceroyalty of New Spain came to a conclusion. The newly independent Mexican Congress still desired that King Ferdinand VII, or another member of the House of Bourbon, agree to be installed as Emperor of Mexico, thereby forming a type of personal union with Spain. The Spanish monarchy, however, refused to recognise the new state, and decreed that it would allow no other European prince to take the throne of Mexico. Thus, the Mexican Agustín de Iturbide was crowned as Augustine I on 19 May 1822, with an official decree of confirmation issued two days following. Only a few months later, Augustine dissolved a factious congress, thereby prompting an enraged Antonio López de Santa Anna to mount a coup, which led to the declaration of a republic on 1 December 1822. In order to end the unrest, Augustine abdicated on 19 March 1823 and left the country, and the Mexican monarchy was abolished. After hearing that the situation in Mexico had only grown worse since his abdication, Iturbide returned from England on 11 May 1824, but was detained upon setting foot in Mexico and, without trial, was executed.

Archduke Maximilian of Austria, brother of the Emperor of Austria, and descendant of the prior Habsburg rulers of Mexico as New Spain, was elected Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico by the Assembly of Notables in Mexico City, thereby re-establishing the Mexican monarchy.

The year before, Benito Juárez, the republican President of Mexico, suspended all repayments on Mexico's foreign debts (save those owed to the United States), leading France, the United Kingdom, and Spain to send a joint expeditionary force that took Veracruz in December 1861. Juárez then repaid the debts, after which British and Spanish troops withdrew, but Emperor Napoleon III of France and Mexican monarchists used the opportunity to overthrow the republic and install a Mexican monarch friendly to the interests of France and the Mexican nobility.

The new Mexican emperor ultimately did not bow to Napoleon's wishes, leading the latter to withdraw the majority of his influence from Mexico. Regardless, Maximilian was still viewed as a French puppet by the liberals. As well, at the end of the American Civil War, US troops moved to the Mexico-US border as part of a planned invasion, seeing the establishment of the Second Mexican Empire as an infringement on their Monroe Doctrine, even though it was a Mexican scheme and was considered an endemic Mexican monarchy. Backed by the Americans, ex-president Juárez mobilised to retake power, and defeated Maximilian at Querétaro on 15 May 1867. The Emperor was arraigned before a military tribunal, sentenced to death, and executed at the Cerro de las Campanas on 19 June 1867.

#### Kingdom of Mosquitia

The Kingdom of Mosquitia controlled the Atlantic coasts of Nicaragua and Honduras from the seventeenth century to the mid-nineteenth century.

The Miskitu, Pech, Rama, Garifuna, Mayagna and later Creole people of Central America who inhabited the territory were governed by the authority of the Mosquitian Monarchy. While the kings had authority over the entire territory; there were other important leaders known as "generals," "governors," and "admirals," who controlled different regions within the Kingdom.

The Kingdom of Mosquitia was similar to that of the Hawaiian kinship system. Many generals tried to become kings, but only Peter, the first known historically, became King Regent, following the death of his brother King Jeremy II. All Miskitu kings, generals, governors and Admirals were close relatives who controlled the kingship for more than 270 years.

According to the oral tradition of the Miskitus, centuries ago, a group of people who were led by their warrior leader Miskut, emigrated from northern South America, traveled the Caribbean coast and settled on the continent, in a place where a river, a lagoon and the sea converged. They called this site Sitawala, the river would later be called Wangki (Coco River), and the lagoon Kip Almuk (Old Cape). The villagers called themselves Miskut kiampka (Miskut family) or Miskut uplika nani (people of Miskut).Contacts with pirates (French, Dutch and British) and Africans (seeking refuge to escape slavery) began in the 17th century. In 1629, English Puritans established on Providence Island, what they called New Westminster, the Providence Company. From dealing with British merchants and settlers, the Miskitu people obtain non-traditional products and firearms, which became a new cultural needs. This was also the time when the Kingdom start to gain its popularity.

The Kingdom of Mosquitia became a stronger force against the Spanish when the Miskitu King Edward I, signed a Treaty of Friendship and Alliance with King George II of the United Kingdom, accepting military protection and the English common law except when English law was in conflict with existing Miskitu customs, culture and traditions.

At the cessation of the American Revolutionary War, King George III of the United Kingdom, via the Convention of London, also known as the Anglo-Spanish Convention, was an agreement negotiated between the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Spain concerning the status of British settlements within the territory of Central America. It was signed on 14 July 1786. Britain agreed to evacuate all British settlements from Mosquitia. In exchange, Spain agreed to expand the territory available to British loggers on the Yucatán Peninsula, and allowed them to cut mahogany and other hardwoods. Over the opposition of Mosquitia settler, the agreement was implemented, and the British evacuated more than 2,000 people. Most of them went to Belize, but others were relocated to Jamaica, Grand Cayman and Roatan.

However, Great Britain continued their relationship with the Mosquitian Kingdom and its government, whereby they interfered for the next 150 years into Moskitia international affairs at the expense of the sovereignty of the Mosquitian Kingdom.Through the act of what Great Britain called "indirect rule," they concluded the signing of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty of 1850 with the United States. Base on the terms of the treaty, neither Great Britain or the United States would ever "occupy, or fortify, or colonize, or assume or exercise any dominion over Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the Mosquito Coast or any part of Central America", nor make use of any protectorate or alliance, present or future. This meant giving King George IV (George Augustus Frederic) the full control of his Kingdom and the recognition of the Mosquitian Kingdom as a sovereign nation. However, in 1860, Great Britain, without any International right, entertained the Treaty of Managua, in which Great Britain claim to recognize Mosquitia as being part of the Nicaraguan territory. This treaty however, reserved, on the basis of historical rights, a self governing enclave known as the Mosquito Reserve for the people, citing earlier treaty arrangements and historical circumstances. Subsequently, the king was also forced to change his title to chief.

