Royal Spectacle: The 1860 Visit of the Prince of Wales to Canada and the United States (review)

There has been a resurgence of interest in the modern British monarchy in recent years, not least in its ceremonial guise. Ian Radforth's Royal Spectacle, which surveys the visit of the Prince of Wales to Canada and the United States in 1860, is an admirable, scholarly addition to the burgeoning literature on national identity and royal pageantry. The purpose of the first royal visit to British North America, which came at the initiative of the legislature of the Province of Canada, was to cement imperial relations, to rally disparate Canadians around the British banner, and to further trade and industry. From the monarchy's point of view, the Prince's visit was an opportunity to test royal popularity abroad, which in an era of advancing democracy could not be taken for granted. The visit, remarked The Times, "will illustrate not only the loyalty of these prosperous Provinces, but the immense extent of British dominion and the deep-laid foundations of British power" (45).

The book opens with a constructive chapter on the background of the tour, the Prince's entourage, and the itinerary and arrangements, which were planned with an eye to civic effect and what his minders thought the young, unproven Prince could bear. In Britain, the Queen and Prince Albert took an active interest in their son's progress. In some respects, as Radforth points out, the North American tour mirrored their own visits to England and Scotland in the 1840s and 1850s. In keeping with the local character of Canada, the municipalities took the lead in planning the visit and the various civic receptions. In addition to sitting through innumerable loyal addresses, the Prince laid the foundation stone of the new Parliament buildings in Ottawa, presided over the opening of the Victoria Bridge, and dedicated parks, a waterworks, and an exhibition. As the North American tour illustrated, the Prince proved a worthy representative of the Albertine monarchy and its emphasis on civic purpose. Like all the royal offspring, he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but also arrived with a silver trowel in his hands, the better to lay foundation stones.

On his Canadian tour, the Prince sought to be as attentive to provincial characteristics as he was to public monuments. Radforth is particularly attuned to local and regional identities, which sometimes threatened the general impression that Canada was composed of a citizenry of contented admirers of the Queen. Negotiating the claims of Orangemen, French Catholics, native peoples, and African Canadians, who did not fit into conceptions of mid-Victorian progress, brought out the underlying tensions in the tour. Radforth includes a revealing chapter titled "Performing Indians," which discusses the prominent, though ambivalent, role the native peoples played in public spectacles during the tour. Most Canadians deemed the Prince's Canadian visit a success, a source of pleasure and pride; but partisan journalists made Canada appear "as a place riven by class, ethnic, and religious feuds that threatened public peace, as well as provincial progress and prosperity" (378).

Radforth's treatment of the Prince in the United States is lively, though less thorough than the chapters on Canada, which make up the bulk of the book. The excursion, which came at the invitation of President Buchanan, was an exercise in good will and diplomacy rather than imperial purpose. In the United States, the Prince travelled incognito as the Duke of Renfrew, a fiction disregarded by everyone he met. Sensationalist reporters followed the Prince's every movement. In Detroit, Cincinnati, and Chicago, unruly crowds jammed the streets. In genteel Boston, where the Prince visited Harvard and interviewed the last living survivor of the Battle of Bunker Hill, onlookers were more sedate. In New York, which Radforth highlights, a mass of humanity waited impatiently as the Prince was driven down...