Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution 9781472599995, 9780907628972

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Preface John Dinwiddy and Otto Dann It has long been almost a truism of European history that the French Revolution gave a great stimulus to the growth of modern nationalism. The present volume sets out to examine in detail how far and for what reasons the era of the Revolution did see major developments in this respect in the various parts of Europe. The collection derives originally from a colloquium on 'The effects of the French Revolution on the awakening of modern nationalism in Europe', which was held at the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme in Paris under the auspices of the European Science Foundation in November 1985. Scholars from Denmark, England, France, Holland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland and West Germany took part. Most of them provided papers on late-eighteenth-century nationalism in their respective countries, having been asked to address themselves to a common set of questions which included the following: How far had national consciousness developed before 1789? How far and in what ways were nationalist impulses strengthened by contact with Revolutionary France? What social forces were encouraging the growth of a sense of nationhood, and through what media and organizations were nationalist concepts propagated? To what extent was the development of nationalism associated with institutional change and 'modernization'? The proceedings of the colloquium were carried on in English, French and German; but it was decided that a volume of essays should be published in English, which would make available to English-speaking readers the wide range of research and interpretation drawn upon and brought together by the various participants. The contributions were therefore revised and translated and a composite bibliography was compiled as an adjunct to the volume. The editors and contributors are deeply grateful to the European Science Foundation for sponsoring the original colloquium, and to Christoph Muhlberg and Michael Evans of the ESF secretariat for their invaluable work in helping to organize it.

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Note on Contributors KálmánBenda Otto Dann John Dinwiddy Franz Dumont Marianne Elliott Clive Emsley OleFeldbaek Florence Gauthier Jacques Godechot Erik Lönnroth Marco Meriggi Michael G. Müller Henk Reitsma Harro Segeberg

Historical Institute of the Academy of Sciences, Budapest University of Cologne Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London Academy of Sciences and Literature, Mainz University of Liverpool The Open University University of Copenhagen University of Paris VII University of Toulouse-Le Mirail Swedish Council for Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Stockholm University of Trento Historical Commission, Berlin Free University, Amsterdam University of Hamburg

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1 Introduction* Otto Dann The French Revolution presented a great challenge to all European peoples, and remains fundamental to our understanding of the formation of the modern world. A major aspect of its historical importance lies in the fact that it is commonly regarded as the period when a modern form of nationalism was born, and we are reminded of this aspect every time we hear the Marseillaise. Those who are acquainted with the history of Europe in the eighteenth century know, however, that in the same epoch and even before the Revolution took place, national ideas and patriotic movements could also be observed in other countries. Although the French Revolution may not have been the beginning of all forms of European nationalism, it certainly influenced all of them greatly. We must be careful, however, when faced with traditional, mostly nineteenth-century, evaluations of this Revolution, and with the numerous stereotyped explanations applied to it. Recent historiography has reassessed the importance of the French Revolution for developments in the various countries of Europe and for our general understanding of modern history.1 The essays collected in this volume try to contribute to this debate by focusing on the question of the origins of modern nationalism in Europe. The literature on the subject presents a strange picture. In general the historiography still sticks firmly to the French Revolution as the starting point of nationalism, but for more than thirty years this field has not been researched in detail.2 The last international debate took place in 1970. A study of the proceedings of that conference leads to the conclusion that *I am much indebted to John Dinwiddy and Christine Lattek for their help in translating and discussing this essay. 1 See e.g. Francois Furet, Penser la Revolution frangaise (Paris, 1978); Michel Vovelle, Die Franzosische Revolution. Soziale Bewegung und Umbruch der Mentalitdten (Munich, 1982). 2 See e.g. C.J.H. Hayes, The Historical Evolution of Modern Nationalism (New York, 1931); Elie Kedourie, Nationalism (London, 1961); E. Lemberg, Nationalisms, Bd. 1 (Reinbek, 1964); Peter Alter, Nationalismus (Frankfurt, 1985), pp. 60 seq. The best survey of national developments before 1789 hitherto published is Hans Kohn, The Idea of Nationalism. A Study in its Origin and Background (New York, 1945).

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2 Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution our approaches today are different from the ones adopted there, with their tendency to view the Revolution from Marxist perspectives and to treat it as a heroic episode.3 New methodological and conceptual questions about nationalism are being posed by political science, sociology, and political philosophy. The works of Karl Deutsch and his disciples have shown the importance of analysing the process of nation-building, which underlies every form of nationalism.4 Social scientists have discussed recent forms of nationalism in Third World countries in connection with theories of modernization; and they have thus, by way of comparison, produced new concepts for analysing and assessing the formation of nations and national states in early modern Europe.5 From a sociological standpoint, Anthony D. Smith has recently stressed the ethnic components of nationalism, and Ernest Gellner has shown how political philosophy can pose sociological questions and apply them to intellectual and cultural developments.6 All of these approaches have given historiography new tasks and new opportunities though so far these have rarely been followed up.7 The essays in this volume face particular difficulties in examining the rise of modern nationalism in eighteenth-century Europe. To begin with, there are terminological problems. In particular, which processes or stages of development should be described as 'nationalism', and which as 'patriotism'? Undoubtedly this question cannot be answered in a general and definitive way, since at the time of the French Revolution traditional and novel forms of politics went hand in hand and overlapped. It is desirable, however, to provide some conceptual orientation. At the same time, we need always to bear in mind the two dimensions of our topic: first the development of theories and concepts, as a national movement needs to express itself in a new political language, using new ideas and slogans; and secondly the field of social and political change, involving the formation of national organizations and the growth of conflict between patriots and established regimes. 3

Actes du colloque Patriotisme et nationalistic en Europe a I'epoque de la Revolution fran^aise etde Napoleon, XIIIe Congres international des Sciences historiques, Moscow 1970 (Paris, 1973). 4 K.W. Deutsch, Nationalism and Social Communication (Cambridge, Mass., 1956). Cf. especially K.W. Deutsch and WJ. Foltz (eds.), Nation-Building (New York, 1963); S. Rokkan, K. SeelenandJ. Warmbrunn, Nation-Building (The Hague, 1973). 5 Cf. Charles Tilly (ed.), The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton, 1976). 6 Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford, 1986); Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (London, 1983). 7 For a pioneering application of sociological analysis to history see Miroslav Hroch, Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe (Cambridge, 1985; originally published in German, Prague, 1969); a recent survey with a more conceptual approach is John Breuilly, Nationalism and the State (Manchester, 1982).

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// Let us first turn to the development of concepts and vocabulary. It is important to observe here that the notions used in the eighteenth century differ greatly from our own political and academic terms. Today the concept /nation' is always thought of in a political context and in connection with the state, while in the eighteenth century there were still two more or less distinct meanings attached to the term: 'nation' as a group of people of identical origin, and 'nation' as the collective holder of sovereignty. Towards the end of the century these two concepts were gradually merged, with explosive results in some countries. Today it is common for scholars to apply the term 'nationalism' not only to chauvinistic tendencies but to any political movement by which a social group, regarding itself as a nation, aims at political sovereignty in its area of settlement and claims political participation and autonomy. On the other hand, we tend to use the term 'patriotism' to describe movements which are concerned with the welfare of their native country but do not aim at a radical reconstruction of the political system. With this distinction in mind, let us consider what words and terms were used in the eighteenth century to describe nationalist or patriotic behaviour. The term 'nationalism' was hardly used at all. It can be found occasionally in eighteenth-century publications, for example in Herder's writings. He justifies 'nationalism' as a mode of behaviour for young peoples.8 But generally the term was used in a pejorative sense to denote an exaggerated pride in one's own nation, an intolerant prejudice, similar to our term 'chauvinism'. In direct contrast to 'nationalism', the term 'patriotism' was used to describe all forms of national thinking in eighteenth-century societies. It was always defined as 'love for the fatherland' (amorpatriae). Patriots were those who loved their country so much that they were always willing to value it above other countries, to work for its welfare, and to defend it in times of war. The Patriot was a title given to a number of periodicals. In all societies the term 'patriot' was an honorific one, used as such in many eulogies and obituaries. Hence it is not surprising that in the second half of the century several politically active groups called themselves 'patriots'. The term became the distinguishing label of certain political parties.9 The range of such parties shows, however, that in this epoch it was not always clear what patriotism meant. Was one's fatherland (patria) the territory of one's origin, the land of one's forefathers, or the country in which one felt most at home and with whose constitution one was most in sympathy? Because the term had a wide range of meanings, it was possible to have 8

See Jacques Godechot's remarks, below pp. 13-16. See e.g. the Dutch case (H. Reitsma, below pp. 175-7) and the Swedish one (E, Lonnroth, below p. 107). 9

4 Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution not only one but several 'fatherlands' - a vital problem for eighteenthcentury Germany.10 Furthermore there was an ambiguity about what 'love for the fatherland' really implied. Was it patriotic to want to conserve, or to want to improve and reform, the country's constitution? We shall return to this question later. Compared to the dominant role of the terms 'patriot, patriotic, patriotism', the term 'nation' played an inferior role in eighteenthcentury European societies - until the Revolution in France. Also, the adjective 'national' was very rarely used. The derivatives of the Latin term natio come into general use in European popular parlance relatively late and not everywhere. From the fifteenth century onwards, this term was increasingly used in political contexts and developed, as mentioned above, two different meanings. According to one usage, dating originally from antiquity and the middle ages, 'nation' was understood in its old Latin sense as meaning a people of the same origin. Common language was the first criterion, another being common history. The latter in the form of 'national history' became a subject of academic research. Nations in this sense were the outcome of their own history and had evolved distinctive characteristics. This concept was not markedly different from the term 'people'.11 In his Encyclopedic, Diderot gave a classic definition of a different usage of the word 'nation as 'une quantite considerable de peuple qui habite une certaine etendue de pays, renfermee dans de certaines limites, et qui obeit au meme gouvernement'.12 Here, 'nation' is used in a political sense and describes the population of a state. Common political organizations and common laws are the main criteria. In the world of the ancien regime, where laws did not usually apply to all members of the state but only to particular social groups, the term 'nation' did not denote the whole population but only those with political rights. In feudal societies this was, above all, the aristocracy, and in republics the active citizens. This political conception of the 'nation' embraced all those who belonged to the societas civilis, i.e. only those who had a right to participate in politics and to share in the exercise of sovereignty. The 'nation', therefore, was often envisaged as facing the king. The king and the nation made up the societas civilis and together constituted the state. The 'nation' in this sense was in many countries differentiated from what 10

Cf. e.g. the situation in the city of Mainz (F. Dumont, below, p. 160-1); and on the individual case of Herder's allegiances, see Hans Kohn, p. 341, and Otto Dann, 'Herder und die Deutsche Bewegung', in Gerhard Sauder (ed.),Johann Gottfried Herder 1744-1803 (Hamburg, 1987), pp. 318 seq. 11 Cf. the essays of Benedykt Zientara and Frantisek Graus in Otto Dann (ed.), Nationalisms in vorindustrieller Zeit (Munich, 1986), pp. 12 seq. and 36 seq. 12 Encyclopedic (17 vols., Paris, 1751-65), xi. 36.

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was called the 'people', the latter term being used to describe those classes of a population which did not have political rights and consequently did not belong to the nation. The perimeters of the political concept of the 'nation' indicate that it involved considerable problems. How were political rights to be distributed between king and nation? Who was to be sovereign? Could the 'people' be permanently excluded from the 'nation'? The problems and conflicts inherent in such questions dominated the history of many European societies during the eighteenth century. They can only be understood if we consider the political and social processes which formed -the background to the national question. ///

What forces had shaped embryonic nationalism in European societies prior to the eighteenth century? And what social and political tendencies were associated with the development of nations in the century of the Enlightenment? First of all we must consider the process of nation-building, the basis of all national developments. From the time of the decline of the Carolingian Empire, nations began to emerge as a new force in the process of state-building in Europe.13 The leading social groups which shared a common language and other characteristics intensified their mutual links in order to pursue their common interests. A new sense of identity, national consciousness, came into being and formed the basis of a common state. The founders of the new nations were at first only two classes of the population: the nobility, electing or recognizing a national king, and the clergy, the intelligentsia, articulating the concepts of the new national consciousness. From the middle ages onwards, educated laymen and in due course other social groups followed suit. But we must bear in mind that the 'nation' in these periods never included - nor did it ever claim to include - the whole population, but only those classes which had developed a sense of national identity and begun to act upon it. In close conjunction with the process of nation-building, more developed national ideologies emerged. From the later middle ages onwards, documents can be found referring to specific peoples as the subjects of history, thereby giving a new meaning to the term 'nation'. 13 See Helmut Beumann, 'Zur Nationenbildung im Mittelalter', in Otto Dann (ed.), Nationalisms in vorindustrieller Zeit, pp. 21-33; F, Gratis, Die NationsbiIdung der Westslaven im Mittelalter (Sigmaringen, 1980); H. Beumann and W. Schroeder (eds.), Aspekte der Nationenbildung im Mittelalter (Sigmaringen, 1978); J.R. Strayer, 'The historical experience of nation-building in Europe', in Deutsch and Foltz (eds.), Nation-Building (New York, 1963), pp. 23-49.

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These 'nations' were also acquiring their own national historiographies. Individuals of special importance became national symbols: here were the beginnings of a national ideology in which stereotypes and prejudices played significant roles.14 These national historiographies often emerged and developed at the same time as early national movements, such as Hussitism in fifteenth-century Bohemia, and there are consequently grounds for locating the origins of nationalism at the times when such movements occurred. In connection with nation-building and the development of national ideologies, the process of modern 'state-building' is of particular importance. In order to integrate the population into a common citizenship, the administrative system had to be comprehensive and a new legitimation was required for government. Thus national ideas became important as a means of developing a common political identity for all subjects. The social groups leading the state-building process increasingly had recourse to national arguments in order to explain and justify their political actions. In this way the territorial state could evolve into a nation-state. This evolution did not mean an immediate change in the political system or in the distribution of power, but only an alteration in modes of political legitimation and self-definition. The government could invoke the nation in its political argument and propaganda, and the promotion of a sense of national identity became a major concern of the state.15 We must not overlook, however, the fact that the process of modern state-building did not everywhere lead to the foundation of a national state. In some areas another type of modern state was coming into being: the dynastic state in which a sovereign, with the help of the privileged classes, ruled several peoples or only a part of an old people. There were great obstacles to such a state becoming a nation-state, and in the world of the eighteenth century it was not always regarded as necessary that it should do so. The process of modern state-building was usually led by the king, while other elements in society - nobles and citizens - played subordinate parts. Inevitably these groups began to pose their own demands. Struggles for participation in the state and its reform broke out and to a large extent conditioned the history of many European states from the seventeenth century onwards. From the start, these disputes were 14

For a recent survey see F. Graus, 'Nationale Deutungsmuster der Vergangenheit in spatmittelalterlichen Chroniken', in Otto Dann (ed.), Nationalisms in vorindustrieller Zeit, pp. 35-53; also C.L. Tipton, Nationalism in the Middle Ages (New York, 1972); E.D. Marcu, Sixteenth-Century Nationalism (New York, 1976); K.F. Werner, 'Les nations et le sentiment national dans FEurope medievale', Revue historique, ccxliv (1970), 285-304. 15 See Charles Tilly (ed.), The Formation of National States in Western Europe. There does not yet exist any general comparative analysis of the building of nation-states in Europe in the early modern period, but see the remarks of Breuilly, pp. 50 seq. and 353 seq.

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characterized by the emergence of patriotic movements, and their nationalist character became increasingly predominant in the course of the eighteenth century. At first such struggles tended to be confrontations between the king and the privileged classes, which were often organized in a parliament. Vis a vis the king, they called themselves 'the nation' - in the political sense of the word-or representatives and champions of the nation. Thus particular classes could declare their rights to be 'national liberties', and fought to obtain the king's recognition for these so-called 'national rights'.16 If the sovereign came from a different nation, such a conflict gained an extra dimension: the struggle for privileged liberties acquired the characteristics of a movement for national liberation from foreign oppression.17 'Patriotism' played an important role in this type of conflict: it became the chief source of legitimation and motivation for all those who fought for 'national liberties'. So far as the privileged classes were concerned, this usually meant fighting for the preservation of the old institutions of the community. 'National constitutionalism', as J. H. Elliott has called it, thus had the purpose of conserving the native constitution.18 During the eighteenth century patriotism changed its appearance in many European countries. A new concept of patriotism was formulated, outside the old circles of privilege, by the educated middle classes.19 Influenced by the natural-law theories of the Enlightenment, they formulated >a new social model ensuring the inclusion of the nonprivileged classes in the nation. In their eyes, this new form of patriotism was a well-founded ethical position, allowing only a secondary role for class-interests, and concerned for the welfare for all citizens. This was no longer a conservative concept of patriotism: patriotic activity now meant trying to alter and modernize the constitution of the fatherland; 16 On the French case see R. Bickart, Les Parlements et la notion de souverainete national (Paris, 1932); and for the experience of Sweden in the eighteenth century see Lonnroth, below p. 103. For the position of the English parliament in the Tudor period see G.R. Elton, * English national self-consciousness and the Parliament in the sixteenth century', in Otto Dann (ed.), Nationalisms in vorindustridler Zeit, pp. 73—82. Cf. also Breuilly, pp. 53 seq. 17 For the example of the Netherlands during the war against Habsburg Spain see Johan Huizinga, 'How Holland became a nation', in his Verzamelde Werken (9 vols., Haarlem, 1948-53), ii. 266-83; and for the Hungarian diet faced with the Habsburg government see K. Benda, below pp. 131-2. 18 J.H. Elliott, 'Revolution and continuity in Early Modern Europe', Past and Present, xlii (1969), 47 seq. 19 On the Swiss case see Ulrich Im Hof, below p. 183, and his magnum opus on the 'Helvetic Society', Die Entstehung einerpolitischen Offentlichkeit in der Schweiz. Strukturand Tatigkeit der Helvetisehen Gesellschaft (Stuttgart, 1983); on German patriotism see H. Segeberg, below p. 142, and C. Prignitz, Vaterlandsliebe und Freiheit. Deutscher Patriotismus von 1750-1850 (Wiesbaden, 1981); and for developments in Denmark see O. Feldbaek, below pp. 89-96.

8 Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution enlightened reformers called themselves 'patriots'. If the sovereign himself was a reformer, he could be considered the First Patriot of his country; if he was not, the reformers formed a patriotic opposition against him. Their aim was a reformed fatherland, a new society based on an enlarged concept of the nation. But they respected the basic framework of the existing constitution; they were not revolutionaries. IV

In eighteenth-century Europe some societies and social classes went a step further in their struggle for participation. They demanded not only participation for the patriots but posed the question of sovereignty. They desired full political sovereignty and autonomy for the whole nation. The concept of patriotism had thus developed into nationalism, which in the prevailing circumstances was a revolutionary programme. Such a development presupposed a consensus that envisaged the society as a democratic nation. This process had begun in France in the mid-eighteenth century with a revolutionary new interpretation of theories of natural rights. Rousseau was the first to formulate the concept of a society in which a nation of citizens with equal rights would govern itself democratically, and in which all aspects of social life would be regulated on the basis of popular agreement. This nation would include all inhabitants, nobody being excluded; 'people' and 'nation' would become one.20 The term 'nation' was thus defined in a new and radical way. The model of a democratic nation was based on two main principles that are still valued in democratic societies today: the principle of the sovereignty of the people, and the idea that every individual has inalienable human rights. The new concept of the 'nation' expressed the identity and selfimage of the modern political society in a general sense; its functions included political legitimation, social integration, the cultivation of loyalty, and the mobilization of the citizens.21 The new concept of the 'nation' tended to be not only antimonarchical, but also anti-aristocratic, and it consequently involved breaking with the world of the ancien regime. The modern nation could not become a political reality in feudal societies, for its emergence 20 See A.M. Cohler, Rousseau and Nationalism (New York, 1970); Iring Fetscher, Rousseaus politische Philosophic (Neuwied, 1960); Otto Vossler, Der Nationalgedanke von Rousseau bis Ranke (Berlin, 1937). 21 For the development of the concept of modern nationalism see especially Elie Kedourie, Nationalism', Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism', Hans Kohn, The Age of Nationalism. For the wider historical context see EJ. Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution (New York, 1962); R.R. Palmer, The Age oj'the Democratic Revolution (2 vols., Princeton, 1959-64); Reinhard Bendix, Nation-Building and Citizenship (2nd edn., Berkeley, 1977).

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required the propelling force of a wider political movement of modern nationalism. This points to the second condition for the realization of the modern nation. The intelligentsia which had developed the new concept of a democractic nation was unable to mobilize within its own milieu the social forces necessary to overwhelm the entrenched position of the privileged. It needed allies who were interested on their own account in altering current political conditions. Such allies could occasionally be found among the impoverished aristocracy, but they were mainly to be found among the middle classes and within the working population. The creation of a new democratic nation is an act that each society can only achieve by and for itself. In the second half of the eighteenth century, however, two pioneering societies, the United States and France, were leading the way in this respect, and their experience and example provided important impulses for national movements elsewhere.22 The American Revolution provided the first model of a new nation, but the circumstances in which it came into existence were somewhat remote from those of Europe. For the emergence of nationalism within the European world the French Revolution was more influential. In considering the effects of that Revolution, one needs to distinguish between those national movements which received a positive stimulus from the French example, and those which arose in opposition to French power and expansionism. Of course, since circumstances and influences varied, there were many different ways in which modern nations were formed. But if one takes a broad view of European countries and their different modes of development, two general tendencies can be discerned. If a nation-state had already been in existence during the period of the ancien regime, the crucial point was the problem of sovereignty. The new nation only had to conquer the existing state. In this situation the national movement was identical with the struggle for democratic reforms and institutions. France provides the classic example: here the term 'nation' developed in the second half of the century from one that implied antagonism towards absolute monarchy to one that implied hostility towards the aristocracy and feudalism; and during the Great Revolution it became the dominant

22 For the national character of the American Revolution and its impact on 'patriots' in Europe see Hans Kohn, American Nationalism (New York, 1957); Michael Kammen, A Season of Youth. The American Revolution and the Historical Imagination (New York, 1978); The Impact of the American Revolution Abroad (Washington, 1976); Horst Dippel, 'Die Wirkung der amerikanischen Revolution auf Deutschland und Frankreich', in Hans Ulrich Wehler (ed.), 200Jahre Amerikanische Revolution und moderne Revolutionsforschung (Gottingen, 1976), pp. 101-21. For the impact of the French Revolution on national developments in Europe see the magnum opus of Jacques Godechot, La Grande Nation (2 vols., Paris, 1956).

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and integrating leitmotif.23 But there were other countries in which a different route was followed, one involving gradual evolutionary change of the nation-state and its constitution. It should be noted that this was the route most favoured by Enlightenment opinion in Europe.24 If, however, the basis of a nation-state did not exist, the conditions for the realization of a modern nation were completely different. For all peoples in this situation - and they formed the majority in Europe - the building of a modern nation and the achievement of its autonomy were considerably more difficult and lengthy processes. As a first step, an ethnic community living under foreign rule had to develop into a selfconfideht nation.25 This process of nation-building was especially difficult in those territories where several ethnic groups lived together, and it could lead to alternative and competing conceptions of the nation.26 In any case new methods of nationwide communication and organization had to be found, often in the face of laws and regulations intended to inhibit such developments. Thereafter in some cases a final step still remained to be taken: the conversion of aspirations for national autonomy into the reality of a nation-state. Sometimes this was only possible through a national war of liberation. In many European countries in the second half of the eighteenth century, the pioneers of national movements were undertaking the various tasks that were necessary in the protracted process of building new autonomous nations.27

V It will be apparent from the essays printed in this volume that in regard to national tendencies in eighteenth-century European societies, a great variety of concepts and developments are observable. This introduction, however, has attempted to present a broad perspective and has emphasized three general aspects. The first is the efforts of modernizing 23

Cf. E. Fehrenbach, 'Nation', in R. Reichardt and E. Schmitt (eds.), Handbuch politisch-sozialer Grundbegriffe in Frankreich 1680-1820, Heft 7 (Munich, 1986), pp. 75107; B.F. Hyslop, French Nationalism in 1789, according to the General Cahiers (New York, 1934). 24 Cf. the developments in the Netherlands (Reitsma, below pp. 171-82), in the last period of the Polish state (M. Miiller, below pp. 113—28), and in England (J. Dinwiddy, below pp. 53-70). 25 Cf. the conditions in Italy (M. Meriggi, below pp. 199—212) and the general explanations of A.D. Smith, Ethnic Origins, pp. 153 seq. 26 See the complicated situation in Hungary: Benda, below pp. 129-35, and M. Csaky, Von der Aufklarung zum Liberalismus (Vienna, 1981), pp. 156 seq. 27 Cf. especially the East-European scene: M. Hroch, Social Preconditions; P.P. Sugar and I.J. Ledere (eds.), Nationalism in Eastern Europe (London, 1969); E. Niederhauser, The Rise of Nationality in Eastern Europe (Budapest, 1981); Breuilly, chaps. 2 and 3.

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governments to give their states a national character, and to integrate their subjects by encouraging the process of nation-building and especially the rise of a national culture. The second is 'patriotism' as the most important form in which national attitudes found their expression in the eighteenth century. While at first it strove to preserve the traditional constitution, it shifted its emphasis in the second half of the century to demands for the reform and modernization of the state and society. The third is the rise of a new model of the democratic nation which included the recognition of human rights and political participation for all citizens. This conception was characteristic of the 'age of the democratic revolution', which became an age of nationalism; and the conception was realized in two different ways, through democratic change in already existing states, and through national movements striving for liberation and national autonomy. The history of patriotic movements in European countries during the eighteenth century may seem bewildering, since old forms existed alongside new ones in the societies that were undergoing the process of transition from feudal to democratic constitutions. In the French Revolution the modern concept of a democratic nation proved its enormous power of social mobilization and political legitimation for the first time. The French path towards the creation of a modern nation may have been only one among many, but the practice of arguing in national terms has not since disappeared from political debate and the concept of a democratic-nation still forms a basic part of our political understanding today.