After the chief and the people of the Mosquito Reserve enjoyed 34 years of autonomy, the Nicaraguan government violated the terms of the 1860 Treaty of Managua, and in 1894, sent army troops to the Mosquito Reserve in order to incorporate the region to the rest of the country. In 1905, the Harrison-Altamirano Treaty was signed between Nicaragua and Great Britain which ended the Mosquito Reserve, it's legal and hereditary government, and its Autonomy Statute.

During this same historical time, in 1957, the Hereditary Matriarch, Josephenie Hendy Hebbert Twaska, tried to regain the independence of Mosquitia. However, after the execution of some of her family members, in 1960, she was given the option to be exiled permanently or face death or imprisonment. She moved to Costa Rica and now lives the United States where she is still trying to regain Independence for her people.

Mosquitia regained its Autonomy Statute after three years of war between the FSLN government and a group of alliance between Indigenous and Afro-descendant people of the Mosquitia, when in 1984, the government proposed negotiations to end the war. The first talks of these negotiations were carried out with the Miskitu leader, Brooklyn Rivera. And on 30 October 1987 the Autonomy Statute was published. The Mosquitian Monarchy have still yet to be restored, still many Miskitu people and others still recognize the Miskitu Royal family.

#### Taíno

The Taínos were an indigenous civilization spread across those islands today lying within the Bahamas, Greater Antilles, and the northern Lesser Antilles. These regions were divided into kingdoms (the island of Hispaniola alone was segmented into five kingdoms), which were themselves sometimes sub-divided into provinces. Each kingdom was led by a cacique, or "chieftain", who was advised in his exercise of royal power by a council of priests/healers known as bohiques. The line of succession, however, was matrilineal, whereby if there was no male heir to become cacigue, the title would pass to the eldest child, whether son or daughter, of the deceased's sister. After battling for centuries with the Carib, the Taíno empire finally succumbed to disease and genocide brought by the Spanish colonisers.

### Colonial monarchies

#### Courland

After a number of failed attempts at colonising Tobago, Duke Jacob Kettler of Courland and Semigallia, sent one more ship to the island, which landed there on 20 May 1654, carrying soldiers and colonists, who named the island New Courland. At approximately the same time, Dutch colonies were established at other locations on the island, and eventually outgrew those of the Duchy of Courland in population. When the Duke was captured by Swedish forces in 1658, Dutch settlers overtook the Courland colonies, forcing the Governor to surrender. After a return of the territory to Courland through the 1660 Treaty of Oliwa, a number of attempts were made by the next Duke of Courland (Friedrich Casimir Kettler) at re-colonisation, but these met with failure, and he sold New Courland in 1689.

#### France

After King Francis I commissioned Jacques Cartier to search out an eastern route to Asia, the city of Port Royal was founded on 27 July 1605 in what was Acadia, today is called Nova Scotia. From there, the French Crown's empire in the Americas grew to include areas of land surrounding the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi River, as well as islands in the Caribbean, and the north eastern shore of South America; the Viceroyalty of New France was eventually made into a royal province of France in 1663 by King Louis XIV. Some regions were lost to the Spanish or British Crowns through conflict and treaties, and those that were still possessions of the French king on 21 December 1792 came under republican rule when the French monarchy was abolished on that day. Upon several restorations of the monarchy, the royal presence in the Americas ended with the collapse of the Second French Empire under Napoleon III in 1870.

#### Russia

The first permanent Russian settlements in what is today the US state of Alaska were set down in the 1790s, forming Russian Alaska, after Tsar Peter I called for expeditions across the Bering Strait in 1725, with the region administered by the head of the Russian-American Company as the Emperor's representative. Another Russian outpost, Fort Ross, was established in 1812 in what is now California. The colonies, however, were never profitable enough to maintain Russian interest in the area, with the population only ever reaching a maximum of 700. Fort Ross was sold in 1841, and in 1867, a deal was brokered whereby Tsar Alexander II sold his Alaskan territory to the United States of America for \$7,200,000, and the official transfer took place on 30 October that year.

#### Portugal

The United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves came into being in the wake of Portugal's war with Napoleonic France. The Portuguese Prince Regent, the future King John VI, with his incapacitated mother, Queen Maria I of Portugal and the Royal Court, escaped to the colony of Brazil in 1808. With the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, there were calls for the return of the Portuguese Monarch to Lisbon; the Portuguese Prince Regent enjoyed life in Rio de Janeiro, where the monarchy was at the time more popular and where he enjoyed more freedom, and he was thus unwilling to return to Europe. However, those advocating the return of the Court to Lisbon argued that Brazil was only a colony and that it was not right for Portugal to be governed from a colony. On the other hand, leading Brazilian courtiers pressed for the elevation of Brazil from the rank of a colony, so that they could enjoy the full status of being nationals of the mother-country. Brazilian nationalists also supported the move, because it indicated that Brazil would no longer be submissive to the interests of Portugal, but would be of equal status within a transatlantic monarchy.

#### Spain

Beginning in 1492 with the voyages of Christopher Columbus under the direction of Isabella I of Castile, the Spanish Crown amassed a large American empire over three centuries, spreading first from the Caribbean to Central America, most of South America, Mexico, what is today the Southwestern United States, and the Pacific coast of North America up to Alaska. These regions formed the majority of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, the Viceroyalty of Peru, the Viceroyalty of New Granada, and the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata in each of which the Spanish monarch was represented by a viceroy. By the early 19th century, however, the Spanish sovereign's possessions in the Americas began a series of independence movements, which culminated in the Crown's loss of all its colonies on the mainland of North and South America by 1825. The remaining colonies of Cuba and Puerto Rico were occupied by the United States following the Spanish–American War, ending Spanish rule in the Americas by 1899.

#### Sweden

For a period of time the French ceded sovereignty of the island of Saint Barthélemy to the Swedes but it was eventually returned. Saint Barthélemy (1784–1878) was operated as a free port. The capital city of Gustavia retains its Swedish name.

