Making Politics in the European Countryside, 1780s-1930s 9782503595061, 2503595065

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MAKING POLITICS IN THE EUROPEAN COUNTRYSIDE

CORN PUBLICATION SERIES VOLUME 19

Making Politics in the European Countryside 1780s-1930s

Edited by laurent brassart, corinne marache, juan pan-montojo & leen van molle

All authors publishing in the CORN series have been invited by the editors. All articles are intensively discussed at preparatory meetings, reviewed by the editors and double blind peer reviewed by external reviewers. This book is published as part of the CORN research programme “Inequality and Rural Development”, with the support of the Interfaculty Centre for Agrarian History (ICAG, KU Leuven) and of the CEMMC (Centre d’études des mondes moderne et contemporain) of the University Bordeaux Montaigne.

© 2022, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. D/2022/0095/28 ISBN 978-2-503-59506-1 eISBN 978-2-503-59507-8 DOI 10.1484/M.CORN-EB.5.123797 ISSN 1780-3225 eISSN 2565-9413 Printed in the EU on acid-free paper.

Contents

List of Contributors

9

List of Illustrations

11

General introduction Corinne Marache, Laurent Brassart, Juan Pan-Montojo & Leen Van Molle

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Part I The shock of wars and revolutions, 1780s-1850s Introduction Laurent Brassart

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1. Consensus or conflict? Politics in towns and villages between the Seine and the North Sea, c. 1780-1830 Jean-Pierre Jessenne

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2. From rural homelands to national bordered lands, 1789-1815? Laurent Brassart & Maxime Kaci

59

3. Social inequality and the dynamics of political translocalisation: rural communities in nineteenth-century Germany Niels Grüne

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4. Peasant politicians and democracy: how the peasants contributed to the democratisation of Denmark, 1788-1849 Jesper Lundsby Skov

101

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CONTENTS

Part II Shifting repertoires of collective action Introduction Juan Pan-Montojo

123

5. A war within the war: peasant attacks against the forests during the Franco-Prussian War, 1870-1871 Alexandre Dupont

135

6. Punishment meted out by the community: politics and popular justice in rural Spain, 1895-1923 Óscar Bascuñán Añover

153

7. Electoral practices in French villages at the time of male universal suffrage: from rural collective action to individualism Nadine Vivier

171

8. Collective peasant struggles under the Third Republic in France: learning and inventing new protest tactics Édouard Lynch

195

Part III Political parties in the countryside Introduction Leen Van Molle

215

9. Between the nation and self-interest: the Czech peasantry in Moravia at the daybreak of civil society, 1848-1914 Milan Řepa

223

10. Spanish republican discourses on the countryside, 1840-1874 Florencia Peyrou

247

11. Agricultural associations and political parties in the transition to mass politics in Catalonia, 1890-1936 Jordi Planas & Raimon Soler-Becerro

271

CONTENTS

12. Agrarian politics in Sweden, c. 1850-1950 Erik Bengtsson & Josefin Hägglund

293

13. Agrarian parties in Europe prior to 1945 and beyond Miguel Cabo

313

7

List of Contributors

Óscar Bascuñán Añover Department of Modern and Late Modern History, Complutense University of Madrid, Spain Erik Bengtsson

Department of Economic History, Lund University, Sweden

Laurent Brassart

Institut de Recherches historiques du Septentrion , University of Lille, France

Miguel Cabo

Department of History, University of Santiago de Compostela (USC), Spain

Alexandre Dupont

Laboratoire Arts, Civilisation et Histoire de l’Europe, University of Strasbourg, France

Niels Grüne

Department of History and European Ethnology , University of Innsbruck, Austria

Josefin Hägglund

Department of History, Lund University / Södertörn University College, Sweden

Jean-Pierre Jessenne

University of Lille, France

Maxime Kaci

Centre Lucien Febvre, University of Franche-Comté, France

Édouard Lynch

Laboratoire d’études rurales, University Lumière Lyon 2, France

Corinne Marache

Département d’Histoire, University of Bordeaux Montaigne, France

Juan Pan-Montojo

Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain

Florencia Peyrou

Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain

Jordi Planas

Department of Economic History, University of Barcelona, Spain

Milan Řepa

Institute of History of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Brno, Czech Republic

Raimon Soler-Becerro

Centre d’Estudis Antoni de Capmany, University of Barcelona, Spain

Jesper Lundsby Skov

Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History, University of Oslo, Norway

Leen Van Molle

Interfaculty Centre for Agrarian History, KU Leuven, Belgium

Nadine Vivier

University of Le Mans, France

List of Illustrations

Jean-Pierre Jessenne Map 1.1: The area and the main towns between the Seine and the North Sea

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Laurent Brassart & Maxime Kaci Map. 2.1: French reaction to the arrival of Brabançons refugees

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Map. 2.2: Marking out, guarding and fighting in the northern borderlands

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Niels Grüne Map 3.1: Case study regions in the states of the German Confederation, c. 1850

77

Alexandre Dupont Map 5.1: Forest Crimes in France during the Franco-German War

136

Óscar Bascuñán Añover Table 6.1: Alleged crimes and offences committed by victims of attempted or successful lynchings, 1895-1923

156

Milan Řepa Map 9.1: Moravia within Austria-Hungary in the early twentieth century

224

Jordi Planas & Raimon Soler-Becerro Map 11.1: Districts with an anti-dynastic winner in the elections for the Spanish Parliament held in 1901, 1910, 1923 and 1933

277

Map 11.2: Agricultural chambers and districts were the regionalists succeeded in elections for the provincial board of Barcelona (1903-1913)

281

Table 11.1: Professions and participation in agricultural associations of the regionalist provincial deputies in Catalonia (excluding the city of Barcelona), 1914-1923

282

Map 11.3: Sections of the Federation of Societies of Agricultural Workers of the Penedès Region (1919-1921) and of the Union of Rabassaires (1923-1925)

285

Map 11.4: Agricultural associations that joined the ERC party (1931-1936)

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CORINNE mARAChE, LAURENT BRASSART, jUAN PAN-mONTOjO & LEEN vAN mOLLE 

General introduction

For a little over three decades, the bibliography on the politicisation of the peasantry in particular and the countryside in general has been largely renewed. Certain countries such as Spain, France and the United Kingdom have provided abundant material for this historiographical field, and numerous authors have continued to enrich the issues, following the example of the recent work of Chloé Gaboriaux in France (2010), Miguel Cabo in Spain (2014), Clare Griffiths in Great Britain (2007) and Müller and Harre for central Europe (2010). However, there is no real synthesis on this issue on a European scale, and since the proceed‐ ings of the international colloquium organised by the École française de Rome in 1997, which gave rise to a collective publication edited in 2000, La politisation des campagnes au XIXe siècle (France, Italy, Spain, Portugal), no work has focused on this theme from a European perspective. Twenty years since that publication, the present book proposes to continue the reflection on the politicisation of the countryside in Europe. The diversity of the territories studied is one of the first assets of this book, the contributions of which make it possible to observe the politicisation of rural territories from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean and from France to Moravia. Another strong point of this collective undertaking lies in the desire to approach the process of politicisation over a long period of time, from the end of the early modern period to the 1930s, and thus fully including the revolutionary era, which is too often studied in isolation. This book, which is based on rich and varied primary and secondary sources, has the added interest of proposing an extremely broad and open conception of Corinne Marache • Département d’Histoire, University of Bordeaux Montaigne, France Laurent Brassart • Institut de Recherches historiques du Septentrion, University of Lille, France Juan Pan-Montojo • Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain Leen Van Molle • Interfaculty Centre for Agrarian History, KU Leuven, Belgium Making Politics in the European Countryside, ed. by Laurent Brassart, Corinne Marache, Juan PanMontojo & Leen Van Molle, CORN Publication Series, 19 (Turnhout, 2022), pp. 13–20 DOI 10.1484/M.CORN-EB.5.128240

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the notion of politicisation and the way of doing politics, during, but also well be‐ fore the time of the famous “descent of politics to the masses” (Agulhon, 1970).1 The authors wished to go beyond the classical notion of politicisation, which is all too often reductive, and which has long led to the idea that so-called traditional society is simply an immobile space to be politicised. In fact, the conception, as defined in the 1970s and 1980s, of a chronologically linear politicisation of the countryside, operating only from the top to the bottom and intrinsically linked to the process of democratisation and the swing to the left of the rural masses, who are often reduced to immobile, conservative behaviour, hostile to change, and incapable of autonomous thought without their elites, is totally challenged. The book demonstrates that the process of politicisation which took place in the period under consideration was not a phenomenon that appeared ex-nihilo, but that on the contrary it corresponded to a progressive transition that occurred in rural societies throughout the modern and contemporary eras according to different rhythms, modalities and spatial logics in the European territories. Rural politics is seen as a continuous construction, a long and cumulative process, with a multiplicity of attitudes towards institutions and multifaceted individual and collective decision-making processes. The authors of this book have thus com‐ pleted and enriched an analysis, largely renewed in recent years, of the process of nationalisation, the dynamics of entry into politics and the political practices of rural societies, according to the political, economic and social contexts, both local and national, the connections between towns and countryside, and the social groups and individuals involved. The diversity of approach enriches this book and underlines, if it were necessary, the polysemous character of the notion of politicisation, which covers realities that are all the more difficult to grasp, the more important the space considered is. It is indeed a soft and hard, abstract and concrete, factual and diffuse meaning of the concept of politicisation that is considered, ranging from gestures to speeches, through banal or extraordinary political actions. The link between socialisation and politicisation is at the heart of this book, which examines the appropriation, by the inhabitants of rural territories, of ques‐ tions and debates relating to the organisation and the future of the communities to which they belonged. It considers the involvement of rural populations in local and national political life, in the process of democratisation and, thus, its integration into the national arena and its transition towards mass politics. Alongside voting and electoral practices, the involvement of rural societies in trade unions, cooperatives and other associations, whether agricultural or not, is placed at the heart of the reflection, insofar as it helped to familiarising the peasant world with democratic practices and strongly contributed to an awareness of the relationship between local and national issues and challenges. The central role of political parties (both left and right) in the process of politicisation 1 Quotations from primary and secondary sources, throughout the book, have been translated into English.

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

of the countryside, be it of agricultural workers, farmers and sharecroppers, or small, medium and large landowners, is extensively discussed. The book discusses both the view and discourse of parties and politicians on rural societies and spaces, and their reception, appropriation and translation by the people of the land. Politicisation is seen as an inter-relational dynamic between the state and the peasants, which is broken down into as many specific situations depending on the country and the time. Consensual or conflicting, the links between the local rural communities, the supra-local (justice, laws, administration, police, etc.) and the national, between the rural and the urban, as well as between the different components of rural societies, which manifest themselves through a whole range of behaviours that vary in time and space, are studied with finesse and nuance: meetings, demonstrations, petitions, passive resistance, obstruction, strikes, riots and violence, including lynching. The authors also examine the capacity of rural societies to think about politics, and even to internalise it, to the point of mobilising for translocal or even national causes. This deliberately broad acceptance of everything that is and everything that makes politic, allows the authors to approach as closely as possible the diversity of political practices (votes, demonstrations, petitions, etc.), everything that contributes in some way to a broadening of the identitary, discursive and ideological horizons of the villagers, whether this involves the appropriation or the rejection, at least temporarily, of political parties or of the State. From this very open approach to the process of politicisation in the country‐ side, many questions arise which are answered in the various chapters of the book for different spaces and periods. What was politics for rural people? Why and how were they interested in politics? Where and why was politics materialised, in what way, by what acts, what words, what attitudes? In what context, in what networks, in what circumstances? Who were the old and new, the traditional and modern actors who contributed to and accompanied the politicisation of rural societies? How did they succeed one another, superimpose or hybridise? How have existing inequalities in rural societies, or between cities and the countryside, been maintained, transformed, recomposed and reinvented during this process of politicisation? All these questions and many more are addressed in this book, which is structured in three main parts, each of which is introduced by a long introduction that allows the different chapters to be put into perspective. The first part “The shock of wars and revolutions, c. 1780-1850” focuses on the revolutionary phase of nation-state building from the 1780s to the 1850s. Using examples from northern France, Flanders, Germany and Denmark, the various chapters deal with the advance of political liberalism, between revolutions, wars and border changes. The authors, in turn, address the question of the participation of the inhabitants of the countryside, including the most remote, in political life and their understanding of revolutionary issues. They revisit the alleged differ‐ ences between cities and the countryside, showing that although the mechanisms, rhythms and objectives differed according to place, political transformation was taking place in these spaces whose borders and differences have often been

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overestimated or artificially thought out. They question the ways in which rural people both became acquainted with and then immersed themselves into the multifaceted realities of the local and the national in a troubled time of great political and territorial upheaval. The second part of the book considers the evolution of the repertoires of collective action in the European countryside from the 1850s to the 1930s, using examples from France and Spain. The authors analyse different modes of collective action and their political significance, questioning the traditional or modern character of the forms of mobilisation they observe. Are these collective actions the expression of the construction of the modern state or of forms of opposition to it? Are they constructed in the continuity of previous forms of village politics, in opposition to the latter, or can they be considered as a complex process of accumulation and hybridisation of ways of understanding and ‘doing’ politics? Finally, the book ends with a study of political parties in the countryside from the 1850s to the 1940s. It deals with both the ‘big’ parties, operating both in and out of towns, and the outspoken agrarian parties: their appearance in the countryside, their problems in establishing themselves, the networks and means of action they used, and their responses to the demands of the peasants. Four of the five chapters offer national case studies (Moravia, Spain, Sweden), while the last one proposes a comparative European approach to agrarian parties in Europe before 1945. The majority of the chapters that make up this book are the result of papers presented at two scientific meetings held in Belfast in April 2018 and in Bordeaux in April 2019, thanks to the CORN V (Comparative Rural History Network, financed by FWO Flanders) programme “Inequality and rural development” (2017-2021), within which the working group “Inequality and power distribu‐ tion: village politics and the rural-urban political cleavage”, was formed. The aim of these two scientific events was to better understand the processes of politicisation and nationalisation at work in the countryside and the evolution of inequalities within rural societies and between towns and the countryside. We would like to thank those who participated in these meetings, in addition to the authors in this volume: Darina Martykanova (Madrid), Benjamin Duinat (Paris), Clare Griffiths (Cardiff) and Daniel Brett (London). Their contributions have helped to inform the thinking behind this book. All chapters have been subject to a quadruple review and have undergone sub‐ stantial changes between their initial and final versions to ensure consistency and coherence of content. The careful language correction by Christopher Brennan has ensured that the book is linguistically and stylistically consistent. Moreover, the coordinators of the book would like to thank Brepols Publishers for all the care taken in the publication. Finally, it should be noted that this book, despite the diversity of approaches it proposes, has not been able to explore all the fields of rural politicisation in Europe. Although the United Kingdom is not studied as such, which may seem

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

surprising given its importance in the variety of the politicisation processes in the European countryside, it is nevertheless omnipresent in the questions and references that feed the authors’ reflections. It is also regrettable that the authors are silent on the material culture and materiality of politicisation, a more informal area of politicisation. This is the case for clothing in politics, which, while it may have been addressed for very specific periods and events (such as the Damsel War studied by Peter McPhee (1995), is nevertheless largely absent from the work on politicisation in the countryside. Yet there is much to be said for this issue. Let us mention, for example, the style of dress of the dorgéristes in the inter-war period, or the way in which political and ideological currents were able to instrumentalise a certain image of the peasant world, leading to the creation of the folklorist movement in France at the end of the nineteenth century and, consequently, to the invention of a tradition which froze male and female peasants in typical regional portrayals (Hobsbawm and Ranger, 2004; cf. also the Reichserntedankfest, the harvest festival introduced in Nazi Germany). All the chapters in this volume, except for the last one on agrarian parties, are either national or regional in geographic scope, although most of them intro‐ duce comparative elements, and many make reference to supranational processes. Transnational dimensions are implicit and taken for granted, but far less explained or analysed. However, we know that political processes in the countryside shared chronologies, forms, terms, and concepts, because they were embedded through various links in transnational networks and supranational textual communities. French revolutionary legislation, for instance, concerning political representation, municipal government, property rights, etc. was appropriated by many countries, because it was diffused within an Atlantic “république des lettres” that came into being in the eighteenth-century and without which the formulae adopted by the French revolutionary legislators would not have been understood by others (Bots and Waquet, 1997). Political leaders, intellectuals, journalists and literary authors of legitimist and counter-revolutionary movements read each other’s publications, met to obtain support or assistance because they were in exile, and even fought side by side. They shared standpoints, symbols and slogans, of which some had been developed in rural environments, and which travelled all the way down to remote villages (Vicent Fanconi, 2019). Examples of transnational influencing are numerous. The general press of the 1870s and 1880s, for instance, informed its readers of the political troubles in Ireland as a result of the land war, and saw in the reformist measures by the British government a new form of public policy concerning rural properties. Anarchist propagandists translated fragments of the book of Errico Malatesta, Fra contadini [Among peasants], published in 1884, and ensured a wide reception of its main theses in various cultural spaces (Dornetti, 2020). Karl Kautsky’s Die Agrarfrage, published in 1899, inspired the agrarian programmes of socialist parties and unions well beyond Germany. By the end of the nineteenth century, international agricultural societies and congresses facilitated frequent meetings of agrarian leaders, politicians and agronomists and furthered the sharing of discourses and views on legislative measures and tech‐

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nical progress, in particular the Commission internationale d’Agriculture that was established in 1889 (Pan-Montojo, Mignemi, 2017). The press of agrarian associ‐ ations summarised what agricultural journals in other countries had published and familiarised its readers with the expertise in culturally central countries, and even more so with practices elsewhere that became real models all over Europe, such as the Danish cooperatives or the lobbying power of the German Bund der Landwirte. However, transfers and appropriations were not limited to agricultural matters and the concerns of agrarianist movements. In various countries, the Catholic Church played a marked role, through its parochial institutions, religious orders and lay associations, its publications, meetings and mass events, in order to spread its social doctrine and, accordingly, to promote the German Bauernvereine and the Belgian Boerenbond as models of the desired social Catholicism for the countryside. These are but a few examples of transnational cultural, political, vocational and social encounters and movements that connected rural dwellers and their leaders across frontiers and served as the vectors for many of the similarities we find in the wake of the politicisation process among regional and national cases. To end with, this is thus an open invitation for all those interested in the history of the processes of politicisation in the European countryside to continue their research. There are many open avenues for future work and publication on this rich, complex and fascinating theme.

GENERAL INTRODUCTION

Bibliography Aguhlon, M. (1970) La République au village, Paris. Bots, H. and Waquet, F. (1997) La République des lettres, Paris. Dietmar, M. and Harre, A. eds (2010) Transforming Rural Societies: Agrarian Property and Agrarianism in East Central Europe in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Innsbruck. Dornetti, F. (2020) ‘Fra Contadini di Errico Malatesta, da Firenze a Tokyo’, Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie orientale, 56, pp. 593-624. Fernandez Prieto, L., Pan-Montojo, J. and Cabo, M. eds (2014) Agriculture in the Age of Fascism, Turnhout. Gaboriaux, C. (2010) La République en quête de citoyens. Les républicains français face au bonapartisme rural (1848-1880), Paris. Griffiths, C. (2007) Labour and the Countryside. The Politics of Rural Britain, 1918-1939, Oxford. Hobsbawm, E. and Ranger, T. ed. (1983, new ed. 2004) The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge. McPhee, P. (1995) Les semailles de la République dans les Pyrénées-Orientales 1846-1852, Perpignan. Pan-Montojo, J. and Mignemi, N. (2017) ‘International organizations and agriculture, 1905 to 1945: Introduction’, Agricultural History Review, vol. 65, 2, pp. 237-253. Vicent Fanconi, A. M. (2019) De la monarquía católica a la Europa legitimista: una historia transnacional del primer carlismo, unpublished doctoral thesis, Univ. Autónoma de Madrid. (2000) La politisation des campagnes au XIXe siècle. France, Italie, Espagne et Portugal, Rome.

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PART I

The shock of wars and revolutions, 1780s-1850s

LAURENT BRASSART 

Introduction

Can the 1780 to 1850 years be considered a matrix for the politicisation of European peasants? It would certainly be an exaggeration, as the agrarian, food, anti-fiscal and anti-seigneurial riots of early modern times have proved to be more than the simple manifestation of infra-politics to which historiography had long reduced them. Indeed, the pre-1780 period already presented clear characteristics of politicisation, a phenomenon which historians have called “popular politics” (Wood, 2002), the “moral economy of the crowd” (Thompson, 1971) and even “la politique du peuple” (people’s politics, Dupuy, 2002), the latter arguing that, in essence, the political will of the people predated the institutionalisation of politics and that its essential characteristics were its everyday nature, proximity, emotional immediacy, moral economy and attachment to traditions. Consequently, the poly‐ semy of the concept of politicisation has to be taken into account. In early modern times, politicisation in the rural areas was not so much a competition for access to political institutions, rather the ability to express a political idea, at minimum to rise above the simple defence of private or local interests, and at maximum to connect to national issues. We know, for instance, that the anti-fiscal jacqueries (peasant revolts) of the seventeenth century in the French countryside aimed at liberating the king of his bad advisors (Bercé, 1986) and that the subsistence riots of the 1770-89 period were meant to foil a famine plot, fomented by speculators and aristocrats without the king’s knowledge (Kaplan, 1982). The anti-feudal riots in the rural areas of the Kingdom of Naples, in the 1730s and 40s, are another example of the rough features of rural politicisation: the peasants there combined violent action on the one hand with judicial proceedings on the other. For the purpose of legal action, the Calabrian peasants had to rephrase their demands into a new and trans-local language which they managed to acquire and use again a few decades later during the so-called great riot of 1799 (Cecere, 2013). This means that politicisation in rural areas was neither born at the end of the nineteenth century (Weber, 1976), nor during the French Revolution (Vovelle,

Laurent Brassart • Institut de Recherches historiques du Septentrion, University of Lille, France Making Politics in the European Countryside, ed. by Laurent Brassart, Corinne Marache, Juan PanMontojo & Leen Van Molle, CORN Publication Series, 19 (Turnhout, 2022), pp. 23–32 DOI 10.1484/M.CORN-EB.5.128241

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1992; Edelstein, 2013), nor in the decades from 1820 to 1850 (Agulhon, 1970; Guionnet, 1997). Nevertheless, between 1780 and 1850, the era of revolutions as it has been called (Hobsbawm, 1962), decisive breaks in the European political order oc‐ curred: new mobilising concepts such as national sovereignty, representative democracy and social justice were propagated, on top of the traditional demands such as the defence of local and individual rights and self-administration of the rural communities. Decisive political events and experiences, such as the Batavian, French and Belgian revolutions, the Napoleonic Empire, nationalist movements and the revolutions of 1830 and 1848, put an end to the feudal system and to absolute monarchies. These political episodes accelerated the process that changed the status of the European peasants from subjects into that of citizens. Subsequently, the dynamics of politicisation adopted new forms of action and raised new conflicts, in particular for the control of local power, be it now accord‐ ing to appeals and partisan logics at a trans-local, national or even international level, and without abandoning the forms of action that stemmed from the early modern period. Contrary to what the historiography of the 1970s and 1980s had advanced, politicisation in the countryside, in the course of the nineteenth century, should not be seen as a mono-directional process, with the political issues of the ruling elites and cities trickling down to the rural masses, nor as an inevitable double dynamic of democratisation and nationalisation (Agulhon, 1970), a point of view often inherited from French republican political discourse (Gaboriaux, 2010). The politicisation of rural populations can neither be reduced to the spreading of left-wing ideas and forces; unquestionably, political strategies of the European right-wing movements were equally important, if not more influential. Research on the royalist Chouans in France (Dupuy and Lebrun, 1986; Martin, 2000), on the conservative Carlists in Spain (Canal, 2000; Pan-Montojo, 1990; Rujula, 1998) and on rural resistance in ‘Belgian’ areas to the Brabant revolution and the French occupation has largely evidenced right-wing political mobilisation: peas‐ ants in various parts of Europe began to adopt national watchwords, to defend political causes which went beyond local interests and to broaden their repertoire of political action. The papers presented in this chapter confirm how much the politicisation of country dwellers, in their capacity to combine local and national demands, rested on conservative – even reactionary – forces and worked in their favour. The case of Westphalia, in Germany, which is examined by Niels Grüne (chapter 3), is particularly illustrative in this respect. With examples of right-wing and left-wing tendencies, all the chapters in this book share the same effort at escaping from a deterministic social interpretation of politicisation, with the rich on the right side of the political spectrum and the poor on the left. It insists on the importance, for the formation of political identities in rural areas, of memory (of the Brabant and the French revolution, or of the liberal reforms in Germany, for instance), of religion (such as the evangelical revival in eastern Westphalia and

INTRODUCTION

Scandinavia, or Catholicism in Flanders), and of the specific economic and social agro-systems of the rural communities. The where/when relationship of rural politicisation has been reconsidered over and over again in historical writing, resulting in the idea that politicisation occurred in a fragmented way through time and space. Rather than pointing at a linear process, as an inexorable and triumphal march forward, whether steered top-down or bottom-up, historians now prefer to insist on the breaks, on the ebbs and flows, and, finally, on the ever-changing resetting of politicisation. In the first chapter, Jean-Pierre Jessenne analyses the dynamics of intense politicisation in villages of Northern France, particularly from 1789 to 1792, followed by a relative but long-standing de-politicisation from the time of the Terror (1793) to the 1830s. In Denmark, after a political arousal linked to the agrarian reforms of the late eighteenth century, Jesper Lundsby Skov (chapter 4) insists on the de‐ cline of peasant politicisation after the conservative turn under King Frederik VI from 1799 onwards and lasting until the reforms of the 1830s. Examining an even shorter period (1789-1815), Maxime Kaci and Laurent Brassart confirm in their turn the strong temporal instability of the dynamics of nationalisation and politicisation in the villages along the northern border between France and Belgium (chapter 2). Fragmentation can also be observed when studying the geographical distribution of political identification. Niels Grüne’s comparative study clearly highlights the construction of contradictory political logics in three rural territories of western Germany in the first half of the nineteenth century: the Baden Palatinate was open to liberal reforms, the Hessian Uplands were rather conservative and eastern Westphalia remained faithful to illiberal monarchical paternalism (chapter 3). On a larger scale, Laurent Brassart and Maxime Kaci’s chapter illustrates that the collective behaviour of individuals and what resulted from the processes of politicisation varied greatly from one village to another. This had already been demonstrated by Georges Lefebvre, in his work on French peasant com‐ munities at the time of the Revolution: he noticed that the so-called Grande Peur (Great Fear) of July 1789, which was born from a rumour, had not spread equally and uniformly over the whole territory. Even within regions which were more permeable to the rumour of an imminent attack of brigands, armed by counter-revolutionaries, some villages mobilised whereas others remained impas‐ sive (Lefebvre, 1932). Consequently, in order to get a better understanding of what triggered the politicisation of rural communities, research on the largest scale of all would be the best option, namely the village community, that is the local socio-political microcosm. Taking up this challenge of the “communalisation of political history” (Mayaud, 2000), a whole generation of historians has engaged in micro storia (Le Gall, 2009), according to pioneering studies such as the one by Giovanni Levi who connected the economic, social and political transformations of a Piedmont village to the broader general history of the seventeenth century (Levi, 1983). Jessenne, for his part, drawing on the pioneering work of Haim Burstin on protagonism, or the modes of entry into politics of an ordinary

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individual (Burstin, 2013), even displaces the scale of analysis from the village to the connection between the individual and the rural community, a change of perspective that rests on the analysis of ego-documents (diaries, account books, correspondence) produced by some rare countrymen (chapter 1; Jessenne, 2012). The important advantage of such multi-scale analyses of the processes of politici‐ sation is the avoiding of any form of essentialisation of the countryside, the village or the peasant, and of an alleged a-temporal portrayal of the rural civilisation (Mendras, 1967). Consequently, according to recent research, the socio-political heterogeneity of peasant communities, also in terms of time and space, was paramount. By taking this local perspective however, is there not a risk of producing a ‘crumbled history’ of politics in the countryside? Is there not a risk that the communalisation of the political history of the rural world could lead to the presentation of unintelligible patterns because no model can be produced, or even worse, that this would lead to the recreation of other logics of essentialisation when the irreducible specificity of each rural community is thus asserted? In other words, what should be done to avoid picturing each locality as a closed box? To take up this challenge, the chapters in this first part of the book insist on the permanent reconfigurations of the synergies between national and local issues on the one hand, and on the dynamic relationship between the towns and the countryside on the other ( Jessenne, 2000). The historiography of the early modern period, the eighteenth century in particular, has already revealed that kings, in various parts of Europe, encouraged rural communities to proceed against powerful feudal lords as a way, for the monarchy, to weaken the power of the aristocrats and, for the peasants, to fight against feudalism (Cecere, 2013; Lemarchand, 2011; Root, 1992). In short, the image of isolated villages, cut off from the rest of the world and hostile to any outside power, is clearly a myth. In this part of the book, Niels Grüne and Jesper Lundsby Skov, each in his own way, point at the dialects of invitation and appropriation between political elites and peasant communities, between national interests and local issues. In other words, “a model of politicisation by induction” (Gaboriaux, 2010), via inter‐ acting channels within rural communities and channels that connected them to the outer world. Skov understands the agrarian reforms in Denmark from 1784 to 1797, steered as they were by a few senior civil servants, as an invitation from the State to the peasantry to enter into politics, acquire new agricultural knowledge, and to contribute to the agrarian development of the country. This invitation, strengthened by the institutional reforms of 1834 that gave at least a part of the peasants the right to vote, was quickly accepted by the latter and induced the creation in 1846 of the first political party in Danish history, the Bondevernnernes Selskab, the peasant party (chapter 4). In his chapter, Niels Grüne explains how, in western Germany, the invitation from liberals to enter into politics, particularly after the revolutions of 1830 and 1848, were not followed by one and the same logic of appropriation across rural areas: Baden enthusiastically accepted the invitation, whereas the Hessian Uplands and eastern Westphalia were far more

INTRODUCTION

reluctant because these regions gave preference to other expectations or needs (chapter 3). Finally, Jean-Pierre Jessenne, when dealing with the policy of the Ja‐ cobin revolutionary government of 1793-1794, introduces a typology of political behaviour in villages in northern France, whereby he distinguishes five scenarii, each of them giving a distinct response to requests from the central government (chapter 1). All these historians share the same view on the reception and the varied appropriation of political incentives from the central State or intermediary insti‐ tutions: rural communities responded depending on the configuration of local socio-political power relationships and on their ability to overcome internal divides. In Germany, for instance, liberal ideas took root in the Baden area where the social cohesion within rural communities was strong, whereas their dissemination failed in Hessen and eastern Westphalia where social divides ran deep (chapter 3). And yet, it was not uncommon that political issues at the national level served as catalysts to the logics of implosion of rural communities. Swiss communities in the Valais mountains, for instance, faced as they were with constraints to adopt or refuse forms of political, economic or social modernity – whether it be the opening of a road, the need to resist an interdiction from the local landlord to buy foreign goods (cotton clothes and alcohol), or the abandonment of subsistence agriculture in order to develop commercial livestock farming – were deeply divided; interestingly, these long-standing discords did accelerate, in the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, strategies of economic, social and gender distinction between rival groups. So, what occurred in the Swiss Val de Bagnes was neither a form of class conflict nor an effect of forms of interdependence (kinship, patronage, etc.) but the struggle of individuals able to express themselves as independent political subjects (Guzzi-Heeb, 2014). Analysing the politicisation of rural communities in terms of offer and expec‐ tation, reception and appropriation allows us to close with two other historio‐ graphic refrains, namely the alleged political passivity of countrymen and the supposed inability of educated politicians, living in cities, to understand them. Recent research has belied this cliché, demonstrating the ability of elites to adapt their political discourses so as to echo the peasants’ demands and to broaden their electoral platforms (Gaboriaux, 2010). This is what the Danish agrarian party, Bondevernnerne, managed to do: it had something to offer to various rural commu‐ nities, promising some that agrarian reforms would resume and, to others who were not interested in such a program, the freeholders of Jutland in particular, a fairer military system. However, in spite of its electoral successes, the party disintegrated because of rising tension between the urban liberals and the more democratic peasant leaders in its ranks (chapter 4). Apparently, the adaptive strategies of the national political elites to incorporate peasants into their political organisation tallied with the aspirations of those rural communities who wanted to be heard. Peasant leaders, for their part, learned to master the political language of the elites and to translate it in order to further the process of acculturation. Admittedly, mediators and specific forms of mediation

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played their part: the press (such as Almuevennen or Commoner’s Friend, a Danish newspaper founded in 1842 by a schoolteacher and a shoemaker that addressed the peasantry, chapter 4), political societies (that of the Jacobins of Douai, for example, an association that managed to thwart the refusal of rural communities in the north department to welcome Brabant refugees, chapter 2), as well as traditional notables with a persistent influence (clergy, nobility) and new figures of radical proselytism (such as the smallholder Peder Hansen and the liberal Orla Lehmann in the Danish countryside in the 1840s, chapter 4). It would be wrong to conclude that the logics of mediation were necessarily successful and that the rural communities easily adopted the ways of thinking that others tried to instil into their minds (Scott, 1995 & 1990). However, as advanced above, the alleged political passivity of country people, when faced with top-down orders, was not a habitus; villagers had the agency to ignore, circumvent or resist the requirements of the State and the expectations of the cities. The reception of new measures depended to a large extent on the conditions and timing of their introduction. Brassart and Kaci demonstrate how the villages along the northern border followed varied paths of interaction with their surroundings, including fruitful exchanges with urban centres and with the State. Faced with a threatening invasion by the Austrian army, these villages spontaneously developed a ritual in March 1792 to strengthen their cohesion, giving a national character to politics and a political character to the Nation: the planting of Liberty trees (chapter 2). Interestingly, this was a truly bottom-up form of action, unsolicited and born in the villages along the border, adopted by city councils and district authorities, and then further generalised throughout the whole North department. One of the major political issues in this context was and has always been the reception of political refugees in the countryside, because it challenged the relationship and demanded complex interaction between towns and countryside, central and local authorities, the villagers’ homeland and patriotic cosmopolitism. These complicated and complementary top-down and bottom-up relations have been studied by Brassart and Kaci (chapter 2). In the same way, Jessenne unravels how the writing of cahiers de doléances in the countryside, in the spring of 1789, can no longer be reduced to a servile copying of model cahiers written by politicised urban bourgeois (chapter 1). Undoubtedly, any form of politicisation by induction rests on a synergy between ‘foreign’ and indigenous elements, between logics of diffusion and reception, of translation and appropriation. The process from revolt to the writing of entreaties and petitions, plus the right to vote, to the creation of a political, cultural, and economic counter-society in rural Denmark under the aegis of the newly founded peasant party in 1870 by people disappointed with the Bondevernnerne, proves that rural communities were rather inventive in their modes of political expression and in the construction of true repertoires of action (chapter 4). But there was more: besides voting and the formation of political movements, in the course of the nineteenth century, village communities sometimes chose to modernise archaic forms of protest. Folklore, in particular, lent itself for politicisation. In 1842, in the Baden area, for instance,

INTRODUCTION

oak wreaths were circulated in villages to show the support of the villagers for the liberal candidate who had been defeated in the election (chapter 3). One of the main political concerns for the arising parliamentary states in 1780-1850 period, then, was the suppression of traditional forms of rural political protest (riots not being the least of them) by redirecting critics into an institution‐ alised logic of incorporation, by turning political expression into voting, and by giving the villagers some degree of administrative autonomy, to name one of their most important accomplishments. In return, the acceptance by the rural communities of these strategies of incorporation was the sine qua non condition of its success. What does the analysis of rural voting behaviour reveal? Admittedly, local community logics still dominated (Guionnet, 1997; Vivier, 1998; Grüne, chapter 3), in spite of the presence of some civic individualisation. Nevertheless, the institutional acknowledgment of municipal councils and of their relative administrative autonomy became one of the main matrixes of the politicisation of Europe’s rural populations, even if the demographic size and legal status of the municipalities varied from one country to another (Brassart, Jessenne, Vivier, 2012). Jessenne reminds us that the acknowledgment of the rural commune as a legal, administrative and political entity contributed to the feeling of dignity of the villages and their inhabitants, and, consequently, to their incorporation into the logics of the national State (chapter 1). The following chapters, then, clearly contribute to the deconstruction of some myths and inaccuracies of some historiographic interpretations of politics in the countryside. For example, the supposed “Danish utopia”, a concept invented by nineteenth-century liberals which has been repeated for decades, conjuring up images of a culture of consensus based around a moderate reformism, shared by the State, the landowners and the more educated farmers, is thoroughly reconsidered and reinterpreted by Skov. He insists on the struggle for power that opposed, throughout the whole nineteenth century, the Danish State, oscillating between conservatism and reformism, and the peasantry. The peasants, for their part, although far less educated in the middle of the nineteenth century than often has been written, proved more than able to rapidly organise themselves into an autonomous political force, even if they were divided over the question of an alliance with urban liberals or not. Notwithstanding the fact that there was some form of dialogue between the Danish State and its peasantry, their relationship was far from being as peaceful as some have claimed it to be (chapter 4). Other representations are also questioned in the pages which follow, such as that of the ‘patriotic peasant’, the French chauvinist, a sort of modern version of the Roman legionary, living a simple and frugal life, but always ready to take up arms to defend his country (De Puymège, 1993). Brassart and Kaci stress that French peasants were ready to fight either for the Revolution or against it, depending on their interests, including their identity when it was at stake. Their chapter questions even more the alleged ‘border effect’ which has been understood by some as the driving factor behind the early nationalisation and politicisation of peasants. Another cliché, their supposed political passivity and

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atavistic distrust of the State and the cities, is largely contradicted in all four chapters: whatever their political options, peasants were able to negotiate and compromise in order to achieve their aims. Both the conservative and the liberal forms of politicisation dictated relationships with the central State, depending on the socio-agrarian specificities of each territory, as comes to the fore in the fourth chapter by Grüne. Finally, the ‘communitarian’ spirit of the peasantry, as often presented as the essence of rural civilisation, is questioned by Jessenne, who prefers to insist on the ‘individuation’ of politics. The following four studies present a variety of strategies of politicisation, sometimes apparently contradictory, deployed at different levels (regions, village communities and individuals), depending on local, national and even interna‐ tional contexts, and adapted to the issues that were at stake. The peasant could either take up arms to defend his village, refuse conscription for his son, adopt the revolutionary ideas of 1789, the liberal ones of 1830 or the social ones of 1848, and he could break with loyalties and ideas when he was dissatisfied, for instance for economic or religious reasons. Plural identity (Lahire, 1998) is also a major sociological and political feature of the European peasantry in the era of revolutions, as shines through in the dynamics of its politicisation.

INTRODUCTION

Bibliography Agulhon, M. (1970) La République au village, Paris. Berce, Y.-M. (1986) Histoire des croquants, Paris. Brassart, L., Jessenne, J.-P. and Vivier N. eds (2012) Clochemerle ou république villageoise? La conduite municipale des affaires villageoises en Europe, XVIIIe-XXe siècle, Lille. Burstin, H. (2013) Révolutionnaires. Pour une anthropologie politique de la Révolution française, Paris. Canal, J. (2002) El carlismo: dos siglos de contrarrevolución en España, Madrid. Cecere, D. (2013) Le armi del popolo: conflitti politici e strategie di resistenza nella Calabria del Settecento, Bari. De Puymège, G. (1993) Chauvin, le soldat-laboureur. Contribution à l’étude des nationalismes, Paris. Dupuy, R. (2002) La politique du peuple, XVIIIe-XXe siècle, Paris. ———, Lebrun, F. (1986) Les résistances à la Révolution, Paris. Edelstein, M. (2013) La Révolution française et la naissance de la démocratie électorale, Rennes. Gaboriaux, C. (2010) La République en quête de citoyens. Les Républicains face au bonapartisme rural, Paris. Grüne, N., Bohler, K.-F. (2017) ‘Editorial: Ländliche Akteure zwischen Protest und Revolution (18 bis 21. Jahrhundert)’, Zeitschrift für Agrargeschichte und Agrarsoziologie, 65, 2, pp. 7-21. Guionnet, C. (1997) L’apprentissage de la politique moderne. Les élections sous la Monarchie de juillet, Paris. Guzzi-Heeb, S. (2014) Passions alpines. Sexualité et pouvoirs dans les montagnes suisses (1700-1900), Rennes. Hobsbawm, E. (1962) The Age of Revolution, 1789-1848, London. Jessenne, J.-P. (2000) ‘Synergie nationale et dynamique communautaire dans l’évolution politique rurale par-delà la Révolution française (vers 1780-vers 1830)’, in La politisation des campagnes au XIXe siècle, France, Italie, Espagne et Portugal, Paris, pp. 57-79. ——— (2012) ‘Villageois et citoyens dans les écrits paysans en France (vers 1780-1850)’ in Engles J.-I., Monier, F. and Petiteau N. eds, La politique vue d’en bas. Pratiques privées, débats publics dans l’Europe contemporaine (XIXe-XXe siècles), vol. 1, Paris, pp. 81-104. Kaplan, S.-L. (1982) ‘The Famine Plot Persuasion in Eighteenth-Century France’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 72, 3, pp. 1-79. Lahire, B. (1998) L’homme pluriel, les ressorts de l’action, Paris; trad. (2010), The Plural Actor, London. Lefebvre, G. (1932) La Grande Peur, Paris. Le Gall, L. (2009) L’électeur en campagne dans le Finistère, Paris. Lemarchand, G. (2013) Paysans et seigneurs en Europe. Une histoire comparée, XVIe-XIXe siècle, Rennes. Levi, G. (1983) L’eredità immateriale. Carriera di un esorcista nel Piemonte del seicento, Torino.

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Martin, J.-C. (2000) La Contre-Révolution en Europe, XVIIe-XIXe siècle. Réalités politiques et sociales, résonances culturelles et idéologiques, Rennes. Mayaud, J.-L. (2000) ‘Pour une communalisation de l’histoire rurale’, in La politisation des campagnes au XIXe siècle, France, Italie, Espagne et Portugal, Paris, pp. 153-167. Mendras, H. (1967) Les sociétés paysannes, Paris. Pan-Montojo, J. (1990) Carlistas y Liberales en Navarra (1833-1839), Pamplona. Root, H. (1992) Peasants and King in Burgundy. Agrarian Foundations of French Absolutism, Los Angeles. Rujula, P. (1998) Contrarrevolución. Realismo y carlismo en Aragón y el Maestrazgo, 1820-1840, Zaragoza. Scott, J.-C. (1985) Weapons of the Weak. Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance, New Haven. ——— (1990) Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts, New Haven. Thompson, E. P. (1971) ‘The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century’, Past & Present, 50, pp. 76-136. Vivier, N. (1998) Propriété collective et identité communale. Les biens communaux en France, 1750-1914, Paris. Vovelle, M. (1992) La découverte de la politique. Géopolitique de la Révolution française, Paris. Weber, E. (1976) Peasants into Frenchmen. The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914, Stanford. Wood, A. (2002) Riot, Rebellion and Popular Politics in Early Modern England, London.

jEAN-PIERRE jESSENNE  

1. Consensus or conflict? Politics in towns and villages between the Seine and the North Sea, c. 1780-1830 *

At the end of 1790, administrators from the district of Boulogne-sur-Mer wrote to their counterparts in the département of Pas-de-Calais: “The inhabitants of the countryside have, at every opportunity, organised municipalities in order to become the equals of the mayors and municipal officers of the towns. Now that they have enjoyed the favour of having been granted the same attributes as towns‐ men, is there any chance that they will be deprived of it without protesting?”.2 This assessment on the part of elected representatives from the countryside reveals fundamental facts about politics in the village at the dawn of the French Revolution. First of all, the new municipal institutions quickly became embedded within the everyday life of rural communities, while villagers flocked in great numbers to village halls to fill local offices (Bianchi, 2003; Brassart, Jessenne, 2012; Jessenne, 1995). The increased involvement in local politics by the rural population is explained by their basic desire to have the same rights as those citizens in cities, which in turn was based on the idea that confrontation between town and country should be avoided and that a new consensus, including a politi‐ cal one, should be created. Were these expectations the sign of the transformation, in 1789, of subjects into citizens whose rights were now being acknowledged? Should these demands be seen as a form of politicisation within rural communi‐ ties, the inhabitants of which would have already experienced citizenship in 1789? Analysis of the district of Boulogne clearly reveals, very early on, the prevalence of a phenomenon that historians have considered to be fundamental for the nineteenth century: the ‘politicisation’ of the countryside. However, this term has

* I thank Laurent Brassart, Melvin Edelstein, Renaud Morieux and Sylvaine Welch for their remarks and their help in translating this text. Abbreviations: AD = Archives of départements; AN: National Archives. 2 AD Pas-de-Calais, 2L 4/8. Jean-Pierre Jessenne • University of Lille, France Making Politics in the European Countryside, ed. by Laurent Brassart, Corinne Marache, Juan PanMontojo & Leen Van Molle, CORN Publication Series, 19 (Turnhout, 2022), pp. 33–58 DOI 10.1484/M.CORN-EB.5.128242

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Map 1.1: The area and the main towns between the Seine and the North Sea « Carte figurative de la jonction de navigation de la Flandres (sic) avec celle de la France (vers 1760) », Bibliothèque municipale d’Abbeville, Armarium Hauts de France document 20466. This map (1cm = 10km) from the mid eighteenth century is not precisely dated. It corresponds grosso modo with the area of our study; it testifies to the links between the territories of this region, despite the frontiers, and locates most cited towns.

been defined in various ways, not always compellingly ( Jessenne, 2006; Lehning, 1995). The most banal and enduring of historiographical clichés is the tendency to expand the usual description of villagers as ruffians, incapable of any kind of

CONSENSUS OR CONFLICT?

autonomous thinking with regards to their political attitudes. By extension, they are bound to follow the whims of external actors, clergymen, noblemen or bour‐ geoisie, who are often described as ‘natural élites’. Even if some authors were still influenced by this representation (Weber, 1976), from the 1970s numerous studies, especially concerning popular revolts (Nicolas, 1985; Thompson, 1975) have deconstructed these reductionisms. These historiographical revisions have been well-described (Le Gall, 2005; Pécout, 1994; Morieux, 2004; etc) and are summed up in Laurent Brassart’s introduction to this part of the book. For the writing of this chapter, I have drawn some of my own observations. First, it seems fundamental to approach the study of political attitudes in the moyenne durée, by including both the moments of heated tension and conflict, as well as the periods when political institutions in villages became more stable and the same social groups were able to remain in power over many decades. This is why I have chosen to focus on the period between the 1780s and 1830s, from the revolution of the Austrian Low Countries and the very beginnings of the French Revolution, up until the Revolution of July 1830 in France and the independence of Belgium in September of that year. During this period, political regimes fluctuated and state borders were moved, whilst all the time, power in the village appears to have been more stable, particularly after 1800.3 My second methodological priority is to pay particular attention to the con‐ nection between town and country. This perspective overlaps with several of the debates about politicisation. First, research on this topic has focused on the notion of rural passivity; of the political monopoly of the bourgeoisie; and of the rejection of a revolution which stemmed from the city. The rejection of ‘urbanisation’, according to Charles Tilly, was the main reason for the rebellion in the Vendée (Tilly, 1964-1970). I aim to revise this stereotypical portrayal, not only concerning the French Revolution, but also in the understanding of the regimes of notables in the nineteenth century. The relationship between town and country raises multiple questions about political power, but also about the autonomy of communes, and the access to food or landed property. When they are considered along with other issues, such as sociability or international borders (see chapter 2 by Brassart and Kaci), these relationships provide us with a running theme in our understanding of rural politics as a complex process of common decision-making. At this point, we must raise a final series of questions regarding the way in which protagonists perceived this complex and tormented history. We have cho‐ sen not to dismiss, a priori, any of the approaches outlined above – between the local, the regional and the national, but also between individuals and collectives – because of their tendency to overlap. Haim Burstin’s reflection on ‘protagonism’ 3 The choice of this period does not entail analysing the whole chronological sequence with the same precision; the revolutionary period (1789-99) is studied in more depth, while I am skating over the years after 1800.

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during the French Revolution invites us to attempt to undertake, in much the same way, a microscopic analysis, by questioning the manner in which villagers experienced politics during this period (Burstin, 2013). To achieve this, we will examine the diaries of a number of citizens who recorded how they felt in the face of national or local events. However, one must go further than this to understand how individual opinions turned into collective movements. The village itself, as a community and as a municipality (commune) – therefore the basic administrative and political unit – was undoubtedly pivotal. However, is it justified to talk of ‘politics in the village’ when political practices were so different from one village to another ( Jones 2003)? Would it not be better to talk of plural political attitudes and consider other types of categorisation? For instance, should we talk of ‘popular politics’ or ‘peasant politics’ (Dupuy, 2002)? What is the correct territorial scale in which to analyse these dynamics? This study will focus on the French and Belgian territories between the River Seine and the North Sea.4 The choice of this transnational space is based on three criteria. First, these are territories which were relatively homogeneous with regard to their natural and human characteristics. This region of plains and plateaus, an area gifted with rich soil, was characterised at the end of the eighteenth century by rural settlements which were grouped, for the most part, in villages of a few hun‐ dred inhabitants that were rarely isolated from market towns and cities. Naturally, these rural territories did differ in some aspects. Until the nineteenth century, two main configurations prevailed: the ‘low country’- north of a line from Calais to Valenciennes- was characterised by a large population, numerous towns, and a productive agriculture; between Artois-Cambrésis and the Seine, the population density was much lower, large farms dominated, and the farm work was done by manouvriers or landless workers. Some areas were characterised by bocage, with settlements scattered about. The rural society within the region between the Seine and the North Sea was significant for its diverse social makeup, counting amongst the villagers a minority of larger farmers, landowners and ‘liberal professions’ (such as lawyers and surveyors, etc.), a middle-class of laboureurs and artisans, and a high number of self-employed rural workers who often had several occupations (agriculture, textile, etc). The whole region was dominated by a Catholic presence, as embodied by the large abbeys. Another important element was the chaotic his‐ tory of this region between the 1780s and 1830s. At certain times, as was the case with the revolutions of the 1780s, national events reverberated locally in the same fashion, but had contrasting consequences: while the revolution took root in the French départements, a restoration took place in the Low Countries (1791-1795). This was followed by a unification until 1815, after which these territories were split into two states. This sequence of events, when the territory was successively

4 To have a view of these territories, see map 1. I include in this study (circonscriptions of 1800): the French departments Aisne, Nord, Oise, Pas-de-Calais, Seine Inférieure, Somme and a part of the Ardennes, Seine-et-Oise; the ‘Belgian’ departments Deux-Nèthes, Dyle, Escaut, Lys, Jemmapes and a part of Sambre-et Meuse.

CONSENSUS OR CONFLICT?

unified and enlarged, offers a kind of laboratory with which allows to understand the interaction taking place between the different levels of politicisation within villages, as well as the influence of the wider national dynamic. Furthermore, it raises the question of the validity of Michel Vovelle’s “geopolitics of the French Revolution”.5 He based his study on a vast quantity of primary sources and combined multiple indicators, thanks to the – then pioneering – use of large data. His cartography offers a number of compelling hypotheses that still remain to be proved. In particular, and more specifically concerning my own interests, he describes the countryside from Ile-de-France to Flanders as the “France of flat open country, with large farming and an established order” (1992: 329). What exactly does this mean, post-French Revolution? Does it make sense to apply it to a larger part of North-Western Europe in the first half of the nineteenth century? Is the interplay between consensus and conflict within rural politics, and between towns and villages not far more complex? I will examine this interplay by looking at three moments in succession: 1780s-1791, 1791-1799 and 1800-1830s.

I. From the Ancien Régime to the revolutions: the varied transitions to new political participations and communities (1780- 1791) The relationship between towns and the countryside in the pre-revolutionary period are often reduced to clichés, which emphasise the divisions and cultural differences between them. These views lead to the leitmotiv of a drawing up in towns of cahiers de doléances (complaints) and the election of a delegation of the Tiers État (the third estate) to the États Généraux of 1789, controlled by the urban bourgeoisie. I.1. Beyond clichés: cities and villages connected

It is true that in 1780s’ north-western Europe, there were still many differences between towns and villages: towns did have clearly marked boundaries with walls, denser populations, and varied economic, social and cultural activities, as well as designated aldermen; villages were of a far smaller scale, with a predominantly peasant population, often dominated by seigneurs (landlords or ecclesiastics). However, there were many interrelations between these two worlds, not only for town supplies and markets, but also with the extraordinary development of rural textile production from the 1760s onwards. Picardy offers a good example: in 1785, there were two thousand looms outside of Amiens and its suburbs (En‐ grand, 1979). This led to a mixed system of agriculture and proto industry, and of

5 The title of Michel Vovelle’s book: La découverte de la politique. Géopolitique de la Révolution française, 1992.

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urban and rural activities, which in turn led to both complementary relationships, as well as simmering rivalries. Along with this, urban land property increased near towns, caused by competition between rural and urban buyers, especially for much sought after fertile soil. Moreover, during the eighteenth century, the nobility and the upper bourgeoisie divided their time between private mansions within the town, and a refurbished castle in a village often rebuilt a few years before. Additionally, this upper class shared a common sociability, either based on masonic, agronomic or academic sympathies, and interacted, moreover, along shared political philosophies. In the years 1785-89, political and economic problems combined to increase tension. In France and in the Austrian Low Countries, monarchic governments desired to promote administrative and fiscal reforms which were not popular amongst many of the population. Overall, there were several crises: a textile one, due to the commercial treaty with England in 1786; cattle epidemics; frequent conflict between lords and village communities, especially concerning the commons; as well as an increasing number of beggars and vagrants. All these difficulties were exacerbated by the poor harvest of 1788 and the ensuing subsistence crisis. In these situations, rural elites were often torn between their bond with the rural community and other pressing relationships. Two critical events which happened in parallel with each other accelerated political change: the preparation of the États Généraux in France, and the “Patriot Revolution” in the Southern Low Countries. I.2. The Revolution in the Southern Austrian Low Countries: villages against an urban model?

Simplifying the global scenario of this revolution, which was partly dependent on the relationship between towns and the countryside, the Low Countries rebelled against both Austrian domination and then Joseph II’s reforms. Soon Belgian patriots divided into statistes and Vonckistes, roughly conservatives against liberals (rather than democrats) (Polasky, 1985; Heirwegh, 1987; Pirenne, Vercruysse, 1992). Both groups agreed to declare a United States of Belgium, without much consideration of the position of, nor the problems that existed within the countryside. Trouble in the rural areas was not particularly widespread, but some examples in Brabant had shown that their relationship with both ‘Belgian’ parties was weak. Worse still, some countrymen, in the hope for agrarian justice, clamoured for the return of Joseph II who had initiated reforms in the 1780’s (Bruneel, 1999: 39). It was clearly a revolution led by divided urban elites, with the absence of the peasant population. Its rapid failure in 1790 and the return of Leopold II (after Joseph II’s death) were partly the consequence of the chasm which existed between the urban and the rural world. Was this process an example of “a-politicisation” or of a lack of synergy between the national, urban and rural dynamic? This second diagnosis is probably a far better explanation, in particular when we compare it to the French case.

CONSENSUS OR CONFLICT?

I.3. French people speaking in 1789: voices of the bourgeoisie or an authentic villager’s expression?

Participation was very different from one village to the other. Why? How did the local assemblies proceed in order to arrive at a common choice of demands? It is a question which is extremely difficult to answer. We know the influence of certain models, but this does not mean that these models were strictly copied. In the region of Rouen, the famous pamphlet Avis aux bons normands, written by the barrister Jacques-Guillaume Thouret, had precious little impact when compared to the demands that circulated from one village to another, or which were carried by personages who were present in a number of assemblies (Euchi. 2000). Therefore, it is important not to take the grievances drawn up in the cahiers de doléances as completely indicative of the climate of the period ( Jessenne, 2006: pp. 108-133; Marchand, 1989; Markoff, 1995; Serna, 2019). More appropriate would be to distinguish four types: 1) spontaneous texts written in a popular language; 2) some rare texts which were almost completely copied from previous models; 3) examples of two different cahiers which came about due to the break-up of the assembly, particularly evident in a small number of villages; and 4) a significant majority of cahiers and requests clearly inspired by circulating models and including locally adapted grievances and specific claims. It is obvious that public opinion of the Tiers État was not unified. Country dwellers were neither passive nor cut off from the urban elites, as there were intermediate personalities who developed the connection between the two. It would be too long to detail the many grievances, but one common point comes to the fore: villagers rarely mentioned how France should be organised generally, and the ‘Nation’ was not yet a clear concept, but there were clear political dimensions in the way villagers expressed themselves in 1789. They often denounced the lack of rural representation, particularly in the États Provinciaux where they did exist, and they demanded the establishment of a provincial body where they did not. Generally, urban privileges and monopolies were criticised, but the obvious un‐ derlying feature of these Cahiers was the rural population’s desire for their voices to be heard and for their dignity. Their arguments were not directed specifically against towns, in fact they were relatively at ease over the national wording on the representation and the periodicity of the États généraux. This can be clearly seen in how the assemblies of the bailliages6 were conducted, and particularly in how the results of elections came about. Peasants, and more widely villagers, were very present. In Vexin, big farmers and rich peasants (often called laboureurs) headed 50 % of the local assemblies of the rural bailliage of Pontoise and constituted two thirds of the hundred and thirty deputies elected in March 1789 (Dupâquier, 1990: 73 and 298). Beyond these numbers, the Northern provinces show how important it is to review the cliché of 6 French judicial and administrative districts during the Ancien Regime; in 1789, the representatives of local communities were called to gather in the chef-lieu of bailliage to elect deputies to Versailles.

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a political expression highjacked by the bourgeoisie and urban ‘liberal professions’. The most significant account that supports this is the story of the election of the four deputies in Lille’s bailliage: “All the deputies, who were at least 380, gathered on April 1st [1789]. Particular deputies from the towns of Lille, La Bassée, Armentières, Lannoi, Comines and of the market towns took counsel together to nominate a barrister, a merchant, a manufacturer and a farmer; they hoped that the votes of the countrymen would scatter and that they could control the vote, but they were very surprised when at the first ballot, my father [a barrister] had only 108 votes, when all the countrymen voted for the same man among them, we understood that they had an agreement together; we spoke carefully with them; they wanted a second representative from their class; we argued in vain that one laboureur was enough, they didn’t see reason; they were the strongest, we were obliged to surrender” (Marchand, 1989: 185). This is a wonderful answer to the question of when the politicisation process began: it was already in place in the 1780’s. These villagers elected two rural deputies for Versailles, they were able to thwart urban ambitions, and gathered themselves behind leaders who belonged to the rural bourgeoisie but who were authentic farmers ( Jessenne, 2007: 119-146). We can also see that personalities such as Thouret in Rouen, and Robespierre in Arras, were elected because they allied themselves with the rural Tiers and were clearly in opposition to other candidates who lacked any interest in countryside dwellers. Thus, from then onwards, a purely top-down rule from the state over local communities became practically impossible. Besides, upheaval across the country‐ side in the summer and autumn of 1789 and the fear they aroused in towns and in the Constituent Assembly, testify to the autonomy of these diverse but powerful rural movements. However, while protest grew in the Southwest of the country and in Burgundy, in the North of France the rural population did not oppose the patriotic Revolution, as they did in ‘Belgium’, and feelings of revolution had waned by the end of 1789 (Ado, 1996; Jessenne, 2015). In 1790 and part of 1791, a new territorial organisation was created in the hope of strengthening the position of the local communities and central authorities, and of stabilizing the relationship between towns and the countryside. The deputies in the Constituent assemblies refused to think in terms of national unity versus the local communities. I.4. The forces for a new territorial and political harmony (1789-1791)

The nationalisation of the discourses and expectations is evident. The faith in the new institutions, particularly in the Constituent Assembly, was real, and it opened up a new political horizon. Regional mediators, between the legislators in Paris and citizens in both towns and the countryside, spread the idea that a new world was beginning. For example, the deputy of Flanders, Pierre-François Lepoutre, a

CONSENSUS OR CONFLICT?

farmer from Linselles, north of Lille, wrote to his wife after the events of August 4th, 1789: «France will be superior to all the countries of the universe […]. You can tell that it will be the same law all over the kingdom. […]. I ask you to give one more jug [of cider] to the farm workers to celebrate 4 Août. Tell them that I beg them to be patient for a short time and I hope that their misery will be alleviated».7 But the impulses did not only come from the top, and villagers who had had diffi‐ culties with the new laws soon called upon the National Assembly. For example, in the Pays de Caux (Normandy, north of Rouen) a farmer complained about the landlord’s rabbits which had destroyed his crop, writing: “If this situation continues, I will send a petition to the Assembly”.8 This faith in the institutions rested on the success of new territorial organisa‐ tion, especially the modelling of communes and municipal councils. That institu‐ tional framework was created by law at the end of 1789 and, as early as February 1790, new municipal councils were elected. Their history in the North of France takes on four characteristics. Firstly, the National Assembly decided on November 25th, 1789, that “There will be a municipal council in each town, market town and village”. This proved to be crucial for the harmony between cities and villages. In the northern countryside, it meant that each traditional community would hence‐ forth have its own council at its disposal. Secondly, the councils of communes had to be elected via a male suffrage system, based on the poll tax. In the countryside, most men over the age of twenty-five became citoyens actifs, allowing them the right to vote. Participation in the first municipal elections was extremely high, around two thirds of all enfranchised citizens, and the first municipal councils were dominated by large farmers, leading to a type of fermocratie ( Jessenne, 2007). Thirdly, the speed in which local administrations went into action, as early as March 1790, also had a resounding effect (Brassart, Jessenne, 2012: 67-105). Last but not least, the upper local administration – especially of districts9 and départements- soon became important mediating bodies, working as bridges between the rural and urban municipal councils. In these administrations, elected in April 1790, there was roughly a similar percentage of urban and rural elected members (Edelstein, 2013: 266-270; Jessenne, 1995: 182). All of this favoured institutional stabilisation. A type of auto-government within village communities emerged, which was in line with the social hierarchy within the countryside and with the new order. But this order was only possible

7 Letter from Versailles, August 1789, 5th; see Jessenne Jean-Pierre, Lemay Edna Hindie (1993): pp. 74-75. 8 AD Seine Maritime, 205 BP 65. 9 According to the 1790 territorial law, the district was the administrative mid-level between municipal council and departmental administration; in 1800, the Consulat gathered a few districts in an arrondissement

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if there were not too many conflicts concerning the application of laws. In 1790, the collection of seigniorial dues and the payment of dimes, for instance, caused very acute problems because of the contentious interpretation of the legislation. Thus, in Cambrésis, a citizen from Thun-l’Evêque spoke to the crowd outside the church of Eswars, declaring that the decrees of the departmental Parlement of Flanders “do not have any validity; that they are old decisions”, and that he had received orders from the États Généraux».10 Hunting on private land and in royal forests, despite the legal restrictions, was another example of a collective practice which soon got out of hand. Clearly, in the countryside, revolution was a practice difficult to end! In the face of this radicalisation, departmental administrations attempted to enforce the law. It is not certain that district administrations always complied with the application of the new agrarian order, or that they wanted to apply the freedom of cereal trade promoted by the government. The district administrators of Gournay and Neufchâtel-en-Bray (Normandy) repeated that feudalism had been abolished, but that they were unable to compel peasants to pay for the redemption of feudal dues (Goujard, 1979: 140-141). Moreover, some municipal‐ ities mistrusted the administrators. On August 16, 1791, Willems, in the North department, wrote of his intention of getting back one third of the common which had been taken by the lord: “Municipalities have nothing to do with it [districts]. If we let the latter in charge of administration, municipalities will be destroyed, or they will return to the Ancien Régime. There will be no peace for those men that the citizens have chosen and who sacrificed themselves voluntarily to maintain common rights and interests” (Lefebvre, (1924), 1972: 386). The sale of national land was another source of tension, particularly between urban and rural buyers. The first auctions of land, in the years 1790-91, were often dominated by the wealthy bourgeoisie. To resist this, villagers organised themselves in different ways, as the administrators of the district of St-Quentin describe: “You have seen that the multitude of people at the auction sales grumbled each time that inhabi‐ tants from towns and outsiders took part and made higher bids” (Brassart, 2013: 111). The most elaborate form of resistance consisted of the organised groups which tried to buy plots of land, with the intention of sharing the land between themselves once they had won it at auction. In the Oise, no less than around thirty bands were formed in six out of the nine districts, some of which were based on signed agreements in front of a lawyer (Ikni, 1993: chapter 4). As Haïm Burstin underlines: “The access to citizenship occurs through the politicisation of protest struggles” (Burstin, 2013: 111). These practices became more and more disturbing for the majority of the National Assembly and for the local authorities who wanted to put an end to the Revolution ( Jessenne, 2015). At the same time, hunger riots grew in number and in gravity, such as in Douai in March 1791. Tensions were growing and the 10 AN, DXXIX 29. In France, until 1789, Parlements were regional judicial courts composed of nonelected officers; they also registered royal edicts.

CONSENSUS OR CONFLICT?

relationship between town and countryside became ever more contentious. Some events, such as the flight of King Louis XVI from Paris in June 1791, increased that tension, but the turning point was the beginning of the first coalition war against France on April 20th, 1792. It caused a new revolutionary and politicizing dynamic which ended with of new territorial and political order.

II. From acute political conflict to the villages’ disinvolvement or secession (1792-99) The war had an immediate effect, with the first clashes along the northern border having a disastrous impact on the French troops. So much so that there were mass mutinies and incidents of soldiers joining the militant partisans, the ‘sansculottes’, resulting in the murder of their general, Theobald Dillon. The end of the monarchy, on August 10, 1792, was the crucial event in this dramatic episode. Combining an array of documentation on this decisive moment, we can try to understand how citizens, both individually and collectively, either took on an active and public role in the collective events of the time, or remained distant from the ensuing chaos, choosing to remain on the sidelines (Burstin, 2013: 151-121). I will describe this process using personal writings, reports, testimonies, and votes. II.1. Revolutionary protagonists in villages and towns

I will first refer to three peasant diaries: Gilbert Clain, a large farmer from the north-east of Paris (Moriceau, 1995; diary from 1796 to 1853); André Hubert Dameras, a manouvrier located in the Ardennes (Carlier, 1905; diary from 1770 to 1836) and an anonymous peasant and textile worker from the Pays de Caux in Northern Normandy (AD Seine-maritime J191, period 1789-1801). Despite the differences in their writing, they display the same skill of weaving stories of ordinary, everyday life, evoking the particularities of that time: the weather, crops and work, as well as happy and unhappy events within the village. But there is also mention of the striking events of the Revolution. Not all events are similarly mentioned in the three cases, but there are some common points: namely the establishment of the États Généraux, and the escape and subsequent fall of the king. We can also clearly see a sign of politicisation in the genuine interest that the diary writers have for the new institutions: the first municipal councils, the creation of the national guard, as well as the elections. As the years go by, three sets of problems seemed to structure individual opinions about French national history: religious issues, prices and subsistence, and the war and military enlist‐ ment. Initially, points of view were not very definite, but gradually, information and feelings led to more clear-cut opinions. Concerning religion for example, the anonymous Cauchois wrote favourably about the nationalisation of clerical land and the election of parish priests. Afterwards, he noted the disagreement over the clerical oath and the departure of non-juring priests until, later, he becomes

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much more severe towards republican religious policy. Apparently, the ras-le-bol, the point of saturation and aversion, already had an important position in the politicisation process. None of these countrymen spoke about towns or expressed a clear support for any political party. Conversely, they did clearly express their judgement over some events. Dameras wrote an astonishing and touching com‐ ment: “Year I, year of the Lord 1793, Death of Louis 16 King of France. He was guillotined because he abdicated the constitution. This will unleash war once more, because all the kingdoms will be against France. It is awful to kill a king. Requiescat in pace!”11 Finally, from 1793, these three diarists wrote less and less about political events. Why? Were they frightened of revolutionary repression? In October 1793 (no particular day indicated), the anonymous Normand villager wrote: “We don’t dare to talk about anything because we would be punished by death.” 12 This withdrawal into the private sphere is certainly striking, however it should not be understood as any kind of passivity. The reports of local administrators and of elections also give an insight into this withdrawal process. I refer to the analysis of Boulogne-sur-Mer, previously mentioned in the introduction of this part of the book, which draws attention to the villagers’ attachment to the municipal councils. Two developments changed the relationship between towns and countryside. Firstly, urban political clubs – sociétés populaires from August 1792 – multiplied their attacks against the behaviour of the rural population, especially regarding the subsistence crisis and the refractory priests. Secondly, annual elections for district administrators gave results that changed the proportion of urban and rural citizens in the Pas-deCalais: in 1790, 55% of the administrators of the eight districts were countrymen, mainly farmers; at the end of 1792, they were less than 25% and the presidents of these administrations were all urban citizens (Edelstein, 2013: 450; Jessenne, 1995: 181). This development went hand in hand with a spectacular drop in the electoral participation of rural dwellers, despite universal male suffrage being in place. Meanwhile, at the same time, urban participation increased. A gap was steadily growing between the countryside and the towns, as well as the State, a phenomenon echoed in Belgium in the years 1789-90. During 1793, this process became even more pronounced, due to the enforce‐ ment of revolutionary measures. Especially striking are two specific regional effects of the war in the northern territories: requisitions, which were a common‐ place occurrence, and revolutionary bodies which were regularly active (représen‐ tants en mission, the revolutionary army, etc.). This omnipresent revolutionary government was widely supported by towns and their political organisations (Brassart, 2017; Jessenne, 2015: 66; Lefebvre [1924] 1972). Is this sufficient enough to speak of an ‘urbanisation’ of the revolution, as Charles Tilly did? I

11 “An premier, an du seigneur 1793, Mort de Louis 16 roi de France. On l’a fait guillotiner parce qu’il a abdiqué la constitution. Ce qui causera encore la guerre plus fort, toutes les couronnes sont contre la France. C’est bien fort de faire mourir un roi. Requiescat in pace!” 21 janvier 1793. 12 “On ose plus parler aucune chose car on serait puni de mort”.

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personally do not think it is. Under the First Republic, in 1793-1794, there was no structural change. The republican system was, above all, a reaction to the war, to political divisions, and to power struggles. However, it is true that compelling measures were imposed on many areas, including on agriculture. Indeed, the Comité du Salut Public denounced local authorities and particularly the larger farm owners who did not “divide properties to fight against misery”.13 As a result of the law of Frimaire Year II (December 1793), municipalities lost their autonomy. The relationship between the Jacobin movement and peas‐ ant behaviour became increasingly paradoxical. In the first months of 1794, petitions denouncing the grands fermiers (large tenants) and wealthy villagers were circulated, whilst Catholic and counter-revolutionary practices increased, demonstrating an extension of the Jacobin influence (Lefebvre, [1934], 1989). The mobilisation of the peasantry also increased, with many different forms of resistance to intervention from above. The outcome, between the Seine and Flanders, was a political situation with kaleidoscopic features. II.2. A pattern of divided political behaviour in the year II (September 17931794)

If indeed most towns were under the control of the Revolutionary Government, at least in principle, we can distinguish five main scenarios in the villages ( Jessenne, 1994: 223-247; also, Jones, 1998, 2003). Firstly, in revolutionary municipalities, Jacobins or sans-culottes had taken power. There were active sociétés populaires and committees which enforced the collective support of revolutionary policy, arrested suspects and recalcitrant larger farm owners, requisitioned crops and animals, and required the partition of the common land (Bianchi, 2003). Secondly, in divided communities, conflicts of power surfaced. Here there was often opposition between the municipality on the one hand, dominated by the influential local oligarchy and which had remained almost unchanged for years, and the sans-culotte movement on the other. In these cases, local policy was often unstable and violent. In Marck-en-Calaisis, the société populaire wrote a clear analysis. “They [the big farmers] cultivate at least four to five hundred mesures [around 200 hectares]; they employ, according to the season, around thirty farm workers as poor vassals and can treat them as they want. […] In electoral assemblies all these servants are obliged to give their votes to their masters. So, these rich egoists are nearly always elected as local administrators and keep the people under an endless despotism”.14

13 Georges Couthon in the Club des Jacobins, Le Moniteur, N°20, Year 2, Floréal 1st (April 1794, 20th) ff. 279. 14 AD, Pas-de-Calais, 4L, Comité de surveillance, Marck.

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Thirdly, in many villages, conflict was concealed and did not rise to the surface, of‐ ten allowing the local governing powers to remain stable; the main requirements of the government (taxes, requisitions) were respected, though some of them were diluted (against a suspect for example). In this way, the community felt pro‐ tected. Recalcitrant villages, fourthly, generally ignored revolutionary measures as much as possible, answering them occasionally with clear anti-revolutionary behaviour.15 An example of this was when the younger people of the community refused to comply with conscription and went into hiding in order to avoid the draft. However, these forms of rebellion never expanded into a larger movement, nor did they last. A fifth and final scenario concerned those towns and villages which were occupied by the Austrian Empire, later becoming a part of ‘Belgian’ territory, as well as the main part of French Hainaut which was occupied by the Austrians from July 1793 to the spring of 1794: they were governed by a jointe, whose mission was to restore the Ancien Régime.16 We lack studies about the particular situation in this region, but it seems that public reaction remained very limited: many were unsympathetic with this counter-revolution, but rather than to take action, they seemed to wait for the episode to blow over. When the French army reconquered these territories, it installed a regime of terror which lasted a number of weeks, especially in Cambresis. However, in the whole of the North département, the republican regime quickly became established, even expanding into a part of Belgium. On the whole, a majority of villages probably wavered between moderate conflict and the willingness to satisfy the fairest requirements of the state, often in order to preserve their citizens from harsher demands. But the relationship between towns and villages became more strained, especially when towns com‐ pelled the villagers to follow one particular policy. II. 3 The Thermidorian and directorial Republic: over-politicisation or territorial and political disruption (1795-1799)?

This neglected period is decisive. As early as December 1794, the repeal of the Maximum Laws (price and wage setting laws), as well as an acute subsistence crisis, created huge difficulty as towns competed with one another for supplies. Rural communities were often isolated and had to face many dangers such as food shortages, political quarrels, and robbery and criminality, amongst other issues. In this context, the Constitution of the Year III (1795) turned territorial organisation upside down. 15 About the differences between “anti-revolution” and “counter-revolution”: Dupuy, Lebrun, 1987. An anti-revolutionary opinion just rejects some aspects of revolutionary politics, but not the whole Revolution. 16 A jointe is an administrative body under the direct control of the Austrian governor in the Southern Low Countries.

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The Republic restored a voting system based on a poll tax. Overall, munic‐ ipal councils were replaced by councils on the level of cantons. Each village had to elect one municipal delegate and an assistant as representatives for the administration of the canton; cantons consequently bridged the gap between the villages and the départements. But cantons were artificial constructs, far removed from the actual communities they were authorised to govern. Moreover, elected cantonal councils were overseen by a commissaire, appointed by the central gov‐ ernment and whose duty it was to watch over the application of laws; with this structure in place, the Thermidorians hoped to strengthen the State’s authority and to maintain order. François-Antoine Boissy d’Anglas, when writing about the Constitution, complained that the village councils were: “a vast number of administrations which were acting at the same time in opposite directions and often without discipline”.17 Nevertheless, this institutional system posed a risk, especially because of the discord in public opinion and the serious conflict over power. In a letter to Lazare Carnot, one of the five central directors, Buissart, a lawyer from Arras who approved of the regime, explained on the 24th Messidor of the Year V ( July 12th, 1797): “It’s obvious that there are still royalists and anarchists […]. Countryside and towns are different. In the villages, there are no anarchists, but fanaticism arises sometimes; deported priests can be seen in different places. […] Trees of liberty have been cut since a year ago in twelve or fifteen villages of Arras’ arrondissement. Nobody speaks. Public spirit is not good. […] If offences are not punished, it is in the first place the fault of municipal policemen and their assistants, and then the judges of the peace in rural cantons”.18 This distinction between town and countryside is, as usual, a little oversimplified, but it had never been so true. The gap further increased after the coup d’état of 18 Fructidor Year V, when republican commissaires tried to replace many municipal agents. However, they were not able to find alternatives, as most villagers refused the offer to take office. Our anonymous Norman farmer expressed his opposition to the regime as he had never done before: “Here is the world in two parts, here is the world divided. Here comes persecution and starvation”. And later in the Year V: “In March 1798, men were elected in Criquetot to go to Paris to the National Assembly. All bad people, republican people were elected”.19 His analysis

17 Le Moniteur, Year III, 22 messidor, vol. XXV, pp. 168-170. About this period (1795-1799) in northern France and Belgium: Bernet, Jessenne and Leuwers (eds), 3 vol., 1999, 2000, 2003. 18 A. D., Pas-de-Calais, Fonds Barbier 164/50. By anarchist, Buissart points out néo-jacobins; the accusation of fanatism is directed against public practice of catholic cult in spite of the law of Brumaire Year III (October 1795 25th). 19 “Voila le monde en deux parties, voila le monde divisé. Voila la persécution arrivée et la famine” […] “Au mois de mars 1798, on a nommé à Criquetot des hommes pour aller à Paris à l’Assemblée nationale. On a nommé tous gens méchants, gens républicains”.

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is clear-cut; it was a political position that led to a certain boycott of the State, a withdrawal from the nation, but without a rebellion. The division between both towns and villages, as well as between supporters and opponents of the Directoire was more brutal in the Belgian departments, as expressed by the Guerre des paysans, the so-called Peasants’ Revolt. In the autumn of 1798, the introduction of conscription and taxation caused uprisings in the rural Pays de Waes, between Antwerp and Ghent. Villagers, more especially the younger inhabitants, gathered. The movement soon expanded into the départe‐ ments of Escaut, Lys and Dyle, then further to the south-east (Dhondt, 1987; François, 1998; Stevens, 1999; Rousseaux, 2005), resulting in the creation of an army of several thousand men. Larger cities did not participate significantly, but the movement spread into small towns where leaders came to the fore and com‐ mittees were set up. Historians still debate the role of various social groups within the movement: did it consist of mainly peasants, textile workers or members of the local elites? Luc Dhondt draws an extremely nuanced picture of the time, focussing on the motivation of the actors involved. He unravels how old divisions and an attachment to the institutions that had been in place up until 1787 created ongoing resentment, how disagreement over religious matters caused a great deal of friction, and how opposition to measures imposed by the French, as well as the social and economic differences that existed between proto-industrial trades also played its part in the movement. Xavier Rousseaux emphasises the diversity of local scenarios and the way they played out, but in the end, despite their best attempts, the revolt was finally crushed in December 1798. This process has often been interpreted as a ‘depoliticisation’, a falling back of rural communities in an effort to focus on local problems. This analysis is partly true, but not as a consequence of any everlasting rural behaviour, rather as the outcome of the dysfunctional management of the État-Nation. The Directoire created a gap between the villagers and the State and, in some cases, also between the villagers and towns. France and Belgium were ready for a new synthesis.

III. Order and compromise under the tutelage of local notables: towards a consensus or an a-political stability? The first half of the nineteenth century saw few changes in the system of local administration, despite the change in regimes and sovereignty. III.1. The regime of notables and the maintenance of territorial ties.

I will not revisit the details of the ‘concordat’ between the state and the rural communities at the beginning of the Consulate ( Jessenne, 2003), but it is worth remembering that the law of 28 pluviôse Year VIII (February 13th, 1800), which was introduced by the Consuls and the Minister of the Interior, Lucien Bonaparte,

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decided that the communes would again be the first level of territorial organisation. Municipal councils were elected, but their mayors were now appointed by the departmental prefects. These prefects became the heads and supervisors of their département. This system proved far more able to compromise than has been previously suggested, putting to bed the popular myth of the workings of central‐ isation during the Consulate. The choice of who became mayor in villages was made with great care, no decision was made until after consultation with local personalities. In this way, the prefects tried to find a balance between local nota‐ bles on the one hand, whilst on the other avoiding those who were too radically in favour of or against the Revolution (examples in Bernet et al., 2003). In the northern départements, this rural elite consisted of noblemen (returned from exile or newly ennobled persons), landowning farmers, and others with “capacities” such as lawyers, doctors, and millers, etc. Contrary to the common idea, landed property was not an exclusive criterion of distinction, in fact, political legitimacy also rested on a certain social and cultural affinity with the inhabitants. Power had to be based on top-down and bottom-up dynamics: those who imposed authority on the inhabitants, also had to be acknowledged by them (Gremion, 1976). Rural mayors facilitated the integration of villages into the State machinery and, accordingly, encouraged the community to accept its authority. The self-administration of municipalities went on as long as the needs of the central government – such as the collection of taxes, conscription and public or‐ der – were satisfied. After the Restoration in 1815, and again from 1830 when the July Monarchy partly changed the voting system and enlarged the responsibility of local administrations, the local system proved to be effective and steady in rural Northern France. After all, continuity predominated as the distribution of power rested on locally based situations and aspirations. III.2. The social basis and limits of an a-politicised regime of notabilities

During the French Revolution, the most intolerable charges upon people were abolished. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the demographic pressure in the countryside reached a peak, but the distribution of the population between villages and towns remained rather steady (around 1850: 75% rural and 25% urban for the whole of France, and 65% – 35% in northern France). The rural way of life in the north did not change very much; moreover, the region escaped being a battleground, except at the end of the Napoleonic empire in 1814-1815. Until the third quarter of the nineteenth century, collective and individual attachment to the village remained a key to the stability of rural France and Belgium (Duby, Agulhon, 1976: pp. 51-153). Although inequality and poverty remained widespread and work was hard, the countryside in the north remained free from large protests that other rural

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regions of France and Europe had experienced.20 Nevertheless, there was some underlying tension, as demonstrated in criminal acts by individuals or small groups: violence against guards or gendarmes, fights between young men, or conflicts over the use of woods or fields. And there were also more serious crimes taking place, such as arsonists targeting farms or haystacks, as well as acts of robbery. These kinds of acts were numerous in the Northern department from 1795 to 1805, and they continued throughout the first half of the nineteenth century until gradually decreasing. Any political significance attached to these acts was certainly not evident (Morvan, 1999: 231-236). More research is needed to allow comparison with other regions (Le Gall et al, 2012; Lignereux, 2008). Political intent came more clearly to the fore when villagers opposed attempts to merge two or more municipalities. Such attempts often provoked protest and resistance (Follain, 1996) as people felt attached to a specific community and refused to give up their municipal autonomy. However, this lasting attachment to their local community (Dupuy, 2002) was not sufficient a reason to cause a popular rebellion. Consequently, the only important oppositional movement in northern France during the first half of the nineteenth century took shape in the years 1813-14, in the context of opposition to military conscription, particularly in Flanders and Artois. Young people, refusing to be enlisted, gathered in groups and confronted the gendarmery. It was Napoleon’s defeat and the following occupation of France that halted this rebellion. In later Belgium, the defeat did not provoke any great trouble, even if “the discussions in the taverns of the nine united departments had the same orientation: Belgians complained of the foreigner’s yoke and were conscious of being another people, other than French” (Dubois, 2005: 132-133; Olcina, 2011). We return to the witness accounts again to understand how this moment was experienced. While our authors very rarely wrote during the Empire, they increased their notations from 1813 to 1815, almost as if they had been shocked into action. At the beginning of 1813, Dameras writes: “Some people are still speaking about the militia or the conscription, because we have lost many soldiers in Moscou. Big loss for France”! 21 Later, both Dameras and Clain make many remarks about soldiers crossing into the immediate area and their fear of the Cossacks. They also mention the political events, particularly, the fall of Napoleon and the return of Louis XVIII. Dameras’ diary entry in 1814 runs: “Today, April 17th, after the mass, one has read a text about the destitution of Napoleon Bonaparte: now he is nothing […]. Viva Louis XVIII! We have got peace, thank God”.22

20 It seems that in the German countryside the rebellions were much more frequent: see chapter 3 by Niels Grüne. 21 “On parle encore de la milice ou de la conscription, car on a fait une grande perte de nos soldats à Moscou. Grande perte pour la France”! 22 « Aujourd’hui 17 avril après la messe on a lit [sic] la destitution de Napoléon Bonaparte, il n’est plus rien […]. Vive Louis XVIII! Nous avons la paix par la grâce de Dieu ».

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But one year later he writes: “Viva Napoleon! Emperor of the French People… Most French agree to the Emperor”.23 Then, on June 18th 1815, and the defeat at Waterloo, Dameras is convinced that the European coalition had caused the defeat of France. Only a little later, on June 27th, he uses the word ‘occupation’ and adds that “Thirteen enemy soldiers have crossed Hannogne [Dameras’village] and have beaten the mayor and the priest because the tricolor flag was not removed”.24 This is certainly an interesting statement, linking events at the local level with national politics and patriotism. This is, in fact, a good summary of the process of ordinary politicisation in the first half of the nineteenth century. Similarly, one can observe the development of a national feeling in the northern departments of what later became Belgium. In spite of their inclusion in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands from 1815 onwards, some Belgians embraced the name Belgique and called themselves Belges as it was “the general name used with pride and glory since the Roman Empire”.25 Such testimony of national identification unveil a discrete but important factor of cohesion that included both countryside and towns. Both the rural and the urban bourgeoisie were in tune with one another in their aim of strengthening the post-revolutionary social order, centring their efforts on maintaining the revolutionary legacy, particularly on property rights as many had bought national land.26 They also wanted to protect themselves against criminality and the protest of workers, maintaining their right to be recognised as notables. As long as these conditions were respected, they did not mind about the regime, but if they were not, they withdrew their support as demonstrated in the last years of the Empire and under Charles X’s reign. During the monarchy of Louis-Philippe, from 1830 to 1848, the rural-urban bourgeoisie invested together and developed many sorts of enterprises. For example, in 1839 there were 103 sugar refineries in Pas-de-Calais, 45 of which were managed by farmers, 16 by landowners, and the remaining ones by various urban capitalists. Rural-urban proximity was extended to cultural practices, ways of life and public office (Hübscher, 1979: t. 1, 255-261). However, this rather stable world began to be threatened by several changes in the 1830’s.

23 « Vive Napoléon, empereur des Français […] La plupart des Français sont pour notre empereur […] ». 24 “Treize soldats ennemis sont passés à Hannogne et ont battu le maire et le curé parce que le drapeau tricolore n’étoit pas enlevé”. 25 L’observateur, vol. 11, 1817, pp. 103-105, quoted by Dubois, 2005:159. 26 Lefebvre (1924) demonstrates that this was the case for one third of all sold land in the département du Nord, 2/3 around Douai; in the Dyle department (Belgium) the bourgeoisie obtained 77% of sold areas, Antoine (2000).

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III.3. Change and weakening of controlled politicisation

During that decade, economic change began in the northern French départements and in Belgium, an area at the heart of the industrial revolution. Though many inhabitants remained in their villages and worked in the local factories or mines, migration from the countryside to towns began to increase, as well as cross-border migration (particularly from Belgian Flanders to the Lille district). Consequently, agricultural workers became less submissive, with strikes by harvesters breaking out in different regions due to the low wages. Traditionally paid one sheaf per ten, they refused to be paid in money. A few years later, the Justice of the Peace from Croisilles (east of Arras) wrote to the prefect: “I believe that it is urgent to stop the separation between masters and workers. There is still between them an old bond, dating from old times, old practices. If this bond is broken, we will have nothing left of the good old past”.27 Our countryside was on the move towards less stability, though collective behaviour remained paradoxical. Explaining the political attitudes of country dwellers during the revolution of 1830, in both France and in Belgium, as well as the impact of the revolution of 1848 in France, would need more pages. We can only observe that there were only limited disturbances within the countryside, and these had links to the change of respective regimes.

