Isabel De Madariaga (Essay Date November 2001)

SOURCE: de Madariaga, Isabel. "Catherine the Great: A Personal View." History Today 51, no. 11 (November 2001): 45-51.

In the following essay, de Madariaga explores the life, accomplishments, and political writings of Catherine the Great.

Since I first took Catherine seriously as a ruler, some forty years ago, I have grown to like her very much. This is not therefore going to be an exercise in debunking, it is a personal portrait of someone who has become a close friend.

For nearly two hundred years the Empress Catherine II of Russia (1762-96), or Catherine the Great, as she is known, has had a very bad press as a German usurper from a minor ducal family, without any claim to the Russian throne. Women on the throne were an anomaly and it was expected that they would rule through favourites or husbands. But Catherine had blotted...