### Self-proclaimed monarchies

These entities were never recognised as de jure or legitimate governments, but still sometimes exercised a degree of local control or influence within their respective locations until the death of their "monarch":

James J. Strang

James Strang, a would-be successor to the Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, Jr., proclaimed himself "king" over his church in 1850, which was then concentrated mostly on Beaver Island in Lake Michigan. On 8 July of that year, he was physically crowned in an elaborate coronation ceremony complete with crown, sceptre, throne, ermine robe and breastplate. Although he never claimed legal sovereignty over Beaver Island or any other geographical entity, Strang managed (as a member of the Michigan State Legislature) to have his "kingdom" constituted as a separate county, where his followers held all county offices, and Strang's word was law. U.S. President Millard Fillmore ordered an investigation into Strang's colony, which resulted in Strang's trial in Detroit for treason, trespass, counterfeiting and other crimes, but the jury found the "king" innocent of all charges. Strang was eventually assassinated by two disgruntled followers in 1856, and his kingdom—together with his royal regalia—vanished.

Joshua Norton

Joshua Abraham Norton, an Englishman who emigrated to San Francisco, California in 1849, proclaimed himself "Emperor of These United States" in 1859, later adding the title "Protector of Mexico". Though never recognized by the U.S. or Mexican governments, he was accorded a certain degree of deference within San Francisco itself, including reserved balcony seats (for which he was never charged) at local theatres, and salutes by policemen who passed him on the street. He was active in various civic issues and advocated for the bridging of San Francisco Bay. Specially printed currency authorized by Norton was accepted as legal tender within several businesses in the city. When Norton died in 1880, he was given a lavish funeral attended by over 30,000 persons.

James Harden-Hickey

James Harden-Hickey was a self-proclaimed prince, who attempted to establish the so-called Principality of Trinidad on Trindade and the Martim Vaz Islands in the South Atlantic Ocean during the late 19th century. Although initially garnering some newspaper attention, Hickey's claims were ignored or ridiculed by other nations, and the islands eventually were occupied by military forces from nearby Brazil which remain there to the present day.

Matthew Dowdy Shiell

A self-proclaimed monarch of the so-called Kingdom of Redonda, an island in the Caribbean Sea. Whether M. P. Shiel ever actually claimed to be king of this tiny islet is open to debate; however, other individuals later claimed the title of "King of Redonda," without having apparently ever tried to physically establish themselves on the island itself.

## See also

- Afro-Bolivian monarchy
- Canadian Confederation
- List of monarchs in the Americas
- List of the last monarchs in the Americas
- Monarchies in Africa
- Monarchies in Europe
- Monarchies in Oceania
- Monarchism
- Monroe Doctrine

Countries in the Americas which are monarchies


Early mainframe games

Mainframe computers are computers used primarily by businesses and academic institutions for large-scale processes. Before personal computers, first termed microcomputers, became widely available to the general public in the 1970s, the computing industry was composed of mainframe computers and the relatively smaller and cheaper minicomputer variant. During the mid to late 1960s, many early video games were programmed on these computers. Developed prior to the rise of the commercial video game industry in the early 1970s, these early mainframe games were generally written by students or employees at large corporations in a machine or assembly language that could only be understood by the specific machine or computer type they were developed on. While many of these games were lost as older computers were discontinued, some of them were ported to high-level computer languages like BASIC, had expanded versions later released for personal computers, or were recreated for bulletin board systems years later, thus influencing future games and developers.

Early computer games began to be created in the 1950s, and the steady increase in the number and abilities of computers over time led to the gradual loosening of restrictions on access to mainframe computers at academic and corporate institutions beginning in the 1960s. This in turn led to a modest proliferation of generally small, text-based games on mainframe computers, with increasing complexity towards the end of the decade. While games continued to be developed on mainframes and minicomputers through the 1970s, the rise of personal computers and the spread of high-level programming languages meant that later games were generally intended to or were capable of being run on personal computers, even when developed on a mainframe. These early games include Hamurabi, an antecedent of the strategy and city-building genres; Lunar Lander, which inspired numerous recreations in the 1970s and 1980s; Civil War, an early war simulation game; Star Trek, which was widely ported, expanded, and spread for decades after; Space Travel, which played a role in the creation of the Unix operating system; and Baseball, an early sports game and the first baseball game to allow player control during a game.

## Background

Mainframe computers are powerful computers used primarily by large organizations for computational work, especially large-scale, multi-user processes. The term originally referred to the large cabinets called "main frames" that housed the central processing unit and main memory of early computers. Prior to the rise of personal computers, first termed microcomputers, in the 1970s, they were the primary type of computer in use, and at the beginning of the 1960s they were the only type of computer available for public purchase. Minicomputers were relatively smaller and cheaper mainframe computers prevalent in the 1960s and 1970s, though they were still not intended for personal use. One definition from 1970 required a minicomputer to cost less than US\$25,000. In contrast, regular mainframes could cost more than US\$1,000,000.

By the end of the 1960s, mainframe computers and minicomputers were present in many academic research institutions and large companies such as Bell Labs. While the commercial video game industry did not yet exist at that point in the early history of video games and would not until the early 1970s, programmers at these companies created several small games to be played on their mainframe computers. Most of these spread only to other users of the same type of computer and therefore did not persist as older computer models were discontinued; several, however, inspired future games, or were later released in modified versions on more modern systems or languages. These early mainframe games were largely created between 1968 and 1971; while earlier games were created they were limited to small, academic audiences. Mainframe games also continued to be developed through the 1970s, but the rise of the commercial video game industry, focused on arcade video games and home video game consoles, followed by the rise of personal computers later in the decade, meant that beginning in the 1970s the audience and developers of video games began to shift away from mainframe computers or minicomputers, and the spread of general-purpose programming languages such as the BASIC programming language meant that later mainframe games could generally be run on personal computers with minimal changes, even if initially developed on a mainframe.

