Political Ceremonies and Rituals in the Early Modern World

Abstract As a theoretical category, “ritual” gives us a view into the inner workings of a community, as it represents that community’s foundational values at a given point in time and space. Moreover, it allows us to study change, transformation, invention, and innovation against the background of assumed tradition. Moreover, ritual is about social interaction and not about individual behavior; it is essentially a social concept. It is closely related to religion, ideology, political legitimacy, etc. As it is argued throughout this Forum, ritual is a suitable instrument for the study of global history and transcultural contacts, and for the purposes of comparative history, since rituals are ubiquitous: there is no society and arguably no period of history without them.