Conclusion What can we conclude about rural politicisation in northern France and the south-western part of Belgium in this early period of modern political history? Overall, politicisation cannot be reduced to the transition from a lack of any political vision to a clear choice of a regime or party. Politicisation was always un‐ der construction, including a plurality of attitudes towards collective institutions and decisions. Even abstention or non-collaboration with the State were forms of political demonstration, just as rioting or voting were. We must not forget that all subjects, who became recognised citizens, reacted to events and influences according to their different identities and social networks. Peasants, for their part, opposed lords or requisitions and demanded, as members of a rural community, to be represented or to be able to elect their municipal council. As Catholics, they had different opinions regarding the policy, vis-à-vis the Church, even if they were finally outraged over the persecution of men and women religious. As patriots, they accepted military service against the enemy, but they often ignored the call to take up arms as conscription into the army was both long and hard. Their overall need was one of being respected and in maintaining their dignity, and this was mirrored in the demands they made to the government, to the elites, and to

27 Letter to the Prefect, 1854, June 8th, AD Pas-de-Calais, M 4869.

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fellow townsmen. The revolution of 1789 and the fact that ‘the people’ conquered citizenship was overall an achievement won in their quest for dignity and, since that victory, this requirement was an ever present, essential ingredient for popular and rural feeling towards the authorities. So, indisputably, there was an ongoing politicisation process throughout the revolutionary activity of 1780-99, as well as after. Many people understood that it was possible to become the protagonists of public affairs by direct action. The authors of the cited diaries reveal that they were well informed on political events, even if they did not take direct action themselves during significant events. Even if it is difficult to understand how individual opinions became collective attitudes, we can underline that the politicisation of the rural population took different forms during this period: claims of adhesion to the Nation State, participation in the vote and in local institutions in 1789-91; split attitudes (from adhesion to rebellion) in the face of the Revolutionary Government of 1793-94; distance, resistance or boycott under the Directory, and politicisation in the form of obser‐ vation and delegation to the notables after 1800. In these processes, different factors were more or less important. Relations between towns and villages are just one among these factors. They became difficult when towns tried to impose their will and power (1789, 1793-94, or 1798 in Belgium). Urban-rural relations were moreover part of a decisive whole: the integration into national states – on the one hand France, and on the other subsequently the Austrian Habsburg empire, France, the United Kingdom of the Netherlands and finally Belgium – and into their territorial organisation and the division of power between the local, regional and central level. Urban-rural relations depended on institutions, but also on the legitimacy of the rural or urban notables in power. Elected or appointed, these notables had to conciliate the bureaucratic requirements imposed by the State with a certain respect for the autonomy of the local population. Indeed, they managed to achieve a situation of relative order and peace in the northern villages during the first half of the nineteenth century. The consensus was possible because, after the Revolution in France and the annexation of the ‘Belgian’ departments, and then the end of the Peasants’ Revolt in 1798, rural and urban elites found themselves on relatively good terms, with social tension declining. In this context, the nature of the regime and the identification with one nation or another was not the main preoccupation, and that was not a sign of backwardness as Eugen Weber claimed (Weber, 1976; Pécout’s critics, 1995: 120). I will end with two questions concerning these combined processes. Firstly, to what extent did the social and cultural situation in rural communities play a role? And secondly, can we maintain the results of previous attempts to draw a political geography of politicisation? Michel Vovelle observes that one can distinguish “One France of order” in “the plains of large-scale farming […]”. He lists the main features of Northern rural France, coinciding with those of the large Paris Basin (with much detail): support for the Revolution, economic development, literacy, and nuclear families. After Year III (1795) order gained ground in this

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part of France and it became more conservative, but never counter-revolutionary (Vovelle, 1992: 327-331). I certainly endorse the development of politicisation emerging along these geographical lines, but I would also add Belgium to this ‘countryside of order’, as it stretched from the Seine to the North Sea. However, it is important to add some specifications in our attempts to understand this ‘France of order’. In the first place, a general pattern of behaviour does not mean that local diversity, from one village to another, disappeared. Secondly, I do not accept the relative stability and order in the region as a theoretical model, or a climate or as a feature of this “flat open country”. Rather, the specific conditions in north-western Europe favoured, on the one hand, very productive farming (not only for food production) and on the other hand intensive trading and lively cultural exchanges. This, thanks to the large number of towns and the close links between the urban centres and the countryside. To understand the political developments in the region, two features of the rural sphere must be considered: first, the strength of social networks in the villages, and secondly, the power of the leading group of large farmers and other members of the rural middle class (millers, lawyers, etc). They succeeded, during the first part of the nineteenth century, in adapting to the new order that came into being through revolution and in remaining the mediators between the rural communities, the urban sphere and the State. Promoting the interests of the rural population and acknowledging its dignity were the best means to ensure their power, taking also into account that many villagers depended on them for work or protection. Nevertheless, these standard features of “the countryside of order” do not prevent either differing opinions within local communities, nor fluctuations of political behaviour according to the circumstances and the village involved. There was no general process of politicisation in rural France nor a fortiori in the European countryside. I only hope that the example discussed here, of the region between the Seine and the North Sea, may go some way in developing a comparison of the variation processes within France and in establishing a map of the varied types of politicisation on a larger European scale.

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Bibliography Printed sources Cahiers de doléances and Etats Généraux. Dupâquier, J. (1990) Ainsi commença la Révolution … Les cahiers de doléances du bailliage de Pontoise, Pontoise. Marchand, P. (1989) Florilège des cahiers de doléances du Nord, CHREN-O, University of Lille. Jessenne, J.-P. and Lemay, E. eds (1993) Député-paysan et fermière de Flandre en 1789, la correspondance des Lepoutre, University of Lille, CHREN-O and open-book: https:// books.openedition.org/irhis/2505?lang=fr Villagers’ diaries Anonymous man from Normandy, AD Seine-Maritime J 191, studied by Bithorel, P. (2002) Révolution et vie quotidienne dans les journaux paysans (1788-1823), unpublished master thesis, University of Rouen; also studied by Maneuvrier-Hervieu, P. (2017) ‘La Révolution française vue et vécue par un villageois du Pays de Caux’, Histoire et sociétés rurales, 47, 1, pp. 137-158. Carlier, J. (1905) ‘Le journal d’André-Hubert Dameras d’Hannogne-Saint-Rémi’, Revue historique ardennaise, pp. 12-155. Moriceau, J.-M. (1995) ‘Apprendre la terre. Mémoires de Clain’, Histoire et sociétés rurales, 3, pp. 303-335. Literature Ado, A. (1971, translation 1996) Paysans en Révolution. Terre, pouvoir et jacqueries, Paris. Antoine, F. (2000) ‘La vente des biens nationaux dans les territoires annexés, la Belgique’ in Bodinier, B. and Teyssier, E. eds, L’événement le plus important de la Révolution. La vente des biens nationaux, Paris, pp. 279-298. Bernard, B. and Maskens, R. (2003) La Révolution brabançonne et les États Belgiques Unis, Bruxelles, 2003. Bernet, J., Jessenne J.-P. and Leuwers H. eds (2000, 2001) Du Directoire au Consulat, 4 vol., Lille. Bianchi, S. (2003) La Révolution et la Première République au village. Pouvoirs, votes et politisation dans les campagnes d’Ile-de-France (1787-1800), Paris. Brassart, L. (2013) Gouverner le local en Révolution. Etats, pouvoirs et mouvements collectives dans l’Aisne (1790-1795), Paris. ——— and Jessenne J.-P. (2012) ‘Les préoccupations des municipalités rurales au temps des révolutions’, in Brassart, L., Jessenne J.-P. and Vivier N. eds, Clochemerle ou république au village? La conduite municipale des affaires villageoises en Europe, Lille, pp. 67-105.

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Bruneel, C. (1999) ‘Des provinces belgiques et de la principauté de Liège aux départements réunis, approche des situations politiques’, in Bernet, J., Jessenne J.-P. and Leuwers H. eds, vol. 1, pp. 37-53. Dhondt, L. (1987) ‘Les processus révolutionnaires et contre-révolutionnaires en Belgique (1780-1798)’, in Dupuy, R. and Lebrun, F. eds, Les résistances à la Révolution, Paris, pp. 273-284. Dubois, S. (2005) L’invention de la Belgique. Genèse d’un Etat-Nation, Bruxelles. ——— (2008) La révolution géographique en Belgique. Départementalisation, administration et représentations du territoire de la fin du XVIIIe au début du XIXe siècle, Bruxelles. Duby, G., Julliard, E. and Agulhon, M. eds (1976) Histoire de la France rurale, Paris, vol. 3. Dupuy, R. and Lebrun, F. eds (1987) Les résistances à la Révolution, Paris. ——— ed. (1995) Pouvoir local et révolution, la frontière intérieure, Rennes. ——— (2002) La politique du peuple. Racines, permanences et ambiguïtés du populisme, Paris. Edelstein, M. (1990) ‘La place de la Révolution française dans la politisation des paysans’, Annales Historiques de la Révolution Française, 280, pp. 135-149 ——— (2013) La Révolution française et la naissance de la démocratie électorale, Rennes. Engrand, C. (1979) ‘Concurrences et complémentarités des villes et des campagnes: les manufactures picardes de 1780 à 1815’, Revue du Nord, 61, 240, pp. 61-81. Euchi, D. (2000) Influence des modèles dans la rédaction des cahiers de doléances des campagnes de Rouen, unpublished PhD, University of Rouen. Follain, A. (1996) ‘La formation du réseau communal en France du Nord de 1790 au milieu du 19e siècle’, Revue du Nord, 78, 316, pp. 485-510. François, L. (1998) De Boerenkrijg. Twee eeuwen feiten en fictie, Leuven. Goujard, P. (1979) L’abolitions de la féodalité dans le Pays de Bray, Paris. Gremion, P. (1976) Le pouvoir périphérique. Bureaucrates et notables dans le système politique français, Paris. Hasquin, H. (1990) La Belgique française 1792-1815, Bruxelles. Heirwegh, J.-J. (1987) ‘La fin de l’Ancien Régime et les Révolutions’, in Hasquin, H. ed., La Belgique autrichienne 1713-1794, Bruxelles, pp. 467-503. Hübscher, R. (1979) L’agriculture du Pas-de-Calais au XIXe siècle, vol. 2, Arras. Ikni, G-R. (1993) Crise agraire et Révolution paysanne. Le mouvement populaire dans les campagnes de l’Oise de la décennie physiocratique à l’an 2, unpublished PhD (thèse d’Etat), University of Paris I. Jessenne, J.-P. (1994) ‘The Land, Redefinition of Rural Community’, in Baker, K. ed., French Revolution and Modernisation of Political Culture, vol. 4, The Terror, London-New York, pp. 223-247. ——— (1995) ‘La mise en place des administrations locales dans le Pas-de-Calais en 1790: adhésions et conflits’, in Dupuy, R. ed., Pouvoir local et révolution, la frontière intérieure, Rennes, pp. 169-192. ——— (2003) ‘Communautés rurales et pouvoirs dans l’État napoléonien’, in Petiteau, N. ed., Voies nouvelles pour l’histoire du Premier Empire, Paris, pp. 161-185.

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——— (2006) Les campagnes françaises entre mythe et histoire, Paris. ——— (2007) ‘Usages, équivoques et pertinences de « bourgeoisie rurale »’, in Jessenne, J.-P. ed., Vers un ordre bourgeois, Rennes, pp. 119-146. ——— (2015) ‘Législation nationale, administrations intermédiaires et pratiques locales: la mise en rythme des réformes agraires (vers 1760-vers 1795)’, Revue du Nord, 1, 409, pp. 45-71. Jones, P. (1988) The Peasantry in the French Revolution, Cambridge. ——— (2003) Liberty and Locality in Revolutionary France. Six Villages Compared, 1760-1820, Cambridge. Lefebvre, G. (1924, reprint 1972) Les paysans du Nord pendant la Révolution française. Paris. ——— (1934-1989) Questions agraires sous la Terreur, Paris. Le Gall, L. (2005) ‘Des processus de politisation dans les campagnes françaises, 1830-1914. Esquisse pour un état des lieux’, in Caron J.-C. et al. eds, Les campagnes dans les sociétés européennes, Rennes, pp. 103-139. ———, Offerlé, M. and Ploux, F. eds (2012) La politique sans en avoir l’air. Aspects de la politique informelle, XIXe-XXIe siècle, Rennes. Lignereux, A. (2008) La France rébellionnaire. Les rébellions contre la gendarmerie (1800-1859), Rennes. Logie, J. (1980) 1830: De la régionalisation à l’indépendance, Paris and Gembloux. Markoff, J. (1996) The Abolition of Feudalism. Peasants, Lords and Legislators in the French Revolution, Philadelphia. Morieux R. (2004) ‘Un populist turn dans l’historiographie du XVIIIe siècle anglais?’, Revue d’Histoire moderne et contemporaine, 51, 1, pp. 153-174. Morvan, Y. (1999) La délinquance agricole et forestière dans le département du Nord de 1800 à 1914, unpublihed PhD (Ménager, B), University of Lille. Nicolas, J. ed (1985) Mouvement populaire et conscience sociale, Paris. Pécout, G. (1994) ‘La politisation des paysans au XIXe siècle’, Histoire et sociétés rurales, 2, pp. 91-126. Pirenne, H. and Vercruysse, J. (1992) Les Etats Belgiques Unis. Histoire de la révolution belge de 1789-1790, Paris and Louvain-la-Neuve. Polasky, J. (1985) Revolution in Brussels 1787-1793, Brussels and Lebanon. Rousseaux, X. (2005) ‘Rebelles ou brigands? La « guerre des paysans » dans les départements « belges » (octobre-décembre 1798)’, Cahiers d’histoire, 94-95, pp. 101-132. Serna, P. (2019 Que demande le peuple? Les cahiers de doléances de 1789, Paris. Stevens, F. (1998) ‘La résistance au Directoire dans les départements réunis. La « Guerre des Paysans » (octobre-novembre 1798)’, in Bourdin, P. and Gainot, B. eds, La République directoriale, Clermont-Ferrand, pp. 1025-1045. Thompson, E. P. (1975, translation 2014) La guerre des forêts. Luttes sociales dans l’Angleterre du XVIIIe siècle, Paris. Tilly, C. (1964, translation 1970), Révolution et contre-révolution, Paris. Vovelle, M. (1993) La découverte de la politique. Géopolitique de la Révolution française, Paris.

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2. From rural homelands to national bordered lands, 1789-1815?

The concept of ‘nation’ did not have a clear and universally accepted meaning in France at the time the Revolution broke out. In 1789, this concept was still polysemous (Bell, 2001). For some politicians, such as Robespierre, in his Address to the Artesian Nation (Discours à la Nation artésienne), ‘nation’ referred to a particular province and its institutions, which had to be defended against the absolutist and centralizing royal State (Legay, 2001; Leuwers, 2014: 105-111). For others, such as Sieyès, the author of the famous pamphlet What is the Third Estate? (Qu’est-ce que le Tiers-État?), the nation was a political project founded on national sovereignty, liberty and citizenship, as opposed to dynastic fidelity, subjection, and a society divided into estates, which had been the bases of the Ancien Régime. During the Revolution, the concept of nation as defined by Sieyès was imposed and became more complex, often ignoring the borders which had existed in 1789. The French Nation was an open and cosmopolitan entity which could include all European patriots who longed for liberty and citizenship (Belissa and Cottret, 2005). Patriotism could then be defined as behaviour which expressed a feeling of belonging to a political nation based on values such as liberty, equality and representative government (Cuningham, 1981; Hampson, 1988). By 1815, how‐ ever, after several decades of revolutionary experience, followed by the imperial domination of Napoleonic France over Europe, the idea of ‘nation’ was sufficiently well established for national identities to be created, and for the development of nationalities along the same lines elsewhere in Europe (Thiesse, 1999). The main purpose of this paper is to examine how this process of nationbuilding and politicisation took form and substance amongst several groups of people in rural communities which now lie on either side of the border between modern Belgium and the département du Nord in France. In particular, one central question we want to consider is whether there was a so-called ‘border effect’ on the political attitudes of rural communities. Did the fact of being on a border act Laurent Brassart • Institut de Recherches historiques du Septentrion, University of Lille, France Maxime Kaci • Centre Lucien Febvre, University of Franche-Comté, France Making Politics in the European Countryside, ed. by Laurent Brassart, Corinne Marache, Juan PanMontojo & Leen Van Molle, CORN Publication Series, 19 (Turnhout, 2022), pp. 59–74 DOI 10.1484/M.CORN-EB.5.128243

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as a sort of matrix, or perhaps as a catalyst, for the process of politicisation and nation-building? By ‘border effect’ we mean the resulting conflicts and coopera‐ tion in daily life between local communities which are caused directly by borders dividing a common territory. This approach has two major advantages. First, by focusing on the interaction between changes in border societies and broader geopolitical developments, this text aims to question the classic narrative of the inexorable expansion of nation‐ alism in Europe at the end of the eighteenth century. Secondly, by considering rural communities alongside cities and foreign adjacent territories, it is possible to deconstruct the topos of passive and isolated villages which had simply to endure the process of nation-building. That rural actors used, caused and contested this socio-spatial process has already been suggested in the pioneering work of Peter Sahlins which focused on the Pyrenean territory of La Cerdagne (Sahlins, 1989). Inspired by his anthropological and de-centered approach to the national polarisa‐ tion of conflict in rural borderlands, this paper will focus on a vastly different case: northern borderlands in the context of revolution and war. This case is interesting for two reasons. Chronologically, the context of revolution and war brings with it the need to reinstate the importance of events and to underline the uncertainty and fluctuation of borders in a manner complementary to publications in the field of border studies which privilege the longue durée in the production of national borders, or the transnational overcoming of well-established borders. Spatially, the presence of a military front forced the border population to position themselves and to make explicit their developing feelings of belonging (Maier, 2016; Pollman, 1999). Between northern France and the Austrian Low Countries (now mostly in Belgium), there were no great cultural differences between the populations living on either side of this wholly artificial border. No natural obstacle provided an impediment to crossing this boundary. But two cultural and linguistic communi‐ ties were cut in half by this border – Flanders, in the north, and Hainaut, in the south – after Louis XIV had conquered half of these territories in 1667-69. This artificial border thus constituted an ill-defined and changing line, since it was disputed between France and Austria, which had obtained sovereignty over the Low Countries in 1713. The last border treaties signed in 1769 and 1779 by the two countries deliberately imposed a more or less straight line separating the two territories by the destruction of foreign enclaves and the reduction of the number of towns or villages which straddled the border. It is to be noted that this line, which had only been finalised just before the Revolution, was confirmed after the Restoration by the treaty of Courtrai in 1820, implying that the border had by then become, in some ways, natural. Economic, cultural and political life was organised independently on both sides of a boundary which was no longer questioned or disputed.

FROM RURAL HOMELANDS TO NATIONAL BORDERED LANDS, 1789-1815?

Map. 2.1: French reaction to the arrival of Brabançons refugees

I. The reception of refugees in border villages: a challenge for revolutionary and cosmopolitan patriotism? The revolutions breaking out across Europe in the late eighteenth century, es‐ pecially in the United Provinces and the Austrian Low Countries, led to crossborder movements by travelling patriots (Polasky, 2015). The collective reaction of French rural boarder communities to these movements, express significant feelings of belonging. As early as 1787, defeated Batavian patriots had crossed the border to take refuge in the kingdom of France. In July 1789, it was crossed again, in the opposite direction, by people leaving their country for political reasons. This time, however, the émigrés, as they were called, were French anti-revolutionaries or counter-revolutionaries who left the kingdom to take refuge in the Austrian Low Countries. During the autumn of 1791, the northern border became the theatre of a strange coming-and-going of emigrants, as a new wave of French émigrés looked for shelter in the Austrian Low Countries, and Brabançon revolutionaries found refuge in the French département du Nord. The reception of political refugees was a very tricky political issue for both France and for the Austrian Low Countries, one of the reasons being that there was no desire on either side to imperil the fragile peace which had been reached. The Austrian Low Countries very clearly showed that they wanted to avoid a casus belli with France, adopting some measures introduced by Austria against political and bellicose action on the part of the émigrés. The latter was forbidden to gather near the border (edict of 21 August 1791), whilst the Austrian army was permitted to use force to disperse any illegal gatherings which might be held in defiance of this order (Magnette, 1908). On the French side, however, the revolutionary nature of the regime made the situation more complex than

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in the Austrian Low Countries, as the revolutionary State had to compromise with local powers to impose its authority. Promoting a cosmopolitan patriotism based mainly on commitment to fundamental political values (liberty, citizenship, national sovereignty, confidence in the rule of law) and open to all peoples and individuals who wanted to be free from despotism (absolutism, in other words), was for many central to the revolutionary project. As a result, some local revolutionaries, such as Merlin de Douai, claimed that the French Nation could not exclude Brabançon patriots who had taken refuge in France (Lee, 1931: 78). Brabançon refugees were numerous in number and most of them were at first concentrated in Lille and Douai. It is estimated by administrators that at least 500 of them were to be found in Douai alone. In November and December 1791, the inhabitants of that town lobbied the National Assembly for the dispersal of the potentially armed refugees outside the town walls, or even for their expulsion from the region (Wahnich, 1997: 86-107). Torn between the principle of hospital‐ ity in the name of cosmopolitan patriotism, and the desire to satisfy the demands of local authorities, the National Assembly came to a compromise by adopting the decree of 21 December 1791. The principle of hospitality was confirmed (there were no expulsions) but, in accordance with the principle of égalité, the Brabançon political refugees were to be distributed around neighbouring villages (Kaci, 2016: 96-99). The reception of Brabançon political refugees, which had been an urban and national concern, thus now became a rural one. In fact, some rural communes in the districts of Douai and Le Quesnoy refused to accept the quota of Brabançon families that had been allotted to them by the authorities of the département du Nord. In other rural communes (Arleux, Aubigny-au-Bac, Aniche, Somain, Auberchicourt and Lewarde), rejection took even more violent forms. No sooner had the Brabançon families entered the villages than they were expelled.1 How should we explain this refusal of hospitality in both town and country? Besides the question of cost, sometimes invoked by the local authorities, there were two reasons why people were afraid of the presence of political refugees. The first source of fear may be called anthropological. Foreigners, as beggars also were, were people feared because, unlike the members of a community, nothing was known about them. This was clearly put by the representatives of Lécluse, one of the villages which had been allotted a quota of refugees: “[…] it was not possible to accommodate foreigners in the commune because one could not say that it would be safe to harbour people that no one knew”.2 The second source of fear was more geopolitical. All those villages which were situated near the border were afraid that the presence of the Brabançon refugees would induce a military intervention from the Austrian Low Countries against their communes in order to seize them. Lastly, French authorities had, after all, expelled potentially armed refugees from towns for security reasons. The subsequent interpretation in the 1 Archives départementales du Nord, L 843. 2 Archives départementales du Nord, L 843.

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countryside of the risk posed by refugees was deeply rooted in this official justifi‐ cation. National solidarity was contested because it seemed to imply exposing border villages in order to secure strategic urban areas. The acceptance or rejection of refugees in rural communes raised a series of major political issues between January and March 1792. First, how far villages, which were after all conceived of as little homelands or patries, had been pene‐ trated by ideals from the national patrie. What was the impact at a local, rural level of the cosmopolitan patriotism which advocated revolutionary solidarity between patriotic peoples and oppressed peoples? Second, we can observe the encounter in these villages between a bottom-up politicisation—villagers who rejected the Brabançon refugees—and the top-down politicisation led by political agents—often urban and Jacobin—who advocated the warm reception of them. At the core of these two dynamics, the paramount role was played first by established urban and patriotic authorities, and then by urban Jacobin societies. The official representatives of the State in the districts of Douai and Avesnes invoked subjection to the law —the decree of 23 December 1791— to force the rural authorities to accept the refugees.3 The villages’ reluctance to comply with these injunctions encouraged Jacobins in Douai —who had fraternised with the Brabançon refugees as soon as they had arrived in their city— to support the authorities. An address to the rural communes was drafted on 1 January 1792 by the Society of Friends of the Constitution of Douai and was probably transmitted by some of its spokesmen within the rural communes. It was meant to be a vibrant plea in favour of the warm reception of the Brabançon refugees: “[…] Whereas our august National Assembly, always constant in its principles of justice and equity, has granted hospitable asylum to the Brabançon refugees, hard and evil men have depicted them to you as suspicious people and have advised you to refuse to offer them such hospitality. Who are these Foreigners who are treated with such hardness? They are men who should be respected because of what they endured for fleeing from Despotism, and who came to France to breathe the pure air of liberty. They have brought into this department some of the currency that the perfidious enemies of the French People: the cowardly Émigrés, are carrying away to foreign lands. Far from willing to disturb the tranquility of others, they are only asking for peace. […] Dear fellow citizens, would you be so cruel as to repel them, when they are looking for the shelter of your arms? Let us act towards them, as we would like all peoples to act towards us, if we were so unhappy as to have to look for asylum in a foreign land. We beg you to receive them warm-heartedly; you can regard them as brothers, friends since, like us, they are the friends of liberty”.4

3 Archives départementales du Nord, L 843. 4 Archives départementales du Nord, L 843, Adresse de la Société des Amis de la Constitution de Douai, 1er janvier 1792.

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The themes of cosmopolitan patriotism were fully developed in this address, conveyed in a tone which is both lyrical, in order to arouse emotion, and wholly paternalistic. The country people are presented, as they often were, as naïve and childlike, even when faced with great political issues, and so liable to be influenced by “hard and evil men” who must then be unmasked. Hospitality was presented as a political issue. To reject it was to play into the hands of the counter-revolutionaries, or the “cowardly émigrés”. To accept was to assert one’s love of liberty and to act like true citizens who help all the “victims of despotism.” Something else was also at stake in this address: the consolidation of public order. The Douai Jacobins argued that by agreeing to harbour Brabançon refugees, the villages acted in favour of peace, since their dispersion between several villages was the sine qua non condition demanded by Metternich in the name of the “maintaining of order and neighborly relations along the borders”.5 In practice, the Douai Jacobins’ political mediation with country citizens seems to have been quite successful. In February 1792, no commune in the département du Nord appears to have been reluctant to accept Brabançon refugees.

II. Marking out, guarding and closing the border: patriotism in action In March 1792, in the context of the impending outbreak of hostilities between France and Austria, a spontaneous movement emerged which, this time, began in the French border villages and spread to the cities in the interior: the planting of liberty trees. In rural areas, this was a top-down movement. Local representatives encouraged the citizens to plant them in order to create patriotic unanimity against the enemy threat (Kaci, 2016: 110-113). Planting a liberty tree became a symbol of patriotism. It showed that the community supported the revolutionary regime and served to mark out territory. In that sense, it reveals how closely the politicisation process of rural communes was knitted together with the process of nationalisation. The planting of liberty trees in northern France could also be part of a bottom-up dynamic. Between February and March 1792, different rural actors, in Winnezeele or Wormhout for example, planted liberty trees during insurrections against grain exports (Kaci, 2016: 106-107). These trees can be situated within a characteristic tradition associated with rural culture: that of the mai insurrectional or rebellious May (Ozouf, 1979: 292). From then on, planting trees became asso‐ ciated with one particular patriotic value: Liberty. Rioters from the borderlands asserted their patriotism on the grounds that they were acting to enforce the strict application of the revolutionary decree of 29 August 1789 which prohibited grain exports. After the declaration of war, in April 1792, local authorities in villages 5 Archives départementales du Nord, L 843, Note de M. de Metternich à M. de la Gravière. Bruxelles, le 10 janvier 1792.

FROM RURAL HOMELANDS TO NATIONAL BORDERED LANDS, 1789-1815?

Map. 2.2: Marking out, guarding and fighting in the northern borderlands

like Flers decided to plant liberty trees during well prepared civic ceremonies. They tried to appropriate a popular symbol to promote the defence of the nation and the revolutionary regime (Kaci, 2016: 111-112). Liberty trees thus became territorial markers associated with patriotic values. When French troops entered Belgium at the end of 1792, they quickly planted liberty trees in conquered towns and villages. Meanwhile, when troops of the anti-French coalition entered Hain‐ aut and conquered Valenciennes during the summer of 1793, they immediately cut down the liberty trees they found. The border as a frontline can thus be interpreted as a place where the question of the relationship between the Nation and the Revolution was reformulated. We can see this taking place in two interlinked dialectical opposites: revolutionaries

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from France or foreign countries which shared the values of the national commu‐ nity, on the one hand, and counter-revolutionaries who were enemies from both France and abroad on the other (Petrowski, 2014: 217). Guarding and defending the border was another spontaneous reaction of the French rural population to outside events. This reaction was an early one. The first popular military parades were organised to prepare for the eventuality that Austrian troops would extend the repression of the revolution of the United Bel‐ gian States to French towns or villages which had taken in Belgian revolutionaries (Rosselle, 1996). This fear was grounded in the activities of Austrian troops in the French borderlands, after the French government had authorised military move‐ ments in reply to the request of the Austrian minister Mercy. On 30 August 1790, the municipal officers of Hondschoote requested a supply of weapons to arm the national guard they had just created, in order to guard the border. In 1790-91, in the border villages of Frélinghien, Houplines, Comines and Werwick, skirmishes between French national guards and Austrian soldiers were so common that the authorities of the département du Nord forbade “all national guards to set foot on foreign ground or to violate it under any pretext”, in accordance with the decree of 30 June 1791.6 Along the borders between the département of the Aisne and the Austrian Low Countries, the process of rural politicisation was more significant than in the hinterland. In the district of Vervins (one of the six districts of this French départe‐ ment and the only one in a border position), the daily spectacle of lords fleeing into exile, together with persistent rumours of an imminent invasion by imperial troops since the defeat of the United Belgian States, created a fear which at first led to the clamour for self-protection, before taking on the form of a more offensive politicisation. As in the département du Nord, rural people first organised them‐ selves into national guards, setting up guard posts which operated day and night along the border, and requesting arms from the central State. Mobilisation in local defence involved Jacobin societies which were well-represented within the district of Vervins. Indeed, three of the ten Jacobin clubs present in the département of Aisne in September 1791 were located within this border district (Brassart, 2013: 87-89). However, we should not necessarily deduce that those inhabiting these border areas exhibited an unreserved adherence to revolutionary political ideas, simply from this impulse to protect one’s own space. It was also in the Vervins district that the religious crisis reached its greatest intensity in the département of Aisne – the refusal of priests to take an oath to the Civil Constitution of the clergy, the popular support they received in their parish – all of which suggests that there was far from full adherence to the new revolutionary ideas amongst the rural people of this border district (Brassart, 2013: 73-77). Indeed, opponents of the Civil Constitution of the clergy were, in general, highly active in the rural borderlands of northern France. In fact, this activity was the consequence of a

6 Archives départementales du Nord, L 839, Défense des frontières.

FROM RURAL HOMELANDS TO NATIONAL BORDERED LANDS, 1789-1815?

transnational history. Until 1790, many villages in Flanders were in the bishoprics of Tournai and Ypres. These institutional links were consolidated by the earlier experience of resistance to Joseph II’s religious reforms in the Austrian Low Countries. Transnational solidarity in defence of traditional Catholicism induced cross-border exchanges of men and printed publications. Refractory priests from France took refuge in the Austrian Low Countries and came back illegally to celebrate Mass. The parish faithful likewise crossed the border secretly to meet their traditional priest to receive the sacraments of matrimony. And yet, does this mean that the villagers wanted to protect their country, revolutionary France, or only their little homeland, their patrie, their village and its traditions? Although those living in border villages set up local guards and attempted to arm them, they also opposed the presence of the army in their villages; their refusal to provide accommodation for them being one of their methods of prevention. Madame Angélique Lepoutre, a farmer’s wife from Linselles explained this situation to her husband, a deputy in the Constituent Assembly: “If you send troops here, I am afraid this will bring discord. […] They already find it hard to provide accommodation for paid seasonal labourers who arrive in force. In the border villages, there are even more of them, and it will be harder to accommodate soldiers” (Letter of the 19th December 1790 in Jessenne & Lemay, 1998: 438). Yet the refusal to have troops stationed in their villages during the summer of 1792 did not prevent spontaneous resistance to the invaders, so much so that some Austrian officers complained in a letter addressed to the local representatives of Frelinghen that the inhabitants of the border villages were “people who should not meddle with military affairs”.7 In the Vervins district of the département of Aisne, the National Guard and many peasants formed a military camp in the village of Etreux in September 1793 to resist the attack of the Austrian Ulhans. But the large number of combatants was not enough to compensate for their lack of military quality, and their courage could not hide their inexperience (Brassart, 2014). As we move between the local and a more general perspective, we can see that there was neither a single behavioural characteristic exhibited by rural communi‐ ties, nor a Flemish identity shared by the villages on either side of the border. During the war, in the summer of 1792, for example, the district of Lille and the states of Tournaisis, which were united by intense commercial exchanges, decided to allow the cross-border mobility of cultivators to seed and harvest their fields located in foreign territories. At the same time, however, clashes erupted over similar movements in the district of Hazebrouck. In the villages of Steenvoorde and Bambecque, attempts were made to stop foreign cultivators from gaining access to their properties, on the strength of the decision of the French district and Austrian authorities to prohibit cross-border movements, and small bridges on the border were destroyed. Taking possession of new fields could also

7 Archives Nationales, F1 CIII, Nord 13.

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stimulate the hostility between rural communities from each side of the border (Kaci, 2016: 269).

III. Patriotism foiled: the rejection of conscription on both sides of the border When one considers how local people, both in towns and villages, resisted the Austrian invasion of 1792, it would be tempting to imagine that conscription would have been easily accepted in the département du Nord. This was far from being the case. After a successful period of mobilisation (from 1790 to 1792), there was a reversal in 1793. Calling up men and, later, drafting them (with the Jourdan Law of 19 Fructidor, Year VI – 5 September 1798) was unsuccessful. In fact, in the département du Nord only 45% of the men who were supposed to join the armed forces in Year VII actually answered the call (Crépin, 1994). In the Belgian territories, meanwhile, which had been annexed in Year II and reorganised into départements, there was the same resistance to conscription, even more so in Flanders (the Lys Department, in particular) than in Wallonia départements. On both sides of the former border between France and the Low Countries, uprising broke out against conscription. First, there was the famous “Peasants’ War” from October to December 1798, in which 5,000 Belgian peasants, most of them Flemish, rebelled against conscription and the anti-clerical laws enacted by the French occupier. Second, some fifteen years later in France, the “little Vendée of Hazebrouck” broke out in November 1813, led by Louis Fruchard and involving 500 to 660 people, most of them draft-dodgers from the surrounding villages, followed by troubles in the Lys département in December 1813. What were the causes of those rebellions against conscription? On the French side, according to historian Annie Crépin, it was more a form of ‘a-statism’ than any counter-revolutionary or anti-national feeling. A-statism could be defined as a rejection of the State which is considered as too interventionist (Crépin, 2000). Georges Sangnier believes it may have been ‘a-patriotism’, or rather anti-patriotism since the local people were willing to help the nation defend itself for a short time (in 1792, for instance) but refused long-term conscription for goals which they did not understand the reasons for (Sangnier, 1965). Different political and military commitments forced rural citizens to choose between their multiple attachments and their sense of belonging. The context of crisis and war tends to show that rural people were primarily attached to their villages. In France, however, this did not mean that the sense of national belong‐ ing was rejected. That, indeed, is the reason why rural resistance movements in northern France were easily contained. In the Belgian conquered territories, meanwhile, their incorporation into the “Great Nation” was much more fragile, and this situation was a breeding ground for large scale rebellions such as the “Peasants’ War”. Tellingly, Cédric Istasse, who has studied letters sent by Belgian soldiers fighting in the Napoleonic regiments to their families, noticed that they

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rarely used the word “patrie”, and that when they did, what they meant was their home or their village (Istasse, 2013). Yet on the French side, it appears that local patriotism, in the sense of soli‐ darity with the inhabitants of their villages, was fully compatible with a form of patriotism which was more political and can be recognised as national. In other words, their attachment to their little homeland did not exclude a form of patriotism which, at the time, implied supporting the political and social ideals of the Revolution. In line with Peter Sahlins’ ideas, one could say that the different territorial scales completed rather than contradicted one another (Sahlins, 1989: 274). The political action of the revolutionary committees concerning the surveil‐ lance of newcomers, established in border villages in 1793-1794, is an illustration of this apparent paradox. On the one hand, any unknown person who tried to cross the border was scrupulously stopped by the members of these committees, their papers examined, and their luggage inspected in the hope of arresting a spy or a counter-revolutionist about to emigrate, thus engaging in a recognised form of patriotic action. On the other hand, young villagers who wanted to escape being drafted by the revolutionary state crossed the border without being stopped by the locals and with the complicity of the committees carrying out the surveil‐ lance, showing how family interests and local solidarity would often supersede the interests of the Nation.8 Rural reaction to the political imperatives and military events of this period were determined less by national borders and more by the social and mental limits which distinguished between those recognisable within the territorial experience of everyday life, and those unknown, whether they were foreigners or not.

IV. Was there some sort of cross-border patriotism? The existence of cross-border networks to help young conscripts to dodge the draft in 1793 might seem to prove the existence of a kind of shared cross-border patriotism in this region. To confirm this, one might add that common economic interests, a common religion, Catholicism, and some form of a-statism were shared by people on both sides of the border. Cross-border solidarity was demon‐ strated on various occasions, notably against the customs authorities. Werwick, a border village, is a case in point. In January 1791, villagers from both sides of the border united in a riot against customs authorities (Petrowski, 2014: 230). More important still, we might add that revolutionary events did not much affect life in border villages. In the letters that Angélique Lepoutre, the wife of a Linselles farmer, wrote to her husband, a deputy in the Constituent Assembly, one cannot help but notice that the villagers continued to cross the border in the years 8 Archives départementales du Nord, L 10 134, comité de surveillance de Blaringhem, 13 floréal an II and 2 prairial an II.

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1790-92, whether it was for work, leisure or family gatherings. Thus, during the Brabançon Revolution of 1789, Angélique Lepoutre was visited by members of her family who lived in the Austrian Low Countries (Letter from Madame Lepoutre of 29th May 1790, in Jessenne & Lemay, 1998: 330). In 1790, she wrote that her relatives intended to come to France to attend the Fête de la Fédération (Festival of the Federation) on 14 July (Letter from Madame Lepoutre from 12th July 1790 in Jessenne & Lemay, 1998: 339). Apart from the period of war in 1792-1794, when the border was relatively closed, it was quite easy for local people to cross it, since there were no natural, linguistic or cultural barriers. This openness confirms what Gérard Noiriel wrote about borders: “the private sphere was, relatively speaking, barely controlled, whereas the State’s control of the public sphere became tighter and tighter during the modern period” (Noiriel, 2012: 309-329). The maintaining of, and perhaps even the increase in, matrimonial and professional mobility across the border during the Revolution and the Empire clearly shows that this was the case on the Northern border of France. Alexandra Petrowski has shown that between 1795 and 1799, when Belgium was annexed by France, 20% of those who married an inhabitant of Watou (Belgium) were French and that 28% of those who married inhabitants of Steenworde (France) were Belgian (Petrowski, 2014: 257). And yet, the persistence of solidarity and exchanges across the border does not necessary imply that we can deduce the existence of some sort of cross-border patriotism. Take, for example, forms of resistance and the uprising against con‐ scription. The “Peasants’ War” which broke out in Belgium in 1798 did not extend to the French side of the border. The riot in Hazebrouck in the départe‐ ment du Nord in November 1813 was indeed followed by similar events in the contiguous Lys Department of Belgium in December, but this did not lead to any cross-border coalition. What happened was just imitation, much more than a contagion. Finally, we must remember that in 1791-1792, it was incredibly difficult for the local authorities and the National Assembly to convince villages in the North Department to accept Brabançon refugees, which goes against the idea that there may have been any such cross-border patriotism.

Conclusion What can we say about the alleged ‘border effect’ on the dynamics of nationali‐ sation and politicisation amongst rural populations? It is clear then that there was not one, but rather a plurality of border effects related to cross-border movements, to the interplay between rural actors, and to the examples of conflict and co-operation. All these effects reveal the importance of the border on the everyday life of the local population. But on a larger scale, the border effect induced no single political position and no single form of adhesion to the process of nationalisation. Contrary to the topos of the alleged conformism of northern and eastern France, which was supposed to be fostered by the military threat,

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these borderlands were not patriotic by nature (Vovelle, 1992). Nor, by contrast, does the border effect necessarily imply the existence of cross-border patriotism. The debate over the Brabançon refugees or the impossibility of conceiving crossborder resistance to conscription, demonstrate this. One might be tempted to say that nation-building was successful in this region since local people were able to protect their villages and the border when they were in danger. But does this necessarily mean that the corresponding systems of opposition – us vs them, revolutionaries vs counter-revolutionaries, patriots vs enemies, or, to sum it up, French citizens vs Belgian subjects – were interiorised or even nationalised between 1790 and 1794? One should not rush to such a conclusion. Within local rural communities, there was no unanimity on political issues. Opinions could vary from one village to another, as was made apparent by their differing attitudes towards the reception of Brabançon refugees in 1791-1792. Along the same line, the fact that the villages were able to set up national guards as a form of protection against the risk of an Austrian invasion in 1790-1792 was later contradicted by their almost unanimous rejection of conscription during the period of territorial conquest by the French Republic and the Empire, as if patriotism did not extend beyond the defence of one’s own village. In reality, people felt they belonged to several communities and, in this sense, they had several identities. During the Revolution, there were different territorial levels which were combined without excluding any other: the villages, the border regions and the national territory. Depending on events, villagers who lived along the border supported one or the other and occasionally played one against the other, adopting flexible strategies. From one point of view, it is obvious that these varied identities constituted a space which favoured the dynamics of politicisation in these rural communities. National debates penetrated villages and were re-appropriated within them. They also crossed the border. No doubt that the French émigrés depicted the Revolution in negative terms once they had reached Belgium, and the Brabançon patriots like‐ wise denigrated the Austrian regime in the villages of northern France where they sought refuge. One might suggest that the border effect over rural communities was relative with regards to nation-building processes, but that it had a stronger effect on the politicisation processes. By centring the margins, it becomes obvious that the rhythm and the direction of nation-building was variegated even within the same country. It depended on local specificities and on local sociocultural characteristics. A de-centred approach shows that the notion of a clear and linear transition from the desire to create a borderless Europe, to the jingoistic rhetoric during wartime, ignores the diversity and the agency of rural communities in a time of change and revolution (Rowe, 2014).

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Bibliography Archival sources Archives départementales du Nord, L 839; L 843. Archives nationales, F1 CIII, Nord 13. Literature Belissa, M. and Cottret, B. (2005) Cosmopolitismes, patriotismes. Europe et Amérique, 1773-1802, Paris. Bell, D. (2001) The Cult of the Nation. Inventing Nationalism, 1680-1800, Cambridge. Brassart, L. (2013) Gouverner le local en Révolution. Etat, pouvoirs et mouvements collectifs dans le département de l’Aisne (1790-1795), Paris. ——— (2014) ‘Civils et militaires de l’Aisne face à l’invasion autrichienne (fin aoûtseptembre 1793): l’échec d’une résistance’, in Les civils de l’Aisne dans la guerre, Mémoires de la fédération des sociétés d’histoire et d’archéologie de l’Aisne,LIX, pp. 175-197. Crépin, A. (1993) ‘Le Nord et le Pas-de-Calais face à la création de l’armée nationale’, Revue du Nord, 75, 299, pp. 41-57. ——— (1994) ‘La guerre et le Nord de la France sous la Révolution et l’Empire: levées d’hommes et conscription dans les départements du Nord et du Pas-de-Calais’, in Curvellier, S. and Clauzel, D. eds, Les champs relationnels en Europe du Nord et du NordOuest, Calais, pp. 285-309. ——— (2000) ‘Les communautés villageoises et la Grande Nation: réticences et résistances faces aux levées d’homme et à la conscription’, in Leuwers, H. ed., Du Directoire au Consulat. 2. L’intégration des citoyens dans la Grande Nation, Lille, pp. 77-89. Cuningham, H. (1981) ‘The Language of Patriotism (1750-1914)’, History Workshop Journal, 12, pp. 8-33. Hampson, N. (1988) ‘La Patrie’, in Lucas, C. ed., The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture, Oxford, vol. II, pp. 125-149. Istasse, C. (2013) ‘Appartenance à la Grande armée et identité nationale: étude des cadres géographiques de référence des soldats belges à travers leurs correspondance’, in Antoine, F. et al. eds, L’Empire napoléonien: une expérience européenne? Paris, pp. 397-410. Jessenne, J.-P. and Lemay, E. H. (1998) Député-paysan et fermière de Flandre en 1789. La correspondance des Lepoutre, Lille. Kaci, M. (2016) Dans le tourbillon de la Révolution. Mots d’ordre et engagements collectifs aux frontières septentrionales (1791-1793), Rennes. Lee, O. (1931) Les Comités et les clubs de patriotes belges et liégeois (1791-an III), Paris.

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3. Social inequality and the dynamics of political translocalisation: rural communities in nineteenth-century Germany

Research on the economic, social, cultural, and political changes in German rural societies during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has undergone a noticeable upsurge since the 1990s (Dipper, 1996; Franz, Grewe and Knauff, 1999; Dörner, Franz and Mayr, 2001; Raphael, 2003; Grüne and Konersmann, 2006; Troßbach and Zimmermann, 2006: 172-205). In many cases, such studies have at least implicitly touched upon the question of how local communities entered into a wider arena of institutionalised political communication due to a combination of endogenous forces and external incentives. This has drawn interest to a number of complex topics that have already been debated with great intensity in French historiography since the publication in 1976 of Eugen Weber’s book Peasants into Frenchmen (1976). In German literature, by contrast, the scattered evidence within this field has hardly been used for comparative purposes, beyond highlighting a geo-economic dichotomy between large-scale peasant farming with impartible inheritance and smallholding areas with partible inheritance (Gailus, 1982; Koch, 1983; Langewiesche, 1989; Ries, 1998; Dipper, 1998). Even in the most recent textbook on agrarian history, these findings receive only scant attention (Prass, 2016). Nevertheless, it would not suffice to simply transfer Weber’s explanatory model to the German world. This is because, on the one hand, Weber grounded his work in a theory of modernisation on which French historiography has itself turned its back (Mayaud, 2000; Hüser, 2001; Brassart, 2017). On the other hand, his preoccupation with national processes of

Niels Grüne • Department of History and European Ethnology, University of Innsbruck, Austria Making Politics in the European Countryside, ed. by Laurent Brassart, Corinne Marache, Juan PanMontojo & Leen Van Molle, CORN Publication Series, 19 (Turnhout, 2022), pp. 75–100 DOI 10.1484/M.CORN-EB.5.128244

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integration would not do justice to the territorial plurality of German-speaking Central Europe.1 This chapter attempts to avoid such teleological reductions. It is dedicated to exploring those factors which either fostered or hampered political translocalisation – i.e., a turn towards procedures, mindsets, and patterns of identification beyond the village realm of experience – in German rural areas between the late Ancien Régime and the mid-nineteenth century. Democratic modes take centre stage here, aiming to fathom practices of having a share in the body politic that were institutionally embedded, broadly accessible, and involved the transcendence of local “policy arenas”.2 Nevertheless, beside new forms of participation above the communal level (e.g., in territorial or national elections), the focus is as much on the changing use of traditional means of addressing the authorities (e.g., by supplications and petitions). Of interest in both these contexts is not just whether a socio-spatial expansion of legitimate participation occurred, but moreover whether this went hand in hand with an increased perception of local issues as a concern for the state as a whole. This also raises the question of the degree to which this kind of politicisation entailed party-ideological features, or in other words, to what extent such practices were connected to, for instance, liberal or conservative positions and rhetorics. To this end, three regions will be analysed, which were all shaped by family farms, yet differed from each other in political terms, and for which previous studies exist that can underpin a comparative analysis: the northern Upper Rhine Plain, the Hessian Uplands, and eastern Westphalia (see map 3.1). In sections II-IV the comparison will proceed in an asymmetric manner: they begin by depicting in detail and on the basis of primary source research the developments in the northern Upper Rhine Plain, followed by briefer accounts of the two other regions so as to carve out the major contrasts between the areas under investigation. After an outline in section I of rural social structures and communal power relations, the guiding perspective will be applied to processes of political translo‐ calisation in three fields of action and discourse: central representative bodies as nuclei for emerging party orientations (II); argumentative shifts in relevance from fragmented legal traditions to territorial or national law-making (III); and the diffusion and bonding potential of programmatic movements (such as liberalism or conservatism) in rural milieus (IV). The main emphasis is placed on how significant the phenomena were with regard to extending political horizons of

1 In the same vein, Laurent Brassart and Maxime Kaci warn against too readily associating rural politicisation with the rise of national sentiments relating to examples from the border regions between France and Belgium during the Revolution and Napoleonic Era (chapter 2). 2 The expression “policy arenas” was coined by the American political scientist Theodore J. Lowi and has resonated particularly in everyday history, where it is used to highlight the political significance of the lifeworld sphere through a “desetatisation of the concept of politics” (“Entstaatlichung des Politikbegriffs”). See Frevert, 2002: 156-157.

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Map 3.1: Case study regions in the states of the German Confederation, c. 1850 Source: Based on IEG-maps 5 and 87 © Institute of European History/A. Kunz 2000.

interpretation and semantics. The conclusion will bundle the results in a compara‐ tive summary (V).

I. Local frameworks: social structures and communal power relations During the period of examination, the translocal dimensions of rural politics essentially mirrored the structural elements of the local sphere. The social fabric and the communal constitution stand out as especially potent. They can be classified according to regional types. In the northern Upper Rhine Plain, partible inheritance was the dominant form of handing down possessions to the next generation. Yet, particularly from the eighteenth century onwards and as an effect of class-endogamous marriage strategies notably among the peasant elite, this did not necessarily lead to a bal‐ anced distribution of landed property. On the contrary, often a harsh disparity in

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ownership and agricultural resources emerged (Sabean, 1998: 449-489; Mahler‐ wein, 2001: 75-85, 104-108). Against this backdrop, the prevalence of village-wide solidarity cannot readily be explained as a reflection of congruent interests an‐ chored in egalitarian stratification. Rather, the fact that rural communities in the Rhine, Neckar, Main, and Mosel valleys nevertheless exhibited a considerable degree of sociocultural cohesion, was owing primarily to two developments. First, access to farmland for poorer groups increased appreciably at the turn of the nineteenth century, because the division of common grounds and an advanc‐ ing lease market (as against feudal tenure) allowed them to augment their arable holdings (Mahlerwein, 2001: 182-183, 258-262; Warde, 2002: 205-215; Grüne, 2009; Grüne, 2011: 110-117; Grüne, 2013: 160-173). Thanks to the region’s beneficial natural conditions and transportation links, even small plots could help less prosperous families to make a commercial agrarian living, if they devoted themselves to labour-intensive cash crops (e.g., wine, tobacco). This resulted not least in a mental ‘peasantisation’ of hitherto impoverished parts of the population, who by dint of their life and self-image as independent farmers acquired a revived sense of belonging to the rustic village culture (Grüne, 2007: 78-86; Grüne, 2011: 149-172; Grüne, 2013: 174-175). Second, the model of Personalgemeinde (personal community right) inherited from the early modern era was maintained during this period, which placed the overwhelming majority of local householders on an equal footing in communal citizenship, regardless of any other hierarchies. All the municipal codes instituted after 1815 in the respective states or provinces of the German Confederation channelled local political procedures into democra‐ tic paths, albeit frequently curbed by wealth-related census suffrage (Mahlerwein, 2001: 294-295; Mayr, 2006: 69-88; Grüne, 2011: 53-62).3 The peasant elites were therefore increasingly obliged to take the concerns of the ‘civic’ (enfranchised) lower classes into account in order to stabilise their traditional ruling position in the villages. The “estate-based pattern of vertical social integration” (Nolte, 1994: 13) that was hereby emphasised, guarded against a cleavage of rural society along class lines which could subsequently be charged with party ideologies. In the Hessian Uplands, peasant fiefs handed down as impartible inheritance, and freehold, which was subdivided between the heirs, existed parallel to each other and shaped the rural system of stratification. Hence, a narrow peasant class managed to keep reproducing itself while being faced with a rising number of households with much less or no means at all (Wagner, 1986: 54-58; Friedeburg, 1991a; Friedeburg, 1997: 38-65). Moreover, and in contrast to the situation in the northern Upper Rhine region, reforms of agrarian institutions and cultivation methods in the Hessian Uplands did not occur to any significant extent until the mid-nineteenth century (Wagner, 1986: 79-100; Friedeburg, 1997: 14-15, 100-110, 130-149). For instance, the sustained pastoral use of common land 3 Of relevance here are the municipal constitutions in the Bavarian Rhine District (Palatinate), in the Grand Duchy of Hesse (Rhine Hesse), in the Prussian Rhine Province (Administrative Districts of Trier and Koblenz), and in the Grand Duchy of Baden (Lower Rhine District).

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for livestock farming largely prevented these areas from becoming available as individual arable allotments. In terms of the redemption of feudal burdens, the delay of reforms meant that the nobility and the territorial prince (or state) continued their role as recipients of rents (services, money, and/or in kind) and as bearers of feudal regulatory powers, a form of presence in the localities that was the source of persistent conflict. Finally, agricultural intensification – e.g., crop rotations which reduced fallow and raised productivity – that could have mitigated the scarcity of resources, only took place haltingly, due partly to the above-mentioned circumstances, but also to climatic, soil, and traffic obstacles in the uplands. This constellation forced many smallholders to supplement their meagre in‐ come from little plots with day work and cottage industry, and most notably with temporary labour migration (e.g. Hollandgängerei, seasonal migration from German territories to the Netherlands) (Wagner, 1986: 58-65, 101-102; Friede‐ burg, 1997: 65-69). Such mixed employment, which often entailed the absence of household heads for months at a time, does not merely evince economic precarity. It also meant that the agrarian nexus of experience within villages, which was capable of engendering cohesion across social classes despite sharp differences in ownership, was distinctly weakened. Yet, also the municipal constitution of the Electorate of Hesse, for example, allowed the civic lower classes in the coun‐ tryside to participate politically through village assemblies, votes, and elections (Friedeburg, 1997: 15, 118-130). The sociopolitical tensions that ensued from these circumstances raise the question of whether they offered a gateway for rivalling translocal programs, or conversely, whether they fostered a compensatory ‘parochialism’ which nourished an attitude of “a-statism” (Brassart/Kaci, chapter 2) to retain a minimum of harmony within the village. Rural social inequality was even more pronounced in eastern Westphalia, and in most of North West Germany generally, as a result primarily of ex‐ clusive impartible inheritance (Mooser, 1979: 231-235; Mooser, 1984: 40-43, 84-92, 231-280; Düwel, 1996: 25-34; Fertig, 2007: 67-83, 119-156; Fertig, 2012: 99-210). The fate of unpropertied villagers was increasingly characterised by the limitation of their access to agrarian means of production as petty tenants, if they did not have to forfeit it altogether as mere lodgers. Due to demographic dynamics, the number of such inhabitants exceeded the peasant demand for extra-familial workers (which already fluctuated seasonally), which in turn drove the traditional asymmetric arrangements between land tenure and labour obliga‐ tions (Heuerlingssystem, hireling system) to its limits. Consequently, the economic options of the lower classes were narrowed down to the growing cottage industry (especially linen weaving), which had itself slid into a price and sales crisis due to competition from industrial factories after the Napoleonic Wars (Mooser, 1984: 61-79, 146-181; Düwel, 1996: 48-57; Brakensiek and Mahlerwein, 2010: 257-260). The structural problem was exacerbated by that branch of agrarian reform, implemented from an early stage in the eighteenth century here, which in an

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enlightened and liberal vein aimed to suppress collective modes of resource exploitation, including the ancillary use of woods (Mooser, 1984: 93-145; Braken‐ siek, 1991; Brakensiek, 1994; Düwel, 1996: 35-41; Brakensiek, 2002: 233-238; Brakensiek and Mahlerwein, 2010: 262-267; Grüne, 2013: 159-162, 167-168). A more rigid forest economy, and even more so the privatisation of common lands that granted additional holdings chiefly to the larger peasants, painfully reduced the means of subsistence of less prosperous families. Such unequal divisions document a fundamental feature of the regional social order: corporative claims to participation were tied to customary classes of farmsteads (or farm sizes) and to criteria of seniority. These estate-based principles relating to property and legal status also extended to the organisation of local rule. Only entitled community members, effectively the circle of landed peasants, could practice selfadministration and hold office. The Westphalian Rural Community Ordinance of 1841 essentially affirmed this system despite the growing gap between Ein‐ wohnergemeinde (residential municipality) and Realgemeinde (village corporation), though in political terms it did refer to a more consistent land tax census as the new dividing line between the two (Mooser, 1979: 236-237, 242-247, 253-255; Mooser, 1984: 207-209; Brakensiek and Mahlerwein, 2010: 267-268). On the whole, the sub-peasant majority of the population was thus confronted with social changes, partly fuelled by liberal state interventions, that visibly harmed their interests, yet without offering those affected an institutional forum to articulate their opinions and to exert a countering influence at the village level. In summary, rural societies in all three regions were exposed to considerable centrifugal forces from the late eighteenth century onwards, mainly as a result of demographic expansion and growing disparities in land ownership. However, di‐ vergent conditions regarding corporative structure, communal law, and economic development led to variations not only in the degree of social polarisation and the separation of employment spheres, but also in the communities’ integrative capacities as a platform for coordinating the concerns and actions of different groups (with reference to common rights Grüne, Hübner and Siegl (2016): 280-284, 288-290). This had an impact not least on the relationship with actors, concepts, and impulses towards mobilisation beyond the villages. This latter aspect is particularly important for the further discussion below.

II. Representative bodies: centres of gravity for political communication Due to territorial diversity, early constitutionalism in the German Confederation had variable effects on the three case study regions. In the states with provinces in the northern Upper Rhine Plain,4 a cornerstone of constitutionalism was 4 Primarily Baden (Constitution of 1818), Hesse-Darmstadt (1820), and – for the Rhine District (Palatinate) – Bavaria (1818). Yet, this did not apply to the Prussian Rhine Province.

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the establishment of parliaments (territorial diets) soon after 1815, whereas for instance the Electorate of Hesse only followed suit in 1831. Eastern Westphalia, which lay in the Kingdom of Prussia, even had to wait until 1848. These were accompanied by the short-lived revolutionary National Assembly of 1848/49 in Frankfurt. Theoretically, by system changes of that kind, villagers were in a sense “invited into politics”, as has been argued for Denmark from the 1840s onwards (Skov, chapter 4); but this alone did not ensure that the offer was accepted. Of course, the potential for a translocalisation of political mindsets inherent in representative bodies was bound to fluctuate simply for the reasons of state law outlined above. More importantly, however, divergent motives for either opening up to or distancing oneself from such processes of participation also emerged in the village context. To begin with, differences can be discerned in the elections for the second chamber of the state diets, as well as for the National Assembly. In South West Germany – most obviously in the Grand Duchy of Baden – a liberal reform camp on the one hand and a conservative government camp on the other not only crystallised on the parliamentary level in the Vormärz (pre-1848) era, but from the 1830s onwards, this ideological party antagonism began to pervade the Urwahlen, too. These primary elections were the first step of an indirect procedure in which local ballots were held to determine boards of electoral delegates who then returned the deputies to the chamber. Despite the unbroken dominance of propertied and administrative village elites in the electoral boards, the ballots thereby to a certain extent lost their traditional character as mere personality elections (Hörner, 1987: 205-231). Nevertheless, this process of politicisation did not necessarily trigger an ideological segregation of rural societies. Rather, the liberal movement largely enjoyed a hegemonic acceptance, as expressed in the oppositional sympathies of communal citizens under the aegis of peasant notables. This basic pattern – which can also be identified elsewhere (Troßbach and Zimmermann, 2006: 195-196, 201-203; Mahlerwein, 2000: 363-364; Mahler‐ wein, 2001: 409-418, 434-435; Dörner, 2006: 89-93, 294-307, 322, 331) – was especially marked in the villages of the Baden Palatinate in the northern Upper Rhine Plain (Grüne, 2011: 396-401). Between 1819 and 1847, the citizens of the rural communities in the Grand Duchy’s districts of Ladenburg and Schwet‐ zingen, north and south of the lower Neckar, were called upon eight times to vote for electoral delegates in the constituencies of Ladenburg-Weinheim and Philippsburg-Schwetzingen. From the 1830s onwards, a consistent preference for outspoken liberal deputies to the second chamber in Karlsruhe became evident in the Ladenburg region: First, the mayor of Weinheim, Albert Ludwig Grimm, was elected, followed in 1839 by Karl Theodor Welcker, and thereafter by Friedrich Hecker. Not only the allegiance towards the increasingly radical Hecker, but also the decision for Welcker in 1839 was a clear political signal, since the government tried with all available means to prevent his re-election in whatever constituency he stood for (Becht, 1985: 177-179; Becht, 1997, 36-37).

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Developments south of the Neckar were initially much the same. From 1831 onwards, Philippsburg-Schwetzingen dispatched the informal leader of the oppo‐ sition, Johann Adam von Itzstein, to Karlsruhe (Hörner, 1987: 273). Yet, in 1842, this tradition was disrupted with the privy councillor Friedrich Christian Rettig, who was close to the government, henceforth representing the constituency up until the revolutionary era. This apparent conservative turn, however, was seen as a nuisance by many electoral delegates themselves, especially those from the district of Schwetzingen. On 18 May 1842, thirteen of them petitioned the state diet to contest Rettig’s election from the month before. According to their appeal, the district magistrate Franz Burkhardt Fauth in particular had invested enormous efforts into stirring up the delegates against von Itzstein. This is why “Mister von Itzstein, who in the last previous election had united all the votes in the constituency behind himself, received only twenty-one votes, whereas Mister Rettig received forty”.5 In subsequent years, the local liberal partisans did not seem to shy away from ballot rigging either. In any event, district magistrate Fauth reported such manoeuvres in several villages to the Ministry of the Interior in 1846. For exam‐ ple, following “a vote that turned out well for the radicals in Oftersheim”, the brewer Heinrich Seitz from Schwetzingen dispensed free beer, although it could not be proven “whether the beer had been promised in advance as a reward”. And during the “election of radical delegates in Hockenheim”, so Fauth claimed, “six radical delegates were elected […] due to the efforts of mayor Kosel, the economist and councilman Schwab, [and] the municipal treasurer Piazolo”.6 Informed observers evidently thought they knew how such local results should be interpreted. In March 1846, for example, the progressive newspaper Mannheimer Abendzeitung published commentaries on just about every primary election in the Baden Palatinate – as it had already done to a lesser extent in 1842 and 1843 – which partly relied on assessments from within the villages. For instance, a report from Feudenheim exclaimed: “Our primary election took place […] entirely in the interests of progress”.7 All six of the electoral delegates from Schriesheim were attributed a “liberal disposition”, as was said about at least three

5 Verhandlungen: Protokolle der Zweiten Kammer 1842/1, 3 June 1842: 135-138, here 137. The nine signatories from the district of Schwetzingen were from Seckenheim (4), Neckarau (1), Hockenheim (3), and Altlußheim (1). The petitioners also accused Franz von Jagemann, the district magistrate of Philippsburg, and the forest officer Zipperlin of manipulation and, in the latter case, even blackmail. The second chamber did in fact repudiate the election. Von Itzstein, who had already won the constituencies of Lahr and Ettlingen-Rastatt and had chosen the mandate of the latter, did not stand in the revote. The repeat election of a deputy in Philippsburg-Schwetzingen once more saw Rettig emerge victorious. 6 Baden General State Archives 236/4291, 18 April 1846. 7 Mannheimer Abendzeitung, 7 March 1846: 253. One of those elected was mayor H. Ludwig Hill.

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of their four counterparts in Heddesheim.8 From the district of Schwetzingen it was declared that “in Oftersheim, Hockenheim, and Reilingen […] the primary elections turned out well”, while in Neckerau a sense of “joy” was expressed “that our primary election passed off in the spirit of progress”.9 In late March, the Mannheimer Abendzeitung therefore summarised the primary elections positively: The fact that a predominantly liberal second chamber would emerge from the upcoming elections of deputies was thanks to the “core of citizens in the towns and, in some areas, the larger number of genuine farmers”.10 Just as in many parts of France during the first half of the nineteenth century, such unanimous rural polls suggest that “before being a political act, voting was a social act”, reflecting and perpetuating a “communitarian identity” (Vivier, chapter 7). They fed on a village culture which cherished an image of egalitarianism and local solidarity. The optimism voiced in the Mannheimer Abendzeitung was validated by the district of Ladenburg, but not at first glance by the area around Schwetzingen, since the government candidate Rettig won the election there once again. The newspaper nevertheless felt itself to be in unison with the petitioners of 1842 in blaming this circumstance on the rural voters in the district of Philippsburg, which made up the southern half of the thirty-first constituency. Accordingly, an article from October 1847 following the promising results of the primary elec‐ tions from the Schwetzingen area put a dampener on the euphoria: “Incidentally, these figures do not yet tip the balance. Only when the district of Philippsburg votes better than it did the last two times is there hope that [segment blacked out by the censor] Rettig will be replaced by a man of progress”.11 In the Hessian Uplands, by contrast, no such far-reaching ideological galvani‐ sation occurred in the electoral proceedings of the 1830s and 1840s (Friedeburg, 1991b; Friedeburg, 1997: 230-276). The rather diffuse and fluctuating voting patterns only began to consolidate in the latter half of the century, at which point it was chiefly conservative and anti-Jewish groups that profited. This was down to two reasons. First, bourgeois political representatives in the Vormärz era, when the party spectrum was in any case not yet particularly defined, did not invest a lot of effort in mobilising the rural sphere. Second, the villages were sharply polarised in social terms and the lower classes depended starkly on the peasants proper. Although this asymmetry bred manifold latent conflicts, it seemed likewise so vital and inescapable that from a local angle it could not be suffered to be subverted by the development of ideological camps. Formally democratic participation hence lent itself to primarily traditional, externalised, and thus communally integrative protest issues such as feudal burdens and taxes,

8 Mannheimer Abendzeitung, 11 March 1846: 269, and 9 March 1846: 263. In the district of Ladenburg, such reports were furthermore issued from Ilvesheim and Käfertal; in both cases, the mayor was characterised as a liberal. 9 Mannheimer Abendzeitung, 9 March 1846: 263, and 8 March 1846: 257. 10 Mannheimer Abendzeitung, 30 March 1846: 345. 11 Mannheimer Abendzeitung, 4 October 1847: 1079.

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usury, avaricious cattle trade, economic forestry, hunting privileges, unwanted immigration, and competition from new settlers. These could be channelled, at the latest during the German Empire (since 1871), with a certain degree of “inter‐ changeability between liberal, conservative, and anti-Semitic election rhetoric” (Friedeburg, 1997: 260). Basically the same grievances and resentments in the countryside could be catered to by invoking the ‘liberty’ from undue outside impositions, the ‘order’ and ‘religiousness’ of village society, or the need to crack down on allegedly ‘parasitic’ Jewish money lenders and livestock dealers. It was not until 1848 that the rural population of eastern Westphalia had the opportunity for the first time to send deputies to central representative bodies – to two at once, in fact, namely the Frankfurt Parliament and the Prussian Na‐ tional Assembly in Berlin (Mooser, 1982: 78-81; Mooser, 1984: 357-359; Düwel, 1996: 120-124). In both instances, they voted almost exclusively for individuals who hailed socially from the educated bourgeoisie with close ties to the state and/or the church (lawyers, civil servants, pastors) or from the rural upper class (substantial peasants) – and whose programmes were opposed to parliamentary constitutionalism. Due to almost universal male suffrage, the votes of poorer rural dwellers were crucial for this outcome. In the revolution of 1848/49, the northern Upper Rhine Plain and the Hessian Uplands witnessed little violent col‐ lective action, and village support for sweeping political reforms, which loomed large in the former case, was principally demonstrated through peaceful means like voting, petitions, popular associations (Volksvereine), and rallies (Wettengel, 1989; Grüne, 2011: 424-445; Friedeburg, 1997: 230-251). On the other hand, the eastern Westphalian peasants, who had hardly ever been challenged to date in the communal sphere, faced a wave of riotous lower-class protests at the local level in the spring of 1848. Gravitating towards the monarchical state powers that guaranteed security and the protection of property, the landed elite therefore evinced a steadfast royalism in its voting behaviour. However, the fact that the sub-peasant groups largely ignored the campaigns of urban liberals and, from an outside perspective, rejected the opportunity for self-conscious participation calls for an explanation. This circumstance is related to features of village politi‐ cal culture that will be explored in the following two sections with respect to petitions and ideological commitments. In any case, no “transformation of social polarisation […] into a divide between ‘conservative’ peasants and ‘democratic’ hirelings” took place which would have been predetermined by ownership struc‐ tures (Mooser, 1984: 358).

III. Ways of reasoning: the dynamics of generalisation The semi-democratic status of representative assemblies did not only derive from the fact that most of their members were chosen through elections. Between these periodic acts of legitimisation, the parliaments moreover received petitions that injected local perspectives into the political process and therefore provided

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a potential mass medium of constitutional communication about state authority. The early modern practice of supplication was thus continued under new systemic circumstances. Conventionally, such supplications had been aimed at rulers and government agencies and had mostly intended to raise particularist (individual, group-related, corporative) legal and protective claims that often deviated from the given territorial law (Nubola and Würgler, 2005; Holenstein, 2000; Grüne, 2001: 206-272, 324-362). Hence, the extent to which the involvement of central representative bodies led to more encompassing rural patterns of perception and argumentation is even more interesting than the quantitative scale of petitions alone. Again, examples from the Baden Palatinate help to illustrate the conditions in the northern Upper Rhine Plain (Dörner, 2006: 52-59). According to the minutes of the Grand Duchy’s diet in Karlsruhe, the second chamber received a multitude of petitions from rural communities (Grüne, 2011: 401-413). It frequently served as a point of appeal when all other official channels had been exhausted without success. Thereby the contacts between local societies and state institutions which had been established via supplications during the Ancien Régime were extended by an additional stage. While it meant a qualitative leap that rural affairs could now be brought before a political representative body, this type of petition usually emphasised issues specific to a particular locality. However, a considerable number of petitions also arrived from the countryside that strove from the outset to elevate agrarian demands to a general level or to join initiatives which had a bearing on the state as a whole. This promoted, on the one hand, a translocal widening of the discursive horizon. On the other hand, it facilitated alliances with the reform-minded faction in the second chamber by building a bridge between rural interests and liberal constitutional politics. The mobilisation that occurred in the early 1830s with respect to the redemp‐ tion of tithes, for instance, had broad ramifications. The Reformlandtag (reform diet) of 1831 introduced a series of minor laws in this regard, whereas the great tithe could only be regulated in 1833. In June 1831, a “petition on behalf of all the landowners and farmers of the thirty-first constituency of the districts of Schwetzingen and Philippsburg” was submitted to the second chamber. It called for the “abolition of the tithe” on the grounds that it posed a burden for precisely those inhabitants who were “as producers to a certain extent [the] most useful citizens in the state”.12 The petition was also signed by 360 villagers from ten communities south of the River Neckar. A comparable “petition from twenty communities in the districts of Schwetzingen and Philippsburg with 815 signatures” was lodged in September.13 Besides, the legislative achievements of the Reformlandtag extended to the pas‐ sage of a new municipal code. The second chamber, moreover, caught German12 Baden General State Archives 231/1775, 20 June 1831. See also Verhandlungen: Protokolle der Zweiten Kammer 1831/13, 3 July 1831: 2. 13 Verhandlungen: Protokolle der Zweiten Kammer 1831/24, 22 September 1831: 2-3.

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wide attention by opposing a resolution of the Federal Diet in Frankfurt that threatened to annul the latitudinarian Baden press law. Over the following weeks, the deputies received numerous expressions of gratitude, through which the electoral base appeared to substantiate the inner consistency of all these measures imbued with a liberal spirit. In the district of Schwetzingen, the voters interlaced issues relating to agriculture, the municipal code, and the press law. 488 country dwellers extolled: “the restoration of the constitution, the abrogation of compulsory labour services and of tithes on reclaimed land and livestock, […] as well as the admirable municipal code, the publicity of court proceedings, the freedom of the press, and the defence against the German Confederation, […] and finally the powerful commitment to the redemption of the general tithe”.14 It was no coincidence that the festive receptions of deputies taking place in many parts of Baden after the diet, employed a motto which seemed compelling to villagers: “Freedom of the press! Freedom from compulsory labour service! Freedom from tithes!” (Rotteck, 1833: 639). The requests concerning trade policy submitted to the National Assembly in Frankfurt provide another instructive example of mass mobilisation via peti‐ tioning. A tendency towards free trade became evident during parliamentary consultations on a pan-German customs tariff in the fall of 1848 that would have endangered the profitability of tobacco-growing in the Palatinate. An appeal was subsequently disseminated through the press, amongst others, which called for protests in the shape of complaints and fell on fertile ground in the villages on the lower Neckar (Federal Archives 58/69, 58/83, December 1848; see bibliography). On average, more than half of the local citizens were prepared to sign; moreover, the signatories labelled themselves as Tabaksproducenten (“tobacco producers”) or Landwirthe (“farmers”), the latter being an inclusive notion similar to the French “cultivateurs” ( Jessenne/Vivier, 2010: 162). Both quantity and semantics testify to the drive towards social cohesion brought on by agricultural intensification in the Baden Palatinate. At the same time, some of the petitioners tried to forestall suspicions of an unpatriotic attitude by asserting their national allegiance and – as happened in the village of Neckerau – by declaring themselves to be “loyally devoted citizens of the German National Parliament” at a “sadly critical moment in time […] for the unification of Germany”. In comparison, the villages of the Uplands only sporadically resorted to petitioning the diet of Hesse, for instance, in the pre-revolutionary era (Friede‐ burg, 1997: 236-244). Apparently, the territorial representative body was hardly regarded as an authority when it came to solving specifically agrarian structural problems like the faltering abolition of feudal dues. In addition, members of parliament (notably those of a liberal persuasion) obviously did not make much 14 Baden General State Archives 231/1198, 15 December 1831; see also Verhandlungen: Protokolle der Zweiten Kammer 1831/36, 22 December 1831: 2-4.

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of an effort to highlight such affairs for forging party-political bonds. Admittedly, villagers certainly became more active in the petition movement of 1848/49, now directed at the Frankfurt Parliament. And the petitions were not lacking in borrowings from the programmatic vocabulary of the time. Nevertheless, the prevailing style was “in content […] determined by the defence of certain particular interests” and thus remained tailored to preserving the stability of local rule and society (Friedeburg, 1997: 239, 242). Despite the tactical concessions made to the lower classes, who after all were technically entitled to participation, this strategy first and foremost corresponded to the viewpoint of the peasant elites. In the face of the emancipatory impulse of the revolution, they were, as a contemporary put it, haunted by the fear of a “large bunch of unruly men, people besotted by ideas of false liberty, without property or secure means of income”, who were “extending their hands like thieves towards the property of better citizens since they have nothing to lose” (Friedeburg, 1997: 236). In eastern Westphalia, there is evidence of a not insignificant number of peti‐ tions in the first half of the nineteenth century, yet these were mainly addressed to provincial state authorities, some also to ministries in Berlin (Mooser, 1982: 64-77; Mooser, 1984: 308-316). Alternatively, the Westphalian Provincial Diet could have served as another port of call after 1825. However, it was rarely approached in this manner, possibly because it was seen to be largely ineffective. Most of the complaints, moreover, originated from members of the rural lower classes who, due to growing tension with the peasantry, bewailed their economic plight and urged the bureaucracy to step in, for example with regard to leasehold, rents, or daily wages. This pattern essentially continued during the revolution against a backdrop of violent turmoil on the local level, except that the Prussian National Assembly now formed an important further point of appeal (Mooser, 1982: 77-82; Mooser, 1984: 355-367; Düwel, 1996: 153-158; Konersmann, 2001). Although these petitions, as distinct from those of the Uplands, thus explicitly unveiled the fault lines and conflicts within rural society, their authors did not necessarily evoke a liberal vision as a counter-image. The hireling G. F. Redeker, for example, who submitted a series of symptomatic requests on behalf, and signed by many, of his peers in the hamlets of Altenschildesche and Braake from 1845 to 1847, did not indicate “in a single word […] any familiarity with the language of democracy and socialism of the Vormärz period” (Mooser, 1984: 313). Instead it was the government – an interventionist ‘social monarchy’ – that consistently emerged in the petitions of unpropertied groups as the institution which promised paternalistic care and palpable, material aid. As Josef Mooser put it, a “continuity of a socially conservative political attitude both in rebellion and loyalty” can be discerned here (Mooser, 1982: 77).

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IV. Offers of identification: the appeal of party programs in rural milieus The regions under consideration here have thus far revealed obvious differences with regard both to their openness towards early parliamentary practices of partic‐ ipation and to a softening of ‘localist’ patterns of thought. This begs the question of the extent to which the constellations described here generated relatively stable, ideologically grounded party orientations. Turning first to the northern Upper Rhine Plain, significant features can be discerned in the rural resonance of the liberal-connoted festivities that took place in the Grand Duchy of Baden on 22 August 1843 to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the constitution. In the lower Neckar valley, both the central events in Ladenburg and especially Schwetzingen and the occasional festivities organised in the villages exerted a substantial appeal (Grüne, 2011: 414-423). In Seckenheim, for example, the councilmen gathered at the village hall in the morning along with a number of citizens and schoolchildren, from where they moved out with “twenty crowned wagons” to join the parade in Schwetzingen.15 The celebration in Schwetzingen was also joined by “the core of the citizens as well as the schoolchildren” from Oftersheim and by “men from Hockenheim, Brühl, and a few other villages” (Mathy, 1843: 33). The main speaker was Karl Mathy, a prominent liberal member of the second chamber. Well aware of his rural audience, he used his speech to praise the accomplishments of Baden’s constitutionalism, including initiatives towards the “freedom of the press”, the “accountability of ministers”, improvements to the “administration of justice”, and the liberal “municipal code” as well as the abolition or redemption of the “old dues”, of “compulsory labour services”, and of the “tithe on livestock”, the “tithe on reclaimed land”, and the “general tithe” (Mathy, 1843: 37-38). In the absence of entrenched networks between urban and village notables, as they existed in nineteenth-century France ( Jessenne, chapter 1; also Jessenne/Vivier, 2010: 150), the sociocultural gap separating town and countryside had to be bridged via shared political issues and beliefs. This also meant that the common platform of bourgeois and peasant progressive forces came close to the sort of “cosmopolitan patriotism” which elsewhere in this volume is defined as being “based mainly on commitment to fundamental political values” (Brassart/Kaci, chapter 2). The early liberalism in Baden was moreover characterised by a strong person‐ alisation of party affiliations, with affinities to opposition politicians and to their programs becoming elevated in rituals and charged with affection. This could relate to local protagonists, such as the Protestant parson of the rural parish of Heddesheim, Georg Friedrich Schlatter. His friends included the renowned liberal parliamentarians Friedrich Hecker, Johann Adam von Itzstein, and Alexan‐ der von Soiron. Schlatter lobbied vehemently for the re-election of Karl Theodor

15 Mannheimer Abendzeitung, 17 August 1843: 765.

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Welcker to the second chamber in 1842 and attended a banquet in Hecker’s honour in Mannheim in 1843. However, such tributes were usually reserved for top politicians from outside the villages, as evident in the case of von Itzstein in 1842. In the constituency of Philippsburg-Schwetzingen, the defeated electoral delegates, who mostly hailed from communities south of the lower Neckar, aimed to make a publicly visible statement against the failure to re-elect their former representative. To this end, they commissioned the production of a “citizens’ crown” emblazoned with the inscription: “To the nestor of German freedom […] from the free men of the thirty-first constituency”, which they planned to present to von Itzstein in Karlsruhe.16 Before the silver oak wreath was taken there, it was exhibited in the house of the mayor in the village of Seckenheim, Johann Georg Hörner, where it was “soon surrounded by curious individuals of all orientations”. Due to the rush of onlookers, the crown was moved to the Badischer Hof inn, where everyone could gaze upon this “expression of true, loyal sentiment”, as the Mannheimer Abendzeitung framed it.17 The crown was presented in the Pariser Hof tavern in Karlsruhe, where von Itzstein had gathered for a meal with other members of the second chamber, by a deputation of several electoral delegates who handed it over together with a written address signed by over 800 voters. In the letter, von Itzstein’s followers lamented that “their upright patriotic efforts […] had not been rewarded” with directly taking part in the victory of the liberals in the last state diet election. Precisely for this reason, however, they felt themselves “irresistibly called upon to solemnly join those who contributed to the election of the majority of this cham‐ ber”. During the ceremony, one of the delegates described the “oak wreath” as “the symbol of German civic virtue”. In his words of thanks, von Itzstein assured his listeners that he was aware of “the patriotic sentiment of the free electoral delegates of the constituency of Schwetzingen and Philippsburg as of many, very many voters” and that it “had not been they who had robbed the district of its former representative”.18 Incidentally, Karl Theodor Welcker was honoured in a similar way in the region north of the Neckar that same year. And von Itzstein received further tributes in 1844 on the occasion of the “Itzstein Celebration”, this time from several areas of Baden: Most significant in this context was a commemorative coin for which donations had been collected in rural areas since as early as 1842 (Das Itzstein-Fest, 1844). Research on the Hessian Uplands has provided few indications of such par‐ tially emphatic acts of solidarity between country dwellers and representatives of either political liberalism or other ideological streams. In fact, before the mid-nineteenth century, there only appears to have been a temporary adoption of ideological topoi during the revolutionary months of 1848/49. These rhetorical 16 Mannheimer Abendzeitung, 12 August 1842: 756. 17 Mannheimer Abendzeitung, 17 August 1842: 773. 18 Mannheimer Abendzeitung, 23 August 1842: 791-792.

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allusions largely exhibited a selective character and an instrumental function, with anti-etatist slogans levelled against noble and territorial authorities – branding landlords and civil servants as ‘exploiters’ and ‘oppressors’ – being especially pop‐ ular. This lent an additional impetus to the customary gesture of pan-communal protest under the guidance of the peasants. By contrast, emancipatory and egal‐ itarian catchwords were hardly ever resorted to in a fashion that could have delegitimised the steep hierarchy within rural society. Rather, the recent battle cry of “liberty, equality”19 encouraged attempts on the part of peasants, smallholders, and paupers together to extort the abolition of feudal dues from intimidated seigneurs; to push for the free cutting of timber in state forests; or to distribute woods and glebe lands as arable plots among indigent families – in short, aspira‐ tions which targeted enhanced local autonomy over resources for the sake of maintaining the old power relations in the villages (Friedeburg, 1997: 244-251). As a result, “the traditional village leaders acquired such elements of revolutionary phraseology as could be turned against the governing authorities. By assuming the new political leadership, they were able to buttress their own traditional social and economic supremacy” (Friedeburg, 1997: 249-250). Turning finally to eastern Westphalia, two factors worked in tandem to direct the resistance of sub-peasant groups, which was growing throughout the first half of the nineteenth century and occasionally turned violent in 1848, into conserva‐ tive governmental rather than oppositional channels and thereby left their mark on the new democratic forms of participation. On the one hand, the (industrial) bourgeois liberals of the Westphalian variety embodied precisely those property reforms that had promoted possessive individualism and agrarian capitalism in the rural sphere and had left the lower classes in material hardship. It therefore hardly appeared plausible to back the liberals through participatory practices, which by extension compromised the constitutional agenda of liberalism as well (Mooser, 1982: 72-75, 77-79; Mooser, 1984: 355-367; Düwel, 1996: 205-234). On the other hand, religion played a larger role than it did by comparison in the northern Upper Rhine Plain, where the relationship between Catholics and Protestants in the often multi-confessional villages had lost much of their early modern acrimony and political explosiveness during the first half of the nineteenth century (Grüne, 2011: 364-390); or in the Hessian Uplands, though here, too, studies have postulated an increased impact of the local Protestant clergy on communal protests (Friedeburg, 1997: 193-204). In eastern Westphalia, Church pietism, which was particularly virulent among the poor, and the clout of Lutheran parsons led to a long-lasting obstruction of emancipatory mobilisation and lent the protests a restorative hue (Mooser, 1982: 75-77, 81-82; Mooser, 1984: 308-316; Brakensiek and Mahlerwein, 2010: 267). It was not by chance that a biblical vocabulary prevailed in this context. Tellingly, the above-mentioned hireling Redeker, for instance, in one of his petitions invoked the “merciful,

19 Quoted from eye witness reports in Friedeburg, 1997: 245.

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gracious God” as the source of “equity and justice”, which ought to be enforced by “Your Excellency [King of Prussia], our refuge, our father” to relieve the distress of the rural poor (Mooser, 1984, 313). Under the influence of anti-liberalism and evangelical awakening, then, a “conservatism of the lower classes loyal to the state” crystallised here, which favoured patriarchal authoritarianism and complemented the scepticism towards democracy of the peasants, who embraced a law-and-order stance (Mooser, 1984: 364; Düwel, 1996: 235-250).

V. Comparative summary: scopes of participation and political translocalism In German rural societies of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the diversity of social, economic, and municipal structures went hand in hand with varying forms and degrees of translocal political orientation. Yet, such disparities cannot simply be derived from different patterns of order and conflict in the villages. Insofar as the new mechanisms of supralocal participation mattered in this context, it was just as relevant when and how they were established on the territorial or national level and to which extent the nascent parliamentary parties were able to secure the support of rural groups. This model of explanation – referring to local society, institutional representation, and ideological affiliation – allows to typologise the findings on the three fields of action and discourse analysed above. 1 Representative bodies: In the northern Upper Rhine Plain, a far-reaching party-political infiltration of the rural sphere occurred during the 1830s and 1840s. It resulted in an identification with the early liberal movement and its parliamentary figureheads that manifested itself in electoral behaviour and transcended class boundaries. Thanks to economic stability and local political pacification (see section I), the communal elites managed to express their opposition to the government without putting their hegemony in the villages at risk. In the Hessian Uplands, by contrast, voting practices were less profiled in ideological terms. Due to the social antagonisms at play here, pronounced ideological alignments would have risked a disintegration of village society. This in turn promoted a restriction of protests down to goals that forged a local consensus against the outside world. Meanwhile, the rural population of eastern Westphalia only received an opportunity to participate in elections for central representative bodies in 1848. They then voted decidedly monarchist, thereby taking aim at the very parliamentary system that guaranteed their democratic participation in the first place. The fact that the upper and lower classes in the countryside, divided as they were by a deep social chasm, came together in an anti-participatory habitus, was a fundamental punch line of the revolutionary experience in this region. 2 Ways of reasoning: Continuing and modifying early modern communication practices (supplications), petitions provided a significant link between rural

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societies and government authorities and/or parliaments in the first half of the nineteenth century. In the northern Upper Rhine Plain, estate assemblies, as an additional port of call, instigated a change process that involved a translocal generalisation of argumentative horizons. Rural petitions, by being embedded into a territorial discourse on norms, increasingly took on a state-wide dimen‐ sion.20 In comparison, the residents of the Uplands not only held back on petitions numerically, but they moreover used them largely to articulate local interests even during the revolutionary period, without connecting them to a broader territorial or ideological framework. The same applies to eastern Westphalia, with the exception here that members of the rural lower classes in their complaints, mainly to the authorities, tended to stress their socioeco‐ nomic misery and to denounce the egotism of the peasants, in the hope of administrative countermeasures. 3 Offers of identification: Such heterogeneous patterns of response were depen‐ dent not least on the extent to which the parties emerging on the territorial and national levels followed the strategy of, and succeeded in, winning the support of (sections of) the rural population. This was especially true for the liberal movement as the carrier of participatory principles. Since ideological tenets usually exerted only a weak genuine attraction in the countryside, the ability to plausibly combine agrarian interest politics and progressive consti‐ tutionalism was crucial here. On the northern Upper Rhine Plain, notably in Baden, significant segments of the rural electorate recognised the represen‐ tatives of early liberalism – which was in any case sensitive to municipal affairs – as champions of an identity-forming program that elevated translocal participation to a vehicle of communal prosperity. In the Uplands, by contrast, there were few indications of any such amalgamation of rural lifeworld and liberal creed. Rather, the emancipatory slogans of the Vormärz era and the rev‐ olution were mainly functionalised to couch traditional communal protests in a manner in keeping with the times, and thereby to compensate for problems of integration in village society. In eastern Westphalia, finally, liberalism hit a twofold barrier: the lower classes perceived it as the one reformative power that had deprived them of their livelihoods since the turn of the nineteenth century, while the evangelical awakening then taking place channelled the pau‐ pers’ protest into a socially reactionary direction. Under these circumstances, democratic participation became an instrument to conceive of illiberal monar‐ chist paternalism as a concrete political utopia. In all cases examined here, traditional forms of participation were substantially utilised alongside newly created democratic mechanisms. Still, according to the interpretive model of political translocalisation, it is less important that these opportunities were exploited to varying degrees. Of much greater significance 20 Jean-Pierre Jessenne points to a similar extension of the rural “political horizon” due to the establishment of a central legislative body and the resonance of nation-wide laws at the beginning of the French Revolution (chapter 1). See also Jessenne/Vivier, 2010: 149, 160.