## Early games

The very first computer games began to appear in the 1950s, starting with Bertie the Brain, a computer-based game of tic-tac-toe built by Dr. Josef Kates for the 1950 Canadian National Exhibition. While the status of these games as video games depends on the definition used, the games developed during this time period ran on the large antecedents of mainframe computers and were primarily developed for the purposes of academic research or to showcase the technological development of the computers on which they ran. Access to these computers, located almost exclusively in universities and research institutions, was restricted to academics and researchers, preventing any development of entertainment programs. Over the course of the decade, computer technology improved to include smaller, transistor-based computers on which programs could be created and run in real time, rather than operations run in batches, and computers themselves spread to more locations.

By the 1960s, improvements in computing technology and the early development of relatively cheaper mainframe computers, which would later be termed minicomputers, led to the loosening of restrictions regarding programming access to the computers. At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), access to the TX-0 experimental computer was opened to students and employees of the university. This in turn led to the development of programs that in addition to highlighting the power of the computer also contained an entertainment aspect. The games created for the TX-0 by the small programming community at MIT included Tic-Tac-Toe, which used a light pen to play a simple game of noughts and crosses against the computer, and Mouse in the Maze, which let players set up a maze for a mouse to run through. When the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) PDP-1 computer was installed at MIT in 1961, the community built a video game to showcase its abilities, Spacewar!, which then became the first known video game to spread beyond a single computer installation as it was copied and recreated on other PDP-1 systems and later on other mainframe computers.

Over the course of the decade, computers spread to more and more companies and institutions, even as they became more powerful—by 1971, it is estimated that there were over 1000 computers with monitors, rather than the few dozen at the beginning of the 1960s. While different computers could generally not run the same programs without significant changes to the programs' code, due to differences in the physical hardware or machine languages, the expansion of the computing industry led to the creation of catalogs and user groups to share programs between different installations of the same series of computers, such as DEC's PDP line. These catalogs and groups, such as the IBM program catalog and the Digital Equipment Computer Users' Society (DECUS), shared small games as well as programs, including, for example, "BBC Vik The Baseball Demonstrator" and "Three Dimensional Tic-Tack-Toe" in the April 1962 IBM catalog, and dice games and question and answer games in the DECUS newsletter. The Sumerian Game (1964) for the IBM 7090, a strategy video game of land and resource management, was the first educational game for children. Mainframe games were developed outside of the IBM and DEC communities as well, such as the 1962 Polish Marienbad for the Odra 1003.

By the latter half of the 1960s, higher-level programming languages such as BASIC which were able to be run on multiple types of computers further increased the reach of games developed at any given location. While most games were limited to text-based designs, rather than visual graphics like Spacewar, these games became more complicated as they reached more players, such as baseball and basketball simulation games. Access to the computers themselves was also extended to more people by systems such as the Dartmouth Time Sharing System (DTSS), which connected several thousand users through many remote terminals to a central mainframe computer. By the 1967–68 school year the DTSS library of 500 programs for the system included, John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz wrote, "many games". Over a quarter of the system's usage was for casual or entertainment purposes, which Kemeny and Kurtz welcomed as helping users to become familiar with and not fear the computer. They noted that "we have lost many a distinguished visitor for several hours while he quarterbacked the Dartmouth football team in a highly realistic simulated game". By 1972 the football simulation had become a multiplayer video game, supporting head-to-head play.

## 101 BASIC Computer Games

In 1971, DEC employee David H. Ahl converted two games, Hamurabi and Lunar Lander, from the FOCAL language to BASIC, partially as a demonstration of the language on the DEC PDP-8 minicomputer. Their popularity led him to start printing BASIC games in the DEC newsletter he edited, both ones he wrote and reader submissions. In 1973, he published 101 BASIC Computer Games, containing descriptions and the source code for video games written in BASIC. The games included were written by both Ahl and others, and included both games original to the language and ported from other languages such as FOCAL. Many of these ports were originally mainframe computer games. 101 BASIC Computer Games was a best seller with more than 10,000 copies sold, more sales than computers in existence at the time. Its second edition in 1978, BASIC Computer Games, was the first million-selling computer book. As such, the BASIC ports of mainframe computer games included in the book were often more long-lived than their original versions or other mainframe computer games.

Hamurabi in particular is mostly known for its appearance in Ahl's book. After hearing of The Sumerian Game, Doug Dyment at DEC created his own The Sumer Game for fellow employee Richard Merrill's newly invented FOCAL programming language. The game consists of ten rounds wherein the player, as the ancient Babylonian king Hammurabi, manages how much of their grain to spend on crops for the next round, feeding their people, and purchasing additional land, while dealing with random variations in crop yields and plagues. Multiple versions of the game were created for the FOCAL and FOCAL-69 languages, but an expanded, uncredited version of the game was included in 101 BASIC Computer Games as Hamurabi, and later versions of the game, even in FOCAL, referenced the new title over the old. Hamurabi influenced many later strategy and simulation games and is an antecedent to the city-building genre.

The other game Ahl originally ported to BASIC, Lunar Lander, appeared in the book in three different forms. The original version of the game was called Lunar, and was originally written in FOCAL for the PDP-8 by Jim Storer while a high school student in the fall of 1969. A different version called Rocket was written in BASIC by Eric Peters at DEC, and a third version, LEM, was written by William Labaree II in BASIC. Ahl converted Jim Storer's FOCAL version to BASIC, changed some of the text, and published it in his newsletter. A year or so later, all three BASIC versions of the game appeared in 101 BASIC Computer Games, under the names ROCKET (Storer version), ROCKT1 (Peters version), and ROCKT2 (Labaree version). All three text-based games required the player to control a rocket attempting to land on the moon by entering instructions to the rocket in response to the textual summary of its current position and heading relative to the ground. Ahl and Steve North converted all three versions to Microsoft BASIC, changed the collective name to Lunar Lander, and published them in Creative Computing magazine in 1976; that name was used in the 1978 edition of BASIC Computer Games.

