A federal monarchy is a federation of states with a single monarch as over-all head of the federation, but retaining different monarchs, or a non-monarchical system of government, in the various states joined to the federation.
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The term was introduced into English political and historical discourse by Edward Augustus Freeman, in his History of Federal Government (1863). Freeman himself thought a federal monarchy only possible in the abstract.[1]
Historically an important example of a federal monarchy is the German Empire of 1871-1919. The head of state of the federation was a monarch, the emperor, who was also head of state of some constituent parts to the federation as king of Prussia, while other constituent kingdoms, such as the Kingdom of Bavaria, Kingdom of Saxony or Kingdom of Württemberg, retained their own monarchs and armies. Besides the altogether 23 monarchies federated to the empire there were three republican city-states, namely Bremen, Hamburg and Lübeck, and Alsace-Lorraine, a semi-autonomous republic since 1912.
The Umayyad Caliphate (661-750 AD) is also considered one of the most important federal empires that ruled very early. It is sometimes considered to be the first federal empire ever known. This empire, under the rule of the caliph, annexed smaller monarchies like Egypt, Mesopotamia, Arabian Peninsula, Persia, Afghanistan, North Africa, Morocco, Spain, Portugal and parts of Turkey, Pakistan and Turkmenistan. Each of those smaller monarchies is ruled by its own ruler who submits to the grand rule of the caliph. The Umayyad Empire was ranked the fifth largest contiguous empire ever to exist. At its maximum expansion, it covered more than five million square miles rendering it one of the largest empires ever known to humanity.
The concept played a role in political debates in Italy and Austria-Hungary in the nineteenth century and in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in the twentieth century, without ever being put into effect in any of these cases.
In recent years the Kingdom of Belgium and the Kingdom of Spain have been referred to as federal monarchies, although neither are officially styled as such.[2] Canada and Australia are also federal monarchies, and both share the same individual as their respective sovereign.[3][4]
Currently the term can be applied in the fullest sense to Malaysia[5] and the United Arab Emirates, in both of which the head of state of the federation is selected from among the heads (sultans or emirs respectively) who rule the constituent states of the federation.
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