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is the extent to which they engendered a connection to discourses of territorial order and to party-ideological camps. It is precisely in this respect, beyond the in‐ stitutional surface, that continuities and ruptures with the estates-based societies of the Ancien Régime become evident. ‘Politicisation’ understood in this manner – not just in form, but in content – unfolded most distinctively in the northern Upper Rhine Plain. There, the translation of rural concerns into questions of territorial legislation and state organisation was owing to the interplay with the movement of early liberalism. Originally urban reform politicians managed to muster lasting support among the farming population by relating agrarian inter‐ ests with their own constitutional agenda. Some chapters in this volume suggest – e.g., regarding France, Spain, Denmark, and Sweden – that this was a widespread dynamic in nineteenth-century Europe: progressive forces gained ground in the countryside once they took pains to broaden their platform by incorporating motifs specific to village life (Vivier, chapter 7; also Jessenne/Vivier, 2010: 150, 160-161; Peyrou, chapter 10; Skov, chapter 4; Bengtsson/Hägglund, chapter 12). In the Hessian Uplands, however, the articulation of rural issues in supralocal arenas of communication took on a more defensive character and aimed rather at protecting the municipal sphere than at embedding it within state-wide contexts of discourse and action. Yet again in eastern Westphalia, the local actors were more open to interventions by the authorities, although they legitimised their as‐ pirations to this end less through recourse to the community as a whole, and more by reference to the particular claims of individual social groups. Ultimately, they placed their hopes rather in an authoritarian paternalism than in participation on a central level. While such regional features arose from a bundle of factors and therefore preclude monocausal explanations, the comparative approach of this chapter reveals above all the close nexus between local social circumstances and modes of politicisation. Certainly, this chapter has illuminated at several points that village political culture did not merely reflect social structures and relationships. But at the same time, it becomes clear that the latter informed political outlooks, ambitions, and commitments in the countryside to a greater extent than has often been acknowledged in the recent literature. The economic consolidation and relative homogeneity of rural communities as was demonstrated here in the northern Upper Rhine Plain was conducive to a mobilisation for institutional participation, as it offered a point of identification transcending class that, despite its liberal positioning, did not threaten to divide the local milieu. The harsh social contrasts that determined the conditions in the Uplands and in eastern Westphalia lacked any such consensus grounded in everyday experience that could have been deployed in the extralocal sphere. Consequently, a parochial distance to early parliamentarianism and its increasing differentiation along party lines came to dominate in these regions, or an anti-democratic conservatism

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gained the upper hand. This did not strictly determine the long-term processes of politicisation. Yet, the question of how participation was perceived and practiced in translocal terms in the countryside of nineteenth-century Germany was surely tied to a great measure of sociohistorical path dependence.

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Bibliography Archival sources Bundesarchiv Koblenz (Federal Archives): 58: Reichministerium des Handels (Imperial Ministry of Commerce) 69/5113: Schutzzollpetition der Gemeinde Heddesheim an die Frankfurter Nationalversammlung (Petition for protective tariffs from the community of Heddesheim to the National Assembly in Frankfurt), 19 December 1848 69/5155: idem from Brühl, 26 December 1848 69/5165: idem from Neckarhausen, 24 December 1848 69/5167: idem from Schriesheim, 23 December 1848 69/5168: idem from Altlußheim, 28 December 1848 69/5174: idem from Edingen, 27 December 1848 69/5175: idem from Oftersheim, 27 December 1848 69/5184: idem from Hockenheim, 25 December 1848 69/5185: idem from Neckarau, 26 December 1848 69/5188: idem from Reilingen, 27 December 1848 69/5232: idem from Friedrichsfeld, 29 December 1848 69/5234: idem from Ketsch, 28 December 1848 69/5235: idem from Seckenheim, 29 December 1848 69/5260: idem from Plankstadt, 28 December 1848 69/5267: idem from Feudenheim, 29 December 1848 69/5564: idem from Sandhofen, 30 December 1848 83/5156: idem from Neulußheim, 29 December 1848 83/5285: idem from Käfertal, 29 December 1848 83/5372: idem from Wallstadt, 30 December 1848 83/5567: idem from Ilvesheim, 24 December 1848 Generallandesarchiv Karlsruhe (Baden General State Archives): 231: Badischer Landtag, Zweite Kammer (Territorial Diet of Baden, Second Chamber) 1775: Petition namens der sämtlichen Güterbesitzer und Landwirthe des 31ten Wahlbezirks der Bezirksämter Schwezingen und Philippsburg (Petition on behalf of all the landowners and farmers of the thirty-first constituency of the districts of Schwetzingen and Philippsburg), 20 June 1831 1198: Dankschreiben der unterschriebenen Bürger des Amts Schwetzingen für die durch unausgesetzte Thätigkeit vielfältig erwirkte Erleichterungen der Unterthanen und längst ersehnte verbesserte Staatseinrichtungen (Letter of thanks of the signed citizens of the district of Schwetzingen for the relief of the subjects, effected in many ways by incessant activity, and the long sought-after improvement of state institutions), 15 December 1831

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——— and Konersmann, F. (2006) ‘Gruppenbildung – Konfliktlagen – Interessenformierung: Marktdynamik und Vergesellschaftungsprozesse im ländlichen Strukturwandel deutscher Regionen (1730-1914)’, Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, 46, pp. 565-591. ———, Hübner, J. and Siegl, G. (2016) ‘Institutionen und Praktiken kollektiver Ressourcennutzung in der europäischen Agrarwirtschaft: Vergleichende Betrachtungen und Forschungsperspektiven’, in Grüne, N., Hübner, J. and Siegl, G. eds, Ländliche Gemeingüter: Kollektive Ressourcennutzung in der europäischen Agrarwirtschaft / Rural commons: Collective use of resources in the European agrarian economy, Innsbruck, Wien and Bozen, pp. 274-296. Holenstein, A. (2000) ‘Die Umstände der Normen – die Normen der Umstände: Policeyordnungen im kommunikativen Handeln von Verwaltung und lokaler Gesellschaft im Ancien Régime’, in Härter, K. ed., Policey und frühneuzeitliche Gesellschaft, Frankfurt am Main, pp. 1-46. Hörner, M. (1987) Die Wahlen zur badischen zweiten Kammer im Vormärz (1819-1847), Göttingen. Hüser, D. (2001) ‘Bauern und Franzosen, Integration und Eigensinn: Zur ländlichen Politisierung und kulturellen Nationsbildung im Frankreich des 19. Jahrhunderts’, Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, 41, pp. 409-431. Jessenne, J.-P. and Vivier, N. (2010) ‘Northern France, 1750-2000’, in van Bavel, B. and Hoyle, R. eds, Rural economy and society in North-Western Europe, 500-2000, vol. 1: Social relations: property and power, Turnhout, pp. 139-166. Koch, R. (1983) ‘Die Agrarrevolution in Deutschland 1848: Ursachen – Verlauf – Ergebnisse’, in Langewiesche, D. ed., Die deutsche Revolution von 1848/49, Darmstadt, pp. 362-394. Konersmann, F. (2001) ‘Soziale Differenzierung und Politisierung ländlicher Gesellschaft in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts: Das Amt Rietberg in Ostwestfalen zwischen 1822 und 1856’, in Zimmermann, C. ed., Dorf und Stadt: Ihre Beziehungen vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart, Frankfurt am Main, pp. 177-202. Langewiesche, D. (1989) ‘Die Agrarbewegungen in den europäischen Revolutionen von 1848’, in Heideking, J., Hufnagel, G. and Knipping, F. eds, Wege in die Zeitgeschichte: Festschrift zum 65. Geburtstag von Gerhard Schulz, Berlin and New York, pp. 275-289. Mahlerwein, G. (2000) ‘Wandlungen dörflicher Kommunikation im späten 18. und in der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts’, in Rösener, W. ed., Kommunikation in der ländlichen Gesellschaft, Göttingen, pp. 345-364. ——— (2001) Die Herren im Dorf: Bäuerliche Oberschicht und ländliche Elitenbildung in Rheinhessen 1700-1850, Mainz. Mayaud, J.-L. (2000) ‘Pour une communalisation de l’histoire rurale’, in Agulhon, M. ed., La politisation des campagnes au dix-neuvième siècle: France, Italie, Espagne et Portugal, Rome, pp. 153-167. Mayr, C. (2006) Zwischen Dorf und Staat: Amtspraxis und Amtsstil französischer, luxemburgischer und deutscher Landgemeindebürgermeister im 19. Jahrhundert. Ein mikrohistorischer Vergleich, Frankfurt am Main et al.

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Mooser, J. (1979) ‘Gleichheit und Ungleichheit in der ländlichen Gemeinde: Sozialstruktur und Kommunalverfassung im östlichen Westfalen vom späten 18. bis in die Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts’, Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, 19, pp. 231-262. ——— (1982) ‘Rebellion und Loyalität 1789-1848: Sozialstruktur, sozialer Protest und politisches Verhalten ländlicher Unterschichten im östlichen Westfalen’, in Steinbach, P. ed., Probleme politischer Partizipation im Modernisierungsprozeß, Stuttgart, pp. 57-87. ——— (1984) Ländliche Klassengesellschaft 1770-1848: Bauern und Unterschichten, Landwirtschaft und Gewerbe im östlichen Westfalen, Göttingen. Nolte, P. (1994) Gemeindebürgertum und Liberalismus in Baden 1800-1850: Tradition – Radikalismus – Republik, Göttingen. Nubola, C. and Würgler, A. eds (2005) Bittschriften und Gravamina: Politik, Verwaltung und Justiz in Europa (14.-18. Jahrhundert), Berlin. Prass, R. (2016) Grundzüge der Agrargeschichte, vol. 2: Vom Dreißigjährigen Krieg bis zum Beginn der Moderne (1650-1880), Köln, Weimar and Wien. Raphael, L. (2003) ‘Staat im Dorf. Transformation lokaler Herrschaft zwischen 1750 und 1850: Französische und westdeutsche Erfahrungen in vergleichender Perspektive’, Zeitschrift für Agrargeschichte und Agrarsoziologie, 51, 1, pp. 43-61. Ries, K. (1998) ‘Bauern und ländliche Unterschichten’, in Dipper, C. and Speck, U. eds, 1848: Revolution in Deutschland, Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig, pp. 262-271. Sabean, D. W. (1998) Kinship in Neckarhausen, 1700-1870, Cambridge. Troßbach, W. and Zimmermann, C. (2006) Die Geschichte des Dorfes: Von den Anfängen im Frankenreich zur bundesdeutschen Gegenwart, Stuttgart. Wagner, K. (1986) Leben auf dem Lande im Wandel der Industrialisierung: “Das Dorf war früher auch keine heile Welt”. Die Veränderung der dörflichen Lebensweise und der politischen Kultur vor dem Hintergrund der Industrialisierung – am Beispiel des nordhessischen Dorfes Körle, Frankfurt am Main. Warde, P. (2002) ‘Common rights and common lands in south west Germany, 1500-1800’, in De Moor, M., Shaw-Taylor, L. and Warde, P. eds, The management of common land in north west Europe, c. 1500-1850, Turnhout, pp. 195-224. Weber, E. (1976) Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France 1870-1914, Stanford. Wettengel, M. (1989) Die Revolution von 1848/49 im Rhein-Main-Raum: Politische Vereine und Revolutionsalltag im Großherzogtum Hessen, Herzogtum Nassau und in der Freien Stadt Frankfurt, Wiesbaden.

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4. Peasant politicians and democracy: how the peasants contributed to the democratisation of Denmark, 1788-1849

How did peasants contribute to the democratisation of Denmark in the first half of the 19th century? This chapter argues that Danish peasants were ‘invited’ into politics. This invitation engendered a process of politicisation in two stages. The first stage is to be situated during the agrarian reforms of the late 18th century. In this period, the peasant became a political and economic figure in both historical literature and the governmental reform program. In the second stage, during the 1830s and 1840s, the peasants engaged actively in politics and created a political movement that contributed significantly to the democratisation of Denmark’s Constitution in 1849.

I. Challenging the narrative of a Danish utopia In contrast to many other European countries, the peasantry in Denmark – and Scandinavia – has played a central symbolic role from the late Enlightenment until the 1950s and 1960s. Earlier generations of Danish historians created a narrative which focused on the societal problems that had emerged in the late eighteenth century and that had been resolved peacefully via cooperation between key actors, such as the state, the landed elite, industrialists, and peasants. In the twen‐ tieth century, the workers gradually replaced the landed elite in this consensus model. The model has been understood as a significant reason why Denmark was spared from the revolutionary upheavals that many other European countries experienced (Bregnsbo, 1996). This narrative is still alive today ( Jespersen, 2007: 80-87). Scandinavian historians have labelled this peaceful process as the Scandina‐ vian Sonderweg. In an influential publication, The Cultural Construction of Norden, the historians Øystein Sørensen and Bo Stråth identified this Sonderweg as a par‐ Jesper Lundsby Skov • Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History, University of Oslo, Norway Making Politics in the European Countryside, ed. by Laurent Brassart, Corinne Marache, Juan PanMontojo & Leen Van Molle, CORN Publication Series, 19 (Turnhout, 2022), pp. 101–120 DOI 10.1484/M.CORN-EB.5.128245

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ticular inflection of the Enlightenment, compared to the rest of the West. In the Scandinavian Enlightenment, they argued: “The peasant figure, who elsewhere was considered with contempt as rude, ill-bred, and uneducated, was seen as the mythical incarnation of education (Bildung/dannelse), freedom, and equality” (Sørensen and Stråth, 1997: 1). The core idea in this Sonderweg is a pragmatic fusion of the twin principles of the Enlightenment, freedom and equality, embod‐ ied in the figure of the peasant that “was too conservative to be radical, but too radical to be conservative” (Sørensenand Stråth, 1997: 3). According to Sørensen and Stråth, this particularity of the Scandinavian Enlightenment created a politi‐ cal culture that managed to contain the tensions between liberty and equality. Furthermore, and compared to other countries such as France and Germany, there was a noteworthy absence of dominant political elites in the Scandinavian countries, making the elites more inclusive and moderate with regard to peasants and workers. A crucial development was the emergence of popular (not populist) movements, which emphasised respect for all persons and education as a means to social improvement. As carriers of individual freedom and social equality, these peasant movements criticised the monarchy and elitist behaviour. Because the peasant movements embraced the French Revolution’s values in a moderate and pragmatic way, they never turned into radical movements. In the late nine‐ teenth century, when the peasants became the ‘core’ of ‘the people’ in their own imagination, this moderation was also reflected in a democratic and progressive nationalism without a militant attitude. The national identity, as carried out by the peasantry, was defensive and mobilised against the class identity of the workers (Sørensen and Stråth, 1997: 7-8, 14-16). Sørensen and Stråth argue that an important reason for this moderation also derived from education. The peasant movements were deeply influenced by the vision of the Danish priest, politician, and historian Nikolai F. S. Grundtvig, and benefited from his educational efforts. Grundtvig was not only influential in Denmark, but in the whole of Scandinavia. Through the folk high schools, his educational project (dannelse) became an emancipatory tool for the peasantry. It empowered the peasants and turned them into active citizens and politicians whose legacy influenced the design of the welfare state and twentieth century democracy (Sørensen and Stråth, 1997: 8-10). In 1998, the leading Danish historian Claus Bjørn recounted a similar story and called it the history of the Danish utopia (Bjørn, 1998). Like Sørensen and Stråth, he emphasised vital elements such as moderation, inclusion, and compro‐ mise, but he focused moreover on the role and power of the state. In Bjørn’s ac‐ count, this Danish utopia emerged with the agrarian reforms of the late eighteenth century. These reforms were headed by top civil servants and landowners, who wished to create a better peasantry that would lead to an increase in agricultural productivity on the fertile fields and contribute to the development of a more prosperous society. In this vision, the state played a crucial role as the initiator and coordinator of agrarian and other reforms, not a night-watchman state, but an active state able to realise change for the betterment of society. Crucially, the state did not forcefully push through these reforms but encouraged them pragmatically,

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through open debate and economic incentives. The state showed the way, but left room for initiative (Bjørn, 1998: 9-44). The Danish utopia thus engendered a political culture of inclusiveness, pragmatism and compromise. Later generations of politicians, landowners, industrialists, peasants and workers never abandoned this model, but adapted it and contributed to it (Bjørn, 1998: 45-48). These two interpretations of the Danish modernisation are just two versions of the same narrative that exist in many different variations in the historiography and have been very influential, not just in Danish historiography, but also in international scholarship. The famous political scientist Francis Fukuyama notably coined the term “getting to Denmark” to frame how a country can successfully modernise into a peaceful and prosperous democratic welfare state. He was hereby clearly inspired by the aforementioned narratives (Fukuyama, 2015). Meanwhile, Danish historians have challenged several aspects of these narra‐ tives. There are far too many to name them all, but a few are worth mentioning. An early and now classic critic was Thorkild Kjærgaard, who argued that too much history writing has focused on the peasantry and has positioned them as the main characters in the modernisation process of Denmark, reducing the landowners and smallholders to merely supporting side figures (Kjærgaard, 1979). Inspired partially by Kjærgaard’s arguments, the economic historian Per Boje has recently published an ambitious reinterpretation of Denmark’s modern economic history. He challenges the often-iterated explanation that Denmark owes its prosperity to its peasants and, in particular, to the cooperative movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Instead, Boje argues that Denmark’s prosperity is more due to visionary civil servants, international corporations, and innovative landowners (Boje, 2014). A group of younger historians has also recently tried to challenge the assumption that Denmark’s modern history has been characterised by a consensus-oriented political culture that created only a small number of conflicts, compared to several other European countries. According to these historians, Sissel Bjerrum Fossat, Rasmus Glenthøj, and Lone Kølle Martinsen, the consensus approach has misconstrued our understanding of Danish history in many respects (Fossat, Glenthøj and Martinsen, 2018). This chapter is also a critique of the Sonderweg/utopian narrative. While there is undoubtedly a core of truth in this account, three interrelated critical observations are addressed here. Firstly, there are reasons to argue that the utopian narrative overstates the level of cooperation between the state and key societal actors, such as the peasants. While the state definitely played a crucial and supportive role during the agrarian reforms at the end of the eighteenth century, in the 1840s the state did not support the political peasant movement but reacted nervously and chose a more cautious approach. Secondly, while it is true that Denmark, in comparison with other European countries, such as England and Germany, was less dominated by elite groups, the Danish peasants were still met with both arrogance and mistrust by the academics and the landed elite. This chapter emphasises how encounters between the peasants and the elites were often marked by conflict, and less by mutual understanding. And thirdly,

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the Sonderweg thesis exaggerates the importance of education (Bildung). The educated peasant belonged to the period after 1870. During the 1830s and 1840s, the political peasant movement primarily focused on agrarian reforms to raise the standard of living and respectability of the smaller farmers. Education played only a minor role in this context.

II. Issuing the invitation: foundation myths and agrarian reforms Before it was even possible for peasants to act as politicians, they had to be set free. Until the agrarian reforms of the late eighteenth century, almost all peasants in the country lived as tenants in a manorial economy: they produced grain without having access to landownership. Even though they were not serfs, as was the case east of the Elbe, tenants only had limited civil rights because local large landlords owned the land and the farmhouses they lived in. In 1788, the stavnsbånd system – a particularly hated and restrictive institute that imposed compulsory residence on peasants and tied them to the estate on which they were born (and which will be further explained below) – was abolished. Ever since then, the abolishment has been seen as a symbolic victory for the agrarian reforms (Løgstrup, 2015: 16-21, 34-35). The striving for even more freedom began in the middle of the century when an increased demand for agricultural produce, in particular grain created a need to rationalise the agricultural economy. New intel‐ lectual currents from France and Great Britain that emphasised entrepreneurial freedom paved the way for reforms in a more liberal direction (Løgstrup, 2015: 44-54) These developments created a first phase of politicisation from the late eigh‐ teenth century onwards when historical literature changed the concept of the peasantry from a negative and feudal image into a more positive and freedomoriented perception. Interestingly, historical writing then became another way of ‘doing’ politics (Evju, 2019). This fact needs some contextual explanation. During the late eighteenth century, Denmark was a monarchy that included several territories. Since 1660, the Danish kings had been the absolute rulers of the twin kingdoms of Denmark and Norway, together with the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. Along with several overseas territories and colonies, all these parts formed an imperial state that was controlled from Copenhagen (Østergaard, 2012: 49-50). A unique feature of Danish absolutism was that it was based on a written constitution, the Lex Regia from 1665, that placed almost unrestricted power in the King’s hands. In comparison with many other absolute states in this period, Denmark stood out as a rather extreme case of absolutism. However, the political reality was different. Since the middle of the eighteenth century, the kings had allowed more and more space for political discussion on the assumption that intellectual and enlightened debate could provide the government with important insights and contribute to better governing (Seip, 1958). However, the period

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was also characterised by kings who were either poorly advised by their advisors, or who suffered from conditions which restricted their ability to play any real significant governing role. Both Frederik V and his son, Christian VII, were utterly dependent on their advisors, whilst Frederik V was a drunk, and Christian VII suffered from a mental disorder. In 1770, Christian’s personal physician, J. F. Struensee, took advantage of the King’s poor state of mind and used his influence in order to manipulate the king into placing all his power into the doctor’s hands. As a man of the Enlightenment, Struensee used his newly gained powers to reform the government, and he immediately abolished all restrictions on freedom of expression. However, his enemies in court were numerous, and in 1772, they arrested and executed Struensee for his treacherous acts. In the following years, from 1772-84, order was restored under the strict command of the civil servant Ove Høegh Guldberg, who once again severely restricted freedom of expression. Nevertheless, in 1784, the young Crown Prince Frederik (VI) and his allies in court toppled Guldberg. Frederik was physically fragile but had a healthy mind. Under his new rule, a new period of reform and liberal governance shaped poli‐ tics. The years 1784-99 were marked by an increased tolerance of different points of view in the public debate, although there were limits, of course. Questioning the monarchy’s legitimacy directly was not tolerated, but there were other ways to criticise the government without the risk of repercussions (Østergaard, 2012: 52-53). Historical writing was one such way. Of course, this had not been entirely apolitical previously, as it had often been used to legitimise the reigning regime. However, what did change was that from the 1770s, historical writing became a weapon of criticism (Nevers, 2011: 52-59). A central figure in this context was Peter F. Suhm, who was a wealthy historian and a critic of absolutism. In fact, he had previously written a constitutional draft proposal in 1772, after the fall of Struensee, which would have limited the powers of the King significantly. Guldberg, naturally, rejected this proposal, as he was a staunch supporter of the current regime (Hørstbøll, 2008: 207). Nevertheless, it did reveal Suhm’s political inclinations. As a historian, he was asked to write a comprehensive history of Denmark, Norway, and Holstein to be used as a textbook in the educational sys‐ tem. Even though his manuscript was slightly censored, it was published in 1776 and, subsequently, it had a significant impact on political thinking of the time. The basic tenet in Suhm’s narrative was the theory that the peasantry in ancient times had been free and had the right to elect the king. In this foundational myth, there existed a balance between the peasantry and the king, where the peasants were seen as the backbone of the country, cultivating their fields. However, this freedom had been curtailed with the advent of the feudal system, and the aristocracy had suppressed the peasantry and destroyed the natural balance. Suhm wrote: “Instead of many thousands of independent farmers, one now had a few bishops, abbots and priors, and a few hundred lords, who had turned all the tillers of the fields into serfs” (Horstbøll, 2008: 208). With the introduction of absolutism, the kings had become detached from these ‘origins’, forgetting and

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then ignoring the freedom of the peasantry. In essence, Suhm told a story of how liberty once existed, only to be lost. Now it had to be restored. It was central to Suhm’s narrative that it entailed a political program placed within his own time. According to this program, the peasantry’s original freedom had to be reinstated, and their independence restored (Horstbøll, 2008: 208). Naturally, it comes as no surprise that Suhm’s ideas had a profound impact on the discussions concerning agrarian reforms. Suhm was not the only historian to use history as a political critique of the absolute monarchy. Tyge Rothe, another contemporary historian, also launched a foundational myth of a free peasantry. He was deeply influenced by the French philosopher Montesquieu and set out to write a grand history of both Scandi‐ navia and Denmark, focusing on the ramifications of feudalism (Horstbøll, 2008: 219-221). In 1781 and 1782, he published The Nordic Constitution or Nordens Staetsforfatning in which he developed the narrative that there had once been a democracy of peasants before the advent of feudalism: “One finds in the people of the North the real democracy, which was so honorable that the kings, however proud and mighty they might be, yet without any loss of honor, let their power curtail by the same [democracy]. A great part of the Middle Ages, it is the peasants who act as a democracy at the public meetings [Folkemøderne]. Though most importantly, there is no hereditary nobility, no hereditary high office, and most decisively, no fief jurisdiction. All are equally subject to the law and have the same judges” (Rothe, 1781: 2). The basis of this combination of both democracy and monarchy was thus to be found in a free and independent peasantry that lived in a state of civil liberty. Resembling Suhm, Rothe blamed feudalism as the cause behind the dismantling of this original freedom. The feudal system placed the political power in the hands of the landowners that destroyed the connection between private property and civil liberty. The conclusion of this narrative was clear: private property rights had to be liberalised and civil rights reinstated (Horstbøll, 2008: 223-225). Rothe’s historical writing was also an intervention in the contemporary debates regarding agrarian reforms. Both his and Suhm’s theories of an original free peasantry became widely accepted, not just in the discussions of agrarian reforms, but also in wider historical writing and fiction in the course of the nineteenth century (Horstbøll, 1992: 164-179; Martinsen, 2012: 73-103). While the foundational myths had created a common point of reference in the political language, the agrarian reforms were a paramount and more tangible result that enabled a systematic change of living for the Danish peasantry. Agrarian and economic reforms had been discussed since the middle of the eighteenth cen‐ tury but had finally achieved a breakthrough during the reform years of 1784-97. Top civil servants such as Andreas P. Bernstorff, Christian D. F. Reventlow, and Christoffer Colbiørnsen were instrumental in carrying out these reforms. There was a common understanding that the agrarian economy was inefficiently

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productive in comparison to other countries. Together with the increased demand for agricultural produce, this created an urgent need to rationalise production, employ new techniques, and make better use of new tools. Before the reforms, the agricultural sector was dominated by a few hundred families that owned around 800 manors and about 75% of the arable land. The Crown itself owned an additional 10%. The majority of peasants worked as tenants with an obligation to do compulsory work for their landlord (corvee) and to pay a yearly rent (landg‐ ilde) (Feldbæk, 1989: 38-39). A particular hated institution was the so-called stavnsbånd, which since 1733 had bound men between the ages of forteen to thirty-six (later on changed into four to forty) to live and work at the manor where they had been born. The reasoning behind the stavnsbånd was a need to supply enough men to the military, which the manors were obliged to provide. The agrarian reforms changed all of this. They provided generous incentives for the peasants to buy their own farms, which many did, and better legal protection for those who remained tenants. The many villages that had characterised the landscape before diminished drastically in numbers with the enclosure, and most symbolically, the stavnsbånd was abolished in 1788 under great celebration. The reforms began a process that would create a new and free peasantry (Bjørn, 1995: 61-87). The principal body that prepared the legislation for these reforms was the so-called Great Agrarian Commission, established in 1786 by the government, only two years after the young Crown Prince had taken back control from Ove Høegh Guldberg (Løgstrup, 2015: 213-214). As the Danish historian Eva Krause Jørgensen has shown, the internal discussions in this commission were charac‐ terised by a reformist discourse that argued in favour of peasant emancipation ( Jørgensen, 2015). The reformists in the commission criticised the dull and lazy peasants who lived a life of indolence, however they also highlighted that the peasants’ laziness was mainly a result of not living a life of freedom. It was the prevailing agricultural system that produced this lower and unenlightened class of peasants. If the peasants were free to buy the farm they wished for and learn how to cultivate it, they would be more able and willing to make it more productive. One commission member, Wilhelm August Hansen, argued: “I think the state would win in doing so […] that there arose a new class of honorable peasants or agriculturists which I believe in several aspects is good, especially since most of them could be assumed to gain a greater capability, insight, and aspiration to make improvements of the agriculture than the current peasant class yet has” ( Jørgensen, 2015: 103). This discourse has its origin in the previously mentioned foundational myth of an original free peasantry. However, how did the reformists define this new freedom? As was typical of the time, the concept of personal freedom did not entail complete freedom to do whatever one wanted to do. Freedom had a narrower meaning. It was freedom to do what one ought to do for the betterment of oneself and for the general welfare (Skov, 2019: 50-53). This understanding was

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also reflected in the internal discussions of the commission. One member, Bolle Willum Luxdorph, stated that: “freedom is far from the same as self-determination. To be free is a condition in which a man can perform his duties unhindered, and one of the great duties of a man is to serve his country, each according to his ability and talent” ( Jørgensen, 2015: 108). In other words, the reformists believed that the peasantry had the ability to live in freedom and to serve their country. This was significant, but as Christian Colbiørnsen argued, the peasants needed guidance first: “He [the peasant] must be led to know the importance of the advantages he will achieve by entering a civic society. And first, when he has been enlightened, will he realise that his freedom has not been stolen from him, but that he only by the wisdom of the law is led to use it for his happiness, which is connected to the wellbeing of the whole. First then, as a citizen, will he feel that he is a free man: and this knowledge and this feeling are the true sources to the fidelity and love which blossoms in his chest for the king and fatherland” ( Jørgensen, 2015: 114). This kind of thinking turned the agrarian reforms into a reality and was crucial in the ‘invitation’ or politicisation of the peasantry, as an open invitation to enter the circle of citizens. It is important to note, though, that the reforms were an ongoing process that took several decades. In the 1830s and 1840s, half of all peasants on the large islands, such as Zealand and Fyn, still lived as tenants, while freeholders were more numerous in Jutland (Løgstrup, 2015: 560-561). The reformist discourse that argued in favour of freedom for the peasantry still lived on, but it did not completely replace the old and more negative discourse that viewed peasants as lazy and uneducated. Both discourses continued to live side by side, but it is fair to say that the most negative perception of the peasants waned during the first half of the nineteenth century, as they became a key figure in the national and romantic conceptions of history (Henningsen, 2019: 119-120).

III. Accepting the invitation: Bondevennerne and democracy In 1799, the enlightened years of reform and tolerance ended. The young Crown Prince Frederik VI had become disillusioned with the direction of public discus‐ sion. They were too critical of his government. Therefore, in 1799, he circum‐ scribed the law on freedom of speech to such an extent that political discussions virtually disappeared for around three decades ( Jørgensen, 1944). Of course, people did not stop thinking about politics just because they could not write about it in public. An example of this was the events in 1814 that resulted in the separation between Denmark and Norway. This were a consequence of the

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Napoleonic Wars, in which Denmark had sided with France, the losing side. Norway used the momentum of the war to draft and adopt a new constitution that became a model for many Danish liberals in the 1830s and 1840s (Glenthøj, 2013: 85-91). What finally broke the political deadlock in Denmark was the establishment of four consultative estate assemblies in 1834, an idea which had actually originated from the Congress of Vienna in 1815. It was only after the revolution in Paris in 1830, a revolution that threatened to spread to Denmark, that King Frederik VI became convinced of their necessity. Two were established in Denmark, one in Schleswig, and one in Holstein. Though they only had a consultative function and could not force the government to do anything, it was a first step towards popu‐ lar self-government (Skovmand, 1964: 136-143). The voters were divided into three estates: landowners, property owners in the market towns (købstæderne), and peasants. The two Danish assemblies were placed in Viborg ( Jutland) and Roskilde (Zealand). The assembly in Roskilde had seventy members, and twenty of those seats were reserved for the peasant representatives, whilst there were twelve for Copenhagen, eleven for the market towns, seventeen for the landown‐ ers, and finally ten representatives appointed by the king from various worthy sectors, such as the university and the church. In Viborg, twenty-two of the fifty-five seats were for the representatives of the peasants, fourteen for the market towns, twelve for the landowners, and seven appointed by the King. The number of peasant representatives in both assemblies were large enough to secure a balance between the three estates. The voting restrictions varied depending on affiliation to an estate, but only about 3% of the population received the right to vote. Remarkably, even tenants were given the right to vote, which was crucial given their numbers in Zealand (Bjørn, 2003: 190-191). For the very first time, peasants now had a chance to elect their own politicians. In other words, it was an invitation to enter the political arena, which the peasants eagerly accepted. Not everyone was pleased. In the highly influential and liberal weekly maga‐ zine, Dansk Ugeskrift, the reaction to these new assemblies was somber. While many thought it was a step in the right direction towards a constitutional monar‐ chy, others feared that the new voting rights were too democratic. Professor Joachim P. Schouw, the editor of Dansk Ugeskrift, worried that there would be too many peasant politicians and too few representatives from Copenhagen in Roskilde’s new assembly. Notably, the voting rights excluded many enlightened and clever men that lived in the capital. Schouw also questioned the capability of the peasants. He was not convinced that they would elect men with the right ability and knowledge required to serve as representatives ( Jensen, 1931: 270-271). This reaction shows the ambiguity among many academic and liberal men towards the peasantry. The liberals had a romantic understanding of the peasants and sympathised with them, but only to a certain point. They would not accept peasants as truly equal in politics. Assisted by rising prosperity, a new political movement emerged in the 1840s that rested on the peasantry and represented its interests. It was called The Society

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of Peasant’s Friends, or Bondevennernes Selskab. In the historiographic literature, this is traditionally just called Bondevennerne. Established in 1846, it was the first political party in Danish history, and simultaneously the culmination of a long-standing conflict between the peasantry and both the landowners and the absolute monarchy. The elected peasant politicians in the consultative assemblies had, since the late 1830s, fought for the continuation of agrarian reforms, which in their view had come to a halt. In the 1840s, they increased their political activity and sharpened their rhetoric. They sent petitions to the King, signed by thousands of peasants, requesting a continuation of the enclosure and a complete abolishment of the still existing tenant system with the hated corvee. Another crucial request was the implementation of an equal distribution of those entering into military service, which was a heavy burden on the peasants (Skovmand, 1964: 181-186). The peasant politicians’ strength in the 1840s was not just visible in the assem‐ blies, but also in the villages and in the countryside, where “agitators”, as they were disapprovingly called, travelled around trying to persuade the peasants to organise themselves and articulate commons goals. This method of spreading an opinion via travelling from village to village was, nota bene, already practiced by the new Christian awakening movements that challenged the prevailing orthodoxy and which had appeared a few decades before, in the early 1800s (Nielsen, 2009: 82-83). However, ultimately geographical divisions split the peasantry. As I have men‐ tioned earlier, there was a large presence of freeholders in Jutland who, naturally, were less interested in the struggle for further agrarian reforms. This was reflected in their lesser involvement in the Bondevennerne movement, although they did support the claim for equal military service. The new Christian movements, for their part, enjoyed broad support among many peasants in both Jutland and the large islands. This resulted in political and religious conflict over educational and religious matters, as the peasants desired more freedom to follow their own beliefs (Bjørn, 2003: 283-284). The new Christian movements also demanded that peasants be treated as equal with other citizens and, in that sense, there was a common link with the political peasant movement (Nielsen, 2009: 78-81). The Bondevennerne organisation was largely based in Zealand, which was by no means coincidental as there had always been a close connection between support for Bondevennerne because of the prevalence of the tenant system which tenants had longed to escape from. Zealand counted two groups of peasant politicians, one in the assembly in Roskilde, led by Balthazar Christensen, and a second outside of the assembly, including Rasmus Sørensen, Peder Hansen Lundby, and Jens A. Hansen. Christensen had trained as a lawyer and, though he was not from a peasant background, he nevertheless sympathised strongly with the peasants’ cause. As a Roskilde representative, he made several proposals to continue the agrarian reforms from the late eighteenth century. In one of his speeches from 1844, his rhetoric had been so sharp that several of his opponents accused him

PEASANT POLITICIANS AND DEMOCRACY (DENMARK, 1788-1849)

of “communism” and of being an enemy of the right to private property ( Jensen, 1934: 514-515). At around the same time, Sørensen and Hansen, both of whom had a back‐ ground in the new religious movements, founded the newspaper Almuevennen or Commoner’s Friend in 1842 to provide the peasants with a publication that could focus on the injustice the peasants were forced to endure. Even though they were very short on funding, they nevertheless made Almuevennen into a serious newspaper that was able to be the voice of many peasants, including, to some extent, the numerous smallholders (husmænd). Neither Sørensen nor Hansen were peasants: the former was a schoolteacher, whilst the later was a shoemaker. However, they had lived most of their lives among peasants and other people of the lower classes and they had been appalled by how these people were treated by the higher classes (Vammen, 2011: 226-247, 256-261). Due to Rasmus Sørensen more radical beliefs, the split with J. A. Hansen in 1843 came as no surprise, but he soon found a new partner in Peder Hansen Lundby, a smallholder’s son. Both shared similar beliefs and radical ideas, and they began to travel around from village to village, mostly in Zealand but also on other islands, as well as in Jutland where they gathered thousands of signatures from peasants for petitions which they sent to both the king and the assemblies in Roskilde and Viborg. They demanded a complete abolishment of the tenant system, and they were not afraid to use harsh language when targeting landown‐ ers, creating much nervousness among both them and the government who feared ensuing peasant uprisings (Vammen, 2011: 247-253). In 1845, Sørensen and Hansen Lundby spoke at a large meeting at Kongsdal, between Holbæk and Sorø. It was attended by 8000 people, mostly peasants, where they reiterated their demands for further agrarian reforms. This led to the government, who had become so anxious that such meetings would set off a dangerous peasant movement, to prohibit any future large gatherings without permission from the local police. However, the ban only succeeded in creating further resentment amongst the peasant politicians and many liberal academics, so much so that they united and created the party Bondevennerne. The government, especially King Christian VIII, soon realised their error and repealed the prohibition. However, the damage had already been done, and a new alliance between peasants and liberals was forged ( Jensen, 1934: 524-527). Although the party’s goals were to achieve “equal civil rights” and the “eman‐ cipation” of the peasantry, its actual leadership demonstrated that the partners within this new alliance were anything but equal. No one in the party’s new board actually belonged to the peasantry. It was made up of a military officer, An‐ ton F. Tscherning, a manufacturer, Johan C. Drewsen, the aforementioned lawyer Balthazar Christensen, the liberal academic Orla Lehmann, Povel Povelsen, also an academic and accountant, the schoolteacher Asmund Gleerup, and Niels F. Jes‐ persen, a peasant but who was in possession of an academic degree ( Jensen, 1934: 527). Despite having gained broad popular support among the actual peasants, neither Rasmus Sørensen nor Peder Hansen Lundby were invited into the party’s

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leadership. Sørensen soon after left the party in disappointment (Vammen, 2011: 244). The new party proved to be primarily a union between liberal academics based in Copenhagen, and a more moderate group of peasant politicians located in the market town of Holbæk, some 60 kilometers west of Copenhagen ( Jensen, 1934: 531). With its moderate profile, the party quickly gained thousands of members. In 1847, their number had exceeded 5000 and was still rising. Since the peasants were used to having people from the higher classes as leaders, they presumably did not mind that their party was for the most part headed by academics (Vammen, 2011: 224-225). However, internal division between the party leaders were vibrant. Many peasants and others of the lower classes, such as shoemaker Hansen, mistrusted the intentions of the liberal academics. Orla Lehmann, in particular, was a contro‐ versial figure. He had become the leading spokesperson for the liberal opposition to the government during the 1840s, and his main goal was the dismantling of absolutism. Many historians have with good reason suspected him of using Bondevennerne to create a more robust and broader opposition to the government (Vammen, 2011: 265). A similar pattern to this was also visible in parts of Germany (see Grüne’s contribution). The true impact of the Bondevennerne became visible in the revolutionary year of 1848. As in many parts of Europe in the spring of 1848, revolution in Denmark caused the abolishment of the absolute monarchy. However, unlike in other European countries, the transition to a constitutional regime happened rather peacefully, led as it was by liberal academics in Copenhagen. Both Orla Lehmann and Anton F. Tscherning became ministers in the transitory govern‐ ment. Elections were held to a constitutive assembly in the autumn of 1848 to draft a new constitution. King Frederik VII signed the new constitution on June 5, 1849 which, compared to many other contemporary constitutions, was unusually democratic. Here, the voting restrictions to the lower chamber, the Folketinget, in the new parliament, the Rigsdagen, granted about 15% of the adult population the right to vote. The same voting rights applied to the upper chamber, Landstinget, though here there were further financial requirements required to be eligible for a seat (Bjørn, 1999). Meanwhile, already existing tension in the Bondevennerne led to a new divide between the peasant politicians and the liberals. During the turbulent year of 1848, it became increasingly clear that the liberals and the peasants had fun‐ damental disagreements about the political system’s future design. Reflecting the concerns of J. P. Schouw from fourteen years earlier, the liberals worried over whether the peasantry would gain too many representatives in the new parliament. To counter that prospect, they favoured a constitutional two-chamber model as in England with a “democratic” lower chamber and an “aristocratic” upper one (Nevers, 2011: 112-113). In this context, the Bondevennerne was instru‐ mental in giving the new constitution a more democratic turn than had been envisioned by the liberals and, more especially, the conservative representatives. The Bondevennerne indeed did surprisingly well in the elections for the constitu‐

PEASANT POLITICIANS AND DEMOCRACY (DENMARK, 1788-1849)

tive assembly. By that time, the party counted about 10.000 members and, unlike other candidates, it had the advantage of being an organised party that skillfully campaigned for its candidates on Zealand (Bjørn, 2003: 341-342). That election resulted in the formation of three political groups within the constitutive assem‐ bly: the first obtained a minor third of the seats and leaned to the right, the second won another minor third and opted for the center, whilst the last group gained a larger third of the seats and leaned to the left (Bondevennerne). The peasants thus became the largest minority group. However, thirty-eight additional members were appointed by the government, most of them leaning to the right-wing group and ultimately making that the largest of the three. However, the peasants had won thirty-eight of the 152 representatives, which was certainly more than had been expected (Bjørn, 1999: 18-19). The members of the constitutive assembly were required to answer many questions concerning the new political system they were designing. One of the most important and time-consuming concerned voting rights. The Bondevennerne wanted the future parliament to have only one chamber, elected via universal male suffrage, but this caused much dispute as both liberals and conservatives were dead set against such proposals. The political discord was probably most visible in the different application of the concept of democracy. As shown by historian Anne Engelst Nørgaard, that concept was central in the political language of the Bondevennerne, both as a way of creating the identity of the party and as a designation for its political goals. They were “the democracy”, and they wanted a more “democratic” constitution (Nørgaard, 2016: 108-109). To most liberals and conservatives, this was dangerous talk, as to them democracy was a concept inexorably linked to anarchy and unrestricted majority rule. Democracy was to be restricted and not expanded (Nevers, 2011: 111-113). Interestingly, the Bondevennerne’s identification with democracy soon also influenced the political language of their political opponents, in such a way that they also identified the Bondevennerne as “democrats” or “the democracy” (Nørgaard, 2016: 135-138). Indeed, universal male suffrage soon became synonymous with the concept of democracy (Nevers, 2011: 111). Across the political spectrum, the dominant discourse was that political devel‐ opment, from absolutism to a constitutional monarchy, had to be “evolutionary” and “calm” and not abrupt or breaking from the historical development ( Jensen, 1941: 431-444). To fend off attacks on this point, the Bondevennerne argued that democracy was not a distortion of the historical development that had taken place but was in fact the logical next step in society’s natural evolution. One prominent member of the Bondevennerne, the aforementioned Tscherning, talked about “a transition from a less orderly” to “a more civilized” time.1 In another speech, he argued that Danish absolutism had been “a leveling absolutism that prepared Democracy” and concluded that limited suffrage equated turning back

1 Beretning fra forhandlingerne paa Rigsdagen, 1848-1849: 1897.

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the historical development.2 In this way, Tscherning maintained that universal suffrage and a democratic constitution were not radical propositions but the natural results of a long historical development. As shown by Anne Engelst Nørgaard, there was a strong connection between the concept of democracy and maintaining the King within the political language of the Bondevennerne. They rejected all talk of republicanism and even argued that the King was “the country’s first democrat”. Even though the Bondevennerne did not want to give the King an absolute veto on future legislation, but rather only a suspensive one, they did not view this as a weakening of his position but as a strengthening of it because, so they argued, the King’s power was connected to the people’s strength. According to Tscherning, there existed a close bond between the King and the people, by which he primarily meant the peasants (Nørgaard, 2016: 146-151). There were two arguments for this position. Firstly, the peasants had traditionally viewed the King as their friend and his advisors as their enemies (Bjørn, 1981: 59-66). Secondly, members of the Bondevennerne observed, in the spring of 1849, a conservative reaction in many parts of Europe that rolled back the democratic achievements of the year before. Because they feared that something similar would happen in Denmark, they added weight to their argument by positioning the King as a defender of their voting rights (Neergaard, 1892: 404-406). Even though the final draft of the constitution included a bicameral parliament with a lower and upper chamber, it would be a mistake to think that the Bonde‐ vennerne fought in vain. On the contrary, the party had a considerable influence in pushing the new constitution in a more democratic direction than would otherwise have been the case. The Bondevennerne maintained a strong focus on the democratic right to universal suffrage, not only because of democratic ideals but also because it would finally set the peasants on an equal footing with the other classes in Danish society. This was their chance to step out of their role as second-class citizens. The party had been invited into the political arena, accepted the invitation, and changed the political system to its advantage. Only a few years later, the situation looked completely different.

Perspectives and conclusion The revolutionary year of 1848 opened the political arena for the peasants, but their democratic achievements at the constitutive assembly were not translated into real political influence in parliament for the next two decades. There was both an internal and external reason for this. Externally, the problem was that the all-consuming issue in Danish politics revolved around the relationship between the Kingdom of Denmark and the Duchies of Schleswig, Holstein, and (since

2 Beretning fra forhandlingerne paa Rigsdagen, 1848-1849: 1907-1908.

PEASANT POLITICIANS AND DEMOCRACY (DENMARK, 1788-1849)

1814) Lauenburg. 1848 was namely also a time of civil war: a separatist move‐ ment in Schleswig and Holstein rebelled against the King and began a brutal civil war with Denmark that ended in 1851. As part of the peace settlement, which was dictated by the major European powers, in particular Russia, it was agreed that Denmark and the Duchies of Schleswig, Holstein, and Lauenburg had to remain together and find a peaceful way to co-exist. This proved to be exceedingly difficult, if not impossible; in the end a new war broke out in 1864, which resulted in a crushing defeat for Denmark and the loss of all the Duchies. Denmark was suddenly reduced from a small state to a tiny one. Sandwiched between these two wars, experiments were set up with a federal constitution encompassing the Danish Kingdom and the Duchies, but none of them proved viable. These federal constitutions transferred foreign affairs, defence, and financial policy from the Danish Parliament, the Rigsdagen, to the federal one, the Rigsrådet, where the vot‐ ing rights were more elitist. One significant consequence was the Bondevennerne’s loss of political influence (Glenthøj, 2014: 196-199). Equally important was the internal fragmentation of the Bondevennerne during this time. In the 1840s, the Bondevennerne had been united in the struggle for agrarian and democratic reforms, but in the 1850s these topics were downgraded in favour of the struggle between Denmark and the duchies. The party disagreed internally on the right approach, which caused a deep split between a group led by Jens A. Hansen, who supported a new and nationalistic line, and another group headed by Anton F. Tscherning, who favoured a federal solution. Deep resentment ensued, which was further fueled by the fact that the groupings also reflected geographical divisions. The peasants in Zealand generally supported Hansen, while those in Jutland mainly followed Tscherning. This fragmentation weakened the party and contributed to the adoption of only a few minor agrarian reforms during this period (Neergaard, 1916: 229-266). However, the voluntary replacement of tenants with freeholders continued, and the number of tenant farms dropped from about 21.000 in the early 1850s to about 9.000 in the 1860s (Skovmand, 1964: 356). After the defeat in 1864, the country needed a new constitution. Denmark had at that moment a federal constitution originating from 1863, and a national constitution that had been approved in 1849. Both had to be combined into one. The constitution of 1863 was more elitist than that of 1849, and the conservative and liberal politicians hoped once more to reduce the influence of universal male suffrage in the new constitution (Nilsson-Stjernquist, 1955: 5-65). In an attempt to preserve some political influence, Jens A. Hansen made a controversial deal with the aspiring landowner, Jacob B. S. Estrup. Hoping to create a sizeable agrar‐ ian bloc with landowners, Hansen and his group voted for Estrup’s constitutional draft which privileged landowners with a disproportionally large influence in the upper chamber, the Landstinget. This new constitution of 1866 became a massive disappointment to many members of the Bondevennerne. The landowners showed little interest in sharing political power. Consequently, in 1870, the disappointed peasants created a new political party called The United Left or Det Forenede

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Venstre. They demanded the implementation of a new constitutional principle: a parliamentary system of government, whereby the government should reflect the majority in the lower chamber, Folketinget (Fink, 1986: 9-28). This demand instigated a new constitutional struggle that would last until 1901, when, finally, the King appointed a government supported by The Left. Unlike their predecessors from the 1840s and 1850s, the new generation of peasant politicians in the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s created a truly popular move‐ ment with broad support across the country. In the 1880s, they even established an alliance with a young generation of progressive academics in Copenhagen. The United Left became a serious political opposition to those who eventually, in the 1880s, united in the conservative party Right or Højre. During this time, folk high schools (folkehøjskoler) began to pop up in many places. Before 1870, there were only fourteen folk high schools; in 1873, that number had increased to fifty-two; twenty years later, there were seventy-five folk high schools. These schools transformed the peasantry into a new educated class of citizens (Dyb‐ dahl, 1965: 51-52). More or less simultaneously, the peasants reorganised their economy on a cooperative basis: local producers of dairy and meat united in cooperatives that sold their products to international markets. This contributed to rising standards of living and, amongst the peasantry, created the sense of being the backbone of Denmark’s agrarian economy for many decades. As the influen‐ tial Danish historian Uffe Østergaard argued: “The peasant-farmers’ movement achieved hegemony because it succeeded in establishing an independent culture with its own educational institutions. This was in turn possible because of the unique organisational form of agrarian industry: the cooperative” (Østergaard, 2012: 60). Some comparable developments were also seen in Sweden (chapter 12 by Bengtsson and Hägglund). In the context of this anthology, it must be stressed that it was only after 1870 that Nikolai F. S. Grundtvig’s visions began to influ‐ ence the political peasant movement through the folk high schools. Regarding Grundtvig, Øystein Sørensen and Bo Stråth argue that “it is difficult to exaggerate his influence, not only in Denmark, but all over Scandinavia” (Sørensen and Stråth, 1997: 8). However, as shown by Grundtvig scholar Jes Fabricius Møller, it is indeed easy to exaggerate his influence. He was not really a Democrat in any modern sense of the word, and he was not the sole founder of the folk high school movement (Møller, 2015: 103-130). The two radical peasant politicians, Rasmus Sørensen and Peder Hansen Lundby, had their own plans for the creation of new folk high schools. Sørensen’s plan was never realised, but Lundby established a folk high school in 1852 without Grundtvig’s influence (Vammen, 2011: 235-236, 255). The peasant movement’s huge success in the late nineteenth century has in many ways overshadowed the peasant movement of the 1830s and 1840s. It is not unusual to encounter the interpretation that the peasants were politically naive and incompetent until the 1870s (Henningsen, 2019: 106-133). That is an overstatement. This chapter has argued that the political peasant movement of the 1830s and 1840s had a significant influence in democratizing Denmark’s

PEASANT POLITICIANS AND DEMOCRACY (DENMARK, 1788-1849)

political system, but it did so in ways that do not comply with the Sonderweg/ Utopian-thesis. The movement of the 1830s and 1840s was predominantly a social movement that fought for its own material gains. Its adherents were more inter‐ ested in agrarian reforms than high politics. Its peasant politicians were poorly educated and lacked the political experience to become leaders in their own right, therefore they united with more experienced liberal academics. But this alliance proved to be fragile, resulting in a deep conflict due to the obvious political differences. Nevertheless, despite their shortcomings, the peasant politicians of the 1830s and 1840s successfully established a political movement with significant political influence in the constitutive assembly, where they pushed the political agenda in a more democratic direction. Their downturn in the 1850s and 1860s made their victories bittersweet. The next generation of peasant politicians made sure not to repeat the failures of the original founders of the political peasant movement.

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Bibliography Printed sources Beretning fra forhandlingerne paa Rigsdagen, 1848-49, Copenhagen. Rothe, T. (1781) Nordens Staetsforfatning. Første Deel, Copenhagen Literature Bjørn, C. (1981) Bonde, herremand, konge. Bonden i 1700-tallets Danmark, Copenhagen. ——— (1995) Lovene gives kraft – en biografi af Christian Colbiørnsen, Odense. ——— (1998) Dengang Danmark blev moderne – eller historien om den virkelige danske utopi, Copenhagen. ——— (1999) Kampen om grundloven, Copenhagen. ——— (2003) Gyldendal og Politikens Danmarkshistorie. Bind 10. Fra reaktion til grundlov 1800-1850, Copenhagen. Boje, P. (2014) Vejen til velstand – marked, stat og utopi. Om dansk kapitalismes mange former gennem 300 år. Tiden 1730-1850, Odense. Bregnsbo, M. (1996) ‘Den danske vej Om traditionen for den danske konsensuskultur’, Historie/Jyske Samlinger, 2, pp. 311-327. Dydahl, V. (1965) Danmarks historie. De nye klasser 1870-1913. Vol. 12, Copenhagen. Evju, H. (2019) Ancient Constitutions and Modern Monarchy Historical Writing and Enlightened Reform in Denmark-Norway 1730-1814, Leiden & Boston Feldbæk, O. (1989) ‘Historikerne og landboreformerne. Traditioner og problemer’, Historisk Tidsskrift, 89, 1, pp. 38-54. Fink, T. (1986) Estruptidens politiske historie 1875-1894, I, Odense. Fossat, S. B., Glenthøj, R. and Martinsen, L. K. eds (2018) Konfliktzonen Danmark. Stridende fortællinger om nyere dansk historie, Copenhagen. Fukuyama, F. (2015) ‘Nation Building and State Building’, in Hall, J. A., Korsgaard, O. and Pedersen, O. K. eds, Building the Nation. N. F. S. Grundtvig and Danish National Identity, Copenhagen, pp. 29-50. Glenthøj, R. (2013) ‘Enevælde under afvikling. Schlegel og tidens skiftende opfattelse af kongemagt og konstiution’, in Mestad, O. ed., Frihetens forskole. Professor Schlegel og eidsvollsmennenes læretid i København, Oslo, pp. 68-91. ——— (2014) 1864. Sønner af de slagne, Copenhagen. Henningsen, P. (2019) Dengang vi var bønder, Copenhagen. Horstbøll, H. (1992) ‘Civilisation og nation 1760-1830’, in Mørch, S. ed., Danmarks historie. Historiens historie. Bind 10, Copenhagen, pp. 105-198. ——— (2008) ‘Northern Identities and National History – Paul-Henri Mallet, Peter Frederik Suhm and Tyge Rothe’, in Haakonsson H. and Horstbøll, H. eds, Northern Antiquities and National Identities. Perceptions of Denmark and the North in the Eighteenth Century, Copenhagen, pp. 207-226

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Jensen, H. (1931) De danske stænderforsamlingers historie. 1830-1848. Første del. Stænderforsamlingernes tilblivelse og deres første virksomhed, Copenhagen. ——— (1934) De danske stænderforsamlingers historie. 1830-1848. Anden del. Stænderforsamlingernes virksomhed og betydning fra 1838 indtil 1848, Copenhagen. ——— (1941) ‘Den politisk-historiske Udviklingstanke i de danske Forfatningsdrøftelser 1830-1848’, Historisk Tidsskrift, 10, 5, pp. 431-444. Jespersen, J. (2007) Historien om danskerne 1500-2000, Copenhagen. Jørgensen, E. K. (2015) Breaking the Chains. An Intellectual History of the Discursive Struggles over the Danish Agrarian Reforms, 1784-1797, Aarhus University, unpublished PhD Dissertation. Jørgensen, H. (1944) Trykkefrihedsspørgsmaalet i Danmark 1799-1848. Et bidrag til en karakteristik af den danske enevælde i Frederik VI’s tid og Christian VIII’s tid, Copenhagen. Kjærgaard, T. (1979) ‘Gårdsmandslinjen i dansk historieskrivning’, Fortid og Nutid, 28, 1, pp. 178-191. Løgstrup, B. (2015) Bondens frisættelse. De danske landboreformer 1750-1810, Copenhagen. Martinsen, L. K. (2012) ‘Bondefrihed og andre verdensbilleder. Idehistoriske studier af B. S. Ingemanns Danmarkshistorie 1824-1836’, Temp – Tidsskrift for historie, 3, 5, pp. 75-103. Møller, J. F. (2015) ‘Grundtvigs betydning for samfundet’, Grundtvig-Studier, 66,1, pp. 103-130. Neergard, N. (1892) Under Junigrundloven. En Fremstilling af det danske Folks politiske historie. Fra 1848 til 1866. Første bind, Copenhagen. Neergaard, N. (1916) Under Junigrundloven. En Fremstilling af det danske Folks politiske historie fra 1848 til 1866. Andet bind, første halvbind, Copenhagen. Nevers, J. (2011) Fra skældsord til slagord. Demokratibegrebet i dansk politisk historie, Odense. ——— and Bregnsbo, M. (2018) ‘Den store fortælling og de forgangne fremtider’, in Fossat, S. B., Glenthøj R. and Martinsen L. K. eds, Konfliktzonen Danmark. Stridende fortællinger om nyere dansk historie, Copenhagen, pp. 62-87. Nielsen, N. K. (2009) Bonde, stat og hjem. Nordisk demokrati og nationalisme – fra pietismen til 2. verdenskrig, Aarhus. Nilsson-Stjernquist, N. (1955) Tillkomsten av 1866 års grundlov, Lund. Nørgaard, A. N. (2016) Demokratiet og kampen om Junigrundloven. En undersøgelse af demokratibegrebet i den danske grundlovskamp 1848-49, Aarhus University, unpublished PhD Dissertation. Østergaard, U. (2012) ‘The Danish Path to Modernity’, in Árnason, J. P. and Wittrock, B. eds, Nordic Paths to Modernity, Oxford, pp. 49-68. Seip, J. A. (1958) ‘Teorien om det opinionsstyrte enevelde’, Historisk Tidsskrift, 38, pp. 397-463. Skov, J. L. (2019) Frihed og ret: En begrebshistorisk analyse af forholdet mellem forfatning og frihedsrettigheder c. 1840-1953, University of Southern Denmark, unpublished PhD Dissertation.

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Skovmand, R. (1964) Danmarks historie. Bind 11. Folkestyrets Fødsel 1830-1870, Copenhagen. Sørensen, Ø. and Stråth, B. (1997) ‘Introduction: The Cultural Construction of Norden’, in Sørensen, Ø. and Stråth, B. eds, The Cultural Construction of Norden, Oslo, pp. 1-24. Vammen, H. (2011) Den tome stat. Angst og ansvar i dansk politik 1848-1864, Copenhagen.

PART II

Shifting repertoires of collective action

jUAN PAN-mONTOjO 

Introduction

If there was a common feature in all European rural societies before the Great War, and even afterwards, it was the predominance of an oral culture. Notwith‐ standing the dynamism and geographic heterogeneity of literacy indicators throughout the European countryside, the existence of gates of access to written texts in mainly illiterate environments(such as reading aloud for groups by one of the literate persons), and the gradual penetration of certain popular collections of books, as well as almanacs, calendars and other printed materials, most villagers read little and wrote even less.1 For this reason, when we approach rural societies, at least before the birth of agrarian associations and unions and their press from the 1880s onwards, we have to rely much more on external observers (civil servants, novelists, police officers, scientists, members of the landowning classes, priests, estate administrators, journalists…) than on the relatively scarce written documents produced by peasants themselves. As Corbin (2000) put it, these external representations displayed a permanent discord between, on the one hand, the idyllic view of the rural population, reservoir of the genuine cultural elements of the nation and gifted with natural, simple, and stoic feelings and thoughts, and, on the other hand, an extremely negative portrayal of this heterogeneous social group that was said to lack most of the traits of civilisation. Rural conflicts, often viewed as violent and irrational, if not the direct product of manipulation by non-peasant agitators of all kinds,

1 Oral transmission did not turn villages into an isolated world before the arrival of the media. Temporary migration, rural-urban exchanges, public speeches and acts, sermons and religious services, the existence of rural elites who belonged to various textual communities and spread new terms and discourses among their subaltern groups (although the meanings and senses of these cultural-linguistic transfers very frequently changed among the receivers), political and religious preachers who went to rural fairs and markets and met with the locals… There were many channels at work between the urban and the rural spaces, which had blurred frontiers. Isolation was a matter of degree: it varied because of many circumstances and was not always correlated with illiteracy. On nineteenth-century exchanges, in the German speaking regions, between the village and the city, see Jacobeit, Mooser, Sträth (1990). Juan Pan-Montojo • Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain Making Politics in the European Countryside, ed. by Laurent Brassart, Corinne Marache, Juan PanMontojo & Leen Van Molle, CORN Publication Series, 19 (Turnhout, 2022), pp. 123–134 DOI 10.1484/M.CORN-EB.5.128246

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tended to be ascribed to the negative pole of this dichotomy. Conflicts also opened opportunities for the production of news and reports on villages that described the behaviour and apparent motives of those who participated or at least of those who spoke on behalf of protesters. Collective action or social mobilisation is the concept used by sociologists to refer to singular public displays of protest (either in favour of or against something), and/or to expressions of group identity or contributing to group identification.2 Identity would be in this context what unites the group members, including what the group allegedly stands for, whereas identification would be the process whereby a group tries to build or reconfigure an identity for itself or for other groups in a contentious environment. Social movements (both when we define them as sets of beliefs and ideas widely held by social groups, and when we include organisational aspects within the concept) are the protagonists of collective actions or social mobilisations. Social movements though have a dual relationship with social action: they can launch mobilisation and they can be also constructed through them, and, very frequently, they trigger protests and they are transformed by them. Collective action is relatively easy to trace and describe, since it is essentially public dramatisation.3 Its participants want to draw the attention of other people to their existence, their complaints, and their demands, and therefore the more noise they make, in both the metaphorical and in the real sense, the more success‐ ful their action as such has the chance to be. Collective action involves at least two sides: participants and antagonists. Those who reject the aims of a concrete social mobilisation or the social movement associated with it, besides confronting its demands, often try to minimise it, prevent its happening, repress the participants, and restrict or filter news about its existence. The sought-for visibility of collective action, however, turns it into a useful entry to address historical phenomena that are in themselves far less explicit and open. In this book, we are dealing with the transformation of politics in European rural societies between the late eighteenth century and the Second World War. If this topic is relevant to historians, it is, among other reasons, because those who lived in the countryside were, as stated in the general introduction, characterised almost everywhere in Europe as the archaic or the pre-modern counter-model of the changes that were taking place in society as a whole. The urban world, and some islands of socio-economic innovation outside it, were widely accepted to be leading the transformations that created the new power relations in which

2 There is a huge bibliography on social movements, and collective action. Our working definition of social action or social mobilisation is based upon Tarrow (1998) and Tilly (1978). As for identity and identification, another topic addressed by an ever-growing socio-scientific and historiographical literature, we have relied on Brubaker and Cooper (2000). 3 A systematic analysis of politics as dramatisation and of the theatrical or performing elements of social movements, with an ample revision of the sociological bibliography, in Alexander, Glesen, and Mast (2006).

INTRODUCTION

public opinion, social movements, and open debates led to the triumph of what Max Weber called the rational-legal authority, reducing the space for traditional forms of leadership. Traditional authority based on customary power relations, on how authority had ‘always’ been distributed, was supposed by many authors to be the prevailing element in the static and backwards-looking world of the peasants. Partly because of their submission to local elites, and partly because of their lack of cultural resources, rural dwellers lagged behind in every single level of political participation and followed slowly, and with obvious deficiencies, the path of political progress opened up by the urban population. Those who denied the desirability of socio-political change also found within the peasantry a reservoir of ‘positive’ values, such as deference to their natural leaders, rejection of urban politics, and conservativeness. They shared, hence, many of the prejudices of their progressive rivals. However, despite this widespread image, recovered consciously or unconsciously by those historians who used and still use metaphoric expres‐ sions such as the ‘descent of politics to the masses’, the ‘coming of the politics to the villages’ or ‘rural politicisation’ as mere acceptance of urban patterns of political behaviour, peasants were not just passive spectators, nor resilient to any change. They did not simply receive and adopt the political innovations taking place elsewhere. Political acculturation, which means that peasants had a political culture of their own that was replaced by a new one (something that was and is not always recognised in analyses that discuss the non-political or pre-political rural world), was not the only possible formula for political change in the village.4 By focusing on collective action, this second part of the book adds new elements to refute a passive and static stance of peasants in the field of politics. The chapters in the first part of the book have dealt with the participation of peasants in revolutionary and counter-revolutionary processes during the Age of Revolutions. They have analysed how peasants adapted and reconstructed new concepts and institutions spread by the revolutions and by their enemies, and eventually how they left their imprint on the outcome of revolutions and reforms. As for the contributors in the chapters that follow, they will attempt to explain how peasants resorted to a combination of pre-existing and new forms of collective action. In fact, how they created some types of action themselves. The typologies of collective action adopted by some social theorists often leave aside rural society or implicitly depict its forms of social mobilisation as the starting point of a modernising trend. Hence, they confirm a dual image of society in which villages represent the conservative element. Hobsbawm (1959),

4 Agulhon (2000: 2) states that when he talks about politics he means “modern politics” or “liberal democracy”, two expressions that imply that this influential historian equates urban patterns of political behaviour and politics. In the same text, Agulhon refers to “acculturation”, which given his understanding of politics, means replacement of a non-political or pre-political culture by a political one. We assume here the criticisms made by Dupuy (2002) to these historical narratives, on the political role of peasants in contemporary France, presided for a long time by this view of acculturation.

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for instance, coined the concept of “primitive rebels”. In the many editions of this book, he continually saw pre-socialist or pre-communist peasant movements as primitive, in the sense of chronologically older, and in the sense of “inferior as methods of social struggle”.5 Tilly (1995: 41-48), in his book on popular contention in Britain between the 1750s and the 1830s, revised his own theoret‐ ical production/writing on repertoires, as sets of routines of collective action. Repertoires, he maintained, “are learned cultural creations […] that emerge from struggle” and include a limited number of actions, since creating and learning them imply the possession of different resources by protesters, and since “antago‐ nists have learned a relatively limited set of means, [which] constrain the choices available for collective interaction”. He identified a repertoire in Britain that prevailed in the 1750s and another one that prevailed in the 1830s. The first one was, according to him, “parochial” (involving very often a single community), “bifurcated” (direct action was taken in local issues, whereas protests were left to the initiative of the elites, when supra-local authorities were involved), and “particular” (routines of action varied from group to group, issue to issue and place to place). The second one that prevailed in the 1830s was “cosmopolitan” (referring local problems to issues of supra-local nature), “autonomous” (protest‐ ers addressed their antagonists without mediators) and “modular” (the routines of protest were easily transferable to many issues and contexts). This classification was not new, but in this work, Tilly explicitly abandoned the names of traditional and modern he had previously assigned to them, and accepted the criticism of the teleological nature of this and other bi-polar classifications (e.g., pre-polítical versus political or backward versus forward). Forms of collective action, he added, are in themselves mere tools that serve one or another end. Our different approaches to collective action in rural societies in France and Spain in the long nineteenth century and beyond reveal that many of the forms of social mobilisation that existed before the revolutions lasted for a long time, although they took new meanings in a new context. Poaching, wood and timber gathering in the forests, pilfering or stealing in the fields or from barns, diversion of water flows, were all part of survival strategies used by the peasants that had a long history, maybe as long as the creation of exclusive rights to hunting and fishing, and the appropriation of land and water. Very often, whole communities, or at least a part of them, collaborated with those who broke the manorial norms and even the law of the land, turning individual action into collective ways of resistance. It was the state-building process and the enforcement of new legislation on woods, land use, gaming, and fishing which turned the State and its local agents into the adversaries of the peasant population. Throughout the nineteenth century, villagers were not only forced to choose between either avoidance or confrontation with private guards, but also to do the same thing 5 This is a quote from the epilogue written for the first Spanish edition in 2001, published by Crítica, under the title Rebeldes primitivos. Estudios sobre las formas arcaicas de los movimientos sociales en los siglos XIX y XX, p. 276.

INTRODUCTION

with a distant and increasingly powerful enemy that protected its newly imposed norms and backed it with its police forces and its law courts. As Alexandre Dupont explains in chapter 5, forest riots drew on a long tradition of hidden resistance and open revolt, but they developed in the new context created by the growing infrastructural power of the State. He reminds us that the episode he focuses on formed part of “the vast movement of mobilisations that took place in nineteenth century Europe in defence of the commons”. Collective ‘theft’ in the woods was a local action, with no formal supra-local coordination, but it addressed the State and its representatives. When participants were caught, and had to explain their actions, they often resorted to a language that conveyed their having another understanding of natural resources, and their defence of the autonomy and rights of local communities. In France, these collective attacks on forests and the riots that ensued tended to disappear at the end of the nineteenth century. In other countries such as Spain, they continued to exist, combined with defensive strategies before courts, taking advantage of possibilities opened by the law to withhold commons, and with more continuous, individual and collective infringements of the law. Collective action carried out by groups of neighbours or by local councils, in an institutionalised way or not, did not die out despite the fact that the commons became a central element of contention for all types of agricultural unions and associations until the Spanish Civil War (González de Molina y Ortega, 2000; Sabio, 2002). Another branch of State power, the administration of justice, often came to be seen as a rival to the local communities, which rebelled against certain court deci‐ sions in criminal cases by, for example, meting out ‘justice’, or at least attempting to do so, through the lynching of perpetrators. As in the forest riots, lynching was a communitarian action that opposed local residents to penal mechanisms created by the State. Taking justice into one’s own hands was a direct challenge to state power, as jurisdiction is one of the most essential elements of any political system. Jurisdiction and its monopoly of coercion has been a cornerstone of political power since it became legitimised through the prevention of the Hobbesian war of all against all. However, the development of states in the nineteenth century extended new ways not only of appointing judges, but also by defining how and on what bases judges were to make their decisions. The advance of the ‘rule of law’, both where case law prevailed and where codification and a justice of laws were introduced, meant the application of complicated and impersonal juridical techniques that opened up a gap between the popular understanding of justice and the actual implementation of legal justice. However, Oscar Bascuñán (chapter 6) does show that demands for another type of justice were not permanent. Riots appeared in connection to crimes particularly loaded in symbolic terms and seemed to depend on contextual elements that included the strength of the police forces and the handling of the case by local representatives of the State. On the other hand, those who took part in lynching relied on a popular discourse that underlined the contradictions of liberal justice between its impersonal procedures and the reality of its unequal treatment of the people, according to their position

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in socioeconomic and political terms. Once again, rioting with its violence (aggra‐ vated, in the case of lynching, by the punitive aim of the action) was not an outburst of primitive rebellion, but a selective means used to address the State, the local establishment that represented and supported it, and the contradictions of judiciary decisions. Violence was not a pre-modern legacy in this environment. It was a response to public force (the violence or the threat of violence exercised by the State), taken from the age-old toolkit for human relationships.6 In both the forest riots and the lynching riots, we find cosmopolitan and autonomous actions, since participants addressed the State and its agents, and they did it without the intervention of any mediators. Those riots were localised and adapted to the concrete area in which protest arose: the occupation and the use of natural resources (theft as far as the authorities were concerned), and pun‐ ishing those who were suspected of committing a crime (the murder of someone yet to be proven guilty, as the law would claim). Collective action was direct, because it righted the supposed wrong, and adapted to the environment that existed in relatively isolated villages (where the police or military reinforcements were slow to arrive) or to the opportunity offered by the general turmoil or war (as Alexandre Dupont reminds us throughout his text). But its protagonists did not ignore the State, nor its language and the political relationship it had created. Politics was at the core of these actions, certainly the new politics brought about by liberals and, subsequently, democratic forces which led to new electoral processes. Elections are a conventional and institutionalised form of political participa‐ tion which liberalism introduced into Europe at different times. The chronology of the approval of universal male suffrage varied greatly across European coun‐ tries. However, in all constitutional monarchies, as well as in republics, a signifi‐ cant number of male rural dwellers had been given the opportunity, by the 1880s, to exercise their right to vote, either in local or legislative elections and in a tempo‐ rary or permanent manner. Where there was a longer continuity, as emphasised by Nadine Vivier in her chapter on France from 1848 onwards, electoral practices evolved from a form of collective action, since the vote took place communally and expressed the identity of the community, to be transformed, at least formally, into a more individualistic action. Legislative reforms imposed norms to fight what the political class considered to be electoral malpractices or corruption, as among other things they termed the fact that the ballot did not reflect in its formal elements a free individual choice. By the late nineteenth century, the electoral rituals in rural districts had changed thoroughly in France, although the official ballot paper was only adopted in 1913.

6 On violence and its role in social relations, see the different works of Sofsky, for instance Sofsky (1996). This sociologist combines anthropological pessimism, distanced detailed description and general statements, which very often do not have or seek any type of proof, but have a highly heuristic potential.

INTRODUCTION

Despite the transformation of electoral practices that Vivier has underlined, patterns of patron-client relationships or communitarian voting – two phenomena that were often associated7 – persisted beyond the stricter regulations put in place for the exercise of suffrage and, in some European countries, continued well into the twentieth century (Cabo and Veiga, 2011; Mardon, 2019). These patterns did not work in the same way, neither during national elections nor when the governance of the municipalities was at stake. At both levels, though much earlier in the first, dissenting votes gradually expressed fracture and occasionally led the elites to resort to fraud, pressure, and bitter conflict surrounding the ballot results. In fact, the only measure of the effective individualisation of the suffrage in the rural areas would be the existence of plural results in the smallest electoral areas, and this in the absence of government intervention to falsify the outcome of the elections. When we talk about riots, or elections, or lynching, the term community comes to the fore. Very often, the people who lived in villages identified them‐ selves primarily as members of those villages, both before the State and before those regarded as culprits of betrayal and injustice against them. Interestingly, their strong local identity, based on their daily interaction and on their solidarity against the external world, began to overlap with their growing identity as part of ‘the people’ or ‘the nation’, thanks to the process of nationalisation and the pen‐ etration of local government by the State throughout the century, as well as the parallel social differentiation within villages and agro-towns.8 During the Great Depression, a time of agrarian distress and sectoral crisis in the 1870s and 1880s, a third identity began to take root: that of being a farmer, or agriculturalist, or peasant. We by no means suggest that the many words which exist in various Eu‐ ropean languages, and which belong to the lexical family of ‘peasant’, many with very idiosyncratic meanings, had not previously existed. They had, but they had not been used by rural dwellers as a banner for social mobilisation. Nadine Vivier and Edouard Lynch (chapters 7 and 8) refer to the interaction between social and political elites, often from the urban centres, State legislation, and socio-economic development which contributed to the spread of local syndicats agricoles in France from the 1880s onwards. Some of these associations, coordinated by regional and national federations and headed by notables, acted as more elitist agricultural clubs, while others ventured further into co-operative projects. In most European countries, between the 1880s and the Great War, similar agrarian associations came into existence (Sanz Lafuente, 2006). They did not play, initially, a major role in social mobilisation. They were, however, extremely effective in the creation of a new socio-economic agent with a specific voice: agriculture or agrarianism.

7 Although as Garrigou (2002) points out “unanimous” votes in the legislative elections persisted in rural France in the 1880s. 8 On the common elements of the highly different institutional and political changes brought about at the local level by the State-building process in Italy, France and Germany: Raphael (2006).

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In France in the 1890s, as had happened in Italy in the 1880s and which would happen in Spain in the first decade of the twentieth century, agricultural labourers introduced Tilly’s new repertoire (strikes, demonstrations, meetings). Their unions were inspired by socialists, radical republicans or anarchists, and adopted urban forms of collective action. Through class associations, labourers overcame the contradiction of social struggle as identified by Scott (1985: 242) in his field study on a rural community in Malaysia: “If [forms of resistance] are open, they are rarely collective, and if they are collective, they are rarely open”. However, the mobilisation of labourers took place in waves, showing the weaknesses of their socio-political activism, since agricultural workers, unless they had other sources of revenue (their own plots of land or other jobs), could barely survive if boycotted by employers in the high season of harvesting. This was one of the peculiarities of rural labourers, compared to industrial and urban workers, but by no means the only one. As Lynch explains, stopping work in the country‐ side forced the strikers to use specific mobility strategies, the columns, or to block roads. Moreover, the role of women in demonstrations and in the strategic organisation of strikers was more visible. Finally, support by local authorities was often a key factor to the success of mobilisation. In France, unions of agricultural labourers were not particularly strong, certainly compared to those in Italy, where the Federazione dei lavoratori della terra, created in 1901, became an exceptional stronghold of socialism in the European countryside until its destruction by fascism, creating a wide range of collective action (Crainz, 1993). Spain also had a strong movement of labourers in the Southern areas of the country, especially after 1914, although it was divided between socialist and anarchist forces. In the first third of the twentieth century, peasants deployed collective action in their village communities or grouped in syndicats that either drew on the preexisting repertoire of forms of social mobilisation or appeared as an innovative mixture of the ruralised urban collective action used by labourers. In fact, in the very first social movement in twentieth century rural France, the one of the vignerons du Midi in 1907, the syndicats had either a minor role, or no role at all. Winemakers went to the cities, organising huge meetings and demonstrations, put in place a large propagandistic campaign, in the papers and sending post-cards, and eventually partook in riots that caused many casualties. The actions were of a communitarian nature, since whole communities (including labourers who had participated in the mobilisations of the previous years against their employers) participated, but they were hardly parochial. This massive social movement gave birth to a permanent organisation of winegrowers, which had an important role in the years to come and seemed to open the gates to new waves of protest led by peasant organisations in France. The proliferation of peasant syndicats, with an ever-increasing membership by the end of the Great War, enabled the creation of an impressive agrarian social movement in France, an agrarian social movement, which was plural in its political leanings and its organisation. In other European countries, a similar trend can be seen: the establishment of a variety of rural and agrarian associations

INTRODUCTION

and cooperatives, federated at regional and national levels. In a small number of countries, this movement went hand in hand with the creation of agrarian parties, as Cabo explains in part III of this book. The Interwar Period became the high time of agrarian mobilisation. In the 1920s and, more especially in the 1930s, old and new types of collective action came into existence. Peasants attained a higher mobility, thanks to the development of public transport and of motorised vehi‐ cles, and hence they could attend meetings and demonstrations in central cities. This enhanced visibility, combined with the development of the media and the full integration of rural districts in the inter-partisan struggle (where democracy survived the authoritarian and fascist onslaught), and opened new pathways for peasant collective action. Obstructive demonstrations, boycotts, blocking of roads and other “direct actions” (the new concept employed for “spontaneous” illegal or non-legal actions aiming at redressing symbolically or materially “wrongs”) were some of the new forms adopted. Peasants appropriated some elements of the repertoire of industrial and urban movements, but also kept many of the traits of pre-existing rural protests. Direct action was a single concept that covered many forms of mobilisation, turning them into a concrete module (as be-ins, sit-ins, happenings, or occupations are today), whereas communitarian rioting still held an important position in the agrarian revolt, let alone in the peasant revolutions that took place in Russia and Mexico in almost the same period. Four chapters, three of them dealing with France, and another on Spain, cannot be the basis for broad generalisations on rural collective action in modern Europe. However, they contribute to reveal certain relevant elements. The first is the dynamism that existed within the rural repertoire during our period of study. Much of this dynamism was a result of change, both in terms of content, and in terms of the parties involved, in the conflicts in which rural groups participated. Innovations can be seen too as a product of the creativity of rural protesters who responded to specific geographic and social circumstances, and adapted their responses to their context. The second one is that collective action in the countryside often accumulated traits that appear to be inconsistent with sociological classifications: they could be parochial and cosmopolitan, bifurcated and direct, particular and modular. This was not due to a transition or an ongoing process of modernisation or politicisation, but a product of the duality of scales (local and national, communitarian and societal) in which peasants and other rural dwellers lived. In many of the types of rural social mobilisation we have referred to, there was violence. Riots, by their very nature, tended to deploy violence whether against people or at the very least against objects. Lynching was a violent act, as well as the brawls, the fighting with sticks and stones and the shootings which were fre‐ quently reported in times of election in many places. Labour strikes in the Italian North, the Spanish South, the French Midi… often included violent outbreaks, provoked arson in the fields, or menace and, occasionally, physical attacks on strike breakers and employers. Edouard Lynch underlines the violent dimension in the social mobilisation of French peasants in the 1930s. There are, however,

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contradictory elements. Violence connected to elections in mid-Victorian Britain was quite frequent and more intense in urban areas compared to smaller, more remote rural areas (Wasserman and Jaggard, 2007). It was similar at the other end of Europe, in Romania (Marton, 2019). The contemporary rural and anti-urban reading of criminal statistics stated that urban centres tended to exhibit higher figures of crime against people. On the other hand, there is a long tradition of historical and anthropological research that underlines the relevant role of violence in rural environments. Dupuy (2002: 112-122) argues that violence was a structural element of daily life on which rural communities were based: young males came of age through its display, whilst confrontation defined com‐ munitarian boundaries and the reparation of public humiliation and personal and collective wounds became almost a duty (Vaquinhas, 1996; Chavaud, 1995). On this level, once again, we need to come to a more comprehensive understanding of the role of violence in social relationships, dealing with it as another instrument of action and not as an aberration or a legacy of archaic or primitive behaviour. Our ethical position before violence should not bias our analysis of a conspicuous element of collective action and institutional regulation of public order, both in the rural and in the urban worlds.

INTRODUCTION

Bibliography Agulhon, M. (2000) ‘Présentation’, in La politisation des campagnes au XIXe siècle. France, Italie, Espagne et Portugal. Actes du colloque international organisé par l’École française de Rome en collaborarion avec l’École normale supérieure (Paris), l’Univeritat de Girona et l’Università degli studi della Tuscia-Viterbo. Rome 20-22 février 1997, Rome, pp. I-VIII. Alexander, J, Glesen, B. and Mast, J. eds (2006) Social Performance. Symbolic Action, Cultural Pragmatics and Ritual, Cambridge. Brubaker, R. and Cooper, F. (2000) ‘Beyond Identity’, Theory and Society, vol. XXIX, 1, pp. 1-47. Cabo, M. and Veiga, X. R. (2011) ‘La politización del campesinado en la época de la Restauración. Una perspectiva europea’, in Ortega López, T. M. and Cobo Romero F. eds, La España rural, siglos XIX y XX. Aspectos políticos, sociales y culturales, Granada, pp. 21-58. Chavaud, F. (1995) Les passions villageoises au XIXe siècle, Paris. Corbin, A. (2000) ‘Recherche historique et imaginaire politique. À propos des campagnes fraçaises’, in La politisation des campagnes au XIXe siècle. France, Italie, Espagne et Portugal. Actes du colloque international organisé par l’École française de Rome en collaborarion avec l’École normale supérieure (Paris), l’Univeritat de Girona et l’Università degli studi della Tuscia-Viterbo. Rome 20-22 février 1997, Rome, pp. 47-55. Crainz, G. (1993) Padania. Il mondo dei braccianti dall’Ottocento alla fuga dalle campagne, Roma. Dupuy, R. (2002) La politique du peuple. Racines, permanences et ambigüités du populisme, Paris. Garrigou, A. (2002) Histoire social du suffrage universal en France, 1848-2000, Paris. González de Molina, M. y Ortega, A. (2000) ‘Bienes comunales y conflictos por los recursos en las sociedades rurales, siglos XIX y XX’, Historia Social, 38, pp. 95-118. Jacobeit, W., Mooser, J. and Sträth, B. (1990) Idylle oder Aufbruch? Das Dorf im bürgerlichen 19. Jahrhundert: Ein europäischer Vergleich, Berlin. Marton, S. (2019) ‘La “corrupción” electoral en Rumanía. Los comienzos titubeantes de la democracia’, Ayer, 115, pp. 77-104. Raphael, Lutz (2006) ‘«L’État dans le village»: administration et politique dans les sociétés rurales allemandes, françaises et italiennes de l’époque napoléonienne à la Seconde Guerre Mondiale’, in J. L. Mayaud and L. Raphael eds, Histoire de l’Europe rurale contemporaine. Du village à l’État, Paris, pp. 249-281. Sabio, A. (2002) ‘Imágenes del monte público, patriotismo forestal español y resistencias campesinas, 1855-1930’, Ayer, 46, pp. 123-153. Sanz Lafuente, G. (2006) ‘Une relecture des grandes organisations de propriétaires terriens en Europe. Entre l’entreprise coopérative, la transformation agraire et la politisation des campagnes, 1880-1939’, in J. L. Mayaud and L. Raphael eds, Histoire de l’Europe rurale contemporaine. Du village à l’État, Paris, pp. 117-137. Scott, J. (1985) Weapons of the Weak. Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance, New Haven. Sofsky, W. (1996) Traktat über die Gewalt, Frankfurt. Tarrow, S. (1998) Power in Movement. Social Movements and Contentious Politics, New York.

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Tilly, C. (1978) From Mobilisation to Revolution, Reading. ——— (1995) Popular Contention in Great Britain, 1758-1834, Cambridge (Mas.). Vaquinhas, I. (1996) Violência, justiça e sociedade rural. Os campos de Coimbra, Mon-temoro-Velho e Penacova de 1858 a 1918, Porto. Wasserman, J. and Jaggard, E. (2007) ‘Electoral violence in mid nineteenth‐century England and Wales’, Historical Research. The Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 80, pp. 124-155.

ALExANdRE dUPONT 

5. A war within the war: peasant attacks against the forests during the Franco-Prussian War, 1870-1871

A traditional way of understanding the Franco-German War of 1870 is to consider that the conflict was the first between the two nations, which then went on to fight several more times up until 1945 (Wetzel, 2012; Chanet et al., 2016). For this reason, the Franco-German War has been regarded as the outcome of the nation-building process of both countries. It seems clear that on both the German and the French side, the war would have led to the nationalisation of the population (Levillain and Riemenschneider, 1990; Roth, 1990). To use the words of Eugen Weber, peasants had been turned into Frenchmen (Weber, 1983). The widespread mobilisation against the German invasion, including volunteers joining the Franc-tireurs units, together with the political turmoil within France during the “Année terrible” (Milza, 2009), showed that the French people had formed a nation, a nation divided on its political future, but united in the rejection of the German occupation (Audoin-Rouzeau, 1989; Taithe, 2002). This historiographical assumption is still an important framework of interpret‐ ing this war, even if new paths are being explored (Bourguinat and Vogt, 2020). Among other fields, the processes of politicisation1 that the war had provoked and the variety in which it fostered, appear as a major way of rethinking the conflict (Bourguinat, Dupont and Vogt, 2020). The present paper aims to contribute

1 By politicisation, we mean the appropriation and positioning of the people about questions and debates relative to the organisation and future of the communities they were part of, at different scales, and their consecutive commitment in public actions or discourses. Such a definition, although (and because) very smooth, allows the identification of processes of politicisation, de-politicisation or even re-politicisation in multiple spaces and times according to the current debates, as proposed by recent research (Le Gall, Offerlé and Ploux, 2012). With a smooth understanding of the concept of politicisation, we aim to pay attention to processes the traditional general frameworks (as defined in Agulhon, 1970) tend to make invisible. Alexandre Dupont • Laboratoire Arts, Civilisation et Histoire de l’Europe, University of Strasbourg, France Making Politics in the European Countryside, ed. by Laurent Brassart, Corinne Marache, Juan PanMontojo & Leen Van Molle, CORN Publication Series, 19 (Turnhout, 2022), pp. 135–152 DOI 10.1484/M.CORN-EB.5.128247

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Map 5.1: Forest Crimes in France during the Franco-German War

to this field by focusing on a quite unexpected episode: the peasant attacks against woods in the French countryside during the conflict, attacks recorded in the jus‐ tice inventories in the French national archives.2 A dozen files containing petitions

2 This work relies on the archives of the series BB/24: « Ministère de la Justice. Mélanges; dossiers de recours en grâce » from the French national archives in Pierrefitte-sur-Seine. The call numbers of the specific cases studied here will be specified as they are mentioned.

A WAR WITHIN THE WAR

of mercy, sent by convicts to the Ministry of Justice after they had been sentenced, have been analysed. It is obviously just a small sample of cases, but they do offer a good insight into what happened in the French forests during the Franco-German War. On the one hand, this episode could be considered as a small part of a wider peasant mobilisation against being deprived of their forests throughout the whole of Europe during the nineteenth century. Moreover, French peasants had protested in various ways against the privatisation of common land and the decline of their land-use rights from 1820 to 1870 (Vivier, 1998; Démelas and Vivier, 2003; Whited, 2000). In a way, this research tries to contribute to the study of rural mobilisation in nineteenth century Europe, focusing on the politicisation of environmental and property issues (Graber et Locher, 2018). It underlines the peculiar forms of the mobilisation and their significance: if politics had indeed taken place in the woods for a lengthy period (Thompson, 1975), we argue that the peasant attacks of 1870 were not mere remnants of an archaic repertoire of action, but a reuse of these traditional forms of political acts which were adapted within a new context. On the other hand, this later episode of attacks on forests raises questions about popular rights on the commons and the woods in the context of an evolving politicisation. By taking place at the end of the century, and during a war between two nations, it calls into question the traditional narrative about the construction of political modernity (Fureix and Jarrige, 2015) and about the war of 1870 itself: what do these riots directed against forestry officials reveal about the construction of the state and the nationalisation of the people in nineteenth century France? Are those mobilisations a counterexample of the rise of the nation-state and of the politicisation of the people in a national framework, a case that would put in danger the idea of a precocious nationalisation of the people in France and their intervention on the national political stage? Or is it possible that we can view these riots as an invitation to make more complex the picture of politics in the village during the nineteenth century and to seriously consider these apparently archaic and pre-political actions to identify politicisation processes at different scales that shed light on various paths towards political modernity (Bourquin and Hamon, 2010)? This study concerns a later episode of forest riots in France, taking place during a time which was redefining the concept of forestry property, a process which had begun during the French revolution and which lasted until the end of the dismantlement of common rural property in the 1880s. It is an episode which should be inserted into a larger chronology and a wider geography which would then allow a rethink of several assumptions made about the nationalisa‐ tion of the peasantry in nineteenth century France – and Europe. Instead of seeing these peasant attacks as some remnant from the past, inexorably linked to anti-liberalism, to the local politicisation that they relied upon, and to the violent form that they took, we will try to show the sense and relevance of such actions in the context of the Franco-German War, and to transcend the traditional

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opposition between archaism and modernity by underlining that those peasants were fully modern, in their own way (Corbin, 2008). The aim is not to come to any conclusions, but rather to propose an interpretative framework for the action of those peasants, from various points of view, and to explore how they conceived their own behaviour and what lay behind their motivation.

