Protector (title)


Protector, sometimes spelled protecter, is used as a title or part of various historical titles of heads of state and others in authority.

Political and administrative

Heads of state

Iran

Wakil ar-Ra`aya was a title of the Persian imperial Monarch under the Zand dynasty, as those rulers refused the style Shahanshah. The founding ruler of the Zand dynasty adopted the style; it appears that his successors used the same style, although documentation is obscure.

Napoleonic France

  • in most of Germany, east of the Rhine, except Prussia, from 25 July 1806 to 19 October 1813, the French Emperor, Napoleon I, bore the additional title of protecteur de la Confédération du Rhin, i.e. Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine, generally known as Rheinbund, uniting the German princes that had bowed to the conqueror. The actual presidency of its diet and council of Kings was held by a German prince, the Fürstprimas.
  • Bonaparte had a similar position in Switzerland under French occupation, but there his style was Médiateur de la Confédération Helvétique, while the chairmanship of the Diet, the acting Head of the Confederation, with the title Landammann der Schweiz /Landamman de la Suisse /Landamano della Svizzera, fell simply to the chief magistrate of the canton hosting it.

    Nazi Germany

  • Nazi Germany was represented by a Reichsprotektor in the Czech puppet-state it installed on 16 March 1939 under the explicit name Protektorat Böhmen und Mähren, the "Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia". The Reichsprotektor held the real executive power, not the native President and Prime Minister. The German incumbents, after a month under a Military Governor, were:
  • *5 April 1939 - 20 August 1943 Konstantin von Neurath, Freiherr NSDAP
  • *27 September 1941 - 4 June 1942 Reinhard Heydrich NSDAP
  • *27 May 1942 - 28 May 1942 Karl Hermann Frank NSDAP
  • *28 May 1942 - 14 October 1943 Kurt Daluege NSDAP
  • *14 October 1943 - 8 May 1945 Wilhelm Frick NSDAP
  • *26 April 1945 - 8 May 1945 Ferdinand Schörner

    Fictitious

The self-styled Emperor Norton I of the United States included among his titles "Protector of Mexico."

Colonial administration

  • In Spanish America, a Protector of the Indians was to restrain the abuses of the conquistadores at the expense of the indigenous Indios, e.g. granted to the first missionary bishop of Cusco.
  • In the British Empire, a colonial official responsible for administering the Chinese Protectorates, entities charged with the well-being of ethnic Chinese residents of the British-held Straits Settlements—which included current-day Singapore—during that territory's colonial period.
  • In the French empire, the Protecteur des Indigènes 'Protector of the Natives' was a colonial official charged with the protection of an indigenous community; ironically, such 'native' status was also awarded to the immigrants -thus officially named- on the island of La Réunion.

    Religious

Catholic

Since the thirteenth century it has been customary at Rome to confide to some particular Cardinal a special solicitude in the Roman Curia for the interests of a given religious order or institute, confraternity, church, college, city, nation, etc. Such a person is known as a Cardinal Protector.

Islamic

The title Hâdim ül Haramain ish Sharifain or Khādim al-Ḥaramayn al-Sharifayn, Arabic for 'Servant of the Noble Sanctuaries', notably Mecca and Medina was awarded to Sultan Salim Khan I by the Sherif of Mecca in 1517, a year after his conquest of Egypt and assuming of the title of Commander of the Faithful, and Successor of the Prophet of the Lord of the Universe, i.e. Caliph; both remained part of the full style of his successors on the throne.