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The New Concept of the Nation and its Diffusion in Europe Jacques Godechot Some Remarks on Terminology Nation, nationalisme, nationality. Of these three words, only the first existed in the French language in 1789, though it was used with a meaning rather different from that which it has today. It is true that Furetiere, in his Dictionnaire published in 1690, wrote: 'Nation signifies a great people inhabiting a single area of territory defined by certain boundaries, or even under a certain dominion.' The Dictionnaire de VAcademiefran$aise, in its editions of 1694, 1740 and 1762, gave a similar definition. 'A Nation\ it said, 'is constituted by all the inhabitants of a single State, of a single country, who live under the same laws and employ the same language." Montesquieu1 and Voltaire2 also used the word nation in this sense. But in Le Siecle de Louis XIV, and also in the Essai sur les moeurs et Vesprit des Nations, Voltaire used the word nation in two different senses. The first was that of Furetiere and of the Dictionnaire de VAcademie: 'England, this witty and bold nation';3 'the nations of northern Europe, Poland, Sweden, Denmark, Russia';4 '.the French nation'.5 The second did not correspond to the definitions which we have cited. For example, Voltaire used the terms 'nation allemande* and 'nation germanique\6 although one could not say that at that period the Germans lived 'under a certain dominion' or 'under the same laws'. The definition of Furetiere and of the Academy applied even less to the expression 'la nation juive\ which was often used in the Essai.7 The Jews, in the eighteenth century, did not inhabit 'a single area of territory defined by certain boundaries'. Furthermore, the word nation was used in France in 1

Montesquieu, Considerations sur les causes de la grandeur des Remains et de leur decadence (Paris, 1734), iii. 80. 2 Voltaire, Essai sur les moeurs et Vesprit des nations, ed. Rene Pomeau (2 vols., Paris, 1963), i. 136. 3 Voltaire, Le Siecle de Louis XIV, ed. Rene Pomeau (Paris, 1957), p. 617. 4 Ibid., p. 621. 5 Ibid., pp. 619, 633, 642, 648, 680, etc. 6 Voltaire, Le Siecle de Louis XIV, pp. 621, 622. 7 Voltaire, Essai sur le moeurs, i. 115, 122, 136. 13

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Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution

the seventeenth century - and had been since the middle ages - in senses much less precise than that specified by the dictionaries of Furetiere and the Academy. Thus the College des Quatre-Nations in Paris was founded by Mazarin to provide accommodation for scholars who were natives of Alsace, Flanders, Roussillon and Piedmont; and these were provinces, not nations. Similarly, according to the Encyclopedic of Diderot and d'Alembert, the word nation was in use in some universities to 'characterize the elements or members which compose them by reference to the various countries from which they originate'. The Faculty of Paris was composed of four nations (France, Picardy, Normandy, Germany) subdivided into tribes; and the German nation embraced all foreigners. Voltaire, moreover, thought that the concept of the 'nation' was in the process of disappearing: 'Today, there are no longer Frenchmen, Germans, Spaniards, even Englishmen: whatever people say, there are only Europeans. All have the same tastes, the same feelings, the same customs, because none has experienced any particular national formation. '8 Rousseau, by contrast, believed in the existence of'nations': 'Every people has or ought to have a national character.'9 He regarded the 'nation' as the natural human grouping, and he considered that devotion to the 'nation' was laudable. The marquis d'Argenson, around 1771, observed that 'never have the words "nation" and "state" been as frequently used as they are today'. These two words, he added, ' were Ifiever uttered under Louis XIV, and even the ideas they represent did not exist.'10 In 1789, the word nation became the favourite word of the revolutionary generation. It appears constantly in the cahiers de doleances that were sent to the States General. On the eve of the drawing up of these cahiers, the elder Lacretelle wrote in a tract entitled De la convocation de laprochaine tenue des Etats generaux: 'A nation consists of those citizens who inhabit a territory, own property or carry out essential tasks for the cultivators of the land, obey the law, pay the taxes, and serve the country.' From 1789 in France, the nation became sovereign. The motto 'Un roif une foi, une lot' ('one king, one faith, one law'), which characterized the ancien regime, was replaced by 'La Nation, la lot, le roi ('the Nation, the law, the king'): thenceforward the Nation made the law which the king was responsible for executing. And when the monarchy ceased to exist on 10 August 1792, the Nation became even more plainly sovereign. ' Vive la Nation!' cried the French soldiers at Valmy, when 8

Ibid., i. 136. Rousseau, Projet de constitution pour la Corse, in Oeuvres completes, ed. Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond (3 vols., Paris, 1959-64), iii. 913. 10 Abbe Coyer, Dissertations pour etre lues, la premiere sur le vieux mot depatrie, la seconde sur la nature dupeuple (Paris, 1755); cit. Boyd C. Shafer, Faces of Nationalism (New York, 1972), p. 61. 9

The New Concept of the Nation

15

they hurled themselves against the Prussian army on 20 September 1792, The adjective 'national', although it had not figured in the Encyclopedic of Diderot and d'Alembert, enjoyed a remarkable vogue. Everything which had been royal became national: the national navy, the national police, the national estates. The nation had its own emblem, the tricoloured national flag, which replaced the white flag of the house of Bourbon.11 It was from 1789 that the word Nation acquired, in French, the meaning which Ernest Renan so admirably expressed in his lecture Qu'est-ce qu'une Nation?: 'A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle. Two things, which cannot really be separated, constitute this soul, this spiritual principle. One is in the past, the other is in the present. One is the common ownership of a rich inheritance of memories; the other is the actual consensus, the desire to live together, the wish to make the most of what has been jointly inherited. A nation is, then, a great solidarity, constituted by an awareness of the sacrifices that have been made, and of the further sacrifices that are accepted in advance. It presupposes a past; and in the present it is encapsulated in a determinate fact: the agreement, the clearly expressed desire to continue the common existence.'12 From a more specifically juridical point of view, Leon Duguit, a professor of law, wrote: 'In the French doctrine, as it was expressed in our constitutions of the revolutionary era and of 1848, the nation is the titular source of sovereignty, The nation is a person with all the attributes of personality, conscience and will. The "person" of the nation is . . . distinct from the State, and is anterior to it; the state can only exist where there is a nation, and the nation can subsist even when the state no longer exists or does not yet exist.'13 It will be observed that neither Renan nor Duguit linked the existence of the nation to the use of a single language, or even to living in 'a single area of territory defined by certain boundaries'. While the word nation is old, for it existed in Latin - omnes ejus gentis nationes, wrote Tacitus - the same is not true of the words nationalisme and nationalites, nor of the concepts which they represent. The word nationalisme is not to be found in the 1877 edition of Littre's Dictionnaire de la languefran$aise. Ferdinand Baldensperger, in La Revolution fran^aise in 1905, indicated what he thought to be the first use of the word: by the abbe Barruel in his Memoirespourservira Vhistoire dujacobinisme published at Hamburg in 1798-9. 'Nationalism,' wrote Barruel, 'took the place after 1789 of philanthrophy . . . It was then permissible to despise

11 Ferdinand Brunot, Histoire de la langue frangaise (11 vols., Paris, 1905-69), vol. x, part ii, p. 634. 12 Ernest Renan, Qu'est-ce qu'une Nation? (Paris, 1871). 13 Leon Duguit, Traite de droit constitutionnel (2 vols., Paris, 1911), i. 607.

16 Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution foreigners, to deceive them, to be offensive to them. This virtue was called "patriotism".' Thus for Barruel nationalism was patriotism in an exacerbated form.14 But the word 'nationalism' was used much earlier in the German language. In fact the text of a sworn statement required from students at the University of Leipzig shows that the elector of Saxony had obliged them, from 1661, to condemn 'nationalism' on oath. It is true that the word had then a different meaning from that which it was to acquire at the end of the eighteenth century.15 The students of Leipzig were then organized in Landmannschaften or 'nations' similar to the 'nations' of the Sorbonne. Their 'nationalism' was thus only a kind of provincial chauvinism. But in 1774 Herder used the word Nationalism16 and in 1798 Nationalisms,17 more or less in its modern meaning. The Revolutionary Concept of the Nation The French revolutionaries did give precision to the concept of the Nation. This concept was not based on common language, but on the freely expressed will of the inhabitants: the right of peoples to selfdetermination was expressed for the first time in the Constituent Assembly on 30 November 1789 by the deputy Saliceti, who demanded that Corsica should become part of the French nation because this was the wish of its inhabitants. The right was reasserted on 28 October 1790 in relation to Alsace by the deputy Merlin de Douai, who declared: 'Today . . . now that the sovereignty of the people is at last proclaimed to be sacred . . . what do the French people care for those conventions which had the effect of uniting Alsace to France in the era of despotism? The people of Alsace is united to the people of France because it has willed it . . . It is not by the treaties of princes that the rights of nations are regulated.'18 Thus the existence of nations was essentially founded on the will of the peoples concerned. But it was necessary, as well, that the Nation should 14

Abbe Barruel, Memoirespour servira I'histoire dujacobinisme (5 vols., Hamburg, 17989), iii. 184; cit. F. Baldensperger in La Revolution fran^aise, xi (1892), 263. 15 The Leipzig students had to swear that they would sincerely execrate 'detestabiles illas et Academia perniciosas labes, Pennalismum, Nationalismum et Conventicula alia' ('those detestable and pernicious banes of the Academy, ragging, nationalism, and other factions') which had been formally banned by the electors of Saxony and by the university authorities. (Archives of the University of Leipzig.) 16 Herder, Auch eine Philosophic der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit. Beytrag zu vielen Beytragen des Jahrhunderts (1774), in Samtliche Werke, ed. B. Suphan (33 vols., Berlin, 1877-99), v. 510. 17 Herder, Christliche Schriften (1798), in Samtliche Werke, xx. 234. 18 Le Moniteur universel, 30 Oct. 1790. Reprinted in J. Godechot, La Pensee revolutionnaire, 1780-H99 (2nd edn., Paris, 1969), pp. 121-2.

The New Concept of the Nation 17 be unified. France, indeed, had acquired an overall unity in the thirteenth century, before Spain, which only achieved it in the sixteenth century, and before Great Britain, which did not obtain it until the seventeeth. Yet prior to 1789 the provinces preserved their particularities, there were foreign enclaves within French territory (Avignon, Montbeliard, and certain German principalities in Lorraine and Alsace), and France possessed enclaves abroad (such as Landau). The nation, which was identified with the state, was henceforth to be unified, and everywhere the same institutions were to operate. The Constituent Assembly declared in the Constitution of 1791 (article 1 of section II): The Kingdom is one and indivisible, its territory is partitioned into 83 departments'; and in article 1 of section HI, it asserted: 'Sovereignty is single, indivisible, inalienable and imprescriptible. It belongs to the Nation.' The Convention did no more than repeat what the members of the Constituent Assembly — almost all royalists - had resolved in 1791; it declared on 25 September 1792, five days after the battle of Valmy and four days after the abolition of the monarchy: 'The French Republic is one and indivisible/ This formula was to be reproduced in the Constitution of 1795 (article I).19 It was still necessary that this unity and indivisibility should be made secure. In the Convention, the deputies who were called Girondins because their principal leaders were representatives of the Gironde, distrusted the omnipotence of Paris, where the Commune had just organized the first Terror, marked by the prison massacres of early September 1792. Doubtless it was not their intention to revive the ancient provinces and their privileges, but they wished to 'reduce Paris to its one eighty-third share of power'. Rather than being federalists, they were 'departmentalists'. Neverthess, they invoked the example of the United States, while inverting the significance of the term 'federalist', for in the United States, the Federalist party, following Washington, wished to strengthen the Federation, while the democratic Republicans, following Jefferson, demanded more autonomy for each of the States. Without taking account of these nuances, the Girondin Anacharsis Cloots published in the Chronique de Paris of 16 October 1792 an analysis of The Federalist, the work of Hamilton, Jay and Madison, and concluded his article with a panegyric on American federalism. The following day, Gorsas, then considered as a Montagnard, replied to him. A federal state, he said, could only be a state formed by the joining together of several other states. This was not the case with France. 'No one ever thought of dismembering a strong and united state in order to give it a federal constitution, and of fragmenting one people into several in order to give it an appearance of unity.' Consequently, he considered that France could not, and should not, become a federal state. The debate between 19

J. Godechot, Les Constitutions dela France depuis 1789(2ndedn.y Paris, 1975), pp. 37, 38, 79, 103.

18

Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution

federalists and unitarists, between Girondins and Montagnards, continued throughout the winter of 1792-3. The Revolutions de Paris carried in its issues of 31 March-6 April 1793 an article entitled: 'On the unity and indivisibility of the government'. The author showed that federalism had caused the stalling of the revolutionary movement in the United Provinces in 1787, and that it was responsible for the political weakness of Switzerland. In the United States, geography-i.e. the sheer size of the country - and problems with regard to communication made federalism a necessity; but this federalism was not a source of strength.20 At the parliamentary level, the conflict was brutally cut short, on 2 June 1793, by the arrest of the leading Girondin deputies. But this resort to force provoked a 'federalist' revolt in France: Normandy, Bordeaux, Lyon, Marseilles, Toulon rebelled against the Montagnard Convention and the Paris Commune. This revolt was put down by armed force. It provided evidence, moreover, of collusion between federalists, royalists, and the enemies of France. At Toulon, the rebels had proclaimed Louis XVII as king and the comte de Provence (the future Louis XVIII) as regent, and had called in the English and Spanish fleets. The capture of Toulon on 18 December 1793, achieved largely through the efforts of Captain Bonaparte, put an end to the revolt and gave complete power to the unitarists (the Montagnards).21 The success of the anti-federalist Montagnards was followed a few months later by the great victory over the Austrians at Fleurus (10 June 1794). The French armies occupied Belgium, most of the left bank of the Rhine, and the whole of the United Provinces. They brought to these areas the 'principles of 1789' and the institutions created by the Revolution. The French nation became the model nation, la Grande Nation - accustomed to conquer, as the poet Marie-Joseph Chenier was to put it in his elegy for General Hoche. It appeared that the mission of the Grande Nation was one of liberation: that France should help oppressed peoples to gain their liberty, in virtue of'the right of peoples to dispose of themselves'. 'France', Michelet wrote later, 'who belongs not only to us, and whose duty it is to guide every nation towards liberty. '22 France seemed to be the pilot ship of humanity at large. The Diffusion of the French Concept of the Nation For the French revolutionaries, as we have seen, the essence of a nation lay not in all its members speaking a common language, but in their will to form a nation. Also, as far as possible, a nation should possess 'natural frontiers' of the kind that are formed by the sea or a chain of mountains or 20 21 22

J. Godechot, La Grande Nation (2nd edn., Paris, 1983), pp. 236-8. J. Godechot, Les Revolutions (4th edn., Paris, 1986), pp. 183-95. Jules Michelet, Le Peuple (new edn., Paris, 1946), p. 245.

The New Concept of the Nation

19

a great river. Above all, it should possess a homogeneous set of institutions and a centralized republican government. In short, a nation, to be strong and worthy of the name, should form in imitation of France a 'republic one and indivisible'. During the period of the Directory, France helped two of her neighbours, the Low Countries and Switzerland, to constitute themselves into republics of this type. There were divisions of opinion over policy towards Italy, and there unity was not in the end achieved. In regard to Germany, the question of unity was hardly raised. The United Provinces had revolted against their suzerain the Stadholder in 1780. The latter, thanks to help from Prussian troops and the British navy, stamped out the revolt in 1787. To escape the repression, more than 40,000 Dutchmen left the country. Many took refuge in France. From 1792, they formed a 'Batavian revolutionary committee' which allied itself with the French Jacobins and committed itself to the goal of transforming the old aristocratic and federal republic of the United Provinces into a democratic republic 'one and indivisible', with the aid of France. French troops entered the United Provinces in December 1794, taking advantage of the exceptionally cold weather which had frozen the Meuse and the Rhine, their southern frontier. Amsterdam was occupied on 1 January 1795. Immediately, the Batavian revolutionaries decided to convene the 'provisional states general' which was to undertake the transformation of the country. The deputies elected to the states general separated into 'unitarists', who chiefly represented the provinces of Holland, Utrecht, Gelderland and Overijssel, and 'federalists', who came principally from Zeeland, Friesland and Groningen. They were unable to agree except over the calling of a 'Batavian Convention', which was to create a constitution for the Batavian Republic, as the United Provinces were now called. The Batavian Convention met at The Hague on 1 March 1796. The 'federalists' had a majority in this body, but France supported the 'unitarists'. One of the latter, Schimmelpenninck, proposed that the Convention should proclaim that in principle the Batavian Republic was 'one and indivisible', and should stage a competition in which every citizen would be invited to submit his ideas on the most suitable form of constitution for the republic. The motion was defeated, and the controversy dragged on. Meanwhile the Directory, in France, uncovered the communist conspiracy of Babeuf and learned that certain Batavian unitarists (such as Blauw and Valckenaer) had connections with the 'Babouvistes'. The Directory ceased at this point to give such firm support to the Batavian unitarists, and on 30 May 1797 the Batavian Convention adopted a relatively federal constitution, while pronouncing that it should be submitted to a referendum (as the constitutions of 1793 and 1795 had

20 Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution been in France). When the referendum was held on 8 August 1797, the draft constitution was rejected by 108,761 votes to 27,955. A new Convention was elected to produce an alternative draft. Almost at the same time, the coup d'etat of Fructidor took place in France (4 September 1797), expelling the moderates from power and replacing them with Jacobins. The French ambassador at The Hague, Noel, was replaced by Charles Delacroix who was instructed to support the unitarists. But the latter did not always command a majority in the Convention. Delacroix decided to organize a coup d'etat in the Batavian Republic similar to the one which had occurred in France. With the help of General Joubert, who was in command of the French troops, the federalists were purged from the Convention on 22 January 1798. Thereupon the Batavian Jacobins drew up a thoroughly unitarist and centralist constitution. When submitted to a referendum on 23 April 1798, it was approved by 153,913 votes to 11,597. The Batavian Republic became a centralized 'nation' on the French model, and this structure was retained in Louis Bonaparte's kingdom of Holland in 1806. Holland was thus the first country which took over the French model of the nation-state.23 During the period when Holland was forming itself into a nation, the French Directory was trying to make a nation out of the Swiss cantons. But here the process was very different from that which took place in Holland. In the latter case, notwithstanding the coup d'etat of 22 January 1798, the new constitution had been discussed at length by the people's representatives, and had then been voted on by the people themselves. In Switzerland, only an insignificant number of 'patriots', of whom the most important were the Vaudois Frederic Cesar de Laharpe and Pierre Ochs of Basel, wished to alter the country's political structure, to destroy the remnants of feudalism, and to institute a republic 'one and indivisible'. They were backed by the Directory and by General Bonaparte, who wished both to make Switzerland into a buffer against a possible Austrian offensive, and to command the route through the Valais and the Simplon which was the shortest way from Paris to Milan. Laharpe and Pierre Ochs recognized, however, that it would be difficult to demolish the federal organization of Switzerland, to which the inhabitants were deeply attached. On 12 December 1797, Pierre Ochs wrote to Bonaparte that the essential question was whether 'to preserve the federal pattern which is so pleasing to Austria, or to establish unity, which is the only way of making Switzerland the loyal and faithful ally of the French Republic'. Bonaparte declared himself in favour of the unitary model and Pierre Ochs drew up a constitution of this type, even though he was not very committed to unity himself. 'It is Bonaparte who wanted a republic one and indivisible', he wrote. The French Directory, aware of these reservations, hesitated; it thought for a time of dividing 23 On the Batavian Republic, see especially Simon Schama, Patriots and Liberators: Revolution in the Netherlands, 1780-1813 (New York, 1977).

The New Concept of the Nation

21

Switzerland into two or three republics, linked in a confederation and allied to France. But this idea drew loud protests from the patriots as well as the federalists. The Directory decided in favour of a republic one and indivisible. However, it did not have its plan submitted to a convention or a referendum, as in Holland. It had it promulgated by a commissaire attached to the army of Helvetia, Lecarlier, and the printed text was circulated in a little book with a blue cover, the 'Livre bleu'. When this constitution 'bestowed', or rather 'imposed', by the French Republic became known, there was revolt. The 'original' cantons (Schwyz, Uri, Unterwalden, Zug) rose, and were followed by others, notably the Valais. The military repression was harsh, and political centralization was tightened up: the small cantons were grouped into three 'great' ones. The unitary system was never however accepted. In 1799 when the war was resumed and the Austro-Russian troops occupied the eastern part of Switzerland, 'federalist' revolts broke out again in the cantons of Luzern, Fribourg, Schwyz and Solothurn. After Bonaparte's rise to power in France, unitarists and federalists in Switzerland were more than ever at each other's throats. There was nothing less than civil war. Bonaparte eventually intervened: by the 'Act of Mediation' (19 February 1803) the federal regime was in effect reestablished. Switzerland was divided into nineteen autonomous and equal cantons, and the diet became once more, as it had been before 1798, an assembly of delegates from the cantons, without any real powers. Switzerland, in contrast to Holland, had not become a 'nation'. This can be easily explained. The population of Switzerland was far from homogeneous. Four languages were spoken: German, French, Italian and Romansh. The Germanic cantons were the most numerous and the most populous, and the unitary regime offered them a preponderance which was unacceptable to the rest. In addition to linguistic antagonisms, there were religious ones. The Protestants were the more numerous, and in a unitary system they would have dominated the Catholics in a way that the latter could not have tolerated.24 In Italy, the situation was completely different. The country was homogeneous in both language and religion, and the 'patriots' who wanted the unification of Italy were fairly numerous. But while the French Directory favoured unification in Switzerland, its attitude towards the same process in Italy was hostile. In Italy, the unitary idea was an old one - one indeed that Dante had articulated. But it remained vague. When in 1790 France constituted itself into a kingdom 'one and indivisible', there were 'patriots' in all the Italian states who became supporters of the Revolution, hoping that it would bring about the unification of the peninsula. They were subjected to almost immediate persecution, and some had to go into exile, making 24

On the Helvetic Republic, see the article by Alfred Rufer in Diftionnaire historique et biographique de la Suisse (8 vols., Neuchatel, 1921-34), iv. 25-60.

22

Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution

their way to Corsica or the south of France. When, after the recapture of Toulon in December 1793, French troops occupied the little Piedmontese port of Oneglia (now part of Imperia), they congregated in this locality, of which one of them, the Pisan Buonarroti, had been appointed administrator by the Committee of Public Safety. Buonarroti was to put himself at their head when the French army advanced into Italy. He proclaimed the existence of the Italian Republic. But after the fall of Robespierre he was dismissed from his post on 5 March 1795, recalled to Paris, and confined in the Plessis prison, where he made the acquaintance of Babeuf. Both of them were freed after the defeat of the attempted royalist coup of Vendemaire (5 October 1795), and Buonarroti took part in Babeufs communist conspiracy, while directing, from a distance, thefuorusciti of Oneglia. He was due to rejoin them and resume his position at their head when the Directory discovered Babeufs plot and decreed the arrest of its leaders. Nevertheless, the Italian patriots followed the army of Italy when it took the offensive under the command of Bonaparte. After the great victories which this army gained at Millesimo and Dego, the Italian patriots penetrated into Piedmont, and on 28 April 1796 Ranza proclaimed the Republic at Alba. Oh the same day, however, Bonaparte signed at Cherasco an armistice with the King of Piedmont-Sardinia, and this treaty recognized the king's unimpaired sovereignty over his two states. The patriots had been left in the lurch, and there was no longer any question of a republic. But the war went on. Bonaparte's army pursued the Austrians into Lombardy, and the patriots followed in the wake of the army. At Lodi, on 16 May, Bonaparte issued a proclamation promising the Italians 'independence', without specifying whether this applied only to the Milanese, or to the whole of Italy. On the same day French troops entered Milan, which already had a 'Jacobin' club, a national guard with a tricoloured flag of green, white and red, and several revolutionary newspapers. On 26 August, Bonaparte set up a 'General Administration of Lombardy', which amounted to a provisional government dominated by the patriots. In the meantime there was a crescendo of books and articles calling for the creation of an 'Italian republic one and indivisible'. Outstanding among these publications was a work of 319 pages by Michele L'Aurora, entitled All'Italia nelle tenebre, V aurora porta luce. The author maintained that Italy should be 'free, united and independent'. He saw only one obstacle to unification: the temporal power of the Papacy. The Pope, he declared, would have to give up the Papal States. 'Christ had no kingdom. Why then have the popes taken possession of twelve of the finest provinces of Italy?' L'Aurora reckoned that Italy should be divided into eighty departments, which would then be sub-divided into cantons, and those in turn into municipalities. At the head of the republic would be a 'senate' of five hundred members, which would sit in the

The New Concept of the Nation

23

Vatican and be responsible for electing a president. This grand project, wrote L'Aurora, could only be implemented in a context of general peace. Then all the nations of Europe, constituted into democratic republics, could be federated together to form a 'universal republic'. Under the influence of such writings, the General Administration of Lombardy - following the suggestion which Schimmelpenninck had put forward without effect in Holland - organized with Bonaparte's agreement an essay competition on the following subject: 'Quale dei governi liberi meglio convenga allafelicita d'ltalia. Thejury, presided over by the celebrated Milanese Pietro Verri, awarded the first prize on 26 June 1797 to Melchiorre Gioia. He was a priest who had already gained a reputation by his works on the Italian economy. But he was in prison at Piacenza, his native town, on account of his 'anarchist' (i.e. Jacobin) views. The vision that inspired him was a strictly unitary one. 'Reason and history combine to demonstrate', he said, 'that Italy will bring about her own ruin if she divides herself into little independent republics.' He dismissed the federalist model, which precluded the organization of a powerful state: 'The ease with which Italy can be invaded, the difficulty of getting all the citizens to band together in her defence, the mutual jealousies which naturally arise between confederated republics, the slowness with which federations operate, lead me to reject the federalist plan . . . Since almost all parts [of Italy] are vulnerable to external enemies, she needs to be given a form of government which can offer the strongest possible resistance to invasion; and the only such government is a republic one and indivisible.' Gioia proposed that this republic should be given a constitution based on the French constitutions of 1793 and 1795, especially the former. In spite of the success of this essay in the competition, •• Bonaparte created not one Italian republic, but several small republics in the north of Italy. On 27 December 1795 he formed the Cispadane Republic out of the duchy of Modena and the papal legations of Bologna, Ferrara and Ravenna. In the summer of 1797 he created the Cisalpine Republic, comprising Lombardy, the Cispadane Republic, a part of the mainland territories of Venice, and the Valtelline. At the same period he 'democratized' the old aristocratic republic of Genoa, which became the Ligurian Republic; but at the Treaty of Campo Formio (18 October 1797) he ceded the Republic of Venice to Austria, although for the preceding six months he had allowed a democratic movement to develop there. In fact Bonaparte was not interested in the awakening of nations and nationalisms. He supported the Italian patriots so long as they seemed to be helping his strategic plans, and he backed the Swiss patriots because he wanted to control the route from Paris to Milan. He created the Cisalpine Republic because he saw it as a medium for extending his authority, although the Italian patriots were meanwhile regarding this little