I. Peasant attacks against the forests in 1870: a general overview We should first present these cases from a general point of view and consider what types of action the term ‘attack’ actually covers. Those studied can be divided into three categories. Some of them involved poaching in the forests, as was the case in the department of Meurthe-et-Moselle, where the authorities identified the formation of poaching associations dedicated to boar hunting during the winter.3 Another type concerned citizens, often wealthy ones, who had bought illegally cut wood from peasants or workers. This was the case of the carpet maker Édouard Fleury, who was condemned in April 1871 for the purchase of four cubic meters of wood from workers from Vernon, in Normandy. The third category, and the one which made up the majority of the ‘attacks’, concerned people who had cut wood in the forests without prior authorisation. Such was the case in the area of Vernon, where the authorities observed that the forest of Bizy, the property of French banker and historian Fernand de Schickler, had been devastated by a great number of people. It led the authorities to organise dozens of trials to judge the perpetrators of these acts, even having to select the ‘guiltiest’ amongst the peasants as there were so many involved. In fact, a list drawn up in June 1871 recorded ninety-one people who had been condemned for this devastation but had still not served their sentences.4 Most of these attacks were, hence, collective acts carried out by numerous participants. From a geographic point of view, as map 5.1 shows, we can identify roughly three main regions: first, the region of Lorraine, which was occupied by the Prussians from the fall of 1870; second, a larger zone including Normandy and the centre of France which was conquered by the Prussians during the winter of 1870-1871; and third, the Pyrenees, a region located far from the military front. As we can see, the geographic distribution of the cases was wide, but the areas of mobilisation were significant, as we will show below. We could argue that these attacks took place under particular circumstances, but that they were based on a largely shared social imagination. We should also mention that these cases could be included in a far wider range of cases regarding acts of disobedience during the war. In the same archives, various cases deal with other forms of resistance to the State. The military mobili‐ 3 AN, BB/24/726, files 1159 and 1367. 4 AN, BB/24/725, file 423.

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sation provoked troubles in Loudun, in the centre of France and in the Basque village of Barcus.5 There were also riots against the authorities when they tried to control supplies in Granville in June 1871 by restricting trade with Jersey and in the southern department of Herault by controlling the roads in September 1870.6 Certain elements in each of these cases allow us to identify recurring themes. Two in particular should be mentioned: on one hand, all of these cases involved a collective action amongst the local community, whilst on the other they all put into question the political legitimacy of the French authorities and their right to impose the law. Another common point in all these cases is the treatment they received in the hands of the authorities. Even if the Ministry of Justice did respond to petitions for mercy in diverse ways, the public prosecutors who were given the responsibility of judging them interpreted the acts of the peasants as simple acts of disobedience, as acts of delinquency that required the application of the law. These acts were to be taken seriously. The prosecuting assistant in Montargis (Loiret) underlined that “in a time when the respect to any authority tends to disappear, justice must remind the insulters that there are laws before which everyone has to bow down”.7 In a similar way, the prosecutor in Rouen explained to the Minister of Justice that the prosecution had a “salutary effect”: it “reminded people of the respect due to the property of others”.8 Nevertheless, for these officials of the law, the devastation committed in the woods had nothing to do with any kind of political action. They were inclined to see them as one of the damaging consequences of the war: the situation awoke the natural tendency of the people to disobey, and the aim of the authorities was to restore order and the control by the administration, a classic form of reaction from public officials (Scott, 1998). At the same time, they also adopted a paternalistic attitude towards these ravages: the difficulties that the inhabitants of the countryside had to face during the war were considered as being the cause of the attacks on the woods. Forced unemployment, combined with a harsh winter, had led the peasants to these illegal actions in order to survive. The severity of the law thus had to be softened with a sympathetic spirit: the prosecutor of Rouen, after pointing out the benefits of prosecution, explained that the sentences should be applied with caution, as their goal was not to worsen the situation of those peasants.9

5 6 7 8 9

AN, BB/24/724, file 311; AN, BB/24/730, file 4178. AN, BB/24/724, file 373; AN, BB/24/795, file 6655. AN, BB/24/724, file 318. AN, BB/24/725, file 423. AN, BB/24/725, file 423.

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II. Climate and ecological issues: re-appropriating the forests As so often, such a vision disguised the reasons behind the acts of the grassroots actors, as well as their worldview (Thompson, 1971). Nevertheless, it is possible to understand these elements from the accounts sent by the prosecutors to the Ministry regarding petitions of mercy. A first insight can be made from a territorial aspect. What led the peasants to attack the forests? In part, the assumptions of the officials were correct: the devastation was due to the difficult conditions the rural inhabitants had had to face from two particular aspects. First, the war and the occupation by the Germans had disrupted the economic life of the country and imposed a burden on the French, who had been forced to supply the German occupiers (Howard, 2001; Wawro, 2003). Second, all of the testimonies on the winter of 1870 confirm that it was a particularly harsh winter, which helps to explain why the peasants had cut the woods. As a merchant from Rouen had explained when justifying the purchase of illegally cut wood from workers from Oissel: “In the horrible situation imposed on the workers by the unbelievable misfortunes of the war, they had no other possible resource but the forest. The respect for human life had to take precedence over the respect for the state forest” (Mémoire…, 1871: 3). This charitable and sympathetic opinion of the attacks, also held by some law officials, hide the socio-political dimension of these actions: by stealing wood from the forests, the inhabitants of the rural communities reaffirmed the central place of the forest and its resources within their material culture and defended the rights they claimed on these resources – even though we have no proof of the legal rights in the cases studied. In fact, these attacks can be likened to the vast movement of mobilisation which took place in nineteenth century Europe in defence of the commons (Wall, 2014). The articles Karl Marx wrote in the 1840s for the Rheinische Zeitung about the theft of wood and its repression in Rhenish Prussia, soon constituted a theorisation of the legal and political issues it implied (Marx, 2013) and are still debated in the social sciences (for example, Linebaugh, 1976; Bensaid, 2007). Indeed, several cases show that those people who attacked the woods were not only trying to survive, but that the attacks fall within a long conflict between the state and the local communities over the ecological control of forests. In France, since 1827, the adoption of the forestry law had considerably strengthened the power of the state over the forests in order to fight the degradation supposedly caused by the people. The local and traditional use of the forest by rural commu‐ nities formed an ecological system which was far different from that which was promoted by the state. For the local people, the woods were part of an economic environment that provided them several resources. For the state, the priority was to protect the woods and to restore them by limiting the activities that exploited the trees (Corvol, 1987; Chalvet, 2011). These ecological conflicts provoked various episodes of local uprising throughout the century, the most famous being

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the War of the Demoiselles that took place in the department of Ariège in the years following the passing of the forestry law. In this case, the French government had to face a serious uprising of the rural inhabitants of the Pyrenees, who used the traditional language of the carnival and the charivari to fight against the forestry agents (Baby, 1972; Sahlins, 1994). In a way, the attacks of 1870 were late examples of resistance against the imposition of an exterior ecological model introduced by the state, with a focus on private property and the end of rights use (Thompson, 1975; Jacoby, 2001; Neeson, 2010). This partially helps to explain the geography of the attacks. Natu‐ rally, the presence of German troops constituted a decisive factor, as it put at stake the control of the French government on their own territory and gave agency to the local actors. In fact, the weakening of the state seems to be closely correlated to the intensity of the mobilisation, a point that will be discussed below, and could lead to the conclusion that this weakening allowed the emergence of a general opposition to this ecological model in the areas where the situation was the most favourable, that is in the margins of the territory and within the occupied zone. But another ecological factor played a part in the areas where the attacks took place, which were especially numerous in the East of France – and more particularly in Lorraine – and in the Pyrenees. In fact, Lorraine was the testing area of this ecological model promoted by the state, as it had been inspired by one that had been developed in Prussia, just on the other side of the border (Devèze, 1962). At the other end of the country, in the Pyrenees, the population had strongly resisted the new forest legislation since 1827 (Soulet, 1987). The region was the target of a state discourse that claimed that the traditional use of the forests was damaging to them and that management of the woods should be removed from the peasantry and entrusted into government hands in order to prevent an ecological disaster (Métailié, 2006). More generally, the European mountain communities, because they relied on an extremely specific ecological balance related to pastoralism (Netting, 1976), suffered particularly from these changes and were areas of important resistance (for example, Cobo Romero, Cruz Artacho and González de Molina, 1992; Iriarte Goñi, 2009). Of course, such an argument does not explain the whole reason behind the forest attacks. Nevertheless, it does bring to light the ecological factor that was part and play of the subjacent conflict that again surfaced in 1870, as it mirrored the conflicts in Bavaria in the 1840s previously studied by Richard Hölzl (Hölzl, 2011). This was also the position of Ramachandra Guha when he advocated the inclusion of ecological reasons in understanding peasant resistance in colonial times. As Hölzl points out, Guha’s hypothesis can easily be transposed to nineteenth century Europe in that he argues that the origins of forest conflict “were as much ideological as economic: for peasant use and state use were embedded in very different understandings of the social role of the forests. I argue, therefore, that ecological history cannot merely be the history of changes in the landscape; it must link environmental changes with changing, and competing, human perceptions of the ‘uses’ of nature” (Guha, 1989: XIII).

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Various attacks clearly reflected those ecological issues. When he wrote to the French President Adolphe Thiers to obtain a reprieve, Jean-Baptiste Aubry, a labourer who had been condemned for poaching, explained his action by saying that the increase in boar numbers in his region was ruining agriculture, and that the German invasion had worsened the situation to the point where he was forced to hunt boars merely to survive. However, he was also quick to put the responsibility of his misfortune on the ecological politics of the state: “If the rangers keep preventing us from killing the boars for any more years, we will no longer be able to sow or plant in our fields, and even in our gardens, because they come within a hundred yards of our houses”.10 A similar argument was used several hundred miles away. In November 1870, about eighty people entered the communal forest of the Angles (Pyrénées-Orientales) and cut about 500 pines. They justified their action by claiming that “the vicinity of the forest harmed the crops by maintaining the moisture of the arable land”. Clearly, they were also set on conflict with the state over the woods, as they also stated that they wished to “take revenge at the same time on the surveillance of the forest administration”.11

III. A war against the state? As is clear from this last quote, the issue was not only one of an ecological nature. Previous conflicts, as well as the forestry law of 1827, had generated strong opposition between the state, represented by its agents, and the local communities. This is perhaps the main common point between all of these cases: all the reports made by the justice officers pointed out the hostility of the people towards the forestry officials. We will return to this point in our conclusion and try to explain why these officials were particularly hated amongst the population. For the moment at least, we can only underline the many threats and insults they received when they resisted the woodcutters (Corvol, 1987). During the occupation of Montargis (Loiret) by German troops, the inhabi‐ tants of the area began to cut trees in the Montargis forest. The rangers, due to their numerical inferiority, did not intervene and only recorded the violations. When they did go to confront Louis Lioret over the amount of wood he had stolen, they received the following answer: “I think you’re a bunch of zeros. As for you, ranger Berthier, you nearly got hanged by the boatmen, but I will be the one who will hang you in the forest”. His brother Jules tellingly added, in a sentence that clearly associated the rangers with the enemy: “Here come the Prussians, I hid a Remington rifle in the forest to hunt the Prussians, but it can serve for you too”.12 As we can see from these two quotes, the forest was also the place where

10 AN, BB/24/726, file 1159. 11 AN, BB/24/725, file 733. 12 AN, BB/24/724, file 318.

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the traditional authority of the state agents over the populace was abandoned, a space where the inhabitants could hide arms and take revenge on public authority. In one case, it went far beyond that. In the village of Viéthorey (Doubs), one of the forest rangers, Pagnol, faced the hostility of the inhabitants due to his severity. The war was an occasion to take revenge: in 1870, they managed to have him arrested as a Prussian spy, and in May 1871, someone killed him. His successor also suffered the same resentment from the inhabitants, until the mayor of the city was finally judged to have been the ringleader and was sentenced for his actions in 1873. The inquiry revealed that the mayor had taken a crucial part in the harassment of the ranger, insulting him on four occasions after he was accused along with other inhabitants of hunting boars illegally.13 It was clear that the mayor was one of the leaders of the dispute, and once he had been found guilty, it was revealing that he received the support of many notables from the area, including the priest and the justice of the peace. A striking feature of most of the cases studied is the social organisation of the attackers. Three elements should be stressed. First, most of these attacks were collective: only one person was usually named in the petitions for mercy, but the files reveal the collective aspect of the mobilisation. Various reports even mention associations created during the war to organise poaching or logging, especially in the east of the country. Most of these actions seemed spontaneous, but the extent of their operation suggests a real coordination behind them. In the department of Loir-et-Cher, the court of Blois had to organise special sittings in 1871 in order to judge the more than 700 people accused of attacking the forests. The prosecutor and the prefect suggested to the Minister of Justice that the forest administration should rely on transactions to soften the burden of justice.14 Such a wide mobilisation was not an exception or specificity: in his study of the forest conflicts in the Spessart, a mountain zone of Bavaria, Hölzl found that no less than 10% of the population of the area was condemned for a forest crime in the 1850s (Hölzl, 2011: 213). A second feature was that these movements were not class movements: the poorer were more numerous, but in many cases the attacks against the woods overcame the social boundaries and involved, in one way or another, the notables of the rural community. Thirdly, the rioters could, for the most part, rely on the support of the local authorities, which also interceded to soften sentences. In part, this was due to the paternalistic system that still arranged the organisation of those rural communities, which obliged local authorities to ensure some protec‐ tion to the lower classes in exchange for their obedience. In the sole case where a private forest was attacked, the landowner Baron Fernand de Schickler insisted on compassion and understanding towards the peasants involved, asking for clemency from the authorities.15 This paternalistic system was not as it had been 13 AN, BB/24/794, file 6132. 14 AN, BB/24/726, file 1764. 15 AN, BB/24/725, file 423.

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previous centuries, it had evolved and adapted into something new, but it was still a powerful social framework which existed in various rural areas (Blinkhorn and Gibson, 1991). Interestingly, these attacks against the forests united rural communities against the intervention of the state and in the defence of both local autonomy and identity. In the Vosges in July 1871, Constant Gley was sentenced for his part in the illegal logging of timber in the forests near Mirecourt, but also because he was one of the organisers of demonstrations to stop the trial against the loggers which had taken place on April 27th. The action of the inhabitants of the area against the trial and the repressive measures in general, as well as the underlying fear of an uprising, forced the magistrates to adjourn the hearing.16 Even several months after the attacks on the woods, local solidarity still stood firm. Why was a war the right moment to reaffirm this local solidarity against the state, bearing in mind that most of the woods attacked were state-owned national forests?17 Two recurrent reasons are clear. Firstly, the war led to an obvious decrease in the effectiveness of the forestry administration, as many forestry officials were mobilised for the war effort. For the first time since 1827, the forests and woods were left to the care of the local inhabitants. Secondly, defeat in Sedan on September 2nd ended the Second Empire and led to the proclamation of the 3rd Republic, which was forced to face both the difficulties of the war and of the German invasion. In such a context, the freedom of these local communities clearly increased to the point that they were able to defy the authority of the state. It was very common in nineteenth century France and Europe that political turmoil led to land occupation or to the claim for land rights, and the various revolutions that occurred throughout the century are a good example of this process (Corvol, 1987: 202; Buttiglione, 2014; Hölzl, 2011; González de Molina y Ortega Santos, 2000: 107). Such was the situation in the Angles. As the prosecutor of Montpellier ob‐ served, “as soon as the proclamation of the republic was known in the district of Prades, the forests began to be devastated in a methodical and thoughtful manner”. The architects of these attacks were sentenced in November 1870, as the south of France was not occupied by the Germans. However, after the sentence “the convicts said out loud that they would never pay the fine and that an amnesty would be granted at the end of the war”.18 In many ways, the war of 1870 revealed the fragility of the modern French state, bringing to light the fact that its control on both the territory and the population was highly dependent on coercive tools. To echo the judgement expressed by Eugen Weber, the peasants had still not been

16 AN, BB/24/725, file 990. 17 The exceptions were the forêt de Bizy, property of the baron Fernand de Schickler, the forêt des Angles, which belonged to the commune (AN, BB/24/725, files 423 and 733), as did the forêt communale de Saizerais (AN, BB/24/728, file 2545) and the forêt communale d’Araux (AN, BB/24/749, file 4752 and 4277). 18 AN, BB/24/725, file 733.

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completely turned into Frenchmen by 1870. To say it in a less teleological way, in the second half of the nineteenth century, the resistance against the rise of the modern State and its agents were still evident and often encouraged forms of social banditry (Hobsbawm, 1959), especially in the areas where this rise had materialised later and with less intensity, such as in the Pyrenees.

IV. Local resistance and national war At this point, we could still consider the attacks against the woods as a mark of cultural and political backwardness within the rural communities, following in the framework proposed by Hobsbawm. This phenomenon would indicate a survival of traditional practices, a sign that France had not become a fully modern nation-state, at least concerning its rural society. The predominance of border areas in the cases studied would be a clue that those areas on the margins of the territory still evaded state control (Weber, 1976). Nonetheless, this framework of tradition versus modernity is of little use when trying to understand what actually happened. It is more informative to consider that these attacks were a symptom of a political process that had remained mostly invisible (Scott, 1990). The context of the ongoing war is crucial at this point. One might think that the peasantry had little worry about the conflict, and that they had taken care of their own affairs without becoming involved in this confrontation. In many ways, the Pyrenean case does seem to reflect such a choice. The inhabitants barely spoke of the war and it was only the change of regime that proved decisive, as it unsettled the incumbent administration. This does not necessarily indicate that they had no feeling of national belonging; rather it could just have been the consequence of their distance from the battlefield (Salhins, 1991). The situation though was much more complex in the parts of France occupied by the Germans. Indeed, the war was not the only reason to justify the cutting, even if claimants did often use the occupation as a justification of their illegal action in the woods. It is remarkable that only one case amongst those we have looked at mentions any collaboration between the inhabitants and the occupiers. In Meurthe, an agreement was negotiated between the locals and German occupying forces to implement cutting and hunting in the forest of Natron, with a payment of 4000 francs. One year after this event, upon reviewing the case, the prosecutor insisted that “they laughed, they had fun, they betrayed their country while the inhabitants of Toul were killed defending it”.19 The prosecutor insisted on the general condemnation of this attitude by the inhabitants of the region, even if many of them – 400 he said – had cut trees in the woods: illegal logging could be legitimate in the eyes of the peasants, but collaborating with the enemy was not tolerable.

19 AN, BB/24/728, file 2545.

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This case is an exception. In all the other instances the inhabitants stressed their loyalty to their homeland. A good example of this took place in Épernay (Marne), where a blacksmith explained that the workers of the railroad company he worked for had chosen to cut trees to survive, as they had refused to work for the Prussians.20 Many other citizens accused of logging insisted on the difficulties caused by the occupation, as well as the cruelty of the Germans. Obviously, these arguments aimed at softening the stance of the investigating officials, but it is also a sign that these people had appropriated the feeling of national belonging. In this context, attacking the woods became an act of resistance, as it allowed them to act against the occupying forces. But there are other cases also where the populace even identified the rangers as the ‘enemy’. It was not only isolated cases such as the inhabitants of Viéthorey having their forest ranger arrested for allegedly spying for the Prussians, or the Lioret brothers threatening to use the weapons they had hidden to fight against the Prussians, against the rangers themselves– and let us not forget, that during the war of 1870, there was indeed a military mobilisation against the Prussians which took place from below in the form of an authentic guerrilla resistance (Dirou, 2014). In other cases, the accused assimilated rangers and the foreign enemy as one, even employing the term Prussian to designate the forest rangers and the French public officials – an element studied by Alain Corbin in his classic study of a massacre in Dordogne in August 1870 (Corbin, 2008). Such behaviour was not just an excuse to insult officials, many of the inhabitants genuinely regarded them as the enemy, in much the same way as they did the Prussians. This offers us an opportunity to propose a more global interpretation of the attacks on the woods in 1870. It suggests that even if the repertoire used by peasants was an ancient one,21 it does not mean that it was merely a survival from the past, a trace of the past in modern village politics. It underlines the fact that practices evolved and adapted to the new realities they faced, that the forest crimes were the consequence of a changing world where the forest resources stood at a crossroad of ecological, economic and social issues, or in a word, political (Daheur, 2018).

Conclusion: a political interpretation of these attacks To introduce such a global interpretation, we will begin with one of the only recorded speeches by a woodcutter that exists on file. It is an exceptional docu‐ ment, which brings to light all the aspects presented above. The scene takes place in the department of the Eure, in the west of France. In the national forest of Lyons, devastation had been caused by the inhabitants of the area, despite the

20 AN, BB/24/728, file 2553. 21 We use here the categories employed by Charles Tilly in The Contentious French (Tilly, 1986), even if we disagree on the relevance of the distinction he makes between ancient and modern repertoires, as we show in the following pages.

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opposition of the few remaining forest rangers, especially one named Masson. On the 7th of January 1871, twenty people went to Masson’s home in the woods. Jean-Baptiste Dujardin, a mechanic from Joinville-le-Pont near Paris, who had fled to the area to escape the German siege of Paris, led them. In front of Masson, he made this very striking speech: “We all plundered the forest. We have all got wood, but we have all agreed to defy any search. If you come to disturb us, we will push you back by force with the greatest energy. I declare to you that you are not a ranger anymore, that your inspector is nothing anymore. We will go in the woods and do whatever we want; you are forbidden to set your foot there, and if you come there, you know what awaits you, what will be done to you. We know that you still have firearms in your home, but I’m going to denounce you to the Prussians and have you disarmed. If you go out with weapons, you know what will be done to you. You are prohibited to sue the people who are with me. We all consider being in solidarity with each other, and if only one of us gets hit, you will have everybody to deal with. We are free to do whatever we want, even to rob you”.22 In this speech, we find most of the previously mentioned elements. Undoubtedly, the war of 1870 was an occasion for many rural communities to win back leeway that the construction of the modern state had taken from them. In a context of conflict and uncertainty, unspoken disagreements which had lain dormant in the relationship between the State and the rural communities over the administration and use of the forests in the previous decades, suddenly burst to the surface under the symbolic form of violence against the woods and, on occasions, actual physical violence against the agents of the state. The war allowed the violent expression of past disagreement by redefining the power relations and the agency of popular actors in a warlike manner. The expansion of the administration and the reinforced control of the territory had made the state a reality for those communities, and the war had put that reality at stake. A triple phenomenon occurred: the mobilisation of local officers for the war took them away from those rural areas; the change of regime disrupted the administrative apparatus; and the German invasion suspended the authority of the French state on a quarter of the territory. Such a context was an opportunity for the rural communities to take back spaces of action and empowerment. This movement was not a sign of the non-integration of country folk into national life: many elements show that French patriotism was present in the worldview of those peasants. Nonetheless, in this context of crisis, it was not sufficient enough to mask a profound political conflict. What is more, the peasants used this patriotism against the agents of the state that they associated with the Prussian enemy.

22 AN, BB/24/750, file 4873.

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The attacks on the woods were not only an act of delinquency, they were not only an opportunist theft which could be explained by the difficult conditions and by wartime. Many historians have underlined that the Franco-German war and the fall of the Second Empire began a period of popular politicisation in France, in which several opposed political ventures confronted each other in a time of great uncertainty. This has been analysed in the case of radical republicans who promoted the communalist movement (Gaillard, 1971; Hazareesingh, 2003) or for the royalist camp that attempted to restore the monarchy (Dupont, 2016). We argue that the attacks on the woods, among many forms of mobilisation, point to another type of politicisation, essentially a local one – even if we argue that it was neither an archaism nor a survival from the past. It was indeed a quite an ancient political culture, but it still existed in 1870 and defended the political autonomy of local communities. It was a political culture that had evolved and adapted to the new realities, by appropriating the national sentiment but without accepting at the same time the strengthening and the centralisation of the state. As a matter of fact, this local way of conceiving politics can also be seen in the shape of the volunteer movement in the Franc-tireurs units during the Franco-German war (Dupont, 2020). These attacks should be seen as an affirmation of a political autonomy and a rejection of the state as a hegemonic entity. Which leaves us with one final question to answer: why the woods? Why did this conflict take place principally in the forests? Two key reasons exist. Firstly, the control of the woods was a decisive process in the affirmation of the state during the nineteenth century. Though less obvious for most historians who generally focus more on the issue of taxes or the draft, it was a prominent reality for the local communities. By promulgating a forestry law and by sending forestry rangers to all parts, the state affirmed its capacity to control the territory, to control the land and hence, to control the people. Forest policy was one of the most concrete incarnations of the state within the countryside; to destroy the forest meant destroying the power of the state. Secondly, the control of the forest fell into a symbolic area for the peasants, an area that provided food, as well as wood for building and heating. It provided both essential materials and uses and customs, as well as being an area of political autonomy for these local communities: an area where they had rights, rights which had been won during the early modern era, had been affirmed during the French Revolution, and had then been defended throughout the whole of the nineteenth century, an area that made them political actors of their own, that made their community a fully-fledged political community (Scott, 1976). Therefore, it is hardly surprising that the Franco-German war, which opened up so many political possibilities, generated a mobilisation amongst the rural communities; one that dressed itself in the old clothes of social banditry and, by doing so, dealt with the pressing issues of the time and represented an alternative way of conceiving political modernity.

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Bibliography Archival and printed sources (1871) Mémoire à l’appui du pourvoi en cassation. Requête de M. Delavenne, négociant à Rouen, contre l’arrêt de la Cour d’appel de Rouen du 24 mars 1871, Rouen. Archives Nationales (Pierrefitte-sur-Seine) [from now on, AN], BB/24/724, file 311: “Résistance de plusieurs communes de l’arrondissement de Loudun (Vienne) à l’application du décret du 2 novembre 1870, ‘qualifié de levée en masse’: outrage au maire de Pouant, en décembre 1870, par des individus qui colportaient une pétition pour faire modifier ce décret”. AN, BB/24/724, file 318: “Dévastations de la forêt de Montargis, pendant l’occupation de la ville par les troupes prussiennes; propos menaçants adressés aux gardes et aux conseillers municipaux, le 10 février 1871”. AN, BB/24/724, file 373: “Désordres à Granville (Manche), le 8 octobre 1870, à propos de l’embarquement sur un navire anglais de denrées alimentaires destinées à l’île de Jersey”. AN, BB/24/725, file 423: “Pillage des forêts de Vernon et de Bizy (Eure), en 1870-71”. AN, BB/24/725, file 733: “Dévastation de la forêt communale des Angles (PyrénéesOrientales) par les habitants de cette commune, le 20/11/70”. AN, BB/24/725, file 990: “Dévastation des forêts des environs de Mirecourt (Vosges) pendant l’occupation allemande; manifestations tumultueuses devant le Palais de Justice de Mirecourt, le 27 avril 1871, pour empêcher la condamnation des délinquants”. AN, BB/24/726, files 1159 and 1367: “Associations de braconniers dans les cantons de Baccarat et de Blamont (Meurthe-et-Moselle) pendant la guerre et l’invasion, notamment dans les forets de Badonviller”. AN, BB/24/726, file 1764: “Nombreux délits forestiers commis, au cours de l’hiver 1871, pendant l’occupation prussienne, dans le département de Loir-et-Cher”. AN, BB/24/728, file 2545: “Individus condamnés pour avoir chassé, sous prétexte d’autorisation accordée par les Allemands, dans la forêt communale des Saizerais (Meurthe) et dans la forêt domaniale de Natrou (Commune de Liverdun)”. AN, BB/24/728, file 2553: “Délit forestier commis par un forgeron d’Épernay (Marne) (Il allègue comme excuse qu’il n’a pas voulu accepter ‘le salaire très considérable que les Prussiens offraient’ pendant qu’ils occupaient le pays.)”. AN, BB/24/730, file 4178: “Troubles dans la commune de Barcus le 13/11/70 à propos du départ des mobilisés”. AN, BB/24/750, file 4873: “Dévastation de la forêt de Lyons [arrt des Andelys] (Eure). pendant l’occupation allemande; attroupement tumultueux pour s’opposer aux perquisitions d’un garde forestier à Touffreville, le 7 janvier 1871”. AN, BB/24/794, file 6132: “Hostilité des habitants de Viethorey (Doubs) contre le garde champêtre à propos de la poursuite des délits forestiers, en 1873”.

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AN, BB/24/795, file 6655: “Manifestations tumultueuses des habitants de Clermont et de Ceyras (Hérault) à propos des droits de péage sur le pont; destruction de la maison du garde préposé à la perception, les 4-5 septembre 1870”. Marx, K. (2013), La loi sur les vols de bois, Paris [1842]. Literature Agulhon, M. (1970) La République au village: les populations du Var de la Révolution à la Seconde République, Paris. Audoin-Rouzeau, S. (1989) 1870: la France dans la guerre, Paris. Baby, F. (1972) La Guerre des demoiselles en Ariège (1829-1872), Paris. Bensaïd, D. (2007) Les dépossédés: Karl Marx, les voleurs de bois et le droit des pauvres, Paris. Blinkhorn, M. and Gibson, R. eds (1991) Landownership and Power in Modern Europe, London. Bourguinat, N. and Vogt, G. (2020) La guerre franco-allemande de 1870. Une histoire globale, Paris. ———, Dupont, A. and Vogt, G. eds (2020), La guerre de 1870, conflit européen, conflit global, Montrouge. Bourquin, L. and Hamon, P. eds (2010), La politisation. Conflits et construction du politique depuis le Moyen-Âge, Rennes. Buttiglione, A. (2014) ‘Revindiche. Violenza sociale e mobilitazione politica in Calabria nel 1848’, Aiônos. Miscellanea di studi storici, 18, pp. 135-174. Chalvet, M. (2011) Une histoire de la forêt, Paris. Chanet, J.-F. eds (2016) D’une guerre à l’autre – Que reste-t-il de 1870-1871 en 1914?, Paris. Cobo Romero, F., Cruz Artacho, S. and González de Molina, M. (1992) ‘Privatización del monte y protesta social. Un aspecto desconocido del movimiento campesino andaluz (1836-1920)’, Revista de Estudios Regionales, vol. 1, 32, pp. 155-186. Corbin, A. (2008) Le village des ‘cannibales’, Paris [1990]. Corvol, A. (1987) L’homme aux bois: histoire des relations de l’homme et de la forêt: XVIIeXXe siècle, Paris. Daheur, J. (2018) ‘Crise socio-environnementale et banditisme: une affaire de piraterie fluviale en Pologne à la fin du XIXe siècle’, Le Mouvement Social, 264, 3, pp. 93-111. Demélas, M.-D. and Vivier, N. eds (2003) Les propriétés collectives face aux attaques libérales (1750-1914). Europe et Amérique latine, Rennes. Devèze, M. (1962), ‘Forêts françaises et forêts allemandes. Étude historique comparée (suite et fin)’, Revue Historique, 236, pp. 47-68. Dirou, A. (2014) La guérilla en 1870: résistance et terreur, Paris. Dupont, A. (2018) ‘« Ils y croyaient vraiment […] à ce millénaire rétrospectif tant attendu ». Légitimistes et catholiques à l’assaut du pouvoir (1870-1871)’, in Caron, J.C. and Ponsard, N. eds, La France en guerre: cinq années « terribles », Rennes, pp. 167-178. ——— (2020), ‘Politiser la guerre. Les projets de corps francs pendant la guerre francoallemande de 1870’, Histoire, Économie, Société,1, pp. 111-127.

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Fureix, E. and Jarrige, F. (2015), La modernité désenchantée: relire l’histoire du XIXe siècle français, Paris. Gaillard, J. (1971) Communes de province, Commune de Paris 1870-1871, Paris. González de Molina, M. and Ortega Santos, A. (2000) ‘Bienes comunes y conflictos por los recursos en las sociedades rurales, siglos XIX y XX’, Historia Social, 38, pp. 95-116. Graber, F. et Locher, F. (2018), Posséder la nature: environnement et propriété dans l’histoire, Paris. Guha, R. (1989) The Unquiet Woods. Ecological Change and Peasant Resistance in the Himalaya, Delhi. Hazareesingh, S. (2003) ‘Republicanism, war and democracy: the Ligue du Midi in France’s war against Prussia, 1870-71’, French History, 17, 1, pp. 48-78. Hobsbawm, E. J. (1959) Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries, Manchester. Hölzl, R. (2011) ‘Forests in Conflict: Rural populations and the Advent of Modern Forestry in Pre-industrial Germany (1760-1860)’, in Massard-Guilbaud, G. and Mosley, S. eds, Common Ground: Integrating the Social and Environmental in History, Cambridge, pp. 198-223. Howard, M. (2001) The Franco-Prussian War. The German Invasion of France, 1870-1871, New York [London, 1962]. Iriarte Goñi, I. (2009) ‘Reflexiones en torno al conflicto ambiental: el caso de la Comunidad de Albarracín’, Ager, 8, pp. 151-179. Jacoby, K. (2001) Crimes against Nature : Poachers, Squatters, Thieves, and the Hidden History of American Conservation, Berkeley. Le Gall, L., Offerlé, M. and Ploux, F. eds (2012) La politique sans en avoir l’air: aspects de la politique informelle, XIXe-XXIe siècle, Rennes. Levillain, P. and Riemenschneider, R. eds (1990) La guerre de 1870/71 et ses conséquences. Actes du xxe colloque historique franco-allemand organisé à Paris par l’Institut Historique Allemand en coopération avec le Centre de Recherches Adolphe Thiers, du 10 au 12 octobre 1984 et du 14 au 15 octobre 1985, Bonn. Linebaugh, P. (1976) ‘Karl Marx, the theft of wood, and working class composition: a contribution to the current debate’, Crime and Social Justice, 6, pp. 5-16. Métailié, J.-P. (2006) ‘La « dégradation des montagnes » au XIXe siècle dans les Pyrénées’, in Beck, C., Luginbühl, Y. and Muxart, T. eds, Temps et espaces des crises de l’environnement, Versailles, pp. 191-210. Milza, P. (2009) L’année terrible. La guerre franco-prussienne, septembre 1870-mars 1871, Paris. Neeson, J. M. (2010), Commoners. Common Right, Enclosure and Social Change in England, 1700-1820, Cambridge. Netting, R. (1976) ‘What Alpine Peasants Have in Common: Observations on Communal Tenure in a Swiss Village’, Human Ecology, 4/2, pp. 135-146. Roth, F. (1990) La guerre de 1870, Paris. Sahlins, P. (1991) Boundaries: the making of France and Spain in the Pyrenees, Berkeley. ——— (1994) Forest Rites. The War of the Demoiselles in Nineteenth-Century France, Cambridge.

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Scott, J. C. (1976) The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia, New Haven. ——— (1990) Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts, New Haven. ——— (1998) Seeing like a state. How certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed, New Haven. Soulet, J.-F. (1987), Les Pyrénées au XIXe siècle, Toulouse. Taithe, B. (2002) Citizenship and War. France in Turmoil, 1870-71, New York. Thompson, E. P. (1971) ‘The moral economy of the English crowd in the eighteenth century’, Past & Present, 50, pp. 76-136. ——— (1975), Whigs and Hunters: The Origin of the Black Act, London. Tilly, C. (1986), The Contentious French, Cambridge. Vivier, N. (1998), Propriété collective et identité communale. Les biens communaux en France, 1750-1914, Paris. Wall, D. (2014), The Commons in History: Culture, Conflict, and Ecology, Cambridge. Wawro, G. (2003) The Franco-Prussian War. The German Conquest of France in 1870-1871, Cambridge. Weber, E. (1976) Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914, Stanford. Wetzel, D. (2012) A Duel of Nations. Germany, France and the Diplomacy of the War of 1870-1871, Madison. Whited T. L. (2001) Forests and Peasant Politics in Modern France, New Haven and London.

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6. Punishment meted out by the community: politics and popular justice in rural Spain, 1895-1923 *

In the early years of the twentieth century, certain crimes committed against a fellow villager led to mob lynchings, or at least concerted efforts to do so, of the true or alleged perpetrator. The lynching phenomenon was neither new nor exclusive to rural Spain. The brutal lynching of a young nobleman in a small town in the French Dordogne region in the summer of 1870 has been described by Alain Corbin in a fascinating book in which he reveals the political reasons behind this outburst of collective violence (Corbin, 1995). Mob lynchings which targeted specific groups of a national, ethnic, cultural, or religious nature have received plenty of attention from historians on both sides of the Atlantic. Some of these studies have prompted interesting debates on the climate of fear that fuelled people’s anxiety, the perception of national policy in rural society, the prestige of the agents of the State institutions in the execution of their authority, and the lack of trust they generated among the villagers in resolving burning issues (Horowitz, 2002; Pfeifer, 2004; Garland, 2010; Noiriel, 2010). The enactment of mob violence in response to certain crimes committed within the heart of rural communities in Europe at the turn of the century, have not generated anywhere near as much the same interest as those recorded in Latin America in recent decades (Martins, 2015). Nonetheless, an initial approach to this study topic may provide a unique viewpoint on the contentious process maintained between the State’s national structures and the conventions of local political life, and their control over the everyday coexistence of citizens and the management of their communal conflicts.

* This study was carried out under a research project financed by Spain’s Ministry of Science and Innovation, ref. PID2019-109336GB-I00. An extended version of this chapter has been published in Spanish in the journal Hispania, 263 (2019), pp. 699-725. Óscar Bascuñán Añover • Department of Modern and Late Modern History, Complutense University of Madrid, Spain Making Politics in the European Countryside, ed. by Laurent Brassart, Corinne Marache, Juan PanMontojo & Leen Van Molle, CORN Publication Series, 19 (Turnhout, 2022), pp. 153–170 DOI 10.1484/M.CORN-EB.5.128248

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The causes, rationales and historical processes of this social phenomenon raise questions that may clearly be analysed, that provide certain answers, or further the possibility for future research. Firstly, what was the nature of the social behaviour deemed inappropriate that sometimes triggered this type of collective action? Secondly, did these actions, influenced by social practices, have any political significance or reveal any politicisation in the village? And finally, did they reflect the existence of a contentious process in which there was an underlying mistrust amongst the rural community towards the way in which the State exercised its power, administered justice, and meted out punishment? In order to answer these questions more confidently, it may be expedient to delve a little further into our understanding of some of these episodes.

I. The spark of popular indignation Before continuing, it is worth clarifying the use of the term lynching. Its meaning has provoked heated debates in the field of historiography in the English-speaking world because of the difficulty in finding a precise definition that remains valid over time and appropriate for different collective expressions of extralegal vio‐ lence. This has led to an often-unsuccessful attempt to distinguish lynching from other phenomena such as vigilantism, mob violence and rough justice (Carrigan, Webb, 2013: XI-XIV). Nevertheless, the historical sources that have informed this research, especially the press in the early decades of the twentieth century, did not hesitate to repeatedly use the term linchamiento [lynching] to refer to certain episodes of crowd violence against one or various individuals.1 Testimonies from the time, therefore, help to situate collective action in which a group belonging to the same community set out to take justice into their own hands. They are expressions of popular justice through violence and with no recourse to legal procedure, physically punishing one or more individuals accused of acting in an offensive or inappropriate way that breached the moral code, accepted norms, or the very safety of the community (Dale, 2016). In the village of Torralba de Calatrava, in the central Spanish province of Ciudad Real, a mob attempted to lynch a man that had killed another over an argument at work. The fight started when one of them had accused the other of not doing his job properly in the fields. They both took out their knives and one of them was killed in the ensuing fight. The feeling of “great anger” did not take long to make its way around the village streets and bring out the first groups. By nightfall, a large crowd had formed outside the jail “and their intentions were not at all reassuring” to the accused. The Guardia Civil did everything in their power to protect their prisoner and prevent him from being lynched. They only managed

1 The terms linchar and linchamiento began to appear in the press in the 1860s and became more common from the 1880s, when the news referring to these episodes in the United States increased.

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to do so by taking him to the local prison.2 Three months later, in the nearby village of La Solana, another crowd behaved in the same way. In this case, a local villager had been murdered by a shot in the back. The first attempts to “lynch the killer” were prevented by the intervention of the Guardia Civil, but the next day the unrest became “extremely serious”. The mob cut the telegraph wires to prevent the Guardia Civil calling for reinforcements, while a huge crowd of “men, women and kids” gathered outside the jail intent on “breaking their way in”. They managed to storm the jail at around midnight, although by then the prisoner had been removed from the building through the back door and taken to another village by the Guardia Civil.3 On certain occasions, nonetheless, the members of the Guardia Civil were unable to contain this collective indignation and avoid the lynching. Such was the case in the village of Bergondo in the province of La Coruña in 1902, where the death of a young man in a fight led to the immediate lynching of his alleged assailant. The lynch mob beat the man and then tied him to a tree for the night beside his victim’s corpse.4 A year later, in the village of Picasent in Valencia, the death of another man in a fight over “electoral reasons” led to the lynching of the alleged “killer”, who was also dragged through several streets.5 In 1911, the villagers in Villálvaro, in the province of Soria, used “sticks and stones” to end the life of an individual they suspected of stealing cattle on numerous occasions.6 In another case in 1919, the villagers of Quintanar de la Sierra, in Burgos, intended to lynch someone that had apparently shot another villager. After several hours of searching in vain for the alleged murderer, the mob finally caught and lynched his son-in-law. The Guardia Civil’s efforts to stop the lynching were of no avail and the post’s commander had both his arms broken in the affray.7 A search through the national and provincial press, through the correspon‐ dence of the Ministry of the Gobernación [Interior] and the memoirs of Guardia Civil commanders has enabled us so far to document eighty-nine episodes similar to those described above in thirty-four provinces between 1895 and 1923. On seventy-eight of these occasions, the intended lynching was thwarted by the deployment of members of the Guardia Civil or other forces of law and order, while in eleven other cases the lynching actually took place. These figures are unlikely to account for all the incidents that occurred, but they clearly indicate

2 The Guardia Civil is a national police force founded in 1844. As a gendarmerie force, it has military status and is responsible for patrolling rural areas. The previous quotations and the events in Torralba de Calatrava are reported in Diario de La Mancha, “En la Audiencia. Causa interesante”, no. 799, 18-2-1909. 3 The two previous quotations and the episode in La Solana in Diario de La Mancha, “Grave motín en La Solana”, no. 654, 2-9-1908. 4 El Noroeste, “De Betanzos”, no. 2.023, 10-12-1902. 5 The previous quotation and the lynching in La Correspondencia de España, “Colisión electoral”, no. 16.712, 9-11-1903. 6 La Correspondencia de España, “Varias noticias”, no. 19.538, 10-8-1911. 7 La Correspondencia de España, “Un crimen y un linchamiento”, no. 22.381, 25-5-1919.

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that this was a social practice sufficiently well known. The phenomenon was not new to this period in Spain and was not restricted to it. This initial research does not, and indeed cannot, determine when this practice began, nor its development over time, although we do have abundant proof of its existence during the Penin‐ sular War (1808-1814) and the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). The number and seriousness of lynchings during wars is commonly explained by the breakdown of the State, the weakness of the forces of law and order, the dismantling of the legal system, and the animosity the conflict generates among the civil population (Tilly, 1992; Ranzato, 1997; Cardesín, 2008). Nevertheless, the persistence of such attempts within other contexts, such as the ones studied, provides an opportunity to extend the historical and sociologi‐ cal analysis of political structures, and the social and cultural processes in which they are framed. More than half of the communal practises identified within our timeframe took place in the countryside. However, there were also recorded cases in some neighbourhoods in cities, meaning that lynching cannot be considered a specific rural practice, and the phenomenon in urban settings deserves a study of its own. Table 1 shows that almost 75% of attempted or successful mob lynchings were due to blood crimes, those that cost someone their life. The crimes that caused the greatest social uproar were those that involved the death of a child or a parent, and which tended to increase the popular clamour to lynch the suspect. Other blood crimes against women and neighbours caused by arguments over work, politics, inheritance, debts, accusations of theft, jealousy or personal slights might also incur popular punishment. All the other alleged crimes and offences listed in Table 1 involve a series of acts that had likewise endangered someone’s life and, to a lesser degree, threatened their property. Table 6.1: Alleged crimes and offences committed by victims of attempted or successful lynchings, 1895-1923

Alleged crimes or offences

Attempted or successful lynchings

Blood crimes

65

Accidents involving cars or trams

9

Serious injuries

5

Robbery or theft

6

Fire

1

Others

3

Source: Press History; Series A on the Government of the National Historical Archive; History of Guardia Civil Command Posts. Author’s own work.

Many other ways of breaking the law, breaching a regulation, committing a crime or assaulting a local member of the community did not lead to acts such as those described above. These crowds, with lynching in mind, were not acting

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in defence of the law or in support of the criminal justice system, but quite the opposite. These acts were committed against liberal ownership of the land, in rural areas where there was serious conflict over local use and exploitation, and which could count on the complicity of a large part of the population. As examined in chapter 5 by Alexandre Dupont, confrontation and attacks on the authorities, on forestry officials, the forces of law and order, or upon tax collectors or bailiffs, received the implicit, and sometimes even public backing of villagers. At least this was the case when they felt that the agents of the State were in breach of what the historian E. P. Thompson has referred to as the “moral economy” (Thompson, 1971). The popular masses could show some degree of tolerance or understand‐ ing toward certain violent outbursts that transgressed or challenged criminal codes, provided they did not exceed the community’s accepted limits (Chauvaud, Mayaud, 2005; Gómez Bravo, 2005; Bascuñán Añover, 2008; Redondo, 2011; Cabo, Vázquez Varela, 2015; Vaquinhas, 1996). In addition, most of the offences committed against individuals such as the usual brawls between two or more people, threats, physical attacks or bodily harm, did not escalate, even though they may have led to animosity between those involved and their immediate families. Men in particular, who tended to carry large knives and their own firearm, shared a culture of honour that made it customary to respond to a slight through violence in order to protect personal or family reputation (Spierenburg, 2016). Therefore, it is always difficult to explain why not all violent crimes committed in the countryside triggered the same response among the population. In other words, why in some cases did locals want to lynch the perpetrator, while at other times they seemed to restrain their indignation? It seems that the answers to these questions are to be found by analysing the level of mistrust or dislike of the alleged assailant, above all, if he had often behaved in an aggressive or unruly manner and had a bad reputation, although it is important to keep in mind that people from outside the community and other citizens such as wealthy landowners or political leaders could also be attacked. In addition, circumstantial factors in the local environment need also to be considered, for instance the victim’s family network, their emotional and social relationships within the village, the violence or cruelty used in the crime, or the existence of prior social conflicts. As well as these factors, the role played by the local powers-that-be in managing the conflict, the presence of the structures of the State within the village, the prestige of its public servants or agents, and other possible events and contingencies should also be considered (Corbin, 1995). The social and political rationales informing this kind of collective violence may also help to dispel a number of other uncertainties involving these acts.

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II. Social practices and political meaning of popular punishment The aforementioned events reveal social uses and practices, and the passions and values of popular culture. As reported in the newspapers of the time, the crowd’s intent on lynching someone tended to be made up of common folk, which means that these acts were not instigated by agents or gangs accustomed in the use of violence. Men, women and even children from the town or village where the crime had been committed gathered in the main public areas. Drawn by the seriousness of the events and in a tense atmosphere, they held hands or expressed a series of different moods of anger, excitement and curiosity. The lynchings therefore reflected a number of unwritten cultural values that had been breached by a neighbour’s death. Certain crimes transgressed the boundaries of what the community could tolerate, reawakening ties of solidarity in the population, reinforcing the identity of a village that might feel shocked or aggrieved, and unleashing violence as a form of punishment against those that had breached the boundaries, threatening collective co-existence or the community’s good name (Pan-Montojo, Perdersen, 2007). The way in which these collective acts are manifested, and their dramatic im‐ pact reveal the traits of a violence that is more coordinated than visceral, imbued with cultural and symbolic meanings (Tilly, 2003). The group tended to more or less follow a pre-established script that involved openly and publicly expressing their indignation, challenging the power of the authorities that administered justice or guarded the prisoner, or physically assaulting those they considered responsible for the crime. Lynchings could therefore be subject to the existence of moral codes or a collective reputation sullied by someone’s death. This meant the offence should have its response in the public and communicative practices that recall the public executions used by the State to stamp its authority and dissuade criminality (Foucault, 1979; Spierenburg, 1984; Trinidad, 1991; Oliver, 2008; Bascuñán Añover, 2016). The crime that had so often been committed in a personal, private, silent or concealed manner could only be righted through a noisy and demonstrative event. What is more, the right to mete out punishment belonged to the entire community in which the crime had been committed, and not solely to those directly affected by the crime. The local people’s involvement transformed personal vengeance into a demonstration of public scorn, in which villagers sought to make amends for the affront, restore their collective reputation, directly punish the alleged criminal, and socially ostracise them from the commu‐ nity. The message had to reach all the members of the community and take its place in the collective memory as a warning against the risks of breaching the accepted boundaries (Thompson, 1971; Burke, 1991; Darnton, 2006; Carrigan, 2006; Carrigan, Webb, 2013; Garland, 2010). This kind of confrontation fostered different political meaning and behaviour. Political views are not only expressed through the ballot box, the machinations of political parties and ideological definitions. Politics in the rural world took a wider

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and more holistic meaning when we focus on the management of communal affairs and resources. Local elites were constantly interacting with villagers, linked by the experience of collective coexistence. Ideas and interests were sometimes shared, whilst at other times they proved divisive and conflictive, or involved everyday disputes and differing values in terms of morals and good governance. Actual lynchings or those attempted, thereby empowered the population and provided opportunities for conducting politics, for making demands, for forging or negotiating alliances, or for mobilising public opinion and expressing tension in the rural world (Cruz Artacho, 2009; Cabo, Veiga, 2011; Miguez, Cabo, 2013). The more commonplace paternalism of the local authorities deployed all its resources on certain occasions. In Santa Cruz de Retamar, for example, the local council did its best to bolster its social acclaim and prestige among the local population. This town in the province of Toledo was shaken for a time by a parricide. The victim had earned the empathy of the population, possibly more so after being subject to such a ghastly crime. The local council quickly held a plenary meeting in which the victim was referred to as an “esteemed villager”, and a public announcement was published in the provincial press to express its condemnation of the crime committed. The alleged murderer, the victim’s son, was forced to suffer all kinds of “insults and abuse” from a “huge crowd” that formed when he was taken to the local jail. The local authorities claimed that only due to their “obvious zeal” and that of the Guardia Civil was the mob thwarted in their efforts to lynch him “without a second thought”.8 This incident was further proof of an increasing demand for power amongst village folk and a challenge thrown down to local authorities that had been forced to go to great lengths to prevent the lynching. Nevertheless, it is surprising that the local council’s public message did not contain any criticism or condemnation of the crowd. The message’s tone revealed an understanding of the collective act, which was explained by the instinctive feelings of a community that was honest and decent, yet ignorant of the workings of the law. The local elites may have been using this press release, which was most certainly read by the provincial and government authorities, to make a public show of their efficiency and prowess at avoiding a greater calamity and redirecting the lynching of an alleged parricide toward the official channels for the administration of justice. Furthermore, the occasion provided an opportunity to gain the community’s recognition, whereby it would feel more united than ever over the shock of the crime. The municipal corporation thereby became the mouthpiece for popular feeling and declared the presumed perpetrator of the parricide a “wicked son of this village, which unfortunately for this honest community was his place of birth”.9 Another attempted lynching that was used in an ever more revealing way for political gain occurred in Almodóvar del Campo, in the province of Ciudad Real. A crime committed in the heart of a rich, distinguished family shook 8 All the quotations of the episode in El Castellano, “Remitido”, no. 60, 9-03-1905. 9 Ibidem.

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the whole of society to the core, including high society, which was especially taken aback by the fact that a peer could have committed such a cruel act. The provincial press paid greater attention to the case because of what it called “the quality of the protagonists”. A man had killed his twenty-two-year-old wife by shooting her several times while she slept, only a few months after the couple had married. Popular indignation over the crime found an aggravating circumstance in the alleged murderer’s questionable public reputation, who was said to have lived “a licentious life before marrying”, while the victim was attributed “spotless virtues”. On the day of her funeral –according to the newspaper report- “the entire neighbourhood had gathered” outside the victim’s home “thirsting for vengeance against the murderer”. Before the hearse carrying the body could set off, the crowd moved to the jail with the intention of “removing the murderer and executing him in the village square”. Ten two-man patrols of Guardia Civil had to apply all their persuasive and coercive powers to contain the crowd and avoid the “brutal confrontation”.10 Nevertheless, the newspaper El Pueblo Manchego, the mouthpiece for clien‐ telist interests and networks in the province, highlighted the role played by the notary public, the local mayor and the member of parliament Ramón Solano Manso de Zúñiga (1878-1931) in avoiding the lynching. The mayor –according to the newspaper report- had appeared on the town hall balcony at the precise moment that the crowd had confronted the Guardia Civil “calling upon them to desist from the application of Lynch’s law because he solemnly promised that the murderer would be executed”. A lynching had once again been avoided, either by the intervention of the forces of law and order, the local authorities, or the interaction between the two. Nevertheless, what is striking is that the newspaper praised the villagers’ “active involvement” in these events. Not a single word of reproach appeared in its pages that questioned the crowd’s violent intention. The highest praise, nonetheless, was reserved for the mayor and member of parliament, to whom the newspaper assigned two columns in order to explain that morning’s events. The article, written in his own hand, appeared below an eloquent heading: “When the people roar, clamouring for justice… they must be given it!”.11 From the first lines of the article until the very end, the mayor adopted a dramatic tone, as well as using clichés to justify the attempted lynching. He referred to the grief of a wounded people and the emotional excitement of the women in particular, the inherent goodness of the peasants and their naïve willingness to surrender their lives for high ideals of justice (Scott, 2000). In truth, his words oozed with that clumsy sense of paternalism so typical of political power, called upon to lead the population along the path of what is right and

10 All quotations in this paragraph from El Pueblo Manchego, “El crimen de Almodóvar”, no. 3.192, 06-09-1921, and “El Sr. Solano evita el linchamiento de un asesino”, no. 3.193, 07-09-1921. 11 El Pueblo Manchego, “El Sr. Solano evita el linchamiento de un asesino”, no. 3.193, 07-09-1921 and no. 3.197, 12-09-1921.

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proper, amidst a greater endeavour to protect the locals and respond to their collective demands. Within a scenario of growing political competition, it is more than likely that the local authorities were well aware of the political potential of certain demands made by local people. Authorities were able to respond to some requests from the population, accept expressions of public dissent, and bear the political cost of decisions on whether or not to compromise. The protests and other forms of social mobilisation forced the clientelist factions to redefine their social relationship with the local population, invest more effort, resources, and to realign the framework of negotiation in the management of local power. A crime such as that committed in Almodóvar thus provided the municipal authorities with an opportunity to champion the cause of popular indignation, to marshal political influence whilst lending support to an exemplary sentence and, in doing so, to reinforce their authority or prestige within the town (Cabo, Veiga, 2011; Cruz, 2015; Pérez Garzón, 2015). This understanding that local government showed toward popular emotion, behaviour and demands, nevertheless, contrasted with other cases in which the attempted lynchings were fuelled either by social and political confrontation, with breaks from clientelist politics, or by challenges to the political hegemony of certain local families. On these occasions, the political significance of these actions could prompt or widen divisions within the heart of the community. In Pozuelo de Calatrava, in the province of Ciudad Real, a landowner and brother of a provincial deputy only just escaped being lynched by his fellow villagers when he was arrested and taken to jail. In this case, far from praising the local’s moral sense of justice, the newspapers reported the events as motivated by their vengeful instinct, “the spite and passion of base politics, degenerating into the hate passed down from one generation to the next from fathers to sons, divided into factions of different families”. The prisoner had fired a shot, killing a councillor who had gone to his house to collect a municipal tax for the policing services that the council provided for landowners. It seems, however, that the landowner was not particularly happy with the services provided. Two weeks before the event, the alleged culprit, his brother and the provincial deputy and “other relatives and friends” had travelled to the provincial capital to lobby the authorities and newspaper editors. They denounced the “intolerable vexations” and the damage constantly caused to their interests and crops, which they considered to be encouraged “or at least consented” to by the “opposing political faction”, which at that time held power within the town. The townspeople had heard the gunshot, and before the Guardia Civil were able to respond to the cry of alarm, “a good number of local people” armed with guns had surrounded the ‘killer’s’ house in an attempt to prevent him from escaping and “avenge the unfortunate officer”. The perpetrator and his entire family had refused the Guardia Civil’s order to hand themselves in “for fear of being lynched”, and he was finally arrested in his home and taken to jail through a gauntlet of people lining the local streets. The initial

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cries of protest became “attempts to cause physical harm” that the Guardia Civil “only just managed to contain” at the doors of the jailhouse.12 In sum, all these episodes reflect social practices that are much more complex than those attributed to the peasants’ ignorance, a spontaneous outburst of anger, or a natural instinct for vengeance. These phenomena of a violent or threatening nature undermined political interaction and attitudes within the community. Collective action rekindled identities shared on the basis of a demand that was considered fair, putting pressure on local authorities who were expected to lend their support or offer a favourable response. Local political elites could sometimes play a decisive role in conflict management. Paternalist approaches could some‐ times channel demands and reinforce the local authority’s prestige. However, at other times, especially when the collective action was informed by prior political disputes or social tension, these might deepen divisions or further polarise politi‐ cal standpoints within the community. These lynchings or attempted lynchings, therefore, had political significance and defined a particular understanding of justice within the community.

III. Resistance to State justice All the crimes committed, those described in the preceding pages or others quite similar, were included in the Spanish Penal Code of 1870, whether they were classified as murder, parricides, manslaughter or wrongful death. Severe penalties were anticipated for most of those crimes, even the death penalty or life sentence for the most serious ones and for repeat offenders (Sánchez González, 2017). Nevertheless, the crowds that gathered in these cases preferred lynching to the official system of justice. In a lynching, the punishment was not determined by any legal code, the alleged offenders did not receive any legal protection, and a popular understanding of justice was applied directly by the local people themselves. The guarantees that the rule of law in criminal proceedings granted defendants were ignored in these lynchings. Legal authority was displaced and relegated to a position that was questioned, controversial and less assured. These violent episodes reveal a contentious process between society and state agents over the way of understanding and applying punishment that could provide food for thought in the debate on the assertion of state power and the nationalisation of politics within the rural world (Molina, Cabo, 2010). Events such as these make it difficult to look upon the State as fully sovereign in its public recognition and authority for administering justice. In many of the cases studied, the State did in fact end up imposing its authority, avoiding the lynching at the last minute through the use of all the means at its disposal. At the dawn of the twentieth century, the State’s coercive apparatus in the form 12 All quotations in this paragraph from El Pueblo Manchego, “Crimen en el Pozuelo. Un guarda muerto”, no. 1.533, 28-2-1916.

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of the forces of law and order was already strong enough to eventually supress any outbursts of local protest (González Calleja, 1998 and 1999). Nevertheless, local groups occasionally sprang up in the countryside to challenge public order, to question the interference of government authorities in the name of a form of popular justice, and to maintain their expectation of being able to apply that justice through a lynching. As David Garland says, these lynchings or attempted lynchings could therefore reveal the limitation at which the power of the State was still exposed. They also showed the incomplete channelling of certain expressions of collective violence and social conflicts through legal and institutionalised pro‐ ceedings, as well as the local authorities’ reluctance to repress or prosecute those participating in the act of punishment, and the power wielded by local players in the management of their community (Garland, 2010). Public authorities often had to exert themselves in their efforts to wrestle away the power to punish certain violent crimes from rural communities. On each occasion a lynch mob came into existence, its leaders demanded that the perpetrators of certain brutal crimes were treated in a very different way to those foreseen in the Penal Code. This latter consideration must have been in the minds of the people of Villanueva del Fresno, a village in the province of Badajoz. The jury’s full acquittal of two men accused of murder and parricide, of whom the prosecutor had asked for the death penalty, was a slap in the face to “a large part of the villagers”. The crime had been committed five years earlier, but the villagers had not forgotten, and tensions remained high. The news of the imminent return of one of the freed men was the spark that ignited the fire. “Large groups” went out to meet the car bringing the man home, and when it arrived “they attacked the vehicle” and “stabbed, stoned and beat him to death”.13 Events of this nature provide evidence of popular resistance to a new kind of culture of punishment, enshrined in the liberal criminal code, above all when dealing with horrendous crimes that shocked society, and divided or profoundly undermined popular feeling. On certain occasions, this revealed a certain incredulity toward a legal system that proclaimed the presumption of innocence and procedural safeguards, guaranteed the accused’s right to a defence, eliminated corporal punishment, sought greater moderation and proportionality in sentencing, and made incarcer‐ ation the main form of punishment (Ramos Vázquez, 2017; Gargallo Vaamonde, Oliver, 2013). Society at that time applied a culture of retribution in its attitude toward dreadful crimes, although to attribute to it an innate sense of vengeance or the timeless principal of an “eye-for-an-eye…” is similarly problematic. Political parties and currents of opinion in favour of the abolition of the death penalty, with compassionate and humane treatment for the guilty party, had made significant progress since the times of the Sexenio Democrático (1868-1874) (Burillo, 2011). 13 El Debate, “Contra un crimen. El jurado le absuelve, y en el pueblo le linchan”, no. 2.966, 5-3-1919; Correo de la mañana, “Extremadura”, no. 1.653, 11-3-1919; and Diario de Córdoba, “Lynchamiento”, no. 21.434, 5-3-1919.

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Campaigns against the execution of offenders, deaths that began to be seen as avoidable or unnecessary, began to receive attention both at home and abroad (Bascuñán Añover, 2016). The ongoing reporting of attempted lynchings in the press might be an indication of the impact on enlightened readers of the violent or aggressive events taking place in the countryside. Far from being an unknown phenomenon, what might have been changing was the social attitude toward these acts, or what Jan Plamper has called the “cultural and emotional histories” that impregnated society (Plamper, 2014). Nevertheless, the commotion over brutal crimes, especially in the circles closest to the victim, could expose the development of new more rights-based punitive cultures and legal procedures to transient processes of involution and popular resistance. Emotion, passion, affec‐ tion and feelings have always been present within human behaviour, collective action, violence and punishment. Historiography’s recent interest in this new ana‐ lytical perspective is beginning to reveal the importance emotion has in processes of change. Besides, emotions have ceased to be considered an anthropological constant, being attributed as a learnt component that is acquired, experienced or transformed within a specific cultural context. This means that the history of emotion can and needs to be told (Frevert, 2014). A sense of insecurity and violence or mistrust of the authorities and of the agents of the State may also have fed this culture of popular punishment and the persistence over time of attempted lynchings (Miller, 1998; Gardner, 1998). Justice was one of the most disparaged branches of the administration in liberal Spain in these decades. Local judges, who had jurisdiction on minor faults and small lawsuits, were only required to be able to read and write to hold their office, and their actions tended to favour the local elites and their clientele. The appointments, promotions and transfers of the examining magistrates [jueces de instrucción], the basic expertise of professionalised judges, were all intricately linked to clientelist networks and political interest. Justice was used by landown‐ ing bosses, the caciques, to rid themselves of political adversaries, disrupt the work of local councils, or prosecute opposition councillors (Fiestas Loza, 1997). The ballad about the processing of several labourers in a town in Toledo accurately reflected this opinion: “The thief enters the court/stands before the judge/shows him five duros in cash/and walks away an honest man”.14 The constant complaints about the workings of the law and its partiality were of concern to the highest judicial authorities, who commented on this image of justice in the countryside. The Supreme Court’s Public Prosecutor expressed himself in the following terms in 1896: “the municipal judge is the negation of Justice and the champion of whim and tyranny”.15 The introduction of trial by jury in 1888 did nothing to improve the indepen‐ dence of justice, nor its unpopularity. The measure was designed to make the 14 Archivo de la Audiencia Provincial de Toledo [Archive of the Provincial Court of Toledo], section 2, Libro de Sentencias de 1898 [Record of Sentences 1898], sentence no. 239. 15 Memoria elevada al Gobierno de Su Majestad por el Fiscal del Tribunal Supremo, 1896, p. 15.

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process more democratic, to open the doors of the administration of justice to the population at large and involve it in the most serious cases of crimes against people and property. The jury’s work, however, was not exempt from significant political influences. Caciquismo, local political bosses and their network of clients, managed to sway those trials in which its interests were compromised, through the selection of the members of the jury, by rejecting unfavourable judges and jurors, by manipulating trial times, bribing witnesses, stipulating conditions on verdicts reached, and buying acquittals. This political manipulation of juries led to their partial suspension in 1907 and 1920, and their general abrogation following Primo de Rivera’s coup in 1923. In addition, legal scandals and not-guilty verdicts were constantly being reported in the press, which helped to create a climate of social insecurity and a lack of faith in the justice system (Alejandre, 1981; Egea Bruno, 2015). Attempts to stop alleged perpetrators from being removed from the vicinity of the crime for fear that they would escape punishment, reveal the rural population’s distrust towards the administration of justice. We have witnessed this in some of the episodes described earlier, and this was also the case in another village in Badajoz called Zalamea de la Serena where “large groups” attempted to storm the prison on several occasions in order to lynch the alleged murderer of a local woman. The “vigorous intervention” of the Guardia Civil repelled them, though it did nothing to appease the anger of men and women who in a “huge demonstration” “clamoured for justice” and shouted that “the criminal should not leave the village under any circumstances”. With this in mind, the villagers set up a guard “to keep permanent watch over the prison to stop, by any means possible, the prisoner leaving Zalamea, where they want to see justice done”. The arrival of the examining magistrate once again brought “a host of people” out onto the street. The fear of an outbreak of “very serious disturbances” should the magistrate order the accused to be transferred to the local prison, forced the captain of the Guardia Civil to call for reinforcements. To many citizens, the official justice of the State could seem to be too distant, too remote, too slow and, most probably, too unreliable. The administration of justice had undergone a major overhaul during the building of the nation-state. During the Ancien Régime, the jurisdictional independence achieved by some communities or feudal domains, and the legal duties of magistrates, mayors and public officials (the last of these sometimes nominated or elected by the council or the villagers themselves) ensured a close relationship with the local area and certain paternalist attitudes and practices (López Díaz, 2006; Pousa Diéguez, 2020). In addition, there were numerous antiquated laws in force and judges had a wide margin in which to interpret them. In many cases, they found it difficult to adapt their decision so that it was in line with the law, as many laws were open to contradiction, and they tended to rule based on custom, on their conscience or common sense, on their personal interpretation, or on judicial precedent. The penalties imposed depended on these precedents, the condition of the defendant, or what the judge considered fair in each case. The judge, not

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the law, embodied justice. (Lorente, 2007; Ortego Gil, 2015). Liberal reforms sought to put an end to the discretion of the judge and the fragmented nature of jurisdiction by introducing a uniformity within local law, by the coding of punishments, by the grading of courts based on their assigned responsibility, by their proportional distribution throughout the territory, and through access to a legal career via competitive public exams. Nevertheless, these reforms did not stop the administration of justice being subject to political interest and changes in government, a politically motivated appointment, promotion and transfer of judges, suspicion of corruption, and the sense that the process of hearing criminal cases was both slow and ineffective (Pro, 2019). The collective action to stop the prisoner from being removed elsewhere re‐ flected the desire to maintain control over the administration of justice in the case of certain local crimes. In this matter, the villagers, or an active number of them, could feel sufficiently empowered to pressurise the local elites by withdrawing their loyalty or forging new alliances, forcing them to make promises or intervene in the handling of the detainee. On certain occasions, such as those analysed here, the villagers might call for the harsher punishment of detainees or criminal acts. Yet on others, when the arrest was considered unfair, they could also demand the prisoner’s release, and even storm the local jail to free fellow villagers (Bascuñán Añover, 2008; Lucea Ayala, 2005; Redondo Cardeñoso, 2011). Politics in a rural setting found its everyday expression in the management of these conflicts. In this sense, lynchings could also act as dramatic practices that represented the discredit of centres of power. This means that the study of lynchings, besides constituting an invitation to explore the fabric of social relations and cultural values in rural populations, calls for an analysis of political structures and of the nature and limitations of the State’s power in societies that manifest these expressions of collective violence. The historical development of lynchings, therefore, far from following a straight and true civilising path toward their gradual disappearance, may have been exposed to involutions in settings in which political power was seen to be weak, ineffective and mistrusted (Elias, 2000; North, Wallis and Weingast, 2009).

Conclusions The episodes described herein have provided evidence of the contentious rela‐ tionship between the State, and more specially the administration of justice and public order, and the conventions of local political life over the control of everyday coexistence and the management of its conflicts. Certain violent crimes, the ones that provoked the most dramatic and shocking impression on society, triggered multitudinous lynching attempts in the villages where the event had taken place. The violence of these crowds had a retributive meaning. The commu‐ nity sought to punish the alleged culprit in a public and open way. The transition from restrained indignation to a collective action aimed at lynching could be

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caused, nonetheless, by a series of social relationships and political structures that enabled collective violence to become the consensual response. The prevalence of these popular practices is explained in a social environment that recognises them, considers them legitimate or acceptable in the face of a common threat or grievance. The very public act of punishment shows cultural values inasmuch as the members of the community expressed links of solidarity, their own ways of understanding justice and punishment, and a shared concern for upholding rules of conduct, public and private decency, and to maintain certain standards of coexistence and integrity in the population. These kinds of confrontations fostered different political meanings. Violent displays of popular will and power provided political opportunities for the com‐ munities and local elites within a national scenario of growing political awareness. Local political elites could play a decisive role in conflict management. They had to redefine their social relationships with the local population and to invest more effort, resources and frameworks of negotiation in the management of local power in order to become the standard-bearers of the community’s demands. Paternalist approaches could sometimes reinforce the local authority’s prestige and social acclaim. At other times, however, lynchings or attempted lynchings might actually deepen divisions or further polarise the community whenever collective violence reflected social tension and political confrontation, opposition to clientelist politics, or challenges to the political hegemony of certain local fami‐ lies. In this way, collective actions could destabilise the municipal mandate, fuel political and personal disputes between client factions, or create an opportunity for the political adversary. These episodes lead to reconsider local politics and the imperturbable image of the municipal authorities. In addition, manifested within the lynchings was a reluctance to leave certain crimes in the hands of the justice administration or far removed from the local community’s control, which reveals the limitations to which the power of the State was still exposed. The dispute over the management of violent crimes could persist in a context of mistrust in public agents and the discredit of a justice sys‐ tem subject to political interest or applying abstract and impersonal rules. Delving further into this line of research requires unravelling many other questions. There is a need to extend the spatial, temporal and comparative horizons to explore the relationship between the process of affirmation of the State’s structures, the nationalisation of rural politics, and the number and intensity of these lynchings. In short, future research should pay attention to the complex links between power structures, politics, cultural norms and collective violence within the countryside.

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Bibliography Alejandre, J. A. (1981) La justicia popular en España. Análisis de una experiencia histórica: los tribunales de jurados, Madrid. Bascuñán Añover, O. (2008) Protesta y supervivencia. Movilización y desorden en una sociedad rural: Castilla-La Mancha, 1875-1923, Valencia. ——— (2016) ‘La pena de muerte en la Restauración: una historia del cambio social’, Historia y Política, 35, pp. 203-230. Burillo, F. (2011) La cuestión penitenciaria. Del Sexenio a la Restauración (1868-1913), Zaragoza. Burke, P. (1991) La cultura popular en la Europa moderna, Madrid. Cabo, M. and Veiga, X. (2011) ‘La politización del campesinado en la época de la Restauración. Una perspectiva europea’, in Ortega T. and Cobo F. eds, La España rural, siglos XIX y XX. Aspectos políticos, sociales y culturales, Granada, pp. 21-58. ——— and Vázquez Varela, J. M. (2015) ‘Las otras guerras de nuestros antepasados: la violencia intercomunitaria en la Galicia rural contemporánea’, Hispania, 251, pp. 781-804. Cardesín, J. M. (2008) ‘Motín y magnicidio en la Guerra de la Independencia: la voz de “arrastrar” como modelo de violencia colectiva’, Historia Social, 62, pp. 27-47. Carrigan, W. D. (2006) The Making of a Lynching Culture: Violence and Vigilantism in Central Texas, 1836-1916, Urbana. ——— and Webb, C. (2013) Forgotten Dead: Mob Violence against Mexicans in the United States, 1848-1928, Oxford. Chauvaud, F. and Mayaud, J. L. eds (2005) Les violences rurales au quotidien, Paris. Corbin, A. (1995) Le village des “cannibales”, Paris. Cruz, R. (2015) Protestar en España, 1900-2013, Madrid. Cruz Artacho, S. (2009) ‘Política y mundo rural en la España del siglo XX: Socialización política, participación electoral y conquista de la democracia’, in Nicolás E. and González C. eds, Mundos de ayer. Investigaciones históricas contemporáneas del IX Congreso de la Asociación de Historia Contemporánea, Murcia, pp. 249-278. Dale, E. (2016) ‘The role of popular justice in U. S. history’, in Knepper P. and Johansen A. eds, The Oxford Handbook of the History of Crime and Criminal Justice, Oxford, pp. 539-554. Darnton, R. (2006), La gran matanza de gatos y otros episodios en la historia de la cultura francesa, Madrid. Egea Bruno, P. (2015) ‘Mata al Rey y vete a Murcia. La corrupción de la justicia en la España de la Restauración’, Studia Histórica. Historia Contemporánea, 33, pp. 159-192. Elias, N. (2000, orig. 1939) The Civilizing Process, Oxford. Fiestas Loza, A. (1997) ‘Justicia y amigos políticos en el siglo XIX’, in Alvarado Planas J. eds, Poder, economía, clientelismo, Madrid, pp. 233-255. Foucault, M. (1979) Vigilar y castigar. Nacimiento de la prisión, Madrid. Frevert, U. (2014) ‘The modern history of emotions: a research center in Berlin’, Cuadernos de Historia Contemporánea, 36, pp. 31-55.

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Gardner, J. (1998) ‘Crime: in proportion and in perspective’, in Ashworth A. and Martin W. eds, Fundamentals of Sentencing Theory, Oxford, pp. 31-52. Gargallo Vaamonde, L. and Oliver, P. (2013) ‘Desarrollo y colapso del penitenciarismo liberal’, in Oliver P. eds, El siglo de los castigos. Prisión y formas carcelarias en la España del siglo XX, Barcelona, pp. 15-62. Garland, D. (2010) Peculiar Institution: America’s Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition, Cambridge. Gómez Bravo, G. (2005) Crimen y castigo. Cárceles, justicia y violencia en la España del siglo XIX, Madrid. González Calleja, E. (1998) La razón de la fuerza. Orden público, subversión y violencia en la España de la Restauración (1875-1917), Madrid. ——— (1999) El máuser y el sufragio. Orden público, subversión y violencia política en la crisis de la Restauración (1917-1931), Madrid. Herrera, A., Markoff, J. and Villa, I. (2013) ‘La democratización del mundo rural en España en los albores del siglo XX. Una historia poco conocida’, Ayer, 89, pp. 21-42. Horowitz, D. (2002) The Deadly Ethnic Riot, Berkeley. López Díaz, Mª (2006) ‘La administración de la justicia señorial en el Antiguo Régimen’, Anuario de historia del derecho español, 76, pp. 557-588. Lorente, M. (2007) De justicia de jueces a justicia de leyes: hacia la España de 1870, Madrid. Lucea Ayala, V. (2005) Rebeldes y amotinados. Protesta popular y resistencia campesina en Zaragoza (1890-1905), Zaragoza. Martins, J. de S. (2015) Linchamentos. A justiça popular no Brasil, São Paulo. Miguez, A. and Cabo, M. (2013) ‘Pisando la dudosa luz del día: el proceso de democratización en la Galicia rural de la Restauración’, Ayer, 89, pp. 43-65. Miller, W. (1998) ‘Clint Eastwood and equity: popular culture’s theory of revenge’, in Sarat A. and Kearns T. eds, Law in the Domains of Culture, Ann Arbor, pp. 161-202. Molina, F. and Cabo, M. (2010) ‘An inconvenient Nation: Nation building and national identity in Spain, 1808-1936. The historiographical debate’, in Van Ginderachter M. and Beyen M. eds, Nationhood from Below: Europe in the Long Nineteenth Century, Basingstoke, pp. 47-72. Noiriel, G. (2010) Le massacre des Italiens. Aigues-Mortes, 17 août 1893, Paris. North, D., Wallis, J. and Weingast, B. (2009) Violence and Social Orders. A Conceptual Framework for interpreting Recorded Human History, Cambridge. Oliver, P. (2008) La pena de muerte en España, Madrid. Ortego Gil, P. (2015) Entre jueces y reos. Las postrimerías del derecho penal absolutista, Madrid. Pan-Montojo, J. and Pedersen, F. eds (2007) Communities in European History. Representatios, Jurisdictions, Conflicts, Pisa. Pérez Garzón, J. S. (2015) Contra el poder: conflictos y movimientos sociales en la historia de España, Granada. Pfeifer, M. (2004) Rough Justice: Lynching and American Society, 1874-1947, Urbana. Plamper, J. (2014) ‘Historia de las emociones: caminos y retos’, Cuadernos de Historia Contemporánea, 36, pp. 17-29.

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Pousa Diéguez, R. (2020) ‘La administración de justicia en la Corona de Castilla: la división jurisdiccional de Soria en la segunda mitad del siglo XVIII’, Cuadernos de Historia Moderna, 45, 267-295. Pro, J. (2019) La construcción del estado en España. Una historia del siglo XIX, Madrid. Ramos Vázquez, I. (2017) ‘Historia del régimen penitenciario en España (1834-1936)’, in Alvarado Planas J. and Martorell M. eds, Historia del delito y del castigo en la Edad Contemporánea, Madrid, pp. 121-151. Ranzato, G. (1997) Il linciaggio di Carretta (Roma, 1944). Violenza politica e ordinaria violenza, Milano. Redondo Cardeñoso, J. A. (2011) Protesta y violencia de los campesinos castellano-leoneses: La Tierra de Campos (1900-1923), Palencia. Sánchez González, D. M. (2017), ‘Delitos y penas en los códigos penales españoles’, in Alvarado Planas J. and Martorell M. eds, Historia del delito y del castigo en la Edad Contemporánea, Madrid, pp. 97-119. Scott, J. C. (2000) Los dominados y el arte de la resistencia. Discursos ocultos, México. Spierenburg, P. (1984) The Spectacle of Suffering. Executions and the Evolution of Repression: from a Preindustrial Metropolis to the European Experience, Cambridge. ——— (2016) Violence and Punishment. Civilizing the Body through Time. Cambridge. Thompson, E. P. (1971) ‘The moral economy of the English crowd in the eighteenth century’, Past & Present, 50, pp. 76-136. Tilly, Ch. (1992) Coerción, capital y los estados europeos (990-1990), Madrid. ——— (2003) The Politics of Collective Violence, Cambridge. Trinidad, P. (1991) La defensa de la sociedad. Cárcel y delincuencia en España (siglos XVIIIXX), Madrid. Vaquinhas, I. M. (1996) Violência, justiça e sociedade rural. Os campos de Coimbra, Montemor-o-Velho e Penacova de 1858 a 1918, Porto.

NAdINE vIvIER 

7. Electoral practices in French villages at the time of male universal suffrage: from rural collective action to individualism

The politicisation of rural France has been a subject of intense debate amongst historians of the nineteenth century, particularly during the period of 1980 to 2000. Diverse authors have attempted to explain when and how the rural popu‐ lation became involved in national political life. The first and much enduring view had already been created by early nineteenth-century prefects and was subsequently adopted by historians: ‘Peasants have no interest in political life’, ‘people have no time to deal with politics: they have to work’, wrote Liegard, the prefect1 of Hautes-Alpes in 1820.2 An American historian, Eugen Weber, offered a revival of this idea in his attractive book Peasants into Frenchmen (1976): he relied on archival evidence from the most backward rural areas to demonstrate that peasants became aware of politics only in the 1880s. The second view stemmed from Maurice Agulhon’s thesis (Agulhon, 1979): he questioned why the Var, a department in Mediterranean France, turned from legitimist convictions to republicanism in 1848 and focused to that end on the role of sociability. In this region of grouped houses and large villages, clubs and societies were a means through which the cultural model of the urban bourgeoisie reached the rural population. Agulhon named this process “the descent of politics towards the masses”. During the 1990s, the interpretation of peasant involvement in politics gradu‐ ally changed. This change was due to a more critical reading of urban writing on the peasantry and to new ways of defining politicisation. According to Marxist theories, then prevalent amongst historians, politicisation could only be proved by a left-wing engagement; any other option was seen as retrogressive and a

1 The prefect is a public servant, the top representative of the central government as well as the chief administrator in a department 2 Archives Nationales, F1c III Hautes-Alpes, 3. Nadine Vivier • University of Le Mans, France Making Politics in the European Countryside, ed. by Laurent Brassart, Corinne Marache, Juan PanMontojo & Leen Van Molle, CORN Publication Series, 19 (Turnhout, 2022), pp. 171–194 DOI 10.1484/M.CORN-EB.5.128249

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product of ignorance. Nowadays, a more open-minded view allows us to consider that a right-wing choice can be both rational and not necessarily a by-product of submission to local notables [elites]. This long and conspicuous controversy has been the subject of several historiographical reviews, as well as being notably discussed during a conference in Rome in 1997 (La politisation, 2000). New critical reading of local documents and an anthropological understanding of electoral behaviour has unveiled an early peasant involvement in political life. This comes to the fore in the more recent social history of universal suffrage, focusing on the polls and the whole voting process (Garrigou, 2002; Déloye and Ihl, 2008). This chapter is based on recent studies and archival evidence and aims at a better understanding of the relationship of rural dwellers with politics, through the lens of their behaviour during elections throughout the nineteenth century. The introduction of male universal suffrage in 1848 is better documented than previous elections, since it triggered debate on electoral practices and even political philosophy; for this reason, the 1848 election has caught much of the attention of historians. The chapter begins by explaining how the Republic (1848-1851) took up the challenge of organizing elections for 9 million voters. Peasant participation in 1848 and their behaviour in 1850, when universal suffrage was limited, reveal their understanding of politics and the political process. Part II deals with the rooting of male universal suffrage during the Second Empire, from 1852 to 1870; a time when adult men became more acquainted with regular elections at local and national level, and gradually broke away from traditional elites. The Third Republic, from 1871 until the end of the century, attempted to court the votes of the rural community, seen as the solid base of the regime.

I. 1848-50: ‘universal’ suffrage in the wake of the previous voting system The sovereignty of the people was consecrated by the Revolution in 1789, but the right to participate in a direct democracy was not given to everyone. Procedures were devised to exclude most of the citizens from voting, such as the two or three-stage electoral system under Napoleon I and the restricted suffrage based on a minimal tax quota. Until 1848, suffrage was not considered the inherent right of citizenship. During the constitutional monarchy (1815-1848), the franchise was always limited by conditions of residence, age, gender and wealth, and thus reserved for well-integrated male citizens. Soon after the July revolution of 1830, a reform of municipal councils enlarged the number of municipal voters to between two and three million, ten times more than for the election of deputies. Residence and integration within the local community were guarantees for the legislators. However, for national elections, the elites feared the inexperience of many citizens. Those who demanded electoral reform in the 1840s aimed at a slightly broader electorate thanks to a lower tax qualification and the admission of schooled voters (intellectuals, capable of thinking and acting indepentently),

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but it was only a relatively small number of socialists and leftist republicans, such as the lawyer and deputy of Sarthe, Alexandre Ledru-Rollin (1807-1874), who dreamt of universal male suffrage. The Provisional Government, established during the revolution of 1848, en‐ forced universal suffrage on a reluctant society. The decree of March 5th, following on the declaration of principle on March 2nd, granted direct and universal suffrage without any condition of tax. If this system is clear and well defined today, it was not the case in 1848. Primo, ‘universality’ was obviously understood as male, and women were excluded. Secondo, opponents in every political movement questioned the way mass elections should be organised. Louis-Antoine GarnierPagès (1803-1878), a republican member of the provisional government, was well aware of the difficulties, calling direct universal suffrage “un saut dans l’inconnu” (a leap into the unknown). I.1. Issues and challenges of the first election, April 1848

According to the observation of Marie d’Agoult “The promulgation of the decree calmed the minds”.3 Alphonse de Lamartine (1790-1869), a leading politician during the revolution and Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Provisional Govern‐ ment, declared that this government chooses the Republic, “with ratification by people who will be immediately consulted”. All men over the age of 21 were called to elect a constituent assembly whose members would receive a parliamentary allowance. The number of voters increased from 250,000 to over nine million. However, organising mass elections within such a short period of time proved to be an impossible challenge, resulting in a postponement from the original date of 9th of April, to the re-arranged ones of the 23rd and 24th April. One round of ballot should lead to the election of those candidates of a list with the highest number of votes, provided they had more than 2,000 votes. Hence, in many ways it was a form of a first-past-the-post system. The material organisation of the ballot was the first concern. Mayors were responsible for establishing the electoral lists and for checking on the voters’ civil status and, in some cases, their military certificates and rent receipts (Offerlé, 1993: 30). In villages where people knew each other, lists were generally reliable, and few changes were made in the ensuing months of 1848. In small villages one could also rely on the municipal lists that were established according to the electoral law of the July monarchy. The choice of the polling station was an important issue. The Conservatives wanted to organise the ballot within each commune4 (municipality) under the watchful eye of the old elite, the nobility and the clergy. Republicans for their part wanted to free the voters from the traditional

3 The writer Marie d’Agoult (1805-1876) published under a male pseudonym: Daniel Stern, Histoire de la Révolution de 1848, Paris 1850, p. 331: « la promulgation du décret a calmé les esprits ». 4 The commune (municipality) is the first level of the administrative organisation in France.

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social structures and power relations. In the end, voters were required to vote at the centre of the supra-municipal districts, known as cantons.5 Two spacious rooms were required: one for the preparation of the electoral cards, and the other for receiving the ballot papers. In most cases, a public building was chosen, such as the town hall or a courthouse, though never a church and seldomly a private residence. Alexis de Tocqueville’s famous description of the actual election day in Saint-Père l’Eglise (Normandy) is fairly representative,6 though we prefer to cite another very similar case in the village of Plozévet (Western Brittany), as reported at the time by the newspaper L’Impartial: “The inhabitants of Plozévet gave a fine example of order and patriotism when they voted for their representatives (…). On Sunday, all the electors, nearly 700 in number, gathered in the borough of Plozévet and, after placing themselves in two rows, they set out for the main town of the canton, led by two drummers. Twelve mounted farmers formed the vanguard. The citizens Lelouet, the acting priest,7 and Le Guellec, the mayor of the town, marched at their head, while the tricolour flew at the centre of the two rows, carried by the citizen Le Douce. They walked three leagues (12 km) very calmly. Upon their arrival in Plogastel, they walked three times around the square and then stood in front of the town hall in preparation for casting their ballots”.8 In rural areas, cantons sometimes covered a large area, electors had to travel far in order to cast their vote. Tocqueville had to cover a distance of 4 km to Saint-Père l’Eglise, while Plozévet was 12 km away from the polling station in Plogastel. The Parisian rural suburbs were in a similar situation. The sparsely populated canton of Courbevoie (west of Paris) was isolated in a loop of the River Seine, and poorly connected to Paris. Fearing that republican ideas may not have reached everyone, the idea of dividing the canton into two voting areas was rejected by the government, thus forcing the inhabitants of Gennevilliers to embark on a 6 km walk to Courbevoie in order to meet better informed citizens (Villette, 2013: 176-180). Such processions of voters followed a leader, either a nobleman, or the mayor, or occasionally the parish priest, as in the spring of 1848 the Church and civil administration still maintained a good relationship. The citizens who then followed would walk in an assigned sequence, by name in alphabetical order. Upon their arrival at the polling place, all had to wait to cast their vote as each commune was accorded a specific time slot, for example one-and-a-half-hours for the voters of Sceaux, south of Paris (Villette, 2013: 187). As there was no

5 A canton is an administrative division, gathering several communes. The principal town (chef-lieu) of a canton is the seat of the district court, administrative services and the headquarters of the gendarmerie. 6 Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), Souvenirs, Paris, 1893. 7 “un desservant”: non-tenured priest at the commune level 8 Newspaper L’Impartial du Finistère, cited by Le Gall, 2009: 176.