Another game from the book is Civil War, a text-based computer game that puts the player against the computer in a simulation of the American Civil War. Civil War originated on multi-user mainframe computers in 1968, and simulates fourteen major battles of the conflict, with the human player as the South and the computer as the North. The player can control four direct variables which interact to determine a battle's outcome: how much of their money to spend on food, salaries, and ammunition, and which of four offensive or four defensive strategies to use. The side with the fewest casualties wins a battle, and if the player wins eight or more battles they win the game. Ahl credited the game in 101 BASIC Computer Games to L. Cram, L. Goodie, and D. Hibbard, students at Lexington High School, and to G. Paul and R. Hess of "TIES" for converting the game into a two-player game. Civil War was later one of a number of text-based games available on early 1980s pay-to-play systems.

Possibly the most popular of the mainframe games that appeared in Ahl's book was Star Trek. The game is a text-based computer game that puts the player in command of the Starship Enterprise on a mission to hunt down and destroy an invading fleet of Klingon warships. Unlike the other text-based games, however, it did not use written responses to player input, but instead had character-based graphics, with different characters used as graphical symbols to represent objects. It was initially developed by Mike Mayfield in 1971 on an SDS Sigma 7 mainframe. The game was also unlike many of the other mainframe games in the book in that it was originally written in BASIC; by the time the book was published, it had been widely copied among minicomputer and mainframe systems and modified into several versions. It was one of these, renamed by Ahl as Space War, that appeared in 101 BASIC Computer Games. The 1978 version of the book contained a Microsoft BASIC port of Super Star Trek, an expanded version of the game first written in 1974, and this version was ported to numerous personal computer systems of the era; Ahl stated in the book that it was difficult to find a computer installation that did not contain a version of Star Trek. Multiple updated versions in a wide variety of languages have been made since. By 1980, Star Trek was described by The Dragon magazine as "one of the most popular (if not the most popular) computer games around", with "literally scores of different versions of this game floating around".

## Other games

Some mainframe games that did not appear in 101 BASIC Computer Games have still had a lasting impact. One such game was Space Travel, developed by Ken Thompson in 1969, which simulates travel in the Solar System. The player flies their ship around a two-dimensional scale model of the solar system with no objectives other than to attempt to land on various planets and moons. The player can move and turn the ship, and adjust the overall speed by adjusting the scale of the simulation. The ship is affected by the single strongest gravitational pull of the astronomical bodies. The game was developed at Bell Labs, and was ported during 1969 from the Multics operating system to the GECOS operating system on the GE 635 computer, and then to the PDP-7 minicomputer. While porting the game to the PDP-7, Thompson developed ideas for his own operating system, which later formed the core of the Unix operating system. Space Travel never spread beyond Bell Labs or had an effect on future games, leaving its primary legacy as part of the original push for the development of Unix.

Another influential early mainframe game was Baseball, a sports game that was created on a PDP-10 minicomputer at Pomona College in 1971 by English major Don Daglow. Baseball was the first baseball video game that allowed players to manage the game as it unfolded, rather than just picking players at the beginning of a game. The program is documented at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York. Baseball was continually updated through 1974, and distributed to other PDP-10 installations. The text-based game had each player control the pitcher or the batter; they would enter their intention to, for example, pitch to or walk the batter, or switch hitters. The batting player could direct on-base players to steal, and the batter to hit. The results of the play would be printed out onto paper as a verbose description, like a radio description of the game. Daglow went on to develop more sophisticated baseball games in 1983 with Intellivision World Series Baseball, and 1987 with Earl Weaver Baseball, as well as numerous other games.

Early video games on mainframe computers


Kurt Meyer

Kurt Meyer (23 December 1910 – 23 December 1961) was an SS commander and convicted war criminal of Nazi Germany. He served in the Waffen-SS (the combat branch of the SS) and participated in the Battle of France, Operation Barbarossa, and other engagements during World War II. Meyer commanded the 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend during the Allied invasion of Normandy, and was a recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords.

After ordering the mass murder of civilians and prisoners of war (POWs) several times during the conflict, Meyer was convicted of war crimes for his role in the Ardenne Abbey massacre (the murder of Canadian POWs in Normandy). He was sentenced to death, but the sentence was later commuted to life in prison.

He became active in HIAG, a lobby group organised by former high-ranking Waffen-SS men, after his release. Meyer was a leading Waffen-SS apologist and HIAG's most effective spokesperson, depicting most of the Waffen-SS as apolitical, recklessly brave fighters who were not involved in the crimes of the Nazi regime. These notions have since been debunked by historians.

## Early life and SS career

### Early life

Born in 1910 in Jerxheim, Meyer came from a lower-class working family. His father, a miner, joined the German Army in 1914 and was an NCO in World War I. Meyer began a business apprenticeship after completing elementary school, but became unemployed in 1928 and was forced to work as a handyman before becoming a policeman in Mecklenburg-Schwerin the following year.

Politically active at an early age and a fanatical supporter of Nazism, Meyer joined the Hitler Youth when he was fifteen, became a full member of the Nazi Party in September 1930, and joined the SS in October 1931. He was a guest at the marriage of Joseph Goebbels in December of that year. In May 1934, Meyer was transferred to the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (LSSAH). With this unit (which later became part of the Waffen-SS, the combat branch of the SS), Meyer took part in the annexation of Austria in 1938 and the 1939 occupation of Czechoslovakia.

### Early World War II

At the outbreak of World War II, Meyer participated in the invasion of Poland with the LSSAH, serving as commander for an anti-tank company (namely 14. Panzerabwehrkompanie). He was awarded the Iron Cross, Second Class, on 20 September 1939. In October, Meyer allegedly ordered the shooting of fifty Polish Jews as a reprisal near Modlin and court-martialled a platoon commander who refused to carry out his instructions. He participated in the Battle of France and was awarded the Iron Cross, First Class.

Following the Battle of France, Meyer's company was reorganized into the LSSAH's reconnaissance battalion and he was promoted. Benito Mussolini's unsuccessful invasion of Greece prompted Germany to invade Yugoslavia and Greece in April 1941. During the invasion, the battalion came under fire from the Greek Army defending the Klisura Pass. After heavy fighting, Meyer's troops broke through the defensive lines; with the road now open, the German forces drove through to the Kastoria area to cut off retreating Greek and British Commonwealth forces. After the campaign, Meyer was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross.