24 Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution republic as the nucleus of the future Italian republic 'one and indivisible'. After Bonaparte's departure from Italy at the end of November 1797, the Directory was no more favourably disposed towards the unification of the peninsula. Two of its most influential members, Reubell and La Revelliere-Lepeaux, were definitely hostile, at first because they feared the formation on France's south-eastern frontier of a large and intensely 'nationalistic' power which could become a formidable enemy, and later because they were nervous about the links between the Italian unitarists and the Jacobins, especially the French Babouvistes, whom they branded as 'anarchists'. The fact that Buonarroti had been the first leader of the Italian patriots meant that in the minds of these Directors the whole unitarist movement in Italy was suspect. Still, the 'democratization' of Italy went on. Rome was occupied by French troops in February 1798 and a Roman Republic was proclaimed in the Forum on the 15th of that month. Less than a year later, it was the Kingdom of Naples that was invaded. The royal family fled to Sicily on 26 January 1799, and General Chainpionnet installed the government of a new Neapolitan (or Parthenopean) Republic. Piedmont and Tuscany were also occupied by French troops. The whole Italian peninsula (apart from Venice, which Bonaparte had ceded to Austria) was under French influence. Had not the moment arrived for the proclamation of the 'Italian republic one and indivisible'? A single word from the French Directory would have sufficed. But the word was not spoken, for reasons which have been indicated above. The French were soon to be driven out of the greater part of Italy. On 15 April 1799 the army of northern Italy was defeated and forced to retreat, and the army of Naples, to avoid being cut off from France, had to evacuate the Parthenopean Republic. In June only the Genoese riviera remained unoccupied by Austro-Russian forces. Those Italian patriots who could do so made their way to France, and formed groups in Briangon, Grenoble, Dijon and Paris. They were more attached than ever to the cause of Italian unity. The two greatest enemies of this cause, Reubell and La Revelliere-Lepeaux, had been removed from the Directory by the two chambers on 18 June 1799. Was not this the right moment to induce the French Directory, in spite of the fact that the bulk of the peninsula was in enemy hands, to recognize the Italian Republic 'one and indivisible'? The exiled patriots certainly thought so. They approached two deputies, Briot of the Council of Five Hundred and Descomberousse of the Council of Ancients, and asked them to present their requests to the Assemblies. On 29 August, Briot duly declared: 'Perhaps [the Directory] will ask you to proclaim the Republic of Italy. I know by what means people have tried to counter one of the projects which most deserve the support of the French people. For my part, I have no hesitation in attaching the highest importance to the prompt and solemn proclamation of the Italian Republic.' And Descomberousse of

The New Concept of the Nation 25 the Council of Ancients demanded 'that the Italians should be invested with a real political existence . . . through an indivisible unity and not through an impotent federation'. These appeals, however, had no repercussions.25 Very soon afterwards Bonaparte returned from Egypt. On 14 October 1799 he was back in Paris, and on 9 and 10 November he overthrew the Directory by a coup d'etat and took over supreme power. Now Bonaparte - as had been apparent in 1796-8, and notwithstanding what he was to write later at St Helena - was little concerned about problems of national unity (or what were soon to be called problems of nationality). He was indifferent to the 'right of peoples to dispose of themselves', and he cared little about 'natural frontiers'. What interested him was power, territorial power. He wished to rule over as much territory as possible. He was no 'republican', and from 1799, fascinated by Alexander and Caesar, he was dreaming of empire. In Italy in 1796 and 1797 he had deserted the Italian patriots at Cherasco, he had ceded the republic of Venice to Austria at Campo Formio, and he had not united the Ligurian and Cisalpine Republics when it was possible to do so. He did, as First Consul, re-establish the Cisalpine Republic after the reconquest of northern Italy in 1800. Also, as a concession to unitarist agitation and for the sake of popularity, he announced to the Consulta assembled at Lyon that the Cisalpine Republic had been transformed into the 'Italian Republic'. People could thus imagine that this republic was going to be the nucleus of a much more extensive one, bringing together all the segments of Italy. But the unitarists were soon disillusioned, for on 16 September 1802 Bonaparte decreed the French annexation of Piedmont. He showed thereby that he attached little weight either to the 'doctrine' of natural frontiers, or to the will of the people; for the validity of a plebiscite in favour of annexation, which had taken place at the beginning of February 1799, had been strongly contested, the number of voters having been extremely small. Between 1800 and 1814 Napoleon doubtless simplified the political geography of Italy, but he did not go so far as to eliminate all divisions. Between 1809 and 1814, at the height of Napoleon's power, Italy was still divided into three large states: the Kingdom of Italy, whose sovereign was Napoleon himself, with his sonin-law Eugene de Beauharnais as viceroy; the Italian departments of the French Empire; and the kingdom of Naples ruled over by Murat, the Emperor's brother-in-law. These states still included certain enclaves, such as the duchy of Lucca and Piombino, which belonged to Napoleon's sistfer Elisa Bacciochi, and the principality of Benevento which belonged to Talleyrand. The unitarists gave up hope of seeing their wishes fulfilled by the imperial government. They had formed 25 On the Revolution and the 'Jacobin' republics in Italy, see J. Godechot, Histoire de I'ltalie modeme 1770-1870 (Paris, 1971), pp. 68-107.

26

Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution

themselves into secret societies, of which the leading one was the Carbonari, introduced into Italy by Briot, the man who had called on the Directory to proclaim the 'Italian Republic one and indivisible' in 1799.26 Concluding Remarks The French Revolution, in giving definition to the concept of a 'nation', aroused great hopes among all those who belonged to diverse states and dreamed of constructing a nation 'one and indivisible' on the model of republican France. One observes this desire first in the Low Countries, where it achieved fulfilment, and then in Italy, where it did not. But as between the different forms of nationalism emerging from the French Revolution, there were profound differences. French nationalism rested its claims on 'the right of peoples to dispose of themselves', a right formulated in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and proclaimed on several occasions by the revolutionary assemblies. This right was one that took no account of language, race or religion. It was given practical force by republican France when the peoples of the various French provinces were united together by the Federations of 1790 and especially by the great Parisian festival of 14 July 1790. Subsequently, when the French Republic passed beyond it frontiers of 1790 and embarked on a process of expansion, it consulted the peoples under French military occupation to discover whether they wanted union with France. Hence the plebiscites that took place: valid ones in the Comtat Venaissin, in Savoy, and in the county of Nice, and more questionable ones in Belgium and on the left bank of the Rhine. When Napoleon Bonaparte became First Consul and then Emperor, he carried out annexations without any form of popular consultation. By so doing he completely disregarded the 'right of peoples to dispose of themselves', and by provoking discontent in the countries that were annexed he generated there a nationalism hostile to France.

26

Ibid., pp. 108-47.

3 Universal Rights and National Interest in the French Revolution Florence Gauthier Did the Revolution of the rights of man mark, as is currently held in the historiography (especially that of France), the birth of what is generally called the nation-state? Did the ideals of the natural rights of man and the citizen lead to nationalism? If we are concerned with the question of national formation, there are strong grounds for maintaining that France existed as a nation for a long time before the Revolution and that this nation was the outcome of several centuries of feudal and then feudal-absolute monarchy. What we see emerging in the period 1792-1815 is a chauvinistic kind of French nationalism, produced by the policy of expansionist warfare which was adopted on two occasions. The first such war followed the revolution of 10 August 1792 and was waged by the Girondin government; the second was waged 'by the Thermidorian Convention, following 9 Thermidor Year II (27 July 1794), and prepared the ground for Napoleon's enterprises. The second of these wars of conquest, more prolonged than the first, aroused nationalistic feelings among the French troops, as they were led to believe that they were entrusted with the mission of bringing about revolutions on behalf of other European peoples, who were deemed incapable of emancipating themselves. During this period, the French soldier was no longer a citizen or a defender of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen. He had been turned into a professional soldier, who instead of defending liberty obeyed the commands of Caesar. My intention is to show that the nationalism of the French as conquerors was due to the failure of the revolution of the rights of man. We know that the first period of revolution in France yielded two Declarations of Rights, one dated 1789 and the other 1793. Following 9 Thermidor Year II, the Thermidorian Convention broke away from the philosophy of natural right after a year of debates: the Constitution of the Year III (1795), based on a propertied franchise, did not reaffirm the natural rights of man and the citizen and rejected the universal character of law. The first period of revolution in France, 1789-1795, corresponds to what we may call, following J. P. Faye, the 'revolution of human 27

28

Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution 1

rights'. What were the reasons for the failure of the revolution of the rights of man and the citizen? Why did the Constitution of the Year III break away from natural law? I cannot attempt here to provide a complete answer to these questions, so I shall confine myself to an examination of the debate aroused by the war issues in 1791-1793, focusing particularly on the concept of fraternity as enunciated by Robespierre, the theoretician of natural right and universal citizenship. It should be recalled that Robespierre was the inventor of the motto 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity', as historians of the Revolution seem to have forgotten the fact and tend to suggest that the motto only appeared in 1793. In fact it appeared as early as 5 December 1790, in one of the speeches that made Robespierre famous, when he protested against the property qualification for membership of the National Guard.2 In the draft decree with which he concluded his speech, he specified that every male citizen reaching the age of eighteen should be enrolled in the National Guard of his own commune; that these national guardsmen should be the only armed forces used within the country, instead of the army inherited from the ancien regime; and lastly that in the event of foreign aggression it would be up to the armed citizens to provide for the country's defence. The national guardsmen would bear on their chests and flags the words: 'Lepeuplefran$ais. Liberte. Egalite. Fraternite.' This motto, destined for a great future, epitomized when it first appeared the political theory of its author, and the republican principles to which he adhered as the theoretician of the natural rights of man and the citizen. We shall focus on the third term in the motto, 'fraternite9. It is concerned with the relations between peoples, and therefore on the one hand with the exercise of popular sovereignty and on the other hand with the universal character of citizenship. Given the recent debates concerning this period of history, it seems necessary to return to the texts and concepts of the time, trying in this case to understand the idea of fraternity in the way that Robespierre himself intended it to be understood, and reconstructing its connotations as carefully as possible. In his speech on the National Guard in December 1790, Robespierre returned to the principles of civic law and the law of nations declared by the Constituent Assembly. Since it was laid down in the Declaration of Rights that the state no longer belonged to a king and that the civil character of the society and government was based upon the principle of popular sovereignty, the Constituent Assembly had solemnly renounced all expansionist ambitions and had reduced treaties of alliance to purely defensive agreements. The principle of self-determination and the respect for reciprocity inherent in popular sovereignty had formed new bases for relations between peoples. Yet the war declared on 20 1 2

J.P. Faye, Dictionnaire politique portatif en cinq mots (Paris, 1982), p. 101. Robespierre, Oeuvres completes (10 vols., Paris, 1950-67), vi. 616-47.

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April 1792 was to be transformed, after the revolution of 10 August, into a war of conquest. This was carried on from September 1792 until April 1793 and gave rise to a fundamental debate in the Convention over the issues of sovereignty and reciprocity. During the winter of 1791-2 two parties were in favour of war, for differing reasons: the Court on the one hand and the Brissotins on the other. According to Robespierre the Court had two objectives. It wished to intensify in the country the counter-revolutionary agitation led by aristocrats and non-juring priests, and to prepare the ground for civil and religious war. Also, by declaring war, the Court hoped to strengthen the executive power and make it independent of the Legislative Assembly, so that the Constitution would be not merely modified in an aristocratic direction but more radically changed through a reversal of the hierarchy of powers. The Court intended, in other words, to revive executive despotism through a reconstruction of the state and its machinery. The very title of Robespierre's speech of 8 December 1791 underlined this threat of executive despotism: 'On the stand the National Assembly [the legislative power] should take on the proposal for war put forward by the Executive Power'.3 Let us consider Robespierre's further analysis of the ways in which a society at war runs the risk of its constitution being altered in a despotic direction: War is always the first desire of a powerful government which wishes to become still more powerful. I shall not remind you that in wartime the ministry manages to exhaust the people and ruin the country's finances, while concealing its depredations and mistakes behind an impenetrable veil. I shall only refer to what bears even more directly upon our dearest interests. It is in wartime that the executive displays the most dangerous -energy and introduces a form of dictatorship which can only intimidate a new-born freedom; it is in wartime that the people forget the deliberations which crucially concern their civil and political rights, and shift their attention from their legislators and magistrates in order to fix all their interest and all their hopes on their generals and ministers, or rather on the generals and ministers of the executive power.4

This exposition refers back to the core of Locke's political theory: the idea that the civil character of society and government derives not only from popular sovereignty and citizenship, but also from the exercise of legislative power as the supreme power, subordinate only to the declared primacy of natural right. In Locke's political theory, as embodied in the Declaration of Rights of 1789, the legislative power controls the executive. Relying on this theory, Robespierre showed how the

3 4

Ibid., viii. 47. Ibid., viii. 48.

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Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution

encroachment of the executive upon the legislative power created a 'state of war' (in Locke's phrase) between a despotic government and its subjects, who thereby lost their citizenship.5 Robespierre next analyses the Brissotins' war policy: 'The court and the ministry and their innumerable partisans are crying out for war. So are a large number of citizens, who are motivated by generous feeling, but more inclined to give themselves up to patriotic enthusiasm than to reflect on the vicissitudes of revolutions and on court intrigues.'6 The Brissotins' war project won support from those 'Enthusiasts' who construed the plan of conquest as a noble plan for the liberation of subject peoples: It was in the person of Anacharsis Cloots that the Brissotins found one of their leading propagandists. On 13 December 1791, Cloots proposed at the Jacobin Club that war should be declared as soon as January 1792 and that French armies should be sent to Liege, Brussels and Coblenz. On 1 January, Cloots clarified the annexationist aim of this proposal: 'We will arouse a jacquerie of European ploughmen. Twelve new squares will be added to the eighty-three squares of the French chessboard.'7 He suggested that the French constitution should be offered to the peoples concerned, and that annexations should be cemented by the diffusion of assignats. 'Our papier signe is the most redoubtable of our pamphlets: it links our neighbours' prosperity to that of France.'8 He believed that war could be waged without difficulty, for according to him, these neighbouring peoples were waiting with open arms for the French soldiers and constitution. He developed a vision of a universal Republic, in which Paris would be 'capital of the globe', and in which, through annexation, 'the entire human family' would be combined into a single nation.9 We are dealing here with a grandiose vision of a Europe conquered and united by France. Cloots's enthusiasm prevented him from foreseeing the eventual resistance of these peoples to the incursion of foreign armies and the imposition of a foreign constitution. Moreover, he completely lost sight of popular sovereignty and of the freedom of peoples to determine their own fate. In other words, he lost sight of the idea of personal and social liberty which forms the basis of the initial contract of voluntary association and which is essential to popular sovereignty and citizenship. Annexation is flatly incompatible with the liberty of peoples. His enthusiasm made him not a theoriest of fraternity as his biographer, Avenel, claimed, but a theorist of expansionist French nationalism, oblivious of the principles of liberty and self-determination. With 5 J. Locke, Two Treatises of Government, ed. P. Laslett (Cambridge, 1964), pp. 301, 373-6, 384-5, 434. 6 Robespierre, Oeuvres completes, viii. 47. 7 G. Avenel, Anacharsis Cloots, I'orateur du genre humain (Paris, 1865), p. 194. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid., p. 208.

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31

Cloots, a new political theory arrives on the scene - one that is alien to the natural-right philosophy of liberty, and thus to the principles implemented in the 1789 Declaration of Rights. On 24 April 1792, the Brissotin members of the government created the Foreign Legions, organized by the committee of political refugees. These Legions were to lead the French armies and provide the framework of civil administration after the conquest. The German Legion was headed by Cloots himself.10 Let us return to Robespierre's analysis. He interpreted the war as an extension of a political struggle that was going on within France as well as elsewhere. He said in a speech of 18 December 1791: 'What sort of war can we see ahead? Is it a war of one nation against other nations? Or a war of one king against other kings? No, it is the war of the enemies of the French Revolution against the French Revolution. Are the most numerous and the most dangerous of these enemies in Coblenz? No, they are here in our midst.'11 Robespierre criticized the spirit of conquest which lay behind the war policy and the naivety of the 'Enthusiasts' who never asked themselves what other people actually wanted but simply assumed that the French constitution would suit them. In his view, revolution was not to be exported manu militari: It is in the nature of things that the diffusion of reason should proceed slowly. The most pernicious government is powerfully supported by the prejudices, the habits, and the education of its people. Despotism so corrupts the spirit of men that it comes to be adored by them, and liberty is made to look suspect and frightening when it first appears. The wildest idea that can form in any politician's mind is a belief that the people of one country, to induce the people of another to adopt their laws and constitution, need only subject them to armed invasion. Nobody takes kindly to armed missionaries, and the first advice we receive from nature and wisdom is to repel them as enemies.12

According to Robespierre the first priority, in the face of the Court's counter-revolutionary intrigues, should be to strengthen the Revolution in France. 'Before our Revolution can have its effect among foreign nations, it needs to be strengthened. If we try to give them liberty before we ourselves have secured it at home, we shall simultaneously ensure our servitude and that of the whole world.'12 He suggested that arms should be manufactured everywhere, so that the people could be armed 'even if only with pikes'; that a close watch should be kept over the actions of ministers and the use of public funds; and that measures should be taken to prevent emigres and refractory priests from doing any harm. 'In short,' he said, 'we must be prepared to retaliate against the civil and religious war being planned by the Court. We must fight the "internal Coblenz".'13 10

J.P. Bertaud, La Revolution armee (Paris, 1979), p. 85. Robespierre, Oeuvres completes, viii. 48. 12 Ibid., viii. 81. 13 Ibid., viii. 63.

11

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Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution

War was declared on 20 April 1792. The Court exploited the Brissotins' ardent desire for war, forming a Brissotin ministry on 15 March 1792, and dismissing it on 20 April at exactly the moment when war was declared against 'the king of Bohemia and Hungary'. Robespierre responded by carrying on his dual campaign. On the one hand, there was the fight against the 'internal Coblenz'. 'War has started; all we can do is to take the necessary precautions and to turn it to the Revolution's advantage. We shall wage the war of the people against tyranny, and not the war of the court, patricians, intriguers and speculators against the people.'14 On the other hand, he carried on the fight against the policy of annexation. Having pointed out that in the Belgian provinces there was a division into three parties - the Austrian party, the aristocratic party, and the popular party, which was itself divided over the policy of conquest - he went on to remind the French troops of the principle of popular self-determination: 'It was necessary from the outset, and it is still necessary today, to declare solemnly that the French will only use their strength and advantages in order to allow these peoples to choose for themselves the constitution which seems to them most suitable.'15 The revolution of 10 August 1792 defeated the Court's counterrevolutionary schemes and founded the Republic. But the Girondin government which now had the upper hand in the Convention pursued its own counter-revolutionary project of a war of conquest. As we know, the Belgians and Rhinelanders did not take to armed missionaries and resisted them as enemies. But the most serious consequence of the first war of conquest - continued until the collapse of March-April 1793 was that it enabled the monarchs to strengthen their domination over their own peoples. They were able to take the lead in conducting a defensive war against the French armies of occupation, whilst at the same time the revolutionary forces within their countries became divided, as they were in France. From the beginning of October 1792 the war issue, among others, caused a split in the Jacobin Club; as a result, the Brissotins were expelled from it and formed the Girondin party. The 'Enthusiasts', while criticizing some aspects of the Girondins' management of affairs, gave their support to the policy of conquest. The experiment of the Mainz Republic caused a split in the revolutionary party, over the central question of conquest versus popular self-government. It seems important that the history of the first war of conquest should be reexamined in the light of this essential debate, as the issues have been neglected by French historians of the Revolution. 14 15

Ibid.,iv. 15. Ibid.,iv. 17.

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33

The debate produced a split not only in the Convention, but also among the Montagnards. When the French army was defeated in March-April 1793, the Convention took up the debate over the declaration of rights and the constitution. It was in the draft declaration of rights presented to the Convention on 24 April that Robespierre defined fraternity and universal citizenship. The following articles are particularly important: 35. The men of all countries are brothers and the different peoples should help one another, according to their means, as if they were citizens of the same state. 36. Whoever oppresses one nation declares himself the enemy of all others. 37. Those who make war on a people in order to halt the progress of liberty and destroy human rights must be pursued by everyone, not as ordinary enemies, but as murderers and rebellious brigands. 38. Kings, aristocrats and tyrants, whoever they may be, are slaves who have revolted against the sovereign of the earth, that is to say, mankind; and against the legislator of the universe, that is to say, Nature.16

Robespierre interpreted the revolutionary process as the process of recovering the rights of man, as he affirmed in his draft preamble and in article 37.17 Mankind was the sovereign of the earth and the enemies described in articles 37 and 38 were those who stood in the way of the recovery of natural rights. Mankind contended with its common enemies, both internal and external; and we can see here a new conception of the 'internal Coblenz', extended onto a world scale. The slaves who rebelled against the human race were placing themselves in a state of war with it. Robespierre considered the natural-right revolution as a permanent process, and as a global one. The establishment of a society based on natural right thus involved relations between peoples, and Robespierre affirmed that national oppression and conquest were contrary to natural right, which involved the right of peoples to self-government. By asserting the universality of mankind and of citizenship, Robespierre emphasized another kind of bond between men. Fraternity created a duty of mutual assistance among men and peoples, so that they could work together for their liberation, not on a basis of annexation but on that of self-government. The universal character of citizenship expanded and completed civic law. Being a citizen meant being a part of the sovereign in a society in which equality of rights existed not only in respect of all citizens, but also in respect of all peoples. Just as in civil law equality implied the reciprocal recognition of personal liberty, so fraternity was interpreted by Robespierre as implying the reciprocal recognition of popular sovereignty as between peoples. This reciprocity was the basis of a 16 17

Ibid., ix. 469. Ibid., ix. 463.

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Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution

universal order which brought into play three forms of law: civic law on the scale of a society, the law of nations or international law, and universal or natural law, to which the first two forms of law were subordinated on a world scale. Robespierre rejected the autonomous exercise of sovereignty and thus completed the political theory of the philosophy of natural right. A glance at the debate in the Convention in the winter of 1792-3 will help to clarify this point. We have already mentioned that the policy of conquest adopted by the Girondin government was one of the reasons for their expulsion from the Club des Amis de la liberte et de Vegalite (known as the Jacobin Club) at the beginning of October 1792, and also had the effect of dividing the Montagnards. The position of Danton and Cambon on this subject is well known; they both favoured the annexation of all regions within the limits of what they called the 'natural frontiers' of France. As it is not possible in this essay to give a resume of the whole debate, I shall confine myself to the speech delivered by Carnot on 14 February 1793.18 Carnot's proposal was that annexations should be limited to what suited the interests of France. He presented the annexation issue in the light of popular demands for union with France, and he opened the debate by inquiring whether all these demands were acceptable: The first interest to be consulted is that of the Republic itself. This interest may consist in an increase in strength, riches or national prosperity; in greater security on the frontiers or a simplification of the means of defence; or indeed in the glory which a powerful nation may derive from attaching to itself a people which is weak but worthy of the benefit of liberty. The principle which Carnot laid down was that of national interest, of the safety of the state. The demands of foreign peoples for union would be granted only within the limits dictated by French national interests. He then moved on to the fundamental issue of sovereignty. To say that sovereignty lies in the universality of mankind is to say that France is no more than a portion of the sovereign, and that consequently she has no right to establish at home the laws that suit her best. We, on the other hand, adhere to the principle that every people, however small the country it inhabits, has an absolute right to be its own master. It can be seen that Carnot was replying here word for word to the principle stated by Robespierre, and was posing the dual problem of the sovereignty and autonomy of governments. His speech made it clear that a sovereignty subordinated to the primacy of natural right was diametrically opposed to a sovereignty identified with autonomy, and he rejected the notion of a sovereignty limited by respect for the sovereignty of other peoples. To be more precise, Carnot did recognize that 'sovereignty belongs to 18

Carnot, speech in the Convention, 14 Feb. 1793, printed in J.Y. Guiomar, L'Ideologie nationale (Paris, 1974), p. 273.