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secret ballot, each man had to hand his vote over to the appointed president, who then checked that only one vote had been registered and then placed it into the ballot box. For the illiterate, ballots could either be prepared in advance in their neighbourhood, or in the adjoining room at the polling station. It had been estimated that up to 1,800 voters was the absolute limit that each polling station could cope with, though this number was often exceeded. In Courbevoie, 3,671 of the 4,770 registered electors (i.e. 77%) effectively voted. Voting procedures took two days, followed by a further two days for counting the ballots, with procedures being strictly regulated. The government appointed the president of each polling station (often the Justice of the Peace) and he would choose six observers (often municipal councillors) and 24 additional observers to oversee the counting. It was of great relief when elections went off in a “calm and disciplined” manner, as violence was often more of a concern than fraud. Violent clashes sometimes occurred, often outside the polling station, when supporters bearing the banner of their candidate angered rival supporters, who would attempt to seize and destroy their banner. In Plogastel, after casting their votes in “a fine example of order and patriotism”, fights broke out between rival factions from Plozévet and Plogastel, only ending when the mayor appealed for calm. Voter turnout was remarkably high: 83.6% on average nationwide, with 87.5% in Plogastel. This may be due both to the revolutionary/political enthusiasm of the spring of 1848, as well as the influence of the Church, since the vote took place on Easter day and priests encouraged citizens to fulfil their duty. The results of the election were locally often unanimous, as Tocqueville observed, but does this mean that people had voted under electoral pressure, even though the elections were relatively free of direct governmental manipulation? The commissaires de la République (commissioners of the Republic, the new name given to the depart‐ mental prefects) did intervene in some areas, particularly in Toulouse, though there was very little external pressure in the regions of Paris and Bordeaux. Republicans received the majority of votes, with 285 MPs (34%) who had supported the republic in previous years, including 55 radicals and socialists (called “républicains de la veille”). Nearly half of MPs were moderate republicans who had chosen to support the republic in March, either out of sincerity for their political views or as a shrewd strategy (called “républicains du lendemain”). These were often men who had been in the liberal opposition to the monarchy. The monarchists meanwhile finished the election in last place. Socially, the assembly was dominated by liberal professions (lawyers, doctors), civil servants, and urban and rural capitalists. In the rural area of Limousin, for example, the 23 elected deputies were made up of lawyers, magistrates, entrepreneurs, and civil servants, whilst among those failed candidates were artisans, workers, farmers, and mem‐ bers of the clergy (McPhee, 1992: 95). Had the peasants freed themselves from the influence of the notables? Two answers can be given. Firstly, voters might have been exposed to conflicting pressures. A splendid example is provided by a report made in April 1848 by a tax official in the village of Vabres in the south-western department of the Tarn:

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“I was crossing the floor of the polling station […] when I encountered M. Barthe, a voter from the commune of Saint-Pierre. I asked to see his ballot paper and he replied that his parish priest, Bousquet, had forbidden him from showing it to anyone. I pointed out to him that he should not keep any secret from me, so he gave me the paper […] He then said to me, ‘our priest is much too attached to this list to allow it to be completely altered, but cross out the name at the bottom, and replace it with one of your own choice’, something which I did immediately. I had only just given the amended paper back to Barthe, who had not had time to put it back into his pocket, when the priest returned and took it from him, tore it up and said, ‘what are you up to, you wretched man’[.] Barthe was then handed another ballot paper and I was berated for behaving so badly” (quoted by Crook, 2015: 548). Secondly, it was very difficult to determine the influence of notables. The case of Aude in southern France shows the difficulty of unravelling the candidate’s true intentions: “An examination of the campaign manifestos for the department of Aube illustrates not only the proliferation of ‘republican’ candidates, but also the lack of specific proposals for agrarian reform […]. It was evident that the best-known notables of the department had grouped themselves on two overlapping lists […]. Both lists were dominated by ‘républicains du lendemain’ who spoke of a ‘wise, moderate, tolerant’ Republic, based on civil liberties, respect for free enterprise and property, while insisting they were friends of the poor” (McPhee, 1992: 92-93). This illustrates that a mayor would sometimes ask the commissioner of the Republic which candidate to recommend to voters: among the examples, the mayor of Vineuil (Loir-et-Cher) who enquired as to “how to assure, as far as it depends on me, the success of men worthy of their independence and supporters of a wise freedom” (Garrigou, 2002: 104). In his study of electoral incidents, Lagoueyte asserts there were very few areas of concern, mostly problems such as those mentioned previously: material irregularities, and occasional corruption. He counted 21 departments which went on to protest against the results, signed by only a few people, in other cases by up to several hundred (Lagoueyte, 2002: 115-118; Pourcher, 1991). Throughout the country, the rural population welcomed the republic. This may originate from their memories of the first revolution, but it may also be linked to the economic difficulties that appeared to be related to the policies of the July monarchy. The implementation of the forestry code had ruined pastoral activities in the mountains, due to the ban on cattle grazing in forests and the heavy fines by which it would be punished. This was certainly the case for Molines in Queyras (Southern Alps), where three (out of six) newly elected members of the municipal council had refused to take an oath to King Louis-Philippe in 1846, and where the inhabitants voted for the republicans in 1848. Their main, deeply rooted concern was liberty: not only economic liberty, but personal liberties also, which had

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been severely curtailed, particularly by the introduction of the forestry code. The reports of deliberations in the municipal council reveal how well the inhabitants of Molines mastered up-to-date political ideas (Vivier, 1992: 182-184). The elec‐ tions of April demonstrated once more that the people of rural France were not political novices. The fact that villagers often voted unanimously, referred to their belief in a common municipal identity. Individuals identified themselves with their community, as was similarly expressed in the Bade Palatinate in Germany (chapter 3 by Grüne). Therefore, it is clear that before being a political act, voting was in fact a social action. 1.2. Elections in the summer of 1848: an increasing mobilisation of the peasants

Three additional elections in 1848 aimed at the renewal of local and regional councils through universal male suffrage: for the municipality, as voted for on the 31st of July, for the arrondissement on the 27th of August, and for the department on the 3rd of September. The turnout was low, as demonstrated in Plozévet in Brittany where only 27.8% of the voters cast their ballot for the municipal elections, and only 13% and 29% did so in August and September when the polling station was in the main town of the canton. Peasants were often more enthusiastic when someone from their own community was a candidate (Le Gall, 2009: 180), otherwise, they preferred to continue with their work in the fields during the harvest. It should also be remembered that the Provisional Government had introduced an emergency tax in March 1848: a 45% increase of the land tax; socially discriminatory, it hit smallholders the hardest. Members of the government and leaders of the republican movement were essentially urban professional men concerned for urban workers, which incited conservatives to argue that this ‘forty-five centimes’ tax was aimed at compensating government generosity towards Parisian workers. The tax provoked a huge wave of resistance in South-western France. Another, far more likely explanation for the absenteeism is given by Peter McPhee, who stated that “many people did not bother to vote because the result had already been decided, in cafés, on the street, or after church” (McPhee, 1986: 88). It should not be forgotten that many peasants in villages were used to partici‐ pating in the polls. According to the municipal law passed on the 21st of March 1831, the number of electors for local councils could be no fewer than 30 for a small village. This means that in villages with some 100 inhabitants, nearly every tax paying man over the age of 21 was allowed to vote. In big towns, the tax assessment to qualify the electors remained at 200 francs, resulting in roughly one elector for each 127 inhabitants. For example, in the town of Saint Calais (Sarthe), franchised men were paying a tax of 44 francs or more, while in the surrounding poorer villages, the tax amount fell to 8 francs (the equivalent of a salary of four days for a day-labourer) (Vivier, 2003: 51). Hence, in the 1840s, there were 2.8 million men voting for municipal councils, and only 166,000

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voting for the national assembly. Similarly, members of the Progressive Party in Spain regarded municipal elections in the 1840s as a ‘school of citizenship’ and advocated broadening the franchise, while voting for the national parliament was to be reserved for the elite.9 Philippe Vigier and Maurice Agulhon were convinced of the importance of municipal elections for the training of citizenship. In 1835, home secretary Thiers (1797-1877) made a report relating to the elections of 1831 and 1834. He highlighted a major shift in voters’ behaviour, especially concerning elections for the renewal of half of the local councillors every three years. On average, 60% of the electorate cast their vote, a figure even higher in villages, proving that passions ran high amongst the rural population. Thiers observed that peasants in Southern France often ignored notables, preferring instead to cast their vote for a candidate akin to themselves which, as Vigier pointed out, highlighted the struggle between the ‘big’ against the ‘small’, “les Gros contre les Petits” (Vigier, 1988). This hypothesis was supported by Christine Guionnet in her study of the mu‐ nicipal elections from 1831 to 1848. She relied on historical sociology methods to demonstrate that unanimity of the vote in a village was far from being a sign of resignation or passivity or of intellectual backwardness, stressing that citizens enjoyed a degree of freedom that allowed them to make up their own minds and choose. In some villages, supporters’ groups gathered around a particular candi‐ date and engaged in lively debates, though often punctuated with insults. Conflict sometimes found the priest or the mayor in opposition with the schoolmaster, their divergences a result of either their stance vis-à-vis religion, or a difference in opinion over important issues such as the management of commons or the construction of a new road. Gradually, the voice of the clergy and the power of large landowners was superseded by the elected municipal councillors who were given a six-year mandate to realise their proposed actions (Guionnet, 1997). The results of the polls from the summer of 1848 were in line with the aforementioned interpretation of Guionnet, and those councillors elected deserve particular attention. Half of all the mayors elected were new incumbents. In south-eastern France, only one third of all former mayors were re-elected, whilst in Brittany two thirds were maintained. Historians in the past would often focus on how little change actually took place and highlighted the conservative nature of peasants. Today, the opposite interpretation prevails. Whichever way we look at it, it makes sense that the changes were limited, since the franchise had already included so many peasants throughout the 1840s. In the canton of Montmirail (Sarthe), 38% of elected councillors were notables, whilst most of the others enjoyed average wealth. 21% were known as landowners, 20% as farmers, of which some were simultaneously noted as cartwrights, innkeepers, millers or

9 The Spanish Partido Progresista [Progressive Party] sustained that the right to vote in local elections should be recognised for almost all male heads of family, whereas suffrage for the national elections had to be restricted to those citizens who possessed sufficient property or certain academic credentials (Pan-Montojo, 2006).

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livestock dealers. Solicitors and doctors only accounted for 2%. Thus, the make-up of municipal councils mirrored the social structure of the villages. The limited turnover of mayors also stemmed from the reluctance of many to put themselves up for the role, either because they lacked the time to do it, or found it too difficult a task (in Montmitail most of the men were literate; but in other regions illiteracy could be an additional hindrance) (Vivier, 2003: 52-53). With half of the serving departmental councillors being re-elected, the remain‐ der was made up of new incumbents. These were usually moderate men, anxious about the development of their region. Unpaid for their duties, they would gather twice a year to discuss a range of issues, though they had only a consultative role when it came to financial decisions on matters such as transport, education and assistance. Newly elected men were not necessarily less well-off than the former councillors but were recognised by peasants as men belonging to the community, based on their backgrounds and their way of living. All these elements point towards a popular revolt against notables, in many villages and small towns. An enquiry led by the Home office concluded that in southern France, “all the superiorities in wealth, education and intelligence have been turned down by local councils to give way to men devoid of substance or morality.” (Vigier, 1988: 50). This moment could well have been the turning point when a French political geography emerged. Peasants were, despite the stereotype, not passive at all, they would actively discuss and choose their mayor together before the poll: it was a collective choice. However, things would take a change with the election of a President in December 1848. I.3. December 1848 – December 1851: the dream of a “peasants’ republic” collapsed

The November 1848 constitution provided two separate powers, the president and the legislative assembly, both elected by universal male suffrage. Presidential elections took place on 10 December 1848 for which Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte received massive support. Then, in May 1849, legislative elections became hotly contested, with some democrat-socialists winning in rural areas. When conserva‐ tives who feared socialist progression began to restrict male suffrage in 1850, peti‐ tions circulated, even in the countryside. A last infringement of the constitution, Louis-Napoleon’s coup d’état in 1851, triggered national uprising, particularly in the countryside. Peasants, it seemed, were increasingly pinning their hopes on a moderate republic. In December 1848, rural men had overwhelmingly voted for Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte (Napoleon’s nephew 1808-1873) for president of the republic. A 75% voter turnout gave him a staggering 74.2%. Influenced by their contempt for

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the peasantry and for the anti-Napoleonic ‘black legend’,10 republicans and histo‐ rians have explained this as an irrational attempt to cling to the glory of the past through the conservatism and ignorance of the rural population. However, the reasons for the support of Louis-Napoleon were far more complex. Recent in-depth studies show the multiple factors behind the widespread support. A primary factor was the memory of Napoleon, a gilded memory very much alive in many regions, thanks to the stories of old soldiers, to songs and to novels (Glikman, 2007). Similarly, in the areas marked by the negativity of the Empire’s past (conscription, wars, and economic privation) people mistrusted the nephew of Napoleon, particularly in southern France and Brittany. A second factor was his reputation: was Louis-Napoleon a conservative or not? On the political chess‐ board, he was supported by the conservative Parti de l’Ordre [Order party] and the Church; this was important in the West, the North and in parts of the Parisian basin. But he could also be perceived as a democrat with social ideas. His widely read brochure Extinction du paupérisme11 [Extinction of pauperism] defended public relief. His main republican challenger, General Eugène Cavaignac (1802-1857), was the home secretary who oversaw the bloody repression in June 1848 against workers. Support for Louis-Napoleon was thus also a vote against the rich notables who tended to favour Cavaignac, much in the same way as in the local elections during that summer. Alceste Chapuys-Montlaville, a leftist member of the Chamber of Deputies since 1833 and the future Bonapartist prefect of Isère (1800-1868) wrote: “This election of the president was a considerable event. On this occasion, for the first time, the people of the countryside entered politics, on their own free will […]. It is a new power that has just happened. From now on, the rural element will weigh its full weight in the political movement of society” (Vigier, 1963, t. 1: 325). The second phase of the implementation of the new constitution, the election of the representatives, took place on 13 May 1849. In an atmosphere of political polarisation between left and right, turnout was roughly at 68 %. Candidates of the Parti de l’Ordre won 53% of the votes nationwide, democrat-socialists (called democ-socs) 35 %, and moderate republicans 12 %, the last two increasing their overall share in the countryside. The Parti de l’Ordre increasingly feared socialists, and a bill passed on 31 May 1850 considerably restricted male suffrage. A three-year residence in the municipality became a condition of franchise; it aimed at preventing mobile urban workers from voting. Around 30% of the

10 After Napoleon’s death in 1821, his legacy caused conflicting memories. On the one hand, his opponents spread an ominous legend: a dictator and ogre who put France and Europe to fire and sword. On the other hand, a golden legend propagated by the former soldiers of Napoleon’s army: a man of genius, a strategist winning battles, a politician who pacified France, who gave new and robust institutions, preserved revolutionary principles and disseminated them through Europe. 11 Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte (1844), L’extinction du paupérisme, Paris.

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adult male population were disenfranchised, reducing voters from 9.6 million to 6.7. While the number of voters was reduced in the Paris area by 57% and by 49% around Lille, villages only suffered a 10 to 15% decrease. Examining the reaction to this law in Gard (Southern France), Huard assumed the cautiousness of republicans. Uprising would have been justifiable, but they preferred to use the legal means available, resulting in the launch of petitions which gathered 527,000 signatures, and questioned the right of MPs, elected by universal suffrage, to curtail the right to vote. As in Germany, petitions took on a nation-wide dimension (chapter 3 by Grüne). The petition movement in France was obviously initiated by urban republicans, nonetheless some rural cantons also participated. Signatories did not only come from the disenfranchised, but also from others who wanted to support political equality (AN. and Huard, 1971). Beyond the immediate political concern, the tensions around the restriction of the vote also showed the problematic acceptance of universal male suffrage and the survival, in the minds of many politicians, of a voting system based on tax quotas. The democ-socs had learnt from previous electoral defeats that they had to listen to rural concerns. While they cared little for the peasantry in 1848, even voting in support of the salt tax despite peasant petitions, they changed their strategy in 1849 in preparation for the 1852 ballot. Meanwhile, almanacs and newspapers of leftist radicals circulated in villages, including Pierre Joigneaux’s weekly Feuille du Village which had a sizeable national readership.12 As freedom of assembly and speech was further reduced, some turned from 1850 onwards to male forums of sociability and leisure, such as the cercles of the bourgeoisie, studied in meridional France by Agulhon (1977), and mutual-aid associations, studied by Baker (1999). Meanwhile, social unrest increased, as analysed by many, including Ted Margadant in his volume French peasants in revolt (Margadant, 1979). Among more recent works, Lignereux’s study of the resistance to the gendarmerie sheds new light. Even for routine litigation, people rebelled against the gendarmes, leading to the authorities’ concerns about a ‘spirit of insubordina‐ tion’, and ‘hostility towards authority’ (Lignereux, 2008: 196). Gatherings around ancient rituals, such as votive feasts, took a political turn and nourished rural radicalism (Tilly, 1984: 97). And so, political apprenticeship took place in a frame of conflict. Nevertheless, a map of political clashes in which gendarmes were forced to intervene, shows that only one quarter of France was affected. A north-south division clearly appears; in the southern and western part of France, riots against the State were common occurrences and democ-socs ideas were shared by many. Although republican leaders called for calm, they were often ignored, for instance in Ardèche or Hérault, whereas the north-eastern part of the country remained rather quiet (Lignereux, 2008: 197). The gendarmerie suffered many setbacks

12 Pierre Joigneaux (1815-1892) was an agronomist and journalist, propagator of science-based agriculture in several journals. A fervent republican and socialist, he entered politics in 1848.

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in 1848 at the hands of the rebels, but they progressively turned the situation around, with the government encouraging them to use increasingly brutal means. In the days following Louis-Napoleon’s coup d’état, 2nd December 1851, there were many uprisings in rural areas, though larger towns also experienced unrest: meetings taking place in villages turned violent, while the townsfolk also vented their anger in, for instance, protest marches to the sous-préfecture. Northern France remained mostly quiet, except for in Sarthe where Ariste Jacques Trouvé-Chauvel, a true republican and former minister of finance in 1848, marched with his tannery workers to Le Mans. The area of Le Mans was a stronghold of socialism, electing left-wing representatives, even with restrictive suffrage. In this context, it comes as no surprise that Trouvé-Chauvel and his workers rose up in the defence of the constitution. Was the motivation the same in other areas? Was the disorder an expression of the people’s attachment to the constitution, their rejection of the central state, or their demand to maintain the liberal civil rights? According to Margadant, 69,000 men in 782 communes were involved in the resistance that followed in the aftermath of the coup, located in four major areas: north of the Massif Central (Nièvre, Yonne et Saône-et-Loire), the southwest (Gers, Lot-et-Garonne), Languedoc (Pyrénées–orientales, Hérault), and the Rhône valley and the south-east (Alpes, Var) (Margadant, 1979). More than on one occasion, the peasant vote thwarted the expectations of parts of the political establishment: they voted conservative and moderate republican in April 1848, Bonapartists in December of the same year, some socialist in May 1849, and many fought for the Republic after 2 December 1851. The peasantry had its own rhythm and agenda. While the Parisian working class had little faith in the Republic after June 1848, the peasantry increasingly longed for a moderate republic, as advocated by Pierre Dupont (1821-1870) in his poem “Le chant des paysans” [the song of the peasants]: “Oh! quand viendra la belle? (…) République des paysans!” [when will come the beautiful republic of the peasantry?].

II. Towards an individual choice II.1. 1852-1870: universal suffrage under the Second Empire

The negative reputation of the Second Empire was born out of republican hatred for it, and then propagated in the long term by literature. They enforced the belief that Napoleon III had suppressed universal suffrage, which we can now see as nonsense. In fact, universal male suffrage was the key to the legitimacy of the regime. Napoleon wanted an authoritarian democracy, based on civil and political equality. Bonapartism was a doctrine of national reconciliation, a desire to transcend party divisions. Napoleon aspired to a communion of thought between the people and himself. The legislative assembly had to collaborate with him; it had therefore to reflect the will of the French people. Elections were well organised, and universal male suffrage became a vested practice in the period from

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1852 to 1870. However, the system of ‘official candidacies’, as will be explained further, undermined the democratic pretence. It was decided, from the beginning of the Second Empire, that polls would be organised locally, in the communes. Local practices did not suddenly change, such as the order of entry on the electoral list, although the law allowed voters to vote at any other time on the prescribed electoral day. But the pressure from the village community remained strong. Men would still gather in front of the church after mass, with the mayor often addressing the gathered citizens. And who in fact were the mayors? According to law, they were chosen by the departmental prefect among the electors of the village. However, over the course of time this changed, with the prefect selecting a candidate amongst the elected members of the municipality. Hence, the mayor became both a delegate of the higher administration, and a representative of the local identity. Let us now return to Montmirail (Sarthe) and observe the developments during successive municipal polls. The turnout progressively increased from 1855 to 1870. One of the significant features was a declining obedience to local notables (elites). Piton de Grault, a local aristocratic landowner, had ambitions to become mayor and never forgot to address the prefect to that end. Despite his best efforts, he never received enough votes to become a councillor, with the prefect preferring to choose mayors amongst active or retired merchants, until gradually turning increasingly to farmers. In the 1860s, many farmers took over the administration of the municipality. The evolution was clear: the elites who had dominated through birth and wealth, gave way to a new elite of villagers. However, in Sarthe where the nobility was numerous, some dynasties managed to hold sway over the municipalities, be it on condition that they used their skills and networks to the benefit of the population and the common good. They were thus able to adapt to male universal suffrage and maintain their influence by adopting new practices. For local elections, Bonapartist newspapers called on voters to choose men whose competence was more important than their political affiliation. The State limited its pressure because it aimed at convincing people through its achievements, subsidising municipalities in order to improve their social standing. Napoleon also took great care in listening to peasant opinion. In the context of the agricultural crisis of 1866, he launched a large enquiry among all categories of the literate rural population (landlords and farmers, millers, craftsmen, doctors, etc.) in order to better appreciate the outcome of the free trade agreements (Vivier, 2014). For the legislative assembly, the government publicly stated in 1852 that it would give preference to men devoted to the Empire and with the necessary professional skills to inspire economic policy. Technicians were preferred over politicians and were called upon to apply for candidacy. This system of “official candidacy”, for which the Second Empire was blamed, equalled in fact the admin‐ istrative pressure that all governments in nineteenth century France practiced, including the Third Republic from 1870 (Voilliot, 2005). However, unlike in other periods, the Second Empire made use of these methods publicly. Concretely, in

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order to be of assistance to the citizens as was stated, the prefect designated those candidates who had the backing of the government. Their ballots and posters were printed, and their meetings organised, whereas other candidates had none of those facilities. However, despite the introduction of official candidates, the floor was open to others. If members of the opposition had little voice in 1852, they were far more vocal in 1857 and 1863. Real competition already existed in 1852 within the department of Nord, with the Orléanist notables (Ménager, 1988), as well as in western France with the legitimist notables.13 The regime, for its part, made use of the official candidates and of the mayors’ support to shift the loyalty of electors away from those notables. In 1863, continuation was refused to some outgoing MPs who had been supported by prefects in 1857. The archives show that mayors and voters were sometimes torn between the old and new candidates, which gave them at least the benefit of choice and sometimes allowed them to make their own decision. This resulted in dissenting votes in nearly one third of the polls, along with the suspicion of electoral fraud (Anceau, 2002). There were cases where pressure came from non-official sources, such as in Lozère where the Marquis de Chambrun (1821-1899), an official candidate in 1857, easily won despite being abandoned by the prefect in 1863, thanks to the active support of the local clergy. The clergy had backed the emperor up until 1859, when the relationship then became strained, but clerical influence remained, though it did not play the same powerful role everywhere. In Aquitaine, anti-clericalism had developed early on, and even in catholic Brittany, young priests took a militant attitude against official candidates during the elections of 1863, though success eluded them. The public prosecutor of Rennes concluded that faith had not diminished, rather “the people of the countryside have been hurt by the arrogance with which these priests had wanted to dictate electoral choices” (Lagoueyte, 1989: 67). In 1869, the official candidacy system was abandoned, with the regime prefer‐ ring to exert its influence henceforth through the press (Voilliot, 2005: 223). Freedom of speech and lively press campaigns blew in a new wind. Republicans took advantage of it everywhere. Opposition to the official candidacy system and to the Empire in general helped to build the legitimacy of universal suffrage, associated as it were with the freedom to vote and to present candidates. However, it must also be acknowledged that the Empire offered ambiguity. On the one hand, it allowed universal male suffrage to become deeply rooted (15 polls in 18 years), and it encouraged the rural masses to distance themselves from the traditional notables. National politics clearly took root within the countryside, proving that in contrast to the stereotypical image of a conservative peasantry voting for Napoleon III out of ignorance, the archives show that it was the most active and advanced rural areas of France that voted for him out of conviction. On 13 The Orleanists were liberals who remained loyal to the children of king Louis-Philippe (1830-1848); legitimists were highly conservative and loyal to the descendants of Charles X, king by divine right (1824-1830).

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the other hand, once the regime began to feel threatened by the politicisation of the rural masses, it attempted to quash it from above. During the period of 1852-1870, societal changes reinforced mentalities and personal opinions. An increasing number of children were granted education and medical assistance. The standard of living improved in towns, as well as in the countryside. And along with the extension of the transport network, the expan‐ sion of fairs and agricultural shows, organised by comices, became an important means to progress, opening the rural world to modernity (Vivier, 2009). Fairs were chiefly places of trade, whilst the comices allowed new agricultural tools and techniques to be exhibited. Both fairs and shows were places of intense exchange between large groups of people, also providing opportunities to debate political ideas, yet another indication of the political impregnation of rural life. All in all, the increasing efficiency of the State administration left its mark. An illustration was given by Quercy (Lot), a region of recurrent rebellion and fights between family clans for local power. François Ploux noted the changes from 1848 onwards: insults, quarrels, local mobilisation, violence and internal arbitration in villages declined, in favour of trials in court and sound political debate (Ploux, 2002). This can also be attributed, as in England, to the slow political socialisation in a favourable context of reduced demographic pressure and increasing agricultural productivity (Tilly, 1984; Lynch, 2018: 30). II.2. The Third Republic confirms the power of the rural electorate

The Second Empire collapsed on 4th September 1870, when republicans ousted Napoleon after his defeat by the Prussians. Believing that peasants had voted for him out of ignorance and from outside pressure, republican fears were confirmed during the elections of February 1871. With republicans, who wanted to continue the war against Germany, and monarchists who wanted peace, voters had a clear choice. The rural population overwhelmingly voted for the conservative monar‐ chists, though whether they voted for the party or for peace remains debatable. Consequently, the republicans despised the peasantry, questioning the value of universal suffrage that threatened their own position. Besides, France was the exception, since Italy only had 500.000 voters, and Great Britain 2.5 million. How‐ ever, understanding that the rural electorate was key, the republican leader Léon Gambetta (1838-1882) turned into a “commercial traveller of the Republic”14 in an attempt to win them over, finally succeeding in 1876 by achieving a majority for the republicans. At least this is their version of events, and very much endorsed by historians. But honestly, were peasants migrating to the Republic, or was the Republic migrating to the peasantry?

14 Gambetta was a republican politician, an opponent of Napoleon III, then a member of the provisional government (4/09/1870 to 6/02/1871) and subsequently became MP (1871-1882).

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Recent research by Chloé Gaboriaux (2010) has given new insights. She studied the Second Empire and describes how Napoleon III praised the peasants as the base of French society and considered them, not as prisoners of the nobility nor of the clergy, but as fully fledged citizens, capable of free will and open to progress. She studied many writings and speeches of republicans in order to understand the evolution of their ideas and the way they created the ‘myth of the peasant’, concluding that it was the republicans who came to the peasantry. In 1848-50, republicans were still unable to forge a fair idea of the social reality in the countryside and to adapt their aims accordingly.15 The material concerns of the peasantry were not theirs; the republican MPs voted for instance against the suppression of the salt tax, in direct opposition of almost unanimous peasant support. A republican journalist, Eugène Ténot (1839-1890), testified in 1865: “To whom were their speeches, their books, their newspapers addressed: to the bourgeois, the urban worker, to the peasants never”. They could not solve the contradictions in their own theory: they supported small landownership, but they feared it led to a conservative vote; they praised universal male suffrage, but they believed that rural people were incapable of making political choices. After 1871, understanding that their educated discourse did not work well, republicans used a simpler language and forged their new image of moderation, prudence and wisdom. Moreover, they began to be interested in the peasantry.16 They reinvented the myth of the small owner, saying that it was a gift of the 1789 Revolution. Gaboriaux concludes that Jules Ferry and Léon Gambetta were able to win peasant support because they and the republicans in general adapted their discourse to rural aspirations. In a speech in 1885, Ferry depicted the peasants as “the very core of French society”.17 He tried, as did Gambatta, to include the peasantry as much as possible in political life, believing that “the Republic will be the peasants’ Republic, or will not be” (Gaboriau, 2010: 293). The constitutional laws of 1875 had created a second legislative assembly, the Senate, much to the dismay of the republicans who had always wanted a single, directly elected chamber. Members of the Senate were elected by indirect suffrage: each commune, whatever its size, appointed a delegate, and these delegates chose the senators. Interestingly, the republicans managed to take advantage of this procedure to strengthen their links with the peasantry. The Parliamentary debates in 1884 revealed once more how much the politicisation of the rural population lay at the heart of politicians’ concerns. That year saw the passing of the municipal law, on 5 April, and the debate on the makeup of the Senate. The municipal law confirmed the election of the mayor and his assistants by the municipal council, soon after the election of the latter by universal suffrage. Local councils acquired more autonomy from then onwards; their sessions began to be open to the

15 Spanish republicans had the same problem: see chapter 10 by Peyrou. 16 As did South West German Liberals in the 1830s and 40s (chapter 3 by Grüne). 17 Jules Ferry (1832-1893) was one of the most influential republican politicians from 1879 to 1885, and Prime Minister from 1883 to 1885; quotation from Jules Ferry’s speech in Bordeaux, 1885.

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public, in order to arouse the interest of citizens. Nevertheless, the finances of the municipalities remained under the prefect’s supervision. It was, however, a step towards a greater involvement of the rural population in political life. Senators were to be elected in a meeting of the local electoral delegates in the main town of the department. Together they discussed public matters of national interest and then echoed the national debates within their commune. According to Gambetta, this method would allow political life to reverberate from the most remote hamlet to the bigger cities, and vice versa. Municipalities, therefore, were to play an essential role in the access to citizenship, and the Senate became an instrument of politicisation of the countryside. This was the argument for the preservation of the two-stage election process for senators, despite the centralist views of most republicans. The reform of the electoral procedure triggered long debates. It aimed at completing the progression towards the individualisation of the act of voting, and a reduction of the dependence on collective constraints. As early as 1865, a proposal was launched to organise secret voting: the voter should go into an isoloir (a booth), place his ballot into an envelope, and then physically deposit it into the ballot box. This procedure was only adopted in 1913. Malcolm Crook (2015) published a comparative history of the ballot in Britain, France and the United States. He points at some crucial differences in how this specific reform to introduce the secret ballot was conceived, debated, and finally implemented, in the three countries. British radicals occasionally made the argument that the vote was a matter of ‘personal privacy’ and of no intrinsic interest to others. In France, the arguments in favour of secrecy were, by and large, as follows: first, that it was the best means of protecting the voter from bribery, intimidation and violence, and therefore of enhancing his independence; and second, that it would help to secure more orderly, cheaper elections, cutting down on electoral expenses for parties and local authorities alike. In Britain and the U. S. reformers would eventually look towards the example of Australia which, as well as introducing secrecy, also imposed standardised ‘official’ ballot papers, as opposed to handwritten and/or partisan printed ones. In Britain, this was applied to parliamentary and municipal elections in 1872 (Crook, 2015: 552). In France, radicals and socialists supported such a reform, but some MPs were opposed to it because they relied on their own network for elections and feared that the use of a voting booth would remove their voters’ loyalty and submission. The implementation of the law to introduce a secret ballot had barely any impact on results. Old practices lasted for some time but, fundamentally, the transformation towards individual choice had already taken place (Garrigou, 2002: 195-240). The voting in villages took place in alphabetical order from 1848, bearing the mark of a collective conception of universal suffrage. The gradual decline of this practice under the Empire marked a clear erosion of collective forms. There were now new relationships and new influences taking effect in the electoral process, with the impact of schools and teachers certainly being one,

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though they had an effect less on the politicisation of the population, and more on their actual behaviour, introducing more discipline. It is worth mentioning another important political custom in the countryside: candidates used to buy drinks for the voters. Ephraïm Grenadou, a peasant born near Chartres in 1897, recalled in his memoirs that his “father was a municipal and republican councillor. Twice a week, he received Le Progrès which he read in the evening, then a little the following noon. He didn’t much like the wealthy. He said that he had worked for them and that they were not quite correct (…). People were arguing in the pub but eventually, Saint-Loup, like all the villages around here, was a red country. When a deputy was coming, everyone went to the meeting and he would buy them a drink. Later a law forbade it” (Grenadou, 1966: 59). This practice was in fact forbidden by the reforms of 1913. Nonetheless, celebra‐ tory drinks could always be postponed until the next day! Garrigou considers the electoral drink as a symptom of the transformation of political habits (Garrigou, 2002: 243). It was in use when the traditional political elite was no longer capable of enforcing the vote for a particular candidate, and in places where there was competition. The abolition of the candidates’ drinks reveals the end of the influ‐ ence of candidates on group behaviour, and the beginning of the individualisation of the vote. II.3. Syndicats agricoles (agricultural unions),18 were they an instrument of politicisation?

At the end of the century, the creation of syndicats agricoles took off. It is difficult to know whether agricultural associations had an impact on the politicisation process, as it is impossible for historians to disclose the opinion of individual members. Administrative reports are questionable; speeches by union officials were often rewritten after the event. Interestingly, these agricultural associations split into left- and right-wing political groups. The agricultural societies and comices that were at the origin of most of the syndicats experienced the same process. Emerging in the 1830s, they thrived at the time of the Empire. At the time, they were not places of political debate, other than the prefect’s opening speech that would often praise those actions of the regime which favoured agriculture. After 1871, however, Republicans attempted to turn them into a political force and that triggered division within local comices, as well as in the

18 Syndicats agricoles: aimed at supporting modern farming practices, such as the choice of tools, fodder and unadulterated fertilisers. Their membership encompassed both large landowners and small farmers. Unions of agricultural labourers were created from 1900 onwards.

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new syndicats, often dividing them along the lines of the two major umbrella organisations: the conservative and the republican federations.19 At the turn of the twentieth century, the syndicats presented a Janus face. On the one hand, they made farmers better understand the link between local and na‐ tional issues and they launched campaigns to inform elected councillors about the needs of the farmers. On the other hand, the peasants themselves were excluded from the higher decision-making bodies. Local syndicats had little autonomy. The two federations, hierarchically organised (at the local, regional and national level), imposed on their members the decisions taken in Paris. Syndicat leaders at the national level were notables: conservative leaders sought to compensate for their loss of political influence by regaining power within the syndicats, whereas the republican leaders of syndicats came from the new social group of doctors and veterinarians, lawyers and more educated farmers. The agricultural syndicats, politically divided as they were, were insufficiently organised to be able to take the lead in any mobilisation. Moreover, the social homogeneity among their leaders hindered the sliding down to marked contentious practices (Lynch, 2018: 38). Ronald Hubscher (2000, 145) pertinently asked whether the peasantry was manipulated, or were in fact the manipulators. He concluded that they certainly never gave up. Syndicats were, first and foremost, suppliers of equipment, and peasants chose according to the law of supply and demand. Bringing together a small number of peasants, syndicats were only able to have a minor influence on politicisation. However, they “provided for many peasants their first real encounter with democracy; they brought democratic practices and an awareness of the relationship between local and national issues to the most remote hamlets, and to the most isolated individuals” (Baker, 1999: 313). Political contest continued to enliven the village. We only need to look at Zola’s novel La Terre [The Land] to witness such events and, though it was a work of fiction, it did assemble a very precise documentation of village life representative of the 1880s. Electoral meetings gathered many attendees and generated much lively debate down the pub. Women did not take part in these discussions but participated in another way, as Zola wrote: “There was a fountain of spring water down the road […]. At six in the evening, it was the place where the local gazette was held […]. The forthcoming elections blew a terrible wind of gossip. Full water jugs stayed lined up. The women were not going away. A battle almost broke out on a Saturday night” (Zola, la Terre, 1887, ed. 1895: 141-142).

Conclusion Studies on electoral practices shed a new light on men’s political behaviour and on the factual conditions of the polls. Fundamental questions were raised over 19 The two federations were named after their location in Paris: the conservative one rue d’Athènes and the republican one Boulevard Saint Germain.

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whether secrecy promoted or denied the exercise of virtuous citizenship. And yet this is now largely forgotten. The rural went its own coherent way. Rural people were actively interested in the political life, which until the introduction of universal male suffrage in 1848, they were only able to perceive in its softened echoes. Once suffrage was introduced, collective decisions taken by informal discussion within the village prevailed. The uncertainties of the Second Republic, as well as its brief existence, did not separate rural voters from their old ways. Thanks to historical research, we now have a clear map of their political prefer‐ ences throughout time. The western regions mainly supported the conservatives, whilst the Mediterranean South and Massif Central voted, in the most part, for the socialists. Gradually, in the course of the Empire, rural men acquired the freedom to disengage themselves from the notables. The Third Republic gave even more significance to countryside electors, seeing them as the basis of republican democracy. How can we explain these regional disparities and the shift from collective vot‐ ing behaviour to individual suffrage? Pierre Barral (1968) developed a typology of rural societies, mapping out the regional differences whilst considering three main factors: class relationships within the village (relative equality of independent farmers versus a clear hierarchy with domination by the richer citizens), networks within the community (strength of family ties versus clientelism), and the weight of ideological values, mainly religion. Research then went further and focused on political culture or cultures, since several political cultures coexist within a nation, influencing each other: “Without denying that there is a common denominator between the various political cultures of a nation, observation leads us to consider that these cultures are plural. From this point on, what is known as national political culture seems more likely to stem from the existence of a dominant culture at one point in history” (Berstein, 1992: 72). So why did political cultures differ so much? This question was key within regional research and answers were provided, but no synthesis at a national scale has ever been realised (Ford, 2000: 340). After all, each individual decided on his own vote. Behaviour changed everywhere in nineteenth century Europe, moving away from certain types of collective action. 1848 was a turning point in France. Propaganda showed the ballot as the only legal way of expression, condemning the use of arms.

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Bibliography Archival sources Archives nationales, Paris: série F1c III, administration départementale: Hautes Alpes, Aude, Tarn; série C 2300 à 2314: pétitions contre le projet de loi restrictif du suffrage universel de 1850. Archives départementales de la Sarthe (Le Mans) et des Hautes-Alpes (Gap). Literature Agulhon, M. (1977) Le cercle dans la France bourgeoise, 1810-1848. Etude d’une mutation de sociabilité. Paris. ——— (1979) La République au village. Les populations du Var de la Révolution à la IIe République, Paris. Anceau, E. (2002) ‘Les irrégularités et les incidents lors des élections législatives de 1852 à 1870 ou le difficile apprentissage du suffrage universel sous le Second Empire’, in Bourdin, P., Caron, J. C. and Bernard, M. eds, L’incident électoral de la Révolution française à la Ve République, Clermont-Ferrand, pp. 121-140. Baker, A R. H. (1999) Fraternity among the French Peasantry: Sociability and Voluntary Associations in the Loire Valley, 1815-1914, Cambridge. Barral, P. (1968) Les agrariens français de Méline à Pisani, Paris. Berstein, S. (1992) ‘L’historien et la culture politique’, Vingtième Siècle, 35, juilletseptembre, pp. 67-77. Crook, M. (2015) ‘Ballot papers and the practice of elections: Britain, France and the United States of America, c. 1500-2000’, Historical Research, vol. 88, no 241, pp. 530-561. Déloye, Y. & Ihl, O. (2008) L’acte de vote, Paris. Ford, C. (2000) ‘The use and practice of tradition in the politicization of rural France during the nineteenth century’, in La politisation des campagnes au XIXe siècle, Rome, pp. 327-341. Gaboriaux, C. (2010) La République en quête de citoyens. Les républicains français face au bonapartisme rural (1848-1880), Paris. Garrigou, A. (2002) Histoire sociale du suffrage universel en France: 1848-2000, Paris. Glikman, J. (2007) L’imaginaire impérial et la logique de l’histoire: étude des assises du régime du Second Empire, PhD. Guionnet, C. (1997) L’apprentissage de la politique moderne. Les élections municipales sous la monarchie de Juillet, Paris. Huard, R. (1971) ‘La défense du suffrage universel sur la Seconde République: les réactions de l’opinion gardoise et le pétitionnement contre la loi du 31 mai 1850’, Annales du Midi, vol. 83, no 103, pp. 315-336. Hubscher, R. (2000) ‘Syndicalisme agricole et politisation paysanne’, in La politisation des campagnes au XIXe siècle, Rome, pp. 135-152.

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Lagoueyte, P. (1989) La vie politique en France au XIXe siècle, Gap. ——— (2002) ‘Apprentissage et incidents électoraux à l’aube du suffrage universel’, Bourdin, P., Caron, J. C. and Bernard, M. eds, L’incident électoral de la Révolution française à la Ve République, Clermont-Ferrand, pp. 101-119. Le Gall, L. (2009) L’électeur en campagne dans le Finistère. Une Seconde République de BasBretons, Paris. Lignereux, A. (2008) La France rébellionnaire. Les résistances à la gendarmerie (1800-1859), Rennes. Lynch, E. (2019) Insurrections paysannes: de la terre à la rue: usages de la violence au XXe siècle, Paris. Margadant, T. W. (1979) French Peasants in Revolt. The Insurrection of 1851, Princetown. McPhee, P. (1986) ‘Electoral democracy and direct democracy in France, 1789-1851’, European History Quarterly, 16, pp. 77-96. ——— (1992) The Politics of Rural Life. Political Mobilization in the French Countryside, 1846-1852, Oxford. Ménager, B. (1988) Les Napoléon du peuple, Paris. Offerlé, M. (1993) ‘L’électeur et ses papiers. Enquête sur les cartes et les listes électorales, 1848-1939’, Genèses, no 13, pp. 29-53. Pan-Montojo, J. (2006), ‘El progresismo isabelino’, in Suárez Cortina M. ed., La redención del pueblo. La cultura progresista en la España liberal, Santanderthes, pp. 183-298. Ploux, F. (2002) Guerres paysannes en Quercy. Violence, conciliations et répression pénale dans les campagnes du Lot, 1810-1860, Paris. Collectif (2000), La politisation des campagnes au XIXe siècle, France, Italie, Espagne et Portugal, Rome. Pourcher, Y. (1991) ‘Passions d’urne. Réflexions sur l’histoire des formes, des pratiques et des rituels de l’élection dans la France rurale’, Politix. Revue des sciences sociales du politique, vol. 15, pp. 48-52. Tilly, C. (1984) ‘Les origines du répertoire d’action collective contemporaine en France et en Grande-Bretagne’, Vingtième siècle. Revue d’histoire, vol. 4, pp. 89-108. Vigier, P. (1963) La Seconde République dans la région alpine, Paris. ——— (1988) La Seconde République, Paris. ——— (1991) ‘La République à la conquête des paysans, les paysans à la conquête du suffrage universel’, Politix, vol. 4, n°15, La politique en campagnes, pp. 7-12. Villette, V. (2013) Apprendre à voter sous la IIe République: le suffrage de masse dans le département de la Seine, 1848-1851, Paris. Vivier, N. (1992) Le Briançonnais rural, Paris. ——— (2003) ‘Les élites rurales de la Sarthe au XIXe siècle’, in Pitou, F. ed., Élites et notables de l’Ouest, Rennes, pp. 45-58. ——— (2009), ‘Le rôle des élites françaises en faveur du progrès agricole’, in Vivier, N. ed., Elites et progrès agricole, XVIe-XXe siècle, Rennes, pp. 187-208. ——— (2014) The Golden Age of State Enquiries. Rural Enquiries in the Nineteenth Century, from Fact Gathering to Political Instrument, Turnhout.

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Voilliot, C. (2005) La candidature officielle: une pratique d’État de la Restauration à la Troisième République, Rennes. Weber, E. (1976) Peasants into Frenchmen. The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914, Stanford.

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8. Collective peasant struggles under the Third Republic in France: learning and inventing new protest tactics

The history of peasant protests in the Third Republic of France (1870-1940) provides a unique vantage point from which to review changes in collective mobilisation. In line with the seminal analysis by Charles Tilly (Tilly, 1984), protest practices, or repertoires of contention, underwent a clear shift during the nineteenth century, evolving from a ‘traditional’ set of tactics to a ‘modern’ one. This evolution mirrored the corresponding change that took place, at a European level, across the city and the countryside, as agrarian societies became industrialised. Alert to major tipping points, Tilly prioritised the exploration of the working class, tracking the emergence of new practices, such as strike action, and the rise of new players, the trade unions, against a backdrop characterised by the gradual decline in violent behaviour and the liberalisation, gradual too, of the institutional and political framework. Unsurprisingly, nineteenth century England was first to experience this shift. The English Industrial Revolution was characterised by the rapid decline of its ac‐ tive agricultural population and by an early formation of its working class. France and Germany then followed in the second half of the century and especially after the 1880s. In southern Europe at the turn of the twentieth century, countries like Italy and Spain began to see the structured mobilisation of the agricultural proletariat, which followed broadly that of the industrial working class, even if the rural workers movement maintained some special characteristics, derived from the conditions of rural societies (Cabo, Veiga, 2011; Monti, 1998). Almost simultaneously, activist peasant organisations were created in certain regions. In response to these outbreaks of protest, conservative agrarian organisations experienced a significant rise. In different ways, in France and in Germany, the high proportion of small or middle-sized farms held by peasants who personally tilled the land, together with the transformation of the political systems, led first to agrarian forms of organisation and struggle, whereas a movement of rural labourers developed on a smaller scale. Édouard Lynch • Laboratoire d’études rurales, University Lumière Lyon 2, France Making Politics in the European Countryside, ed. by Laurent Brassart, Corinne Marache, Juan PanMontojo & Leen Van Molle, CORN Publication Series, 19 (Turnhout, 2022), pp. 195–212 DOI 10.1484/M.CORN-EB.5.128250

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As shown by the two contributions dedicated to France in this part of the book, the second half of the nineteenth century saw the decline of collective peasant struggles and the pacification of the countryside. This evolution was related to the development of mechanisms of mediation and representation, thanks to the adoption of universal male suffrage and to the growth of syndicats agricoles (agrarian associations) (Vivier, 2021). Undoubtedly, some more virulent episodes persisted from time to time, as evidenced by the occasional resurgence of forest attacks during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 (Dupont, 2021). However, these outbreaks were a last gasp arising in specific circumstances, which also saw the resurgence of up until then unknown forms of violence (Corbin, 1990). Otherwise, it was in general terms a calm period as protest tactics morphed away from aggression. But the calm lasted only for so long. The growing strain, which the agricultural world was subject to from the end of the 1890s, caused a renewal of tension and struggles. The new range of protest tactics adopted by French peasants at this time was a unique blend of ‘urban’ demonstration and rural specificities. Building on my broad study on peasant mobilisation in France in the twenti‐ eth century (Lynch, 2019), I will focus my analysis on the period of change and reconstruction, which characterised the agrarian and peasant struggles under the Third Republic. I shall cover a time that stretches from the first protests carried out by the farm workers of the 1890s to the tactics used by peasants during the agrarian and political crisis of the 1930s.

I. The nineteenth century, in search of a set of rural protest tactics I.1. The low tidemark for traditional agrarian struggles?

The rich rural historiography of the nineteenth century has long underlined the dichotomy between the first and the second half of the century. The former was characterised by the importance and the scale of rural mobilisation, in an economic and political context in turmoil, opened by the French revolution and the Grande Peur, and closed by the uprising of several departments following the coup d’état of the Prince-President, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte in December 1851 (Margadant, 1979). While these two milestones undoubtedly fit neatly into a political timeline, they should not mask the significance of economic and social determinants in the commotion that punctuates this first period. Beyond the political upheavals and regime changes, the first half of the nineteenth century was defined by a strong demographic growth and a rather unfavourable economic situation. Grain shortages led to numerous ‘cereal riots’, targeting wheat transport or market operations. Likewise, periods of political unrest or power vacuums were fertile ground for the resurgence of one-off protest actions, especially in forest areas. This chronology is very largely confirmed by

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Lignereux (Lignereux, 2008), using as a source the history of the gendarmerie (military police, particularly for rural areas), and showing a downward trend in violence after 1850. The establishment of the Second Empire ended this political and economic instability. Without accepting the myth of the Fête impériale (the imperial good times), it must be stated that the economic situation of the French countryside improved under Napoleon III. On the one hand, the acceleration of industriali‐ sation and urbanisation loosened the demographic stranglehold of the poorest regions, as migration to cities accelerated. On the other hand, the marketing of agricultural products continued to increase, thanks in particular to the devel‐ opment of the railway network. From a political point of view, the very severe crackdown that followed the coup d’état broke the republican opposition for a time. Through official candidacies and propaganda, Napoleon III’s regime strove to pacify the political space in towns and villages. Out of necessity, this overview simplifies this time period, during which more violent episodes did occur, such as the ‘Revolution’ in the village of Sabres (Dupuy, 1996), in 1863, or the troubles that took place during the crisis of the summer of 1870. I.2. Archaism or modernity of action tactics

The shift that took place challenges the relevance of the criteria identified by Charles Tilly to trace the evolution of the protest model. In that analysis, the traditional model was mainly local, as opposed to a modern autonomous model, that is to say supported by structured organisations of national scope. In the examples given by Tilly, the various charivari (mock serenades of protest), seizures of grain, and invasions of fields and forests, make clear reference to rural societies, while “public meetings, strikes, demonstrations” are more aligned to industrial and urban mobilisation. As we mentioned earlier, Tilly compares the respective situations of England and France. Chronologically, as France industrialised later, the comparison would be more valid if he went back to eighteenth century England. Chronology aside, the nature of the jump from a traditional to a modern model which took place, both in urban and in rural areas, is debatable. It seems that it happened through incremental changes, rather than through a single clean break. The precise study of individual cases underlines the difficulty of making non-arbitrary distinctions, all the more so as they depend on rarely impartial sources. Regarding, for example, the local dimension of protest action, the work of Nicolas Bourguinat (Bourguinat, 2002) on the grain riots of the nineteenth cen‐ tury underlines the contrast between apparently archaic practices that appeared to be bound to isolated and specific places, and the contemporary political ideas those practices fed. The same is true of another major movement, in the fiscal domain: the ‘red summer’ shows co-existence of practices attached to traditional models, but aligned to a national dynamic (Caron, 2002). In a similar vein, Agul‐ hon (Agulhon, 1977) has masterfully shown that the 1851 republican struggles in

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the Var villages bore the joint hallmarks of traditional collective forms of struggle and new national dynamics. It is clear, however, that from 1850, and all the more so after 1870, the French countryside entered a period of calm. Meanwhile, from the mid-1860s, the urban working class was increasingly mobilised, having obtained the right to strike and having witnessed the rise of the first workers’ organisations. In doing so, and with a few decades’ delay, trade unions began the implementation of protest tactics. However, the shift was just as gradual, and some of the tactics of the combative workers was directly linked to the continuity of older practices. With both the establishment of and recruitment for many industrial sites in the countryside, social identities were gradually blurred, as Rolande Trempé (Trempé, 1971) has shown in relation to the ‘coal mine peasants’ of Carmaux. I.3. A political or economic outcome?

The apathy of the social movement in the countryside, until its resumption in the early 1890s, is an enigma. From a political point of view, it is possible to detect the soothing effects of the ‘peasant republic’, a slogan coined by its most illustrious founders such as Gambetta (Gaboriaux, 2010). This slogan was translated into emblematic measures such as the creation of the Ministry of Agriculture in 1881, the introduction of chairs of professors of agriculture in each department, or the law of 1882 on the restoration of mountainous land, which curbed the repressive policies that had been applied since the adoption of the Forestry Code in 1827. More broadly, the extension of male universal suffrage for the election of national representatives and, more importantly, of local mayors, helped to legitimise a system of demands and mediation. Likewise, as Vivier underlines in chapter 7, the rise of professional organisa‐ tions, which began after the enactment of the 1884 law on the recognition of unions, provided another outlet for peaceful conflict management. This law facil‐ itated the multiplication of local agrarian unions and their progressive national structuration, according to the existing political divide, the Conservatives in rue d’Athènes on the one hand, against the republicans in Boulevard Saint-Germain on the other. Both conservatives and republicans developed their federation under the control of members of the local and regional establishment (les notables). These organisations, with a strong backing in parliament, were strong enough to obtain, at the beginning of the 1880s, the gradual introduction of tariff barriers for wheat, mitigating the global supply crisis. This customs policy was dubbed, in 1892, the Méline tariff, after the name of the emblematic Minister of Agriculture of the Third Republic, Jules Méline (1838-1923). However, this positive vision of the ‘peasant republic’ should not be overesti‐ mated. Alongside the undeniable political and professional momentum, it was the overall favourable economic context that was the real reason for the ‘Peace of the fields’. The structural elements, mentioned above, the demographic ebb, and the rise in domestic consumption were confirmed, and amplified, in the

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last third of the nineteenth century. In combination, they brought about, if not prosperity, at least real stability for agricultural incomes. Meanwhile, the second industrial revolution provided new growth opportunities, enabling ‘triumphant’ smallholders to earn from multiple activities carried out concurrently (Mayaud, 1999). In this very varied world of the French peasantry during this period, social mobility did exist, particularly for individuals. It made it possible to endure tough periods. This status quo was not challenged until WWI. For the large number of farmers who managed their own land, it even went on until the end of the 1920s. From the point of view of the history of peasant mobilisation, winegrowers in the South and of course a fraction of agricultural workers are the exception to this stable situation.

II. The era of the ‘land worker’ II.1. Class struggle in the field

After this long period of calm, the first signs of restlessness appeared among rural workers. Putting aside a few sporadic protest movements using ‘traditional’ tactics, this category had been virtually absent from the mobilisations occurring in the nineteenth century (Chauvaud, 1996). The trend was reversed from the 1880s, in line with a process at play in all European countries. Tactics undeniably shifted, based on the emergence of autonomous groups and trade union feder‐ ations, more or less loosely connected to radical left (socialist and anarchist) political organisations. The extent of these movements naturally depended on the economic and political conditions of each region or country. Some focused on purely economic demands, but for others, this paved the way towards political representation. In the case of France, the agricultural proletariat, although estimated at more than three million individuals during the 1892 census, did not amount to a truly organised social force. This was due to the absence of a system of very large landholdings and to the overlap of land ownership models. On top of this, over 1.8 million were domestic workers, employed throughout the year. It was therefore within certain minority categories of homogeneous agricultural workers that the first struggles developed. From the 1890s, these were the loggers from the forests of central France and the grape pickers in the South of the country. Following the extensive destruction of the vineyard by the phylloxera crisis, the south had experienced a deep reorganisation of its production system, around large wine-growing estates employing a conspicuous workforce. More sporadically, depending on the ebb and flow of the local or national economic context, other categories, such as horticultural workers, resin collectors in the pine forests of the Landes and agricultural workers in the Greater Paris area rose in protest, riding on the great wave of mobilisation, which took place in the first decade of the twentieth century.

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Since the pioneering work of Philippe Gratton (Gratton, 1971), using in particular the statistics of strikes, we have been able to distinguish three major phases in the mobilisation of agricultural workers during the ‘Belle Epoque’. The first phase had as protagonists the lumberjacks, in the departments of Cher and Centre, between 1892 and 1894. It was characterised by the birth of many unions, often ephemeral, until the creation of the National Federation of Lumberjacks in 1902. The second phase, at the turn of the century, was dominated by grapepickers from the South, using novel tactics in ways that clearly illustrate the transformations at work. Indeed, the groundwork for the main strike movement of 1904-1905 was very largely down to the creation of trade unions in the five departments of the region, under the auspices of the Federation of agricultural workers of the Midi. The Federation itself was created in 1903 in Béziers. By the following year, it had attracted 14,000 members grouped into 145 unions. These became the spearhead of the strikes launched the same year, with for example seventy conflicts in the Aude department, bringing together thousands of strikers for strikes which, in the main, turned out to be successful (Frader, 1991). This momentum fell back quite quickly, however, especially as it did not survive the great crisis of 1907. The third phase is more heterogeneous, bringing together more diverse categories, but without real progress. On the eve of 1914, without having disappeared, the trade unionism of agricultural workers entered a kind of ‘business as usual’ mode, but its impact remained generally weak against the might of the agricultural world. As we stated in the introduction, the rise of the socialist movement, quite similar to other European countries, was central to the emergence of these new forms of struggle (Acosta, Cruz and González de Molina, 2009). The Third Re‐ public, having overcome the trauma of the Commune, saw the development of a long-divided but dynamically socialist organisation, both at the local and national level. In many respects, the socialist movement provided essential support for these new forms of struggle. On the ground, the commitment of activists and elected officials, as well as the coverage of these conflicts by the socialist press, both added to the impetus (Pennetier, 1979). The pioneering role of woodwork‐ ers (lumberjacks, as well as hoopers, and resin collectors) can be explained by their multiple jobs. They were often employed part-time in neighbouring rural industries and aware of workers’ struggles and support structures, such as the local labour exchange. These contacts and these transfers were translated in the implementation of a range of protest tactics, very similar to those of urban workers, even they were adapted to the constraints of the rural strike. II.2. The village strike

Using Tilly’s model, these collective acts illustrate the process of the autonomy of the conflict, with the systematic creation of unions at both the local and national level taking care of the organisation of the struggles from the start of the strike until the final stages of negotiation. The endorsement of conflicts by local

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establishment figures tended to fade away and was replaced by new spokespersons originating from the political and trade union worlds. In this process, labour exchanges, created in cities such as Bourges in 1896, were an essential relay, and so were political representatives, by then elected by universal suffrage. This strong influence of the industrial worker model explains why the urban tactics – such as the use of the red flag, revolutionary songs like the Internationale, and support meetings – were mirrored in rural settings. Despite adopting this urban working-class model, the rural strike nonetheless took on original aspects. The village was both a relatively open public space and the place of work. Controlling it required the use of specific mobility strategies – the columns – or ‘roadblocks’ (Pigenet, Tartakowsky, 2003). While rural strikes were no more violent than urban workers’ strikes, the close proximity of the opposing parties within a town led to heightened tension, especially when a conflict situation ground to a standstill. A good example are the parades organised by the strikers (known as passe rue during the wine strikes in the Midi) at the end of public meetings, or when picketing (Sagnes, 1980). This collective dimension also made the role of women more visible, even though it is difficult to distinguish between the reality of events, and what has been subsequently interpreted from police reports of the time, who would often downplay or overplay their role, depending on the needs of the authorities. Even more so than in cities, local town mayors played an essential role, supporting or tolerating initiatives. Some provided space for the protesters or initiated mediation processes. In the South, or in the region of Centre, where the radical and socialist left consolidated strongholds early, the link between municipal power and professional mobilisation was particularly decisive in the success of the demands, as the strikers were eligible to receive material support from the town halls. More broadly, these conflicts inevitably left deep marks in local political life. This is because, in the villages, more so than in cities, it was difficult to draw a line through past tension. Local elections were often a popularity contest for the strike. Indeed, some villages maintained, over the long term, a striking ‘tradition’. II.3. The ‘urban worker’ model runs out of steam

Despite these attempts at structuring the struggle and ad hoc boosts in mobilisa‐ tion, the unionisation of agricultural workers struggled to consolidate itself over the long term. First of all, trade union structures were fragile and often failed to survive after the end of a conflict, when they were no longer perceived as ‘useful’. Such difficulties were not unique to the agricultural domain, yet in the village, the constraints over steady commitment to the struggle were stronger: the ‘leaders’ were often forced out of their local working life, for lack of employers. The isolation in the villages and on farms, as well as the absence of alternative spaces to socialise, were considerable obstacles. At a structural level, the status of an agricultural worker was often only temporary, similar to that of very smallholders

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who were still very numerous in the countryside. It is no coincidence that the sectors most concerned were on the ‘fringes’ of landownership. Lumberjacks and resin collectors in the department of Landes described themselves as ‘workers and peasants’ (Pigenet, 1993). The ability to mobilise horticultural workers, another example of an active minority, can easily be explained by their proximity to urban centres and, hence, to more and more heterogeneous organisational support points. Conversely, in regions with large landholdings, where many locals were employees, isolation was much more pervasive. To this latter factor, we must add that even before 1914, part of the workforce was brought in from abroad and therefore its members were foreigners with a weaker network (Hubscher, 2005). The organisational effort of rural workers that began before 1914, barely came to fruition after WWI. Admittedly, the rise in the affiliation to the trade unions, which was evident in the last years of the war, led to a much hoped-for coalition. The Federation of Agricultural Workers, affiliated to the CGT, was created on April 4th, 1920 and claimed 30,000 members and 328 unions.1 However, the union momentum slowed down very quickly. Most damaging was the post-war division within the socialist and workers’ movement. On the one hand, the communist majority kept control of La Voix Paysanne, a newspaper created in 1918 by the French socialist party (SFIO), as well as managing to retain some areas of influ‐ ence. On the other, the Federation of Agriculture and the CGT rejected member‐ ship in the Third International. The divisions hindered the protest dynamic. Here again, the issue was, first and foremost, the evolution of the economic context. The war accelerated the migration of agricultural workers towards the cities and led to the reshaping of the French peasantry: tenant farmers and sharecroppers proved to have done quite well from the war. Did ‘the agrarian question’ really fade away? In truth, the rapid deterioration of the economy, particularly in winemaking districts of the south of France, led to new conflicts (Cadé, 1983) which multiplied with the crisis of the 1930s. Difficulties and tension intensified, culminating by the time of the election of the Popular Front: the wave of strike action of the summer of 1936 spread to the farms in the Paris region (Farcy, 1996) and also involved immigrant workers. In addition to the economic context, the political victory of the left and the trade union reunification within the CGT created a strong platform for unions and workers. The explosion of June 1936 was manipulated for partisan gains. The dorgériste far right and its ‘green shirts’ sent teams of ‘volunteers’ to break the strikes. The attempt to revive the movement in 1937 fizzled out, against a political context that was no longer favourable. This marked the last major struggle of rural workers in the twentieth century.

1 Agricoles du Midi, 85 syndicats; Résiniers et métayers, 47; Agricoles du bassin parisien, 42; Bucherons, 42; Vignerons de la Champagne, 27; Feuillardiers: 9.

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III. Peasants come into the scene III.1. The enigma of 1907: can peasants become modern?

Without minimizing the impact of the mobilisation of agricultural workers, it is clear that their economic, political and union weight was minimal in France in the first half of the century. At that time, the country thought of itself as a nation of smallholders. It is therefore credit to the peasants that things began to change, with the gradual establishment of the two large federations of syndicats which were to contribute a great deal to the professional and political socialisation of the peasantry, even if they remained, especially until 1914, ‘vertical’ organisations dominated by members of the local establishment. The winemaking uprising of 1907, probably the most renowned and influential rural mass protest in France, broke out on the margins of these unions and syndicats. Whilst the scope and du‐ ration of the uprising have been the subject of many studies (Sagnes, Pech, 1997), its originality and its impact have long been underestimated by the historiography of the social movements. For too long, it was referred to as a regional event, somehow part of local folklore, or else reduced to its ‘revolutionary’ dimension because of the riots and mutinies that took place at the end of the episode. We will not analyse here the causes of this event, linked mainly to the collapse of wine prices following the reorganisation of regional wine growing triggered by the phylloxera epidemic, along with the intensification of trade and the rise in fraudulent commercial practices, nor will we touch on the major stages of the mobilisation and its tragic conclusion. This episode stood out as a highly unusual protest movement. It went across all social classes, and had a truly collective dimension, generating its own organ‐ isation, the comités de défense viticole. It quickly extended to the whole of the southern part of France, set up and maintained an unprecedented mobilisation, judging by its scale and its organisational methods. In villages, firstly, and then in large cities of the South, a growing number of demonstrations brought together hundreds of thousands of demonstrators every week, in a peaceful and organised manner. A novel and extensive media strategy, using words (in newspapers) and images (postcards) (Lamarque, Viala, 2007) relayed and amplified their impact throughout the country. Faced with the disorganisation of their markets, wine producers turned to the state and to parliamentarians to ensure regulation and control. This was far beyond a spontaneous uprising. The original thrust of the protest, triggered by Marcelin Albert (1851-1921), was endorsed, and accelerated by elected officials, at local and national levels. It led to the creation of a longlasting institution, the Confédération des Viticulteurs du Midi, set up in September 1907, which remained the preferred partner of the public authorities until the 1960s. Despite this indisputable modernity, the “communitarian” dimension of the protest and some of its actions may have induced observers to classify it as traditional, at least if we are to accept some of the criteria adopted by Charles

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Tilly. In fact, it is clearly established that the protests appealed to a wide audience, well beyond the various types of landowners and workers within the wine sector, triggering a sense of collective defence, which diluted the strictly professional dimension. This was reflected in particular by a significant presence of women, sometimes even put in leading positions to better publicise the protest, as evi‐ denced by the very many photographs published on postcards. The degree of involvement of wine-workers, even of those who a few years earlier had led an especially intense struggle against the employers who now headed the protest, continues to be debated among historians (Verdejo, 2008). The fight for a collec‐ tive cause, against an enemy perceived to be external, the so-called fraudeurs (fraudsters), took precedence over internal tension. Despite the reluctance of some of the leaders of the uprising, this meant local wine traders were exempt from any criticism. Some of the protest action, such as the threat of a grève de l’impôt (tax strike), could also be linked to the long tradition of tax uprisings (Delalande, 2008). However, the way this was articulated, as well as its ultimatum, indicated a well-thought-out understanding of the balance of power, as evidenced by its re-appearance during subsequent mobilisation phases. The acceleration of the crisis from June and the eruption of violence, intri‐ cately linked to the strategy of the Clemenceau government to call the army in, branded the protest with the stamp of violence and gave it a quasi-revolutionary dimension, including deaths, shootings, mutinies (Pech, Maurin, 2007), and vandalism against public buildings. These dramatic events obscured the ability of the rural actors to lead a large-scale mobilisation in a peaceful manner, focused on ‘professional’ demands, which, in fact, would be partly turned into legislation by parliament and the diverse ministries concerned in the years that followed. This is why 1907 appears in many ways as a catalyst for new protest practices, both through its actors, the rural landowners of all types, and through its choice of protest tactics: the demonstration. This choice went on to inspire the mobilisation of winegrowers in the region of Champagne in 1911, as well as the gatherings organised around public buildings, such as the préfectures (provincial governments). Thanks to the events of 1907, uprising was kept alive throughout the twentieth century in wine-growing regions, as well as inspiring countless other rural struggles all over the country for many years. III.2. The time of ‘cultivateurs-cultivants’ has come

Despite its ‘modernity’, the crisis of 1907, through its collective and regional dimension, slowed down the emergence of genuine professional movements specific to farmers. Beyond rural workers, very few smallholders or sharecrop‐ pers, before 1914, became involved in any professional public conflicts. A coun‐ terexample, which gained the support of the peasant writer, Émile Guillaumin (1873-1951), is the case of the sharecroppers of the Allier, whose challenge against the unfavourable balance of power, though gallant, inevitably failed. It was, therefore, not until 1914 and the impact of the First World War on millions of

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peasants conscripted into the French army, that the membership of peasant syndi‐ cats grew rapidly. Although very few studies have tried to measure the impact of that conflict on the French countryside, the shock it caused was more far-reaching than previously accounted for. Right after the end of the military conflict, continu‐ ous protests aimed at shaking off the tutelage by figures of the local establishment, sometimes dubbed as farmers ‘with white hands’, on local organisations. Such events challenged social relationships: the traditional subordination to local elites crumbled away. In its place, a more dynamic, questioning peasant movement came to the fore that affected republicans and conservatives alike (Berger, 1975). A clear example of this was the thousands of smallholder peasants from the West of the country who gathered around Father Mancel and the newspaper Le Progrès Rural, grouped under the label of “cultivateurs-cultivants”2 (Barral, 1969). In the South-West, clusters of paysans-travailleurs [peasant-workers] came together. They were encouraged by activists and elected officials close to the recently founded Communist Party, as the party sought to broaden its influence beyond rural workers (Gratton, 1969). The momentum led to the creation of the Confédération Générale des Paysans Travailleurs (CGPT) in 1929. For the catholic agricultural unions, the fight against the religious policy of the cartel des gauches [coalition of centre-left parties], from 1924 onwards, gave rise to new mobilisation strategies, in which street demonstrations became both a massive and common practice. If these demonstrations were not specifically agricultural in focus, many peasants took part, especially as more farming demands were quickly incorporated. Aiming to repel the law on social insurance, the ‘crazy law’, it served as a platform for the dorgerist movement (Bensoussan, 1998). Yet another example of these new dynamic forms of collective mobilisation was the creation of the Parti Agraire et Paysan Français (The French Agrarian and Peasant Party) in 1927. The party was a political response to a widespread desire for emancipation of the rural class among the peasants (Lynch, 2009). Whilst this heightened activism did not bear fruit immediately, it set up militant networks across the political spectrum that would make subsequent mobilisation both possible and effective. Whilst a growing section of tenants, sharecroppers and small landowners became more active during the 1920s, the chosen forms of struggle were calm and controlled, channelled by political, or even institutional, forums, such as the creation of departmental chambers of agriculture in 1927. It took a few more years, following the economic crisis of the 1930s, for large-scale mobilisations to spread, with the emergence of new and more radical practices. Among those was the widespread use of the ‘procession-demonstration’,3 focusing on a single

2 This tautological expression (‘farming farmers’) was used as a way to distinguish this organisation of smallholders and tenant farmers from the syndicates controlled by wealthy landowners who did not cultivate themselves their land. 3 This typology refers to Danielle Tartakowsky (1995), who distinguishes «manifestation procession», demonstration procession, «manifestation pétition», petition demonstration, and insurrectional

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narrow demand. The protest against the fall in agricultural prices, and in particular the price of wheat, was a case in point. From the middle of 1932, such price drops affected all farmers. This first attempt at using the street was initiated by the agrar‐ ian party: whilst the party did not have much success at the ballot box, it managed nonetheless to position itself, in some departments, as an effective leading voice for mass mobilisation that more moderate syndicats could not succeed at. This was particularly the case with the demonstration of Chartres in January 1933, where following a meeting, the préfecture was invaded and the prefect jostled by the crowd (Lynch, 2005). Building on this success and its media coverage, the leaders of the Agrarian Party again made new attempts, in Paris and then in other regional capitals. A national day was even scheduled for November 1933, but its success turned out to be limited. The protest dynamic was nonetheless set in motion, all the more effectively as various organisations began to compete against each over, in particular the Peasant Defence movement of Henri Dorgères (1897-1985). This movement benefited from the support of the conservative Union Nationale des Syndicats Agricoles [National Union of Agricultural Associations] and of its new leader, Jacques Leroy-Ladurie (1902-1988) (Bensoussan, 2006). The extent of rural anger was the reason why the mobilisation also included republican or socialist organisations, such as the Confédération Nationale Paysanne. This cycle of demonstration reached its peak in 1934-1935, before petering out after the victory of the Popular Front and the restoration of the price of wheat. The protest movement led by the landowners was not limited just to street demonstrations, which spread across France in the 1930s. The peasant protest was innovative, particular in using what could be termed as the obstructive demon‐ stration (manifestation obstruction). Expressing discontent publicly was one thing, but these protests were also about opposing threats, whether real or imagined, that were bound to fall upon the shoulders of the peasants. This was the case, for example, in the fight against land confiscations that befell tenant farmers driven out of business by the economic crisis. Renaud Jean (1887-1961), of the CGPT, mobilised tenant farmers and sharecroppers of Lot-et-Garonne against this very issue (Belloin, 1993). In the West, particularly the Côtes-du-Nord and the Trégor, socialists and communists vied to defend producers facing difficulties (Prigent, 2008). These struggles were linked in part to the agricultural demands of the Popular Front, and in particular to the establishment of a Statute of Land-lease, introduced to protect tenant farmers against landowners. This only came to pass after WWII. The fight against foreclosure was also claimed by the far right dorgéristes, although by using a different angle. The model was provided by the ‘Salvaudon’ confiscation of 1933, staged by the dorgerist press (Paxton, 1996). In this context, the villains were not the landowners claiming their due rent, but the Republican State and the tax authorities crushing the peasants with unfair taxes. demonstration «manifestation insurrection». In our own research exploring peasant mobilisation, we have added obstructive demonstration, “manifestation obstruction”, and destructive demonstration, “manifestation destruction”.

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This was clearly a type of political – rather than economic – mobilisation, even if its impact on the countryside was amplified because of the difficult economic conditions of the time. The dorgéristes continued to act against both real, fake, or potential cases of expropriations for tax debts after the victory of the Popular Front, when the new government was portrayed as a corrupt and anti-peasant republic. As a result, rural struggles became more radicalised during the Popular Front, but they decreased rapidly in intensity. III.3. The basis for a new set of protest tactics?

The 1930s thus constitute a key moment in the construction of the contemporary peasant protest model. The model fed both on the general evolution of the modern repertoire, mostly driven by urban areas, and on its own rural diversity. These changes were clearly visible for actors, tactics and objectives. The development of an autonomous set of peasant protest tactics cannot be split from the emergence of new actors: small and middle-sized landowners, and tenant and sharecroppers. Their growing engagement in collective action was channelled through professional and political movements. We must dismiss the over-inflated numbers of membership the organisation frequently quoted, as clearly the millions of members these agricultural associations claimed included all the beneficiaries of all syndicats, and not all the activists who actually mo‐ bilised. Yet the gradual emancipation from conservatives and republican members of the local establishment was real. Whether within the Agrarian Party, the dorg‐ erist ‘peasant-defence groups’, or inside ‘left-wing’ groups, such as the Communist CGPT and the Socialist CNP, local activists covered most of the French territory and allowed effective mobilisation processes to take place. And whilst Dorgères or Fleurant Agricola (1864-1936) were ‘political entrepreneurs’, socially alien to the world of agriculture, this was not the case of other leaders such as Marius Vazeilles (1891-1967), Waldeck Rochet (1905-1983) (Vigreux, 2000), Tanguy Prigent (1909-1970) (Bougeard, 2002) or the Divanac’h brothers, dorgerist activists in the West of the country. This militant identity was built and staged by a militant press. Newspapers proved to be essential in the development of these protest movements. The press contributed both to the ‘ideological’ training of its readers and to broadcast the demands, but it was also an effective tool of mobilisation. The reach of the newspapers was even stronger because their titles retained a very strong ‘professional’ dimension, which ensured a significant, almost captive read‐ ership. That the border between professional and militant interests was blurred may have been an asset, as demonstrated by the effective alliance between the Dorgères movement and the Union Nationale des Syndicats Agricoles of Jacques Le Roy Ladurie. Yet, it became a weakness when the latter distanced itself from the far-right group after 1936. During these inter-war years, the ‘peasant movement’ as a whole adopted the modern tactics originally used in the large urban demonstrations, in the form of parades in the big cities. This development reflected the changes taking place in

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the countryside, where a growing mass of peasants were more mobile and more available. These practices were influenced by the type of collective action: demon‐ strations. It consisted of peaceful and well-managed processions, incorporating new customs such as passing in front of war memorials, the significance of which was very strong within a peasantry that had been particularly affected by the war. Rural parades were not immune to the upsurge of violence, such a pervasive element in 1930s France. Agrarian leaders could morph into radical right events, as for example during the Parisian demonstration of January 6, 1933, when peasants came up against police forces when they attempted to march towards the Chamber of Deputies. But the set of rural tactics kept transforming, using illegal methods designed as action directe, and vindicated by the leaders as the ‘strike’ of the peasants. Since this was prohibited, peasants could exert pressure in other ways by blocking or disrupting activities that had a direct impact upon them. This was the case of the opposition to land expropriation, mentioned previously, or of the ‘tax strike’ campaigns initiated by the Front Paysan (Peasant Front) in 1934. These provocations against public law and order were made possible by the specificities of the rural struggle. In villages that were scattered and far away from administrative centres, and with collective solidarity in full swing, there was little that the police or the gendarmerie could do. In its desire to denounce the ‘anti-peasant’ policy of the republican regime, Dorgerism went the furthest in this area. It squarely made action directe and the call for violence a key element of its positioning, and even more so of its propaganda. It is worth dwelling on the matter of violence. This was a long period of pacifist protest movements, which nonetheless became marred by more violent outbursts, especially in the 1930s, due to a combination of professional mobilisation and political radicalisation. In the case of “peasant violence” in the interwar period, two elements should be underlined. One was cyclical: the emergence of this violence, in words rather than acts, was a part of the wave of radicalisation in political struggles in the interwar period. Here, the Agrarian Party, and especially Dorgerism, were the exception – although highly visible – rather than the rule. The other element is structural. As agrarian ideologists explained (Barral, 1968), peasants were a special category in the country, because they feed and defend the nation, resorting to violence or action directe was somehow legitimate. At least, it was more acceptable and as such more tolerated by public authorities and by public opinion. Finally, the specificities of these tactics, and in particular the use of direct action, cannot be explained solely by the conditions of rural struggle. It also reflected in the relationship to the State. Indeed, since the establishment of the Republic, peasants had turned to the State to solve their difficulties. Unlike urban workers, fighting their struggle against their employers, peasants had been seek‐ ing help from lawmakers who could, for example, restrict competition through protectionism, as was the case in the years 1880-1890, or regulate the French domestic market, as happened in the case of the southern wine sector from 1907 onwards. This appeal to the State was all the more effective in republican and democratic France, given the considerable weight of the peasant vote. It is against

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this background that we need to understand, during peasant demonstrations of the 1930s, the attacks against the symbols of the State, and in particular the préfectures, which were and are the ‘territorial’ branches of the executive power. This was an effective strategy, as State intervention became widespread. The estab‐ lishment of the Office du Blé [Wheat Board], far from being a transitional measure, marked the beginning of the implementation of agricultural policy supported and led by the public authorities (Chatriot, Leblanc and Lynch, 2012). Other more specific measures, such as the control of the wine market in 1935, illustrated the expanding range of State intervention, far beyond the simple price regulation of agricultural products.

Conclusion The emergence of a set of protest actions specific to the contemporary peasantry therefore took place in the first half of the twentieth century, in a context of gradual emancipation of the peasantry. This required both the adoption of tactics implemented by other social acts, such as the demonstration petition, but also the invention of action directe, as an effective means of demanding State support. After the long hiatus of WWII and the reconstruction period, which also marked the shift towards an accelerated modernisation of French agriculture, these trends were confirmed. The agricultural profession, by then unified around the category of agriculteur, continued to build its tactics to underpin its moderni‐ sation, using diverse forms of collective action: petition demonstrations, obstruc‐ tive demonstrations, and direct action. They sometimes resorted to violence, which peaked between the 1950s and the 1970s. From then onwards, the rapid decrease in the number of farmers and union reorganisation led to further adapta‐ tions.

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Bibliography Acosta, Ramírez F., Cruz Artacho S. and González de Molina M. (2009) Socialismo y democracia en el campo (1880-1930). Los orígenes de la FNTT, Madrid. Agulhon, M. (1977) La république au village, Paris. Barral, P. (1969) ‘Les Syndicats Bretons de cultivateurs-cultivants’, Le Mouvement Social, 67, pp. 147-161. ——— (1968) Les agrariens français de Méline à Pisani, Paris. Belloin, G. (1993) Renaud Jean, le tribun des paysans, Paris. Bensoussan, D. (1998), ‘Le réveil des catholiques bretons (1924-1926)’, Vingtième siècle, revue d’histoire, 57, pp. 53-75. ——— (2006) Combats pour une Bretagne catholique et rurale. Les droites bretonnes dans l’entre-deux-guerres, Paris. Berger, S. (1975) Les paysans contre la politique, l’organisation rurale en Bretagne, 1911-1974, Paris. Bougeard, C. (2002) Tanguy Prigent, paysan-ministre, Rennes. Bourguinat, N. (2002) Les grains du désordre, Paris. Cabo, M. and Veiga X. R. (2011) ‘La politización del campesinado en la época de la Restauración. Una perspectiva europea’, in Ortega López M. T. and Francisco Cobo Romero F. eds, La España rural, siglos XIX y XX. Aspectos políticos, sociales y culturales, Granada, pp. 21-58. Cadé, M. (1983) ‘La grève des ouvriers agricoles de Rivesaltes en 1928’, Annales du Midi, 169, pp. 403-440. Caron, ( J.-C.) (2002) L’Été rouge. Chronique de la révolte populaire en France (1841), Paris. Chatriot, A., Leblanc E. and Lynch E. eds (2012) Organiser les marchés agricoles. Le temps des fondateurs. Des années 1930 aux années 1950, Paris. Corbin, A. (1990) Le village des cannibales, Paris. Delalande, N. (2008) ‘La grève de l’impôt dans l’Aude en 1907: protestation anti-étatique ou appel au pouvoir public’, L’Aude et la Vigne: cent ans de passion, Actes du colloque de Carcassonne (28-30 juin 2007), Carcassonne. Chauvaud, F. (1996) ‘L’inquiétante solitude: révoltes et protestations des salariés des campagnes au XIXe siècle. L’exemple du département de Seine-et-Oise (1815-1880)’ in Hubscher, R. and Farcy, J. C. eds, La moisson des autres. Les salariés agricoles aux XIXe et XXe siècle, Paris. Dupuy, F. (1996) Le pin de la discorde. Les rapports de métayage dans la Grande Lande, Paris. Farcy, J. C. (1996) ‘Les grèves agricoles de 1936-1937 dans le Bassin parisien’, in Hubscher, R. and Farcy, J. C. eds, La moisson des autres. Les salariés agricoles aux XIXe et XXe siècle, Paris. Frader, L. L. (1991) Peasants and Protest: Agricultural Workers, Politics, and Unions in the Aude, 1850-1914, Berkeley. Gaboriaux, C. (2010) La République en quête de citoyens. Les républicains français face au bonapartisme rural (1848-1880), Paris. Gratton, P. (1971) La lutte des classes dans les campagnes, Paris, ——— (1969) ‘Le Communisme Rural En Corrèze’, Le Mouvement Social, 67, pp. 123-145.

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Hubscher, R. (2005) L’immigration dans les campagnes françaises, XIXe-XXe siècle, Paris. Lamarque, P. and Viala, P.-H. (2007) La révolte des vignerons du Midi de 1907. Un témoignage photographique, Narbonne. Lignereux, A. (2005) La France rébellionnaire. Les résistances à la gendarmerie (1800-1859), Rennes. Lynch, E. (2019) Insurrections paysannes, Paris. ——— (2009) ‘Pour et par le paysan. La movilizacion agraria en la Francia de entreguerras’, Historia Agraria, 49, pp. 133-159. ——— (2005) ‘Le parti agraire et paysan français entre politique et manifestation’, Histoire et sociétés, 13, pp. 54-65. Margadant, T. W. (1979) French Peasants in Revolt. The Insurrection of 1851, Princeton. Mayaud, J.-L. (1999) La petite exploitation rurale triomphante en France, XIXe siècle, Paris. Monti, A. (1998), I braccianti, Bologna. Paxton, R. O. (1996) Le temps des chemises vertes: révoltes paysannes et fascisme rural, 1929-1939, Paris. Pech R. and Maurin J. eds (2007) 1907, Les mutins de la République. La révolte du Midi viticole, Toulouse. Pennetier, C. (1979) Le socialisme dans les départements ruraux français: l’exemple du Cher (1850-1921), thèse de 3e cycle en histoire, sous la direction de Jacques Droz, Université de Paris I. Pigenet, M. (1993), ‘Ouvriers, paysans nous sommes…’. Les bûcherons du Centre de la France au tournant du siècle, Paris. ——— and Tartakowsky, D. (2003) ‘Les marches en France aux XIXe et XXe siècles: récurrence et métamorphose d’une démonstration collective’, Le Mouvement Social, 202, pp. 69-94. Prigent, F. (2008) ‘La Charrue Rouge: réseaux, pratiques et identités socialistes dans le Trégor des années 1930’, in Antoine, A. and Mischi, J. eds, Sociabilité et politique en milieu rural, Rennes. Sagnes, J. (1980) Le mouvement ouvrier du Languedoc, Toulouse. ———, Pech, M. et Pech, R. eds (1997) 1907 en Languedoc et en Roussillon, Montpellier. Tilly, C. (1984), ‘Les origines du répertoire d’action collective contemporaine en France et en Grande-Bretagne’, Vingtième Siècle. Revue d’histoire, 4, pp. 89-108. Trempé, R. (1971) Les mineurs de Carmaux, Paris. Verdejo, X. ed. (2008), Debout, les damnés de la terre! Syndicalisme révolutionnaire autour de la crise de 1907 dans le Midi viticole. Actes du colloque de Narbonne pour le centenaire des événements de 1907, Nîmes. Vigreux, J. (2000) Waldeck Rochet, une biographie politique, Paris.