### Eastern Front, and massacres of civilians

The LSSAH Division (including Meyer and his battalion) participated in Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, in June 1941 as part of Army Group South. He and his unit quickly became infamous even among the LSSAH Division for mass-murdering civilians and destroying entire villages, such as when they murdered about 20 women, children, and old men at Rowno. According to historian Jens Westemeier, Meyer was primarily responsible for the brutalization of the troops under his command. His terror tactics were regarded with approval by the Waffen-SS command. In combat against the Red Army, Meyer and his unit also achieved some military successes, while suffering the heaviest casualties among the LSSAH's battalions. He gained a reputation as an "audacious" leader during Operation Barbarossa, and was awarded the German Cross in Gold in 1942 while still with the LSSAH.

In early 1943, Meyer's reconnaissance battalion participated in the Third Battle of Kharkov. He reportedly ordered the destruction of a village during the fighting around Kharkov and the murder of all its inhabitants. Different accounts of the events exist, though they share a general outline. Meyer was awarded the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves for a successful attack on the village of Yefremovka (Jefremowka) on 20 February 1943, where his forces took no prisoners and killed about 1500 Soviet soldiers. After the war, a former SS man described an incident which took place on Meyer's orders in Jefremowka in March 1943, following its occupation. Billeted in the village, the eyewitness heard a pistol shot at 10:30 in the morning. He ran to the door and saw an SS commander who demanded to see the company commander. When the latter arrived, the SS commander shouted: "On the orders of Meyer, this town is to be levelled to the ground, because this morning armed civilians attacked this locality." He then shot a 25-year-old woman who was cooking the German's lunch. According to the testimony, the Waffen-SS men killed all the inhabitants of the village and set fire to their homes.

Separate testimony from a former SS man (given to the Western Allies' interrogators after his capture in France in 1944) substantiates elements of the story:

> The reconnaissance battalion of the LSSAH made an advance at the end of February [1943] towards the East and reached the village of Jefremowka. There they were surrounded by Russian forces. Fuel and ammo ran out and they were supplied by air until they were ordered to break through towards the West. Before trying to do so, the entire civilian population was shot and the village burnt to the ground. The battalion at that time was led by Kurt Meyer.

Ukrainian sources, including two surviving witnesses, reported that the killings took place on 17 February 1943. On 12 February, LSSAH troops had occupied two villages: Yefremovka and Semyonovka. Retreating Soviet forces had wounded two SS officers. In retaliation, LSSAH troops killed 872 men, women and children five days later; about 240 were burned alive in the church in Yefremovka. Russian sources reported that the massacre was perpetrated by the "Blowtorch Battalion", led by Jochen Peiper. Meyer continued to serve in the LSSAH until the summer of 1943, when he was appointed commander of a regiment of the newly-activated, still-forming SS Division Hitlerjugend stationed in France.

### Battle of Normandy and Falaise pocket

The Allies launched Operation Overlord, the amphibious invasion of France, on 6 June 1944. After much confusion, SS Division Hitlerjugend got moving at about 14:30; several units advanced towards one of the beaches on which the Allies had landed, until they were halted by naval and anti-tank fire and Allied air interdiction. Meyer, confident that the Allied forces were "little fishes", ordered his regiment to counterattack. The attack led to heavy casualties. The division was ordered to break through to the beach on 7 June, but Meyer instructed his regiment to take covering positions and await reinforcements. The Canadian Official History described Meyer's involvement in the battle:

> Although Meyer claimed later that only shortage of petrol and ammunition prevented him from carrying the attack on towards the coast, this need not be taken seriously. Indeed, he himself testified that seeing from his lofty perch "enemy movements deeper in that area"—doubtless the advance of the main body of the 9th Brigade—he came down and rode his motorcycle to the 3rd Battalion to order its C.O. "not to continue the attack north of Buron". Meyer's 2nd Battalion had been drawn into the fight, north of St. Contest "in the direction of Galmanche". Fierce fighting was going on when Meyer visited the battalion in the early evening; just as he arrived the battalion commander's head was taken off by a tank shot ... Meyer ordered both this battalion and the 1st (around Cambes) to go "over from attack to defense."

By 22:00, Meyer had set up his command post in Ardenne Abbey. That evening, elements of the division under Meyer's command committed the Ardenne Abbey massacre; eleven Canadian prisoners of war, soldiers from the North Nova Scotia Highlanders and the 27th Armoured Regiment were shot in the back of the head.

On 14 June, divisional commander SS-Brigadeführer Fritz Witt was killed when a naval barrage hit his command post. Meyer, the next-highest-ranking officer, was promoted to divisional commander; at 33 years of age, he was one of the war's youngest German divisional commanders. According to historian Peter Lieb, Meyer's rise to division command was relatively typical for the Waffen-SS, as the latter desired individuals as commanders who were regarded as ruthless, brutal, and ready to serve at the front line. By 4 July, the division had been reduced to a weak battlegroup; six days later, it retreated behind the Orne River. In just over a month of fighting, the division had more than a 60 per cent casualty rate.

The Canadian forces began their advance on Falaise, planning to meet up with the Americans with the goal of encircling and destroying most of the German forces in Normandy. The Hitlerjugend division was holding the northern point of what became known as the Falaise pocket. After several days of fighting Meyer's unit was reduced to about 1,500 men, whom he led in an attempt to break out of the pocket. Meyer described the conditions in the pocket in his memoirs: "Concentrated in such a confined space, we offer unique targets for the enemy air power. [...] Death shadows us at every step". Meyer was wounded during the fight with the 3rd Canadian Division, but escaped from the Falaise pocket with the division's rearguard. The remnants of the division joined the retreat across the Seine and into Belgium. On 27 August, Meyer was awarded the Swords to the Knight's Cross with Oak Leaves and promoted to SS-Brigadeführer. He led his retreating unit as far as the Meuse, where he and his headquarters were ambushed by an American armoured column on 6 September. The division's staff fled into a nearby village, where Meyer and his driver hid in a barn. A farmer discovered them, and informed the Belgian resistance. Meyer surrendered to local partisans, who handed him over to the Americans on 7 September.

