Politics
His acute intelligence and his aloofness from the dynastic considerations affecting most European sovereigns gave the king considerable weight as an arbitrator in international questions. At the request of the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States in 1889 he appointed the chief justice of Samoa, and he was again called in to arbitrate in Samoan affairs in 1899.
In 1897 he was empowered to appoint a fifth arbitrator if necessary in the Venezuelan dispute, and he was called in to act as umpire in the Anglo-American arbitration treaty that was quashed by the United States Senate. He won many friends in the United Kingdom by his outspoken and generous support of Britain at the time of the Second Boer War (1899–1902), expressed in a declaration printed in The Times of the 2 May 1900, when continental opinion was almost universally hostile.
He was the 1,027th Knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece in Spain and the 774th Knight of the Order of the Garter in 1881.
During his time as King the Office of Prime Minister was instituted with Louis De Geer as the first holder of this new position. Among the prime minister`s during the reign of Oscar the most known and powerful was Erik Gustaf Boström who became very trusted by Oscar. Boström was given free hands by Oscar to select his own ministers without much regal involvement. It was an arrangement that furthered the road to parlamentarism.
Read more about this topic: Oscar II Of Sweden
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“The average educated man in America has about as much knowledge of what a political idea is as he has of the principles of counterpoint. Each is a thing used in politics or music which those fellows who practise politics or music manipulate somehow. Show him one and he will deny that it is politics at all. It must be corrupt or he will not recognize it. He has only seen dried figs. He has only thought dried thoughts. A live thought or a real idea is against the rules of his mind.”
—John Jay Chapman (1862–1933)
“If politics is the art of the possible, research is surely the art of the soluble. Both are immensely practical-minded affairs.”
—Peter B. Medawar (1915–1987)
“Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.”
—Mao Zedong (1893–1976)