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PART III

Political parties in the countryside

LEEN vAN mOLLE 

Introduction

Political history and political sciences have a long tradition of studying voting systems and elections, parliaments and governments, politicians and political parties. This research tradition tends to present political parties as the spearheads of democracy: since their establishment in the course of the nineteenth century or thereafter, in one country after another, parties have nourished public opinion, stimulated the political participation of the gradually expanding electorate, chan‐ nelled the wants and needs of their followers, and given them a voice in the ruling institutions. In doing so, they seem to have embodied ab ovo the promises of mod‐ ern politics, namely the belief that the people can rule themselves, to their own benefit. Indeed, parties manage to bridge the gap between the ‘ordinary people’ and parliaments via representatives whose legitimacy rests on their election as the spokesperson of their voters’ aspirations. But the connection between the people and party politics was, and still is, nowhere and never unproblematic. Parliamentarism and democratic ideals preceded the establishment of organised parties. Parties, once established, had difficulties in attracting enough voters from divergent social classes and interest groups and to satisfy their wishes, and party politics was never the sole form of political agency of the people, including the agency of the rural population, as is illustrated in the previous chapters ( Janse and te Velde, 2017: 1-9). Making politics in the countryside was multifaceted, throughout the whole timespan of the late eighteenth century up to World War II, ranging from old to new repertoires of individual and collective action such as lynching, obstruction, open meetings (including ‘field preaching’, as explained in chapter 9 by Řepa), pamphlets, petitions, resistance, riots, strikes, violence and, moreover, voting. The last part of this book questions the relationship between the peasantry and party politics. This is not exactly an easy topic: there is a gap between rural history and political history. The relationship between peasants and party politics has been the object of historical research far less than that between the working class and politics. Where were the country dwellers when parties came into being and began to dominate the process of democratic representation? Which party Leen Van Molle • Interfaculty Centre for Agrarian History, KU Leuven, Belgium Making Politics in the European Countryside, ed. by Laurent Brassart, Corinne Marache, Juan PanMontojo & Leen Van Molle, CORN Publication Series, 19 (Turnhout, 2022), pp. 215–222 DOI 10.1484/M.CORN-EB.5.128251

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or parties served as political platforms for agrarian interests and ruralist world views? Both questions could be answered by pointing at the persistent stereotype of an ignorant, politically disinterested and ‘naturally’ conservative peasantry. Referring to Barrington Moore’s Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Moore, 1966): when peasants in Europe turned from mere passive “objects of history” into “actors in history”, they tended to reinforce the traditionalist, if not reactionary side of politics. This was at least what conservative politicians and the Catholic church expected them to do. Anyhow, there is clearly a “fixation” in historical research, as Gollwitzer put it (Gollwitzer, 1977: 2), on the relationship between the agrarian movement on the one hand, and political movements and parties of the (ultra) right on the other, including Nazism and Fascism (for instance: Gerschenkron, 1943; Moore, 1966; Puhle, 1972; Paxton, 1997; Cabo, Prieto and Pan-Montojo, 2014). Generally speaking, the rural population has been treated in a ‘stepmotherly’ fashion in political history; unknown, inconvenient and a disruptive factor in the mainly urban-based flow of modern party politics. The march towards uni‐ versal (male) suffrage made the mass of rural voters electorally significant and, at the same time, a matter of concern for governments and parties alike. Their democratic right to vote even made possible the eventuality of an undemocratic result, as was the case in mid-nineteenth century France where the election as president of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, candidate of the conservatives and of the Church, paved the way for his coup d’état and the Second Empire (chapter 7 by Vivier). The previous chapters of this book and those following do, indeed, situate the farming population in more conservative (Catholic, monarchist) parties, but also in Christian democratic, (radical) liberal, republican and anticlerical, social‐ ist (anarchist, communist), regionalist and nationalist political formations, and furthermore, in distinct agrarian parties (with regard to communism: Vigreux, 2007; with regard to nationalism: Hroch, 1985; Beyen, Van Ginderachter, 2012). It is no exaggeration to label the farming classes – in plural due to the internal hodgepodge of large landowners, farmers, smallholders and agricultural labourers – as political semi-nomads, time and again in search of the best defender of their own particular interest. If anything, their repeated quest for the most adequate political affiliation points at the instability of their situation, and the contextuality of their choices engendered electoral fragmentation. The interests of farming people differed, throughout Europe, often from region to region, even from place to place, according to the specific agrosystem (soil conditions, crop choices, labour and property structures), the market conditions, outside influences (notably from urban centres) and power relations. The focus on local problems was and remained a feature of Europe’s scattered rural commu‐ nities until late into the nineteenth century and even beyond. Villagers had heated debates over issues such as the use of the local forest, water or a common pasture, the appointment of a schoolteacher or a parish priest. Participation in national elections was often lower in the countryside than in cities, as is documented for instance in the Swedish parliamentary elections of 1902, 1911 and 1914

INTRODUCTION

(Lewin, 1971: 197). The votes of country dwellers were or were often suspected to be votes made under the pressure of local notables (the clergy included) and along age-old lines of contention that subsequently permeated the functioning of political parties at village level. Before the secret ballot was in place, tenants (if indeed they were granted permission to vote by the landowner) would yield to the wishes of their landlord, labourers to those of their master, and devout Catholics to those of the Church (chapter 7 by Vivier). The integration of rural voters in the large ideology-based parties – conserva‐ tives, liberals and socialists – hovered with the readiness of these parties to take agrarian demands to heart. Some crucial demands, such as land repartition or tariff protection, set large landowners against tenants and landless agricultural labourers and agricultural producers against industrial workers and urban con‐ sumers. Social class is indeed, as the following chapters demonstrate, an impor‐ tant category of historical analysis to make sense of the many divergent political choices at play within the countryside. By and large, one could say that the landed nobility and large landed farmers often chose the conservative side, that crofters and the paid labour force on farms, in vineyards and in forests were gradually more attracted towards socialism, whereas medium-size and smaller farmers and tenants explored all sides of the political landscape. Growing class conscience drove the ‘agrarian defence’, a concept coined by Derek Urwin (1980), more and more apart. The Moravian example is telling in this respect, as Řepa unfolds (chapter 9). In 1861, the Moravian National Party came into being as a Czech nationalist party that rested on middle class intelligentsia, small traders and many farmers. The interplay between the interests of Czech farmers and those of Czech nationalists in this party, with its leadership of notables, crumbled away from the early 1880s onwards when imports and decreasing market prices began to undermine the profitability of agriculture. A separate Czech-Moravian peasant party tried to forge its own way during the elections of 1884 and 1890 for the provincial Diet but was eventually silenced. In 1891, the more liberal minded farmers switched to the People’s Party, a splinter group of the Moravian National Party. Subsequently, part of the rural vote went to the conservative National Catholic Party, established in 1896, and another part to the Christian Social Party, established in 1899. Another newcomer, the Moravian Agrarian Party founded in 1904, was marked by tensions between its conservative wing on the one hand, with a following largely made up of richer farmers, and its radical liberal and anticlerical wing on the other, which attracted smallholders. On top of this political tangle came the social democrats who managed, during the decade before the First World War, to expand their electorate among Moravia’s unskilled urban and rural labourers. Separate agrarian parties, for their part, were mainly late arrivals on the politi‐ cal scene and many of those were short-lived. There are, however, at least at first sight, a few noticeable exceptions. The Danish Bondevennernes Selskab, the Society of Peasant’s Friends, established in 1846, was not only the first political party in Danish history, but also the very first party that explicitly addressed the peasantry

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and relied, at least in part, on politicians from a peasant background. However, Bondevennerne soon suffered from internal discord and did not survive the shock waves within Danish politics in the 1850s and 1860s. In 1870, some of its peasant members founded a new party called Venstre (meaning ‘Left’, but in fact a liberal party) that was regarded as the party of the rural population until the 1950s. How‐ ever, Venstre experienced a rocky history during its existence, with many changes and divisions to the left and to the right of the political spectrum (cf. chapter 4 by Skov). The example of Sweden, where the elitist Lantmannapartiet (Country Party) had originated in the 1860s and which seemed to continue its path until the middle of the twentieth century, is equally misleading: its history displays multiple discontinuities, as Erik Bengtsson & Josefin Hägglund argue (chapter 12). The separate agrarian parties of Central and Eastern Europe came on the scene much later, too late to catch up with the already well-established political might of the elites in these regions: the nobility, the urban, industrial and financial bourgeoisie, and, not to forget, the Church. The Catholic Church was nota bene, in large parts of Europe, the first well-established translocal mass-organisation and had, in its own way, a firm authority and control over villages, including a certain political control. The strength of Catholic and Christian democratic parties in western and southern European countries, with their firm grip on the countryside, can consequently explain the absence of large and viable separate agrarian parties there (Gollwitzer, 1977: 7-11, 32-34, 147-168; chapter 13 by Cabo). Notwithstanding the varied pace and paths of party politics in the countryside, five common features or conditions come to the fore, throughout Europe, as is amply illustrated in this book. Firstly, as a noticeable background, the influence of reading and schooling: the combination of a rising degree of literacy among country dwellers, decreasing prices of printed paper and increasing transport facilities boosted the circulation of news and propaganda in the countryside and clearly contributed to the political socialisation of the rural public. Spanish republicans, for instance, during periods of liberal government, efficiently made use of cheap newspapers, leaflets and reading clubs to connect with countrymen and to convince them of the importance of political participation (chapter 10 by Peyrou). In Moravia, newspapers in the Czech language played an influential role in the mobilisation of country people for the Czech national movement within the Austro-Hungarian Empire (chapter 9 by Řepa). In the Scandinavian countries, the so-called folk high schools acted as emancipatory tools, offering their adult public in the countryside both vocational education and a broader world view (chapter 4 by Skov, chapter 12 by Bengtsson & Hägglund). Secondly, and related to the first point, the introduction of civil liberties – especially the freedom of speech, press, association and assembly – shaped the necessary conditions to develop and spread political opinions and to organise pressure groups and parties. No wonder that the granting (or withdrawal) of these and other liberties – such as the liberation from feudal tithes, dues and forced labour – became in themselves an issue of political striving and contention in the countryside (chapters 3, 9, 10, 11 by Grüne, Řepa, Peyrou, Planas & Soler).

INTRODUCTION

Tension and conflict arose, a third common point, evidently with every change in the voting system that could weaken the political power of the landed elites and strengthen the voices of the rural masses, or in some cases vice versa. The introduction of universal (male) suffrage for parliamentary elections – in France in 1848, in Spain in 1869-1873 and again in 1890, in Germany in 1871, Belgium 1893, Austria 1907, Sweden 1908, Italy 1912, etc., each European country at its own pace – functioned everywhere as a double wake-up call: to the political consciousness of the country dwellers and to the political parties to take the rural voters seriously. The emerging social democratic parties in particular had insisted on electoral democratisation because they were well aware that, if they could capture both the votes of the industrial working class (not yet very numerous in most countries) and of a part of the (numerous) peasantry (smallholders, small tenants, sharecroppers, agricultural labourers, and the frequent combinations of these categories), they might win a majority in parliaments and even obtain access to government. Although orthodox Marxist theory, as propagated by Engels and other established ‘Marxists’, stated that the peasantry was doomed to disappear,1 social democrats across Europe began to reconsider the issue, re-tailored their program (by including points such as better wages for agricultural labourers, the establishment of producers’ cooperatives and, with slightly more hesitation, the ad hoc preservation of small ownership) and tried to adapt their propaganda tactics to the susceptibilities of the agricultural proletariat (examples from all corners of continental Europe in Blok et al., 2002). It must be said that the context facilitated the attraction of the social democratic alternative: many interwoven setbacks paved the way for peasant unrest and political volatility among country dwellers, such as the remainders of feudal coercion in Central and Eastern Europe, overpopulation in many rural areas (as in parts of Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and Spain), high prices for land, collapsing prices for agricultural produce during the Great Depression, and rural unemployment. However, all in all, the socialists met with little success in creating a significant following among Europe’s farming folk, apart from some clusters of rural wage labourers in ‘red rural areas’ (as in Southern France, Northern Italy and Spain). Jointly responsible for this was the strong and purposeful anti-socialist counter-offensive. As soon as social democrats tried to reap profit from the extension of the vote, other parties – the conservative and confessional parties very much in the fore – developed a conspicuous ‘fear of the red’ rhetoric and doubled their electoral efforts in the countryside (examples in Delwit and Gotovitch, 1996; Blok et al., 2002). Needless to say, elections in‐ creasingly became the pre-eminent arena for the political socialisation of villagers (cf. also the chapters 3 by Grüne and 7 by Vivier). The fourth element reinforced the importance of the enfranchisement: the agricultural crisis of the late nineteenth century. Economic self-interest proved to 1 After the publication of the first volume of Das Kapital in 1867, Marx would have changed his mind with regard to the sense and value of traditional village communities, cf. the intellectual biography by Stedman Jones (2016).

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be the most decisive argument to mobilise and politically activate farming people, far beyond the scope of village politics. The transnational origins of the crisis called for a firm protectionist or restructuring policy at the highest level, being the national parliaments and governments. The crisis created a ‘state of emergency’ and functioned thus as a catalyst: the call for support, if not for direct protection via high import duties, engendered the establishment of an impressive range of agricultural associations and drove many small farmers, tenants and farm hands to the ballot for the first time in their lives. In Sweden, for instance, the voter turnout rose from 25% in 1884 to 50% in 1887, clearly because so many hoped for tariffs against the grain imports from Russia and North America. The Swedish Country Party foundered on the issue of protectionism and split up, while other parties used tariffs as an appealing promise to gain votes, the Moravian National Party be‐ ing an example (chapter 9 by Řepa and 12 by Bengtsson & Hägglund). Florencia Peyrou (chapter 10) also gives convincing evidence of the weight of a concrete political program, tailored to the current needs of the farming population, as an efficient means to attract rural votes. The Spanish republicans, so she reveals, cleverly combined the defence of their democratic principles with claims such as the redistribution of farmland among smallholders and agricultural labourers and local self-government as a way to entrust power to the people, at the expense of the omnipotence of the local bosses (caciquismo). The fifth common element is tributary to the previous four and functioned, as many cases demonstrate, as a stepping-stone or even as the keystone to mass politics in the countryside, namely the foundation and rapid spread of agricultural associations. In Catalonia, for instance, as shown by Jordi Planas and Raimon Soler (chapter 11), agricultural organisations played a central role in gradually weakening the influence of the two hegemonic ‘dynastic parties’ (conservatives and liberals) and paving the way for the breakthrough, from the early twentieth century onwards, of the people-friendly regionalist and republican parties. Their conclusion is clear: associations of farming people, with their bottom-up dynam‐ ics, advanced the democratisation process. During the nineteenth century, the whole of Europe was in the grip of an ‘associational mania’, even in the country‐ side. Whether called agricultural societies, agricultural clubs, farmers’ unions, Bauernbunde, dairy cooperatives, syndicats agricoles, unions of agricultural workers and so forth: associational life, at the local level and united at the regional and national level, proved to be the ideal, if not the necessary platform to link farmers directly or indirectly to party politics, as comes to the fore in the chapter 9 by Řepa regarding Moravia (see also Aldenhoff-Hübinger, 2006; Sanz Lafuente, 2006). Agricultural associations seem to have played a marked politicising role everywhere, from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean, from the east to the west. This is also what Miguel Cabo observes with regard to the autonomous agrarian parties: all successful agrarian parties came into being after the establishment of agricultural associations in the region, they rested on these associations and, as time went on, the associations also tended to rely on them. The associations empowered their members: they advanced the networking within villages, their

INTRODUCTION

meetings served as a training ground for democratic concertation and their voca‐ tional education helped to connect the local communities to the outside world of higher education, scientific research, national and international agricultural markets, politics and the State. But it remains less transparent to what degree the farming population made their own political choices, or whether they were carried away by the choice of the associational leadership. This is what Nadine Vivier notes with regard to France, when mentioning the power of the conservative federation of agricultural syndicats in the rue d’Athènes, and of the republican federation in the boulevard Saint-Germain. These types of large agricultural associations, as institutionalised conglomerates of agrarian interest, managed indeed to instrumentalise the agrar‐ ian discontent to the benefit of ‘their’ political party, but not just from above. Interestingly, many associations were established and guided by ‘cultural amphib‐ ians’:2 charismatic leading figures with firm roots in the countryside, originating from farming families or families of large landowners, but more educated (as agronomists, veterinarians, lawyers, teachers or priests for instance) than most country folk, and thus well suited to act as intermediaries between the rural population and urban centres, and between local and national political concerns (Segers and Van Molle, 2022: introduction). The mobilisation of farmers was built upon a constant interaction between top-down and bottom-up forces. Across Europe, the many-branched farmers’ organisations, with their numerous member‐ ship and varied services (weekly and other publications, technical demonstrations and advice, mutual insurances, cooperative purchase of fertilizer and fodder, sav‐ ings and credit unions, etc.) shaped, as the time went on, a powerful all-embracing farmers’ movement. This corresponds to what Charles Tilly has labelled “social movements as politics” (Tilly et all, 2020): social movements as the “major vehicles for ordinary people’s participation in politics”, as vectors for collective claims and collective action. The agricultural associations furthered the sociability of their members, mobilised them to enforce favourable law-making, modelled their common identity as members of the farming class and, ultimately, steered their voting behaviour.

2 This concept comes from M. MacDonald (1986) ‘The Secularization of Suicide in England’, Past and Present 111, p. 67 and has been taken over by many in various contexts.

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Bibliography Aldenhoff-Hübinger, R. (2006) ‘La politisation des campagnes à travers l’agrarisme et le protectionnisme à la fin du XIXe siècle en Europe (Allemagne, France, Italie)’, in J.-L. Mayaud and L. Raphael eds, Histoire de l’Europe rurale contemporaine. Du village à l’État, Paris, pp. 163-176. Beyen, M. and Van Ginderachter, M. eds (2012) Nationhood from Below. Europe in the Long Nineteenth Century, Basingstoke – New York. Blok, A. eds (2002) Urban Radicals, Rural Allies. Social Democracy and the Agrarian Issue, 1870-1914, Bern. Cabo, M., Prieto, L. and Pan-Montojo, J. eds (2014) Agriculture in the age of Fascism. Authoritarian Technocracy and Rural Modernization, 1922-1945, Turnhout. Delwit, P. and Gotovitch, J. eds (1996) La peur du rouge, Bruxelles. Gerschenkron, A. (1943) Bread and Democracy in Germany, Berkeley. Gollwitzer, H. (ed.) (1977) Europäische Bauernparteien im 20. Jahrhundert, Stuttgart – New York. Hroch, M. (1985) Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe. A Comparative Analysis of the Social Composition of Patriotic Groups among the Smaller European Nations, Cambridge. Janse, M. and te Velde, H. (2017) ‘Perspectives on political organizing’, in H. te Velde and M. Janse eds, Organizing Democracy. Reflections on the Rise of Political Organizations in the Nineteenth Century, Basingstoke, pp. 1-18. Moore, B. (1966) Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World, Boston. Paxton, R. (1997) French Peasant Fascism: Henry Dorgères’s Greenshirts and the Crises of French Agriculture, 1929-1939, Oxford. Puhle, H. J. (1972) Von der Agrarkrise zum Prefascismus, Wiesbaden. Sanz Lafuente, G. (2006) ‘Une relecture des grandes organisations de propriétaires terriens en Europe: entre l’entreprise coopérative, la transformation agraire et la politisation des campagnes 1880-1939’, in J.-L. Mayaud and L. Raphael eds, Histoire de l’Europe rurale contemporaine. Du village à l’État, Parijs, pp. 117-137. Segers, Y. and Van Molle, L. eds (2022) Agricultural Knowledge Networks in Rural Europe since 1700, Woodbridge. Stedman Jones, G. (2016) Karl Marx, Greatness and Illusion. Cambridge Mass. Tilly, Ch., Castaneda, E. and Wood, L. J. (4th ed. 2020) Social Movements 1768-2018, New York – Abingdon. Urwin, D. W. (1980) From Ploughshare to Ballotbox. The Politics of Agrarian Defence in Europe, Oslo. Vigreux, J. (2007) ‘Le communisme rural en Europe, entre agrarisme progressiste et modèle collectiviste’, in P. Cornu and J.-L. Mayaud eds, Au nom de la terre. Agrarisme et agrariens en France et en Europe du 19e siècle à nos jours, Paris, pp. 257-274.

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9. Between the nation and self-interest: the Czech peasantry in Moravia at the daybreak of civil society, 1848-1914

Czech history significantly lacks comprehensive research on the life of the rural population in the nineteenth century. The ideologically determined historiogra‐ phy of 1948-1989 favoured the themes of the Industrial Revolution and the labour movement; however, at least a few principal studies dealt with the economic activities of peasants and their associations.1 Although post 1989 research into the political life in the Bohemian Lands in the second half of the nineteenth century registered a considerable boom, historians paid much more attention to analyses of the urban milieu, such as its political elites, the formation of the political parties, self-government or the development of the civil society. The politicisation of the countryside remained a neglected perspective. This deficit arises especially in comparison with the development of research on Austrian, German, Polish or Galician peasants.2 This study is therefore one of the first more consistent attempts to fill this imaginary blank space.3 From the whole of the Bohemian Lands – including Bohemia, Moravia and the Austrian part of Silesia – it concen‐ trates on Moravia, until 1918 one of the “provinces” of the Cisleithanian part

1 For Bohemia: Havránek, 1966; Havránek, Petráň, 1969. For Moravia: Kraváček, 1976 and 1982; Verbík, 1970, 1977 and 1978b; Pospěch, 1981. 2 Schultz, Harre, 2010; Lorenz, 2006. For Austrian peasants in general, e.g. Bruckmüller, 2010b. For Galicia: Himka, 1988; Zayarnyuk, 2003; Stauter-Halsted, 2004; Struve, 2005. For Polish peasants: Brodowska, 1984; Molenda, 1999; Hampel, 2008; Karczewska, 2017. For drawing my attention to key works by Polish historians, I thank my colleague Pavel Kladiwa. 3 This study was created as part of the grant project Transformation and Social Activation of Rural Areas in Moravia and Austrian Silesia, 1861-1914 (supported by the Czech Science Foundation, funding project no. 17-02986S). Author owes many findings to other participants in the project: Andrea Pokludová, Pavel Kladiwa, Petr Popelka and Pavel Cibulka. Milan Řepa • Institute of History of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Brno, Czech Republic Making Politics in the European Countryside, ed. by Laurent Brassart, Corinne Marache, Juan PanMontojo & Leen Van Molle, CORN Publication Series, 19 (Turnhout, 2022), pp. 223–246 DOI 10.1484/M.CORN-EB.5.128252

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Map 9.1: Moravia within Austria-Hungary in the early twentieth century (William R. Shepherd, ‘Distribution of races in Austria-Hungary’, Historical Atlas, New York, 1911, p. 168).

of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.4 Moravia, like Bohemia and Lower and Upper Austria, was characterised by a relatively high population density, a good quality of primary education and a rather high literacy rate. These features distinguished the western parts of the Habsburg Monarchy from its eastern parts – Slovakia, Hungary (the Magyar territories) and, to some extent, Galicia. The development of political life and civil society in Moravia and Bohemia was complicated by the co-existence of two national identities, Czechs and Germans; in Moravia the German population made up about a quarter of the population. This made both lands different from their nearest southern neighbours, Lower and Upper Austria, which were nationally homogeneous. The study outlines the process of involvement of the rural population in Moravian public life from 1848 to 1914 and identifies its essential factors. It

4 The author builds on his earlier works on the diffusion of the national consciousness in Moravia in the second half of the 19th century, dealing with both the Czech and German nationalist movements (Řepa, 2001 and 2014). Regarding the political history of Moravia during this period, see especially Malíř, 1996, 2009 and 2014, and Malíř and Řepa, 2018.

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considers, on the one hand, the extent to which the Czech nationalist movement contributed to the politicisation of the countryside, and how much, on the other hand, this politicisation relied also on the initiative of the villagers and the needs of the peasants themselves. The analysis is based primarily on the materials from the Czech milieu, but for comparative purposes it also notes the German environment and emphasises how it differed from the Czech one.

I. The foundations of peasant associational life, circa 1848-1875 Similarly to other Central European countries, in Moravia the Revolution of 1848/1849 also constituted a turning point in the political life of peasants. Even as late as at the beginning of this revolution, their traditional form of protest endured in the form of petitions with complaints and requests. At that time, their aspirations were aimed at only one goal – the abolition of peasant dues. Gradually, however, country people were confronted with the first manifestations of modern politics: the formation of associations, journalism and elections. The election campaigns intensified the atmosphere, as in May and June 1848 alone there were no less than three elections held in Moravia: for the Moravian Provincial Diet, the Frankfurt Parliament, and the Austrian Reichstag. For agrarian Moravia, the Provincial Diet – which was in session from late May 1848 until January 1849 – was the most important. It was dubbed the “Peasant Diet” for the numerous peasants among its deputies, as it was elected on the basis of a relatively wide male suffrage, whose extent was only surpassed by the introduction of universal male suffrage in 1907. The representatives of the peasants were certainly not mere spectators; some of them actively joined the debates, or even filed bills. On 9th June 1848, the Moravian Diet passed a decree on the liberation of the peasantry from dues, thus outstripping even the famous decree on the abolition of serfdom promulgated by the Reichstag in Vienna on 7th September 1848. The compensation for the abolition of serfdom in favour of the former manorial landlords did put a strain on the peasants, but to a viable extent – in contrast to Slovakia and Hungary where semi-feudal residues remained in existence for a long time, and the payment of compensation for redemption from serfdom stretched throughout the entire nineteenth century. The abolition of serfdom meant an end to the revolution for the peasants (Blum, 1978: 360). Nevertheless, 1848 showed that there were individuals growing up in the Moravian countryside capable of representing and defending peasant interests at the parliamentary level. Although the revolutionary “Spring of Nations” of 1848/1849 lasted only a year, it left valuable political experience which survived the neo-absolutist regime of the 1850s and thanks to which the restoration of constitutional life in 1861 did not start from scratch. The neo-absolutist regime of the 1850s, which followed the defeat of the revolution in spring 1849, was in many respects ambivalent. On the one hand, it suspended the development of civil society initiatives (free

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journalism and associational life) and of parliamentary democracy. On the other hand, the neo-absolutist “cautious” modernisation contributed a great deal to developing the economic potential and to improving the state administration and education in the Austrian Monarchy. For peasants, the main benefit from the Revolution of 1848 was preserved, their emancipation from serfdom. More‐ over, rural municipalities had gained communal autonomy, however limited – municipal elections, for example, were held in 1850 and after that only in 1861 – and controlled by state bureaucracy. The communal autonomy was a necessary step because of the abolition of patrimonial administration. However, the local self-government constituted – especially for the smallest municipalities – a con‐ siderable administrative as well as economic burden. The state did realise that for the modernisation of the countryside, mere legal emancipation or self-government would not suffice. It was necessary to help the peasants in the process of engaging agricultural production into the wider market economy, so that they would be able to withstand the competition from the large landowners. In the 1850s the state therefore supported the establishment of dis‐ trict agricultural clubs as branches of provincial agricultural societies. These had been founded in the first half of the nineteenth century as organisations serving the economic interests and needs of manor farm estates. The main sense of the network of agricultural clubs was to improve peasant production, as a response to the complicated changes that the countryside was undergoing after the abolition of serfdom. The help of the district agricultural clubs enabled the transition from the extensive three-field system to more intensive mixed farming. The clubs advo‐ cated introducing other crops such as forage and industrial crops, improving and extending cattle breeding, using artificial fertilisers, employing new technology, land development and land consolidation (Verbík, 1978b: 99-100). In Moravia, the district agricultural clubs started to be established as branches of the semi-governmental Moravian-Silesian Agricultural Society, which was founded in 1811, uniting mainly state and manor farm estate clerks, clergymen, teachers, and publicists, etc. This society retained much of its original exclusive‐ ness, even under the changed conditions in the second half of the nineteenth century, and this exclusiveness was, at the beginning, taken over by the newly established district branches. That is why non-rural personalities initially prevailed in these first district clubs, while peasants only gradually overcame their distrust. At first, mainly progressive and usually wealthier farmers joined them, whereas the number of peasants in most of these clubs did not exceed half of the members. Besides academic articles in journals, direct educational efforts of the Society and the clubs also included lectures at annual general meetings and field preach‐ ing. The principle of field preaching lay in that peasants from wider surroundings gathered in an open space and listened to several presentations on current eco‐ nomic issues. This form of education enjoyed considerable success (Kraváček, 1976: 12). By participating in these events, the peasants crossed the horizon of their local experience. Even non-members could freely attend the meetings of Moravian clubs, and it was possible to hold them arbitrarily in any location

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of the district. Moravian clubs were much more numerous in comparison with the Bohemian ones, and the number of people participating in their activities was larger than in Bohemia. The clubs meant much for the development of the peasants’ socialisation and public involvement. Ironically, this was an unintended consequence since their original mission had been purely educational. The first district agricultural organisations laid down the basis for the further development of associational life of the Moravian peasantry. In the 1860s the establishment of even more district agricultural clubs, as branches of the Moravian-Silesian Agricultural Society, continued. Their operation was, however, limited by the fact that the headquarters of the Agricultural Society in Brno decided on the allocation of subsidies to the individual branches, thus being able to influence their activities. The liberal December Constitution of 1867 provided new, free opportunities for establishing associations. Consequently, an impressive number of associations with varied objectives was formed across all of Moravia. Whereas in 1869 there were 684 of them, in 1880 there were already 2,912, and ten years later 3,678. Although not all associations operated in the same way, these figures have a certain informative value; after all, in 1910 Moravia counted one association per 203 inhabitants ( Janák, 1993: 74-75). Importantly, these associations, and not the political parties, laid the foundations of the civil society in the Czech part of Moravia. After 1867, most district agricultural clubs used the freedom of association to their advantage to emancipate themselves from the headquarters in Brno and to become independent. Although the agricultural organisations were not the only associational type in rural areas, their significance lay in the fact that – in contrast to other rural associations, such as reading clubs or choirs, which operated purely locally – their activities generally covered the whole district and often even exceeded its boundaries. The network of agricultural associations therefore became the backbone of associational life in the countryside. In 1868 there were twenty-eight district agricultural associations in Moravia, whereas in 1875 there were already thirty-seven associations, twenty-one of which were Czech. In 1884, Moravia counted a total of fifty-four agricultural associations with 12,777 members, thirty-six of which were Czech with 8,216 members. In the 1890s agricultural associations existed in all judicial districts; by 1896 their number had increased to 102 (Verbík, 1970 and 1978b). Although focussed on agricultural and economic issues, the agricultural clubs and associations also significantly contributed to the political and cultural devel‐ opment of the country dwellers. In a time of limited public activity, particularly such as in the 1850s and 1860s, the gatherings of the agricultural organisations substituted political action. As unintended consequences, many district agricul‐ tural clubs cultivated not only professional knowledge but fostered also democra‐ tic principles. Peasants could then use the gained experiences and skills for local self-government, with which they had had little experience until then (Verbík, 1970: 240). Peasant organisations in Moravia therefore acted as a factor of politi‐

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cal and social emancipation and integration in the Czech nationhood. The largest and most influential Czech rural associations were established in Central Moravia, in a region called Haná, which was the most agriculturally advanced territory in Moravia. Haná was one of the few Moravian regions with a relatively homogenous rural population of which more than 90% were Czechs. Gradually, notable figures came to the fore in the ranks of the peasantry, who were able to activate their surroundings and to even make a breakthrough in council elections (Kutnar, 1966; Verbík, 1970). At first there were two activists from Haná who distinguished themselves the most, František Skopalík and Jan Rudolf Demel. Each represented a different type of activism in the rural milieu. František Skopalík (1822-1891) was the prototype of an old-world farmer, who attended the sessions of the Moravian Provincial Diet and Austrian Reichstag in a traditional folk costume. His conservative political and social stances did not preclude progressive opinions regarding economic matters. He was a man of deep piety, who respected the political authorities, accepted the status quo in the social hierarchy, and warmly embraced the Czech nationalist feeling (Obrtel, 1937; Sobek, 1946). Skopalík was close to Jan Rudolf Demel (1833-1905), head of the District Agricultural Club in Olomouc (Olmütz), the second largest Moravian city. While Skopalík was basically a self-made man, Demel came from an urban milieu and a financially secure family. He studied natural sciences at the Universities of Science and Technology in Prague and Vienna, after which he taught biology and chemistry at a secondary school. While Skopalík was devoted to the Moravian National Party and the principle of one party covering the broad interests of all Czech inhabitants, Demel regularly came into conflict with the leaders of Czech politics in Moravia, gradually becoming convinced that peasant interests would most reliably be represented by an independent peasant political organi‐ sation. Demel’s greatest contribution to the cause of agrarian Moravia lay in that he created a comprehensive programme of organisational, educational and entrepreneurial activity in the Czech milieu of the Central Moravian countryside. Demel’s approach found its concrete significance in the establishment of peasant credit unions, a specific Moravian form of agricultural credit organisation, which brought, especially in the first stage of their existence, relief to the peasantry by providing favourable credit. Already at the turn of the 1870s, these unions became a pivot for the accumulation of agrarian capital (Verbík, 1977: 123-124). Together with Skopalík, Demel advocated the creation of agricultural schools for the peasant youth. The successes that the agricultural associations from the Haná region reached, when educating their own youth, contributed to a large degree to the fact that, in the later nineteenth century, both in terms of the extent and level of agrarian schooling, Moravia had surpassed Bohemia, becoming, from this perspective, the most developed province in Austria-Hungary (Kraváček, 1976: 37).

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II. Political life and the significance of the countryside for the Czech nationalist movement, c. 1860-1880 In the second half of the nineteenth century, the politicisation of the Moravian peasantry came from the mutual impact of the nationalist movement and of associational life: both flows intermingled. While the activities of the associations remained regional and concerned merely practical matters, the nationalist move‐ ment succeeded in integrating peasants into the wider society. In order to understand the position of the peasantry in the political life in Moravia during the period under consideration, it is necessary to mention the specificities of the electoral system, which was characterised by electoral curiae, census suffrage, and single-seat electoral districts with a majority system.5 It was as if the curial system preserved the pre-1848 division of the society into estates which no longer corresponded to its dynamical development as it favoured partic‐ ular social and professional groups (Malíř, 2014: 110-111). A consequence was that the Moravian political scene was dominated by the noble landowners, the representatives of the German Liberals, and the leaders of the Czech nationalist movement. The German Liberals and the Moravian (i.e. Czech) National Party both claimed to be the exclusive defenders of all interests of respectively the German and the Czech population. This situation unquestionably hindered the process of diversification of the political scene into a party system, which did not occur before the end of 1880s. The extremely complicated electoral geometry favoured the German popula‐ tion because, in general, the Czechs paid less taxes than the German inhabitants. Although the proportion of Czechs to Germans was 3 to 1, the ratio of deputy seats was approximately 2 to 3 in favour of the Germans. It was only after 1884 that the balance of power was evened out. Owing to this, the German Liberals held the majority in the Moravian Provincial Diet until the beginning of the twen‐ tieth century. The curial electoral system strongly reduced the possibility of the Moravian National Party, established in 1861, to make a significant breakthrough in the curia of town districts, unlike in that of rural districts, where most of their deputies were elected. From the late 1870s, the division of mandates between Czech and German provincial deputies elected in the curia of rural districts stabilised on the ratio 23: 8. The social base of the Moravian National Party was conditioned by the struc‐ ture of the Czech population in Moravia which, until the late nineteenth century, had lacked industrialists and other big entrepreneurs. Middle class intelligentsia, including clergy, craftsmen, small traders and peasants prevailed. From 1861 to 1890, the Czech provincial deputies in Moravia were, to a large extent, peasants, who (with the exception of the election of 1867) formed at least one quarter of 5 Elections were held in groups or classes (called curiae) of electors. Regarding the Moravian Diet elections, there were three curiae: I. the curia of landowners; II. the curia of town districts and of trade and industry chambers; III. the curia of rural districts.

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all Czech deputies, followed by lawyers with 20% and priests with 12-17%. Other social groups never gained more than one tenth of the Czech mandates. The Czech representation contrasted considerably with the representation of the German Liberals who, apart from many from the intelligentsia, sent a lot of members of the entrepreneurial bourgeoisie to the Diet, including prominent Moravian industrialists. The German Liberals usually supported all measures leading to the freedom of enterprise and civil liberties. A number of German deputies were mayors of important Moravian cities and larger towns, while some Czech deputies were mayors of smaller towns or merely villages. Consequently, the power of the Moravian National Party rested on rural voters. Inevitably, its programme had to adapt to the social and economic situation of the peasantry: the party opposed free trade and advanced demands such as the protection of small entrepreneurship, legal measures against usury, and policy against the pauperisation of the countryside. The Czech political representation also tried to strengthen the economic position of the Czech population outside the Diet. It reinforced Czech capital via the creation of savings banks, credit unions, joint-stock companies, and produc‐ tion cooperatives, etc. Moreover, it tried to enforce the protection of small-scale production against economic liberalism. For this last endeavour, it found allies – perhaps paradoxically – not only in the peasantry, but also among the conserv‐ ative large landowners. The Czech political elite had, indeed, close relationships with the peasant milieu. One reason for that was the fact that the Czech industry, trade and banking were, to a great extent, linked with agriculture, as was the case for sugar refineries, breweries, malthouses, savings banks, etc. Besides, a few successful peasants managed to become members the agrarian bourgeoisie (Malíř, 2014: 121). Another reason was to be found in the geography of Moravia: the region counted few larger cities; many towns had a strong rural basis and the difference between small towns and villages was not apparent. Moreover, the relatively high population density enabled an intensive social communication all over the region. The fact that the Moravian National Party remained the only representative of Czech politics until as late as the 1880s had one significant consequence, namely that its leaders were not forced to engage in more intensive pre-election agitation, either in towns or in the countryside. The same held true for the German nation‐ alist camp. The Moravian National Party was run by a group of deputies who could count on a network of mediators across Moravia. However, this network was usually activated only at the time of elections and communication between the party leadership and the local mediators was slow; associational activity and the press were not enough to overcome this communicative gap. All of this complicated the process of the politicisation of rural areas, but with the advantage that local officials had the liberty to take initiatives of a bottom-up character. To sum up, Czechs and Germans were political rivals, but there was a clear difference between them regarding their respective spheres of interest. While the Czech political representatives, in accordance with the social composition and

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needs of Czech society, were extremely active in educational, agricultural and municipal matters, the German politicians mostly dealt with issues related to industry and trade. Mainly thanks to the Czech representatives, the Moravian Provincial Diet adopted a number of acts and took measures to protect and support agriculture (for instance cattle insurance, improvement of cattle breeding and protection of the sugar industry). From the beginning of the 1860s, the question of nationhood formed the main line of conflict in the Bohemian Lands. For Czech politics, ethnic differences were far more important than common ideologies or shared interests. As in Bohemia, in Moravia the representatives of Czech nationalist politics favoured the principle of ‘Bohemian state law’. This political notion was based on the claim that the historical ‘Lands of the Bohemian Crown’ had never ceased to exist and that their fate should be determined in a mutual agreement by the Bohemian king (i.e. the Austrian Emperor) and elected representatives of the Czech political nation (Pánek – Tůma, 2018: 367). For Czechs in the 1860s and 1870s, politics were basically reduced to a struggle for Czech national rights, which the public perceived as a clash between Czechs and Germans. This nationalist antagonism was even more amplified by the fact – for which there is a lot of evidence in the contemporary press, literature and even in sources of a private nature, such as memoirs or correspondence – that the lower strata of society understood social inequalities through a nationalistic lens. Being “German” meant having better prospects for a good position in society, whereas being Czech equalled poverty. In this simplified form, the Czech nationalist policy became comprehensible, and thus had the great potential to mobilise a broad stratum of the Czech population. Czech nationalist agitation was gaining in strength from the early 1860s on‐ wards, reaching an extraordinary intensity around 1870. The politically turbulent years of 1866-1873 constituted a significant milestone, also for the politicisation of the Moravian countryside. Important events – like the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, the Austro-Hungarian Compromise and December Constitution of 1867, the failed negotiations of 1871 to realise an Austro-Bohemian compromise, and the five elections for the Provincial Diet from 1867 to 1871 – unusually mobilised public opinion, including those in the Moravian countryside. Although the basic impulses for the various forms of protest movements came from the centre of the political scene, the response in the countryside was quite extensive. The most valuable source for capturing the waves of protest is the daily press of the period, which closely surveyed the course of the protests in various parts of the country. An analysis of this source makes it possible to identify to what extent and in what ways the rural population was involved. In the summer of 1868, two declarations by Czech deputies at the Provincial Diets in Prague and Brno attracted public attention. Regarding Bohemian histori‐ cal state law, both declarations refused to recognise the December Constitution and the Austro-Hungarian Compromise. They aroused a wave of reaction when many claims of support were published in Czech papers. From 27th August 1868, the daily Moravská orlice [Moravian Eagle] – in the second half of the nineteenth

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century the most influential Czech daily in Moravia – began publishing a column entitled “An Agreement of the Nation with the Deputies”. In essence, it called on the public to send expressions of their support for the Czech deputies to the editorial office, which were then published. From 30th August 1868 and virtually every day until 27th October, such statements were quoted on the front page. The range of senders was diverse; both towns and villages responded. Often, it was municipal councils which sent statements on behalf of their citizens. This shows the growing self-confidence of local authorities; they took up fundamental stances regarding matters of national interest, although this might have put them in conflict with the state power. Examples of the coordinated action by several municipalities indicates an even higher level of communication and consultation: a typical case being an assembly of mayors, most often within the district, but also meetings of associations which provided suitable opportunities for joint statements. These ostentatious expressions of support for the Czech political representa‐ tion were only a prelude to much larger events, in the form of mass gatherings that developed into a mass movement, called the Tabor movement.6 The original aim of these mass meetings was to support the nationalist agenda of the Czech political leaders, but also many specific demands (social, economic, religious, educational) were heard. It was precisely the Tabor movement that brought the important political events to the countryside. The gatherings were held outside city grounds, in the open air, most often on hills. Their mass character was un‐ precedented, with tens of thousands of inhabitants participating in some of them. From the first meeting in 1868, the period of organising gatherings in Moravia basically lasted six years, though with an uneven intensity. The peaks came in 1869 and 1871. The organisers of the gatherings clearly had the ambition to reach the widest possible audience, at least into the neighbouring districts. Therefore, they published advertisements in the press, especially in the Moravská orlice. Newspapers, written in Czech, not only reported on the events, but also called for participation, introduced the organisers, described their course in relative detail, and reprinted the entire text of the speeches. The daily press had thus become one of the main factors in mobilising public opinion. In the organisation of gatherings, Moravia was inspired by neighbouring Bohemia. However, the Moravian Tabor movement differed from the one in Bohemia in two fundamental aspects. In the first place, the Moravian gatherings were mainly based on local initiatives and were thus not steered from above by political representatives of the Moravian National Party. Furthermore, it was local officials who predominated among the initiators and organisers. Secondly, most Moravian gatherings had a highly religious character, resulting to a large extent from the priests’ significant role in the economic and cultural development of 6 These mass gatherings were called tábory lidu [people camps]. The word Tabor suggested a reminiscence of the Hussite movement; Tábor is a town founded by the radical wing of the Hussites in 1420.

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Moravia in the second half of the nineteenth century. Their public activity was also reflected in the composition of the preparatory committees and the list of speakers. Significantly, the district agricultural clubs or associations were involved in the organisation of the Moravian gatherings. This fact confirms once more their continuous importance for the socialisation and politicisation of the rural popula‐ tion. Especially in the early years of the Tabor movement – 1868 and 1869 – economic motives played a key role in organising the mass meetings. Gatherings intended for peasants could benefit from the tradition of field sermons, were often organised by the district agricultural associations, and placed topics related to farming on the agenda. This connection with agricultural matters was, indeed, necessary because the program of the meetings was subject to the approval of district authorities. The organisers thus had to choose topics that increased the chance that their request would be accepted. In any case, economic issues appeared to be less problematic than political ones. In some invitations we find the organisers listed by name, which enables us, at least in these cases, to analyse the social profile of the preparatory committees. Most organising teams had a mixed composition, bringing together representa‐ tives of various social strata and professional groups, including mayors, parish priests, craftsmen, small traders, entrepreneurs, as well as peasants. Exceptionally, the preparatory committee of a gathering consisted almost exclusively of peasants. Because they were given a festive character, the Tabor gatherings became magnif‐ icent representations of the national identity of the Czech people and of the identity of particular regions. In eastern Moravia, they also included ceremonial processions, where peasants came in festive folk costumes and where the biggest attraction for broad strata of the rural population were horseback riding groups of young men (Verbík, 1978: 109-111; Janák, 1958). These waves of protest were completed at the turn of 1873 by a new type of political mobilisation, the petition movement. This movement was initiated by the liberal wing of the Moravian National Party, grouped within the Political Society (Politický spolek) in Brno, which by mid-December 1872 had sent a protest note to the government against changes to the electoral law. This electoral reform intro‐ duced direct elections to the Reichsrat, without the intermediary role of provincial diets. It was considered a means of strengthening German liberal dominance (Beller, 2018: 142). By mid-January 1873, the Political Society had turned to various local activists to develop the petition movement in their surroundings. Moravian newspapers – such as the Moravská orlice, Občan [Citizen], Našinec [Countryman] and Pozor [Attention] – contributed also to the development of the movement which lasted for the first three months of 1873, reaching its peak between mid-January and the end of February. Whether a petition would be sent was either agreed on by the entire municipal council, or only by the mayor and his councillors, or in some cases – especially in municipalities dominated by Germans – by several citizens. In total, 152 Moravian municipalities participated,

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smaller towns as well as rural municipalities, representing twenty out of the thirty districts, leaving aside the districts with a predominantly German population. In the face of the growing Czech nationalist movement, even the political representatives of the Moravian Germans began to recognise the potential of the political activation of the countryside. The German press started, from the 1870s onwards, to point at the political passivity in German speaking rural areas and calling for the German political elites to pay more attention to the countryside.

III. The rising of a peasant political movement in the 1880s and 1890s After its upsurge in around 1870, there came a downturn in the Czech nationalist movement. The failure of the Austro-Bohemian Compromise undoubtedly con‐ tributed to this, as the mobilisation of public opinion had not helped to achieve its political objectives. The outbreak of the economic crisis in 1873 added to the feeling of failure, a prolonged agrarian crisis that lasted to the end of the 1880s and which had a considerable impact on life in the Moravian countryside. The crisis affected not only the agricultural sector and the standard of life of the peasants, but also changed their thinking about their position in society and their relationship with politics. The owners of smaller or medium farms, who were primarily dependent on the sales of their produce, responded to the crisis by more intensive association.7 Via the establishment of production and consumer cooperatives, joint-stock companies (for instance sugar refineries, malting plants and breweries), credit unions, agricultural schools and professional journals, they were not only looking for protection and the safeguarding of their economic position, but also for new forms of self-help and for the means to make their agricultural activities more productive. In comparison with Bohemia, the number of agricultural organisations was, at least in some respects, higher. One of the reasons for the disproportionately high number of credit unions in Moravia was their steady upsurge in the countryside, at least in the areas with a Czech predominance (Kraváček, 1976: 21-22). The reaction to the crisis once again showed the different stance of Czech and German peasants. Moravian Germans did not see a solution in establishing self-help credit unions; instead, they tended to expect help from the state, namely the establishment of credit unions initiated by state or provincial authorities (Verbík, 1977: 128-126). During the crisis, the Czech peasantry of Moravia became more and more convinced that Czech political representation did not sufficiently meet the needs of the countryside, blaming it for the severe impact of the crisis, especially on smallholders. The leadership of the Moravian National Party was in the hands of burgher notables, mainly from the ranks of lawyers, who were not sufficiently 7 Caboʼs chapter emphasises the impact of economic crises on the growth of agrarian associationism in late nineteenth-century Europe.

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interested in the situation of the individual regions; a more intensive communi‐ cation between the centre and the individual districts only took place during election campaigns (Malíř, 1996: 34-37). Many peasants connected the economic crisis with the existing political establishment, concluding that they had to rely more on themselves and to fight for their interests more actively (Havránek, 1966: 129). This was, to a certain extent, the expression of a loss of confidence. This stance created the basic prerequisite for the development of an indepen‐ dent political peasant movement. However, whether to actually begin forming it was something the peasants were by no means united in. The main reason for the failure of an independent political agrarian movement before 1900 lay in this discord. None of the peasant organisations spoke for the totality of the peasantry, and the leadership of the movement remained a contested issue. Despite the Haná region being the core of the agrarian movement, even there the movement did not form a coherent whole. Besides, the idea of breaking up the united Czech political camp in Moravia, as represented by the Moravian National Party, still seemed, even in the 1870s and 1880s, sacrilegious to many peasant leaders. They did not consider the position of the Czech people in Moravia to be strong enough to expose it to a political fragmentation of its own forces. Nevertheless, parties and political movements became subject to divergencies. In Moravia, this happened from the 1890s onwards, when class conscience and estate interests came more than ever to the fore, eclipsing the previously dominant Czech nationalist ideol‐ ogy (Urban, 1978: 290-291). Agrarian interests in the 1890s celebrated farm work and defined the countryside against the urban way of life. Interestingly, the Moravian German rural milieu did not embrace these rural ideas. Some leaders from the Czech rural milieu clung to the apolitical character of the peasant movement. They urged the priority of the economic organisation of the peasantry over its politicisation, which they saw as something that split the peasantry. Jan Rozkošný (1855-1947) played an important role in this respect. He belonged to a new generation of peasant activists, which complemented Skopalík’s and Demel’s generation on the public scene. Rozkošný came from a peasant family and ranked among the first graduates of the agricultural school in Přerov (Prerau). He himself remained loyal to the Moravian National Party and to the principle of one umbrella party. Instead of its politicisation, he started to organise the peasantry in district agricultural councils of a semi-public nature and united them subsequently in one central organisation, called the Agricultural Council for the Margraviate of Moravia (1898), as an institution of a public-law nature. Rozkošný wrote the articles of association, following the example of the same institution established in Bohemia. The Councils task was to play the role of mediator between the state and the provincial authorities on the one hand, and the needs of the Moravian peasantry on the other. Given the deep division of society along linguistic lines, the Agricultural Council had a Czech and German section. Eventually, Rozkošný created the Central Union of Czech Agricultural Associations in the Margraviate of Moravia (1899), in order to coordinate the

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activities of the individual agricultural associations and of which he became the head. Other peasant leaders preferred to follow the path of politicisation, either via the creation of an independent political movement or via joining one of the established political parties. It was Demel – the leader of the District Agricultural Association in Olomouc – who, from the beginning of the 1880s, provided the most ambitious impulses for the unification of the agrarian movement and its politicisation. In 1883, Demel’s efforts resulted in the establishment of the Czechomoravian Peasant Association for Moravia. It had its head-office in Olo‐ mouc and published its own periodical, Selské listy [Peasant Papers]. Demel’s asso‐ ciation had, unlike all previous peasant organisations, clearly political ambitions. This came already to the fore in 1884, when the Czechomoravian Peasant Asso‐ ciation had independent candidates running in the elections for the Moravian Provincial Diet in no less than nine electoral districts. Interestingly, this was the first time in Moravia that different candidates ran on the Czech side other than the politicians nominated by the Moravian National Party. The Czechomoravian Peasant Association thus fulfilled the role of opposition within the previously united Czech nationalist camp in Moravia. The self-confidence of the Peasant Association had grown so much that it finally decided to run independently in the 1890 elections for the Moravian Provincial Diet. However, the Moravian Governorate – the highest organ of the state administration in the province – disbanded the Association even before the elections began for an alleged violation of its statutes; this was followed by the persecution of some of the Association’s leaders. This event seriously thwarted the development of an agrarian political movement in Moravia. But it did not reduce its importance as the first form of independent political organisation of the Moravian peasantry. The particularity of the Czechomoravian Peasant Association – in contrast to the development of the agrarian movement in Bohemia – was that its establishment preceded and reflected the diversification of the political camp in Moravia. When the government, once again, allowed another peasant political associa‐ tion to be founded, the Peasant Union for Moravia and Silesia came into being in 1892. The Union rested on a new generation which, unlike its conservative predecessors, professed liberal ideas and strived for the political independence of the peasantry. The chairman of the Union, Josef Vychodil (1845-1913), did however reject the establishment of an independent agrarian party. He inclined more towards cooperation with the Peoples’ Party (established 1891), i.e. the originally liberal and radically nationalist wing of the Moravian National Party. For the whole of the 1890s, the Peasant Union formed an important part of the Peoples’ Party. What thus occurred was a remarkable political union between the liberal oriented urban intelligentsia of the Peoples’ Party and the political opposition movement of the peasantry (Malíř, 1996: 43). The Moravian Germans for their part established their agricultural associa‐ tions later, not until the 1880s. They were predominantly apolitical and focused

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on education and exhibitions. Attempts to establish a political organisation on behalf of the peasantry did not take place until the early twentieth century and were for a long time unsuccessful. The representatives of the German peasantry remained loyal to the already existing political parties. The only manifestation of their solidarity revealed itself at the end of 1906 when fourteen deputies elected in rural districts created an informal parliamentary club in the Moravian Provincial Diet, known as the German Peasant Union [Deutsche Bauernvereinigung], which set itself the task of defending the economic interests of the German peasantry.

IV. From the differentiation of the political scene to the establishment of the Agrarian Party, c. 1890-1914 Further development of the agrarian movement around 1900 continued to vacil‐ late between building strong economic, but apolitical interest organisations, or a strong political movement. However, the gradual politicisation of the agrarian movement continued, including the fact that a part of the peasantry turned to other political parties. The political differentiation – becoming more outspoken from the end of the nineteenth century onwards – also affected the countryside: country dwellers were no longer to be seen as a homogeneous mass, either socially or politically. With the gradual widening of suffrage in Cisleithania – in 1882, 1896 and 1907 – even Moravia entered in a period of mass politics, and the political parties had to adapt. The old party of the notables – the Moravian National Party – was falling behind, while other parties that managed to mobilise the interests of social (workers, peasants) or confessional (Catholics) groups were gaining. In a time of widening suffrage, the mass of rural inhabitants was welcomed as a yet unused source of votes, mainly for the newly forming parties (Bruckmüller, 2010b: 803). Before the First World War, peasant voters were therefore found in all relevant parties, each of which were creating their own peasant organisations. The traditional ties with the Moravian National Party, however, remained in place and were by no means confined to the oldest generation of representatives of the Moravian peasantry, as embodied by František Skopalík. Those supporting the Moravian National Party in the 1880s and 1890s also included members of the younger peasant generation, for example Jan Rozkošný (Pospěch, 1981: 258). Thanks to their collaboration with the Moravian National Party, local leaders gained influence and often also a deputy mandate, and as a result they usually had no interest in submitting to the authority of the Czechomoravian Peasant Associa‐ tion or, later, the Peasant Union. Nevertheless, from the mid-1890s, those staying loyal to the Moravian National Party included only a small number of wealthier and politically notable farmers. Peasants, for their part, began to perceive as problematic that Czech politicians from the ranks of burghers (above all, lawyers) or the clergy preferred to stand as candidates in the curia of rural districts because they had a greater chance of being elected there than in the curia of town districts,

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something which had previously been somewhat a necessity in the 1860s and 1870s. Although the total number of Czech provincial deputies from the ranks of the peasantry remained relatively high, ranging between 25-45%, it began to be considered as disadvantageous that Czech non-peasant candidates were taking deputy seats in the curia of rural districts from representatives from the ranks of the peasants themselves. Once more, the situation was different on the side of the Moravian Germans; if German parties tried to win votes in the curia of rural districts, they almost always nominated peasants as candidates (Malíř, 2009: 56; Malíř, 1996: 89-90). Of all the newly forming political movements, it was the Catholic one that had, besides the agrarian movement, the greatest potential to win peasant votes. The Catholic parties appealed mainly to the more conservative-minded peasants, opposing the liberal course set in the peasant movement in the 1890s. Catholicism was deeply rooted in the Moravian rural milieu, perhaps even more than in neighbouring Bohemia. The clergy’s contribution to the diffusion of the Czech nationalist movement in the Moravian countryside, as well as to its social and cultural emancipation, was immense. Parish priests and other clergy came predominantly from the countryside and, as peasant sons, they had an extremely close relationship to agriculture. They knew the mentality of people well and were able to use it to strengthen the confidence in the Catholic parties, as well as strengthening the position of the Catholic Church. There were in fact two Czech Catholic parties established in Moravia, the National Catholic Party (1896) and the Christian Social Party (1899), with both especially relying on the rural population. The National Catholic Party was rooted in conservatism and focused on nationalist politics, i.e. mainly language and educational issues. It attracted, above all, wealthier middle classes and the intelligentsia. At first, the Christian Social Party left the high politics to the National Catholic Party and focused on developing non-political mass organisations and on formulating a social and self-help programme, reflecting in this way the economic and social interests of the lower classes, including the agrarian workers. Both parties operated via the network of Catholic associations in the Moravian countryside. The Catholic Association of Czech Peasants in Moravia, founded in 1901, became the umbrella organisation for the Catholic associations. It had merely a thousand members in 1902, but by 1910 their number had increased twenty times. The Catholic Association supported the cooperative movement in the countryside, particularly the establishment of credit unions according to the Raiffeisen type, and advocated changes to hunting legislation and agricultural insurances (against hail, wildfires, etc.). Although the independent political movement of Czech peasants in Moravia had been developing earlier than in neighbouring Bohemia, the separate Bo‐ hemian Agrarian Party was actually established earlier, coming into existence already by 1899. The Moravian peasant movement had been characterised by discords and divergencies for a long time. The orientation of the Peasant Union, as the most important political organisation of the Moravian peasantry, fluctuated

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depending on the figures who headed it at any given time. Local and personal interests had long prevented a more unified course of action, and even later, after the establishment of the Moravian Agrarian Party in 1904, the tension between its original core in Haná and factions in other parts of Moravia persisted. This explains why the Agrarian Party was formed outside of the Peasant Union and rested on a strong base in other parts of Moravia outside of Haná. Although the Peasant Union did not cease to exist, it did lose its influence. The potential of the new party manifested itself immediately afterwards: in the provincial elections in 1906, fifteen out of the twenty-one candidates of the Mora‐ vian Agrarian Party won a seat (Pospěch, 1981). Even after the establishment of the Agrarian Party, its two wings, a conservative and a liberal one, were in conflict.8 At first the conservative wing, represented by Jan Rozkošný, was the dominant one, seeing the Agrarian Party mainly as a political means to defend the interests of the wealthy and medium sized farmers. In 1910, however, the leadership of the party was taken over by the liberal, more democratic wing, led by Kuneš Sonntag (1878-1931). He was possibly the most prominent figure of the new generation of Moravian agrarian politicians, an important ideologist, publicist and capable organiser. Sonntag wanted to improve the situation of the countryside by focusing on the problems of both peasants and non-peasants. With this wide scope, the Moravian Agrarian Party differed from its counterpart in Bohemia, which leaned much more towards wealthy farmers as well as large landowners. The Moravian agrarians were more open to pure universal suffrage than the Bohemian ones and cooperated with other progressive parties, including the Social Democrats (Malíř, 1996: 201-205). The first accurate picture of the political profile of Moravia is given by the Reichstag elections in 1907, when voting was organised on the basis of equal and universal male suffrage. Moreover, in 1907 – and the same was true for the subsequent elections in 1911 – the electoral districts were reorganised: they were not only divided into urban and rural, but also into Czech and German districts. Thanks to this, the issue of nationalism faded into the background and other political matters played a greater role. From these elections it emerges more clearly to whom the political sympathies of the Czech and German countryside in Moravia belonged, even though the final picture is somewhat distorted by the fact that the voting was based on a majority and two-round system. In 1907, in the first round of the elections in Czech rural districts, the National Catholic Party gained 35% of the votes, the Social Democrats 28% and the Moravian Agrarian Party 20%. The first round of the elections of 1911 confirmed the dominance of these three parties in the Czech countryside, though the Agrarian Party gained strength at the expense of the Social Democrats. However, in 1911 the Catholics (i.e. National Catholics together with Christian Socials) failed to succeed in the second round of elections, losing seven out of their nine run-off contests against

8 This confirms Caboʼs assumption that agrarian parties are not easy to be placed on a right-left axis.

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candidates from parties which were strongly anti-clerical, either the Agrarian Party or Social Democrats. It turned out that anti-clericalism was gaining ground in Moravia, even in rural areas. Nevertheless, the success of the clerical parties does document the prevailing conservatism of the Czech countryside in Moravia and the influence of the Catholic Church on the political and social views of the villagers; this influence was strongest in eastern and southern Moravia. The rise of Social Democracy in the countryside was indicative of the changing social composition of the formerly purely rural areas. Population growth multiplied the ranks of those who could not make their living by farming and had to migrate to towns or travel to work, or, alternatively, work in factories and industrial enterprises built in the countryside. Especially the numerous unskilled rural workers, seasonal workers and day labourers felt attracted to the appeal of Social Democracy, as can be observed in north-east Moravia. At the same time, parties stressing nationalist issues were unable to succeed in the Moravian countryside. The Czech Catholic parties and the Agrarian Party became the dominant parties in the Czech part of the rural Moravian areas, and because of that the most successful Czech parties in Moravia in the years preceding the First World War. Yet this fact caused fierce political quarrels between them at the time. These quarrels took place not only in high politics, i.e. during general and provincial elections, but also on a lower, regional and local, political level, e.g. for positions in district and local peasant organisations, cooperatives and other associations. Both sides had numerous newspapers and magazines at their disposal and invested in pamphlets and propagational leaflets. Both the Catholic and the agrarian move‐ ment had a strong base in the form of various economic, recreational and youth associations. The tensions between them escalated after 1910 when the liberal wing with its distinctive anti-clerical character became dominant in the Agrarian Party. Along with this, tension in the rural communities began to rise, dividing them into a more conservative and more liberal minded people (Malíř, 2009: 61-64). Their often merciless clashes are documented in electoral propaganda, newspaper articles, as well as in polemical brochures, such as the Whip on the Agrarian Lie and Deception (Šamalík, 1913) or the Clerical Party in the Light of the Truth (Marcha, 1913). Explosive situations arose at voter meetings, i.e. when the candidates met with members of the electorate. These were often attended both by supporters and opponents of candidates. Consequently, riots and skirmishes were never far off. The clash between the clericals and anti-clericals mirrored the advancing secularisation of the countryside, which manifested itself especially in conflicts between the parish office and its enemies in the village communities.9 Political diversification also took place within the German political ranks in Moravia, basically simultaneously with what happened in Czech politics. The dif‐ 9 This part of the study draws on the research of material from south-east Moravia, specifically the districts of Uherské Hradiště and Uherský Brod, such as documents from the District Office, the Dean’s office, the Regional criminal court and regional newspapers (Slovácký kraj, Náš kraj).

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ferentiation among the Germans were, on the one hand, linked to rising German nationalism and, on the other, to the growing distrust of the ability of liberals to defend German interests against the Czech nationalist movement. Other political groups, more or less radical nationalist or anti-Semitic, were gradually separating themselves from the hitherto unified liberal camp. Despite the political divisions, however, German liberal and nationalist parties – excepting radical anti-Semitic movements – were able to co-operate, and as a result the bourgeois-nationalist bloc retained its dominance until the last years before the First World War, which, at that time, caused German Moravia to differ from the overall trend that prevailed in Cisleithania. German parties based on a class or confessional principle had difficulty in asserting themselves in Moravia, which was true of both the Social Democrats and the Christian Social Party, and especially of the Agrarian Party. The German Christian Social Party was founded in Moravia in 1905, whilst the German Agrarian Party only in 1914. The 1907 elections showed that the German countryside in Moravia was dominated by bourgeois-nationalist parties, which won 43% of all valid votes in the first round. In 1911, this bourgeois-nationalist bloc also included candidates from the German agrarian movement, with all five agrarian candidates succeeding (Cibulka, 2012: 353-362).

Conclusion The development of political life and civil society in Moravia was complicated by Czech-German antagonism. The largest Moravian towns had a German character, and the curial election system caused the representatives of Czech nationalist politics to be reliant on successes basically only in the curia of rural municipalities. This created a specific link between the Czech nationalist movement and the Moravian countryside. The politicisation of the Moravian peasantry came from the mutual impact of the nationalist movement and associational life. It was primarily associational life that led to the foundations of civil society in Czech Moravia. The Czech nationalist doctrine, however, provided the much-needed idealistic fervour. Nationalist demands dominated Czech politics throughout the entire second half of the nineteenth century, overshadowing other important top‐ ics. Czech political representation phrased its demands in the attractive form of an emotionally tense struggle for the rights of the Czech people, and thus managed to gain the attention of the wider population for ‘national affairs’. How successfully public opinion was mobilised became clear by the protests in 1868-1873. They took various forms, from a petition movement to mass meetings. What mattered was that both the urban milieu and the countryside were essentially equally involved in the protest movement. The 1860s and 1870s thus became decisive for the diffusion of the Czech national consciousness into all regions of Moravia and into the lower social strata, including the peasant smallholders. As far as the national self-consciousness of the peasantry was concerned, this took place earlier

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and more decidedly in the Bohemian Lands than, for example, among the Polish peasantry. Until the 1890s, the Moravian National Party remained the only representa‐ tive of the Czech nationalist camp; this privileged position did not force it to intensify its agitation or to build an internal party structure. Bottom-up initiatives were all the more important, namely the associative movement, which began to develop especially after 1867. Associations played a key role in the creation of a civil society network in the countryside, as was also the case among the Polish people for example. The associational activity required more intensive commu‐ nication and the will to seek consensus, thus contributing to the adoption of democratic mechanisms. The associations and their activities basically substituted the functions that were later performed by political parties; this was true for Moravia to a greater extent than for neighbouring Bohemia. The dense network of associations was thus, besides the growing Czech national consciousness, the other factor that advanced the politicisation of the countryside, to a much greater extent than local self-government. Local authorities just dealt with a purely routine agenda, determined by practical needs. Conflicts in villages did not have a political subtext – in the sense of clashes among political parties – but a social one, in the form of disputes between the rich and medium-sized farmers on the one side, and smallholders and landless people on the other. It was only after 1900 that political parties began to assert themselves at the level of municipal politics. However, as early as the 1860s, rural councils or their representatives already began to stand up for the demands of the Czech nationalist movement, often in opposition to the Viennese government. In the countryside, the backbone of civic life was formed by agricultural associations. They did not limit their scope to economic matters, but also engaged in political activities, as demonstrated by the protest movement at the turn of the 1870s. During the economic depression of the 1870s and 1880s, agricultural associations became the basis of an agrarian movement striving to improve the living standards of the peasantry. They took many initiatives to advance peasant self-help, including the establishment of specialised organisations, such as credit unions and dairy cooperatives. Within this broad agrarian movement, however, there was no consensus on whether to remain non-political, to ally with a particular party, or to establish its own agrarian one. Until the late nineteenth century, many peasant leaders regarded breaking up the still unified Moravian National Party as almost sacrilegious. However, from the 1890s onwards, political differentiation did gradually take place, and a separate Moravian Agrarian Party (1904) was established. This party eventually emerged as radically democratic and anti-clerical. This made it different from the Bohemian Agrarian Party which was dominated by larger and medium sized farmers, whereas Moravia counted a higher percentage of smallholders. In the provincial elections of 1913, the Moravian Agrarian Party became the strongest Czech party of all. Undoubtedly, this was the foreshadow of the dominance of the Agrarian Party in inter-war

CZECH PEASANTRY IN MORAVIA, 1848-1914

Czechoslovakia. To sum up, three out of four forms of the “agrarian defence” – as defined by Cabo in chapter 13 – played a significant role in Moravia: agrarian wings in existing parties, peasant associations and an agrarian party, while pressure groups were less overt.

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Bibliography Archival sources Moravian Archive, Brno: (B 13) Moravian Governorate – Presidium (C 12) Regional Criminal Court Brno (C 48) Regional Criminal Court Uherské Hradiště District Archive Uherské Hradiště: Dean’s Office Uherský Brod District Office Uherské Hradiště District Office Uherský Brod Newspapers: Lidové noviny Moravská orlice Náš kraj Slovácké noviny Slovácký kraj Other printed sources Election results 1907 and 1911: Die Ergebnisse der Reichsrathswahlen in den im Reichsrate vertretenen Königreichen und Ländern im Jahre 1907. Wien, 1908 (Österreichische Statistik, 84. Band, Heft 2), pp. I.72-77. Die Ergebnisse der Reichsrathswahlen in den im Reichsrate vertretenen Königreichen und Ländern im Jahre 1911. Wien, 1912 (Österreichische Statistik, Neue Folge, 7. Band, Heft 1), pp. 106-111. Polemical brochures: Marcha, J. (1913), Klerikální strana ve světle pravdy (předvolební brožura), Brno. Šamalík, J. (1913), Bič na agrární lež a klam, Brno. Literature Beller, S. (2018) The Habsburg Monarchy 1815-1918, Cambridge.

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Blum, J. (1978) The End of the Old Order in Rural Europe, Princeton. Brodowska, H. (1984) Chłopi o sobie i o Polsce. Rozwój świadomości narodowej, Warszawa. Bruckmüller, E. (2010a), ʻLandwirtschaftliche Arbeitswelten und ländliche Sozialstrukturenʼ, in Rumpler, H., Urbanitsch, P. eds, Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848-1918, IX/1.1, Vienna, pp. 251-322. ——— (2010b) ʻDer Bauernstand, Organisationsbildung und Standeskonsolidierungʼ, in Rumpler, H., Urbanitsch, P. eds, Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848-1918, IX/1.2, Wien, pp. 783-811. Cibulka, P. (2012) Německé politické strany na Moravě (1890-1918), Prague. Hampel, J. ed. (2008) Chłopów polskich drogi do demokracji. Studia i szkice, Kraków. Havránek, J. (1966) ʻDie ökonomische und politische Lage der Bauernscahft in den böhmishen Ländern in den letzten Jahrzehnten des 19. Jahrhundertsʼ, Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte, pp. 97-136. ———, and Petráň, J. (1969) ʻRolnické hnutí v českých zemích v letech 1775-1918ʼ, Československý časopis historický, pp. 863-886. Himka, J.-P. (1988) Galician Villagers and the Ukrainian National Movement in the Nineteenth Century, London. Janák, J. (1958) ʻTáborové hnutí na Moravě v letech 1858-1874ʼ, Časopis Matice moravské, pp. 290-324. ——— (1993) ʻSpolky v českých zemích do roku 1951ʼ, in Kordiovský, E. ed., Politické strany a spolky na jižní Moravě, Mikulov, pp. 59-93. Karczewska, A. (2017) Czemu ten nasz chłop ciemny. Inteligenckie dyskusje o czytelnictwu ludowym v Królestwie Polskim w XIX. wieku, Warsaw. Kraváček, F. (1976) ʻNástin organizační a podnikatelské činnosti českého rolnictva na střední Moravě ve 2. polovině 19. stoletíʼ, Sborník prací Pedagogické fakulty Univerzity Palackého v Olomouci, Historie 3, pp. 5-58. ——— (1982) ʻOrganizační a podnikatelská činnost české agrární buržoazie na Moravě na počátku 20. století (1896-1914)ʼ, Hospodářské dějiny / Economic History, vol. 9, pp. 315-410. Kutnar, F. (1966) ʻPokroková generace rolnictva z doby po zrušení poddanstvíʼ, Sociologie a historie zemědělství, vol. 2, pp. 39-52. Lorenz, T. ed. (2006) Cooperatives in Ethnic Conflicts. Eastern Europe from the late 19th until the mid 20th Century, Berlin, pp. 229-250. Malíř, J. (1996) Od spolků k moderním politickým stranám. Vývoj politických stran na Moravě v letech 1848-1914, Brno. ——— (2009) ʻMoravské rolnictvo mezi liberalismem a politickým katolicismemʼ, in Fasora, L., Hanuš and J., Malíř, J. eds, Sekularizace venkovského prostoru v 19. století. Brno, pp. 47-68. ——— (2012) Biografický slovník poslanců moravského zemského sněmu v letech 1861-1918, Brno. ——— (2014) ʻThe Moravian Diet and Political Elites in Moravia 1848-1918ʼ, in Pál, J., Popovici, V. eds, Elites and Politics in Central and Eastern Europe (1848-1918), Frankfurt am Main, pp. 101-128.

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——— and Řepa, M. (2018) Morava na cestě k občanské společnosti, Brno. Máša, J. (1925) Jan Rozkošný, Brno. Molenda, J. (1999) Chłopi, naród, niepodległość. Kształtowanie siȩ postaw narodowych i obywatelskich chłopów w Galicji i Królestwie Polskim w przededniu odrodzenia Polski, Warsaw. Obrtel, F. (1915) Moravští sedláci v letech 1848-1904, Přerov. ——— (1937) ʻ F. (1937 Skopalíkʼ, in Michálek, M. ed., Zemědělští buditelé. Sbírka životopisů mužů o zemědělství zasloužilých, pp. 185-195. Pánek, J., and Tůma, O. eds (2018) A History of the Czech Lands, Prague. Pospěch, P. (1981) ʻZaložení agrární strany na Moravěʼ, Časopis Matice moravské, vol. 100, 3-4, pp. 255-271. Řepa, M. (2001) Moravané nebo Češi? Vývoj českého národního vědomí na Moravě v 19. století, Brno. ——— (2014) Moravané – Němci – Rakušané. Vlasti moravských Němců v 19. století, Prague. Schultz, H. and Harre, A. eds (2010) Bauerngesellschaften auf dem Weg in die Moderne. Agrarismus in Ostmitteleuropa 1880 bis 1960, Wiesbaden. Sobek, F. (1946) František Skopalík (1822-1891). Jeho život a dílo, Brno. Stauter-Halsted, K. (2004) The Nation in the Village. The Genesis of Peasant National Identity in Austrian Poland 1848-1914, Ithaca. Struve, K. (2005) Bauern und Nation in Galizien. Über Zugehörigkeit und soziale Emanzipation im 19. Jahrhundert, Göttingen. Urban, O. (1978) Kapitalismus a česká společnost, Prague. Verbík, A. (1970) ʻPočátky zemědělských spolků na Moravěʼ, Časopis Matice moravské, vol. 89, 3-4, pp. 226-252. ——— (1977) ʻFormování agrární ideologie na Moravě v 60. letech 19. stoletíʼ, Časopis Matice moravské, vol. 96, 1-2, pp. 116-128. ——— (1978a) ʻZemědělské instituce v letech 1848-1900 v českých zemíchʼ, Vědecké práce zemědělského muzea, vol. 18, pp. 143-161. ——— (1978b) ʻZemědělská revoluce a regionální zemědělské spolky v českých zemích ve druhé polovině 19. stoletíʼ, Hospodářské dějiny, vol. 1, pp. 73-120. Wenzl, F. (1935) Profesor Jan Rudolf Demel (1833-1905). První průkopník zemědělského družstevnictví, Brno. Zayarnyuk, A. (2003) Framing the Ukrainian Peasantry in Habsburg Galicia, 1846-1914, Edmonton.

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10. Spanish republican discourses on the countryside, 1840-1874 *

“Because we must not forget for a moment that ours is an agricultural country, only agricultural” (Sixto Cámara 1848: 152)

“For the masses, the federal republic means the division of a farm or a mountain here, mínimum wages there, settlers becoming owners further away” (José de Echegaray, 1873, cit. Termes, 2000: 198)

Historians long ago refuted traditional interpretations on the backwardness and isolation of the Southern European countryside during the nineteenth century, emphasizing the “complex interactions” between a political culture formed be‐ tween the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries, and a new one that struggled to prevail. They generally overlooked the crucial changes that had taken place, unevenly, since 1789 (the abolition of feudalism, the end of tithes, the creation of town and provincial halls, disentailments and the confiscation of common land, elections, wars, fiscal reforms…) to focus on the period beginning around 1875, marked by the emergence of agrarian politics or institutions (ministries of agriculture, protectionist tariffs), the organisation of agrarian interests, and a growth of peasant protest, which sometimes led to a political engagement in republican, anarchist, or socialist direction (Cabo, Veiga, 2011). * This text would not have been possible without long conversations with Juan Pan-Montojo and Jesús Millán. I am truly grateful for their generous help, as well as for Hugo García’s and the editors of the book’s comments on an earlier version of this text. Florencia Peyrou • Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain Making Politics in the European Countryside, ed. by Laurent Brassart, Corinne Marache, Juan PanMontojo & Leen Van Molle, CORN Publication Series, 19 (Turnhout, 2022), pp. 247–270 DOI 10.1484/M.CORN-EB.5.128253

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In the case of Spain, research on rural areas has also focused on the last quarter of the nineteenth century revealing, in several regions, various forms of politicisation and power sharing, access to resources, organisation and social interaction, as well as frequent social unrest and mobilisation, connected to the strong performance of republicans and socialists in local elections. These groups supplied broader political languages, led peasant complaints and mobilisation towards more ambitious common goals and acted as mediators between rural populations and state authorities. Hence, they are now beginning to be considered as key actors in the nationalisation of Spanish rural politics (González de Molina, Cruz, Acosta, 2013). Republicans appeared in the Spanish public sphere at around 1840, defend‐ ing, as other European democrats or radicals did, “universal” male suffrage and the sovereignty of the people.1 It is widely accepted that they attained a larger geographical and social basis as the century progressed, playing a key role in the mobilisation of wide social groups, including those from the countryside (Peyrou, 2008; Peyrou, 2013). In fact, by 1868 they had a remarkable peasant support, but their actions (discourses and practices) in rural areas during the mid-nineteenth century have not yet been studied in any great depth. These actions prove crucial in understanding how they became established in the countryside, as well as the above-mentioned fin-de-siècle processes (many republicans joined the Spanish Socialist Party, which was founded in 1879, or shifted to anarchism, a movement which was also extremely popular in some rural areas).

I. The unequal paths of Republicanism in the European countryside The rural support highlights an important difference between Spanish republican‐ ism and similar movements in neighbouring countries such as Portugal, Italy, or France. The various currents of Portuguese republicanism (federal, moderate and 1 Maurizio Ridolfi has noted the existence of a European Democratic Universe characterised by the support of a “community of sovereign citizens” based on the rule of law, while Jonathan Sperber has referred to European radicals, united by the defence of the same basic principles (political equality and civil liberties). They also shared symbols (tricolour flags, Phrygian caps), forms of organisation (newspaper offices, mutual aid and educational societies, and secret societies) and even social bases (generally urban liberal professionals, intellectuals, artisans and labourers). But at the same time there were important differences among them. There were various conceptions of the ideal form of government: some groups championed the republic, while others accepted a truly constitutional, limited monarchy. There were also different stances on social and economic issues: while some of them trusted (just as many liberals did) social self-regulation and condemned any governmental interference in the socio-economic sphere, others defended State intervention, for example low-interest loans allowing the workers to establish cooperatives, and/or public works to boost employment. Others advocated communism. Finally, there were divergences regarding administrative-territorial organisation, with some defending federal or decentralist positions and others centralism. Ridolfi (2005: xi, xiv); Sperber (1994: 77-86).

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democratic) which developed from 1848 until 1883, when the first Republican Party finally unified all of them, were all based on clubs, newspapers and electoral centres established in urban areas. The Democratic Program of 1878 was the first to explicitly mention the improvement of peasants’ conditions through the distribution or sale of uncultivated lands (terrenos baldíos), as well as the promo‐ tion of agricultural instruction and cooperatives allowing for the acquisition of cheap credit, machines and farming tools (Catroga, 2000: 51). The pioneering newspaper O Republicano (1848) referred to an indistinct “people”, and Jose F. Henriques Nogueira defended the protection of agriculture, industry and com‐ merce together in his Estudos sobre a Reforma em Portugal (1851) (Lacerda, 2013: 40). Nogueira envisaged the extinction of the “rural and industrial proletariat” through the generalisation of allodial property promoted by self-governing mu‐ nicipalities (Neto, 1989: 767) and some later programs, such as the Federal one published in 1873, mentioned the democratisation of property. But specific rural issues did not seem to have received much attention, unlike others such as credit and consumer or producer’s cooperatives. According to Fernando Catroga, the strength of Portuguese republicanism lay in Lisbon and other cities such as Porto and Coimbra, as its project was scarcely accessible to “rural mentalities” (Catroga, 2000: 87). In Italy, it has been stated that liberal Risorgimento forces despised and disregarded the rural world (Soldani, 1973: 585), and thus lacked the support of a substantial portion of the Italian population. The Italian countryside had witnessed a “rapid erosion of land-use rights” since the end of the seventeenth century. These rights differed across the various regions, but in all places they “sustained impoverished rural communities and protected their inhabitants from destitution”. In addition, “the enclosure of common land and its conversion into lease hold or freehold property (…) led to drastic changes for the Italian peas‐ antry”. Some peasants could buy small land plots, but those “generally illiterate and without any capital to improve their land”, soon “fell rapidly into debt” (Riall, 2004: 67, 37, 38). In 1833, Mazzini defended the harmonisation of rural and urban spaces, and industrial and agricultural interests (Dell’Unità Italiana), but that was clearly not enough. Around the mid-1840s, after the failure of revolutionary attempts in various parts of Italy, Lamberti complained that it was impossible to move inland Italians (Francia, 2012). In 1848, in the context of great rural unrest, neither Milan’s democrats nor Venetia’s republicans paid much attention to “agricultural questions”, but republicans supported the distribution of common land in Calabria, and in April 1849 the Roman Republic launched an “agrarian political program (…) ordering church property – which had been expropriated in February – to be distributed among its present lease holders and farmers against the payment of a moderate rent”. In any case, according to Dipper, “none of the aims of the 1848 revolution were shared by the rural popula‐ tion” (Dipper, 2008: 433). Some years later, Mazzini would include the creation of a “class” of smallholders through agrarian reform, as well as industrial and agricultural cooperatives in his social program (Dovere della democrazia, 1852)

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(Tramarollo, 1975: 17). When Garibaldi occupied Sicily in 1860, Crispi “declared that common land should be divided among the peasants with special privileges given to those who volunteered to fight with Garibaldi”; the promise was not kept, provoking great disappointment (Riall, 2007:214). Thus, Italian democrats were unable to distinguish themselves from the moderates (Zangheri, 2000: 16). Chloé Gaboriaux has shown that the need to explain the rural vote in France during the Second Republic (1848-1852), and the rural support for Napoleon III, fostered the French republican’s growing interest on rural populations and condi‐ tioned their representations of paysans as a social group. First conceived as the strongest and healthiest part of the nation, just as Jeffersonian Democrats had similarly seen yeomen farmers, they ended up being despised as ignorant and archaic. If rural interests were initially considered as converging with those of the population as a whole, they would come to represent private interests separated from the common good. Initial projects included the parcelling and distribution of lands in order to create an egalitarian and democratic society of smallholders, capable of becoming independent citizens. They also aimed at establishing cham‐ bres consultatives and agricultural professional schools, as well as to relocate the elections to the chef-lieux des cantons in order to escape harmful local influences within the communes. By the end of the Second Republic, the latter had come to be described as isolated, retreated within their own private interests. That is why some republicans defended direct suffrage as a way of politicizing the locals. The persistence of rural support for Napoleon III – even after the liberalisation of the Empire in the 1860s, which invalidated previous beliefs in extortive practices – consolidated the view of peasant voters as people unable to see, in political terms, beyond the limits of their own village. This situation was blamed on French rural structures, above all an isolated, extremely fragmented rural world. Small landowning was no longer praised, as it was now believed to divert peasants from the common good. Besides, farming began to be associated with isolation, routine, backwardness… and political indifference. Decentralisation and the liber‐ alisation of institutions, accompanied by the nationalisation of peasants through instruction, came to be seen as the solution to enrich rural public life and enhance communal independence. During the Third Republic, from 1870 onwards, the threat represented by a mostly conservative rural world fostered debates on the possibility of a different form of representation, which marked a sharp break with previous republican principles, as well as on the make-up of the senate, which some regarded as a “grand conseil des communes”. It also encouraged Jules Ferry’s project of a République de paysans, based on an awareness of the social peculiarities of French democracy (Gaboriaux, 2010: 294). Until 1874, Spanish republicans for their part did not have a specific discourse on rural populations, nor did they conceive of them, as the French republicans had done, as a particular social group. However, they were able to connect with peasants’ aspirations and received support in many rural areas. This has already been noted in specialised literature, although more research is needed on this point and geographical diversity was paramount (Piqueras, 1996; Duarte,

SPANISH REPUBLICAN DISCOURSES ON THE COUNTRYSIDE, 1840-1874

Gabriel, 2000). According to Demetrio Castro, most of the 200 members of the guerrilla force deployed around Zaragoza and Huesca’s northern areas in October 1848 were rural laborers. Guy Thomson has shown the intense efforts made by republicans in towns and villages of eastern Andalucía between 1854 and 1874 to organise reading and educational societies (where the republican press was read aloud) in times of freedom, and a wide network of Carbonari clandestine societies in times of repression. Juan Antonio Inarejos has found that republicans clandestinely organised a network of local committees and were important factors of political socialisation in Castilla-La Mancha’s rural inner provinces during the reign of Isabella II (1844-1868) (Castro, 1994: 57; Thomson, 2010; Inarejos, 2006). As for Catalonia, Àngel Duarte has refuted the view that locates progres‐ sivism in the cities and traditionalism in the countryside. Democratic ideas had an important impact in agrarian regions, especially around Barcelona and Lleida, the countryside of Tarragona and Penedès, and Alt and Baix Empordà (Duarte, 2004: 38). Republicans were also active in the provinces of Teruel, Asturias, Málaga, Cádiz, Valencia, Alicante and Castellón, and enjoyed considerable support from agricultural workers until the end of the century (Villanueva Herrero, 1993; Piqueras, 1996; Morales, 1999; Peyrou, 2003; Sánchez Collantes, 2012; Martí, 1996). In fact, from 1854 republicanism seemed to rise everywhere in Spain (Lida, 1972). How did this happen? In order to answer this question, it is first necessary to provide a brief sketch on the political dynamics of the period, as well as a short outline of the main republican discourse and their form of organisation.

II. Spanish republicanism 1840-1874 The emergence of Spanish republicans is strongly linked to the so-called Liberal revolution that started in 1808: a conflictive, discontinuous process in which peri‐ ods of revolution and reaction succeeded one another until 1840. An important milestone in this process was the enactment of the Constitution of 1812, which proclaimed national sovereignty, indirect suffrage for a large proportion of the male population, equality before the law, freedom of the press, the establishment of local councils in villages of more than 1,000 inhabitants, and considerably reduced the powers of the monarch. All of it implied a remarkable rupture with the Ancien Régime, which is why this Code became a reference for Spanish repub‐ licans during a large part of the nineteenth century. In addition, early Spanish liberalism (or doceañista) fostered the formation of national militias and patriotic societies (political clubs), thus creating a highly participative political system with an intense emancipating potential for large groups of the urban and rural population. However, from the mid-1820s most liberals replaced these participa‐ tive principles with those of doctrinarism, in particular the ideas that sovereignty might be shared between the King and the Cortes, and that the franchise should be subject to a property qualification. In any case, they had to deal with a great

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resistance from the absolutists, named Carlists after their candidate to the throne.2 Polarisation between liberals and Carlists led to a civil war from 1833 to 1839. By 1840 absolutism was defeated, retaining a marginal but persisting influence in areas of Galicia, Navarra, the Basque country, Aragón, Castilla-La Mancha, Cat‐ alonia and Valencia until the twentieth century. Liberals were at the time divided between Moderates and Progressives according to the extent to which they were willing to extend (or limit) the attributions of the crown and political rights and liberties. The former defended a constitutional monarchy with strong powers and a very restricted social basis (determined by the payment of high property taxes), whereas Progressives favoured a wider integration which included maintaining national militias and a broader franchise. At the local level, the Progressives accepted the election of town councils by indirect suffrage of all taxpayers, which amounted, during the brief lapses in which they held power, to a percentage of electors ranging from 66% to 83% of the population. They also intended to set some limits on royal power (Varela Suanzes, 1983; Romeo Mateo, 2000; Romeo Mateo, 1998). The Moderates came to power in 1844, when Isabella II became officially the queen, and a year later issued a new Constitution which restricted the right to vote to 0.8% of the population and reinforced “the power of the monarch, the cabinet and the Senate in the decision-making process”. In addition, they adopted a “heavy-handed policy toward the press and freedom of association” (Cruz, 2000:81). Moderates held power almost non-stop until 1868. There were also radical groups who kept conceiving freedom as political participation, believed that many reforms remained unimplemented and, from the mid-1830s, gradually stopped trusting the power of the monarchy to liberalise the political system and act as a truly moderating force. Their mistrust increased as the crown never really accepted liberal principles, not even a shared sovereignty (Millán, Romeo 2013), and some of them began to praise the republic as the only possible form of government for a liberal regime. In 1840 they started to organise around newspaper offices, reading associations and secret societies, and in 1849 founded their own Democratic Party. In 1854, a revolution led to a two-year period of Progressive government, which extended liberal rights. This allowed republicans to publish many newspapers and, with the expansion of the electoral system, win 21 seats in parliament. But in 1856 the Moderates came back to power, carrying out a harsh repression that left republican groups in a “semi-ostracised” position until 1862. Republican political action wavered between legality and secrecy until 1868, when a Glorious revolution brought down Isabella II (Castro, 1994: 69).

2 Spanish absolutism, Carlism, emerged as a faction supporting don Carlos’ contra-revolutionary project based on three principles: God, the fatherland and the King, as well as on the defense of local liberties and privileges. According to Jesús Millán, it supported an authoritarian political order which nevertheless accepted an intensely conservative capitalism, as well as the restriction of social mobility and the autonomy of individuals and their ability to participate in all spheres of public life (Millán, 2000:274).

SPANISH REPUBLICAN DISCOURSES ON THE COUNTRYSIDE, 1840-1874

1868 led to a more open regime, dubbed the Democratic Sexennium (1868-1874): more advanced liberals seized the reins of state and issued a decla‐ ration of rights, including freedom of speech, the press, association, assembly, religion and education, the inviolability of home and correspondence, and “uni‐ versal” (male) suffrage. On the other hand, the Constitution of 1869 established a new version of the constitutional monarchy embodied in Amadeo of Savoy, who arrived in Madrid in January 1871. While his powers were considerably reduced, the king retained the right to approve legislation (Peyrou, 2008; Duarte, 2013). During these years, republicans remained intensely active and gained influence among the popular classes. In 1868 the Democratic Party became the Federal Republican Party. In Madrid alone, its members published around 70 newspa‐ pers and organised numerous clubs and associations. Furthermore, it obtained between 85 and 52 MPs in national elections between 1869 and 1871 and won municipal elections in several cities. Amadeo’s abdication in February 1873 led to the proclamation of a republic, which lasted only until December of the same year. Political instability prevented the federal Constitution, drafted in July 1873, from being implemented. Republicanism was deeply divided into several factions and, furthermore, the four successive governments of the period had to face the armed opposition of absolutists3 and Federalists, as well as the hostility of the rest of the parties, ranging from non-cooperation to active conspiracy. Finally, in December 1874, General Martínez Campos carried out a coup d’état and restored the monarchy in Spain (Pérez Roldán, 2001; Castro, 2000; Esteban Navarro, 1994). Spanish republican leaders, as their Portuguese and Italian counterparts also did, appealed mainly to an audience of urban artisans and workers, shopkeepers, wage-earners from the service sector, students and liberal professionals. These social groups had been politicised by the Liberal revolution, chiefly through their participation in the above-mentioned national militias or patriotic societies devoted to reading and discussing the numerous political newspapers launched in periods of liberal government.4 Many of them had come to believe in the importance of political participation to achieve individual emancipation and social regeneration. Republicans offered them an alternative political model to the ‘oligarchic-property-based’ system which excluded them.5 A political model based on popular sovereignty and universal male franchise (Peyrou, 2008). But rural areas had also been intensely affected by the Liberal revolution. The establishment of indirect male suffrage and the creation of new municipalities in communities previously subjected to larger ones, in 1812, allowed for a degree of participation that was unusual in other countries at the time (Millán, 2000: 270). The Constitution passed in the same year became known in many towns

3 Another civil war broke out in 1872, lasting until 1876. 4 Burdiel (1987) and Garcia Rovira (1989) have stressed the strength of liberalism among heterogeneous urban popular groups. 5 Progressives also had a strong popular support, at least, until 1856 through an “inclusive dirigisme”.