Universal Rights and National Interest

35

all peoples . . . Liberty and sovereignty are inalienable: this is the principle which establishes the same equality of rights among nations as among individuals, whence it follows that as a general rule no union of territories can be proclaimed without a formal contract between the two parties involved.' But he added that there was one exception to this general rule of civic and international law: 'This is the exception which arises from imminent danger to one of the contracting parties: for according to the first maxim stated above, any political measure is legitimate when the safety of the state demands it.' It was precisely this exception to the general validity of natural right that iiiduced Carnot to reject the principle that mankind was the sovereign of the earth, since this principle was incompatible with the notion of autonomous sovereignty and with the idea that a state could make whatever laws it pleased. In other words Carnot was denying the universal character of law, and substituting for it the principle of national interest and untrammelled sovereignty. Robespierre, as we have seen, was a theoretician of the universality of natural law in the tradition of Locke, and his theory denied the autonomy of states on the grounds that such autonomy was the essence of despotism and tyranny. With Carnot's speech, we see the birth of a new political theory, that of national interest and autonomous national sovereignty. We are no longer dealing with Cloots's 'enthusiastic' stance, inspired by the belief or hope that European peoples would receive the French army with open arms and would merge together into a universal republic, united both politically and territorially. Carnot's stance was entirely different. The national interest as he conceived it amounted to the interest of a particular nation which was going to dominate other peoples; the 'powerful nation . . . attaching to itself a people which is weak but worthy of the benefit of liberty' would call the tune. The egoism of a dominant nation, 'choosing' from among the peoples enamoured of liberty those which would be most useful to it, was being set up against the rights of man and the citizen and against 'liberty, equality, fraternity', in the sense in which the motto was conceived by its author. The study of the split among the Montagnards over the war issue has been no more than adumbrated in this essay. It needs to be pursued further with regard not only to the Montagnard group but also to the Jacobin Club and the entire democratic movement of the time; and further work needs to be done on the parliamentary debates, especially those over the Declaration of Rights. It is noteworthy that the term 'fraternity' did not appear in the Declaration approved by the Convention on 24 June 1793. By way of conclusion, I shall indicate some directions for research concerning the war issue during the period of the revolutionary government, which was instituted by a vote of the

36 Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution Convention on 10 October 1793 and lasted until October 1795 when it was replaced by the Directory, After the failure of the Girondin policy of conquest, and with the invasion of French territory by the Austro-Prussian armies, the war had changed its nature: from a war of conquest it had become a war of selfdefence. But in the spring of 1794, when the revolutionary government reorganized the army, the issue of conquest reappeared and produced fresh divisions among the Montagnards and within the Convention. The Robespierrists, who were in a minority in the Committee of Public Safety (and by 'Robespierrists' I mean those who defended the concept of fraternity as defined by Robespierre) were, as we know, eliminated on 9 Thermidor Year II (27 July 1794), because, among other reasons, they opposed the transformation of a defensive war into another war of conquest.19 The failure of the popular movement and the elimination of the Robespierrists allowed the Convention not only to turn the victory at Fleurus into a prelude to the Revolution's second war of conquest, but also to crush the popular movement.20 The Constitution of the Year III (1795) crowned this double attack on civic law and the law of nations, by on the one hand founding a new aristocracy in France on the basis of a restricted franchise, and on the other hand by renouncing respect for the sovereignty of other peoples. The new constitution broke away from the political theory of the natural rights revolution initiated in 1789. The Declaration* of Rights and Duties of 1795 in effect substituted for the concept of natural rights the concept of the 'rights of man in society', and replaced the natural law philosophy in the tradition of Locke with a new political theory based upon autonomous national sovereignty. This decisive turning point seems to have been strangely neglected in the recent historiography of the French Revolution. In order to illustrate the hypothesis that the Constitution of 1795 dealt a mortal blow to natural law philosophy, I should like to consider Hannah Arendt's analysis of the natural rights issue at the time of the French Revolution. Arendt begins with the issue of sovereignty, and suggests that a contradiction emerged between state and nation 'at the very birth of the modern nation-state, when the French Revolution combined the declaration of the Rights of Man with the demand for national sovereignty'. The contradiction resided in the fact that 'the same essential rights were at once claimed as the inalienable heritage of all human beings and as the specific heritage of specific nations; the same _/ 19 See A. Mathiez, Etudes sur Robespierre (Paris, 1973), pp. 93-105; J.P. Gross, SaintJust, sapolitique et ses missions (Paris, 1976), especially on the clash between Saint-Just and E. Schneider over the issue of the war of conquest; J. P. Bertaud, La Revolution armee, pp. 194-229, 267-333. 20 A. Mathiez, La Convention thermidorienne (Paris, 1929); K. T0nneson, LaDefaitedes sansculottes (Oslo, 1979).

Universal Rights and National Interest

37

nation was at once declared to be subject to laws, which supposedly would flow from the Rights of Man, and sovereign, that is, bound by no universal law and acknowledging nothing superior to itself.21 According to Arendt, this contradiction, and the failure to acknowledge a universal law, led in practice to the outcome that human rights were only protected or strengthened in so far as they were national rights. It is clear, however, that Robespierre, through his theory of universal citizenship and his subordination of the exercise of sovereignty to the primacy of natural right, did combine and reconcile the idea of natural rights in the context of civil society with the idea of a universal natural law governing the relations between peoples. It is true that defenders of human rights in the most enlarged sense did, after protracted conflict, suffer defeat and extinction, and that the Constitution of 1795 enthroned a political theory which was fundamentally distinct from theirs. It would be a mistake to suppose, however, that what occurred was a transformation of natural rights into national rights, and that this transformation resulted from an inherent contradiction in the theory on which the revolution of natural rights was founded. We should recall what was stated in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen in 1793, echoing a similar phrase in the original Declaration of 1789: 'The French people [are] convinced that neglect and contempt of the natural rights of man are the sole causes of the misfortunes of the world.'

H. Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York, 1973), p, 230.

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4

Nationalist Rhetoric and Nationalist Sentiment in Revolutionary France Clive Emsley Le nationalisme was not a word in common use in France during the revolutionary period; indeed there appears to be only one instance of its use, and that by the counter-revolutionary abbe Barruel in his Memoires pour servir a Vhistoire du jacobinisme.1 However la nation, le patriot, and passionate declarations of love for lapatrie and, after September 1792, for la republique, une et indivisible were central to the discourse of the Revolution. Furthermore many studies of nationalism, while approaching it from very different standpoints, have described a qualitative development in the concept within revolutionary France,2 particularly in the run up to war and during the period of the Jacobin dictatorship when, to use the phraseology of the revolutionaries themselves, a free nation, a sovereign people, took up arms against tyrannical monarchs and their slaves. The aims of this essay are two: first, to look at some of the uses of nationalistic rhetoric, and second to explore the depth of nationalist sentiment during the revolutionary period. Jacques Godechot has described how, from its very beginning, the French Revolution witnessed an increasing use of the words la nation and national. La nation replaced le roi in the hierarchy of the state. During the experiment with the constitutional monarchy it was the nation which was regarded as deciding, drafting and commanding through the laws; the king was merely the executive. At the same time many of those issues relating to the state which had previously been described as 'royal' began increasingly to be described as 'national'.3 Yet whatever the importance of the nation during these early years, there was considerable debate on what form the nation should take: should it be strongly centralized or, harking back to seventeenth-century Calvinist proposals as well as to 1 Jacques Godechot, 'Nation, patrie, nationalisme et patriotisme en France au xviiie siecle', in Actes du colloque Patriotisme et nationalisme en Europe a I'epoque de la Revolution frangaise etde Napoleon (Paris, 1973), p. 26. 2 See, e.g., C.J.H. Hayes, Essays on Nationalism (New York, 1926); Boyd C. Shafer, Nationalism, Myth and Reality (New York, 1955); Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London, 1983). 3 Godechot, pp. 20-2.

39

40

.

Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution

Rousseau's ideas about une republique confederative des petits etats, should the state be a decentralized federation? In many ways the reorganization was a fudge; a new system of administrative departments was created, but rather than dividing the country up on strict geometric principles the new departements were, as far as possible, established without breaking existing provincial frontiers, while the local government structures permitted regionalism and local rivalries to thrive.4 The regional diversity of late eighteenth-century France was brought home to revolutionaries in the successive assemblies in Paris by the abbe Gregoire's vast linguistic survey of 1790. Gregoire concluded that three quarters of the population knew some French but perhaps only three million could speak it properly. Key revolutionary documents had to be translated for local consumption; thus around Bordeaux, Les Droits de VHomme became Lous Dreyts de I'Ome.5 Addressing the National Convention on 16 Prairial, Year II, Gregoire lamented that the French language was accepted by the 'tyrants' of Europe! But this language, used in diplomacy, spoken in many German towns, in Italy, in the Low Countries, in part of the country around Liege, in Luxembourg, in Switzerland, even in Canada and on the banks of the Mississippi, by what mischance is it still unknown to a very large number of the French?6 He insisted that this ignorance endangered equality and that establishing the unity of language was integral to the Revolution. A Frenchification policy was a key element in the thought of many revolutionaries, though it is also important to note that Gregoire made this speech in June 1794 at the height of the Jacobin dictatorship which had trampled on a federalist revolt. At its outset the Revolution gave the politically conscious an opportunity for pride in being French and for achieving the significant shift from the old order of an absolute monarch and privileged nobility, to a new order with a constitutional king, an end of feudal privilege and a recognition of the rights of man. France was perceived as a model for the world. 'Nationalism' is often perceived as, at least in part, an appeal to a mythic past or to specific traditions inherent in a people. Revolutionary

4

Alfred Cobban, 'Local government during the French Revolution*, in Alfred Cobban, Aspects of the French Revolution (London, 1971). 5 Michel de Certeau, Dominique Julia, and Jacques Revel, Une politique de la langue: la Revolution fran^aise et les patois (Paris, 1975), p. 181; see also Eugen Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870-1914 (Stanford, 1976), pp. 71-2. 6 De Certeau et al., pp. 300-1.

Nationalist Rhetoric and Sentiment in France

41

France however had dispensed with the past and looked back upon no peculiarly French traditions. The revolutionaries harkened to what one recent historian has described as: a 'mythic present*, the instant creation of the new community, the sacred moment of the new consensus. The ritual oaths of loyalty taken around a liberty tree or sworn en masse during the many revolutionary festivals commemorated and re-created the moment of social contract; the ritual words made the mythic present come alive, again and again.7

When they did look to the past for models it was overwhelmingly to the ancient, worlds of Greece and Rome whose great republicans, the revolutionaries believed, had invented the liberty which it was now France's duty to proclaim throughout the world. In the early years of the Revolution this self-congratulatory pride was not matched by an aggressive foreign policy seeking to extend these new principles and practices at bayonet point. Not only did the National Assembly renounce wars of aggrandizement,8 but the diplomacy of the early years of the Revolution remained cautious. The princelings of Alsace, outraged by the abolition of their seigneurial rights, were not simply ignored on the grounds that they opposed the wishes of a free people; they were offered compensation, and if few accepted it this was hardly the fault of the revolutionaries.9 There was heated debate over whether or not to incorporate the papal enclaves of Avignon and the Comtat Venaissin into France after local revolutionaries had staged their own insurrection and requested integration. French troops did eventually occupy the enclaves, but rather than simply depending upon the wishes of a free people, and thus establishing a dangerous precedent, an old arret of the parlement of Aix was unearthed which maintained French rights over Avignon.10 It was as relations deteriorated with the other powers of Europe and as war seemed to offer a potential benefit to the dominant groupings in the assembly that an aggressive, nationalist rhetoric came to dominate their discourse. The physical structure of the assemblies combined with revolutionary pride and enthusiasm to contribute to this. Both the manege, the assembly hall in use from November 1789 until May 1793, and the National Convention had public galleries, and speeches from the tribune often seem to have been directed as much to these galleries where activists revelled in audience participation, as to the fellow deputies. At 7 Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1984), p. 27. 8 Archives parlementaires de 1787 a 1860, ldreserie, xv. 661-2. 9 Gerlof D. Homan, Jean-Francois Reubell: French Revolutionary, Patriot and Director (1747-1807) (The Hague, 1971), p. 26. 10 T.C.W. Blanning, The Origins of the French Revolutionary Wars (London, 1986), p. 78.

42

Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution

the same time popular deputations arrived on the floor of the assemblies to proclaim rousing declarations and to sing their patriotic songs. Danton, a man who knew a thing or two about histrionics, intervened on several occasions to point out that the National Convention was never intended as a forum for singing.11 For the Brissotins, as for others during the run up to war, the nation and the Revolution became synonymous, fimigres and foreign tyrants by threatening the one also threatened the other, and the French people had to be ready to fight and to die for both. In December 1791 Brissot implied the possibility of a levee en masse of the nation: I am not now proposing to compare our military forces with those of our enemies; if we want to stay free we must ask, like the Spartans, where our enemies are and not how many there are (Applause)', however, if we have to draw this parallel, you can see that every advantage is on our side, for now every French citizen is a soldier, and a soldier in good heart! (Applause). And what is the power on earth, where is the Genghis, where is the Tamberlaine, who has the swarms of slaves in his train, and who could flatter himself to enchain six million free soldiers?12 Nationalist histrionics reached an early climax in the Legislative Assembly in January 1792 following the Girondin Guadet's boast that the French nation was ready to die for its constitution. At these words, according to the Archives parlementaires, all members of the Assembly, inspired by the same sentiment rose and cried: Yes, we swear it! This surge of enthusiasm communicated itself to all those present, firing their hearts. The ministers of justice and of foreign affairs, the ushers, the citizens male and female who were present in the Assembly joined with the deputies, rose, waved their hats, stretched their arms to the President's table and swore the same oath. The cry was: We shall livefree or we shall die, the Constitution or death, and the chamber resounded with applause.13 When war became a reality and revolutionized the Revolution, the new republic also became synonymous with France and the nation; and if the brotherhood of man and of free peoples was trumpeted by the Jacobins, the French were clearly the elder brother and the first among the equals since they were the first to be free. War began to sweep away reservations about the annexation of territories that might be seen as lying within France's natural frontiers of the Alps, the Rhine, and the Pyrenees. In November 1792 the abbe Gregoire proposed the union of Savoy with France. In accordance with Rousseauist orthodoxy that small republics fostered political consciousness and therefore were preferable to large ones, Penieres, a deputy from the Correze, opposed the measure; II

Eugen Weber, 'Who sang the Marseillaise?' in The Wolf and the Lamb: Popular Culture in Francefrom the Old Regime to the Twentieth Century, ed. J. Beauroy, M. Bertrand and E.T. Gargan (Saratoga, California, 1976). 12 Archives parlementaires, xxxvi. 607. 13 Ibid., xxxvii. 413.

Nationalist Rhetoric and Sentiment in France

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14

he was shouted down for his pains, Symptomatic of this increasingly aggressive nationalism was Francois Robert's plea to his fellow conventionnels, during the debates on the new constitution in the spring of 1793, to 'forget the universe' and to 'close the heart to every sentiment foreign to the motherland'. I love all men; I love free men especially; but, above all men in the universe, I love free Frenchmen . . . Could it be that among you there is to be found a man who does not prefer his motherland to everything else in nature? Why then have we become free, is it not to love the motherland? Motherland! sacred word that a good man can never pronounce without emotion . . . Motherland! - receive my vow to live and to die for you.15

As the military struggle became desperate with insurrection at home as well as enemy armies menacing French soil, so the different factions within the Assembly and, later, the Convention, each claimed for themselves the privilege of being sole spokesmen for the nation and the true guardians of the nation's revolution. Identical sentiments were to be found outside the assemblies, especially when the war was going badly. Nationalist rhetoric filled the press. 'Magnanimous, nation!' proclaimed Louis-Marie Prudhomme's Les Revolutions de Paris at the beginning of September 1792. You made the first revolution for the kings, but the kings did not wish to profit by it, now you are going to make it for the people . . . Such is the state of our armies, such is the political state of France; this empire is at the highest degree of glory that could ever be reached; the axe of the people has done justice to the conspirators within the nation; soon their guilty leader will fall beneath the axe of the laws; yet sooner will the armies of the conspiring despots be repulsed or cut to pieces. The people are going to remain in permanent insurrection until the perfect establishment of universal liberty. How glorious it is to be French!16

Ferocious war songs spoke of the 'sacred love of the motherland' and summoned the nation to a glorious war on behalf of France to defend both native soil and fellow citizens. The chorus of Le Chant du Depart announced the Frenchman's duty to his Republic: La Republique nous appelle, Sachons vaincre ou sachons perir, Un Frangais doit vivre pour elle Pour elle un Frangais doit mourir.17 14

Ibid., liii. 614-5. Ibid., Ixxii. 385. 16 The Press in the French Revolution, ed. J. Gilchrist and W.J. Murray (London, 1971), pp. 271-2. 17 The Republic calls us, We will conquer - or we will die, A Frenchman must live for her And for her a Frenchman must die. 15

44 Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution During the heady days of the Year II meetings of the Paris sections often concluded their sessions by singing the Marseillaise, 'the hymn of liberty'.18 Provincial revolutionary activists linked the same trinity Nation, Republic, Revolution - and swore undying loyalty. Young volunteers and conscripts were described by contemporaries as setting off for war enthused by the same revolutionary songs; their departure was often a carefully orchestrated piece of theatre. At Thiviers in the Dordogne the recruits entered the chamber of the local popular society as the assembly came to the line of the Marseillaise, 'Amour sacre de la Patrie'. The soldiers knelt down, 'their avenging arms raised towards the tricolour flag', whilst one of their number swore, on behalf of all, to defend the flag to their last drop of blood.19 In Bordeaux officials took an oath to wage eternal war against tyrants, traitors and anarchists . . . to maintain liberty, equality, the Republic one and indivisible, the safety of persons and property . . . [and] only to use those powers entrusted to me by the people in order to ensure respect for national sovereignty.20

But the Bordelais had a different perception of the trinity from the Jacobins in Paris and,-together with other cities, they combined in an ineffective revolt against centralization and dictatorship. All revolutionaries claimed to speak for the Nation, Republic, Revolution, but manifestly there were very different perceptions- of the trinity for which men were prepared to risk their lives. In addition to the overthrow of the monarchy and the last vestiges of feudalism, the Revolution also dealt a series of blows at the ancien regime church. While la nation replaced le roi in the hierarchy of the state the nationalization of church property and the Civil Constitution of the Clergy were positive efforts to make the church part of the nation. At the same time the ceremonies and the saints of Catholicism were rivalled and even replaced for many revolutionary activists by national festivals and martyrs of the Nation, Republic, Revolution. The grand fete de la federation held on the first anniversary of the fall of the Bastille was attended by tens of thousands: hundreds of priests celebrated round a giant altar; Louis XVI swore loyalty to the new constitutional system and Marie Antionette, lifting up the dauphin to the people, declared similar allegiance on behalf of herself and her son. Significantly, however, in spite of the religious trappings it was the nation, rather than God, which was the focus in all of this. During the early years of the Republic a variety of propagandists, most notably Jacques-Louis David, 18

Die Sansculotten von Paris, ed. W. Markov and A. Soboul (Berlin, 1957), pp. 10, 32, 50, 74, 19 Lieutenant de Cardenal, Recrutement de I'Armee en Perigord pendant la periode revolutionnaire (1789-1800) (Periguex, 1911), pp. 313-14. 20 Alan Forrest, Society and Politics in Revolutionary Bordeaux (Oxford, 1975), p. 108.

Nationalist Rhetoric.and Sentiment in France

45

canonized a succession of national revolutionary heroes from Jean-Paul Marat, whom many were prepared to equate with Jesus, to boy soldiers like Joseph Bara and Joseph Viala who were killed in the Vendee.21 Thermidor heralded the end of the more extreme forms of nationalist, revolutionary and republican religion, though it is worth remembering that, a decade later, Napoleon contemplated a Temple of Glory in La Madeleine. It also heralded the end of the ferocious, nationalist rhetoric of the Year II,22 as well as the end of politicians playing, literally, to the gallery and provoking noisy audience participation. But nationalist rhetoric and sentiment did not disappear, and earlier inhibitions about annexation.were not restored. Belgium was annexed in 1795 and, under the Directory, successful young generals, in league with local revolutionaries, began creating sister republics on France's borders. By the summer of 1797 the term la Grande Nation was in common use; for the French it signified that their nation was the guardian of the principles of 1789, the liberator of oppressed peoples, and military victor over the combined powers of ancien regime Europe.23 But pride in la Grande Nation and its achievements also boosted the notions of French superiority which had been latent under the Jacobins. The elder brother in the fraternity of republics was to be more than first among equals enjoying tributes, economic advantages and the strongest voice in foreign policy. Nationalist outrage followed the murder of two French diplomats by Austrian hussars at the break-up of the Congress of Rastatt;24 but when France resumed war against Austria and, consequently, the Second Coalition in 1799, there was not the same fervour as had been apparent six and seven years before. Albert Soboul suggested that the reason for the rise and rapid decline of national fervour was the fact that the bourgeois revolution failed to resolve the social realities of class division. The bourgeoisie, identifying itself as the 'nation', permitted its social inferiors to participate in the war effort to ensure survival between 1792 and 1794, but then squeezed them out again; the mass of the people did not identify with France, the nation, the republic under the Thermidorians and the Directory.25 The rhetoric discussed so far has been that of the men who trod the political stage 21 Albert Soboul, 'Sentiment religieux et cultes populaires pendant la Revolution: saintes patriotes et martyrs de la liberte", Annales historiques de la Revolutionfrangaise, xxix (1957), 195-213. 22 It is, however, worth noting that this ferocious rhetoric was generally far worse than its bite in the case of both foreigners living in France and prisoners of war. Richard Cobb, 'Quelques aspects de la mentalite revolutionnaire (avril 1793-thermidor an II)*, in Richard Cobb, Terreur et subsistances 1793-1795 (Paris, 1965), pp. 36-44. 23 Godechot, pp. 25-6. 24 Denis Woronoff, The Thermidorean Regime and the Directory 1794-1799 (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 163-4. 25 Albert Soboul, 'La Revolution franchise: probleme national et realites sociales', Actes du colloque Patriotisme et nationalisms . . ., pp. 29-58.

46 Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution either in one of the successive national assemblies or in the political clubs. The question is, how far can this nationalist sentiment be perceived further down the social scale? In short, how pervasive was the commitment of the French people to the trinity of Nation, Republic, Revolution? Revolutionary and nationalist language was used by many people, but the historian needs to approach such usage with caution. Declarations of patriotism and loyalty may have been genuine, and the very extent of their use does give a marker to the rise and fall of such sentiments, but they also became institutionalized and developed into the acknowledged language of those seeking assistance, patronage, or a way out of trouble. Gendarme Vetterkorp's loyalty was such that he promised to 'cover the Convention with his body until the last drop of his blood so as to protect it from traitors and the factious'; but gendarmes had to provide their own horses, Vetterkorp's horse had been killed in the fighting in the Vendee, and he wanted it replaced. When gendarmes Liard and Pascal of Caen were arrested on a charge of theft they counter-charged that the officers authorizing their arrest were merely seeking revenge for a denunciation which Liard's and Pascal's 'love of country' had necessitated.26 By the same token counter-revolutionary sentiments may largely reflect annoyance or frustration on a particular occasion - bread shortage or conscription for example - rather than any deep-seated, politically conscious opposition.27 Even when a stirring heroic, nationalist image exists in historical tradition, the reality may have been rather different. One such image is the march of the Marseilles battalion to Paris in the summer of 1792; the men allegedly inspired those who met and lodged them on their way with their new war song. The question must be posed: how many of the people they encountered on the route could understand the Provencal language spoken by the battalion? At least one verse of their version of the song, sung in Provencal, was never incorporated into what became the traditional version, and while 'revolutionary' in sentiment it reflects the earthy element of other soldiers' songs: March on, God's arse March on, God's fart The emigres, by God Have no more idea of God Than old monarchist priests.28 26

Archives de la guerre, xf 244 Gendarmerie: Divers 1791-1814, See, for example, the shouts and behaviour of rioters described by Richard Cobb in 'Une emeute de la faim dans la banlieue rouennaise', in Cobb, pp. 301-2. Attempts in the Perigord to tighten up on troops over-staying their leave and to arrest deserters in prairial Year IV led to disorder and shouts of Vive le roi'f; de Cardenal, pp. 343-7. See also the case of the prostitute, Marie Antoinette Bartellemy, described in Jill Harsin, Policing Prostitution in Nineteenth-Century Paris (Prirfceton, 1985), pp. 180 and 370-5. 28 This translation from Weber, 'Who sang the Marseillaise?*: The original Provencal version is to be found in Francois Mazug, Essai historique sur les moeurs et coutumes de Marseille au xixe siecle (Marseille, 1854), p. 32. 27

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47

That there was tremendous commitment to, and effort on behalf of the nation in the early stages of the war, cannot be denied. Some soldiers petitioned for a pay increase to be withdrawn because of the nation's financial difficulties and because they fought for liberty and not for money.29 In those areas invaded by Austrian, British, Prussian and emigre armies large numbers of the local population prepared to fight en masse even before Barrere announced the levee on 23 August 1792.30 As he rode into the northern tip of the Nord, John le Marqhant, a young British staff officer, was amazed 'how strongly attached the lower order of people show themselves to revolutionary principles . . . and how completely the French are in this quarter won over to the cause.'31 Whatever the counter-revolutionary propaganda had led men like Le Marchant to believe, it might be argued that people invaded by foreign armies are rarely prepared to embrace them with open arms. But it must also be remembered that the invading armies, particularly the Prussians and emigres pushing into Lorraine, were entering those provinces which had a tradition of providing most recruits to the French armies during the eighteenth century.32 This tradition was maintained during the Revolution.33 No matter whether the French army was royal or republican, volunteer or conscript, the men of Alsace, Lorraine, Franche Comte and, to a lesser extent, Flanders, seem to have been more ready to join the colours than Frenchmen from elsewhere. Nationalist fervour could be tinged with group or individual selfinterest, even among those participating fully in the war effort. Desperate to plug the gaps appearing before the Austro-Prussian onslaught, the government called 6000 of the new National Gendarmerie to the colours; most of the gendarmes were army veterans and could therefore be expected to know how to behave and take orders under fire. But as the gendarmes assembled in camps at Chalons, Fontainebleau and Versailles their off-duty discussions brought home to them that they had common concerns and worries. What would happen to their families if they were killed? They rode their own horses, would they be reimbursed if their horses were killed? Many complained of being owed expenses for their police duties: could these now be paid? Some of them held rank in the Gendarmerie: why should they be expected to give up these ranks when they were drafted into the army? Individual gendarmes took the opportunity of pressing. individual complaints: Louis Charmoille 29

Samuel F. Scott, The Response of the Royal Army to the French Revolution (Oxford, 1978), p. 163. 30 Jean-Paul Bertaud, La Revolution armee: les soldats-citoyens et la Revolution fran^aise (Paris, 1979), pp. 113-5. 31 R.H. Thoumine, Scientific Soldier: A Life of General Le Marchant 17 66-1812 (Oxford, 1968), p. 22; see also p. 30. 32 Scott, pp. 9-11. 33 Berthaud, pp. 137-8 and 271.