### Prisoner of war

After his surrender, Meyer was initially hospitalized due to injuries he received from his American guards during an altercation. He was transferred to a POW camp near Compiègne in August and attempted to hide his SS affiliation, but his identity as a high-ranking SS officer was discovered in November. Meyer was then interned at Trent Park in England, where his conversations with other high-ranking prisoners of war were covertly tape-recorded by British military intelligence. He was frank about his Nazi-orientated political beliefs in these exchanges; Meyer had dedicated himself to its ideology, saying that a person "could only give his heart once in life". One interrogator described him as "the personification of National Socialism". Throughout the recordings, Meyer and other SS men confirmed the German armed forces officers' view of them as ideological fanatics with an almost religious belief in Nazism, the Third Reich, and the messianic personality cult of Adolf Hitler.

In a taped January 1945 conversation, Meyer praised Hitler for having inspired a "tremendous awakening in the German people" and for reviving their self-confidence. In a taped conversation the following month, he chided a demoralized Wehrmacht general: "I wish a lot of the officers here could command my division, so that they might learn some inkling of self-sacrifice and fanaticism". According to the recordings, Meyer had not just paid lip service to Nazi ideology to further his military career; he saw himself as an ideological racial warrior with a duty to indoctrinate his men with the National Socialist creed. Despite rigorous interrogations by British authorities, Meyer refused to admit any war crimes; his involvement in the Ardenne Abbey massacre was eventually revealed by imprisoned SS deserters.

## War crimes trial

Meyer was held as a prisoner of war until December 1945, when he was tried for war crimes (the murder of unarmed Allied prisoners of war in Normandy) in the German town of Aurich.

### Indictment

Meyer's charges were:

1. Prior to 7 June 1944, Meyer had incited troops under his command to deny quarter to surrendering Allied soldiers.
2. On or around 7 June 1944, Meyer was responsible for his troops killing twenty-three prisoners of war at Buron and Authie.
3. On or around 8 June 1944, Meyer ordered his troops to kill seven prisoners of war at his headquarters at the Abbaye Ardenne.
4. On or around 8 June 1944, Meyer was responsible for his troops killing seven prisoners of war, as above.
5. On or around 8 June 1944, Meyer was responsible for his troops killing eleven prisoners of war, as above.

The third and fourth charges referred to the same event; the fourth charge was an alternative to the third, if the killings were found to be a war crime but he was found not to have ordered them. The fifth charge was related to a separate group of prisoners; in this case, the prosecution did not allege that Meyer had directly ordered their deaths. He was charged with responsibility for the deaths of twenty-three prisoners on 7 June, and eighteen more the following day. Meyer pleaded not guilty to all five charges.

A second charge sheet accusing him of responsibility for the deaths of seven Canadian prisoners of war in Mouen on 8 June 1944 was prepared; after the successful conclusion of the first trial, however, it was decided not to try the second set of charges. No charges were laid against him for alleged previous war crimes in Poland or Ukraine; the Canadian court was constituted to deal only with crimes committed against Canadian nationals.

### Proceedings

The court, the first major Canadian war-crimes trial, faced a number of problems before it could be convened. Chief among them was the fact that since the accused was a general, he had to be tried by soldiers of equal rank; finding enough available Canadian generals was difficult. The court as eventually constituted had four brigadiers – one, Ian Johnston, was a lawyer in civilian life – and was presided over by Major General H. W. Foster, who had commanded the 7th Canadian Infantry Brigade in Normandy.

In accordance with eyewitness statements by German and Canadian soldiers and French civilians, Meyer was found guilty of the first, fourth and fifth charges and acquitted of the second and third; he was deemed responsible for inciting his troops to give no quarter to the enemy and for his troops' killing of eighteen prisoners at the Abbaye Ardenne, but not responsible for the killings of twenty-three at Buron and Authie. Meyer was found responsible for the deaths at the Abbaye Ardenne, but acquitted of directly ordering the killings. In Meyer's closing statement before sentencing, he did not ask for clemency but defended the record of his unit and the innocence of his soldiers: "By the Canadian Army I was treated as a soldier and ... the proceedings were fairly conducted".

Meyer’s case is notable as one of the earliest applications of the legal concept of command responsibility—accountability in personal terms for the actions of subordinates in violating the laws of war. The concept is now codified in the 1977 Additional Protocol I to the 1949 Geneva Conventions as well as the Canadian Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act.

### Sentence

Although most observers expected a long imprisonment – the court had not found him guilty of directly ordering the murders, but tacitly condoning them – the court sentenced Meyer to death by firing squad. One of the judges, Brigadier Bell-Irving, later said that he believed a guilty sentence required a death sentence and that no lesser sentence was permissible. The sentence was subject to confirmation by higher command; Meyer was originally willing to accept it, but was persuaded by his wife and his defence counsel to appeal. The appeal was reviewed by Canadian headquarters and dismissed by Major-General Christopher Vokes, the official convening authority for the court, who said that he could not see a clear way to mitigate the sentence imposed by the court.

Shortly before the sentence was to be carried out, however, the prosecutor realised that the trial regulations contained a section requiring a final review by "the senior combatant officer in the theatre" and no-one had completed such a review. The execution was postponed until it could be carried out. The senior officer was the commander of Canadian forces in Europe: Christopher Vokes, who had dismissed Meyer's appeal. Vokes had second thoughts and began a series of meetings with senior officials to discuss how to proceed. Vokes' main concern was the degree to which a commander should be held responsible for the actions of his men. The consensus which emerged from the discussions was that death was an appropriate sentence only when "the offence was conclusively shown to have resulted from the direct act of the commander or by his omission to act". Vokes said "There isn't a general or colonel on the Allied side that I know of who hasn't said, 'Well, this time we don't want any prisoners'". Vokes had himself ordered the razing of Friesoythe, a German town, in 1945, and had ordered the shooting of two prisoners in 1943 before his divisional commander intervened.