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and villages through the civic festivities organised by liberal governments each March nineteenth (the day of its proclamation) until the 1840s. These celebra‐ tions included parades along the main streets and public readings of the code in the central square of each village or town. Constitutional principles were also spread through songs, hymns and political catechisms (Castro, 1987; Lecuyer 1999-2000; Morales, 1990). Information and newspapers circulated intensely, and local lawyers, doctors, teachers, tailors, barbers or pharmacists, as well as travelling theatre groups, peddlers, migrants or beggars, played a crucial role in disseminating news and ideas (Arnabat, 2001: 147). New studies have shown that the vocabulary of rights, sovereignty, freedom and representation reached the countryside, even if many times it referred to local issues (Veiga, 2017b). Patriotic and secret societies were also formed in small and midsize towns, and many peasants took part in guerrillas and militias, above all during the civil war, which mobilised around 500,000 men in just the liberal camp alone (Perez Garzón, 1978: 72). The war also involved many people affected by the resulting socio-economic crisis. Over the first half of the nineteenth century, a process of “political translocalisation – i.e., a turn towards procedures, mindsets, and patterns of identification beyond the village realm of experience” – took place in the Spanish countryside, as it also did in Germany (chapter 3 by Grüne). Both doceañista liberalism, with its program of national emancipation and egalitarian horizon, and its later progressive middle-class version which often resorted to revolution and popular mobilisation, gained considerable popular appeal in the countryside thanks to substantial reforms such as the abolition of lordships, desamortización (nationalisation and the sale of land owned by the Church and other corporations) and disentailments (which aimed precisely at attaining political support). It is interesting to note that such juridical changes of the rural order, with their radical social and economic consequences, derived from a “set of violent political actions combined with a wide social mobilisation” (Pan-Montojo, 2018). The Left-wing liberals’ view of political power as a tool to reform society and correct inequalities was also important, as well as their defence of a highly politicising instrument such as nation dependent militias (Cortes, municipalities) which eventually included the right of insurrection. Ultimately, and according to recent research, during the Liberal revolution long lasting forms of privilege changed, which meant in some cases the suppression of positions of power and sources of rents for the landed aristocracy, but also the reordering of hierarchies of social influence below this apex, all of which also contributed to foster middle class and popular support for liberalism (Millán, 2000: 276, 264). Spanish republicans acted on this highly politicised terrain since 1840, recovering some of the principles established by early liberalism (especially those with a Rousseaunian vein) and, as in other countries, “incorporating motifs specific to village life” (see also Grüne in this volume). It has been stressed that localism was one of the most prominent features of republicanism, which understood towns and villages as the places where its participatory ideals could be fulfilled (Duarte, 2006). But there are no studies

SPANISH REPUBLICAN DISCOURSES ON THE COUNTRYSIDE, 1840-1874

focusing on the way republicans addressed rural populations and problems. In fact, as has been already stated, republicans did not include a specific rural question in their treaties or manifestos, probably because they did not have to face the results of rural votes until 1868. They tended to refer indistinctly to an urban and rural “heroic people” (sometimes, in a more specific way, to “the proletarian classes, to farmers, crafts and tradesmen and to labourers”, as well as to the pitiful state of agriculture, industry and commerce altogether) (El Huracán, 12.3.1841). Their project was to bring about a cohesive, united community of citizens, free from fragmentation or social exclusion. They would achieve this through political fran‐ chise, as they considered that society was divided between political right-holders – ‘privileged’ or ‘aristocrats’ – and those deprived of political rights, who formed the “people”. The latter was an interclass category imagined in moral terms and dominated by workers, rural and urban labourers who lacked material property but who could be seen to have property rights in their wages and ability, who con‐ tributed by their efforts to national prosperity and possessed ‘intellectual faculties’ that allowed them to think and deliberate. Electoral qualifications had replaced the old nobility by a ‘modern aristocracy of money’ and divided the nation into ‘oppressors and oppressed’, a division that was the main cause of social conflict and disorder. Yet Republicans did not condemn economic inequalities, which they found inevitable. What they could not tolerate was that wealth gave rise to privileges, above all the “monopoly of political rights”. Political participation of all (male) citizens in the nation’s public affairs would, consequently, end social division and produce order, peace, harmony, and social cohesion (Peyrou, 2013).6 But this general goal of a harmonic community of citizens did have different implications for rural populations, which occupied a place in the Party’s general strategy and program. Drawing on republican newspaper articles, books and leaflets, and manifestos, as well as on recent historiography on the topic, this chapter focuses on two specific features of this rural vein which played a key role in efforts to address and reach peasants in order to mobilise them and obtain their support. One of them was an alternative proposal for the ecclesiastical and civil desamortización laws and procedures that took place during the nineteenth century, especially those of 1836 and 1856; and the second was a federalist project that emphasised communal self-government as opposed to liberal centralism (which marks an important difference from French republicanism). Two other points in the republican program connected with intense popular unrest: the abolition of excise taxes and the end of conscription (to be replaced by a small

6 Women were not included in these claims. Republicans accepted the prevailing discourse of domesticity, which destined women to the private sphere. However, they charged women with the task of educating children with the aim of forming honest men and good citizens, willing to fight for freedom and the nation, and this required them to know the principles of democracy. From this angle, women were not totally excluded from the public sphere: although effectively separated from the political scene, they were linked to it by their responsibility in the formation of future democrats.

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voluntary army and a bunch of local national guards), both of which equally concerned urban and rural populations.

III. Land distribution Desamortización, beginning in 1798, was the confiscation of lands and properties from the Catholic Church and the religious orders (especially in 1836) and from the municipalities (in 1856), and their sale through public auctions or in the mar‐ ket (Pan-Montojo, 2009). The desamortización of 1836 took place in the middle of the Carlist war, and “while it did not alter the structure of land ownership, it did permit people with money or state bonds – merchants, government officials and army officers – to become landowners. In rural areas, a broad spectrum of large, middling and smallholders or tenants added to their properties”. But the landless had little chance to get land. The redistribution carried out in 1856 “continued the process of liberalisation and privatisation of land and real property that had been interrupted after 1843. The goal was to complete the cycle of privatisation of entailed properties, now focusing not only on the Church, but also on the common lands of the state, the military orders and the municipalities”. However, at this time prices rocketed, thus hampering once again the acquisition of property by the lower classes (Burdiel, 2000: 29; Cruz, 2000: 46). The situation in different Spanish regions was indeed diverse: if western Andalusia, Extremadura and Castilla-La Mancha were, broadly speaking, char‐ acterised by big properties employing dispossessed wage laborers, the Mediter‐ ranean arch, the north of Spain and Castilla-León featured intensive farming of small pieces of land, rented by modest families (with long or short leases, and frequently high rents) (Saavedra, Villares, 1991). But, in general, land needs in the rural space were overwhelming, and in fact the privatisation of public rural domains had also been carried out since the beginning of the century through informal assignments, distributions and spontaneous sales performed by municipalities, as well as through breakups (illegal parcellation of land) and encroachments that had to be legalised later by the central government (López Estudillo, 1992; Jiménez, Linares, 2018: 50; Millán, 2015). Even if the number of landless agricultural labourers did not significantly increase during the first half of the nineteenth century, most of the lands to which peasants had access were marginal and therefore less productive, thus raising the levels of precarity in the rural spaces. Ultimately, desamortización of common land hampered popular access to many previously available resources, as did the enclosures in Britain and the forestry legislation in France (chapter 5 by Dupont). From the moment republican activists started to organise in the public sphere, they constantly denounced the way these processes had taken place and proposed alternative projects. The latter drew from the models set up during the Spanish Liberal revolution (decrees of 1813 and 1822), which had intended to solve financial but also social problems, as well as to obtain popular support for the

SPANISH REPUBLICAN DISCOURSES ON THE COUNTRYSIDE, 1840-1874

liberal regime. The above-mentioned decrees, in effect, authorised land distribu‐ tion among retired soldiers and landless peasants, as happened in 1822 in Jerez (Seville). Political fluctuations (with the restoration of absolutism in 1814 and 1824) made frequently impossible an effective and long-lasting use of distributed lands. And, although from 1834/1837 the State legitimised some of the previous privatisations, its beneficiaries found it difficult to recover their lands ( Jiménez, Linares, 2018: 47). In 1840, the newspaper El Huracán demanded the distribution of properties for sale among “the people”, with the goal of creating a great number of “proper‐ tied farmers” devoted to “fertilizing the soil”, and “ingraining the cause of liberty”. The article denounced that, up to that date, privatised lands were in the hands of very few individuals, so the whole process had not contributed to increase the support for liberalism, nor improved workers’ conditions or the general agricultural situation.7 El Peninsular also defended the distribution of plots among day labourers and medium-scale farmers, done in exchange for a small annual rent. Landowning was necessary to increase productivity, turn slaves into citizens and, ultimately, achieve freedom and democracy. According to the article, many dispossessed labourers had to lease lands for high rent, thus becoming dependent on the landowners, who in turn kept them in a permanent state of ignorance and slavery. These individuals were also deprived of citizen rights, as conservative and progressive liberals intended to keep the Nation’s will represented by a small number of enfranchised owners. Therefore, land distribution was not only linked to social and economic progress, but also to citizen rights and political empowerment. In fact, the 1836 decree was understood as inseparable from the restriction of electoral rights, all of which aimed at keeping the people poor, ignorant, miserable and enslaved.8 Republican land distribution projects intended to increase support for “the cause of Liberty” (the Carlist war had just finished) and build a harmonious society composed of self-supporting landowners. The projects would imply important economic advantages, but also contribute to the increase in popular access to politics, ultimately leading to popular emancipation and regeneration. Finally, they were linked to a national political option, that of democratic republicanism, organised as a Party since 1849. Some years later, Sixto Cámara insisted on the need to achieve wealth and progress. Spain, he outlined, was a mainly agrarian country; wealth was then to be found in the soil. If agriculture were carried out according to productive principles, Spain could attain an important position on the European scene. A special Ministry of Agriculture was desperately needed in order to promote the development of inventions, instruments and techniques, on the one hand, and encourage land farming, irrigation channels, means of communication, rural banks and agricultural institutes and colonies, on the other. According to regional and communal needs, regional authorities, in cooperation with an agricultural 7 El Huracán, 23-9-1840; another exemple, in El Huracán, 11-3-1841. 8 El Peninsular, 5-4-1842, 6-4-1842.

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engineering corps, would organise “workers’ columns” in charge of big public works (Cámara, 1848: 151-174). But the main solution to the “social question” remained: to turn the dangerous “masses” into “happy and useful citizens and proprietors”.9 When civil desamortización began to be discussed in 1855, republicans de‐ fended again the need to increase the number of landowners among “good rural workers”.10 A project published in La Voz del Pueblo stressed the need to focus on “poor colonists” creating 50,000 new landowners who would consequently become strong supporters of the cause of liberty. The plan consisted in distribut‐ ing among “the poorest neighbours” plots of 5,000 to 10,000 reales, which they would purchase thanks to loans with an annual interest of 4 percent and an amortisation rate of 1 percent, numbers that in 40 years would allow “a poor cottager who has nothing but his working tools [to become] a farmer-owner”.11 Antonio Ignacio Cervera drafted another detailed program in a leaflet entitled “The national will” (1854). He demanded the free distribution of 100,000 plots of 6,000 reales each among retired soldiers who should, in turn, join National Guards veteran battalions. The rest of the land should be sold, divided into small plots to be paid in 25 annuities, so all peasants could afford them. He also required the establishment of a national mortgage bank that advanced up to two thirds of the mortgaged value at a 5 percent interest p.a., and the creation of savings banks in all villages to promote investment in agriculture. Discount Banks were also needed to promote commerce, industry, and agriculture. Cervera’s goal was to turn wage labourers into independent or associate landowners, and this also implied the establishment of agricultural colonies supported by the government (Cervera, 1854). Sometime afterwards, Fernando Garrido would regret the missed chance of the Progressive government, in power from 1854 to 1856, to attach “agricultural masses” (which he estimated in 400,000 families) to liberal institutions, but also to accelerate Spain’s economic development: “No one is more interested in (…) social and political progress than proprietors” (Garrido, 1860: T. 1, 425/T2, 647). This may be why by 1864, Francisco Pi y Margall speculated on the possibility of legislating on land property depending on citizens’ needs. In his opinion, individual property could be limited (in absolute terms it was “monstrous”) and the entire property structure reformed, as land’s dominium eminens ultimately resided on society. He clarified that republicans did not want to destroy property, but to generalise it, turning proletarians into owners (Miguel, 2007: 249). Land distribution was a key element of the republican program and propa‐ ganda, as well as its revolutionary strategy, throughout the conflictive period until 1874. It was indeed at the centre of the 1857 nationwide revolutionary conspiracy led by Sixto Cámara, which chose Andalusia and Extremadura as 9 La Reforma, 9-9-1849. 10 La Soberanía Nacional, 12-9-1855. 11 La Voz del Pueblo, 30-11-1855.

SPANISH REPUBLICAN DISCOURSES ON THE COUNTRYSIDE, 1840-1874

the “favoured loci of insurrection”. Since the Progressive cabinet had fallen in 1856, most republicans had joined a clandestine Carbonari organisation – with wide ramifications across the country. And “Carbonari initiation ceremonies and statutes (…) included the promise of a share in the reparto for the poor and the landless” (Thomson, 2010: 55, 122). A revolutionary manifesto written in 1857 by Cámara in Zaragoza, intending to foster popular mobilisation, was specifically addressed to day labourers and poor landowners, promising them land, popular banks and “good credit mechanisms”. As a first incentive, it announced the arrival of days of freedom, justice and independence: “you will cultivate for yourself the plot owed to virtue and work. You will be kings of those lands given back to you”. Secondly, there would be credit to improve land conditions and labour instruments, and increase the profits (Cámara, 1857). At the same time, Claudio Guerra, Cámara’s right-hand man, drafted some “Instructions” for the enlistment of revolutionary volunteers willing to fight for freedom and emancipation, thus fulfilling the duty of good citizen’s and independent men. Those joining the revolution would receive “a beautiful campaign uniform” (they were making 40,000!), food and lodging, ten reales per day and an “honour ribbon” to certify their patriotism. If the outcome proved a success, then they would receive 3,000 reales to return to their homes, and the best lands as soon as the renewed Local councils proceeded to distribution. Here, a certification (diploma) provided by the revolutionary junta, with comments on the volunteer behaviour written by chiefs and commanders, would be required.12 These plans failed, and Cámara died during another insurrectional attempt in 1859. However, in July 1861, an uprising organised by a Carbonari society took place in Loja (Granada) and other parts of eastern Andalusia. According to Guy Thomson, “rebels were expressing quite faithfully the propaganda and manifestos of the Democratic party”. Banners and ribbons had messages as “Long live democracy”, “Universal suffrage” and “Respect for property”, and if it is true that property was respected, the rebellion contained an element of agrarian expectation, as landowning was already strongly linked to citizenship rights and democracy. El Reino, for instance, reported that “rebels from Antequera had been promised 5 fanegas each for property from state lands”, and that they “spoke of the different properties within the municipal boundaries as if they were already theirs” (Thomson, 2010: 121). Thomson has shown the connections of this uprising with the long process – “fraught with conflicts” – of religious and civil desamortización in eastern Andalusia: “Municipal councils in Loja, Alhama and Antequera since the Bienio, had been active in identifying flagrant cases of illegal encroachment upon municipal lands, and in encouraging smallholding tenants to stake their claims in petitions to Councils. By July 1861 the three cities had already declared to pre-empt further conflict by declaring disputed properties as common land,

12 AMAEE, H2866, “Movimientos revolucionarios”, “Instrucciones para el alistamiento en cualquiera de las columnas de voluntarios que recorren el país”, abril, 1857.

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thereby exempted from further disentailment, or, by ensuring that smaller claimants received a share of privatised land. (…) In this sense, there was a gulf between leaders such as Pérez who were insistent about the need to respect and protect private property, much of it recently disentailed and of questionable legality, and their followers who still saw the liberal reparto implicit in the 1855 law of civil desamortización as unfinished. The process of attaining land through the desamortización required demonstrating current use of land with the proof of recent payment of a rent. Tenants and Councils knew what land had been occupied illegally and it was this potential botín, administered by friendly municipal authorities, that must have inspired many rebels to flock to Loja in early July 1861” (Thomson, 2010: 122). This leads us to the second channel used by republicans to reach rural populations: federal projects. Federalism actually meant an administrative decentralisation im‐ plying free election of local authorities by the inhabitants of towns and provinces, and the implementation of the ideal of active and participating citizens in a large State. The ‘Federal’ structure would establish centres of power close to a well-informed electorate, capable of playing an influential role in public affairs. Federalism was also valued because it would make possible the distribution of power required to guarantee freedom. Municipal independence would ensure the existence of permanent sources of resistance to any attempt at reaction by the central government (Peyrou, 2010). But there was also something else.

IV. A federal project El Huracán demanded in 1840 that each local council and provincial council should form “small independent democracies”, sovereign regarding their local interests (taxes, public works, appointment of authorities),13 while El Peninsular demanded the establishment of “local legislations” which could control public order, works, taxes and health issues at a local level.14 A decade later, La Voz del Pueblo stated that local councils ought to manage freely every local issue, and referred specially to taxes, production organisation and education.15 Finally, Pi y Margall advocated the creation of “political and civil entities” in charge of appointing local authorities, taxes, public order and socio-economic problems (Pi y Margall, 1854: 319). As we can see, privatisation or land distribution were not explicitly mentioned in these projects, which stressed the independence of local powers and their democratic organisation. Such projects opposed progressive and conservative liberals, and retrieved the model of the 1812 Constitution, which enacted wide administrative municipal

13 El Huracán, 17-12-1840; see also 19-11-1841; 3-11-1840; 16-9-1840. 14 El Peninsular, 7-4-1842. 15 La Voz del Pueblo, 27-8-1853.

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powers and an almost universal male franchise at the local level. Progressives restricted voting rights to all taxpaying citizens (around 66-83% of the local population) and tried to combine local independence with a mild centralism, which meant that the government could dissolve any town council in case of “resistance to the law”, as well as control censuses and budgets. Conservatives, for their part, established in 1845 a pyramidal model guaranteeing central control, as well as a wealthbased census for municipal suffrage (Garrido Muro, 2006: 215, 216, 222, 223; Castro, 1979). However, as recent research has shown, at least during the first half of the nine‐ teenth century, and starting from the power vacuum caused by the Napoleonic wars, local powers remained strong in Spain (as well as in France, Italy, Portugal and Germany), and capable of resisting and negotiating with the State (Veiga, 2017a: 292). They certainly could and did informally, de facto, privatise their rural properties, to the point that Antonio Linares believes that these practices from below, which ended up requiring a legal and political response, had a large influence on the liberal desamortización projects and discourses. In practice, legis‐ lation left wide decision powers to municipalities, and even the conservative 1845 Constitution, which marked a centralizing turn, granted local Councils important powers in this respect. Local councils for a long time maintained the right to decide on the terms of leasing contracts (in some regions such as Granada), the costs of transmissions or the appraisal of land and could even turn a blind eye to eventual irregularities. But they were not only important regarding land managing: they were basic organizing centres of the rural society, with high levels of competence over production factors. They took care of infrastructures, water distribution, manure and fertilisers, public health, land regulation, forest crimes, boundary litigations, granaries, and communal fields. In this context, the social makeup of local councils, as well as the access to municipal decision taking, were absolute vital questions. In the words of Manuel González de Molina, control of local power was even an ecological necessity ( Jiménez, Linares, 2018: 58; Linares, 2016: 289; González de Molina, 1993: 11). Besides, local and provincial councils were the main intermediaries between villagers and the central government. Since 1854, many riots and protests for land distribution or the abolition of indirect taxes and conscription included meetings in front of the town halls, meant to present some of the protesters’ demands, or draft petitions for civil governments or the Cortes (Palacios, 2014: 274). Popular control and the autonomy of local power was precisely what repub‐ licans promised with their defence of federalism. Carlists also insisted on local liberties, but they were actually referring to organic communities, supervised by their assumed ‘natural’ leaders (Millán 1992, 85; Millán, 2003). By 1868, the republicans’ growing emphasis on the sovereignty and autonomy of municipal and provincial entities resulted in the attribution of some political powers to the diverse territorial units. They seldom specified, however, how responsibilities would be shared; generally, they proposed a hierarchical model in which the smaller entities were subordinated to the control of higher bodies. The draft Con‐

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stitution of 1873, inspired by the model of the United States, allowed provinces (now called “states”) to give themselves political constitutions, but these should be subject to the judgment and sanction of the Federal Cortes and might under no circumstances contradict the Federal Constitution (Peyrou, 2010). Anyway, during the Sexennium, federal municipalism experienced a great development, and voices defending the social property of municipal land (regulating individual possession) began to be heard (Miguel, 2007: 277). But this six-year period also witnessed an important growth of republican support. Municipal elections in December 1868 gave the Federal Republican Party total control over the councils of 20 provincial capitals (from a total of 49), amongst them Sevilla, Valencia, Castellón, Alicante, Huesca, Teruel, Zaragoza, Barcelona, Tarragona, Lleida, Murcia, Toledo, Valladolid, Santander, Orense and Coruña. They also won the municipalities of many small villages. There are no studies focusing on these local elections and, specifically, on whether they were legitimately run. But republican success was indeed linked to discourse on feder‐ alism and land distribution (together with other social and economic reforms including taxes, conscription, credit and wages, and production cooperatives). Rural populations believed that republican councils would guarantee the revision and amendment of previous sales of communal lands that had put an end to traditional common uses which were vital for rural populations, such as the collection of wood and acorns, or the exploitation of pastures and trees. All usurpations would be restored, and new distributions would be made. In 1868, republican candidate José García Tercero promised the distribution of municipal pastures among modest peasants in Badajoz. In Plasencia, republicans took part in the 1873 municipal elections with a programme that promised emancipation to the workers, by “turning each labourer into a smallholder”. Republicans won the elections and the new mayor, Evaristo Sánchez Pinto, assured in his investiture that he would revise the civil desamortización process and distribute the recov‐ ered lands among landless labourers (Sánchez Marroyo, 1994: 550; Miguel, 2007: 445). Fernando Sanchez Marroyo has explained that in Extremadura, an agrarian region in the Southwest, the control of land property was a central concern for popular groups, who held vivid memories of previous traditions of communal usages, most of which had disappeared after land privatisation was carried out by liberal governments. The revolution of 1868 gave them the opportunity to rectify these processes, and attacks against properties (above all previously municipal properties) multiplied (fruit and wood stealing, land encroaching). This author concludes that the idea of land distribution was deeply rooted within the “popular mentality” (Sánchez Marroyo, 1994). Illegal land occupations and appropriations also took place in Andalusia, where some historians have even talked of a “repub‐ licanization of the peasant movement” during the Sexennium (Caro, 2004: 77). Normally, these were communal lands considered to have been illegally sold during civil confiscation, and perpetrators were usually identified as federalists. Much evidence shows that republican discourses had a great impact in these rural

SPANISH REPUBLICAN DISCOURSES ON THE COUNTRYSIDE, 1840-1874

contexts, although more research is needed. Above all, some radical republican discourses began to demand forced land expropriations (with compensation, except in the case of abandoned lands) on behalf of public interest, as well as the transformation of tenants into landowners if they had paid a rent amounting to double the value of the land, and the revision of the whole sale of municipal land, allowing for a restitution in case of illegality (Miguel, 2007: 441, 357). This could partly explain the widespread insurrection in 1869 in Catalonia, Valencia, Andalusia, Castile, Aragon, Galicia and Extremadura, after the govern‐ ment’s attempt to dismantle republican municipalities (together with the disarm‐ ing of republican militias). The uprising included urban barricades and guerrillas in the countryside, moving from the smaller villages to larger towns to join urban activists or attempting to block the army’s access to the cities (Miguel, 2007: 307). By the end of 1869, republicans had established 49 provincial committees, 500 district committees and more than 2000 local sub-committees, according to the newspaper La Discusión. And their municipal success continued throughout this six-year period (in 1871 they had exceptionally good results in Catalonia, An‐ dalusia, Extremadura, Aragon and the Mediterranean arch, winning 21 provincial capitals’ councils) (Pérez Roldán, 2001: 288). Taking all of this into account, it is possible to state that Spanish republicans did not face electoral failures, as their French counterparts had done, but an impressive amount of success, limited only by State corruption and electoral fraud, as well as by bitter disputes for power within the Party itself, which ended up collapsing in 1872. In 1869, the “unitarian” republican Eugenio García Ruiz (an advocate of decentralisation but not of federalism) stated in the Cortes that most of those who had defended the federal republic in the provinces believed that it meant that the mayor of even the smallest Spanish village could become its “president”, whereby ignoring the legal system, the province capital, “and everything else”.16 This under‐ standing of republican federal discourse, which insisted on self-government, and the difficulties in organising a unified ruling party, could explain cantonalismo, the uprising of several cities that took place during the First Republic, beginning in July 1873. The federal republic, for many people from both urban and rural spaces, had come to mean a kind of immediate and direct political practice; the recovery of power by the people, who would then be able to implement the appropriate social, economic and political reforms (Peyrou, 2010). Cantonalismo was a mainly urban phenomenon, led by radical republicans and some emerging anarchists, but with important rural echoes, and federalism played an important role in its outbreak, not just as a mere formula of government, but as a complete social, political and economic programme – including in several cases a rectification of the confiscation process. Málaga was the first canton to fall, but Cartagena resisted until January 1874 (Espigado, 2002: 116). Its crushing by moderate republicans (who did not support revolutionary means) was an important debilitating factor

16 Diario de Sesiones de Cortes nº73, 13-5-1869, p. 1924.

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for the regime, which had just witnessed the first discussion in Cortes of a draft Law proposing the distribution of uncultivated lands among labourers.17 A Conservative coup-d’état put an end to the whole revolutionary experience in January 1874, and the Monarchy was restored by the end of the year. During the Restoration period (1875-1931), Spanish republicans divided into several different parties, and many of them abandoned federalist ideas, as these began to be considered particularly dangerous because of its “overflow” risks. But it is interesting to note that the Federal currents were precisely the strongest in the Spanish countryside, dominated by caciquismo (patronage) and corruption. According to López Estudillo, they were indeed the most sensitive to social agrarian issues. In Catalonia, from 1890 federals multiplied the organisation of public events and committees and contributed to the reinvigoration of rural workers’ associationism. They tailored a specific rural program which included the organisation of agricultural credit, as well as the reform of exploitation of land contracts (ensuring either their perpetuity or the possibility of appropriation after its amortisation). In 1894, Federalists contributed to the constitution of a Feder‐ ation of Agricultural Workers which included 54 associations and some 26,000 labourers (López Estudillo, 1989). In the vine growing areas, Catalan federals specifically supported the rabassaire struggle by including tenant’s claims in their programmes and endorsing their organisation and mobilisation (chapter 11 by Planas and Soler). In Andalusia, rural disorders and unrest during this period were carried out by huge numbers of federalist and anarchist peasants that combined hopes for the federal republic, collectivism and anarchism (Caro, 2004). Republi‐ cans in Galicia backed the organisation of the first agrarian societies at the end of the nineteenth century (Cabo, Míguez, 2013: 46). In Ciudad Real (Castilla-La Mancha), Radical Progressive Republicans supporting decentralisation were also extremely strong, as they defended cooperatives and agricultural credits, and frequently acted together with Federalists (Higueras, 2016, 591). Therefore, dis‐ course on agrarian reforms and the self-government of early Spanish republicans not only stroke a chord on many rural groups, but could also connected with agrarian associationism, later syndicalism, as well as with socialism and anarchism, which would spread gradually but widely in many Spanish rural areas. They allowed republicanism, and especially its Federalist variety, to become a bridge towards other forms of mobilisation in rural Spain, as well as a peculiarly enduring movement, though its ability to adapt to the clientelist and patronizing practices of the time certainly helped (Sánchez Collantes, 2013).

17 Diario de Sesiones de Cortes, 18-8-1873, p. 1584.

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Conclusion This chapter has dealt with a scarcely researched question: by what means were mid-nineteenth century Spanish republicans able to first reach rural populations, and attain remarkable electoral results from 1868 onwards? I have argued that early Spanish liberal discourses, practices and reforms, as well as armed conflicts with absolutist opponents played a major role, from 1808 to 1840, in the imple‐ mentation of a ‘translocalisation’ process in the Spanish countryside. Far from being backward and submissive, many peasants were extremely active politically, and connected local and supralocal matters through national allegiances ranging from absolutism to doceañista liberalism. This chapter has also shown that Spanish republicanism, which began to organise itself around 1840, was the heir of early liberalism. It retrieved, but also transformed or amplified many early liberal principles, above all those related to an emancipating project linked to national sovereignty and personal autonomy. Access to land and local self-government are the standout features in this emanci‐ pating project as regards the Spanish countryside. Even if they did not develop a specific programme for rural populations, republicans insisted in their papers, leaflets and manifestos for the need to distribute land plots among labourers and medium-scale farmers, normally in exchange for small rents in order to build a harmonious society of self-supporting landowners. On the other hand, they supported a federal territorial organisation assuring popular control and the autonomy of local powers. Both issues are basic elements in understanding the bridge between republicanism and later movements with a strong rural basis, such as socialism and anarchism. Finally, these republican projects connected with existing aspirations in rural areas: land needs were overwhelming, and breakups and encroachments carried out by those in need multiplied from the beginning of the nineteenth century. Local councils kept large decision-making powers during the period under study, and were able to perform informal assignments, distributions, and sales. Control of local powers was, therefore, a absolute necessity. Peasants were thus sensitive to republican discourses, but they did not absorb them in a passive way. They saw them through their own lenses and appropriated whatever suited them depending on a great variety of circumstances. By doing so, they connected local problems and struggles with a movement which was operating at the local level from 1868, and at the national level from 1890. As we can see, all in all there is still much to learn about the way partisan politics worked locally during the nineteenth century.

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Bibliography Archival sources Archivos del Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores (AMAEE), España, H2866, “Movimientos revolucionarios”, “Instrucciones para el alistamiento en cualquiera de las columnas de voluntarios que recorren el país”, abril, 1857. Newspapers El Huracán, 1841-1842 El Peninsular, 1842 La Reforma, 1849 La Soberanía Nacional, 1855 La Voz del Pueblo, 1853, 1855 Diario de Sesiones de las Cortes: 13-5-1869; 18-8-1873 Literature Arnabat, R. (2001) La revolució de 1820 i el Trienni Liberal a Catalunya, Vic. Burdiel, I., Romeo, M. C. (1998) ‘Old and New Liberalism: the making of the liberal revolution, 1808-1844’, Bulletin of Hispanic studies, 75-5, pp. 65-80. Cabo, M., Veiga, X. R. (2011) ‘La politización del campesinado en la época de la Restauración. Una perspectiva europea’, in Ortega, T., Cobo, F. eds, La España rural, siglos XIX y XX. Aspectos políticos, sociales y culturales, Granada. Cámara, S. (1848) Espíritu moderno, o sea carácter del movimiento contemporáneo, Madrid. ——— (1857) ‘La Junta Nacional Revolucionaria al Pueblo’, Zaragoza. Caro, D. (2004) ‘La Reforma Agraria Liberal y los campesinos en Andalucía: de la protesta popular a la conciencia de clase (1798-1874)’, in González de Molina, M. ed., La historia de Andalucía a debate. I. Campesinos y jornaleros, Granada. Catroga, F. (2000) O republicanismo em Portugal. Da formaçao ao 5 de Outubro de 1910, Lisboa. Castro, C. (1979) La revolución liberal y los municipios españoles, Madrid. Castro, D. (2000) ‘The left: from liberalism to democracy’, in Alvarez Junco, J. and Shubert, A. eds, Spanish History since 1808, London. ——— (1994) ‘Orígenes y primeras etapas del republicanismo en España’ and ‘Unidos en la adversidad, unidos en la discordia: el Partido Demócrata, 1849-1868’, in Townson, N., ed., El republicanismo en España (1830-1977), Madrid. ——— (1987), ‘Simbolismo y ritual en el primer liberalismo español’, en Alvarez Junco, J., Populismo, caudillaje y discurso demagógico, Madrid. Cervera, A. I. (1854) La voluntad nacional como el pueblo espera que la interpreten las Cortes constituyentes. Dedicado a las asociaciones obreras del Trabajador, Madrid.

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——— (2013) ‘A great family of sovereign men. Democratic discourse in nineteenth century Spain’, European History Quarterly, nº43-2, pp. 235-256. Pi y Margall, F. (1854) La reacción y la revolución, Madrid. Piqueras, J. (1996) ‘Introducción: los historiadores y el republicanismo’, in Piqueras, J. A., Chust, M., coords., Republicanos y repúblicas en España, Madrid. Riall, L. (2004) The Italian Risorgimento. State, society and national unification, London/New York. ——— (2007) Garibaldi: Invention of a Hero, New Haven/London. Ridolfi, M. (2005), ‘Alle origini della democracia europea. Introduzione’, in M. Ridolfi ed., La democrazia radicale nell’ottocento europeo, Milan. Romeo Mateo, M. C. (1998) ‘Lenguaje y política del nuevo liberalismo: moderados y progresistas, 1834-1845’, Ayer, nº29, 37-63. ——— (2000) ‘La cultura política del progresismo: las utopías liberales, una herencia en discusión’, Berceo, nº139, 9-30. Saavedra, P, Villares, R. eds (1991) Señores y campesinos en la península ibérica, siglos XVIIIXX, Barcelona. Sanchez Collantes, S. (2012) ‘Republicanismos y tradición democrática en la Asturias del siglo XIX’, Cahiers de Civilisation Espagnole Contemporaine, vol. 9. Sánchez Collantes, S. (2013) ‘Republicanismo, clientelas y prácticas caciquiles en Asturias (1868-1911)’, Cuadernos de Historia Contemporánea, 35, 137-160. Sánchez Marroyo, F. (1994) ‘Violencia campesina, impotencia pequeño burguesa y reacción conservadora. El Sexenio Democrático en Extremadura’, Anales de Historia contemporánea, 10, pp. 537-557. Termes, J. (2000) Anarquismo y sindicalismo en España (1864-1881), Barcelona. Sperber, J. (1994) The European Revolutions,1848-1851, Cambridge. Thomson, G. (2010) The Birth of Modern Politics in Spain. Democracy, Association and Revolution 1854-75, Houndmills, Basingstoke. Tramarollo, G. (1975) ‘Mazzini. Pensiero e azione’, in Spadolini, G. (ed.) Democrazia republicana, Milan. Varela Suanzes-Carpegna, J. (1983) La teoría del Estado en los orígenes del constitucionalismo hispánico (las Cortes de Cádiz), Madrid. Veiga, X. R. (2017a) ‘Poderes locales y construcción del Estado en el siglo XIX (1808-1874)’, Ayer, 208 (4). ——— (2017b) Poder e política na Galiza vilega 1790-1833: provincias de Lugo e Mondoñedo, Santiago. Villanueva Herrero, J. R. (1993) El republicanismo turolense durante el siglo XIX, Zaragoza. Zangheri, R. (2000) ‘Contadini e política nell’800. La storiografia italiana’, in VVAA, La politisation des campagnes au XIXe siècle. France, Italie, Espagne, Portugal, Roma.

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11. Agricultural associations and political parties in the transition to mass politics in Catalonia, 1890-1936 *

Since the approval of male universal suffrage in Spain in 1890, the political parties had to try to maintain the support of peasants and increase their influence in the countryside. Even if an undemocratic electoral system, dominated by the local power bosses (caciquismo), persisted after universal suffrage, it was progressively weakened by the social and political mobilisation that went on not only in urban areas, but also in the rural landscape. The transition to mass politics did not completely succeed until republican parties on the one hand, and regionalists on the other, had become dominant in most electoral districts. In this chapter we highlight the contribution of the Catalan countryside to this transition process to mass politics. Catalonia was certainly the region in Spain where this process had its quickest development, firstly because of the number of urban areas, but also because of social mobilisation that took place in the rural areas from the 1890s, with a prominent role played by cooperatives, farmers’ unions and other agricultural associations in the politicisation process. The contribution of civic organisations and social networks to the electoral success of political parties has been highlighted by several scholars. Doug McAdam and Sidney Tarrow have paid attention to the relationship between social movements and politics in the United States at different times in history, * An earlier version of this paper was presented at the workshop ‘The transformation of politics in the countryside and the rural-urban political cleavage, 1789-1945’, held in Bordeaux (France) on 4-5 April 2018. The authors are grateful for all the comments that they received from the participants in this workshop as well as from the editors of the book. Funding was provided by the Government of Spain (RTI2018-093970-B-C33: MCIU/AEI/FEDER, EU) and by the Regional Government of Catalonia (2017SGR1466: Generalitat de Catalunya). Jordi Planas • Department of Economic History, University of Barcelona, Spain Raimon Soler-Becerro • Centre d’Estudis Antoni de Capmany, University of Barcelona, Spain Making Politics in the European Countryside, ed. by Laurent Brassart, Corinne Marache, Juan PanMontojo & Leen Van Molle, CORN Publication Series, 19 (Turnhout, 2022), pp. 271–292 DOI 10.1484/M.CORN-EB.5.128254

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pointing out the influence of social movements on elections (MacAdam, Tarrow, 2010). John Markoff has provided an international scope on the democratisation process, not just by merely focussing on elections, but by also taking into account the social conflicts and collective action (Markoff, 2016). In The Narrow Corridor, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson describe the rise (and fall) of democracy as a dynamic and fragile equilibrium between state and society, in which the soci‐ ety’s ability to become organised is crucial for maintaining an appropriate balance and to avoid not being subdued by a despotic Leviathan (Acemoglu, Robinson, 2019). Robert Putnam has argued that one of the threats hanging over democracy is the fall of civic engagement and associational life – social capital – (Putnam, Leonardi and Nanetti, 1993; Putnam, 2000). The importance of social capital has also been underlined by Shanker Satyanath, Nico Voigtländer and Hans-Joachim Voth in a completely different scenario, by pointing out the contribution of civic organisations in the rise of the Nazi party (Satyanath, Voigtländer and Voth, 2017). The role of voluntary associations in the democratisation processes is still an open question that needs further research, and this is the aim of this contribution. Some political parties created their own civic organisations, as did the Socialist Party (PSOE) in Spain with the local people’s houses (casas del pueblo) that have been described as “schools of citizenship and democratic practice for the working classes” (Moral, 2014). A similar function has been pointed out for farmers’ associations and cooperatives in the consolidation of democratic regimes (Mayayo, 1995: 38). According to James Simpson and Juan Carmona, with the coming of the Second Republic in Spain (1931-1936), the lack of strong civic associations and farming cooperatives proved a barrier to the construction of a democratic political system. This was a consequence of the persistence of traditional elites and the lack of genuine party politics, even after universal male suffrage was introduced in Spain in 1890. These authors conclude that clientelism, corruption, and fraud in elections made it impossible to organise small farmers and build a mass political party before the Second Republic. The only exception was Catalonia: “only in Catalonia did competitive regional party politics require politicians to intervene actively to help farmers, explaining the region’s more dynamic associations and cooperative movement” (Simpson, Carmona, 2020: 10). In this contribution we focus on the role of agricultural associations and political parties in the transition to mass politics in Catalonia. We aim at pointing out that agricultural cooperatives, farmers’ unions and other agrarian associations were used by political parties for recruiting peasant voters, but that they were also actors whose interests the political parties had to take into account in order to be successful in their own right. In other words, agricultural associations were not just created by political parties as politicisation instruments, but also tools used by the peasants to defend their interests. Consequently, they played a role in providing a voice that political parties had to take into consideration.

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The case studied here must be framed in the context of the transformations of agriculture and agrarian social relations that took place in Europe in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century. As Eric Hobsbawm has highlighted, in the transition to modern politics “the countryside becomes significant, if only because of the frequency of revolutions or revolutionary threats, and with the development of systems of mass politics, electoral or otherwise, their attitude forms parts of the permanent calculations of politicians” (Hobsbawm, 1973: 17). Other scholars, such as Eugen Weber, have stressed the role of the state in the in‐ corporation of the peasantry into modern politics, pointing out the construction of railways, military service and, especially, the educational system (Weber, 1976). In this process, the role of agrarian associations must also be underlined. In the context of the late nineteenth century crisis, the social mobilisation of the countryside crystallised in a boom of farmers’ unions, cooperatives and other agricultural associations with different aims and functions, that certainly played a role in the politicisation of the rural areas (Frías Corredor, García Encabo, 2006; Cabo, Veiga, 2011). The changes experienced in European agriculture from the late nineteenth century led to a growing role of the state in organising agricultural markets and the rural society and, at the same time, an intensification of the peasants’ voice in public affairs, which would later determine the evolution of politics in several European countries after World War I (Luebbert, 1991; Cobo Romero, 2012). In the same way that the constitution of 1867 contributed to the creation of associations in the Austro-Hungarian Empire – as Milan Řepa shows us in chapter 9 ‒ two laws introduced in Spain were fundamental in the diffusion of agricultural associations and, more specifically, of agricultural cooperatives: the Law of Associations of 1887 granted the freedom to establish associations, and the Law of Agricultural Syndicates of 1906 stimulated their establishment with tax exemptions. Consequently, the number of associations increased from 1887 onwards throughout Spain, but Catalonia was one of the Spanish regions where cooperatives and other agricultural associations diffused more rapidly in the early twentieth century. Although we do not have very precise statistical data of the diffusion of cooperatives and farmers’ associations in the early twentieth century, there are some contributions that allow us to see their growing extension (Mayayo, 1995; Garrido, 1996; Pomés, 2000a; Planas, 2006; Arnabat, 2019). Cat‐ alonia was also one of the regions in Spain where the transition to mass politics came earlier. Membership data of the local organisations of political parties are not available, but we can find some links between the agricultural associations and the evolution of the political system, taking into account the elections and the profile of the candidates. In the European context, the late nineteenth century crisis was especially hard in Spain, because of the coincidence with the loss of the last American and Philip‐ pine colonies in 1898. In the following years there was a wave of proposals with the aim of regenerating the country, which we can summarise by quoting the work of Joaquín Costa (Costa, 1902) entitled, significantly: Oligarchy and power bosses

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(caciquismo) as the current form of government in Spain: urgency and the way of changing it. In some regions with a strong differential identity, such as Galicia, this movement led to regionalist initiatives which involved agricultural associations, such as Solidaridad Gallega (1907-1911) or Acción Gallega (1912-1915); but these initiatives did not build any political alternatives to the established regime (Cabo, 2013). Neither in the Basque Country, where the presence of nationalism had always been emphasised, was there a definitive displacement of the established political parties. The Basque Nationalist Party did not take part in the elections for the Spanish Parliament until 1918. Despite initial success, in the following years it lost political strength, obtaining only one seat for Navarre in 1923, and only in 1931 did it recover when it created an agricultural union with a nationalist orientation (Aizpuru, 2016). The exception to the rule was Catalonia, where the response to the late nineteenth century crisis among the peasantry was the creation of cooperatives and other agricultural associations and the demand for protectionist measures, but it also involved a political change that was consolidated during the first decades of the twentieth century. In Catalonia, farmers and landowners not only created cooperatives and pressure groups, as shown in this book by Miguel Cabo for Central Europe or Erik Bengtsson and Josefin Hägglund for Sweden, but they integrated themselves into those political parties that, according to them, best defended their interests. In the early twentieth century, two political forces disputed the political hegemony in Catalonia, the regionalists and the republicans, and both of them concentrated on the problems of agriculture, though in different ways, as we will see. This chapter is organised as follows. After this introduction, in section one we offer an overview of the evolution of the political system in Catalonia from 1890 (when male universal suffrage was approved) to 1936 (when the outburst of the Spanish Civil War put an end to the Second Spanish Republic). In section two we address the role of agricultural associations within the growing political influence of the regionalists. In section three we focus on the connection between the republicans and the vine-growing tenants’ struggle, explaining their political influence in rural areas. We end with a brief conclusion.

I. The transition to mass politics in Catalonia After a brief democratic period from 1869 to 1873 when male universal suffrage existed, in 1874 the Bourbon monarchy was restored in Spain. From that point, the political system was dominated by local power bosses (caciquismo) and elec‐ tions were manipulated so that two dynastic parties (Conservative and Liberal), which were mainly a network composed of ‘notable’ persons, took turns in power. Until 1890, the right to vote was restricted to a minority of landowners and taxpayers, and the control of the Parliament by the two dynastic parties was therefore easy.

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When male universal suffrage was approved in 1890, the control of the Parliament persisted, and the two dynastic parties continued to take turns in government thanks to the control of electoral districts by local power bosses and deceptive practices. However, their control of the Parliament was challenged by the republicans and the new parties that used the electoral practice of mass politics, which received growing support in elections. This political evolution was quite slow, especially in rural areas, where caciquismo persisted until the Second Spanish Republic (1931-1936), but the political influence of the dynastic parties gradually weakened. In Catalonia, where the population was more concentrated in urban areas (mainly Barcelona and its surroundings), the transition to mass politics came earlier than in other Spanish regions. At the end of the nineteenth century, opposition to the dynastic parties was carried out mainly by the republicans. They were divided into several parties, but the most important one was the leftist Republican Democratic Federal Party (PRDF). Created by several journalists and local leaders, it has generally been considered as the first incidence of a modern mass political party in Catalonia (Duarte, 1987 and 2004: 128-138). The PRDF found its electoral support in urban middle and lower classes, including some industrial workers, but also in some rural areas. However, it took time to consolidate its presence in the Spanish Parliament after the approval of male universal suffrage in 1890. It had limited success in the general elections of 1891 and 1893, when the Catalan republicans won six and twelwe seats respectively, and the two dynastic parties retained their majority: twenty-seven seats for the Conservatives and seven seats for the Liberals in 1891, and in 1893, nine and twenty-two, respectively. In the following elections, and for a period of ten years, the electoral results for the republicans were even lower: they did not obtain any seats in 1896, and only three seats in 1898, 1899 and 1901. The starting point of the decline of the dynastic parties in Catalonia was the general elections in 1901. Contemporary observers and scholars pointed out the significance of the results in Barcelona (Hurtado, 1964 vol. I: 58; Albertí, 1973: 153-160; Riquer, 1977; Culla, 1986: 37-46; Balcells, Culla and Mir, 1982: 31-55). But, as we will argue, this process was not able to consolidate itself until the rural areas experienced a similar evolution. The transition to mass politics did not completely succeed until republican parties on the one hand, and regionalists on the other became the dominant parties in most electoral districts, including the rural districts of Catalonia. The regionalists contested the 1901 elections in the guise of a new political party, Lliga Regionalista, founded that year by various sectors of the industrial and agrarian bourgeoisie that reacted to the late nineteenth century political crisis in Spain, just after the loss of the American colonies of Cuba and Puerto Rico in 1898. This party aimed at regenerating the political system through honest elections, putting an end to caciquismo, and reforming and modernising Spain with a decentralised state that distributed administrative powers over the Spanish regions (Riquer, 1977). These objectives were in line with those of the republican

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parties. At the end of the second decade of the twentieth century, the regionalists had evolved and were able to cooperate with the dynastic parties in the Spanish government, finding themselves in control of some ministries. However, the old political system was already in a process of disintegration at that time, accelerated by the Bolshevik Triennium (1918-1920), while the regionalists had enjoyed a period of transformation, forging themselves into a formidable power in popular politics. During the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth century, the republican movement in Catalonia was transformed thanks to the figure of Alejandro Lerroux, who used a populist language to attract the lower-middle and working class in Barcelona, and introduced a model of a party which appealed to the masses. Following the example of the socialist movement in Belgium, he reorganised the republican movement in Barcelona through the Casa del Pueblo, an organisation which not only had the functions of a political centre, but also included a cooperative, a school, a library and a café (Álvarez-Junco, 2002; Culla, 1986: 99-114). He created a party, the Republican Union (1903-1907), which later split into two factions: on the one hand the Re‐ publican Radical Party founded by Alejandro Lerroux in 1908, and on the other several republican forces under the guise of the Republican Federal Nationalist Union (1910-1916), the Catalan Republican Party (1917-1931) and the Catalan members of the Reformist Party (1912-1931). For our purpose, we are not going to make any distinction between the republican parties here; but what we must bear in mind is that as a result of the transformation of the republican movement, between 1891 and 1923 about a third of all republican deputies in the Spanish Parliament were elected in Catalonia (24% of all Catalan deputies in the same period) (Arnabat, 2019: 382). In the 1901 elections, both the regionalists and the republicans innovated. For the Lliga Regionalista party, these were the first elections it had contested, and it tried to choose reputable candidates linked to significant civic organisations. The republicans for their part introduced new propaganda techniques in their political campaigns. In both cases their success in the city of Barcelona was based mainly on the ability to mobilise their voters, paying special attention to the scrutiny of the vote in order to avoid the results being rigged, as well as threatening the authorities with the possibility of serious consequences if they were inaccurate (Riquer, 1977: 191-203; Culla, 1986: 39-44). These strategies were not limited to the city of Barcelona. For example, in some rural districts the regionalists’ candidates were landowners with a favourable reputation, as Carles de Camps (Marquis of Camps) the candidate for the dis‐ trict of Olot, and Leonci Soler for the district of Manresa. The former was the president of the main landowner’s association in Catalonia (IACSI), as well as being president of the Agricultural Federation of Catalonia (1899-1901); the latter was one of the founders of the Agricultural Guild of Manresa (1900) and the Agricultural Chamber of Manresa (1905), and president of the Agricultural Federation of Catalonia and the Balearic Islands (1904-1905). The republicans,

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277

Map 11.1: Districts with an anti-dynastic winner in the elections for the Spanish Parliament held in 1901, 1910, 1923 and 1933 Source: Own elaboration based on Balcells et al. (1982), Vilanova (2005) and Soler-Becerro (2019). Note: We have excluded the city of Barcelona and the urban district of Tarragona-Reus Falset for the elections held in 1901, 1910 and 1923.

on the other hand, increased their support beyond the city of Barcelona thanks to their links with the tenants’ mobilisation during the rabassaires’ struggle that had begun in the late nineteenth century (López Estudillo, 1989; Pomés, 2000a; Colomé et al., 2018; Soler-Becerro, 2019), and which we will go into more detail in section 3. The failure of the traditional dynastic parties in the city of Barcelona in 1901 was followed by a slow but continuous setback in the rest of the territory, as shown on map 11.1. During the period analysed, Catalonia had thirty-six electoral districts that elected forty-three deputies between 1891 and 1898, and forty-four deputies between 1898 and 1923, when the last general elections before the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera took place. Two districts elected more than one deputy (the city of Barcelona elected seven deputies and the urban district of Tarragona-Reus-Falset elected three deputies) whilst the other thirty-four districts elected only one. As we are interested in the contribution of the Catalan countryside to the decline of the traditional dynastic parties, on map 11.1 we have excluded the city of Barcelona and the urban district of Tarragona-Reus Falset, where this decline was even more rapid. Map 11.1 shows the growing influence of regionalists and republicans during the first third of the century. In 1901 the dynastic parties still retained the majority of districts: outside the city of Barcelona the regionalist party succeeded only in three districts (Manresa, Olot and Tremp), while the republicans won in only one district (Figueres). Ten years later, however, the regionalist party won in eight

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districts, most of them in rural areas, and in 1923 it obtained twenty-one seats in the Spanish Parliament, most of them elected in rural areas. The republicans also increased their support progressively: in 1901 they only won in one district, in 1910 they won in ten districts and obtained nineteen seats, and in 1923 they won in seven districts and obtained ten seats, most of them also in rural areas. The dynastic parties used the aforementioned rotation strategy to retain their influence: in Catalonia the Liberal party won in 1901, 1905, 1910 and 1916, while the Conservatives won in 1903, 1907 and 1914. However, in 1907 the dynastic parties experienced a dramatic failure (they obtained less than 10% of the deputies in Catalonia) in front of a new unitary anti-dynastic candidature – Solidaritat Catalana – (Molas, 1972, vol. I: 63-78; Riquer, 1972; Balcells, Culla and Mir, 1982: 116-153), and they would never again retain the majority: they received 34-43% in 1910-1916, and then fell to 18-31% in 1918-1923. They tried to stop their decline by creating several new parties such as the National Monarchist Union (UMN) and the Autonomist Monarchist Federation (FMA); but the growing influence of regionalists and republicans led them into a steady decline until 1923, when the military coup d’état intervened in an attempt to halt the disintegration of the traditional political system. After the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera (1923-1930), the electoral system changed and Catalonia was divided in five districts that elected a total number of fifty-four deputies: twenty in the city of Barcelona, fourteen for the rest of the province of Barcelona, and twenty for the provinces of Girona, Tarragona and Lleida collectively. During the Second Spanish Republic (1931-1936), the old dynastic parties did not reorganise and in Catalonia the contest was mainly between two parties, as can be observed in the 1933 elections on map 11.1. The regionalist party (which had been named Lliga Catalana since 1933) concentrated on the right-wing votes, while the left-wing votes went mainly to a brand-new republican party (ERC) founded in 1931, which was extremely successful in the elections for the Spanish Parliament that took place the same year: the left-wing coalitions led by the ERC obtained a total number of forty-six seats (twenty-six for ERC candidates), while Lliga Catalana received only four, leaving four other seats for other republican parties. In 1933, when right-wing parties won the elections throughout Spain, Lliga Catalana and its allies obtained twenty-eight seats, and the ERC and its allies received twenty-six (17 for ERC candidates). The results in the 1936 elections were the complete opposite: victory was for a coalition (Left Front) led by the ERC, with forty-one seats (twenty-one for ERC candidates), while the right-wing coalition, led by Lliga Catalana, obtained only thirteen seats (twelve for the regionalist party). To sum up, during the Second Republic there was a polarisation process between the right and left blocks that culminated in the 1936 elections. In Catalonia, the right was under the leadership of Lliga Catalana and the ERC was hegemonic in the left. Both of them were then true mass political parties: the ERC was founded in 1931 as a modern mass political party, and in 1933 the regionalists reorganised their party and founded the Lliga Catalana, in an attempt

AGRICULTURAL ASSOCIATIONS AND POLITICAL PARTIES

to also become a truly mass political party that could compete in elections with the ERC (Molas, 1972; Ivern, 1988 and 1989). To win the elections, both parties had to mobilise voters in urban and rural areas, in a process that regionalists and republicans had begun in the first decade of the twentieth century.

II. Agricultural associations as driving forces of regionalist politicisation The late nineteenth century agricultural crisis led to an intense social mobilisation in the European countryside, with the diffusion of agricultural cooperatives and farmers’ unions. In Spain, the Associations Act was passed in 1887 to make possi‐ ble the foundation of voluntary associations, and three years later (14 November 1890) a decree was introduced to regulate the creation of agricultural chambers, as intermediaries between the agrarian interests and the authorities (along with cooperative services for their membership). This last measure was not particularly successful, as in the early twentieth century very few agricultural chambers had been created in Spain (less than one hundred), but Catalonia was the region where the highest number of chambers were put into operation (about a third of all created in Spain). Their role in the social and political mobilisation in the first decade of the twentieth century became important, and several of them could count hundreds of members (Planas, 2003). Since 1899, the agricultural chambers and other agricultural associations grouped together under the guise of the Catalan Agricultural Federation, which was enlarged in 1902 to include associations from the Balearic Islands (FACB), numbering a total of 142 associations by the end of the decade. Most of them were agricultural cooperatives, which spread rapidly after a law for the creation of agricultural syndicates had been passed in 1906 (Garrido, 1996). The FACB included the Union of Catalan Vine-growers (UVC) which was founded in 1910 after several crises in the wine industry (1905, 1907, 1908, 1909), leading to an intense mobilisation of wine producers. In only a few months, this association had created delegations in over two hundred municipalities and reached nearly twenty thousand members, far more than any other agricultural association in Catalonia. The creation of the FACB was an initiative of the aforementioned landowners’ association (IACSI), which had existed since 1851, in order to lead and take control of the social mobilisation of the Catalan countryside (Planas, 2008). Although this association claimed to be apolitical, since the beginning of the twentieth century its leaders had become closely linked to the Lliga Regionalista party, especially since the 1906 elections (Molas, 1972, vol. I: 336). Its president (1897-1901), the Marquis of Camps, was elected deputy for the regionalist party in 1901, 1916 and 1918, before becoming senator for a lengthy period (1903-1915 and 1919-1923). He was one of the most authoritative voices in the party regarding agrarian questions. In his view – which was also the official party line – Catalonia had no problem with the social organisation of agriculture, as was

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the case in other Spanish regions with latifundia or minifundia, and agricultural policy should therefore solely focus on technical education, rural credit and the diffusion of agricultural cooperatives (Lliga Regionalista, 1915: 227-263). Other prominent leaders of the IACSI were also elected deputies in the regionalist candidacy for the Spanish Parliament in 1907: Ignasi Girona, Manuel Raventós and Leonci Soler. Ignasi Girona was president (1902-1906 and 1915-1923) and a board member of the IACSI (1907-1910); Manuel Raventós also had a term of presidency (1907-1910) and was a board member (1911-1914), whilst Leonci Soler was a board member some years later (1925-1928). There are other examples: Joaquim d’Abadal (board mem‐ ber 1913-1916), Carles de Fortuny (vice-president 1915-1918 and president 1923-1931), Eusebi Bertrand (board member 1919-1922) and Joan Garriga Massó (vice-president 1933-1934) were also elected deputies for the Spanish Parliament in the lists of the regionalist party. At least one fifth of all members of the IACSI’s board in the early twentieth century were members of the Lliga Regionalista (Planas, 2006: 166). The close link between this party and the leaders of the landowners’ association only broke up in 1934, when the social unrest in the Catalan countryside led the board of the IACSI to approach an extreme right party, as the regionalist party was then considered too moderate to defend their interests. In 1935, the disaffection of landowners led the Lliga Catalana party to create a specific agrarian department to study the problems of the countryside and to advise the party parliamentarians. But all in all, in the early part of the twentieth century, the IACSI was quite influential within the regionalist party, enough that the interests of landowners were taken into account. This is the reason why the creation of a Catalan Agrarian Party in 1931 by no means grabbed the regionalist hegemony among landowners (Molas, 1972, vol. II: 66-67, 251). Catalan agricultural associations – especially the IACSI – remained useful enough to defend agrarian interests, unlike the situation in other European regions, as shown by Milan Řepa, Erik Bengtsonn and Josephin Hägglund, and Miguel Cabo in this book. As the rural population was mobilised primarily in the context of local issues (Brett, 2019), it is useful to look at the provincial elections where local interests were at stake, in order to see the connection between agricultural associations and political parties. Some agricultural chambers were very active in supporting regionalist candidates in the provincial elections. They were not always successful in these campaigns, but they certainly played a role in recruiting peasant voters, disseminating the party’s message, and promoting and giving recognition to their candidates. On map 11.2 we show the evolution of the provincial board of Barcelona from 1903 to 1913, when most of these entities were created. Although the political influence of each agricultural chamber was different – the same as their activities and membership –, the comparison shows a growing political im‐ pact of the regionalist party where more agricultural chambers were in operation. Sometimes, the leaders of the agricultural chambers participated in the provin‐ cial elections as candidates for the regionalist party and were openly supported by

AGRICULTURAL ASSOCIATIONS AND POLITICAL PARTIES

Map 11.2: Agricultural chambers and districts were the regionalists succeeded in elections for the provincial board of Barcelona (1903-1913) Source: Own elaboration with Toran (1988) and Planas (2003). Note: As the provincial boards renewed their representatives every two years in half of the districts, the comparison must take into account the results of the provincial elections of 1903 and 1905, on one side, and the provincial elections of 1911 and 1913, on the other.

their boards, even if these entities were supposed to exclude any intervention in politics. In some occasions, some members protested against the participation of the board in the electoral campaigns, which was then forced to declare their neu‐ trality (Planas, 2013: 95). In other cases, the president of the agricultural chamber resigned just before the electoral campaign, to resume the presidency just after being elected, so that there was no criticism when the chamber’s board supported his campaign, sending letters to all the members asking for their vote (Planas, 1991: 163-165). But as long as the cooperative services worked, the members were not so much concerned about the political interests of the board (Planas, 2010). There are plenty of examples of participation in electoral campaigns by the boards of the agricultural chambers, which helped the regionalist party to increase its influence in the countryside. In table 1 we look at all the provincial deputies that were elected for the regionalist party in Catalonia (excluding the city of Barcelona) between 1914 and 1923. As can be observed, many of them were members of the agrarian bourgeoisie and participated in agricultural associations, sometimes in a leader‐ ship position, as founders, board members, or even as president. This is quite remarkable in the province of Barcelona, where agricultural associations had an intense diffusion in the early twentieth century, but also in the other provinces.

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JORDI PLANAS & RAIMON SOLER-BECERRO Table 11.1: Professions and participation in agricultural associations of the regionalist provincial deputies in Catalonia (excluding the city of Barcelona), 1914-1923

           Professions

Deputies

Leaders Members

           Barcelona

           37

           11

           14

Landowners and other activities

           17

           11

           14

Lawyers and other liberal professions

           14

           0

           0

Entrepreneurs, industrialists and engineers

           6

           0

           0

           19

           3

           3

           6

           3

           3

           Girona Landowners and other activities Lawyers and other liberal professions

           8

           0

           0

Entrepreneurs, industrialists and engineers

           5

           0

           0

           9

           2

           2

           4

           2

           2

           Lleida Landowners and other activities Lawyers and other liberal professions

           3

           0

           0

Entrepreneurs, industrialists and engineers

           2

           0

           0

           3

           0

           0

Landowners and other activities

           0

           0

           0

Lawyers and other liberal professions

           1

           0

           0

Entrepreneurs, industrialists and engineers

           2

           0

           0

           68

           16

           19

           Tarragona

           Total

Source: Own elaboration with Els Diputats de la Mancomunitat de Catalunya [http:// diputatsmancomunitat.cat/mancomunitat/]

Some agricultural associations participated also in political campaigns for the general elections to the Spanish Parliament. This was the case of the agricultural chamber of Vallès, whose board supported the campaign of the regionalist candi‐ date for the district in 1905, and contributed to his electoral victories in 1907, 1910, 1914, 1918 and 1919. In 1920 the victory was surprisingly for the Liberal candidate, helped by a snowstorm that prevented the regionalist voters from going to the polls as they lived in scattered farmhouses and small villages that remained isolated, while the Liberal candidate had its voters mainly in cities that were not affected (Planas, 1991: 161). The following elections were so disputed between the Liberal and regionalist candidates, that they had to be repeated because of accusations of dishonesty that ended up in the Supreme Court. In 1930 a new federation was founded to group agricultural cooperatives, the Union of Agricultural Syndicates and Peasants of Catalonia (USPC). In 1932 its membership included about 150 agricultural cooperatives and had the support

AGRICULTURAL ASSOCIATIONS AND POLITICAL PARTIES

of the Agricultural Federation of the Conca de Barberà (fifty cooperatives), the Catholic Agrarian Federation of Lleida (twenty cooperatives), the Agricultural Chamber of Falset (twenty cooperatives) and the Agricultural Chambers of Tor‐ tosa and Bages. Unlike the IACSI, the USPC gathered mainly peasants and small landowners, but leaders of this new federation were members of the regionalist party and its president, Albert Talavera, was candidate for the regionalist party in the 1931 elections. Consequently, the regionalist party increased its political influence among the small landowning farmers through the USPC, and among the large landowners through the IACSI (Molas, 1972, vol. II: 223-224). On the contrary, it did not have any political influence among the associations that gathered the tenants and smallholders which, as we will see in the next section, were mainly linked to the republicans. Moreover, under the Second Spanish Republic, the regionalist party strongly opposed any initiative for an agrarian reform to the benefit of the sharecroppers, the same in the Spanish parliament and in the Catalan parliament, where in 1934 a law was passed to regulate cultivation contracts for the benefit of sharecroppers and tenants (Balcells, 1968; Camps i Arboix, 1971; Domènech, Herreros Vázquez, 2018).

III. The republicans and the rabassaire struggle In the countryside, the republicans had close connections with the rabassaire struggle, the most outstanding social movement led by vine-growing tenants in the viticultural areas of Catalonia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century (Giralt, 1964; Balcells, 1968; Pomés, 2000a; Colomé et al., 2018; SolerBecerro, 2019). As Florencia Peyrou shows in chapter 10, since the Democratic Sexenium (1868-1874) Spanish republicans included the agrarian question in their programme. When in 1873 the republicans were in power, they passed a law declaring redeemable all emphyteutic payments affecting real estate, including those related to the rabassa morta contract; but the law was repealed in 1874, after the coup d’état that put an end to the First Spanish Republic (Giralt, 1964). The republican support for the rabassaires’ claims continued until the Second Spanish Republic, when – as we will see – a law was passed in the Catalan Parliament in favour of their claims. The first Rabassaire Vine-growers League (LVR) was created in 1882, but was active only for a few months, because of political repression. It is no coincidence that the first two republican deputies for the provincial board of Barcelona after the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in 1874 were elected precisely in 1882 in the district of Sant Feliu de Llobregat, where the LVR had a large membership (Pomés, 2000a: 407-408). A second rabassaires’ federation was created in 1893, when social unrest in the vine-growing areas was more intense because of the phylloxera crisis: the Agricultural Workers Federation of the Spanish Region (FTARE, in the Spanish denomination) was active until 1896 and had political

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coverage by the republican party (PRDF). Many local associations were organised in these years in the vine-growing areas – which operated, at the same time, as viticultural workers unions, mutual benefit societies, agricultural cooperatives, and political committees – in which rabassaires and republicans stood side by side (López Estudillo, 1989; Pomés, 2000a). The rabassaires’ organisations actively supported the republican campaigns, participated in rallies and contributed to their electoral victories, as happened in the 1893 elections, when the republicans had their best results in many years. They obtained twelve seats in the Spanish Parliament, half of them in the rural districts of Manresa, Sabadell, Sant Feliu de Llobregat, Vilafranca del Penedès, Vilanova i la Geltrú (all districts of the province of Barcelona) and La Bisbal d’Empordà (in the province of Girona). These rural districts in the province of Barcelona were precisely where the rabassaire struggle was more intense in the late nineteenth century and where the first tenants’ organisations were created, such as the LVR (1882) and the FTARE (1893). Later, in the early twentieth century, it was in this exact same area where another Rabassaires Federation (FR) was created in 1904 and a Rabassaires Federation of Catalonia (FRC) in 1907. After the First World War, when social unrest increased, the Federation of Societies of Agricultural Workers of the Penedès Region, created in 1919, and the Union of Rabassaires (UR), created in 1922, had most of their membership in this area (map 11.3): the first federation concentrated its membership in the district of Vilafranca (one of the main vine-growing areas in Catalonia), and the UR had a much larger influence, with its membership in the districts of Sabadell, Terrassa, Sant Feliu de Llobregat, Igualada, Vilafranca and Vilanova. These rabassaire organisations had indeed close connections with the republi‐ can parties. In the 1890s, prominent leaders of the PRDF were also members of the FTARE, and in 1895 this agricultural union decided to join the party (López Estudillo, 1989). The creation of the FR (1904) and the FRC (1907) were also initiatives from local republican leaders. In the early twentieth century, several deputies were elected for the Spanish Parliament thanks to the rabassaires’ support. This was the case of Josep Zulueta, who was elected in the district of Vilafranca in 1903 and who was able to retain representation of the district again and again until 1923 (Balcells et al., 1982; López Estudillo, 1989). For the 1919 elections, which took place during an intense social struggle, some rabassaire unions signed a manifesto in support of his candidacy, while others supported the Republican Radical Party. In the district of Sabadell, where the rabassaires also had a strong influence, their support was a key factor for the election of Francesc Layret (Catalan Repub‐ lican Party) in 1919 and then, after his assassination, in the election of Lluís Companys for the Spanish Parliament in 1920. Companys was charged by the local rabassaire unions with creating a large agricultural federation to defend their interests and, in 1922, after an intense campaign, the UR was founded. Companys even attempted to create a viticultural pressure group within the Spanish Parlia‐ ment to defend their interests.

AGRICULTURAL ASSOCIATIONS AND POLITICAL PARTIES

285

Map 11.3: Sections of the Federation of Societies of Agricultural Workers of the Penedès Region (1919-1921) and of the Union of Rabassaires (1923-1925) Sources: Own elaboration with Colomé et al. (2018), Panadés Republicano, 18.12.1919 and Pomés (2000a: 222-223). Note: In grey the districts of Igualada, Vilafranca, Vilanova, Sant Feliu, Terrassa and Sabadell where the republicans were most successful in elections.

In the 1923 elections for the Spanish Parliament, which were the first general elections after its foundation, the UR presented Lluís Companys as candidate. The UR also supported three other candidates that had signed an agreement to defend their programme; but it was only Companys who won a seat in the Spanish parliament. In the provincial elections of 1923, the UR presented their main leaders: the UR’s president and vice-president were candidates for the district of Igualada-Vilafranca and Vilanova-Sant Feliu, respectively. Although they were not successful, they did win in those localities where the UR had important delegations and membership (Pomés, 2000a: 465-486). To sum up, in the vine-growing areas, the rabassaire organisations were proac‐ tive in elections for deputies to the Spanish Parliament, as well as in provincial elections. Inversely, in a kind of reciprocity, some republican deputies played the role of “political entrepreneurs” (Tilly, 2004: 13) in the organisation of the rabas‐ saire movement, defending their class interests. Lluís Companys was the most prominent organiser of the UR, the largest and longest lasting of the rabassaire organisations, even though Spain became a dictatorship immediately after its foundation. In 1931, when the dictatorship was over, he was one of the founders of the ERC, the republican party that had the political hegemony in Catalonia under the Second Spanish Republic, and in 1934 he was elected president of the Catalan autonomous government. The most important leaders of the UR, as the president (Francesc Riera) and the general secretary (Amadeu Aragay), also became members of the ERC.

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Map 11.4: Agricultural associations that joined the ERC party (1931-1936) Source: Own elaboration.

Some local delegations of the UR and some agricultural cooperatives also became members of the ERC party. We have counted as much as sixty-two agricultural associations which joined the ERC in the 1930s (map 11.4). Most of them were associations from the areas where social unrest was more intense, and where rabassaire unions especially adhered to the UR (44%) and agricultural cooperatives (37%). In some villages, the agricultural cooperative was founded by the local ERC organisation (Bosch, 2015: 91-92), whilst in others the leaders of the agricultural cooperative founded the local ERC delegation (Soler-Becerro, 2017). We can see that these agricultural associations played a pivotal role in the politicisation of areas when we compare their geographical location (map 11.4) with the districts where the republicans were successful in the 1933 election (map 11.1). At the local level, we can easily find the links between the ERC and these agricultural associations. In the 1930s, many prominent members of agricultural cooperatives and farmers’ unions belonged to the UR and ERC simultaneously. That was the case of the founder of the agricultural cooperative La Germanor (Gelida), Joan Bertran, who was a member of the UR central committee from 1935. He belonged to the ERC and was the mayor of this municipality from 1931 to 1934. Feliu Tura, another member of the UR central committee, was also mayor of his municipality during the 1930s (1931-1934, 1936-1937, 1938-1939) and leader of the local agricultural cooperative. Josep Calvet, who held the pres‐

AGRICULTURAL ASSOCIATIONS AND POLITICAL PARTIES

idency of the UR central committee in the 1930s, was also the leader of an agricultural cooperative and was elected mayor of his hometown in a coalition between the UR and ERC in 1931 (Colomer, 1996). The board members of the local agricultural cooperatives were often founders of the local delegations of the ERC and/or UR. This was the case of the agricultural cooperative of Cunit, as well as in Pierola (Soler-Becerro, 2019: 199-202; Planas, Valls-Junyent, 2012). There are many other examples that point out the growing engagement of the local peasantry in politics during this period. At the beginning of the Second Republic, the identification between the UR and ERC was almost complete: in the 1931 elections for the Spanish Parliament the main leaders of the UR participated as candidates in the republican party’s list, and the same thing happened in the first elections for the Catalan Parliament in 1932. However, as the UR increased its membership with peasants of other polit‐ ical tendencies, mainly socialists and communists, this agrarian union sought to make clear its independence. For the 1933 elections, the UR nominated two can‐ didates that joined the coalition promoted by the ERC in the Barcelona-province district, and later in the 1936 elections, the UR appointed its own candidates for the Left Front. In a way, it had become a kind of leftist agrarian party (Mayayo, 1995: 131-179). Several other political forces also attempted to organise the Catalan peasantry, but none of them were as successful as the republicans. Anarcho-syndicalism managed to articulate a federation of agricultural workers during the period 1913-1919, but this was dissolved within the National Confederation of Labour (CNT), the main labour union in Catalonia. Small farmers did not support collectivism, and the CNT did not manage to rebuild a peasant organisation until 1932, as agricultural wage workers were in very little number in Catalonia (Soler-Becerro, 2019: 171-175). Catalan socialists and communists did take on the defence of the tenants, but they had a very weak showing in elections. The republicans were also powerful in some other Spanish regions, such as Valencia, Andalusia and Asturias, where they promoted agricultural associations (Pomés, 2000b). However, these associations seldom structured beyond the local or regional level and the electoral success of republicans in rural areas was overall limited. Leaving aside Catalonia, only in Madrid, Asturias and Aragon did the republican deputies exceed 10% of the total number of deputies elected in these regions between 1891 and 1923 (Arnabat, 2019: 382-383). The Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE), created in 1879, had very limited electoral support until 1917, and a determined policy to extend its influence into the countryside did not start until the late 1920s (Biglino, 1986). Consequently, the presence of farmers sections in the socialist trade union (UGT) was small until the 1930s, when the National Federation of Land Workers (FNTT) was created. This federation grew dramatically during the Second Republic, when the Socialists were in power, and became the largest section in the UGT and the most important agricultural workers’ organisation in Spain. But its strength was located mainly in Andalusia and Extremadura, where agricultural salaried workers were the main labour force

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in the countryside and had a very limited support from farmers and tenants (Malefakis, 1970; Bizcarrondo, 2008; Simpson, Carmona, 2020).

Conclusion In this contribution, we argue that agricultural associations (some of them pro‐ moted by wealthy landowners and others that were farmers’ unions) played a key role in the transformation of the political system that took place in Catalonia in the early twentieth century. In this period a new system of political parties was born and lasted long. The political change started in 1901, when the success in Barcelona of two political forces (regionalists and republicans) challenged the predominance of the two traditional dynastic parties (Conservative and Liberal) that had controlled the Spanish Parliament since the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in 1874. However, after their failure in Barcelona in 1901, the dynastic parties still retained the majority of seats in Catalonia for some years. If the regionalists and republicans wanted to become hegemonic in Catalonia, they had to be able to attract sufficient voters in the rural districts. This was achieved along the first decades of the twentieth century and, inversely to what happened throughout the rest of Spain, the Catalan elections progressively pivoted between two main political forces, regionalists and republicans, while the weight of the dynastic parties suffered a gradual setback. The regionalists, who had grouped themselves into the Lliga Regionalista, became the hegemonic party in Catalonia, especially after 1910. Its success was based on the control of the city of Barcelona with the support of the industrial bourgeoisie and middle classes, and the control of rural areas where they pre‐ sented candidates linked to the main agrarian associations (IACSI, FACB, UVC, USPC) or to agricultural chambers and cooperatives, which openly supported the regionalist candidates. The republicans were split into different parties during most of the period looked at, but even so their influence increased, especially in the countryside. Rabassaire unions sought political representatives to bring their claims to the institutions and found them mainly in the republican parties. Consequently, it was in the districts where the small peasantry was organised where the republicans had their best electoral results. To sum up, the political change that occurred in Catalonia in the first decades of the twentieth century cannot be explained without taking into account the results obtained by the anti-dynastic parties outside the city of Barcelona. Region‐ alists and republicans, in different ways, expanded their support in the Catalan countryside and led the dynastic parties to an increasingly marginal position. In this political transformation, the agricultural associations of one or the other sign (linked to the regionalists or to the republicans) played an important role. This process reached its peak during the Second Republic (1931-1936) when

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the agrarian question was at the centre of the political debate, and two large mass parties (ERC and Lliga Catalana) mobilised in the elections thousands of peasants and landowners. Agricultural associations looked for support for their interests in right and left parties, and played a role in their growing political influence, supporting their candidates, disseminating their political message, and feeding their ranks.

Abbreviations CNT (Confederación Nacional del Trabajo) ERC (Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya) FACB (Federació Agrícola Catalana-Balear) FMA (Federación Monárquica Autonomista) FNTT (Federación Nacional de Trabajadores de la Tierra) FR (Federació de Rabassaires) FRC (Federació de Rabassers de Catalunya) FTARE (Federación de Trabajadores Agrícolas de la Región Española) IACSI (Institut Agrícola Català de Sant Isidre) LVR (Lliga de Viticultors Rabassaires) PRDF (Partido Republicano Democrático Federal) PSOE (Partido Socialista Obrero Español) UGT (Unión General de Trabajadores) UMN (Unión Monárquica Nacional) UR (Unió de Rabassaires) USPC (Unió de Sindicats i Pagesos de Catalunya) UVC (Unió de Vinyaters de Catalunya)

National Confederation of Labour Leftist Republican party of Catalonia Agricultural Federation of Catalonia and Balearic Islands Autonomist Monarchist Federation National Federation of Land Workers Rabassaire Federation Rabassaire Federation of Catalonia Agricultural Workers Federation of the Spanish Region Catalan Agricultural Institute of Sant Isidre Rabassaire Vinegrowers League Republican Democratic Federal Party Spanish Socialist Party General Labour Union National Monarchist Union Union of Rabassaires Union of Agricultural Syndicates and Peasants of Catalonia Union of Catalan Vinegrowers

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Bibliography Acemoglu, D. and Robinson, J. A. (2019) The Narrow Corridor. States, Societies and the Fate of Liberty, New York. Aizpuru, M. (2016) ‘El agrarismo guipuzcoano y el nacionalismo vasco (1920-1933)’, Historia Agraria, 69, pp. 167-194. Albertí, S. (1973) El republicanisme català i la restauració monàrquica, 1875-1923, Barcelona. Álvarez-Junco, J. (2002) The Emergence of Mass Politics in Spain. Populist Demagoguery and Republican Culture, 1890-1910, Brighton. Arnabat, R. (2019) Asociaos y seréis fuertes. Sociabilidades, modernizaciones y ciudadanías en España, 1860-1930, Zaragoza. Balcells, A. (1968) El problema agrari a Catalunya (1890-1936). La qüestió rabassaire, Barcelona. ———, Culla, J. B. and Mir, C. (1982) Les eleccions generals a Catalunya de 1901 a 1923, Barcelona. Biglino, P. (1986) El socialismo español y la cuestión agraria (1890-1936), Madrid. Bizcarrondo, M. (2008) Historia de la UGT. Vol. 3. Entre la democracia y la revolución, 1931-1936, Madrid. Bosch, P. (2015) La lluita per la terra. Solidaritats pageses i conflictivitat rural a la regió de Girona (1931-1936), Girona. Brett, D. (2019) ‘Indifferent but mobilized: rural politics during the interwar period in Eastern and Western Europe’, Central Europe, 16, 2, pp. 65-80. Cabo, M. (2013) ‘Acción Gallega: populismo agrario y cambio político en la Galicia de la Restauración, 1912-1915’, Segle XX. Revista catalana d’història, 6, pp. 113-131. ——— and Veiga, X. R. (2011) ‘La politización del campesinado en la época de la Restauración: una perspectiva europea’, in Ortega, T. M. and Cobo, F. eds., La España rural, siglos XIX y XX. Aspectos políticos, sociales y culturales, Granada, pp. 21-58. Camps i Arboix, J. de (1971) Història de la Llei de Contractes de Conreu, Barcelona. Cobo Romero, F. (2012) ¿Fascismo o democracia? Campesinado y política en la crisis del liberalismo europeo, 1870-1939, Granada. Colomé, J., Planas, J., Soler-Becerro, R. and Valls-Junyent, F. (2018) ‘The Rabassaire struggle: long-term analysis of a social and political movement’, International Review of Social History, 63, 1, pp. 1-27. Colomer, M. (1996) Josep Calvet i Mora: la trajectòria d’un rabassaire argentoní, 1891-1950, Argentona. Costa, J. (1902) Oligarquia y caciquismo como la forma actual de gobiemo en Espana, urgencia y modo de cambiarla, Madrid. Culla, J. B. (1986) El Republicanisme lerrouxista a Catalunya: 1901-1923, Barcelona. Domènech, J. and Herreros Vázquez, F. (2018) ‘Land reform and conflict before the Civil War: landowner response to tenancy reform in 1930s Catalonia’, Economic History Review, 71, 4, pp. 1322-1348. Duarte, A. (1987) El republicanisme català a la fi del segle XIX, Vic. ——— (2004) Historia del republicanisme a Catalunya, Lleida.

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Frías Corredor, C. and García Encabo, C. (2006) ‘Sufragio universal masculino y politización campesina en la España de la Restauración (1875-1923)’, Historia Agraria, 38, pp. 27-46. Garrido, S. (1996) Treballar en comú. El cooperativisme agrari a Espanya (1900-1936), València. Giralt, E. (1964) ‘El conflicto “Rabassaire” y la cuestión agraria en Cataluña hasta 1936’, Revista de Trabajo, 3, pp. 51-72. Hobsbawm, E. J. (1973) ‘Peasants and politics’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 1, 1, pp. 3-22. Hurtado, A. (1964) Quaranta anys d’advocat. Història del meu temps, 2 vol., Barcelona. Ivern, M. D. (1988) Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya, 1931-1936, vol. I, Barcelona. ——— (1989) Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya, 1931-1936, vol. II, Barcelona. Lliga Regionalista (1915) El pensament català davant del conflicte europeu. Conferències dels parlamentaris regionalistes, Barcelona. López Estudillo, A. (1989) ‘Federalismo y mundo rural en Cataluña (1890-1905)’, Historia Social, 3, pp. 17-32. Luebbert, G. M. (1991) Liberalism, Fascism, or Social Democracy. Social Classes and the Political Origins of Regimes in Interwar Europe, New York. Malefakis, E. (1970) Agrarian Reform and the Peasant Revolution in Spain. Origins of the Civil War, New Haven. Markoff, J. (2016) Waves of Democracy. Social Movements and Political Changes, Abingdon & New York (2nd ed.). Mayayo, A. (1995) De pagesos a ciutadans. Cent anys de sindicalisme i cooperativisme agraris a Catalunya, 1893-1994, Catarroja–Barcelona. McAdam, D. and Tarrow, S. (2010) ‘Ballots and barricades: on the reciprocal relationship between elections and social movements’, Perspectives on Politics, 8, 2, pp. 529-542. Molas, I. (1972) Lliga Catalana. Un estudi d’estasiologia, 2 vol., Barcelona. Moral, E. (2014) “Las casas del pueblo en el socialismo español”, in Arnabat, R. and Duch, M. eds, Historia de la sociabilidad contemporánea. Del asociacionismo a las redes sociales, Valencia, pp. 123-143. Planas, J. (1991) Propietaris organitzats. Estudi de la Cambra Agrícola del Vallès (1901-1935), Granollers. ——— (2003) ‘Cooperativismo y difusión del cambio técnico en la agricultura. La contribución de las cámaras agrícolas (Cataluña, 1890-1930)’, Historia Agraria, 30, pp. 87-117. ——— (2006) Els propietaris i l’associacionisme agrari a Catalunya (1890-1936), Girona. ——— (2008) ‘El Instituto Agrícola Catalán de San Isidro y la organización de los intereses agrarios (1880-1936)’, Revista española de estudios agrosociales y pesqueros, 217, pp. 13-48. ——— (2010) ‘Identidades, corporativismo y autonomía del campesinado en la acción colectiva agraria. Cataluña, 1890-1920’, Historia Agraria, 50, pp. 65-90. ——— (2013) Viticultura i cooperativisme. La comarca d’Igualada, 1890-1939, Barcelona. ——— and Valls-Junyent, F. (2012) ‘Desigualdad, asociacionismo y conflictividad social en un núcleo de la Cataluña rabassaire’, Historia Social, 72, pp. 89-111.

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Pomés, J. (2000a) La Unió de Rabassaires. Lluís Companys y el republicanisme, el cooperativisme i el sindicalisme pagès a la Catalunya dels anys vint, Barcelona. ——— (2000b) ‘Sindicalismo rural republicano en la España de la Restauración’, Ayer, 39, pp. 103-133. Putnam, R. D. (2000) Bowling Alone. The Collapse and Revival of American Community, New York. ———, Leonardi, R. and Nanetti, R. Y. (1993) Making Democracy Work. Civic Traditions in Modern Italy, Princeton. Riquer, B. de (1972) ‘Les eleccions de la Solidaritat Catalana a Barcelona’, Recerques, 2, pp. 93-140. ——— (1977) Lliga Regionalista. La burgesia catalana i el nacionalisme (1898-1904), Barcelona. Satyanath, S., Voigtländer, N. and Voth, H.-J. (2017) ‘Bowling for Fascism: social capital and the rise of the Nazi party’, Journal of Political Economy, 125, 2, pp. 478-526. Simpson, J. and Carmona, J. (2020) Why Democracy Failed. The Agrarian Origins of the Spanish Civil War, Cambridge. Soler-Becerro, R. (2017) ‘El cooperativisme rabassaire al Penedès durant el primer terç del segle XX’, Estudis d’Història Agrària, 29, pp. 187-220. ——— (2019) Viticultura, desigualtat i conflicte agrari. La lluita per la terra a la Catalunya vitícola, 1900-1936, Tarragona. Tilly, Ch. (2004) Social Movements, 1768-2004, Boulder – London. Toran, R. (1988) ‘Les eleccions provincials a Barcelona, 1876-1923’, in Riquer, B. de dir., Història de la Diputació de Barcelona, vol. III, Barcelona, pp. 161-219. Vilanova, M. (2005) Atles electoral de la Segona República a Catalunya, 2 vol., Barcelona. Weber, E. (1976) Peasants into Frenchmen. The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914, Stanford.

ERIk BENgTSSON & jOSEfIN häggLUNd 

12. Agrarian politics in Sweden, c. 1850-1950 *

This chapter discusses agrarian politics in Sweden from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. The 1860s serves as a good starting point as it saw a fundamental reform of the two most important political entities. On the local level, the municipality was created in 1862 to handle local politics, which hitherto had been handled by the parish (Palme, 1962). And in 1866, the four estates diet (nobility, clergy, burghers and farmers), traditional since the fifteenth century, was replaced by a two-estates parliament with a lower and an upper house (Nilsson, 1994: chapters 1-2). Here we will explore the politicisation of the countryside within this new political system. What role did farmers play in Swedish politics? What were the roles of estate owners and of the rural proletarians? What kind of political organisations were formed for the sake of country dwellers? The chapter builds mostly upon previous Swedish-language research, notwith‐ standing the serious gaps in that research. As shown in chapter 13 by Cabo, Scandinavia has been, along with Central and Eastern Europe, the stronghold of agrarian parties. But in Swedish political history, agrarian politics remain relatively understudied. What prevails is a national view of a Social Democratic twentieth century, with a disproportionate focus on the labour movement. This was already shown by the historian Torbjörn Nilsson (1993) in a thorough review of the literature in the early 1990s. Since then, the imbalance has become less marked, but the sway of the Social Democrats over historians’ minds still exists. The relative lack of research on agrarian politics means that we will point out several disparities and gaps in our understanding of Swedish political history, and correspondingly point to what we see as promising venues for further research.