48 Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution protested about being charged hospital fees which amounted to more than his pay and he demanded reimbursement; Francois Bellein protested that he had been moved from his place of birth, Perigueux, first to one town and then to another where he was the only gendarme and where there was no provision either for him or his horse. The colonel of the division camped at Versailles signed a conclusion to the men's protest, urging that their complaints be dealt with, stating that they put their faith in 'a patriotic administration', and promising that when the men's fears had been allayed and promises made to settle their complaints, they would 'fly to the defence of liberty and equality'.34 Munitions workers in Paris, many of whom had moved from the east as the invaders advanced, produced magnificently; but they also secured fifty per cent representation on the commission regulating their pay and conditions, and patriotic sentiment did not eradicate frictions or workplace abuses.35 Also, while workers in the naval arsenals may have possessed genuine nationalist sentiments, it should be remembered that by working in the arsenals, men might escape other military service.36 Furthermore these men had to provide for themselves and their families, and nationalist sentiment, however strong, did not buy bread, while the inflationary assignats bought less and less. The arsenal workers sought pay increases and payment in 'real' money; those in Toulon became so disillusioned and dissatisfied that they were prepared to throw in their lot with the Anglo-Spanish fleet.37 Sometimes patriotic enthusiasm ebbed almost as rapidly as it had risen no matter what the prevailing political circumstances. Following the King's flight to Varennes in the summer of 1791 the Legislative Assembly called for 'National Volunteers'. The conditions of pay and service offered to these new soldiers were very attractive compared with the line army and the volunteers of 1791 are generally considered to have been eager and patriotic. Yet before the end of the year, as Brissot 34 Archives de la guerre X f 4, especially 'Memoire sur les reclamations que font les gendarmes qui composent la 2e division organisee a Versailles pour le service des armees'. 35 Jacques Godechot, Les Institutions de la France sous la Revolution et I'Empire, 2nd edn. (Paris, 1968), pp. 367-9. 36 Archives nationales BB1853 contains an interesting example of the kind of bureaucratic muddle which probably occurred on several occasions as a result of the conscription legislation. In Nivose, Year XII, Albert Joseph Dupuis and Louis Joseph Armeny, both from Nord Libre (Nord) we're proscribed as refractory conscripts. The problem was that they were called up for the army after they had been recruited to continue their trade as carpenters in the military installations at Boulogne. The mayor of Nord Libre protested on their behalf but the local judicial commissaire did not know what to do and wrote to the minister of justice for guidance. 37 Norman Hampson, 'Les ouvriers des arsenaux de la marine au cours de la revolution franchise (1789-94)', Revue d'histoire economique et sociale, xxxix (1961), 287329 and 443-73; M.H. Crook, 'Federalism and the French Revolution: the Revolt of Toulon in 1793', History, Ixv (1980), 383-97.

Nationalist Rhetoric and Sentiment in France

49

launched his campaign for war, desertion among some of the volunteers was being noted. In November an officer of the gendarmerie wrote from Dax of Volunteer Patriots who, for the most part, repent the first movement of zeal, who have returned to their parishes where, without doubt, they have supporters in the midst of their families, and where they find help, the means of evasion and, perhaps, of resisting any search made for them.38

The ebbing patriotic enthusiasm was even more noticeable after Thermidor, and while this may be explained in Soboul's terms of the bourgeoisie squeezing out the people, more prosaically, it can be attributed to the declining seriousness of the threats to the nation's security. Desertion from the armies became a serious problem. In the summer of 1794 the French armies numbered more than 730,000 men; three years later they had declined to about 380,000 men. Combat and disease could never have accounted for such a loss. Moreover an additional 82,000 men had been requisitioned during this three-year period. Troops given leave or marched through their pays natal often stayed with their families and failed to rejoin their regiments. In the Year IV for example, men from the Perigord serving in the Army of the Pyrenees were ordered to join the Army of the Vendee; their march took them through their native territory and many of them disappeared to their homes.39 Men in other units appear simply to have decided to go home; some reached their pays natal, some went into hiding and, to earn a living, were exploited by employers who, knowing they were on the run, paid them the barest minimum in wages; some became brigands.40 Nor was it only the line army in which enthusiasm declined. In Messidor Year IV Citizen Marais, zjuge de paix and official of the department of Eure-et-Loir lamented the current lack of zeal in the local national guard: 4 the inhabitants of the countryside are always slow and reluctant when a service is required which diverts them from their rural labours'.41 The nationalist rhetoric of the Revolution failed completely to penetrate much of peasant France. The frontier regions of the north east and east had a tradition of providing soldiers, but not so the south western frontier that bordered Spain; the south west did not have the large garrison towns of the north and east which probably accustomed their populations to the military. During the eighteenth century the 38

Archives de la guerre, X f 242 fos, 204-5. De Cardenal, p. 326. 40 Berthaud, pp. 271-5; Alan Forrest, 'Conscription and crime in rural France during the Directory and Consulate', in Beyond the Terror: Essays in French Regional and Social History 1794-1815, ed. G. Lewis and C. Lucas (Cambridge, 1983); idem, 'Les soulevements populaires contre le service militaire, 1794-1814', in Mouvements populaires et conscience sociale, ed. Jean Nicolas (Paris, 1985). 41 Archives nationales, F73031: Marais to Minister of Police, 4 messidor, Year IV. 39

50 Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution small province of Roussillon and the Comte de Foix were notorious for smugglers. The tiny company of marechaussee responsible for the area was incapable of patrolling some of the mountainous districts for much of the year because of the snows, nor was it particularly noted for efficiency in good weather - the brigade in Sallegouse, allegedly, had not arrested either a deserter or any other malefactor in the twenty-five years before the Revolution.42 In 1790 Foix and the western part of Roussillon became the department of the Ariege and throughout the revolutionary and Napoleonic period the people of this department vigorously resisted the military demands of the nation; the young men who were conscripted went into hiding, local mayors destroyed registers of births and falsified marriage papers, and local cures supported their flocks in this resistance, like the cure of Segura who, in Thermidor Year XIII, stood in his church and denounced a squad of gendarmes searching for refractory conscripts as 'robbers'.43 The Ariege may have been the most consistently difficult department for recruiting and conscription, but hostility to military demands, often involving popular disorder and attacks on gendarmes, was to be found across France.44 In the west it was the conscription of 1793 which finally provoked armed insurrection leading to civil war. When the General Council of Cholet came to enforce the recruiting legislation at the beginning of March they found Our young men, gangrenous with fanaticism, have taken flight. Workers have abandoned their workshops; the sons and labourers of our farmers have left their work in the fields. Only the heads of families remain at home. As a consequence, recruiting cannot be conducted here without taking merchants and manufacturers. Yet their number will be insufficient for our quota. These citizens are the only ones who have always behaved well and who can be depended upon. If they are obliged to go, then who will be able to defend our region where the enemies of the motherland have not ceased to breathe the spirit of revolt and of disobedience to the laws?45

Even though the insurrection in the Vendee had been defeated by 1798 the Directory thought it prudent to exempt the region from the recruitment of that year.46 Resistance to military recruiting contributed to the chounannerie in 42

Clive Emsley, 'La marechaussee a la fin de 1'ancien regime: notes sur la composition du corps', Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, xxiii (1986), 622-44; Cahiers de doleancesde la province de Roussillon (1789), ed. E. Frenay (Perpignan, 1979), p. 302. 43 Archives nationales, BB187, rapport de la gendarmerie, 2 thermidor, Year XIII. 44 Forrest, 'Les soulevements . . .'; for the extent of continuing hostility in the Ariege, see BB187, BB188, and Eric A. Arnold, Fouche, Napoleon and the General Police (Washington D.C., 1979), pp. 118-26. 45 Archives departementales, Maine-et-Loire, IL 757, Les officiers municipaux . . . de Cholet au citoyen administrateur commissaire du departement de Maine et Loire, 7 mars 1793. 46 Berthaud, p. 337; Isser Woloch, 'Napoleonic conscription: state power and civil society5, Past and Present, cxi (1986), 105.

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Brittany. Breton folksongs originating in the period and sympathizing with the Chouans portray the Nation and Republic as a predatory enemy destroying, in particular, the religion of the region. Na neus mui a zermoniouy vijil na Kovesion Ol e mant bet distrujet dre eurz an Nasion, Ne glever nemet touet pep sort Komzou lubrik Setu eno ar beden a ra ar Republik.47

Another folksong dedicated to the young Bretons who did go off to fight for the Republic under the levee of 30,000 in February 1793, reports that they left their native soil with tears in their eyes and sorrow in their hearts: Chervijein en Nasion zou dra disoursi, Kalon er Vretoned zou Ian a velkoni.48

Significantly, their native soil was Brittany and the emphasis is on the young men's identity as Bretons and on their being called away by a distant 'nation'; the word Trance' does not appear in the song. Peasant reluctance to assist the nation was not confined to denying the army their young men. They also objected to the requisitioning of their animals for the war effort, to the requisitioning of their produce to feed the towns, and, of course, to fiscal demands. The peasantry had welcomed the revolution to the extent that it affected them; they had participated vigorously in the destruction of the last vestiges of feudalism. Seasonal, and more permanent, migrations show that the peasantry were aware of Paris and the big towns of France, but whether they thought of themselves as belonging to the same national entity as such urban centres, and whether they were aware of sharing a national identity with twenty-five million Frenchmen, are moot points. The peasant identified with his pays natal, the place where he was born, where people lived similar lives and spoke the same language, which often bore little resemblance to French. Of course the whole peasantry of France cannot be lumped together as a single collectivity, sharing the same ideas and aspirations. Eugen Weber has suggested that south of a notional line drawn from St. Malo to Grenoble, there existed, throughout the nineteenth century, a primitive rural France.49 Paul Bois had shown that, between 1790 and 1793, it was local problems that most agitated the 47 'There are no sermons, vigils or confessions./ They have all been destroyed by order of the Nation./ The only oaths to be heard are all kinds of lewd words/ That are the prayers of the Republic.' Francois Cadic, Chants des Chouans (Paris, 1947), p. 29. 48 'Serving the Nation is a disagreeable thing,/ The hearts of the Bretons are full of sorrow.' Cadic, p. 87. Religious feeling is strong in this song also as the recruits complain: 'Adieu de vannieleu, de groezieu hon ilis,/ Rak berpet e vou ret gober en ecsersis.' ('Farewell to the bannners and the cross of our church,/ Now we must spend all our time at drill.') 49 See Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen, passim.

52 Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution peasantry in the Sarthe; the flight to Varennes, the fall of the monarchy, the execution of Louis XVI, were all greeted with indifference.50 Rather than inspiring identification with the French national cause, the demands made on the peasantry during the revolution - and later during the Napoleonic period - for men, money, animals and produce, may have served rather to confirm the peasant, particularly the peasant south of Weber's line, in his feeling for his pays natal and to evoke suspicion of the avaricious national entity of France, But if such a large proportion of the population of France was, at best, indifferent to the idea of the nation, this only qualifies the significance of the French Revolution in the development of modern nationalism. In France, as a result of the Revolution, the nation replaced the king in the hierarchy of the state, and at the same time secular national festivals and national revolutionary saints acquired many of the appendages of religious custom and practice. The gradual undermining of absolutist monarchy and religious superstition by the Enlightenment was accelerated by the Revolution, leaving cultural vacuums; and nationalist sentiment was one of the ideological concepts which could be used to fill these vacuums. The synonymous Nation, Republic, Revolution provided revolutionary activists with a rallying point during successive crises in France in the seventeen-nineties: the idea of the 'nation' generated commitment, partly by identifying something to be committed to. The Revolution also released the military potential of eighteenth-century France. While the revolutionary wars may not have been caused directly by ideological confrontation, they provided Europe with the example of its single most powerful state fighting specifically as a 'nation', with its soldiers, at least ostensibly, claiming to be free citizens fighting for their motherland. Over the twenty years following the declaration of war by the French 'nation' on the 'king of Hungary and Bohemia', other 'nations' followed the French lead, using nationalist rhetoric to inspire a war effort. Some people rose spontaneously against what they conceived of as French oppression; others found their nationalist sentiments gingerly fostered by conservative governments eager to slam shut the Pandora's box thrown open by the French. Both the latter kinds of nationalism tended to be backward-looking, emphasizing the national history and traditions in contrast to the French revolutionaries' nationalism which had, to all intents and purposes, dispensed with the past and which centred on a new beginning. Over the following century, however, this new beginning provided many nationalist and political activists in France with a glorious national history and for them the true France was identified forever with the events and institutions of the Revolution. 50

Paul Bois, Paysans de Vomst, 2nd edn. (Paris, 1971), pp. 113-35.

5

England John Dinwiddy On the basis of some helpful distinctions made by John Breuilly, it may be suggested that 'nationalist' arguments are mainly useful to separatist movements and to movements for unification.1 In the modern history of the British Isles, there have been notable examples of separatist nationalism, in the countries of the so-called Celtic fringe. The emergence of a nationalist movement of this kind in Ireland in the late eighteenth century is described by Marianne Elliott elsewhere in this volume. In Scotland and Wales, there were incipient manifestations of cultural nationalism, exemplified by James Macpherson's 'Ossian' poems of the seventeen-sixtie's and by the literary work of Edward Williams (or *Iolo Morgannwg') later in the century.2 Also, one or two expressions of political nationalism were voiced in the seventeen-nineties by Scotsmen who were strongly influenced by French republicanism. Robert Watson, a doctor o£ medicine who became involved in ultra-radical circles in London, attacked the Union between England and Scotland as having sealed the political death' of the Scots; and having fled to Paris in 1798 he published an address in a French newspaper in which he urged the patriots of Scotland, 'descendants of the immortal Ossian', to unite against English corruption and intrigue and to claim for their country a place among the free nations of the world.3 Thomas Muir - the Scottish radical leader who was sentenced to transportation for sedition in 1793, escaped from New South Wales in 1796, and found his way to France via Vancouver, Mexico and Spain — went so far as to claim in a memorandum submitted to Talleyrand in 1798 that 100,000 Scottish patriots were eager to rise in order to throw off the English yoke and establish an independent republic. However, although a republican Society of United Scotsmen did exist for a time in 1797-8, Muir's claim probably reflected what he thought his French patrons wanted to hear, 1

John Breuilly, Nationalism and the State (Manchester, 1982), p. 11. See Prys Morgan, lolo Morgannwg (Cardiff, 1975); idem, The hunt for the Welsh past in the Romantic period', in The Invention of Tradition, ed. E. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 43-100. 3 Robert Watson, The Life of Lord George Gordon (London, 1795), p. 11; idem, 'Au peuple de la Grande-Bretagne', La Clefdu Cabinet, 2 frimaire an VII (22 Nov. 1798), copy in P[ublic] R[ecord] O[ffice], PC 1/43/A152. 2

53

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Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution

rather than being based on substantial knowledge of his own; and he had himself, like the other Scottish radicals of the early nineties, agitated for a reform of the British parliament rather than for Scottish independence.4 Neither in Scotland nor in Wales was there much evidence of political separatism in the late eighteenth century. In England, there was no real scope for movements aimed either at separatism or at unification. Favoured by her early political integration and her comparative strength in relation to other parts of the British Isles, England had acquired in the early modern period a strong sense of national identity and national pride. A scholar focusing on the seventeenth century has said that England developed 'earlier than any other European country certain fundamental conditions for the growth of modern nationhood', and that she was 'the first country where a national consciousness embraced the whole people'.5 In circumstances such as these, where a nation state and a national consciousness have already been created, the use of national arguments may not be confined - as they tend to be in the cases of separatist or unification movements to opposition groups which are trying to gain control of the state; they may also be used by a political 'establishment' which is endeavouring to strengthen its basis in public support by claiming to represent the true traditions and interests of the nation. In many, perhaps most, European countries the nationalism stimulated by the French Revolution was a force whose internal thrust within the countries affected was liberal or even radical; and in the British Isles this was notably true of Ireland. But in England, although the French Revolution, especially in its early stages, did give a strong stimulus to radical sentiment, this radicalism was in some degree associated with cosmopolitan rather than nationalist values. The factor which was most important in helping to-strengthen national sentiment in England was not the Revolution itself but the war against Revolutionary, and then Napoleonic, France; and the effect-and to a considerable extent the deliberate purpose- of this strengthening of national feeling was to reinforce the established order rather than to challenge it. The term 'nationalism' was not, of course, part of the vocabulary of the late eighteenth century. But a term that was very widely used was 'patriotism'. This term has attracted a considerable amount of attention recently from historians such as Hugh Cunningham and Linda Colley; and one of the main concerns of this paper will be to examine the conflicts which were taking place in England in our period - conflicts which were intensified by the French Revolution and the French wars - between 4 Christina Bewley, Muir of Huntershill (Oxford, 1981), pp. 171-5; H.W. Meikle, Scotland and the French Revolution (Glasgow, 1912), pp. 172-7. 5 Hans Kohn, 'The genesis and character of English nationalism5, Journal of the History of Ideas, i (1940), 69-70, 91.

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different interpretations of patriotism as a political concept. For most of the eighteenth century the word 'patriotism' was frequently, perhaps predominantly, used with connotations which in nineteenth century terminology would have been called liberal or radical. When Dr Johnson made his famous remark 'Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel', he was merely expressing the blimpish view that rotters gravitate to the left in politics. The association of patriotism with a love of freedom had originated in the seventeenth century, when those who defended the traditional liberties of Englishmen against Stuart attempts to strengthen the royal prerogative had acquired the label 'Patriots'. Many Patriots of the Hanoverian period attached great importance to the constitutional struggles of the seventeenth century and looked back with veneration to figures such as Hampden and Sydney. Some of them also - especially the more democratically-minded ones - looked further back in English history for inspiration, maintaining that a model of free and popular government had been realized in the 'ancient constitution' of AngloSaxon times, before being destroyed (or at least impaired) by the Norman invasion. As well as this emphasis on historic or traditional liberties, eighteenth-century Patriotism implied in a more general way devotion to the welfare of the nation as a whole, the people at large, as distinct from devotion to the interests of the ruling few.6 It also involved a preoccupation with the dangers of corruption and arbitrary power. In the early Hanoverian period what this chiefly meant in specific terms was opposition to the 'influence of the Crown' (the ability of the executive to 'corrupt' members of parliament by the distribution of patronage), and opposition to standing armies. By the later eighteenth century Patriotism had acquired connotations which were not merely oppositionist but positively reformist: it involved not only distrust of the Court and executive but also hostility to the degree of control exerted by aristocratic and wealthy 'boroughmongers' over the system of parliamentary election. From the seventeen-seventies, Patriots were advocating reforms such as an extension of the franchise and a redistribution of parliamentary seats. One should add that in the mid-eighteenth century and the time of Wilkes, Patriotism of this oppositionist or radical kind was associated to a certain extent with attitudes which were insular and even chauvinistic. A characteristic line in foreign policy was opposition to continental entanglements, which were commonly thought to be dictated by the interests of Hanover rather than of Britain. Also, radical Patriotism was particularly strong among urban and commercial sections of the population, notably in the City of London - people who combined a 6

Wordsworth, writing The Prelude in 1805, used the word in this sense when describing how he became, during his residence in France in 1792, *a patriot; and my heart was all / Given to the people, and my love was theirs/ (Book ix, lines 124-5.)

56 Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution suspicion and dislike of courtiers and artistocrats with a strong commitment to the expansion of British commerce. Colonies being important commercial assets, this meant an aggressive attitude towards France and Spain, Britain's main rivals in terms of overseas empire. The elder Pitt, partly because of his reputation for disinterestedness, and partly because of his determination to promote Britain's commercial interests, had the unusual distinction of being hailed as a 'Patriot minister' - someone who retained his Patriotic image while holding high office. Lord Bute, on the other hand, was a prime target of Patriot hostility, being a courtier and a Scot, and being held responsible for the Peace of Paris which was considered too lenient towards France and Spain. As Linda Colley has shown, the identification of radicalism with patriotism was made somewhat problematic in the seventeen-seventies and eighties by the American War of Independence. Urban radicals were generally opposed to the war on both material and ideological grounds, for it was considered damaging to trade as well as to the cause of freedom in both America and Britain. North's ministry and its supporters were consequently able to claim that the so-called Patriots were behaving unpatriotically by sympathizing with the enemy; and this charge became especially damaging when France and Spain came into the war on the American side. In 1780 the author of a pamphlet entitled Unity and Public Spirit Recommended was able to say: 'The Patriots of the present day have distinguished themselves chiefly by a zeal to depress the spirit of the nation, to depreciate its success, to aggravate its misfortunes, and to spread terror and dismay. '7 The term 'Patriot' none the less continued to be used as a label to describe political dissidents and reformers, and this usage was still common in the period of the French Revolution, when radicalism acquired a more widespread and substantial popular following than ever before. When the most famous of the democratic societies of the seventeen-nineties, the London Corresponding Society, was launched in January 1792, one of the names considered for it was 'The Patriotic Club';8 and the societies of that decade included a Manchester Patriotic Society (1792-3) and a Norwich Patriotic Society (1795-7). A radical periodical called The Patriot was published at Sheffield in 1792-3; the Birmingham Society for Constitutional Information, in its inaugural declaration of November 1792, described its members as 'Patriots . . . 7 P. 3; cited in Linda Colley, 'English Radicals and the problems of Patriotism c. 1740c. 1790', paper delivered at a History Workshop Conference, March 1984. I am much indebted to this paper, and to Dr Colley for her kindness in lending me a copy. I am also very indebted to Hugh Cunningham's paper, 'The language of patriotism, 1750-1914', History Workshop, xii (1981), 8-33. 8 Memoir of Thomas Hardy, founder of, and secretary to, the London Corresponding Society (London, 1832), p. 1,4.

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anxious for the restoration of our Constitution to its primitive simplicity'; and a reformer at Leeds wrote to the London Corresponding Society in October 1797: 'The villages in this neighbourhood are very populous and a majority of the inhabitants are known to be patriots who are chiefly convinced of the necessity of a union to gain their rights.'9 Many similar examples could be given,10 and occasionally one finds the word 'patriot' or 'patriotic' being used in the same sense even by opponents of radicalism. In a prosecution memorandum relating to the case of Daniel Holt, a radical journalist charged with seditious libel in 1792, his paper the Newark Herald is described as 'a Patriotic newspaper which generally teems with invective against the present constitution and government' - though the underlining of the word 'patriotic' was doubtless intended as an indication of irony.11 Such irony was to be expected, of course, because in the seventeennineties the divergence between the rather special meaning of the term 'Patriot' as a friend of freedom or reform, and the straightforward meaning of the word as a lover of one's country, seemed to become wider than ever. The French Revolution in its early stages was thought to be proclaiming ideals of liberty and fraternity which transcended national boundaries;' and English radicals responded with such enthusiasm to this trend that their 'Patriotism' became paradoxically tinged with cosmopolitanism. A classic illustration is the sermon entitled A Discourse on the Love of our Country, which Richard Price, the Dissenting minister and philosopher, delivered in November 1789 at a meeting of the Revolution Society, a body which had been founded to commemorate the Glorious Revolution of 1688. In this sermon, patriotism merges with internationalism, and is firmly distinguished from that love of one's country which is only 'a love of domination . . . a thirst for grandeur and glory, by extending territory, and enslaving surrounding countries'. Price admits that it is natural to feel a stronger attachment to one's own country than to mankind at large, but he goes on to say: In pursuing particularly the interest of our country, we ought to carry our views beyond it. We should love it ardently but not exclusively. We ought to seek its good, by all the means that our different circumstances and abilities will allow; but at the same time we ought to consider ourselves as citizens of the world, and take care to maintain a just regard to the rights of other countries. The freedom of our country should be a special 'object of patriotic zeal', and it needs to be protected against both internal and external enemies. 9 Birmingham Society for Constitutional Information (Birmingham, 1792), p. 11; B[ritish] Lfibrary] Add. MSS 27815, fo. 180. 10 Cf. Cunningham, pp. 12-13. 11 PRO, TS 117836/2820.

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The former, in Price's view, are usually the more dangerous. There is a tendency in every government towards despotism, because those in authority are almost always anxious to extend their power; and it is therefore extremely important that the people should be vigilant in defending their rights and resisting abuses. They should also, of course, defend their country against foreign enemies; but Price emphasizes that the only just wars are defensive ones, and after referring to a passage on the folly of war in Necker's Treatise on the Administration of the Finances of France, he continues: There is reason to believe that the sentiments on this subject in that treatise, are now the prevailing sentiments in the court and legislature of France; and, consequently, that one of the happy effects of the revolution in that country may be ... such a harmony between the two first kingdoms in the world, strengthened by a common participation in the blessings of liberty, as shall not only prevent their engaging in any future wars with one another, but dispose them to unite in preventing wars every where, and in making the world free and happy.12 In a speech at another meeting of the Revolution Society in the following summer, Prjce welcomed the decree of 22 May 1790 in which the National Assembly renounced wars of conquest, and he said that now that the French had got rid of their despotic system of government there was no longer any reason for the English to regard them with enmity and distrust.13 A similar tone of optimistic internationalism is to be found iri Thomas Paine's The Rights of Man (1791-2). In his view, states organized on republican principles - in other words, having governments 'established and conducted for the interest of the public' generally avoided war, because although warfare brought benefits (through augmented taxes and patronage) to a country's ruling class, it was usually harmful to the nation at large. He though it likely that a reform of the English system of government would be necessary before a cordial relationship could be established with Revolutionary France; but he looked forward to a future alliance between England, France and America which would establish international peace and extend commercial intercourse.14 The ideas of Price and Paine were echoed by the radical societies in the correspondence which they conducted with various bodies in France. The Revolution Society (which consisted mainly of intellectuals and religious dissenters) began the fashion of sending addresses of congratulation and sympathy across the Channel, and in April 1792 two members of the middle-class Manchester Constitutional Society 12

A Discourse on the Love of our Country (London, 1789), pp. 5, 10, 19, 28-9, 30n. G.S. Veitch, The Genesis of Parliamentary Reform (London, 1913), p. 151. 14 Rights of Man, Part I (London, 1791), pp. 159-61; Part II (London, 1792), pp. 30, 115-16, 164-7. 13

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appeared in person at the Jacobin Club in Paris and said that the time had come 'to abolish all national prejudices, and to embrace freemen as brothers, to no matter what country they belong'.15 The year 1792 also saw the emergence - first in Sheffield and London, and then in other places - of reform societies which drew the bulk of their membership from the working classes; and the sympathy felt by these societies for the French revolutionaries was heightened by the revolution of 10 August and the Prussian invasion of France.16 The National Convention which met on 20 September (and included Thomas Paine as delegate for Calais) received a succession of addresses from English societies, the most notable'of which was the one from the London Corresponding Society. Written by the then president of the society, Maurice Margarot (who was incidentally of French parentage), it declared: 'Frenchmen, you are already free, and Britons are preparing to become so! Casting far from us the criminal prejudices artfully inculcated by evil-minded and wily courtiers, we, instead of natural enemies, at length discover in Frenchmen our fellow-citizens of the world.' It went on to prophesy that a triple alliance of the people of America, France and Britain would give freedom to Europe and peace to the world at large.17 From the winter of 1792-3 it became more difficult to maintain that France was committed to the promotion of international peace and fraternity. But even after the outbreak of war between France and Britain in February 1793, there continued to be considerable sympathy for France in English radical circles. It was held that France had been forced to take up arms to defend her recently-acquired liberty, and that her incursions into other territories such as the Low Countries were laudable attempts to bring freedom to oppressed peoples. The secretary of the London Corresponding Society, in a letter of January 1794 (which was published later that year after falling into the hands of the Government), described the French as 'the brave defenders of liberty south of the English Channel5; and the Norwich Patriotic Society said in a public address as late as August 1797: The spectacle of a brave and high spirited people-who have determined to be free, - being enabled to brave the storm; to rise superior to all opposition and maintain their independency, is highly interesting to those who can see in that event the dark clouds of moral evil disappearing, and the bright orb of liberty advancing to meridian splendor.18 15 16

Veitch, p. 190.