Meyer was scheduled to be shot on 7 January 1946. An execution site was selected and the firing party readied. Meyer initially refused to file for clemency, and he seemed to bitterly accept his upcoming death. "So, this is how my life will end," he said. "A volley will crack out in a sandpit somewhere and my body will disappear into a nameless grave." However, under pressure from his wife and lawyer, Meyer filed for clemency. He won a stay of execution on 5 January. On 14 January 1946, Vokes commuted Meyer's sentence to life imprisonment, saying he felt that Meyer's level of responsibility for the crimes did not warrant execution. After the reprieve, which sparked outrage amongst much of the Canadian public, a Communist-run German newspaper reported that the Soviet Union was considering putting Meyer on trial for war crimes allegedly committed at Kharkov. Nothing came of this, however, and Meyer was transported to Canada to begin his sentence in April 1946. He served five years at the Dorchester Penitentiary in New Brunswick, where he worked in the library and learned English.

Meyer petitioned for clemency in late 1950, offering to serve in a Canadian or United Nations military force if released. At the time, the new West German government was seeking the release of German war criminals incarcerated in Allied prisons, and the Canadian and other western Allied governments were looking to gain West German support for NATO to oppose possible Soviet aggression in Europe. The Canadian government was willing to let him return to a German prison, but not release him outright; he was transferred to a British military prison in Werl, West Germany, in 1951. Meyer was released from prison on 7 September 1954, after the Canadian government approved a reduction of his sentence to fourteen years. When he returned to Germany in 1951, he told a reporter that nationalism was past and that "a united Europe is now the only answer".

## HIAG activities and death

Meyer became active in HIAG, the Waffen-SS lobby group formed in 1951 by former high-ranking Waffen-SS men including Paul Hausser, Felix Steiner and Herbert Gille, when he was released from prison. He was a leading Waffen-SS apologist. Meyer announced at a 1957 HIAG rally that although he stood behind his old commanders, Hitler made many mistakes and it was time to look to the future rather than the past. He said to about 8,000 ex-SS men at the 1957 HIAG convention in Karlsberg, Bavaria, "SS troops committed no crimes, except the massacre at Oradour, and that was the action of a single man". According to Meyer, the Waffen-SS was "as much a regular army outfit as any other in the Wehrmacht".

Meyer's memoirs, Grenadiere (1957), were published as part of this campaign and were a glorification of the SS's part in the war and his role in it. The book, detailing Meyer's exploits at the front, was an element of Waffen-SS rehabilitation efforts. He condemned the "inhuman suffering" to which Waffen-SS personnel had been subjected "for crimes which they neither committed, nor were able to prevent". Historian Charles W. Sydnor called Grenadiere "perhaps the boldest and most truculent of the apologist works". The book was part of HIAG's campaign to promote the perception of the Waffen-SS in popular culture as apolitical, recklessly-brave fighters who were not involved in the war crimes of the Nazi regime, a perception which has since been refuted by historians. In July 1958, Meyer shook hands with SPD politician Ulrich Lamar [de] at a HIAG meeting. The event was widely discussed, with HIAG regarding it as good publicity. Many SPD members criticised Lohmar, saying that Meyer remained unapologetic about SS crimes and was an enemy of democracy despite his claims to the contrary.

One of HIAG's de facto leaders, Meyer was appointed the organization's spokesperson in 1959. He presented himself in this capacity as pragmatic and loyal to the West German state, and HIAG as an apolitical group. Even though elements of HIAG increasingly aligned with extreme right-wing groups such as the Deutsche Reichspartei (DRP), Meyer continued to push for a more moderate image in the public. In a television interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in January 1960, he even claimed that he would order Waffen-SS veterans to protect Jewish synagogues and graveyards if he could do so. This statement was met with severe criticism by many openly antisemitic members of HIAG, resulting in growing tensions in the organization. Meyer responded by dissolving the most extreme chapters of HIAG, and restructuring the group to solidify the control of its central leadership over the members. His tactics met with some success, and he met with numerous politicians to advocate for better treatment of former Waffen-SS members, convincing some that he and HIAG had distanced themselves from far-right extremism. He had less success in his 1959–1961 meetings with prominent SPD politician and former concentration camp inmate Fritz Erler. The latter was supposed to gauge Meyer's supposed conversion to democracy, as the SPD was prepared to support a moderate wing of HIAG to counteract more extreme elements of the group. Erler repeatedly confronted Meyer with the extreme right-wing rhetoric of many HIAG members and outlets, prompting the spokesman to shift all blame to his rivals in the lobby group. Meyer never fully convinced Erler of his position, but his meetings with him and other politicians still enabled HIAG to become more respected in the public and better spread its message. Regardless of his claims, Meyer always remained a covert, steadfast adherent of Nazism.

Meyer experienced poor health later in life, with heart and kidney disease and requiring the use of a cane. After a series of mild strokes, he died of a heart attack in Hagen, Westphalia, on 23 December 1961. Fifteen thousand people attended his funeral in Hagen, with the customary cushion-bearer carrying his medals in the cortege.

## Awards

- Iron Cross (1939)
  - 2nd Class (20 September 1939)
  - 1st Class (8 June 1940)
- German Cross in Gold on 8 February 1942 as SS-Sturmbannführer in SS-Division "Adolf Hitler"
- Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords
  - Knight's Cross on 18 May 1941 as SS-Sturmbannführer and commander of SS-Aufklärungs-Abteilung "Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler"
  - 195th Oak Leaves on 23 February 1943 as SS-Obersturmbannführer and commander of the SS-Aufklärungs-Abteilung "Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler"
  - 91st Swords on 27 August 1944 as SS-Standartenführer and commander of the SS Division Hitlerjugend

## Publications

German SS officer (1910–1961)

German prisoners of war in World War II held by the United Kingdom

German prisoners of war in World War II held by the United States

Perpetrators of World War II prisoner of war massacres

Recipients of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves and Swords