* Bengtsson’s work on this chapter has been financed by the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond grant “Dynamic peasants? Agency and inequality in Swedish modernisation”, P16-0412:1. Contact: [email protected] & [email protected] Erik Bengtsson • Department of Economic History, Lund University, Sweden Josefin Hägglund • Department of History, Lund University / Södertörn University College, Sweden Making Politics in the European Countryside, ed. by Laurent Brassart, Corinne Marache, Juan PanMontojo & Leen Van Molle, CORN Publication Series, 19 (Turnhout, 2022), pp. 293–312 DOI 10.1484/M.CORN-EB.5.128255

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I. The framework for agrarian politics in the last third of the nineteenth century The constitutional reforms of the 1860s were, in comparison to the enfranchising regulations in some other European countries, conservative. To have the right to vote in the lower chamber of parliament, one either needed a certain yearly income, or to own or lease property of a certain size. These demands meant that only about 20% of adult males had the right to vote (Rustow, 1969: 20-23). The demands of the upper chamber were so stringent that only 2% received the right to vote for this chamber. On the municipal level, the threshold to obtain suffrage was lower, but one was allocated votes proportionally to one’s level of income or wealth, with the result that one single person could hold thousands of votes. Companies could also vote and were awarded these according to their tax payments (Mellquist, 1974: 48-63) Until 1900 there was no limit on the number of votes a person could have in a rural municipality, resulting in the late 1890s in fierce protests by the suffrage movement against the fact that in 44 municipalities a single person or company had the majority of votes. Einar Mellquist (1974: 11), in his dissertation on the nineteenth century municipal political system, remarked that all European countries limited the suffrage of the poor, but that no system was “as extreme as this Swedish system”. In line with the Scandinavian Sonderweg narrative discussed by Skov in chap‐ ter 4 of this book, Sweden has a long tradition of popular participation in politics, as symbolised by the farmer estate in the estates diet from the early modern period to 1865, and by regular farmers’ participation in the parish rule (Österberg, 1993; Aronsson, 1992). Recent criticism has stressed that this view overlooks the highly plutocratic nature of these political systems (Bengtsson, 2019). Voting was weighted according to the value of one’s land in rural parishes also before 1862 (Mellquist, 1974: 36-46), and wealthy freeholders dominated the farmers’ estate, at least during the nineteenth century, while tenants of the nobility, accounting for around one third of Swedish farmers in 1800, were excluded from the estate (Bengtsson and Olsson, 2020). Nevertheless, the tradition of a relatively broad participation may have created a particular political culture of cooperation and some legacies of egalitarianism also useful in modern politics (Österberg, 1993). The actual participation in parliamentary elections of those who had the right to vote was, however, low after 1866, averaging at 15-25% until the late 1880s. It was particularly low in the countryside (Lewin et al., 1972: 41-45). However, in 1887 the voter turnout grew spectacularly, from 25 to 48 per cent, which is to be attributed to the heated debate over tariffs for grain to protect Swedish agriculture against American and Russian imports (Morell, 2001: 111-113). We will come back to this notorious moment in Swedish political history later. This political framework should be considered when discussing the politicisa‐ tion of the Swedish rural population, as well as with the actual situation within the Swedish countryside. In 1850, there were 410,000 rural households in Sweden, of which 207,000 were peasant-farmers (freeholders or tenants). Of the others,

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97,000 were crofters, tenants of small plots who paid their rent through a combi‐ nation of labour and cash, mostly by labour in 1850, though later progressively more in cash. 89,000 were cottagers, more proletarian than the crofters with only a small garden or plot for themselves. 17,000 households subsisted as contract workers (Morell, 2001: 30-37). Over the second half of the nineteenth century, the workers group more than doubled, while the crofters group remained roughly constant up until 1870 and then gradually decreased. The number of farming households continued to grow until the 1930s, while workers left the agricultural sector after 1900. The number of estate owners remained low, only a few thou‐ sand. The agrarian class structure was thus quite multi-faceted, but as we will see, the minority that actually took part in formal politics was much narrower.

II. Politicisation, locally and nationally, from the 1860s onward Immediately after the establishment of the two-chamber parliament in 1866, political parties came to the fore to organise the voting and attract followers. A ‘Ministerial Party’ of elite liberals which supported the government was formed and, in contrast, an agrarian party also came into being. This Lantmannapartiet, which can be translated into the Country Party,1 had roots dating back to a conservative group within the farmers’ estate in 1862-63 (Thermaenius, 1928: 54-67), and even to efforts to form a ‘Junker Party’, allying landed nobles and wealthy farmers in the late 1840s (Förhammar, 1975). However, the actual forma‐ tion occurred in January 1868, at the Hotel De La Croix in Stockholm. Count Arvid Posse, the gentry land owner Emil Key, and several farmers including Carl Ifvarsson, rallied to become the political opposition united in a loosely organised parliamentary party (Bokholm, 1998: 142-150). Posse had owned an estate of 550 hektar (1375 acres) since 1848 which he then transformed into a stock company in 1883. He was also chairman of the local bank, involved in railroad companies, and owned large shares in coal mining, cement, and the metal industry (Bokholm, 1998: 57-64, 90, 95). In short, he was an “agrarian capitalist of the purest water” (Söderpalm, 1997), and perhaps an unlikely candidate to found what has later been seen as a farmers’ party.2

1 In this translation we follow Widfeldt (2001). Rustow (1969: 23-24), who translated Lantmannapartiet as the Ruralist Party, said of the word lantman that it “connotes residence in the country rather than any particular occupation”. Lewin et al. (1972: 41) translated it as Yeomen’s Party, and Hurd (2000: 105) as Farmers’ Party. Since it was a party led by nobles and notables it was by no means a farmers’ party and so we do not call it as such. Lantman was widely used for wealthier farmers and estate owners, so it had a ‘posher’ connotation in the 1860s than mere farmer, which in Swedish is bonde. See the extensive discussion of title usage in Carlsson (2016). 2 Denmark provides a fascinating case for comparison with the Swedish Country Party. In Denmark, in 1848 a relatively democratic constitution for its time had been passed, and the struggle between liberals and conservatives marked the following decades. Elite actors and especially estate owners

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The first aim of the Country Party was to oppose the government, so it is no surprise that the party’s following from the beginning was quite heterogeneous, encompassing ‘liberals’ as well as ‘conservatives’ (even though such labels were rather non-descriptive in the Swedish setting of that time). In Aftonbladet, its supporters were commented upon as “une phalange tumultueuse de protection‐ nistes”; indeed, a protectionist and conservative impulse can be seen as a running theme among its members. The three main issues on the party programme were to reform the military service, shift the tax burden from the rural to the urban sec‐ tor, and to end public expenses (Rustow, 1969: 26). The first issue was intricately connected to the second: through the so-called allotment system, the Swedish military was financed by land taxes which put a disproportionate financial burden on farmers (Stråth, 2012: 166). Overall, the Country Party played a conservative role in Swedish politics; the difference between the major agrarian party of the 1870s and 1880s in Sweden, with those of Denmark and Norway, was summarised by Rustow (1969: 41) when he pointed out that in Sweden, the ‘farmer’ party had dissolved into the Conservative party in 1904, while in Denmark and Norway, the farmers’ parties were the major Liberal parties of their respective countries. II.1. Politicisation on the local level after 1862

What then happened with politics in the village, at the local level, far removed from the parliamentary affairs of the Country Party and its rival, the Ministerial Party? The sad truth is that we know very little about local politics during this period. There are a few studies of politics in the parish before 1862 (e.g. Gustafsson, 1989; Aronsson, 1992) which pay particular interest to how the pre-industrial society was governed and to the role farmers played vis-à-vis other groups. Research on municipal politics in the countryside after 1862 focused to a large degree on villages in the North of the country where sawmills and other thought that the suffrage had been extended too far and sought a political alliance which would facilitate reactionary reforms. In 1864-65 estate owners negotiated with leading farmer politicians, especially J. A. Hansen, about once again reforming the suffrage in order to give more votes to landowners. The estate owners also wanted a sizable contingent (12 of 66) of the seats in the first chamber being immediately chosen by the King. In the summer of 1866, the Danish estate owners and farmers united to implement this reform, and in October of the same year, they founded the “October Society” to represent the landowning interests of estate owners and farmers alike (Hvidt, 1990: 150-156). This alliance very much presaged that of the Swedish Country Party, also formed in 1866. But the difference is that the October Society had already broken up by the late 1860s, when the more or less liberal farmer politicians realised that the estate owners had no intention of giving the farmers any reforms in exchange for the alliance and the help with the constitutional reform of 1866. From the early 1870s on, Danish parliamentary politics were largely structured around the conflict line between farmers, with their liberal party Venstre, and estate owners with their conservative party Højre (Hvidt, 1990: 197-210). The Swedish Country Party was much more long-lasting than its Danish counterparty; until its inclusion into the united conservative party in 1904, the Country Party was the largest party within the Swedish parliament (see also chapter 4 by Skov).

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industrial activities arose, and where industrial interests began to compete for municipal authority with well-off farmers (Nydahl, 2010; Axelsson Lantz, 2018). These studies address local matters and conflicts, such as the usage of water or land resources and the appointment of the vicar, the schoolteacher or other local functionaries. This type of research is hampered by the fact that the minutes of municipal council meetings are more akin to decision protocols than reports of discussions; furthermore, voting is anonymised and the names of those who attended the meetings are not provided (Nydahl, 2010: 22-23). A conclusion from Erik Ny‐ dahl’s comparison of several municipalities is, however, that in the pre-democratic period (pre-1909), in municipalities dominated by corporations (remember that corporations had the right to vote in Swedish municipalities 1862-1909), political participation was often extremely low, with widespread absence at the vote. A new study of estate-dominated rural municipalities in the south of Sweden shows that local political inequality could be very fierce. Even though the municipality law of 1862 stated that tenant farmers should be able to vote on account of their leased land, landlords often wrote into the tenancy contracts that the right to vote would stay with them (Uppenberg and Olsson, 2021). This practice could still be found in contracts from the 1890s, which highlights the enduring inequality of rural politics. However, further studies of rural municipalities from the reform of 1862 up to the advent of ‘modern’ party politics at the local level in the 1920s and 1930s, are still needed, with cities during this period having had considerably more research (e.g. Palme, 1962). One important study, which can certainly serve as a model, is that of Lars Nyström (2003) on work, power and authority on one estate, Stora Bjurum, on the western plains of the country. Here, the estate dominated the municipality: when the owner died in the late 1890s, he accounted for 87% of the votes in the municipality (Nyström, 2003: 149). Even more crucially, Nyström demonstrates how the estate owner dominated local politics not only formally, but also informally, by the stick-and-carrot-strategy of patriarchal leadership over his employees and tenants. From research by Nyström, Uppenberg and Olsson, and Nydahl, we are presented with an insight into the very unequal distribution of political power in rural Sweden, the contours of which were mapped by Mellquist (1974). In contrast to these perspectives on inequality, though using a longer time span, studies by Österberg (1993) and Aronsson (1992) nevertheless emphasise a tradition of relatively broad political participation. In summary, more research of local politics is needed to facilitate a reliable synthesis of the scattered literature. II.2. Rural politicisation, from the radical wave of the late 1860s to the tariffs debate and the suffrage movement

The disappointment of democrats and radicals with the conservative parliamen‐ tary reform of 1866 engendered the formation of a third party, the so-called New Liberals. It was in the autumn of 1867 in Stockholm that the writer Sven

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Adolf Hedin, the former army captain Julius Mankell, and the newspaper editor Samuel Ödmann created this new party. Unlike the Country and Ministerial parties, this newcomer had the ambition of mobilizing citizens outside of Parlia‐ ment, including those from the countryside (Wallin, 1961: 149-158; Hurd, 2000: 101-105; Hultqvist, 1954: chapter II). These New Liberals adopted a quite radical programme, including universal and equal suffrage for the lower chamber and the municipal councils, plus an ambitious schooling policy and the introduction of conscription for the military to replace the aforementioned allotment system. In a matter of only a few years, from 1867 to 1869, the New Liberals grew into a popular movement, organising hundreds of open political meetings – something quite new in Swedish politics – all over the country to fuel debates on core issues such as suffrage reform (Wallin, 1961: 155). An uprising of tenant farmers against their landlords in the southernmost province of Scania, with rent strikes and claims to ownership of the land, intensified the New Liberal movement and infused it with an element of class struggle (Olofsson, 2008). In Scania, a party filial was founded, along with local political clubs, including the “Farmer and Worker Club” of Skarhult village (Olofsson 2008: 140). The New Liberals thus are significant in the context of this book: they envisioned a different type of farmer politics than that of the Country Party. Instead of an alliance with estate owners, which Ifvarsson and other Country Party farmer politicians stood for, the New Liberals espoused a more inclusive popular alliance. However, the radical movement of the New Liberals fizzled out in the early 1870s. The following decades of parliamentary politics became staid and slowmoving (Wallin, 1961: chapter 10; Hultqvist, 1954). The parliament was, in con‐ stitutional terms, dominated by a conservative status quo, and while there were economically advantageous reforms (Nilsson, 1994) and the economy industri‐ alised, politics remained a predominantly elitist affair, with scant involvement from the majority of citizens (Bengtsson, 2019). The election of 1887 is remembered as the one that woke Swedish politics from its slumber. The grain invasion from Russia and America gave rise to a pro‐ tectionist wave among grain-producing farmers and estate owners. The interests of the grain producers were pitted against the interests of the consumers, including many smaller farmers who did not produce grains for the market, but rather for their own subsistence, and so had no strong interest in high grain prices. The participation in the election to the second chamber rose from 25% in 1884 to 50% in 1887 (Esaiasson, 1990: 83-85; Morell 2001: 111-113). Correspondingly, in 1888 the Country Party temporarily split over the issue of tariffs, the free traders staying in what would be called the Old Country Party while the protectionists broke out to form the New Country Party (Carlsson, 1953). The Old Country Party was generally more liberal, while the new one was more conservative; Rus‐ tow (1969: 41) stresses that the tariff conflict pushed rural politics towards the right. The growing influence of industry and cities gave rise to a more defensive and reactionary mind-set among the farming population, and the material conflict between the city (where low food prices were welcomed by liberals and socialists

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alike) and the countryside (where high market prices were advantageous for larger farmers and landowners) nourished their more conflict-seeking, militant conservatism. When the two Country Parties reunited in 1895, the left-wing flank of the Old Country Party went on to form a small radical liberal party, the People’s Party (Folkpartiet). This People’s Party consisted of farmers, primarily from the northern parts of Sweden, in alliance with urban radicals, which often had a background in the suffrage movement (Edling, 1996: 134). How did the conflict play out on the local level? The leading liberal politician Gustaf Andersson i Rasjön (1884-1961) described in his memoirs his political awakening around 1900 as still very much coloured by the bitter division over the free trade issue, harking back to 1887. Opinions came in packages, dividing rural folk between Left and Right, as free traders advocated a smaller army and supported universal male suffrage, whilst protectionists were pro-army and sceptical towards suffrage reform. According to Andersson, one could simply choose between one or other of the two options (Andersson, 1955: 9-13). Newspaper material3 from the south of Sweden, which reported on the folkmöten or popular meetings, studied by Bengtsson (2021), also highlights the growing politicisation of the rural population. Compared to the literature on formal municipal politics, national politics and the tariffs issue, the analysis of newspapers adds two further aspects. Firstly, in meetings separate from the official party line, and following in the tradition of the New Liberals of the late 1860s, not only were the enfranchised able to participate but, as reported in the press, MPs, schoolteachers, farmers and disenfranchised workers were also able to work side by side. Secondly¸ the press reveals that the rising political conscience and activism was not limited to the tariffs issue. During the 1880s, as other European countries also experienced, ever more pressing social concerns took hold in Sweden, with an increase in poverty and social inequality, and a developing friction between the classes. In 1889, the formation of the Swedish Social Democratic party brought these new emerging issues to the forefront of Swedish politics. The newspapers clearly reveal how rural politics changed in the 1880s and 1890s. On 16 June 1886 – nota bene, a year before the tariff election – Helsing‐ borgs Dagblad reported that a rural political meeting had taken place over the Pentecost weekend, organised by “workers and peace communities in southern Scania”, which was attended by about 5,000 participants. The meeting was held in a beech forest, a popular place for gatherings of various purposes. Two ma‐ jor issues were up for discussion. In the first place, the relationship between “peace, sobriety, and workers’ issues”: the participants agreed that all three issues converged on the same goal: “human improvement”. Secondly: “why are crafts, agriculture, and the working class in distress?”. The School teacher Axel Svensson argued that the evil was caused by the unequal distribution of taxes. The meeting 3 The Swedish Royal Library (Kungliga Biblioteket) has in a major project of digitalised newspapers and made them available on tidningar.kb.se. For discussion of the database see Karlsson (2019).

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ended with a hurrah for humanity, and the participants continued their evening on two dance floors and a carousel. In the same month, 21 June 1886, the newspa‐ per Kristianstadsbladet stated that “here is again the time of popular meetings”, reporting that hardly a day went by without one taking place, most of which had a religious message, with religious pamphleteers restlessly travelling through the area and preaching from morning to evening, “hither in a beautiful wooden hill or a park, thither in a barn or an empty out-house, when the weather is cold and windy”. Plenty of other meetings in Scania, during the summer and autumn of 1886, dealt with the labour question and ways to improve the economic situation. There were, for instance, recurring calls to lower interest rates and to establish national bank offices in every provincial town. Access to cheap credit, as accounts in the press on the political meetings reveal, indeed became a key issue for farmers (cf. Erikson, 2018 on farmers’ debts). Newspapers from the late 1890s confirm the continuous participation of people from the countryside in political meetings. By 1896-97, a more or less clear division between conservative and more liberal-reformist farmers had taken place, as recalled by Gustaf Andersson Rasjön in his memoirs discussed above. Both sides discussed issues such as the extension of suffrage. In a meeting in the “beautiful Svensmad forest” in September 1896 (reported in Arbetet, 10 Septem‐ ber), Salomon Hansson, a farmer with leftist tendencies, argued that it was a pity that his own class, the farming class, showed “such large indifference and even hostility to universal suffrage. Farmers should be allies to the workers to overcome the Junker and bureaucrat rule”. On the more conservative side, politicians of the reunited Country Party defended the use of income and wealth to limit the right to vote. However, in contrast to two or three decades earlier, conservative politicians also began to participate, at least in election years, in meetings outside of the narrow confines of formal politics in the 1890s (Carlsson, 1953: 37-46; Esaiasson, 1990: 86-87). From the 1880s and 1890s onwards, politics in Sweden became ever more popular, and the political landscape changed. In 1904, the various conservative factions of the parliament united in a single Conservative party, now also with organisation outside of parliament The Allmänna Valmansförbundet or AVF (Gen‐ eral Union of Electors) included the Country Party as one of its organisations within the second chamber of parliament. Uniting farming and industrial inter‐ ests, the party has been called “an alliance between steel and rye” (Rustow, 1969: 59-65; Nilsson, 2004: 39-45; Eriksson, 2004: 13-26, 55-57, quote from p. 56). Thus, by 1904 there was no longer any genuine farmer’s party in the Swedish parliament. However, among the 230 MPs of the second chamber at that time, 17 were estate owners and 92 were farmers (Wåhlstrand, 1936: 161-163). Compared to the late 1890s, the interests of farmers had lost out as the liberal professions and blue-collar workers gained more seats. But the landed interests still formed an important component of the second chamber, and the political activity in the countryside had grown since the 1880s. This development was in line with the

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increasing degree of organisation of farmers and other agrarian interest groups during the same period.

III. Organisations for and of farmers At least four types of agrarian organisations, outside formal politics, are relevant to the understanding of Swedish agrarian politics in the c. 1880-1920 period: folk high schools, producer and consumer cooperatives, and farmers’ unions. The folk high schools (folkhögskolor) were educational institutions that began to pop up in Sweden from the 1870s onwards. The idea had been imported from Denmark, where the pastor N. F. S. Gruntvig had developed the first folkehøjskole in the 1840s (cf. chapter 4 by Skov). These high schools not only provided their students with practical knowledge for farming, but also with rhetorical and organ‐ isational skills that prepared them for participation in municipal politics. From the 1910s onwards, the folk high schools became closely associated with the socialist workers’ movement, but initially they addressed the sons and daughters of farmers and were often founded by county councils and reform-minded wealthy farmers ( Josephson, 1993: 203; Toler, 1993: 59-71). The second organisational type, the agricultural cooperatives, originated in the 1880s when the increasing need to invest in agriculture fuelled new initiatives that helped to cut prices, especially of concentrate and fertiliser ( Johansson and Thullberg, 1979: 10). However, this type of purchase cooperative only picked up pace after 1900. Dairy cooperatives had already proven to be successful earlier, which was in line with the move to dairy production from the 1870s onwards in response to the fall of grain prices; a first dairy cooperative began in 1880 at the Hvilan folk high school, followed by many others in the 1890s (Brandesten 2005: 196-200). The dairy cooperatives saw their membership rise from circa 40,000 in 1890 to 100,000 in 1914, handling at that time no less than 68% of the milk produced. Cooperative slaughterhouses grew in much the same way (Rydén, 1998: 65-79). Interestingly, agricultural cooperatives originated bottom-up, as a multitude of local organisations, much in contrast to older agrarian organisations which had been shaped by the elites and were strongly influenced by the state. Nevertheless, the local elites – in the shape of noble estate owners – often managed to play an important role in the cooperatives of the 1870s and 1880s (Brandesten 2005: 114-115, 142). In the Swedish consumer cooperatives, the third organisational type, workers and urban liberals continued to dominate until the 1910s. In neighbouring Fin‐ land and Denmark, the situation was different: in 1910, 50% of the members of Finnish consumer cooperatives were farmers, and as much as 73% in the Danish case, whereas farmers counted for a meagre 8% in the Swedish ones (Ruin, 1961: 198). Initially, the Swedish consumer cooperatives had strong bonds with the Socialist labour movement – in 1909 the Social Democratic Party leader Branting claimed that “Cooperation is calmly building the Socialist social system, in the

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midst of capitalism” – and this alienated farmers (Ruin, 1960: 133-141, quote on p. 140). But from the 1910s onwards, the share of farmers in the Swedish consumer cooperatives grew because the cooperative movement became less associated with socialism and, consequently, managed to attract more farmers. In 1929, a first ‘trade union’ for farmers was finally founded, explicitly influ‐ enced as it were by the Socialist trade unions for workers: Riksförbundet Landsbyg‐ dens Folk (RLF). The initiative was taken in the relatively poor and egalitarian north of the country in order to support the small farmers who were often overlooked by the older, elite-dominated organisations such as the county-level Agricultural Societies. (Rydén, 1998: 120 ff.). The union aimed from the outset to operate as a producer cartel in local markets and to set common prices for produce; it considered the high profits of middlemen and traders as one of its main targets. Collectively, the efforts to organise farmers’ interests from around the 1870s onwards resulted in a fundamental shift: from a relatively disorganised situation until the last third of the nineteenth century, farmers gradually became one of the best organised social groups within Sweden and the world (Micheletti 1990: 15). Moreover, as was the case in Catalonia (chapter 11 by Planas and Soler-Beccero), the development of agricultural cooperatives and farmers’ unions also interacted with politics, as will become clear in the following part of this chapter. Jacob Bjärsdal (1992) talks of a “new farmer”, evolving successfully in the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s: cooperative, democratic and organised. This had political implications and was shaped by the interplay with politics.

IV. Competitors for the vote of the farming community While there was no specific farmers party in Swedish national politics from 1904, all parties, left and right, tried to cater to agrarian interests. Reaching out to smallholding farmers and agrarian working classes became even more of a priority after the 1909 suffrage reform granted universal suffrage to the second chamber for Swedish men. The Conservative party, into which the old Country party had merged in 1904, had continuous discussions internally about how to reconcile urban interests with rural needs, especially with those of wealthier farmers and estate owners (Eriksson, 2004: 75, 79, 90). Parties on the other side of the political spectrum also wanted to mobilise the agrarian population. Edling (1993: 139) points out that in the 1890s, the Swedish liberal left, that is to say the Suffrage movement and the People’s Party, profiled itself as the representative of the lower classes of the agricultural economy in opposition to the reunited Country Party. It argued that farmers, workers and craftsmen had common interests and should unite. The People’s Party merged with other liberal groups in the parliament in 1900 to create the Liberal Coalition Party (Liberala samlingspartiet), which aimed to organise the so-called småfolk of the countryside, a term typical of this period denoting the lower classes, including, dependent on

AGRARIAN POLITICS IN SWEDEN, C. 1850-1950

context, small farmers, crofters and proletarians. The Liberals wanted to attract these groups by speaking out for improved rights for tenants, the generalisation of suffrage, support for farmers to strengthen them in their competition for resources with industrial companies, and other reforms (Edling, 1993). From the literature available, the party was a fragile coalition between anti-bureaucratic, pro-thrift but rather conservative farmers, genuinely left-liberal countryside dwellers, and urban radicals (Esaiasson, 2010: 44; Luebbert 1991: 70-72). As with all socialist parties, the Swedish Social Democrats had a complex relationship with the agrarian classes, in particular with smallholding farmers. The party was predominantly urban. In the 1886 party programme, smallholding farmers were described as part of the disappearing middle class. In 1911, when the first election with universal male suffrage took place, the Social Democratic party revised its party programme substantially in order to make it more attractive for smallholders, tenants, crofters and agricultural labourers (Odhner, 1989). The party now elected to support the continued existence of small farms and advanced cooperatives as a way of combining the advantages of large-scale production with the continued existence of small farms (Odhner, 1989: 93-95; Morell, 2001: 133-134). Despite the efforts of all parties to attract the rural population, the 1910s would see the creation of two new agrarian parties, which in 1921 would merge into one. In 1910 the first programmatic proposal for a new Farmers’ party was presented. It was the estate owner Carl Berglund who presented a programme in the magazine Landsbygden (Rural Life). This local initiative soon developed into a national party, the Farmers’ League (Bondeförbundet, BF) in 1913-14. A corresponding party had been created in Scania in the south, and in February 1915 a competing farmers’ party, the Farmers’ National League (Jordbrukarnas Riksförbund, JRF) was formed. Both parties had very similar programmes and sought to protect agriculture from perceived threats from industry, capitalism and socialism (Mohlin, 1989: 49-57). From its beginning, the JRF adopted a more reactionary and anti-Semitic ideology, whereas such ideological elements only en‐ tered into the BF in 1921 (Mohlin, 1989: 49-57; Widfeldt, 2001: 3-4; Torstendahl, 1969). Bread and butter issues were also very influential elements: one of the arguments for the political organisation in the south was that the taxes on sugar, which was produced in the sugar beet growing south, were due to be lowered (Eriksson, 2004: 69-70). Both parties can, by and large, be seen as instances of the ‘agrarian defence’ discussed by Cabo in chapter 13 of this book: farmers motivated to political action by a perceived undermining of agriculture as the nation’s foremost economic sector and the countryside’s way of life (cf. Sejersted, 2005: 90-91). However, it is still somewhat unclear from the extant literature as to why the new farmer’s party – indeed, two parties initially – emerged in the 1910s.4 One 4 There was a ten year ‘gap’ with no specific agrarian party, from the dissolving of the Country Party in 1904, and the formation of the FL in 1914. Norway saw a similar process where the farmers’ party

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explanation that must be brought up is the increasing urbanisation and industrial‐ isation of Swedish society. Whereas in 1870 only 13% of the 4.2 million Swedes lived in cities, in 1910 this was true for one quarter of the 5.52 million population (Statistiska Centralbyrån 1969: 47). The rural inhabitants felt the threat of its di‐ minished influence over society, which may have subsequently provoked its desire to organise itself politically (Mohlin, 1989). The farmers, for their part, probably also felt provoked by the appearance of unions for agricultural workers. The first wave of trade unionism in Sweden gathered industrial labourers, craftsmen and workers in the transport sector, but in 1904 the first agricultural workers’ union of longer lasting character was formed in the southern province of Scania (Back, 1962: 70-72). The prospect of more expensive labour and challenges to authority can hardly have been endearing to the larger farmers who depended on wage labour and were used to a patriarchal employment relationship (Carlsson, 1953: 297; Nyström, 2003). However, trade unionism of agricultural workers did not really take off before the interwar period – ironically, the same time as the paid labour force left agriculture in droves, being replaced by machinery and family labour – but unionism was surely a ‘threat’ playing out in the minds of any farmer after c. 1900 (Carlsson, 1953: 289-306). As time went on, the politicisation of the rural communities progressed. Electoral participation was still lower in the countryside than in the cities, but on an upward trend in both. In the 1902 election to the second chamber, still being played out under the old rules, the gap was still exceptionally large: 42% of the enfranchised in the countryside voted, against 64% in the cities. In 1911 and 1914, with universal manhood suffrage, 56 and 68% of countryside voters participated, against 63 and 77% in the cities (Statistiska Centralbyrån 1914: 17). Leif Lewin with co-authors (1972: 197) sees 1911 as a “realigning” election where the progress of Conservatives and Social Democrats in cities forced the Liberals to focus on the countryside. This might be an exaggeration, since the countryside had already been a natural recruiting ground for the Liberals before then (Carlsson, 1953: 319-320). In 1906, of their 107 MPs in the second chamber, 30 were farmers and four were estate owners (Wåhlstrand, 1936: 176). In 1912, of 102 Liberal MPs, six were estate owners and fifty four farmers; among the Social Democrats’ sixty four MPs, only five were active in agriculture – all farmers, no proletarians – and among the sixty four conservative MPs, thirty eight were farmers or estate owners (Hesslén, 1936: 186). In short, the countryside was in no way politically homogenous, although Social Democrats underperformed there. The Farmers’ League became an estab‐

Venstre became the more general Liberal party (under the same name), while in 1921 a new specific farmers’ party was founded. This has been the focus of more research than the Swedish case (Rokkan 1967; Aasland 1974). Palme (1964: 8-11) has pointed to that the leading farmer politicians Persson in Tällberg and Petersson in Påboda in 1910 discussed in their letters forming a new centrist farmer party, but they never put those ideas into action. However, the ‘road not taken’ would deserve more research.

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lished political force, with 8% of the votes to the second chamber in 1920, and 11% in 1924 and 1928. Why exactly so many farmers and others choose the FL, rather than the Liberals, Conservatives or perhaps the Social Democrats, is still unclear in the detail. That a spirited defence of the (perceived) material and cultural interests of agriculture and the countryside had appeal is clear (Toler, 1993; Morell, 2001: 119-120), but as we will return to, a call for more research is warranted. First, however, we will discuss a turning point in Swedish politics, in which the Farmers’ League played a key role. IV.1. The road to the Red-Green coalition of 1933

In many countries, the political response to the Great Depression were a turning point: The New Deal in the U. S., Nazism in Germany. In Scandinavia, famously, alliances between farmer parties and Social Democrats were formed. This is commonly seen as the foundation of the long-lasting Social Democratic influence in Scandinavian countries, which paved the way for the Social Democratic welfare states (Esping-Andersen, 1985; Luebbert, 1991). Swedish politics in the 1920s, ever since the first election with universal suffrage in 1921, had been very turbulent, with 10 different governments in a decade. As Per Albin Hansson, the Social Democratic prime minister from 1932 until his death in 1946, reminisced in 1940: “When dictatorships arrived in the world, it gave us cause to ask, how would it be possible in our own country to build a democratic government, which could show the people that we didn’t need the strongman dictatorship.” (Quoted in Nyman, 1944: 14). The election in the autumn of 1932 yielded the following parliamentary situation within the second chamber: 104 mandates for the Social Democrats, 118 for the centre-right parties (Conservatives fifty eight, Farmers’ League thirty six, Free spirited liberals twenty, Liberals four), and eight Communists. The Social Democrats had begun to reach out to farmers in a new way. “The farmers’ distress is also the workers’ distress”, said Per Albin in his May day speech of 1933 (Nyman, 1944: 26). That the finance minister, Per Edvin Sköld in a riksdag debate on support for sugar beet growing, said that the Social Democrats had been “forced to revise its position vis-à-vis support for agriculture”, was happily noted in the FL ranks (Bjärsdal, 1992: 141). In a country where the conflict between urbanite demands for cheap food and farmers requests for agricultural produce to earn a worthy price had been one of the main political conflict lines since 1887, this was a major step. In both parties, the idea began to grow that a farmer-Social Democratic coalition, such as the one in Denmark in January of 1933, could be possible (Bjärsdal, 1992: 142; Isaksson, 2000: 239). The situation in the spring of 1933 was coloured by the ascent to power of Hitler on 30 January. The Social Democrats, in a minority government, negotiated with all the centre-right parties, the Farmers, the Liberals and the Conservatives, on the two major issues of the day: unemployment, and the crisis of agriculture, in order to find a coalitional solution. In May, after little success with the Conserva‐

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tives and the Liberals, the Social Democrats and the FL began negotiations (for the entire process, see Nyman, 1944: 22-59; Isaksson, 2000: 228-246; for the economic background, Johansson and Thullberg, 1979: 48-58). In the end, the Social Democrats and the FL found common ground: the workers’ party agreed to protectionist measures and higher prices for milk and other key goods, and the FL agreed to the expansionist economic policy desired by the Social Democrats. The emergency solution proved to have far-reaching consequences; indeed, it has often been portrayed as the starting point of the “Swedish model” (EspingAndersen, 1985; Luebbert, 1991). The alliance between the presumed centreright party of the farmers and that of the Social Democrats gave a stable majority in parliament. It was not until the 1970s that the Farmers’ League really broke the on-off pact with the Social Democrats and instead turned to a collaboration with the Liberals and the Conservatives. However, the alliance should not be interpreted as an outcome of an old tradition of worker-farmer collaboration. As we have shown in this chapter, there was no such tradition in place. Rather, the alliance of the 1930s was one of convenience, of short-term material interest and a concern with political stability in an uncertain time. It turned out in the long term to be of consequence, but that could not have been predicted in 1931 or 1932. IV.2. An epilogue on the Farmers’ League

In the first decades of its existence, the FL was purely an agrarian party. There were exceptions, such as the professor Nils Wohlin who became a cabinet minister in the 1930s, but mainly the party was of and for the farmers. In the 1940s the party started to broaden its appeal to other voters. In 1943 it added “Rural party” (Landsbygdspartiet) before Bondeförbundet in its name, to highlight the aim to attract votes from non-farming rural residents, and from 1947 onwards discussions were held on changing the party name wholesale, to the Centre Party (Centerpartiet). In 1956 the name changed to the Centre Party Farmers’ League, and in 1958 the second half was dropped, so becoming a party with the generic name the Centre Party (Widfeldt, 2001: 5-6); the timing was similar to that in Norway, where the Farmers’ Party in 1959 changed its name to the Centre Party (Christensen, 2001: 32). The social base of the party was, to a large degree, still farmers: in 1960, 70% of all farmers voted for CP (Widfeldt, 2001), and still in the 1980s a large share of the delegates at the party conferences were farmers or professionals from the farmers’ organisations, the cooperatives, and the farmer’s union (Micheletti, 1990: 69).

Conclusions This chapter has demonstrated that farmers played a key role in Swedish politics in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but not necessarily in a uniform and constant way. Contrary to the lines of continuity drawn between the Lantman‐

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napartiet of the 1860s and the Bondeförbundet-Social Democratic coalition of 1933 in influential accounts such as Esping-Andersen (1985), this chapter has shown that rural and agrarian politics have experienced major convulsions. If we relate these parties to the typology of agrarian parties offered by Cabo in this book, we may say that both the Country Party of 1868-1904 and the Farmers’ League of 1914 to the 1950s5 fit the description in that they were pragmatic and more interest-driven than ideological. The FL fits Cabo’s description of an agrarian party defending ‘a third way between capitalism and socialism’, staunchly defending private (farmers’) property, but criticizing some aspects of industrial and financial capitalism. With the CP, this type of ambivalence was less prevalent in the party mainstream (as with party leader Arvid Posse discussed in section II), while the party’s left flank could harbour some such criticism. The CP, as a party in which noblemen and estate owners played key roles, did not fulfil Cabo’s criterion that it was usual for agrarians to display suspicion or hostility towards both large landowners and agricultural labourers. Both the CP and the FL, especially the CP, hosted strong scepticism vis-à-vis state bureaucracy. To sum up, there were certainly some continuities in Swedish agrarian politics from the 1860s to the 1950s, but the scene was as much marked by change as it was by continuity. Furthermore, there are several important issues in the modern history of agrarian politics in Sweden which remain unsolved. As stated at the beginning of the chapter, Swedish political history has paid disproportionate attention to the labour movement (Nilsson, 1993), and the image pieced together here builds a picture of less than certain ground. The last major study devoted to the Country Party was published in 1953 (Carlsson, 1953). The key works on the first decades of the Farmers’ League that we are aware of are those by Bjärsdal (1992) which is not an academic study, but a biography written by a party functionary, the volume by Torstendahl (1969) that focusses solely on ideologies, especially those of the far right and not on politics, and the book by Mohlin (1989), which is a rather one-sided quantitative study of electoral behaviour. Therefore, we would like to round off our chapter by pointing towards three areas for further research. A first topic that would be extremely interesting to investigate is party choice among farmers in the early twentieth century. Which factors caused farmers to join the Conservative party, or the Liberal party, or from the 1910s, the Farmers’ League? Bjärsdal (1992) provides a fascinating snippet of information when he discusses why the later party leader of the Farmers’ League, Axel Pehrsson in Bramstorp, chose the Liberal party over the Conservatives in the 1910s: according to Bjärsdal, he could not stand the elitism and the dominance of nobles in the politics of the Conservatives in the south of the country (Bjärsdal, 1992: 26, 39-41). Such social tensions surely played a role, but it would be revealing to consider several influential factors at once: economic interests in 5 When it became less of a distinct agrarian party as it changed its name to the Centre Party. See section IV.2 and, for a more detailed discussion, Widfeldt 2001.

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issues such as tariffs and subsidies, political ideology and opinions regarding universal suffrage, affiliations with organisations such as cooperatives; and so on. A prosopographical method would be advisable, also as a counterpart, from the ‘bottom up’, to the very ‘top down’ focus on party elites in the political history literature for this period. Therefore, one would have to look for autobiographies, local history writing and other sources to add new knowledge. A second topic, related to the previous, which should be ripe for further research is the involvement of farmers – such as Bramstorp – in Liberal party politics around 1900. Previous research has mainly focused on farmer politics as the realm of the Country Party and then the Farmers’ League, but the various liberal parties of the time also had a significant number of farmers in their ranks. Research on these parties has pointed to internal disagreements between urban and rural interests as problematic (e.g. Luebbert, 1991: 126-131), but the motivation and political activity of the liberal farmers themselves remain unclear. A better description of these would also further our understanding of why two new farmer parties were formed in the early 1910s. A third topic worthy of new research is the growth of the farmers’ cooperatives and unions from the 1880s onwards. Unlike the two previous suggestions for further research, this one has been honoured with excellent studies ( Johansson and Thullberg, 1979; Rydén, 1998; Thullberg, 1977). These pioneering works have, to a large degree, described the organisations from a central and macro point of view. In line with our discussion on the motivation of farmers to join the above parties, it would be equally rewarding to study their motivation in joining (or not) the cooperatives and the unions. It is possible that this would give us insights into the mentality, associational life and political culture of Swedish farming families, and may help in understanding the contradictory tendencies in the 1910s: on the one hand, farmers then began to involve themselves in consumer cooperatives, where the Socialists were the dominant force, while on the other hand and more or less simultaneously, the rather militant, right-oriented Farmers’ League was formed. The relationship between farmers and workers here would be an intriguing point to investigate in further detail, and to also help to make sense of Swedish politics and society during this period.

Abbreviations AVF CP FL RLF

Allmänna Valmansföreningen. the Country Party, Lantmannapartiet in Swedish. the Farmers’ League Riksförbundet Landsbygdens Folk.

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Bibliography Printed sources Kungliga Biblioteket, database ‘Svenska dagstidningar’, available at https://tidningar.kb.se/ (last accessed 22 April 2021). Statistiska Centralbyrån (1914) Sveriges officiella statistik. Riksdagsmannavalen 1914. ——— (1969) Historisk statistik för Sverige. Vol. 1: Befolkning 1720-1967, Stockholm. Literature Aasland, T. (1974) Fra landmannsorganisasjon til bondeparti: Politisk debatt og taktikk i Norsk Landmandsforbund 1896-1920, Oslo. Andersson i Rasjön, G.(1955) Från bondetåget till samlingsregeringen: Politiska minnen, Stockholm. Aronsson, P. (1992) Bönder gör politik: Det lokala självstyret som social arena i tre smålandssocknar, 1680-1850, Lund. Axelsson Lantz, E. (2018) Naturresurser, sågverksbolag och bönder: Konflikter i Västernorrland 1863-1906, Umeå. Back, P.-E. (1962) ‘Sekelskiftets tidning som kampanjorgan’, in Alsterdal, A. and Sandell, O. eds, En verklig folktidning: Arbetet 1887-1962, Malmö, pp. 69-83. Bengtsson, E. (2019) ‘The Swedish Sonderweg in question: democratization and inequality in comparative perspective, c. 1750-1920’, Past & Present, 244, 1, pp. 123-161. ——— (2021) ‘The evolution of popular politics in Sweden: the folkmöten of the 1860s, 1870s and 1880s’, Lund Papers in Economic History, 226 (September 2021). ——— and Olsson, M. (2020) ‘Peasant aristocrats? Wealth, social status and the politics of Swedish farmer parliamentarians 1769-1895’, Scandinavian Journal of History, 45, 5, pp. 573-592. Bjärsdal, J. (1992) Bramstorp: Bondeledare, kohandlare, brobyggare, Stockholm. Bokholm, R. (1998) Kungen av Skåne: En bok om statsmannen Arvid Posse, Lund. Brandesten, O. (2005) Lantbrukarnas organisationer: Agrart och kooperativt 1830-1930, Stockholm. Carlsson, C. M. (2016) Det märkvärdiga mellantinget: Jordbrukares social status i omvandling 1780-1900, Stockholm. Carlsson, S. (1953) Lantmannapolitiken och industrialismen: partigruppering och opinionsförskjutningar i svensk politik 1890-1902, Stockholm. Christensen, D. A. (2001) ‘The Norwegian Agrarian-Centre Party: class, rural or catchall party?’, in Arter, D. A. ed., From Farmyard to City Square? The Electoral Adaptation of the Nordic Agrarian Parties, Aldershot, pp. 31-58. Christensen, J. (1997) Bönder och herrar: Bondeståndet i 1840-talets liberala representationsdebatt. Exemplen Gustaf Hierta och JP Theorell, Gothenburg.

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Edling, N. (1996) Det fosterländska hemmet: Egnahemspolitik, småbruk och hemideologi kring sekelskiftet 1900, Stockholm. Erikson, M. (2018) Krediter i lust och nöd: Skattebönder i Torstuna härad, Västmanlands län, 1770-1870, Uppsala. Eriksson, F. (2004) Det reglerade undantaget: Högerns jordbrukspolitik 1904-2004, Stockholm. Esaiasson, P. (1990) Svenska valkampanjer 1866-1988, Stockholm. ——— (2010) Karl Staaff, Stockholm. Esping-Andersen, G. (1985) Politics against Markets. The Social Democratic Road to Power, Princeton. Förhammar, S. (1975) Reformvilja eller riksdagstaktik? Junkrarna och representationsfrågan 1847-54, Stockholm. Gadd, C.-J. (2000) Den agrara revolutionen 1700-1870, Stockholm. Gustafsson, H. (1989) Sockenstugans politiska kultur: Lokal självstyrelse på 1800-talets landsbygd, Stockholm. Hultqvist, P. (1954) Riksdagsopinionen och ämbetsmannaintressena: från representationsreformen till 1880-talets början, Gothenburg. Hurd, M. (2000) Public Spheres, Public Mores, and Democracy. Hamburg and Stockholm, 1870-1914, Ann Arbor. Hvidt, K. (1990) Danmarks historie 1850-1900: Det folkelige gennembrud og dets mænd, Copenhagen. Isaksson, A. (2000) Per Albin. IV: Landsfadern, Stockholm. Johansson, I. L. (1951, reprint 2005) Analfabeten, Stockholm. Johansson, T. and Thullberg, P. (1979) Samverkan gav styrkan: Lantbrukarnas föreningsrörelse 1929-1979, Stockholm. Josephson, O. (1993) ‘Att ta ordet i sin makt: Folket och det offentliga språket i det sena 1800-talet’, in Broberg, G., Wikander, U. and Åmark, K. eds, Svensk historia underifrån: Tänka, tycka tro, Stockholm, pp. 197-218. Karlsson, T. (2019) ‘Databasen Svenska dagstidningar – mycket text, mindre kontext’, Historisk Tidskrift, 139, pp. 408-416. Lewin, L., Jansson, B. and Sörbom, D. (1972) The Swedish Electorate 1887-1968, Stockholm. Luebbert, G. (1991) Liberalism, Fascism or Social Democracy. Social Classes and the Political Origins of Regimes in Interwar Europe, New York and Oxford. Lund, H. and Pedersen, A. F. (1970) Et folk vågner, Copenhagen. Mellquist, E. D. (1974) Rösträtt efter förtjänst? Rösträttsdebatten om den kommunala rösträtten i Sverige 1862-1900, Stockholm. Micheletti, M. (1990) The Swedish Farmers’ Movement and Agricultural Policy. New York, Westport CT and London. Mjeldheim, L. (1984) Folkerørsla som vart parti: Venstre frå 1880åra til 1905, Bergen, Oslo, Stavanger, Tromsø. Mohlin, Y. (1989) Bondepartiet och det moderna samhället 1914-1936. En studie av svensk agrarianism, Umeå. Morell, M. (2001) Jordbruket i industrisamhället 1870-1945, Stockholm.

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Nilsson, T. (1993) ‘Forskning om svensk politisk historia 1866-1920’, in Lövgren, B. ed., Svensk politisk historia: en kommenterad litteraturöversikt, Stockholm, pp. 65-117. ——— (1994) Elitens svängrum: Första kammaren, staten och moderniseringen 1867-1886, Stockholm. ——— (2004) Mellan arv och utopi: Moderata vägval under hundra år, 1904-2004, Stockholm. Nydahl, E. (2010) I fyrkens tid: Politisk kultur i två ångermanländska landskommuner 1860-1930, Sundsvall. Nyman, O. (1944) Krisuppgörelsen mellan Socialdemokraterna och Bondeförbundet 1933, Uppsala and Stockholm. Nyström, L. (2003) Potatisriket: Stora Bjurum 1857-1917. Jorden, makten, samhället, Gothenburg. Odhner, C.-E. (1989) ‘Arbetare och bönder formar den svenska modellen: Socialdemokratin och jordbrukspolitiken’, in Misgeld, K., Molin, K. and Åmark, K. eds, Socialdemokratins samhälle 1889-1989, Stockholm, pp. 83-115. Olofsson, M. (2008) Tullbergska rörelsen. Striden om den skånska frälsejorden 1867-1869, Lund. Österberg, E. (1993) ‘Vardagens sträva samförstånd. Bondepolitik i den svenska modellen från vasatid till frihetstid’, in Broberg, G., Wikander, U. and Åmark, K. eds, Tänka, tycka, tro: Svensk historia underifrån, Stockholm, pp. 126-146. Palme, S. U. (1962) Hundra år under kommunalförfattningarna 1862-1962, Stockholm. Palme, S. U. (1964) På Karl Staaffs tid, Stockholm. Rokkan, S. (1966) ‘Geography, religion, and social class. Crosscutting cleavages in Norwegian politics’, in Lipset, S.and Rokkan, S. eds, Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives, New York, pp. 367-444. Ruin, O. (1961) Kooperativa förbundet 1899-1929: En organisationsstudie, Lund. Rustow, D. (1969) The Politics of Compromise. A Study of Parties and Cabinet Government in Sweden, reprint New York. Rydén, R. (1998) ‘Att åka snålskjuts är icke hederligt’. De svenska jordbrukarnas organisationsprocess 1880-1947, Gothenburg. Sejersted, F. (2005) Socialdemokratins tidsålder. Sverige och Norge under 1900-talet, Nora. Söderpalm, S. A. (1997) ‘Arvid R F Posse’, Svenskt Biografiskt Lexikon, 29, Stockholm, p. 459. Stråth, B. (2012) Sveriges historia 1830-1920, Stockholm. ——— (2005) Union och demokrati. De förenade rikena Sverige-Norge 1814-1905, Nora. Thermaenius, E. (1928) Lantmannapartiet. Dess uppkomst, organisation och tidigare utveckling, Uppsala. Thullberg, P. (1977) Bönder går samman. En studie i Riksförbundet Landsbygdens Folk under världskrisen 1929-1933, Stockholm. Toler, J. (1993) Per Jönson Rösiö, ‘The Agrarian Prophet’, Stockholm. Torstendahl, R. (1969) Mellan nykonservatism och liberalism: Idébrytningar inom högern och bondepartierna 1918-1934, Stockholm. Uppenberg, C. and Olsson, M. (2021) ‘Under the landlord’s thumb. Municipalities and local elites in Sweden 1862-1900’, Lund Papers in Economic History, 218.

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Wåhlstrand, A. (1936) ‘Andra kammaren under tiden omkring sekelskiftet’, in Brusewitz, A. ed., Studier över den svenska riksdagens sociala sammansättning, Uppsala & Stockholm, pp. 156-183. Wallin, G. (1961) Valrörelser och valresultat: Andrakammarvalen i Sverige 1868-1884, Stockholm. Widfeldt, A. (2001) ‘The Swedish Centre Party: the poor relation of the family?’, in Arter, D. ed., From Farmyard to City Square? The Electoral Adaptation of the Nordic Agrarian Parties, Aldershot, pp. 1-30.

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13. Agrarian parties in Europe prior to 1945 and beyond *

Agrarian parties were of relevance in many parts of Europe (especially in Scandi‐ navia and Central-Eastern Europe) between the late nineteenth century and the Second World War, and some continue to exist as marginal political forces up to the present. Up until now, historiography has barely reflected their importance, which includes their decisive role in the politicisation of the peasantry and, in many cases, their experience of governance. This chapter aims to explore where and under what conditions these parties appeared and prospered, and their effect on the political systems and societies of their countries. It provides a European-wide overview and advances some interpretative theses, although occasionally at the cost of losing some of the more nuanced detail in its analysis of a phenomenon that was present right across the European continent, with the few exceptions of the United Kingdom, Italy, Portugal and Russia, although the Russian social revolutionaries could plausibly gather enough arguments to be considered as an agrarian party.

I. An uneven harvest: the political representation of agrarian interests in Europe Agrarian parties are one of the manifestations of the politicisation of the rural masses in Europe. They appeared during the final decades of the nineteenth century, with the fin-de-siècle agricultural crisis as its trigger. The State’s prominent role in resolving the crisis (tariffs, promotion of technical change, facilitation of

* http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8099-3895 Department of History, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela (USC). HISTAGRA research group. This paper is part of a project titled Los vectores del cambio estructural de las agriculturas atlánticas ibéricas: moto-mecanización y especialización lechera, reference: HAR2016-77441-P. Translated by Philip Webb. Miguel Cabo • Department of History, University of Santiago de Compostela (USC), Spain Making Politics in the European Countryside, ed. by Laurent Brassart, Corinne Marache, Juan PanMontojo & Leen Van Molle, CORN Publication Series, 19 (Turnhout, 2022), pp. 313–332 DOI 10.1484/M.CORN-EB.5.128256

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access to property etc.) grew evident, and with it the inevitable need for social groups and economic interests to present themselves before the State as coherent and well-organised interlocutors. Opportunity structures were broadened, clearly in accordance with the nuances and rhythms of each country, such as the expan‐ sion of the electoral census, the granting of freedom of association, the presence of the agrarian question in political and cultural debates, and rising levels of literacy. The ‘agrarian defence’,1 to use Pierre Barral’s (1968) expression, took many forms across the European continent, which we can summarise into four categories as presented below. Firstly, pressure groups were formed in many countries precisely at a time when State policy was perceived as not reflecting the needs of a given economic sector. Hence, for example, the influential German Bund der Landwirte (Agrarian League, BdL) that was established in 1893 when chancellor Leo Caprivi was championing a series of trade agreements that would reorient tariff policy in an anti-protectionist direction. The BdL was able to introduce modern forms of action (mass mobilisation) into a conservative praxis with anti-democratic features, while control was effectively monopolised by large landowners from the east (Puhle, 1967; Aldenhoff-Hübinger, 2002). In many parts of Europe, pressure groups lent their electoral support to candidates, regardless of the party to which they belonged, so long as they pledged to defend their demands. For this tactic to be successful, it was necessary to ensure control over the maximum number of rural voters, for which they relied on a network of services and cooperatives, used a unitary discourse of agricultural interests, and extolled their role within society. This rhetoric also served to meet one of the basic requirements for any pressure group: to portray their interests as coincident with those of society as a whole. Secondly, agrarian currents within existing political parties took shape, such as the agrarian wings of the Catholic parties in Germany (supported by the Christliche Bauernvereine) and Belgium (in the Boerenbond). These sought to adapt the party line to their own interests, competing as they did so with other currents that represented factory owners or trade unions.2 In this case, remaining a minority group in competition with other interest groups within the party in question was a constant risk. Thirdly, farmers’ unions and agricultural cooperatives soon became the most widespread instrument for defending agrarian interests. Taking off in the last decades of the nineteenth century, they consisted of a motley ensemble of organisations that varied according to the peculiarities of each State or region, and dependent on the level of entrenchment they had in local and regional affairs, although higher-level federative structures were also formed. Despite unions and cooperatives having different aims and having to obey different legal requirements, they can be grouped together in the same category, as the former 1 Years later, Urwin (1980) would use the same expression, which has received criticism because it seems to imply that agricultural interests are all one and the same. 2 Hübner (2014) and Van Molle (1990) respectively.

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almost always included the functions of the latter, and because in practice it is often difficult to draw a clear dividing line between them. The bulk of their affiliates were of peasant origins, though this did not preclude the participation of individuals belonging to non-peasant groups within the rural society. They negotiated their support for different political parties, as shown in Catalonia in chapter 11 by Jordi Planas and Raimon Soler. Lastly, we recall the importance of the agrarian parties, the main topic of this paper.3 Importantly, the parties together with the three other organisational modes promoting agrarian interests were not mutually exclusive; in fact, they often overlapped and reinforced one another. Pressure groups, for instance, could build a cooperative network to strengthen the critical mass that supported the proposals they made to the public authorities. Likewise, agrarian parties would prove more influential in places where they were built upon a solid network of cooperatives and agricultural unions, as was the case in Scandinavia. Agrarian wings of larger political parties generally rested on union representatives, as in the case of the German Zentrumpartei or its Belgian equivalent. And agrarian parties, for their part, often acted as pressure groups, concentrating as it were on a range of concrete issues while their positions regarding other political matters remained unclear; their line of action could even become quite erratic concerning issues that were not part of their core programme. Agrarian parties – and this is a thesis that we intend to demonstrate – only appeared where there was a clear discontent with the policies of the existing parties and where the other three modes of representation of agricultural interests were seen by many as insufficient or unsatisfactory. For example, in the Czech case, after having initially been a pressure group within the National Liberal Party (with which the agrarian associative movement shared a political programme, as mentioned in Řepa’s chapter 9 in this volume), a Bohemian agrarian party was founded in 1899 when it became clear that urban interests started to dominate the party’s agenda (Kubricht, 1979; Broklová, Tomeš and Pehr, 2008). In Catholic areas of Germany, peasants turned to Catholic associations and the Zentrumpartei for representation. But in Bavaria, it was perceived that these organisations were not defending their interests with enough zeal, and that the Zentrum prioritised religious issues over economic ones, which led to the establishment in 1893 of the anti-clerical Bayerischer Bauernbund (Farr, 1983; Hochberger, 1991). Unionism was the main strategy in France, thanks to an extensive capillary network of associations that culminated in two national federations, the Catholic Société des agriculteurs de France and the republican Société nationale pour l’encouragement de l’agriculture. However, during the 1930s, when the effects of the economic crisis were severely felt and both traditional mechanisms and State aid failed to mitigate them, these organisations were challenged for the first time by agrarian parties: the ‘greenshirts’ under the leadership of Henry Dorgères and the Parti agraire et 3 We do not consider the agrarian (focused on professional issues) versus peasant parties (with a more radical and comprehensive agenda) dichotomy, which is used on occasions, to be operative.

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paysan français, established by Fleurant Agricola (Paxton, 1996; Lynch, 2005). To cite a final case that reinforces the argument, no agrarian parties were formed in Ireland until after breaking away from the United Kingdom. Irish nationalists had been able to channel the support of the peasantry since the days of the Land War (1879-1882), but after the formation of the Free State, frustrated expectations gave rise first to the Farmers Union (1922-32) and later to Clann na Talmhan (1938), which consistently attracted around 10% of the vote (Dooley, 2004; Varley, 2010).

II. State of the art and obstacles The first texts assessing agrarian parties were published during the second postwar period among circles of exiles who had fled countries controlled by the com‐ munist bloc.4 They offered politicised interpretations vindicating the historical role played by these parties and some agrarian leaders, blaming their opponents for unwanted developments on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Another of their objectives was to deny any continuity between the agrarian parties of the interwar period and the puppet parties that in some countries (GDR, Bulgaria, Poland, Romania) facilitated control over the peasantry. A few other publications in the USA offered greater theoretical pretensions, though their perspective was rather limited because they analysed these organisations through the lens of a rigid right-left dichotomy that hindered the required empathy with the subject of research and an approach according to their own logic (Mudde, 2001). As soon as the Second World War ended, the British historian Hugh Seton-Watson pub‐ lished his influential Eastern Europe between the Wars, 1918-1941, which ultimately attributed agrarian parties’ failures to the long-term isolation of the peasantry in the region, to the distance between their basis and leadership, caused by the joining of leaders with an urban and intellectual background, to their ideological inconsistency, poorly concealed behind evanescent romantic rhetoric, and to the fact that they represented the wealthiest sector of the peasantry rather than the whole.5 The first attempt to conceptualise the existence of agrarian parties, from the perspective of political sociology, was made by Seymour M. Lipset and Stein Rokkan, who in 1967 attributed their emergence to a reaction against the alliance between national elites and industrial and commercial interests. According to these authors, an agrarian party’s viability depended on four conditions: the predominance of family agriculture; the weakness of the urban vote; a marked cultural opposition between city and country, accompanied by the resistance

4 Especially in the pages of International Peasant Union. Monthly Bulletin, published in New York between 1950 and 1971 (Cabo, 2018). 5 Seton-Watson (1945: 258-260). Jackson (1966: 41) would make a very similar judgement two decades later.

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of farmers to a purely capitalist market economy; and finally, a high degree of autonomy vis-à-vis the Catholic Church and its tendency to exert social control. The publication of Europäische Bauernparteien im 20. Jahrhundert in 1977 was a milestone in this field of study. The volume consisted of a general survey by its editor, Heinz Gollwitzer, which is still of great use today, and a series of case studies. Of the total number of twenty papers, only four were written in English, whilst the others were in German; a contributing factor to the book not having the impact it fully deserved. Equally ambitious was the work of the Norway based British author Derek U. Urwin: From Ploughshare to Ballotbox, The Politics of Agrarian Defense in Europe (1980). For Urwin too, the landowning peasantry formed the main basis of support for agrarian parties. The book’s title clearly shows that he advances a ‘defensive’ theory, since he departs from the agrarians’ reaction to threats: collectivisation, the expansion of State administration, an urban centred economy, and a great many others besides. Both Gollwitzer and Urwin have the merit of providing an analytical frame‐ work for the understanding of a phenomenon that was scarcely addressed in the available literature. Since then, a considerable number of monographs on specific agrarian parties have been published, as well as partial approaches in the context of overviews of the agrarian or political history of countries or regions. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, a revival of interest in the topic has been observed, though now shifting its focus to the alternative paths between the ultra-right and ultra-left-wing dictatorships during the interwar period, to the supporters of democratic legitimacy and the forerunners of post-communist political systems. Several of these parties have been re-founded after a four-decade hiatus, although only the Polish Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe (PSL) has achieved significant elec‐ toral success.6 Despite the availability of a considerable amount of research on this peculiar political family, a new synthesis still has yet to be carried out, in order to update the volumes that have been published by Gollwitzer and Urwin almost four decades ago, in tune with the concepts, methodology and debates developed in historical and political research since then.7 Recently, Alex Toshkov (2019) came to the fore with a comparative study of the Yugoslav, Czechoslovakian and Bulgarian cases in which he underlines the key role of agrarianism in interwar Europe, a book that we will refer to again, given its importance. However, the difficulties of this subject of research are numerous and they explain the lack of a generalised approach. 6 The PSL likes to rehabilitate its predecessors, as well as the role of the peasantry under communist rule, maintaining that peasants were the main bastion of resistance who made it impossible to collectivise agriculture (Zalewski, 2007). 7 Daniel Brett (2011) is a partial exception: beginning with his study of the Romanian national agrarian party, he has set up comparisons with Poland, Sweden and Ireland. Thomas Landwehrlen (2009) compares agrarian parties in the Germanic regions. Furthermore, Jean-Michel De Waele and Daniel-Louis Seiler (2009) offer a very complete European panorama from a political science standpoint, though they focus on modern agrarian parties with only very brief historical references.

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A first difficulty is that most interwar agrarian political parties have not been able to maintain an uninterrupted existence into the present, except for in Scandi‐ navia where they changed their name to the Centre Party in the nineteen-fifties to avoid explicit references to the peasantry or to agriculture, as this would restrict their support from an ever-receding electorate (Arter, 2001). In Central and Eastern European countries, they were banned first by the fascist regimes, and again later by the communists. Consequently, their archives were dispersed, in the wake of the exile of their leadership, or destroyed. Moreover, the lack of historical continuity explains that there are barely any organisations that expressly claim their heritage, gather their sources, or support historical research. Secondly, the vast majority of available studies deal only with specific agrarian parties, examining them from the point of view of the political history of the country in question, often without debating their development or advancing interpretations that could facilitate comparison with other agrarian parties. In line with the above, a further obstacle stems from the fact that many studies of agrarian parties were published in languages that are not commonly used within the academic community. In the best-case scenario, some articles or book chapters were published in English, German or French, serving in this way as intermediaries between the monographs originally written in languages that are only accessible to the inhabitants of a particular country and the interna‐ tional scholarly audience interested in the topic. However, most overviews and handbooks of twentieth-century European political history are now produced by anglophone or francophone historians, or political scientists who pay little attention to a phenomenon that remained marginal in their own countries, and which was most significant in European regions that, from their position, are peripheral.

III. The challenges of definition: a political family? What is meant by the concept ‘agrarian party’? The question must be clarified because there is a blurred line between agrarian parties and other groups, for example Catholic parties with a strong agrarian imprint, or regionalist and na‐ tionalist parties that exalted the peasantry as the social group that most purely embodied the identity of the territory in question.8 Based on a minimum of criteria, such as the one offered by Urwin (1980: 165), agrarian parties are those that primarily target the rural electorate, claim its representation, defend the interests of the peasantry as a social group and the cultural values associated with it, and fight for agriculture as a fundamental economic activity. Ruralism – the advocacy of rural life and its alleged values – is taken for granted in parties of this mould, but is not a defining variable, as 8 Both Gollwitzer and Urwin offer lists of agrarian parties by country, which for lack of space we will not reproduce here.

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it imbued forces across the political spectrum, albeit with the exception of the communist parties (Cabo, 2016). Going into more detail, ten defining elements can be identified. Firstly, it is difficult to situate agrarian parties on a right-left axis. Until the 1970s, they tended to be framed as mostly conservative or traditional, even going so far as to be described as the ‘travelling companions’ of fascism. This was in line with the prevailing view on the restraining political role of the peasantry, as advanced by Barrington Moore (1966) in his ambitious modelling of national roads to modernity. Meanwhile, the trend has reversed: recent research tends to highlight the contribution of agrarian parties to the democratisation in the disturbing interwar period (Eellend, 2008; Toshkov, 2019). Secondly, most agrarian parties were rhetorical defenders of a third way between capitalism and socialism. They advocated private property, but with the emphasis on there being a social function and wholeheartedly backed the expropriation of large estates and the redistribution of land, as well as the setting up of cooperatives. By doing so, they opposed socialism and communism, which they identified as the ideology of the labour-force unions and which allowed urban consumers to gain the upper hand in the struggle for low food prices.9 The agrarian parties were equally hostile to capitalism, which they claimed put limitations on the free market and on financial speculation. Moreover, they disso‐ ciated themselves from the capitalist individualism that clashed with the values attributed to the rural way of life, within the family, and the local community. Clearly, the two systems were despised, but not with equal measure: socialism being rejected completely and capitalism, though not entirely rejected as a system itself, denied in many of its forms and treated with such contempt that at times seemed to border on anti-Semitism (Struve, 1999). Thirdly, the trajectory of agrarian parties was marked by pragmatism. They were defined by interests rather than by ideologies, as Gollwitzer (1977: 11) pointed out. This does not mean that they lacked any sort of doctrine, but that their ideology was far less elaborated than those of other groups within society. In a rather eclectic way, it combined various elements taken from liberalism, social-Catholicism, and socialism, amongst other doctrines. It even borrowed from Russian populist tradition, though the influence of which has often been overestimated due to the predominant role of Slavic studies in dealing with this issue.10

9 A mutual distrust, given that there exists an inexhaustible bibliography of Marxist theory and practice in relation to the complicated integration of the peasantry. For an illuminating overview, see Blok (2002). 10 That influence came also from narodniki and later Russian social-revolutionaries who lived as exiles in Central Europe, particularly in Prague. The influence of Russian populism was not limited to Slavic countries; in fact, the Romanian agrarian theorist Constantin Stere (born in northern Bessarabia, under Russian control until 1918) spread it in his own country (Kitch, 1975).

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Fourthly, the activities of the agrarian parties revolved around the defence of the agricultural sector, with an emphasis on the small and medium holdings whose access to property and viability in the framework of the market economy was their prime concern. Therefore, even whilst hoisting the agricultural flag to full mast, they often at the same time voiced their disapproval and outright hostil‐ ity towards the large landowners and the agricultural labourers.11 The choice of concrete lines of action varied according to the characteristics of the agricultural sector in each country. The majority of agrarian parties supported protectionist policies, but the Danish Venstre positioned itself in favour of free trade as a means to reorient production towards profitable cattle farming. The fifth defining factor is that in their praise of the virtues of rural society, traces of anti-urbanism, anti-individualism, anti-intellectualism and the rejection of bureaucracy were also apparent. What is more, it was not only in their choice of dialogue but also in their actions, as is evidenced by the statutes of the Serbian Peasant Party (created in 1920 and unifying three previous parties from Serbia, Bosnia and Dalmatia) which prohibited intellectuals from making up more than a quarter of the executive committee of a company and stipulated that the chairman had to be a peasant (Avakumovic, 1979). A further example of this was the Stambolijski government in Bulgaria ordering citizens to participate in mandatory work periods in the countryside, particularly youths and young adults living in urban areas. Additionally, Agrarian parties shared a pacifist approach to foreign policy, stemming from the traditional rejection by peasants of military adventures that all too often entailed nothing but sacrifice (mobilisation, rising taxes, the confisca‐ tion of cattle…). The Bulgarian agrarian leader Aleksandar Stambolijski was the most symbolic figure in this respect, having been imprisoned for his opposition to the war against Turkey in 1912, and subsequently again for the same reason between 1915 and 1918 (Bell, 1977). Another feature of agrarian parties was their regional character or, in the case of parties operating at the national level, the fact that they relied on ‘strongholds’ in certain regions, while their presence in other regions remained more limited. This unequal situation mirrored the diversity of agrarian structures and the ethnic mosaic in Central and Eastern Europe, above all in the newly constituted states after the First World War. In general, agrarian parties were opposed to centralism; it is, for example, significant that the only Serbian party open to decentralising solutions was the agrarian one (Avakumovic, 1979: 61).

11 In the Bulletin of the Green International (BBIA), published by the International Agrarian Bureau of Prague between 1921 and 1938, one can detect numerous cases proving that agrarian parties theoretically agreed with the extension of social rights to agricultural workers, but voiced simultaneously their fear for increases of production costs and for the thoughtless transplantation of industrial methods of working in agriculture with its completely different requirements.

13. AGRARIAN PARTIES IN EUROPE PRIOR TO 1945 AND BEYOND

Related to this, as well as in the context of multiple nationalist tension before and after the Great War,12 agrarian parties tended to identify strongly with a particular territorial unity through the overlapping of the concept of ‘peasantry’ with that of ‘people’, and ultimately ‘nation’. A paradigmatic case is that of Stjepan Radić’s Peasant Party, which gained a hegemonic position in Croatia, within the State of Yugoslavia that was born out of the peace treaties after the Great War, and which opposed Serbian centralism, having previously fought for autonomy within the Habsburg Empire (Biondich, 2000). However, nationalism rarely played a central role in the ideology of agrarian parties, except in cases of a marked ethnic opposition between large landowners and the peasantry, as for instance in Estonia (Koll, 2006). Toshkov (2019: 61) highlights the “contingency of national expression” in such cases, though each were dependant on their own specific context. Generally speaking, the ‘class’ factor prevailed over the national one.13 The identification of the peasantry with the ‘people’ as a whole, or at least with its healthy and most representative part, was a metonymy that paved the way to groups that can be defined as populist. From an organisational point of view, a ninth characteristic that agrarian par‐ ties seemed to share were clear shortcomings in their manifestos and their prone‐ ness to disagreements and allegiances to particular leaders, rather than to the party or ideology. However, in Mauricee Duverger’s (1994) classic publication, they should be considered as mass-based parties, not cadre parties, and though in practice their development left much to be desired, they had participatory mechanisms at grass roots level and their finances essentially depended on the contributions paid by their members. Their leaders were frequently charismatic figures using a populist style (of anti-intellectualism, emotional rhetoric, and an analysis of reality in Manichaean terms). Finally, parties that did not maintain a solid relationship with important agrar‐ ian associations (such as farmers’ unions and agricultural cooperatives), whether organisational or informal, cannot be considered as agrarian parties. Following these ten criteria, as well as considering that every case has its own particularities, allows us to group the whole range of agrarian parties under one common definition, that of a ‘political family’. This concept places them above a mere political party, a point which is further underlined by the fact that a ‘political party’ would come under the umbrella of a ‘political family’. A party is an organisation designed to seek power, while a political family, according to Serge Berstein (2000, 1), can include several political parties or political forces, as well as associations, media and even individuals who “have a shared political culture, that has a common vision of history, of society, of institutions and of the evolution that is to be desired and structured around a philosophical, religious or

12 Which also conditioned the development of cooperativism in Central and Eastern Europe from its initial stages, as is shown in Lorenz (2006). 13 Kai Struve (2005: 295) illustrates this thesis with regards to Ruthenians and Poles in the parts of Galicia controlled by the Hapsburg Empire.

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ideological ideal that serves as concrete, and confers it global coherence”. None of this excludes tactical and strategic differences, personal rivalries, or contradictions etc; look no further than the heterogeneity of the classic ideological families such as liberalism, socialism, Christian-democracy and communism. The shared visions and ideals that Bernstein mentions are the ones listed above as the common features of agrarian parties: ruralism, the defence of cooper‐ atism, and regionalism, etc. Admittedly, they do not rest on a perfectly thought out ideo-system, nor can they boast of significant key works, comparable to those on Marxism or liberalism. However, what we can do is affirm the existence of common principles that allow us to define the main features of this political family. Putting their clear differences aside, the case for agrarian parties could appear similar to that of fascism, which until not so many years ago was often accused of a lack of ideology, consisting of a worldview based solely on action and a series of oppositions (to democracy, to socialism, to pacifism etc.). Another argument which supports the existence of an agrarian political family is that the parties within it maintained multiple lines of contact and closely followed the initiatives and vicissitudes of their counterparts in other countries (Daskalov, 2014). This was true to such an extent that they were able to cre‐ ate permanent organisational links through the so-called Green International (Haushofer, 1977; Kubu and Sousa, 2010; Toshkov, 2019). In 1921, the Interna‐ tional Agrarian Bureau was created in Prague, which organised annual congresses and published a quarterly magazine from 1923 onwards. The key figure within the Green International was Antonin Švehla, the leader of the Czechoslovakian Republican Party of Farmers and Peasants. It coordinated a highly diverse group of parties, from those that held positions of power in their respective countries, to those in opposition, as well as parties carrying a marginal electoral weight and the remains of those banned under dictatorships. Some Western European parties also became members, though the absence of Scandinavian parties (with the exception of the one from Finland) weakened it.14 The Hungarian Small Farmers Party was also absent, probably due to anti-Slavic sentiment (Von Krusenstjern, 1981). In 1929, sixteen key points were set down, outlining the mandatory require‐ ments for parties to become members: the promotion of cooperativism, the adherence to parliamentary democracy, and pacifism in foreign policy, etc.15 The Green International was relentlessly attacked by the communist Krestintern, or Peasant International ( Jackson, 1966; Van Meurs, 2018). Founded in Moscow as an auxiliary to the Comintern in 1923, the Krestintern failed to achieve its objec‐ tives as it attracted little support and ceased to function after 1932, being only partially replaced as a centre for studies and documentation by the International

14 Agrarian parties from Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain and, the most active of all, the Parti agraire et paysan français, led by the eccentric Fleurant Agricola (Lynch, 2005). The Greek one also joined fleetingly in 1930-1931. 15 BBIA, 1929: II, p. 99.

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Agrarian Institute (Moscow, 1925-1940). Criticism from pro-Soviet organisations were a result of what they saw as the bourgeois nature of agrarian parties, their propensity for fascism, the feeling that their merely reformist nature would ulti‐ mately relegate them to something inferior to capitalism, and their policies that would favour only the middle and well-to-do peasantry.16 However, the Green International’s death knell was sounded by the economic depression and the rise of dictatorships, resulting in the banning of those parties formerly involved before its disappearance in 1938.

IV. The historical trajectory of the agrarian parties To study every party’s trajectory in detail would exceed the scope of this article. Instead, we shall highlight a series of key developments. The first is that the emergence of agrarian associationism in Europe began against the backdrop of the late nineteenth-century agricultural crisis, although in a handful of cases we also witness the formation of agrarian parties before the turn of the century, such as the Danish Venstre (1888), the Bulgarian Agrarian National Union (1889), the Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe (Polish Peasants Party, 1895) in Austrian Galicia, and the Česká strana agrarní (1899) in Bohemia-Moravia. This last party won twenty-eight seats in the Austrian parliament in the 1907 election – the first held with universal suffrage – becoming the most significant Czech party. The oldest parties would also prove to be the most long-lasting and influential. The Swedish case deserves special mention, because of its long tradition of formal political representation for farmers, as analysed by Bengtsson and Hägglund in chapter 12. In 1866, the Riksdag of the Estates was replaced by a bicameral parliament chosen via census suffrage for men. An agrarian fraction, the Lantmannapartei, was already taking shape in the first parliament, though it would not articulate an internal party structure until the latter part of the century. Being of a centre-right persuasion, its main demands were to lower taxes and reduce state bureaucracy. During the First World War, it gave way to two other parties that were more closely connected to agrarian associations, and which in 1921 merged to form the Bondeförbundet (Farmers’ League), a new organisation which harboured corporatist tendencies and that at times degenerated into direct anti-parliamentarianism ( Jonasson, 1977; Morell, 2001: 111-120). Agrarian parties were late arrivals, appearing on the political scene when other parties (liberal, Catholic, socialist…) already had decades of experience, a fact that was truer the further west one went. Their consolidation was dictated by the opportunities that were available in each case, obviously beginning with the existence of formal liberties (such as the freedom of press, of association, etc.) and 16 The deliberations of the First European Peasant Congress (Berlin, March 1930) are an example of this. Available in Agrarprobleme, (1, 2, pp. 173-185), the journal published by Moscow’s International Agrarian Institute.

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parliamentarism. This explains their absence in Portugal, where political rights were restricted and suffrage denied to most of the (male) population until the formation of First Republic in 1910; sixteen years later a military dictatorship was established, thus leaving a very brief window of opportunity. A proportional electoral system and a federal State structure also facilitated their emergence, which helps to explain why in Germany agrarian parties were more successful than in France, though very much on a regional basis. Switzerland had no agrarian party before the Great War, despite the strength of its associative movement. The modification of its electoral law in 1920, aiming to move the country towards more proportional representation, encouraged the formation of an agrarian party in the German-speaking cantons (Tanner and Head-König, 1992: 222). The same is true for Norway, where an electoral reform along the same lines encouraged the Norwegian Agrarian Association (Norsk Landmandsforbund), created in 1896, to take the next step and turn itself into a political party (Aasland, 1974). If the late nineteenth-century crisis had led to the appearance of the first agrarian parties, the next major upset was caused by the First World War and the birth of post-war states. In defeated countries, pre-war elites and traditional par‐ ties were discredited, for example in Bulgaria, while in some victorious countries promises of land redistribution and expectations of prosperity that had been built up during the war were defrauded, as was the case in Romania. A good number of agrarian parties were founded between 1918 and the early twenties, and some rose to power, for example in Bulgaria (1919) and Romania (1928). However, the Depression and the establishment of successive dictatorships marked a setback that was to culminate in the period of 1945-1948, when most of these parties were dissolved as ‘popular democracies’ came into being. In some, peasant parties that subordinated to the communist party were tolerated but limited to an auxiliary and tightly controlled role, without any continuity with the agrarian parties that had preceded them. Official discourse dismissed the pre-war agrarian parties as counter-revolutionary forces, except in Bulgaria where the communist party maintained the National Agrarian Union (BZNS, its acronym in Bulgarian) as a satellite party and appropriated the charismatic figure of Stambolijski, having filtered out the less desired aspects of his personality, such as his clashes with the communists. Interestingly, the Bulgarian communists named one of the main avenues of Sophia in his honour and erected a statue of him in front of the BZNS headquarters.17 The great exception was Scandinavia where, in order to deal with the eco‐ nomic crisis of the 1930s, respective agrarian parties formed governments with social democrats. In doing so, apart from safeguarding the social order, these governments laid the foundations of the future Nordic model of welfare. Despite the differences that existed between the agrarians and social democrats, what prevailed was the fact that both of their voter bases were made up by the social 17 Bell (1977: 246); a historiographical implementation of Tishev’s (1977) rereading of the relationship between communists and agrarians.

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groups that were hardest hit by the crisis. In Finland, the pact between agrarians and social democrats, embodied in a coalition government in 1937, also had the added value of symbolising the healing of wounds opened by ‘reds’ against ‘whites’ during the 1918 civil war (Hoddanen, 1977). There is an unconscious tendency to separate the Scandinavian agrarian parties from the Central European ones – comparative studies are in fact few and far between – and to attribute the positive characteristics of this political family to the former and its less attractive aspects to the latter. This issue is deserving of a more detailed analysis than can be attempted here, but certain questions that add at least a degree of nuance to this dichotomy are needed. For example, the scholar who has most thoroughly researched the Swedish case sees a traditional and anti-modern character in the make-up of its agrarian parties, and even detects disturbing sympathies with Nazism and a defence of scientific racism (Mohlin, 1989ab). Equally in Denmark, the minority Bondepartiet (Farmers’ Party), created in 1923 as a splinter group of the Venstre, forged links with local Nazis and some of its leaders were tried for collaboration after the war. Finally, it is worth mentioning that a few new agrarian parties have been created since the Second World War. The most notable of them are the Dutch Boerenpartij (Farmers’ Party, 1958), which channelled the discontent of those unhappy with growing State interference, the culture of consensus, and Dutch corporativism, but which tarnished its own image by signing up former NSB collaborators (Vossen, 2015; Tames, 2013: 131-135), and the Finnish Rural Smallholders’ Party (Suomen pientalouspoikien puolue). This party emerged in 1959 as a splinter group from the Agrarian Union, which it accused of neglecting the poorer farmers ( Jungar, 2015). In addition, after the fall of the Wall, agrarian parties (re)appeared in countries across the former communist bloc, although their electoral clout was already very much reduced (De Waele and Seiler, 2009). That said, it is true that in their political programmes and rhetoric, newly created populist (non-agrarian) parties have generally shown a special concern for rural issues in a way that harks back to the agrarian parties of the interwar period. These populist parties have also obtained levels of support in rural areas that were slightly higher than the national average (De Lange and Rooduijn, 2015). Ultimately, agrarian parties ended up disappearing sooner or later. In the face of the declining farming population, they became catch-all parties, as in Scandinavia, and began defining themselves as the ‘centre party’. Traditionally, academics such as Gollwitzer and Urwin have blamed their failure on external causes: their status as latecomers, the dictatorial tide that swept Europe in the wake of the 1929 crisis, and the shrinkage of the agrarian population that had been their preferred electoral niche. However, Daniel Brett maintains that this emphasis on external factors ignores the parties’ own agency and diverts attention away from weaknesses that undermined their trajectory, specifically their anaemic ide‐ ology, poor internal discipline, inability to garner support beyond the confines of their natural electorate, conflicting interests derived from the agricultural sector’s

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heterogeneity, and their propensity for disagreements and loyalties to particular leaders.18 While these last points are true and innumerable examples could be cited, they are still unsuitable as explicatory factors, for two reasons. The first is that agrarian parties should be similarly compared to other parties in their respective countries, which were also far from exemplary in how they were run. At the very least, agrarian associations provided agrarian parties with a territorial infra‐ structure and participatory basis that was lacking in other organisations and that could partially compensate for their own organisational deficit. Secondly, there were certain dynamics over which agrarian parties had little control and which ended up overwhelming them. We could mention Czechoslovakia, where the Republican Party of Farmers and Peasants became an invaluable partner in successive coalitions under the leadership of Antonin Švehla (head of the government for most of the 1920s) and established ties with German minority parties (incorporating them into the coalition governments after 1926) to set up Central Europe’s most politically stable country (Miller, 1999). But there was little it could do in terms of the rise of Nazism, and in the end the country’s fate was decided in the corridors of high-level diplomacy. The aforementioned factors explain the unequal trajectory of these different parties, but an examination of the available bibliography seems to point to another key issue: the agrarian associative framework upon which they relied, either through organisational or informal links. From it they obtained electoral support, financing, refuge in times of repression, and leaders.19 Agrarian parties were most successful in places where their emergence was preceded by an extended period of flourishing associationism, as in Scandinavia, Bohemia-Moravia and Bulgaria. Parties had fewer prospects if they emerged in parallel with, or shortly after the creation of an associative network, or in the aftermath of redistributive land reforms, hastily applied following nationalist criteria in countries borne from the peace treaties, and that created hundreds of thousands of precarious properties. Along the same lines, another positive factor was the depth of their previous political experience and peasant suffrage, which again were considerable in Scandinavia and in the Austrian part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.20

18 Brett (2011; 2018) and “What was the National Peasant Party? Internal Division and Organizational Conflict, 1900-1947”, unpublished paper available at www.academia.edu (access: 14-V-2016). 19 Kubu (2013) provides numerous examples of this last aspect. 20 Hence, for example, the contrast between Slovakia (ruled from Budapest) and Bohemia-Moravia, which was nestled in the Austrian half of the Empire, where universal male suffrage had been instituted in 1907 and people enjoyed great associative freedom. The contrast between the three regions of Poland, integrated into the same State in 1918, is also worth reflecting upon.

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Conclusion The first conclusion must be the re-vindication of this atypical political family, not with apologetic intent, but in reverence to its historical importance. Secondly, the characterisation of agrarian parties as ‘reactionary’ and ‘anti-modern’, an accu‐ sation that Marxist historiography and various modern authors have propounded, is most unwarranted.21 Behind this characterisation, in my opinion, lie two preju‐ dices: that of the innate conservatism of the peasantry (which would affect the organisations to which it made the greatest contributions), and that of there being a single model of, and single path to, modernity – as followed by the leading countries in the West – which can be contrasted against the concept of ‘multiple modernities’ (Eisenstadt, 2000). Despite certain rhetorical excesses and often speaking in tones of nostalgic romanticism, agrarian parties proposed an alternative form of modernity (which communism and fascism also did in their own way), and to this end employed unequivocally modern methods (Toshkov, 2019: 39). They tried to reverse a situation of double marginalisation: that of rural societies within their respective countries and that these countries with regard to the continent’s more developed ones (Brett, 2018). Agrarian parties, and in a broader sense the associative movements from which they emanated, made a notable contribution to the extension and consol‐ idation of civil society and the public sphere: via educational work, valuing suffrage, participation in public affairs, the press, etc. With a style frequently labelled as populist, typical in such periods of profound social transformation, agrarian parties played an essential role in the political socialisation of the rural masses within their countries, also serving to foster new forms of leadership, both in the style and in the social origin of their local and national leaders. As defenders of a specific part of the population and the economy, they had ample room for manoeuvre in order to reach agreements on issues beyond their immediate interests. This has often been pointed out as a flaw and proof of their ideological inconsistency. However, it could also be considered a strength because it facilitated stable government coalitions in the interwar period when, in Duverger’s terminology, Central and Eastern European pluralist party systems predominated, varying between extreme and moderate multi-partisanship (or extreme to polarised pluralism, in Giovanni Sartori’s classification), which was further aggravated by the fact that many parties had ethnic connotations. The historiographic debate regarding agrarian parties’ contribution to the advancement of democracy in Europe remains open. Personally, and in global terms, I favour a positive assessment, based on arguments such as the stability provided in Czechoslovakia by the Republican Party of Farmers and Peasants

21 These authors include some of the contributors to Schulz and Harre (eds) (2010). The book’s introduction groups agrarian parties and the agrarian associative movement together and assigns them a conservative essence, except in the Balkans.

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prior to its disappearance,22 their pact with social democrats in Scandinavia, and the (retrospectively fruitless) efforts of groups like the Croatian and Romanian agrarian parties to integrate their electorate into the countries’ unstable political systems. Obviously, there are no lack of counterarguments, such as the initial sympathies displayed by a minority within the Polish agrarians towards Piłsud‐ ski’s 1926 coup, the Estonian and Latvian parties’ support for anti-communist preventative dictatorships in 1934, or the authoritarian tendencies evident in the Stambolijski government of 1919-1923. Nonetheless, on the whole agrarian parties contributed, to the best of their abilities, to the maintenance of the liberal and parliamentary institutional framework that was a prerequisite for their own existence.

Abbreviations BBIA BdL PSL

Bulletin du Bureau international agraire (Prague) Bund der Landwirte Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe

22 This does not only apply to the Czech agrarian party. The Sudeten Germans (BdL) agrarian party was able to reach an understanding and even agreed to enter the government in 1926, although from the mid-thirties they ceded ground to Heinlein’s Sudeten party, which later became a tool for Nazi expansionism (Sobieraj, 2002: 85).

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Eellend, J. (2008) ‘Agrarianism and modernization in inter-war Eastern Europe’, in Wawrzeniuk, P. ed, Societal Change and Ideological Formation among the Rural Population of the Baltic Area, 1880-1939, Huddinge, pp. 35-56. Eisenstadt, S. N. (2000) ‘Multiple modernities’, Dedalus, 129,1, pp. 1-29. Farr, I. (1983) ‘From anti-catholicism to anti-clericalism: Catholic politics and the peasantry in Bavaria, 1860-1900’, European Studies Review, 13, pp. 249-269. Gollwitzer, H., ed. (1977) Europäische Bauernparteien im 20. Jahrhundert, Stuttgart. Haushofer, H. (1977) ‘Die internationale Organisation der Bauernparteien’, in Gollwitzer, H. ed., Europäische Bauernparteien im 20. Jahrhundert, Stuttgart, pp. 668-690. Hochberger, A. (1991) Der bayerische Bauernbund, 1893-1914, Munich. Hoddanen, K. (1977) ‘Die finnischen Bauernparteien’, in Gollwitzer, H. ed., Europäische Bauernparteien im 20. Jahrhundert, Stuttgart, pp. 169-205. Gil Cuadrado, L. T. (2006) El Partido Agrario Español (1934-1936): una alternativa conservadora y republicana (doctoral thesis), Madrid. Hübner, C. (2014) Die Rechtskatoliken, die Zentrumspartei und die katolische Kirche in Deutschland bis zum Reichskonkordat von 1933, Berlin. Jackson, G. D. (1966) Comintern and Peasant in East Europe, 1919-1930, New York Jonasson, G. (1977) ‘Schwedische Bauernparteien’, in Gollwitzer, H. ed., Europäische Bauernparteien im 20. Jahrhundert, Stuttgart, pp. 125-146. Kitch, M. (1975) ‘Constantin Stere and Rumanian populism’, Slavonic and East European Review, 53, 131, pp. 248-271. Jungar, A. C. (2015) ‘Agrarian populism in Finland: continuity and change’, in Strijker et al. eds, Rural Protest Groups and Populist Political Parties, Wageningen, pp. 217-241. Koll, A.-M. (2006) ‘Agrarianism and ethnicity’, in Schultz, H. and Kubu, E. eds, History and Culture of Economic Nationalism in East Central Europe, Berlin, pp. 141-160. Kubricht, A. P. (1979) ‘The national-economic implications of the formation of the Czech Agrarian Party (1899)’, in Volgyes, I. ed., The Peasantry of Eastern Europe, New York, pp. 19-34. Kubu, E. , eds. (2013) Agrarismus und Agrareliten in Ostmitteleuropa, Berlin. ——— and Sousa, J. (2010) ‘Die Wiener Grüne Internationale-eine mitteleuropäische Transfergeschichte?’, in Schulz, H. and Harre, A. eds, Bauerngesellschaften auf dem Weg in die Moderne. Agrarismus in Ostmitteleuropa 1880 bis 1960, Wiesbaden, pp. 243-256. Landwehrlen, T. (2009) Les partis de défense paysanne dans les pays de l’Europe germanique. Étude politologique historique et comparative, Barcelona. Lipset, S. M. and Rokkan, S. eds (1967) Party Systems and Voter Alignments. Cross-National Perspectives, New York. Lorenz, T., ed, (2006) Cooperatives in Ethnic Conflicts: Eastern Europe in the 19th and early 20th Century, Berlin. Lynch, E. (2005) ‘Le parti agraire et paysan français, entre politique et manifestation’, Histoire et Sociétés Rurales, 13, pp. 54-65. Miller, D. E. (1999) Forging Political Compromise: Antonín Švehla and the Czechoslovak Republican Party, 1918-1933, Pittsburgh. Mohlin, I. (1989a) Bondepartierna och det moderna samhället 1914-1936. En studie av svensk agrarianism (doctoral tesis), Umeå.

13. AGRARIAN PARTIES IN EUROPE PRIOR TO 1945 AND BEYOND

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