Cf. G.A. Williams, Artisans and Sans-Culottes: Popular Movements in France and Britain during the French Revolution (London, 1968), p. 70: Tor the British popular movement, the French Revolution which counted was that of 10 August 1792.' 17 Albert Goodwin, The Friends of Liberty: The English Democratic Movement in the Age of the French Revolution (London, 1979), p. 502. 18 Journals of the House of Commons, xlix. 681; An Address from the Patriotic Society of Norwich to the Inhabitants of that City (Norwich, 1797), p. 5.

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One should add that while some radicals, such as John Thelwall, called themselves 'sans-culottes' and talked about the rights of nature, there were others who inclined to a more insular tradition and talked about the rights of Englishmen or the rights of Britons.19 But the way in which a Francophile element had been absorbed into radical Patriotism can be illustrated by a publication called The Patriot's Calendar which appeared annually in 1794-6. It contained, alongside Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights, material such as the Declaration of the Rights of Man, a 'Chronological table of the principal events of the French Revolution', and the words and music of the Marseillaise and '£a ira\ Meanwhile, outside radical circles, there was a powerful reaction against the French Revolution and against the spread of 'French principles' in England.20 Among open-minded members of the propertied and educated classes there had been some sympathy for the Revolution so long as it could be interpreted as an attempt to establish a constitutional monarchy on the English model. But Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France had shaken this interpretation, and by the second half of 1792 it was clearly untenable. Also, the growth in 1792 of popular democratic societies in England which proclaimed their devotion to the writings of Paine and welcomed the establishment of a republic in France, caused much alarm to the propertied classes and spurred them to do all they could to arouse, in combination, anti-French and anti-radical feeling. In this endeavour they were much helped, of course, by the September Massacres and the execution of Louis XVI, and by the expansionist turn taken by the Revolution and the outbreak of war between France and Britain. The conservative reaction contained several strands. It involved the mobilization of the loyalists, first in organizations such as the Association for the Preservation of Liberty and Property against Republicans and Levellers (formed in November 1792), and then in military Volunteer Corps after 1793.21 It involved a certain amount of physical violence against radicals or their property, as in the Birmingham

19

For some suggestive remarks about this tension within British radicalism - and notably about the significance of differences over the use of English or French-style political terms - see two articles by M.J! Lasky: 'The English ideology', Encounter, Dec. 1972, pp. 25-38, and Jan. 1973, pp. 19-34; and The recantation of Henry Redhead Yorke', ibid., Oct. 1973, pp. 67-85. 20 The most general study of this reaction so far written is R.R. Dozier, For King, Constitution, and Country: The English Loyalists and the French Revolution (Lexington, Kentucky, 1983). But for some reservations about this book, see my review in Albion, xvi (1984), 308-9. 21 Austin Mitchell, The Association Movement of 1792-3', Historical Journal, iv (1961), 56-77; J.R. Western, The Volunteer Movement as an anti-revolutionary force, 1793-1801', English Historical Review, Ixxi (1956), 603-14.

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riots of 1791 directed against Joseph Priestley and his fellow-dissenters.22 It involved a considerable number of judicial prosecutions for sedition, and a few for high treason, and the passage of repressive legislation such as the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act (in force 1794-5 and 1798-1802) and the Treasonable Practices and Seditious Meetings Acts of December 1795. And it also involved a large amount of polemical writing and propaganda.23 Among the diverse publications produced by the loyalists there were works by Burke and others which were aimed at an educated readership and contained some sophisticated political theorizing; there were numerous sermons, delivered mainly by clergymen of the established Church; there were tracts such as Hannah More's Village Politics (1792), which she described as 'calculated for the understanding of the lower classes of the people';24 and there were broadsides, ballads and caricatures. A particularly large amount of material was brought out in 1792-3, much of it part of a remarkable publishing programme undertaken by the Association for the Preservation of Liberty and Property; and there were further peaks in output in 1798 and 1803, the years in which the danger of a French invasion seemed most serious.25 This essay is not the place for a general discussion of the conservative reaction; but it will be appropriate to consider what contribution was made to it by 'nationalism', and what forms this nationalism took. The national sentiment that was expressed in loyalist literature was sometimes styled as English, sometimes as British. More often than not, perhaps, the latter term was used, with the implication that Britain was unproblematically one nation. Scottish as well as English writers used the term in this way; when the Reverend Thomas Hardy, professor of ecclesiastical history at Edinburgh, wrote in 1793, This nation has now, for above an hundred years, enjoyed an uninterrupted course of public felicity, such as the history of mankind has no where else exhibited', it was the British nation he was referring to.26 In England, the terms 22

R.B. Rose, The Priestley Riots of 1791', Past and Present, xviii (1960), 68-88; Alan Booth, 'Popular loyalism and public violence in the north-west of England, 1790-1800', Social History, viii (1983), 295-313. 23 Clive Emsley, 'An aspect of Pitt's "Terror": prosecutions for sedition during the 1790s', Social History, vi (1981), 155-84; idem, 'Repression, "terrpr" and the rule of law in England during the decade of the French Revolution', English Historical Review, c (1985), 801—25; H.T. Dickinson, Liberty and Property: Political Ideology in Eighteenth-Century Britain (London, 1977), chap. 8; Robert Hole, 'British counter-revolutionary popular propaganda in the 1790s', in Britain and Revolutionary France: Conflict, Subversion and Propaganda, ed. Colin Jones (Exeter, 1983), pp. 53-69. 24 E.G. Black, The Association: British Extraparliamentary Political Organization 17691793 (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), p. 267. 25 Ibid., pp. 267-71; Gayle T. Pendleton, 'English Conservative Propaganda during the French Revolution, 1789-1802', Ph.D. dissertation, Emory University, 1976, pp. 152, 388; H.F.B. Wheeler and A.M. Broadley, Napoleon and the Invasion of England (2 vols., London, 1908), i, chap. 7, and ii, chap. 20. 26 The Patriot. Addressed to the People, on the present State of Affairs in Britain and France (Edinburgh, 1793), p. 75.

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'British' and 'English' were often used (as will be apparent from several quotations later in this essay) more or less interchangeably. On the positive side, there were several features of English (or British) life which were repeatedly held up as causes for national selfcongratulation. Among these the constitution was perhaps pre-eminent - a prescriptive, stable, balanced constitution, which ensured the rule of law and provided security of person and property for the great and the humble alike. England was also represented as a country of unequalled prosperity, in which opportunities of self-advancement existed for all, while the poor laws and the charity of the rich provided for those in need. English'society was harmonious, well ordered and cheerful; the refrain of a ballad in The Anti-Galilean Songster (1793), sung to the tune of'Good Queen Bess', ran: Long may Old England possess good cheer and jollity, Liberty and property, and no equality.27 All in all, the message was that the English nation was uniquely fortunate. A sermon called The Happiness of Living under the British Government, preached by a Sussex curate in 1793 and dedicated to the magistrates who had launched the local loyalist association, began by saying: 'What I propose to prove, is, that we of this nation are blessed above the rest of the world . . . There are no people under Heaven who have seen clearer instances of the interposition of Providence on their behalf.'28 Negatively, national sentiment was defined - as it had almost always been in the past - in terms of hostility to the traditional enemy across the Channel. A broadside of 1793 called The Alarm, being Britannia's Address to her People said typically: 'Beware of that perfidious, blood-thirsty nation, the French', the source of every evil you have experienced for a century past.'29 A print of the same year entitled The Contrast (etched by Rowlandson) consisted of two medallions symbolizing British liberty and French liberty. Under the first medallion, in which Britannia sits holding the scales of justice, are listed the British qualities of'Religion, Morality, Loyalty, Obedience to the Laws, Independence, Personal Security, Justice, Inheritance, Protection of Property, Industry, National Prosperity, Happiness'. In the French medallion stands a harridan with snakes in her hair, holding a sword in one hand and a pike with a human head impaled upon it in the other; she rests her foot on a decapitated body, while another corpse hangs from a lamp-post in the background. Beneath are listed 'Atheism, Perjury, Rebellion, Treason, Anarchy, Plunder, Equality, Madness, Cruelty, Injustice, Treachery, 27

The Anti-Gallican Songster, no. I (London, 1793), p. 11. Thomas Lewis, The Happiness of Living under the British Government (Tunbridge Wells, 1793), p. 4. 29 BL, shelf-mark 648. c. 26, fo. 95. 28

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Ingratitude, Idleness, Famine, National and Private Ruin, Misery'.30 Along with vilification of the French, there were many vaunting references to English successes over them at Crecy, Agincourt and Blenheim; and in 1804 Charles Burney (organist at Chelsea Hospital) summed up a great deal of contemporary rhetoric in a bluntly simple couplet: The stake is England! Britons rise! Your foes are Gauls! Those foes chastise!31 As suggested earlier in this essay, the contrast between the patriotism of the loyalists and the seeming disloyalty of the 'Patriots' naturally meant that the radicals' claim to the label was often challenged or ridiculed. Distinctions were drawn between Patriots and 'True Patriots'. A loyalist leaflet of 1793 was called True Patriots put to the Test; or An Infallible Test for knowing an Honest Man from a Rogue,32 and a song of the same year entitled True British Patriotism' contained the lines: Our Country, our Laws, our Religion we prize, Our Monarch we love, and all Traitors despise . . . Let the Knaves and the Fools rail at Rulers and Kings, We know, from good 'Order true Liberty springs.33 It was pointed out - for example by Isaac Hunt in a pamphlet entitled Rights of Englishmen: An Antidote to the Poison now vending by the Transatlantic Republican Thomas Paine (1791) - that Paine was very far from an English patriot; and Canning attacked the cosmopolitan ideas of the disciples of Condorcet and Paine in the poem 'New Morality' which appeared in The Anti-Jacobin in July 1798: Each pedant prig disowns a Briton's part, And plucks the name of England from his h e a r t . . . A steady Patriot of the World alone, The Friend of every Country - but his own.34 Also, loyalists often called themselves patriots without acknowledging in any way that the term might have been pre-empted by others. An anonymous poem called The Patriot-Briton; or England's Invasion, 1796 described loyalty as 'that jewel in the patriot's crown'; and Lloyd's, the marine insurance association, in setting up a Patriotic Fund in 1803, 30

B. N. Schilling, Conservative England and the Case against Voltaire (New York, 1950), pp. 222-3; Hole, p. 54. 31 Wheeler and Broadley, ii. 306. 32 Unfortunately I have been unable to trace a copy of this work and cannot therefore reveal what the infallible test was. The work was advertised on the end page of Sir William Young, The British Constitution of Government, compared with that of a Democratic Republic (London, 1793). 33 The Anti-Gallican Songster, no. II (London, 1793), p. 6. 34 The Anti-Jacobin, 6 July 1798.

64 Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution resolved 'That to animate the efforts of our defenders by sea and land, it is expedient to raise by the patriotism of the Community at large a suitable sum for their comfort and relief.35 As Cunningham has said, government supporters to a considerable extent reclaimed the vocabulary of patriotism from the radicals.36 They also did their best to take over along with it some of its eighteenthcentury associations with the defence of freedom, and to maintain that, in combating France, England was fighting/or liberty rather than against it. They were helped in this by political developments in France itself, and by the oppressiveness of the French towards some of the countries they 'liberated'. A particularly significant episode from the point of view of English public opinion was the French invasion of Switzerland in 1798. Switzerland had long been associated in English minds with freedom and independence; and supporters of Pitt's ministry, in denouncing the treatment of that country by the French and praising the resistance offered by the Swiss, were able to borrow much of the rhetoric of eighteenth-century Patriotism. The Times praised the 'fervent zeal' which the Swiss were displaying 'for the defence of their rights, liberty, and independence'; and a loyalist pamphleteer inquired: 'Who can view their present operations without sincerely wishing that success to bravery and patriotism which they must ever deserve, and without feeling a desire to imitate so heroic an example?'37 Late in the same year the conservative British Critic was able to claim: 'We stand forward as the defenders of the civil liberties of Europe, against an all-devouring tyranny; and a glorious office it is. '38 Bonaparte's rise to power increased the opportunities for declamation of this kind, which reached a peak at the resumption of the war after the Peace of Amiens. William Cobbett wrote in an article in his Political Register called -'Important Considerations for the People of this Kingdom', which was republished in pamphlet form: 'Singly engaged against the tyrants of the earth, Britain now attracts the eyes and the hearts of mankind; groaning nations look to her for deliverance-Justice, liberty, and religion, are inscribed on her banners.'39 A major question that remains to be considered is how far loyalist literature reflected (or helped to create) a genuinely national mood: how far the country as a whole was 'nationalistic' during the period we are 35 H. de Rougemont, A History of Lloyds Patriotic Fund from its Foundation in 1803 (London, n.d.), p. 4. 36 Cunningham, p. 15. 37 The Times, 31 Jan. 1798; Invasion of Britain: An Address to the People of Great Britain, on the subject of a French Invasion (London, 1798), p. 12. Cf. G. Bonnard, 'The invasion of Switzerland and English public opinion (January to April 1798)', English Studies, xx (1940), 1-26. 38 British Critic, xii (1798), 552; Pendleton, p. 427n. 39 Cobbett's Political Register, 30 July 1803.

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examining. Answers to this question are bound to be impressionistic, partly because evidence about the political attitudes of the 'inarticulate' classes is inevitably scarce. If one confines oneself to contemporary printed evidence -i.e. the productions of the 'articulate' - the impression one gets is that in the period under consideration the nation became increasingly united in support of the war effort, and that political dissent was virtually extinguished. As we have seen, some radicals went on expressing sympathy for France for several years after the beginning of the war. But by 1798 support for republican France and support for the cause of liberty seemed very difficult to reconcile; and at one of the last meetings of the London Corresponding Society in April of that year the society's president declared that the system now pursuing by the French government was not only oppressive to the surrounding states, but in the highest degree dangerous to the small remains of liberty now left in France . . . He considered the phrase of the 'Grande nation' to be a delusion calculated to direct the attention of the people of France from the dangers he was stating, and to substitute in their minds a spirit of military pride, in place of their attachment to civil liberty.40

In 1803 many people who had been advocates of peace and reform in the seventeen-nineties strongly supported the new war, believing that although English liberties might be incomplete they were certainly worth defending against Napoleon. One such person was the pamphleteer William Burdon, who wrote in a tract called Unanimity Recommended: 'The French were driven into the late war to defend their own liberty - and they are driven into the present, because they have attacked the liberty of all Europe!'41 Similarly James Mackintosh, whose Vindiciae Gallicae (1791) had been one of the most cogent replies to Burke's Reflections, said at a meeting in London in August 1803: 'If there be any amongst us who think the British Constitution not democratical enough, at least they must acknowledge, that General Buonaparte is no patron for democracy.'42 The Liverpool reformer William Roscoe was unhappy about the rancour and aggressiveness of the nationalistic feeling of the time, but even he admitted 'the indispensable duty and necessity' of a vigorous defence against invasion.43 Burdon proposed that questions such as parliamentary reform should be shelved for the duration of the war; and indeed for two or three years very little was 40 [Richard Hodgson], Proceedings of the General Committee of the London Corresponding Society, on the 5th, 12th, and 19th of April, 1798, relative to the Resistance of a French Invasion (London, 1798), p. 8. 41 Unanimity Recommended (Newcastle upon Tyne, 1803), p. 4. 42 Proceedings at a General Meeting of the Loyal North Britons, held at the Crown and Anchor, August 8th, 1803 (London, 1803), p. 14. 43 Henry Roscoe, Life of William Roscoe (2 vols., London, 1833), i. 277-9. Cf. J.E. Cookson, The Friends of Peace: Anti-War Liberalism in England 1793-1815 (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 164-6.

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heard of issues of this kind, and what remained of the radical press was extremely muted. Benjamin Flower's Cambridge Intelligencer was the only newspaper which opposed the resumption of hostilities, and it ceased publication in June 1803.44 What about the views of the inarticulate' during the same period? From such data as we have, there are grounds for suggesting that trends in working-class opinion did not altogether correspond to trends in the more educated strata of society. In the early seventeen-nineties and the opening years of the war, the popular mood seems to have been predominantly anti-French and anti-Jacobin. Although these years saw a novel agitation for political reform among certain artisan groups, the democratic societies involved only a small fraction of the working classes, and except in one or two places such as Sheffield and Norwich the radicals were conscious effacing either apathy or hostility from the bulk of the population: it was at this time that violence perpetrated against them by 'Church and King' mobs was most common. However, E.P. Thompson has underlined the 'major shift of emphasis in the inarticulate, "sub-political" attitudes of the masses' which took place during the French wars. By the post-war period, Church and King mobs were a thing of the past, and the traditionalism and deference which had fostered them had given way to a climate in which radical activists were generally sheltered and supported by working-class communities.45 From a number of places, there is evidence to suggest that the years between 1795 and 1801 were a crucial phase in this transformation. These were years of economic hardship, with especially severe distress in 17956 and 1800-1; there was scant success in the war against France; and repressive legislation, including the Combination Acts of 1799 and 1800, probably contributed to the estrangement of many working people from the political system. Historians of Nottingham have noted a marked change in popular sentiment between 1793-4, when 'Jacobin' opponents of the war were subject to persecution, and the later seventeen-nineties when the anti-ministerial and anti-war party could more than hold its own.46 In Birmingham, the slogans chalked on the walls in the early seventeen-nineties were 'Church and King', 'Damn the Jacobins', 'War and Pitt'; by 1800 they were very different: 'No war', 'Damn Pitt', 'No King, Lords or Commons'.47 In the Manchester area, the diarist William Rowbottom of Oldham recorded that the demand for oak-branches 44

Burden, p. 21; M.J. Smith, 'English Radical Newspapers in the French Revolutionary Era, 1790-1803', Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 1979, pp. 103-6. 45 The Making of the English Working Class (2nd edition, Harmondsworth, 1968), pp. 85, 202-3, 662-3. 46 M.I. Thomis, Politics and Society in Nottingham 1785-1835 (Oxford, 1969), pp. 17581. 47 R..B. Rose, 'The origins of working-class radicalism in Birmingham', Labour History, ix (1965), 11.

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which were hung up outside front-doors as a symbol of loyalism on the anniversary of the Restoration - was much reduced in May 1795 as compared with previous years; and a correspondent of the LCS wrote from Manchester in April 1796: The wretched state of our country has much altered the minds of the people. '48 In London, the existence of mass discontent was shown by the mobbing of the King's coach at the opening of parliament in October 1795; and in December 1797, when a day of national thanksgiving was proclaimed to celebrate the recent naval victories, Pitt was so insulted by the crowds on his way to the service in St Paul's that he did not join the procession on its return-journey but was escorted home later by a party of light horse.49 This day of national thanksgiving was criticized byJ.C. Rashleigh (a young law student who was later to become leader of the reform movement in Cornwall) in a pamphlet he published in 1798. He said that from the people's point of view there was very little cause for celebration, and he painted a sharp contrast between the condition of the country in 1797 and its relatively prosperous and satisfied condition five years earlier. He claimed that the distress resulting from the war, plus the oppressive behaviour of the government and the loyalists, had done far more to divide the nation and produce disaffection, than the writings of Paine and the efforts of the Corresponding Societies had done. Repression might have reduced the people to silence, but this silence should not be mistaken for acquiescence.50 In fact, disaffection was not entirely passive; to some extent, in 1797-8 and again in 1801-2, it became actively subversive. In certain areas notably ones where there was a substantial population of Irish immigrants, such as south Lancashire and London - underground organizations were formed on the model of the Society * of United Irishmen.51 While many radicals were disillusioned by the behaviour of the French, the extremists who belonged to these organizations were eager for a French invasion. A message from the 'Secret Committee of England' to the French Directory - found on an Irish priest in February 1798 when he was arrested at Margate attempting to cross to France declared: 'We now only wait with impatience to see the hero of Italy, and the brave veterans of the great Nation. Myriads will hail their arrival 48 Oldham Public Library, Rowbottom Diary, entry for May 1795; BL Add. MSS 27815, fo. 49. 49 Annual Register (Otridge edn.), 1795, Chronicle, pp. 37-8; 1797, Appendix to the Chronicle, p. 83. 50 The Case of the People of England addressed to the 'Lives and Fortune Men', both in and out of the House of Commons; as a ground for National Thanksgiving! (2nd edn., London, 1798), pp. 5-7, 86-91. 51 The fullest examination of underground political agitation during these years is Roger Wells, Insurrection: The British Experience 1795-1803 (Gloucester, 1983). On the importance of the Irish influence, see Marianne Elliott, Partners in Revolution: The United Irishmen and France (London, 1982), pp. 145-50.

68 Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution with shouts of joy. '52 There was doubtless some wishful thinking in this last assertion. But there was considerable uncertainty at this time about how far the common people, especially in the industrial areas, would be inclined to resist an invasion if one occurred. The Unitarian minister and scholar Gilbert Wakefield maintained in a pamphlet of 1798 that the misery of the common people was such as to make any change seem desirable to them, and that if the French could land seventy or eighty thousand men the kingdom would be lost. He was promptly charged with seditious libel, and sentenced to two years in jail.53 But the authorities may not have considered his analysis altogether implausible: in making arrangements for the defence of the country in 1798, the Government discouraged the arming of the poorer classes in the towns.54 In 1803-5, the degree of national solidarity was greater than it had been in the later seventeen-nineties, but even then it was not complete. Although it has sometimes been assumed that the anti-French broadsides which were printed in such quantities after the resumption of the war were a spontaneous expression of popular feeling, they ought rather to be seen as an indication of the anxiety of the higher classes to instil such sentiments. The broadsides were generally advertised in such terms as these: 'Noblemen, Magistrates, and Gentlemen, would do well by ordering a few dozen of the above Tracts of their different Booksellers, and causing them to be stuck up in the respective Villages where they reside, that the Inhabitants may be convinced of the CRUELTY OF THE CORSICAN.USURPER.'55 The underground societies had ceased to operate, but once again there were doubts about how reliable the lower classes in the manufacturing districts were. The Mayor of Leicester said in a letter to the Home Office that if a French landing coincided with a shortage of provisions, 'a fourth of the population would join the French Standard if they had an opportunity'.56 An inhabitant of Wolverhampton wrote that although there were many loyal men in the town these were only to be found among the more respectable householders; the temper of the working men being very different, it would be most unwise to entrust them with arms.57 And when a Nottingham labourer was charged with having said, while drinking at a 52

Reports from Committees of the House of Commons, reprinted by order of the House (15 vols., London, 1776-1806), x. 813. 53 Gilbert Wakefield, A Reply to some parts of the Bishop ofLlandaffs Address to the People of Great Britain (3rd edition, Hackney, 1798), p. 19; F.K. Prochaska, 'English state trials in the 1790s: a case study', Journal of British Studies, xiii (1973), 63-82. 54 Western, p. 611 andn. 55 FJ. Klingberg and S.B. Hustvedt, The Warning Drum: Broadsides of 1803 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1944), p. 94. Cf. Clive Emsley, British Society and the French Wars 17931815 (London, 1979), p. 118. 56 PRO, HO 42/73;J.L. andB. Hammond, The Town Labourer, 1760-1832 (2nd edn., London 1925), p. 83. 57 PRO, PC 1/3582, Matthew Jones to Sir Evan Nepean, 16 Oct. 1803.

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public house in June 1804, 'Damn Farmer George* and 'I wish Bonaparte would come', the Treasury Solicitor was advised that the prosecution would 'fare better before a Jury of the County of Nottingham than of the Town'.58 Overall, what generalizations can be made, in view of the evidence sampled in this essay, about English national feeling in the period under discussion? One thing that can be reiterated with confidence is that at this time it was overwhelmingly a conservative force.59 The defenders of the existing political and social order were much helped by the fact that antiJacobinism could be fused and reinforced with anti-Gallicanism - the latter attitude having deep historical roots in the popular mind, and being strengthened by the circumstances of the war and by loyalist propaganda. In opposing republican France and French-style radicalism, ministers and their supporters were able to portray themselves as custodians of the nation's traditional values and institutions, and were able to escape from a discourse in which they could be represented as an elite which was threatening to corrupt and undermine the nation's political heritage from within. Although the hardships associated with the war may have produced a burgeoning of resentment below the surface of politics, at the level of public activity and debate the forces of order definitely strengthened their hegemony during the period 17901805, and the radicals were forced to shelve their cosmopolitan ideals and their projects of domestic reform. The loyalists did not however win a total and lasting victory. The end of our period saw the beginning of a new trend; for the battle of Trafalgar, while a huge source of national pride, had the effect of reducing the pressure for national unity by removing the threat of invasion, and thereby opened the way for a gradual revival of interest in reform. For another ten years, it is true, the radicals had to contend with 58

PRO, TS 11/1003/3777. For a different interpretation, however, see Linda Colley, 'Whose nation? Class and national consciousness in Britain 1750-1830', Past and Present, cxiii (1986), 97-117. In opposition to historians who have seen nationalism as a 'functionalist creed', exploited by and supportive of an oligarchical state, she argues that the English state might have done far more than it did to foster popular national consciousness. She admits that Anglican clergymen were very active in promoting a patriotic consensus during the French wars, and that the government encouraged the cult of the monarchy as a focus for popular nationalism; but, she maintains, the British ruling classes were reluctant to resort to large-scale national mobilization because they were nervous about the 'popular participation' which it entailed. With most of this I would agree, but I part company from her when she goes on to talk about 'the state's neglect of and hostility to nationalism'. In view of her admissions about the ways in which the state did make use of national feeling, the 'neglect' was only relative (relative, that is, to some hypothetical conception of a still more systematic exploitation of such sentiment). As for 'hostility', the evidence surely indicates that although there may have been limits to the state's desire to mobilize popular elements in the national cause, the prevailing view of the authorities was that national feeling was something to be encouraged rather than opposed. 59

70 Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution the argument that no serious consideration could be given to such matters while the country was at war. But they were able to harness to their cause a growing discontent with wartime taxation and the swollen National Debt, and their spokesmen diffused the idea that the war was benefiting not the nation at large but an oligarchy of boroughmongers, placemen and speculators. So although in the short term the war strengthened national solidarity and the stability of the regime, in the longer term its effects can be seen as divisive. Lord John Russell, looking back from 1823, argued that the great burden of taxes resulting from the war had done far more than the ideas thrown up by the French Revolution to produce mass disaffection in England: The few enthusiastic Jacobins of 1793 were converted, in 1817 and the following years, into hundreds of thousands of malcontents. The pressure of sixty millions of taxes have indisposed more sound and loyal men to the Constitution of their country, than the harangues of Citizen Brissot and the fraternizing decree of November could have done in a hundred years.60

It turned out that the conservatives had not even won the battle over vocabulary. Early nineteenth-century reformers were called Patriots much as their eighteenth-century predecessors had been: a ministerial pamphlet of 1810 referred testily to Sir Francis Burdett and his followers as 'those who arrogate to themselves the exclusive right of being denominated Patriots'.61 Moreover, the radicals of this period reasserted much of the traditional content of Patriot ideology. There was little talk of general philanthropy and internationalism, or of the universal rights of man: the emphasis had shifted back to the historic rights of Englishmen.62 Burdett played on old themes such as the dangers of corruption and military repression, and he and Cobbett (now turned radical) insisted that in the reforms they sought there was nothing new nothing, in Cobbett's words, that was not to be found 'in the Laws of England or in the example of our Ancestors'.63

60 Essay on the History of the English Government and Constitution (2nd edn., London, 1823), pp. 270-1. 61 [Irving Brock], The Patriots and the Whigs, the most Dangerous Enemies of the State (London, 1810), p. 4. Cf. Cunningham, pp. 15-18. 62 Home Tooke, in the second volume (1805) of his Diversions of Purley (p. 14), straddled the two modes: *I revere the Constitution and constitutional LAWS of England; because they are in conformity with the LAWS of God and nature: and upon these are founded the rational RIGHTS of Englishmen. * Olivia Smith, The Politics of Language 17911819 (Oxford, 1984), p. 139. 63 J.R. Dinwiddy, 'Sir Francis Burdett and Burdettite Radicalism', History, lxv(1980), 17-31; H.T. Dickinson, British Radicalism and the French Revolution 1789-1815 (Oxford, 1985), pp. 69-70; Cobbett's Political Register, 2 Nov. 1816.

6 Ireland Marianne Elliott The French revolution and the war which followed occasioned the emergence of modern republican nationalism in Ireland and the early stages of its takeover by the catholic and Gaelic traditions. It is this republican, anti-English form of nationalism which will be the main focus of the essay, for although constitutional nationalism was (and still is) a continuing force, it was the former which emerged as a direct consequence of the end-of-century crisis and which has remained the most emotive force in Irish history.1 Modern revisionism justifiably criticizes the assumptive sameness with which the democratic revolution concept can at times- gloss over local peculiarities. Certainly what happened in Ireland in the seventeen-nineties was the culmination of a process going back a century or more. Yet few would deny the rollercoaster effect of the French revolution in accelerating the pace of such processes. The French revolutionary era did not create modern Irish nationalism. Rather, several quite separate strands had been developing at different speeds for over a century. The most advanced were a reforming nationalism, developing out of the colonial nationalism of the protestant settlers,2 and a radical dissenting tradition, closely linked to Scotland and concentrated in Ulster. Both were deeply influenced by the contractarian thinking behind the religious and political upheavals of the seventeenth century and were already coming to re-interpret the theory of civil society and consent of the governed to encompass the idea of one 1 Much of this paper is a distillation of my Partners in Revolution. The United Irishmen and France (London and New Haven, 1982). I am grateful to Dr Sean Connolly for his incisive criticisms and advice on an earlier draft. 2 The Irish 'Patriots' of the mid to late eighteenth century closely resernbled 'patriots' elsewhere in Europe. They worked within existing constitutional, social and political confines to achieve gradual improvement. They did not seek any dramatic overhaul of the system and did not identify the people as a whole with the political nation. J.C. Beckett disputes the term 'colonial nationalism' with some justification, pointing out that the 'patriots' saw themselves as speaking on behalf of an ancient nation rather than founding a new one. They did so, however, only by a peculiar form of mental hypnosis which prevented them seeing the absurdity of such claims when two thirds of that 'nation' were effectively excluded by their own legislation. See A New History of Ireland, iv: Eighteenth-Century Ireland, 1691-1800, ed. T.W. Moody and W.E. Vaughan (Oxford, 1986), p. xlvii.

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nation, one united people, linked to England by the person of the king alone. What the French revolutionary crisis did was to replace this constitutional nationalism, evolving from protestant and dissenting traditions, by the sectarian and republican variety which would be the force behind the creation of the new Irish state in 1920. In the century and a half before the seventeen-nineties Ireland had experienced a rate of change unsurpassed anywhere else in Europe. In the early seventeenth century it was still medieval in almost every sense, and though theoretically ruled by England since the twelfth century, the English interest was confined to a small area around Dublin and the Gaelic political and social structure continued undisturbed. Things were to change rapidly, however, after the Elizabethan Conquest at the close of the sixteenth century. In the course of the next century population pressures in England and Scotland combined with political considerations to produce a steady migration to Ireland, unparalleled even by that to the American colonies.3 Ireland was a frontier in very much the same sense as America, and the same kind of aggressive adventurers who founded the early American colonies brought Ireland into the modern world in the seventeenth century.4 The ramshackle Celtic civilization, with its pastoral and subsistence economy, its lack of written law or political organization, easily fell, not least through the collaboration of its own chieftains, recognizing the advantages of hereditary tenure introduced by English law.5 This Anglo-protestant process of modernization, though producing modern estates, a rash of village and town building, and very early trade and industrial developments to supply work to a rapidly expanding population, was not without its casualties. The main ones were those who had been dispossessed: the Old English, those descendants of earlier, mainly aristocratic settlers, who had remained catholic and fought on the wrong side in the various upheavals of the seventeenth century; the native Irish, alike catholic, forced off land confiscated from their chieftains and planted with English protestant settlers. 3

L.M. Cullen, The Emergence of Modern Ireland, 1600-1900 (Dublin, 1983), pp. 83-9. See the following works by N.P. Canny: 'The permissive frontier: the problem of social control in English settlements in Ireland and Virginia, 1550-1650', in K.R. Andrews, N.P. Canny and P.E.H. Hair (eds.), The Westward Enterprise (Liverpool, 1978); 'Dominant minorities: English settlers in Ireland and Virginia, 1550-1650', in A.C. Hepburn (ed.), Minorities in History (London, 1978); and The Upstart Earl: A Study of the Social and Mental World of Richard Boyle, fast Earl of Cork, 1566-1643 (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 26-7. 5 See K. Nicholls, Gaelic and Gaelicised Ireland in the Middle Ages (Dublin, 1972) and A New History of Ireland, iii: Early Modern Ireland, ed. T.W. Moody, F.X. Martin and FJ. Byrne (Oxford, 1976), particularly chaps. 1-6 for excellent accounts of the nature and decline of gaelic civilization; also N. Canny, 'Hugh O'Neill and the changing face of Gaelic Ulster', Studia Hibernica x (1970), 7-35; and K. Simms, 'Gaelic Lordships in Ulster in the later middle ages', thesis abstract, Irish Economic and Social History, iv £1977), 73-4. 4

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But the tradition of bitter resentment against the conqueror and of popular rebelliousness, transmitted to the twentieth century by the Gaelic revival of the late nineteenth, was a propagandist exercise and bore little relation to reality.6 Despite the pre-Norman attempt by ambitious Irish kings to create some idea of a distinct and united natio, Gaelic Ireland was singularly indifferent to English rule, and there are few signs of patriotic or nationalistic stirrings before the seventeenth century.7 Most of those directly affected by the land confiscations and exile had come from the upper reaches of Gaelic society. They had been the patrons of the literary men, the bards, whose elevated social standing reflected their importance as the interpreters and transmitters of Gaelic Ireland's oral culture and legal code. The frequent references in Gaelic bardic poetry of the eighteenth century to such emotive images as the 'Saxon chain', 'wandering exiles', the 'nation's grief, and 'Erin's bold redressers' coming from abroad to restore her 'olden day's glory', were less signs of aggrieved nationality than laments for the loss of their aristocratic patrons, and the declining status of the poet and of oral Gaelic culture in general. Indeed the point that it was an oral rather than a written culture explains why it crumbled so quickly in the face of publicopinion forming processes in the eighteenth century, based largely on the written word. The outcome was the strange phenomenon of backward-looking Gaelic scholars being forced to teach through English because of the absence of written Gaelic literature. As the most literate members of catholic society, they inevitably became also the vehicles of radical ideas spreading from the towns via a surge of press and pamphlet literature read to the illiterate at cross-roads and in church porches.8 Indeed, such was the shortage of books, that these reasonably-priced political pamphlets were snapped up as readers for the schools, and the teachers were generally seen by the authorities as one of the key purveyors of sedition and discontent. Though writing some decades later, Croker, in his analysis of Irish rural society, gives a vivid description of the role of the teacher, which was as true for the end of the eighteenth century as for the period in which he was writing. He described him as holding the most distinguished place in a village and 6 See R.F. Foster, 'History and the Irish question', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, xxxiii (1983), 169-92. 7 See D. O'Corrain, 'Nationality and kingship in pre-Norman Ireland', in Nationality and the Pursuit of National Independence, Historical Studies, ix, ed. T.W. Moody (Belfast, 1978), 1-35. The best discussion of nationalist tendencies in early modern Gaelic Ireland is Tom Dunne's illuminating article, 'The Gaelic response to conquest and colonisation: the evidence of the poetry', Studia Hibernica, xx (1980), 7-30, in which he shows the preNorman attempt to have been isolated, the sense of changing destinies in bardic poetry to have been firmly rooted in the loss of patrons, lords and hospitality, and the impossibility of anything like popular nationalism developing in such a highly stratified society. 8 James W. Phillips, 'A bibliographical inquiry into printing and bookselling in Dublin from 1670 to 1800' (Ph.D. thesis, University of Dublin, 1952), plates 1 and 2.

74 Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution using his position to preach principles verging on 'the broadest republicanism'. Praising the 'spirit of freedom and general equality' which prevailed under the Greek and Roman commonwealths, he would then launch into 'a sweeping invective' against 'the Saxon strangers', praise the memories of 'Gurran, Grattan, Lord Edward, and young Emmet' - popular patriots of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries - and call for a separation of the two kingdoms.9 In the absence of aristocratic patronage, the literary men of catholic Irish society turned more and more to teaching, and in Ireland's thriving hedge-school tradition, with its deep respect for the literary man and wandering scholar, the once aristocratic grievances about dispossession and loss of status were transmitted to catholic society generally. Under the Penal Code of the eighteenth century, the exclusion of catholics from all political, and a good many social, rights infused such laments with a new relevance. And this at at time when the much more politically articulate and radical nationalism of the protestants and dissenters, influenced by the debate on who constituted 'the people', was shedding its fears of the catholic masses and educating them into the injustice of their exclusion from the nation's political life. The resultant fusion of the old and the new traditions was a dangerous mixture, which in the crisis of the seventeen-nineties proved unharnessable. In the development of Anglo-Irish protestant nationalism it was the American rather than the French revolution which pointed the debate towards the majority catholic populace as the real basis of popular sovereignty.10 After the turmoil of the seventeenth century, the protestant interest had emerged triumphant. But it had been a near thing, and the first real assertion of their rights vis-a-vis the executive came in 9

T.C. Croker, Researches in the South of Ireland (London, 1824), pp. 326-9. See also P.J. Dowling, The Hedge Schools of Ireland (Dublin, 1935), pp. 1-10, 84, 102-3, 109-11, and P.M. Hogan, 'Civil unrest in the province of Connacht 1793-1798: the role of the landed gentry in maintaining order' (M.Ed, thesis, University College Galway, 1976), p. 52. Louis Cullen has developed at some length this point about the teachers as the bridge between modern ideas and the Gaelic traditions. See his Emergence of Modern Ireland, particularly pp. 23-24, 131-2, 237; also 'The cultural basis of modern Irish nationalism', in The Roots of Nationalism: Studies in Northern Europe, ed. Rosalind Mitchison (Edinburgh, 1980), pp. 91-106; and see my Partners in Revolution, p. 16, for the circulation of radical publications among the lower orders. The dissemination of political ideas in pre-industrial societies is problematic, and whilst there is overwhelming evidence for a knowledge of events in France within Irish rural society in this period, historians still disagree as to the source of such knowledge. See e.g. D. W. Miller, Tresbyterianism and "modernization" in Ulster', Past and Present, Ixxx (1978), p. 76; also the useful corrective to the traditional rosy image of the hedge schools (essentially pay schools set up by individual teachers) in Mary Daly, The development of the National School, system, 1831-40', in Studies in Irish History presented to R. Dudley Edwards, ed. Art Cosgrove and Donal McCartney (Dublin, 1979), pp. 150-63! 10 See R.B. McDowell, Irish Public Opinion 1780-1800 (Dublin, 1944), pp. 39-50, for an account of the effects of the American revolution on Irish opinion.

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the 1692 parliament, after the Restoration period had witnessed a disastrous decline in the protestant interest, and its near annihilation by James II. The war between William III and James II had been fought almost entirely in Ireland and with considerable justification the Irish protestants felt that they had saved England herself from popish tyranny. It was therefore with a sense of anger and injustice that they witnessed the newly powerful English parliament reduce their own to a level of dependency inconsistent with their new-found recognition of the Irish parliament as a bastion against arbitrary authority.11 The snub at being treated as an inferior breed had all the more sting since, at this stage, though-gradually being forced into developing a purely Irish identity, they still regarded themselves as 'Englishmen of Irish blood', superior to the native Irish and heirs to the same birthright as their English brothers. England herself had been one of the first countries to develop a strong sense of national identity and it is a point worth consideration how far this association with a superior power possessing an already wellestablished and aggressively confident sense of national identity should have forced a counter identity on its oldest colony at a much earlier date than occurred in other countries in the western world. Moreover, England's was a sense of identity which was geographically confined, with a tendency to regard her sons settled outside those confines as an inferior species, necessitating an enforced redefinition of that identity by the latter.12 Certainly the most notable early writings on Ireland's national status had come from within the English colony in Ireland rather than from the native Irish, and it was from that same source that one of the most influential tracts of colonial nationalism issued. William Molyneux's The Case of Ireland's being bound by Acts of the Parliament of England stated (1698) translated many of Locke's ideas into Irish terms, and through the enormous influence which it was to exercise in eighteenth-century Irish thought, it meant that modern republican nationalism was based firmly on Locke, more than on Rousseau, Paine or any of the other political philosophers commonly thought to have been responsible for the development of revolutionary nationalism at the end of the eighteenth century. Molyneux denied the right of the English parliament to bind Ireland by its statutes and stated that there was no power superior to the Irish parliament besides that of the king. He based this argument on the 'universal law of nature' and 'the consent of the people', which excluded the dominion of one country over another. He also rehearsed the 11 The best account of this emergent parliamentary voice of protestant 'nationalism' is James I. McGuire, 'The Irish Parliament of 1692', in Penal Era and Golden Age. Essays in Irish History, 1690-1800, ed. Thomas Bartlett and D. W. Hayton (Belfast, 1979), pp. 1-31. 12 This was the overall conclusion of papers delivered to a conference on 'The formation of the English state: problems of allegiance and identity', held at St Peter's College, Oxford, March 1985.

76 Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution arguments later adopted by Paine that no generation could deprive future generations of their natural rights, and by the American colonists that no man could submit to laws to which he had not consented.13 Thus had Molyneux as early as 1698 singled out what were later to become the key elements in the theory of popular sovereignty as the sole basis for civil government, and it is interesting to note that in the early seventeennineties the protestant radicals - shortly to become Ireland's first republicans - likewise based their support for the French revolution on the same principle of the fundamental right of every man to decide the laws by which he would be governed.14 Thus were the seeds of modern democratic theory already germinating in Irish political thinking long before the ideas of the Enlightenment and the American and French revolutions gained currency, and they produced that contradictory tradition of rebellious loyalism which has baffled English governments to the present day. That they were already in common currency before the revolt of the American colonies explains the widespread sympathy which that revolt aroused within the protestant political nation; it also helps to explain the attempt (successful in its outcome) to put them into practice when England's difficulty during the American War of Independence, as ever, proved Ireland's opportunity. The protestant Volunteers, initially formed to protect the country from invasion by America's continental allies, were soon holding out the threat of Ireland going the same way, if the longstanding demand for constitutional reform were not granted. Full legislative independence from England was duly won in 1782-3 - the implementation in theory of Molyneux's central theme: that the only constitutional connection between Ireland and England was that of a common monarch. These protestant 'patriots', however, seemed content to bask in their own parliamentary victory and forgot that they had called upon the unenfranchised in support of their claims. Many clearly recognized the contradiction between their arguments and the continuing exclusion of the catholics from all political power, and there can be little doubt that the arguments coming out of America and the sense of identity with the American cause were creating a bridge across which protestant 'patriotism' and the newer emerging catholic national identity would have eventually come together in a more comprehensive and peaceful union than the truncated form created by the crisis of 1798.15 The catholics showed no sign that they were not prepared to wait 13

W. Molyneux, The Case of Ireland's being bound by Acts of Parliament in England, stated, 4th edn. (Dublin, 1720), especially pp. 5, 41 and 48; also C. Robbins, The Eighteenth-Century Commonwealthman (Cambridge, Mass., 1959), pp. 137-43. 14 See Life of Theobald Wolfe Tone, ed. W.T.W. Tone (2 vols., Washington, 1826), i. 363, 367, 406; also Northern Star, 9-13 Mar. 1793. 15 See P. Rogers, The Irish Volunteers and Catholic Emancipation, 1778-1793 (London, 1934).

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on events, for the flickering signs of a Gaelic national identity revealed it as something remote and ethereal, lacking any real sense of natural rights and justified revolt against oppression. Indeed it can be argued that modern national identity reached the catholic Irish in proportion to their declining Gaelic identity. Traditional Gaelic-speaking areas were not affected by revolutionary ideas in the seven teen-nineties. Only in the late nineteenth century were Gaelic traditions resurrected and attached irretrievably to catholic nationalism. In the late eighteenth century it was rather the developing nationalism of the dissenters which proved most responsive to events in France. The dissenting tradition in Ireland was almost exclusively an Ulster presbyterian one. By the end of the eighteenth century it combined a sense of provincial superiority (Ulster being then economically the most progressive of all the provinces) with presbyterianism's traditional sense of religious and political purity. Most had not come over with the planters of the seventeenth century, but had settled peacefully in northeast Ulster, frequently themselves religious refugees from the Scottish lowlands. They saw episcopalianism as having compromised the Reformation with its continuing attachment to prelacy. They were inherently antagonistic to authoritarianism and to the aristocratic landed class which dominated Anglo-Irish episcopalianism, and prone to rebelliousness and sectarian fragmentation within their own church organization. It was with good reason that they were described by a fellow United Irishman as 'Lovers of Liberty, and almost republicans from religion, from education and early habits'.16 Above all their religious belief in a direct covenant between God and man made the contract theory of civil society fundamental to their thought process, and, through Francis Hutcheson, their very advanced ideas on the right of resistance when the compact was broken deeply influenced Price, Priestley and the American revolutionaries alike. With a much deeper sense of injustice at their exclusion from Irish politics by the Test Act than the catholics - for they too had fought to defend the protestant succession against James II - there was little love lost between them and the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy, and they distrusted and despised that same Irish parliament whose independence was the sole aim of the narrow nationalism of the protestant ascendancy.17 They were deeply influenced by the Enlightenment, particularly in Scotland, where they had to go to be educated because of their exclusion from Ireland's only university, and were convinced that religious and social injustices could not be tolerated in the new liberal age in which they lived. But they had little faith in the ability of a corrupt Dublin parliament to reform itself, and instead began to exercise their own developing belief in popular 16

W.J. McNeven, Pieces of Irish History (New York, 1807), p. 9. See my Watchmen in Sion: The Protestant Idea of Liberty, Field Day pamphlet no. 8 (Derry, 1985). 17

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sovereignty by appealing directly to the nation through a series of conventions, clubs, a radical press and ultimately through the most radical of all the advanced reform societies to emerge in Britain in the era of the French revolution: the United Irishmen. This class element in presbyterianism became part and parcel of United Irish thinking. It helps explain why, despite the continuing anti-catholicism of dissent, they supported universal manhood suffrage and catholic emancipation as the only means of reforming a corrupt establishment, why they moved so quickly to planning the overthrow of that establishment when it rejected reform, and why their support for the French Revolution deepened as its attack on titles and property progressively alienated privileged classes everywhere.18 As in England, initial reaction to the French revolution by the AngloIrish was complacently favourable, based on a sense that France had finally won the liberty they already had after 1688, and more so after 1782. But their refusal to extend that liberty to the nation at large—much of which they still thought 'unfit for liberty'19 - had been responsible for the political education of the nation by the radicals, after the Irish parliament's rejection of reform in 1783; and the wording of the oaths and statements of the new form of popular catholic secret society developing from the late seventeen-eighties (the Defenders) is a token of the effect of such a process on popular thinking.20 Louis Cullen, in a recent, thought-provoking book has commented on the creation of Irish public opinion in the latter decades of the eighteenth century and the role of the radical press in opinion-forming.21 The United Irishmen in particular were consummate propagandists, disseminating Taine and poison', issuing cheap editions of the most important political pamphlets of the day, and, most importantly, transmitting their advanced reform ideas and news from France in their highly polemical and immensely

18

This contempt for the upper classes and their political institutions comes out strongly in the U.I. paper, the Northern Star, see e.g. issues of 1-5 Dec. 1792 and 9-13 Apr. 1795, and Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, T. 765/383; also Life of Tone, i. 37980, 382-405; and McDowell, Public Opinion, pp. 82-3. 19 See e.g. The Parliamentary Register: or, History of the Proceedings and Debates of the House of Commons of Ireland (15 vols., Dublin, 1784-95), x. 115. See the discussion of this point in Tone's Argument on behalf of the Catholics of Ireland, in Life of Tone, i. 356-62; also ii. 161. 20 On the Defenders see my 'The origins and transformation of early Irish republicanism', International Review of Social History, xxiii (1978), 405-28; andT. Bartlett, 'Select documents, XXXVIII: Defenders and Defenderism in 1795', Irish Historical Studies, xxiv (1985), 373-94. 21 L.M. Cullen, Emergence of Modern Ireland, pp. 236-7.

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22

popular newspaper, the Northern Star. The product of a decade of this onslaught of propaganda on possibly the most mobile and literate of any peasant culture in eighteenth-century Europe was dramatic. Most notably we see a sudden coming together of the vengeful and sectarian tendencies, percolating down from the upper reaches of Gaelic society, and the very modern ideas about equality and the rights of man. Moreover, they were being presented with a new image of France as the promoter of those rights, which complemented perfectly Gaelic images of France as the home of the exiled leaders, the catholic ally who would come to redress their wrongs.23 Long before the United Irishmen themselves opened negotiations with France, the Defenders were speaking confidently of receiving French help, and their documents are full of French revolutionary imagery. 'Are you consecrated?' runs their oath, 'I am - to what? - To the National Convention - to quell all nations - to dethrone all Kings, and plant the Tree of Liberty in our Irish land whilst the French Defenders will protect our cause, and the Irish Defenders pull down the British laws . . ,'24 That the average Irish catholic never fully understood the growing anti-catholicism of the revolution is scarcely surprising when the radicals themselves remained largely ignorant of the train of events in France. Taking their information from the published debates and decrees of the National Assembly, they were propagating the rhetoric of the French revolution, particularly its claims to cosmopolitanism, fraternity, renunciation of wars of conquest and its offer of assistance to peoples wishing to be free.25 It was rhetoric which accorded well with the Gaelic tradition's image of France as the ally and avenger of the catholics. Nor is it surprising that the catholics should have expected some kind of dramatic reinstatement of their religion, given the increasingly strident demands of the radicals on their behalf over the preceding decade. But at the end of the eighteenth century there were still very deep-seated prejudices among the protestant community at large against readmitting the catholics to the political nation, an engrained belief in the 22 Various reports on this dissemination of U.I. propaganda may be found in Irish State Paper Office, 620/19/29, 33, 73, 101 and 620/34/54; also Public Record Office, H.O. 100/43/145-51. MacNeven later claimed - Pieces of Irish History, p. 16 - that they printed 10,000 copies of Tone's Argument in Belfast alone, and also sixpenny editions of Paine's Rights of Man (Northern Star, 2-5 May 1792); see also Kent Record Office, U.840 0.143/3 and 0.144/10, and Trinity College Dublin, MS 873/69, for the dissemination of Paine. 23 J. O'Daly, Reliques of Irish Jacobite poetry, 2ndedn. (Dublin, 1949), pp. 27-37, 61-5; and Sean O'Tuama and Thomas Kinsella, An Duanaire 1600-1900: Poems of the Dispossessed (Portlaoise, 1981), pp. 153, 159, 171 and 191. 24 P.R.O., H.O. 100/44/115-18, Defender oaths. 25 See in particular the Northern Star for 12-13 Sept., 10-13 Oct., 1-5 Dec. 1792, and 24-28 Aug. 1793, the last singling out clauses 118-120 of the new French constitution on relations with foreign nations.

80 Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution archaic and erroneous nature of popish doctrine - making its^adherents incapable of liberty - and overall a fear that once in power they would overturn the land settlement of the previous century and take revenge on the descendants of the planters.26 The advanced radicals and dissenters argued that they had been made fit for liberty by their protestant friends.27 But it was the example of the most catholic power in Europe liberating itself which permitted the advanced radicals to denounce as no longer valid the argument that the catholics were generally unfit for liberty. The founding manifesto of the United Irish Society located authority firmly in popular sovereignty, rooted in the nation, of which the native Irish, the catholic majority, formed the bulk: 'The object of this institution is to make a United Society of the Irish nation . . . Peace in this island has hitherto been a peace in the principles and with the consequences of civil war . . . But we gladly look forward to brighter prospects; to a people united in the fellowship of freedom; to a parliament the express image of the people; to a prosperity established on civil, political, and religious liberty . . .' The demand for catholic rights, it asserted, had been subsumed into that for the rights of 'the whole community', and the thorny problem of how to attain radical political reform, without first securing catholic emancipation, was glossed over. But many of the protestant United Irishmen became increasingly unhappy as the problem of the catholics came to threaten the overall reform programme.28 Certainly it is unlikely that the impasse caused by the catholic issue in the seventeen-eighties would have been broken without some event of the magnitude of the French revolution, and Theobald Wolfe Tone, in his influential Argument on behalf of the Catholics of Ireland (1791), drew Irish lessons from French events. He saw the French Revolution as the living denial of the common association of Catholicism with absolute power. 'The rights of man', he wrote, reflecting on the advanced state of Irish political opinion, even in relation to the 'stupendous' event which had taken place in France, 'are at least as well understood there as here, and somewhat better practised', and he clinched his argument by pointing to the disappearance of religious bigotry in France and the inclusion of catholics and protestants alike in its Assembly. The assumption is that if a nation long reviled for its oppressive Catholicism could reform itself so completely, how much greater the shame on a nation as politically advanced as Ireland not to do so. The French had won the gains of 1688 and 1782 all rolled into one and gone beyond both to establish a truly representative government.29 26

I.S.P.O., Westmorland Correspondence, i. 3-16 and ii. 1-2, 80-3. Northern Star, 7-11 July and 1-5 Dec. 1792. 28 'Society of United Irishmen of Dublin', circular of 30 Dec. 1791 in Northern Star, 711 Jan. 1792. 29 Life of Tone, i. 359. 27

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Tone's pamphlet was directed at the Ulster presbyterians, whose political radicalism was impeded by their traditional view of popery as Antichrist and of the catholics generally as its unthinking slaves. The catholic monarchies in Europe had long figured in prophetic interpretations of Antichrist in the Book of Revelations, and in the characteristic millenarianism of popular presbyterianism, the French revolution was seen as the accomplishment of Armageddon, with popery itself dismantling the forces of Antichrist. The catholics had at last seen the error of their ways, and experience of freedom would in time cause them 'to think like other people'.30 It was scarcely a sound basis for long-term co-operation with the catholics, and the newly aggressive and confident Irish Catholicism which was to develop over the next decades was to prove the unreality of the dissenters' belief in this new era of freedom consuming popery. It was, however, an important factor in this temporary coming together of the sects to produce Irish republican nationalism, as it was in the protestant withdrawal when the prophetic vision exploded. One must not overlook the fact that it took the enormous impact of Daniel O'Connell finally to stamp Irish nationalism as a catholic preserve. But the process was determined by the developments of the seventeen-eighties and -nineties and only required the weakening of protestant nationalism to take over. It was the abolition of monarchy in France and the resulting war which achieved this. Wolfe Tone was the least monarchical of all the United Irishmen and was aghast to find republican France totally persuaded of the monarchical tendencies of the Irish when he arrived in Paris to negotiate French military aid in 1796.31 But France was right. The Gaelic tradition was imbued with the medieval idea of kingship as the protector of the poor, and amidst the otherwise revolutionary assertions of Defender oaths one still finds this continuing reverence for the idea of monarchy.32 The protestant case for greater independence from England was based on the idea of a dual monarchy and they had also imbibed the British sense of superiority about their purified, constitutional monarchy after 1688. The place of monarchy in the dissenting tradition is more problematic and the transferral of the source of all law from the monarch to the people flew in the face of the legalistic wording of the Westminster Confession of Faith, with its dictate of strict loyalty to God's representative on earth. 30

Quoted from Life of Tone, i. 187. The political radicalism of presbyterianism, long assumed by historians, has come in for considerable reappraisal: see Miller, 'Presbyterianism and "Modernization"'; also Peter Brooke, 'Controversies in Ulster Presbyterianism, 1790-1836' (Ph.D. thesis, Cambridge University, 1980), pp. 26-37. 31 Life of Tone, ii. 49-53, 160-1. 32 Sean O'Tuama and Thomas Kinsella, Poems of the Dispossessed, pp. xxvii, 129, 157, 167, 187, 189, 237; also Charlotte Brooke, Reliques of Irish Poetry (Dublin, 1789), p. 353; and P.R.O., H.Q. 100/58/201-7, Defender oath asserting that they have no dispute with the king.

82 Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution However, a significant minority of presbyterian congregations - the seceders and reformed presbyterians - refused to recognize any civil authority in which their church was not sovereign, and there was sufficient ambivalence generally in presbyterian attitudes to episcopalian-inspired political authority for them to see government as much as popery among the forces of Antichrist.33 It was an ambivalence captured perfectly by Milton in his barbed reminder to those Ulster presbyterians who condemned parliament's treatment of Charles I, that it was their own John Knox who 'taught professedly the doctrine of deposing and of killing Kings'. Moreover, with a progressive shift away from the dogmatism of the Westminster Confession, a more tolerant latitudinarianism came to dominate Ulster presbyterianism by the end of the century and in turn the new United Irish Society founded in Belfast in 1791.34 But the United Irish Society in general was slow to break with this tradition of intense loyalty to the person of the monarch and adhered to the old idea of evil counsellors misleading the king against the true interests of the people.35 Given this tradition, the deposition and subsequent execution of Louis XVI came as a great shock, even to the United Irishmen, and turned many against the Revolution even before the outbreak of war. These advanced radicals had long ago lost faith in the institutions of government in England and Ireland alike. They had accepted a new theory of authority resting upon popular consent, and recognizing that such a theory made nonsense without the inclusion of the catholics, they had, as they claimed, 'nationalized liberty' and for the first time put forward the concept of an 'Irish nation of the whole people'.36 Loyalty to the crown alone, therefore, kept them attached to the connection with England and the discomfiture at the royal executions in France forced them to redefine their approach to monarchy in general. There had been much talk of despotism and tyrants and the majesty of the people even before the French revolution, and there was certainly little recognition of, or sympathy with, the concept we have come to call Enlightened Despotism. Prussia and 'Muscovy Kate' were quite simply the oppressors of Poland. Not until 1790 do we see any real questioning of the English monarch's right to rule Ireland, with a hesitant recognition in Tone's writings that the dual monarchy idea made nonsense, since no king based in England could be expected to put Ireland's interest above 33

Brooke, 'Controversies in Ulster Presbyterianism', chap. 1. Elliott, Watchmen in Sion. 35 Life of Tone, i. 347-9, 553; and G. Benn, A History of the Town of Belfast from the Earliest Times to the Close of the Eighteenth Century (2 vols., London, 1877-80), i. 651-3. 36 Society of United Irishmen of Dublin to the Hon. Simon Butler and Oliver Bond Esq.', 16 Aug. 1793, and Society of United Irishmen to the Volunteers of Ireland, 14 Feb. 1792, reprinted in R.R. Madden, The United Irishmen, their Lives and Times (7 vols., London, 1842-5), i. 337-40, and revised edn. (4 vols., London, 1857-60), i. 193-6, respectively. 34

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that of the other kingdom. Although he and his fellow United Irishmen were still proclaiming their loyalty to monarchy the following year, by 1792 - no doubt influenced by Paine's powerful argument against hereditary monarchy, but most immediately to condone France's war they had begun to apply the full contract theory to monarchy, to see kingship as 'delegated power' and the struggle on the continent as one between 'Despotism' and 'the sacred and inalienable rights of man'. Ye! soon shall these truths far and wide be convey'd. 'Spite of Pindar's quaint prattle and Burke's raving din, That the thrones of true Kings by the PEOPLE are made And when kings become tyrants - submission is sin! That the power of oppressors can ne'er be of Heav'n, A being all-just - cannot justice despise: A Being all-just - EQUAL RIGHTS must have giv'n; And who robs man of these must offend the All-wise.37

They condoned the removal of Louis on the grounds that he had betrayed the trust of the people,38 and though the health of the king 'of Ireland' continued to appear in their toasts over the next year, these advanced protestant and dissenting radicals were already republicans in theory before war-induced repression and suppression in 1794 forced them to become so in reality. With that recognition an alliance with the catholics was not far off, and had in effect already taken place in parts of Ulster before it was officially sanctioned in 1795. But it was the French war which; by alienating liberal protestants and dissenters from this developing republican nationalism, finally engineered the takeover of the national ideal by the catholic tradition. The French revolution occurred at a time when existing social relationships were already breaking down and when the power of the ruling elite had been considerably weakened by attack from within. The hopes and fears of each social and political grouping had already been aroused to a level which permitted each to read its own expectations into events in France. The subsequent war may have revealed the very divergent nature of these expectations and destroyed the middle ground, but its economic effects further alienated the people from the landed gentry, and increased taxation, rising prices and declining manufacturing outlets helped give republican nationalism its popular base in the rural proletariat and the urban artisan class. History has shown that war can be one of the most effective agents of revolution. But it also promotes counter-revolution and can polarize society irrevocably. All these processes occurred in Ireland as as result of the French 37 I.S.P.O., 620/19/88a, Songs on the French Revolution sung at the celebration in Belfast, 14 July 1792, and published in pamphlet form. See also Northern Star, 30June-4 July 1792. 38 Northern Star, 1-5 Sept. 1792; also issue for 23-26 May 1792.

84 Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution revolutionary war. It must also be added that active subversion by France herself in Ireland in 1792-4, and the tentative offer of military assistance, played a prominent part in deciding the newly outlawed United Irish Society to opt for militant republicanism in 1795, rather than condone the complete submergence of the reform programme which they had played such a large part in promoting.39 But protestant reforming nationalism, which had developed against a background of catholic quiescence, had rapidly faded in the face of the newly militant Catholicism of the Defenders. Even those who had been in the vanguard of the reform movement seemed to be slavishly supporting the war'and attendant emergency measures at home - revealing the everpresent truth about protestant nationalism, that it was an elitist concept, which could only flourish in a climate of self-confidence and which fell apart when insecurity about land and religion was intensified by the clear implications of the natural rights theory. Protestant fears about this newly aggressive and vengeful Catholicism had already led in 1795 to the upgrading and extension of protestant revenge gangs, active in Ulster since the seventeen-eighties, into the Orange Order, and for the next three years the country was torn by fratricidal conflict between Orangeism and the Defenders. Fears of massacre, genuine economic distress, and an ever-increasing catholic belief in a French invasion as a panacea for their ills, were combining to produce an alarming escalation of lawlessness in the country from 1795 onwards. The Irish government was obliged by the panic pressure of its supporters to introduce a package of security measures which embarrassed London by its severity, and by the creation of an almost exclusively protestant yeomanry force to implement it in June 1796. With that, the Orangemen were entrusted with the task of subduing the country, the catholic population became the victim of intensely sectarian repression, and the country seemed caught in the grip of an uncontrollable spiral of violence. The brutal disarming of Ulster in 1797 was the main product of loyalist panic, and with signs that the uncommitted catholics suffered most, with stories of indiscriminate house-burning, torture, and arrest, and an unprecedented number of capital convictions at the Ulster assizes, signs of billowing smoke on the horizon, as the shock tactics applied to Ulster, were progressively extended to other parts of the country, were sufficient to push adjacent provinces to rebellion in 1798, independently of France and the United Irishmen alike.40 It had been fears of just such a bloodbath, and distrust of the catholic masses generally, which had caused the United Irishmen to pin the fate of 39 For the various French missions to Ireland before 1796 see Elliott, Partners in Revolution, chap. 3, and Archives Nationales, AFIV 1671, plaq. 1, fos. 99-105. 40 Carlow in '98, ed. R. J. McHugh (Dublin, 1949), pp. 68 and 74. For the disarming of Ulster, see I.S.P.O., 620/30/31; British Library Add. MSS 33103, fos. 224-37; and Northern Star, nos. 538-46.

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their cause to that of France. At first their negotiations in Paris had proved remarkably successful, particularly in view of the Directory's growing disillusionment with foreign revolutionaries, and a major invasion force under France's then outstanding general, Hoche, had only failed to land in Ireland at the end of 1796 because of a remarkable series of accidents. But under the second Directory in 1797 France had returned to her more normal policy of helping only those foreign revolutionaries who helped themselves, and demanded internal Irish rebellion before she would again risk her military and naval forces in such a hazardous venture.41 France proved as good as her word when Ireland finally did rebel the following year and, in view of the absence of most of her best military experts with Bonaparte in Egypt, her efforts to get help to the Irish rebels were impressive. But the United Irish leaders had held back their supporters for too long, and, when Ireland finally did rebel, most United leaders were either in prison or in exile; their rebellion turned into the fractricidal massacre of their worst nightmares. Deserted by their external protectors, France and England, and some thought by the United Irish leaders themselves, catholic and protestant alike fought in the summer of 1798 with a bitterness and suicidal recklessness born of mutual fears of genocide. The atrocities on both sides were barbaric, perpetuating new and more emotive reasons for sectarian division into the next century, destroying protestant nationalism, pushing the presbyterian reformers - once the catholics' main hope — firmly onto the side of sectarian loyalism, and making republicanism and loyalism exclusive catholic or protestant preserves. There was a feeling among the catholic peasantry that they had somehow been deserted by those protestant leaders who had urged them to rebel in the first place -just as the loyalists had felt abandoned by England - and the result was the kind of religious polarization and intense distrust of the other kind which would be the main legacy of the period to future generations.42 The ideal of a united Irish nation taking its place in a new, freer and happier Europe, cleansed of 'tyrants' and 'slaves' by the example and possibly the help of France, was the product of an unusual era in Irish history, an era when its social leaders had seen its problems against a background of enlightened cosmopolitanism, an era when the tranquillity of its populace and the confidence of the protestant political nation was producing a gradual but progressive relaxation of the laws which had kept the different parts of the nation in hostile opposition for much of the century. The example of the French revolution had at first quickened the pace of this development and intensified the desire of the 41 See M. Elliott, The United Irishman as diplomat', in Rebels, Radicals and Establishments, ed. Patrick Corish (Belfast, 1985), pp. 69-89. 42 T. Moore, The Memoirs of Lord Edward Fitzgerald (London, 1897), Appendix vi, p. 463; see also P.R.O.N.I., D.561745.

86 Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution protestant reformers to bring the catholics back into the political nation. But the war, and France's obvious interest in utilizing Irish discontent, revived protestant fears of a catholic uprising and produced a sudden regression on the reform issue, when the demand for reform had proceeded too far to be stopped except by force. Repression deepened as London's neglect of the security situation revived old protestant fears of encirclement, bringing about the very thing they most feared: a catholic uprising. Protestant fears and catholic hopes became so exaggerated by the coalition of internal and external republicanism that Ireland itself became incapable of preventing the impending disaster and appealed to its external mentors, to England and to France, to intervene. Neither understood the situation well enough to do so until the disaster had taken place; and the net result was that Ireland, raised to feverish expectation of a more golden future by the early seventeen-nineties, entered the nineteenth century all the more bitterly divided because of the sudden and brutal nature of the collapse of that expectation. The antiEnglishness of protestant colonial nationalism and the contractarian and justified-rebellion aspects of the dissenter-generated republican nationalism had been absorbed into the catholic tradition and reinterpreted in a way which alienated the bulk of reforming protestants from the very movement which they had created in the first place. It required another century for an artificially revived Gaelic culture to be identified with catholic nationalism exclusively, but the disintegration of protestant constitutional nationalism in the seventeen-nineties was the decisive factor in the kind of Irish nationalism transmitted to the modern age.

7 Denmark Ole Feldbaek It is well known that revolutionary France endeavoured, by political and military means, to export national feelings and aspirations. But the Europe to which Paris strove to export this political and social dynamite was not totally unprepared for it. In 1789 national ideas and feelings did already exist in one way or another in most European countries, if not in all. It is necessary therefore to consider the possibility that the development of national ideas in some European countries might have run parallel with that in France prior to 1789. It is even possible that in some European countries nationalism might have developed further than in France, as a result of special social structure, intellectual tradition and historical experience. This discussion of Danish nationalism in the age of the French Revolution will argue that Denmark actually belonged to the group of countries where nationalism had already experienced its first and formative phase of development, before the news of the fall of the Bastille reached its borders. The first section of the essay will give an introductory sketch of the political and social state of Denmark around 1789. The second will describe the development of Danish nationalism prior to 1789. The third will discuss the impact of the French Revolution upon the further development of Danish nationalism until 1805. And the fourth section will contain some concluding remarks. The term 'nationalism' is here used in a rather restricted sense, to signify patriotic feelings, principles and activities.1 In the case of Denmark, nationalism as a policy of national independence is a phenomenon belonging to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Denmark around 1789

Denmark in 1789 was one of the many conglomerate states of Europe. It consisted of the kingdom of Denmark, the kingdom of Norway, the

1

A. Kemilainen, 'The idea of nationalism', Scandinavian Journal of History, ix (1984), 31-64. 87

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duchy of Schleswig and the duchy of Holstein.2 But in this essay, to avoid confusion, the name 'Denmark' is used (unless otherwise stated) to denote the kingdom of Denmark, and not the conglomerate state over which the Danish king ruled. Constitutionally the Danish version of absolutism - based upon the Lex Regia from 1665 - was the most extensive and most consistently defined absolutism in Christendom. But in practice the king's powers and resources were just as limited, and he was just as dependent upon his subjects' general acceptance, as in other monarchical states. With regard to nationalism, however, the Danish version of absolutism was special. Neither in Denmark nor in Norway were there traditional political institutions around which an early nationalism might rally. The absolutist regime in Denmark maintained consistently and successfully that all subjects were politically equal and possessed no formal rights visa-vis the king. One should add, though, that in the two duchies the situation was different. Here the aristocratic landowners were organized in the Ritterschaft, the only surviving relic of the four estates of the duchies. Officially the government in Copenhagen refused to accept the Ritterschaft as a political body entitled to negotiate on behalf of the duchies. In fact, however, the government did listen to the views and wishes of the Ritterschaft, and as a de facto political body it came to play an important role in the development of early German nationalism in Schleswig and particularly in Holstein.3 The early development of nationalism within the Danish state must of course be seen in connection with the economic and social structure of the individual parts of the state. In Denmark and in the two duchies society was predominantly agrarian, the land being owned by a small group of mainly aristocratic landowners and tilled by tenants and cottagers. Norway was likewise an agrarian society, but had virtually no great landowners, the greater part of the land being owned by freeholders and by the upper strata of the bourgeoisie. In Norway and in the two duchies ten per cent of the population lived in the towns. In Denmark, however, twenty per cent of the population were towndwellers: ten per cent living in sixty-seven small provincial towns, and ten per cent in Copenhagen, the capital of the kingdom and of the state. These percentages are important in the emergence of nationalism. 2 General works with bibliographies are: O, Feldbaek, Tiden 1730-1814 [The period 1730-1814] (Gyldendals Danmarkshistorie, iv, Copenhagen, 1982); K. Mykland, Kampen om Norge 1784-1814 [The struggle over Norway 1784-1814] (Cappelns Norgeshistorie, ix, Oslo, 1978); and C. Degn, Die Herzogtumer im Gesamtstaat 1773-1830 (Geschichte Schleswig-Holsteins, vi, Neumimster, 1960). A good presentation in English is S. Oakley, The Story of Denmark (London, 1972), 3 O. Brandt, Geistesleben und Politik im Schleswig-Holstein um die Wende des 18. Jahrhundert (Kiel, 1924), and R. Erhardt-Lucht, Die Ideen derfranzosischen Revolution in Schleswig-Holstein, Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte Schleswig-Holsteins, Ivi (1969).

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Although some members of the agrarian society such as landowners, parsons and local officials contributed to this emergence, the national ideas and feelings which developed in the Danish state during the eighteenth century were very largely confined to the urban bourgeoisie. That means that of the 2.3 million people living in the Danish state around 1789, no more than one per cent can be said to have actively participated in the development of early nationalism. The dissemination of national ideas and feelings among the common people in both town and country belongs to the history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In order to understand the development of nationalism within the Danish state it is essential to bear in mind that from the close of the Great Northern War in 1720 the country experienced peace and steady economic growth. Peace meant that the state's demand for taxes and for military services was remarkably moderate by European standards; and it also meant that ships flying the neutral Danish flag could benefit from the shortage of maritime transport which resulted from the recurrent wars between the great sea powers. Rising freight rates, the rising prices of agricultural products, and a similar rise in the prices of Norwegian timber and fish, brought prosperity not only to the owners of the means of production, but also to the towns of Norway and the duchies, and above all to Copenhagen. This growing wealth was undoubtedly an important factor in the development of nationalism. The bourgeoisie in the larger towns, especially Copenhagen, was becoming increasingly self-aware and confident, not only socially and culturally, but even politically. That the political awakening of the bourgeoisie produced a positive rather than a negative response from the Danish absolute monarchy is something that requires explanation. In an absolute system any kind of political criticism, whatever its immediate object, must in the last resort be a criticism of the monarch; censorship had consequently been an integral part of Danish absolutism. Yet the Danish monarchy had no wish to rely on censorship. It wished to know about the views and attitudes of the more prominent members of the society, and it recognized that in certain political conditions support from a loyal public opinion might be highly desirable.4 It was for these reasons that freedom of speech was gradually granted, at first only by tacit acceptance, but from the middle of the eighteenth century by formal concession. In the seventeen-fifties the government actively encouraged public debate on economic and social issues, and in 1770 censorship was formally abolished - causing Voltaire to send a complimentary letter to the Danish 4

E. Holm, Om det Syn paa Kongemagt, Folk og borgerlig Frihed, der udviklede sig i den dansk-norske Stat i Midten of 18. Aarhundrede [Perceptions about monarchy, people and liberty in Denmark-Norway in the mid-eighteenth century] (Copenhagen, 1883).

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king. The abolition of censorship did not mean that everybody was free to write anything, and through the seventeen-seventies the newly won freedom was used with caution. But after the change of government in 1784 public opinion expressed itself with growing independence. Prior to 1784, governments had remained rather passive in the face of the mounting structural crisis of Denmark's agrarian society. With its feudal and almost medieval structure - characterized by adscription to the soil and labour service - Danish agriculture was prevented from expanding and from fully exploiting the rising international prices of agricultural products. Bourgeois opinion had long been aware of this; and members of the bourgeoisie who subscribed to physiocratic ideas about the fundamental importance of agriculture in economic life and about the need for greater economic and social freedom, reacted with increasing vigour against the privileges of the aristocratic landowners and the servitude of the peasants. Hence the government of 1784 and the bourgeoisie became political allies.6 The Government, wishing to embark on agrarian reforms, welcomed bourgeois support for this policy. At the same time, the bourgeois public needed the goodwill of the government in its campaign against the privileges of the landowners and against the traditional prerogatives of the nobility: bourgeois writers, of course, urged that recruitment to the public service should be based on professional merit rather than on noble descent. The question was, however, how long this marriage of convenience could be expected to last.7 How far would the government allow public opinion to move on from loyal self-expression to engagement in critical debate about absolute government and alternative political and social models? This question was to come to a head a few years later, after the outbreak of the French Revolution. From 1784 to 1789 the marriage between absolute monarchy and bourgeois public opinion was a harmonious one. The government of 1784 initiated agrarian reforms which surpassed even the most sanguine expectations, abolishing the landowners' privileges and breaking the peasants' legal chains. In 1787 the tenant's legal position vis-a-vis the landowner was safeguarded, the landowner being explicitly forbidden to punish his tenants with the wooden horse, the iron collar or arbitrary imprisonment; and in the following year the reform government abolished adscription to the soil. Other reform ordinances were actually 5 H. Joergensen, Da censuren blev opgivet, Udgivet i anledning af tohundredaaret for trykkefrihedsreskriptet of 14. September 1770 [When censorship was abolished. Published at the Bicentenary of the Ordinance of Freedom of the Press, 14 September 1770] (Copenhagen, 1970). 6 K, Toennesson, 'L'absolutisme eclaire: le cas danois', Annales historiques de la Revolution frangaise, ccxxxviii (1979), 611-26. 7 J.A. Seip; Teorien om det opinionsstyrte enevelde' [The theory of an absolutism governed by public opinion], Historisk Tidsskrift, xxxviii (1958/9), 397-463.

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more important, and some were more in the interest of the landowners. But for decades adscription had been regarded as the very symbol of proprietorial tyranny and peasant subjection; and the reform government did all in its power to ensure that the absolute monarch's noble act of benevolence got as much publicity as possible.8 The public reaction was ecstatic, and after the king's solemn declaration that neither he nor^is successors would ever revoke the peasant's freedom, there was a very general belief that Danish absolutism was the best of all constitutions. This was the situation in Denmark in the summer of 1788, exactly a year before the storming of the Bastille. Danish Nationalism Prior to 1789

The central word in early Danish nationalism isfaedreland. Literally, it means 'the land of the fathers' or 'the ancestral land', and its counterparts - although it does not convey precisely the same meaning as all of them are the Latin patria, the French patrie, the German Vaterland and the vaguer English term 'country'. In ordinary use it could refer equally well to the kingdom of Denmark, or to a particular region such as Jutland. One problem is, of course, that the meaning of'fatherland', and of the concept 'love of one's fatherland', changed to some extent over time, and much depended on the context in which the expressions were used. 'Love of one's fatherland' as a national concept can be traced back to the earliest Danish literature; amor patriae was in fact the leitmotif of Saxo's Gesta Danorum (c. 1200), and it appears occasionally in later medieval prose and poetry.9 The concept can again be found in sixteenthand seventeenth-century works on the history of Denmark and on the Danish language, and in official and private correspondence of the same period.10 But at what point did it gain a wider currency through being used in works addressed to a general public? A fairly precise answer to this question can be given. The Danish professor and playwright Ludvig Holberg (1684-1754) made frequent use of the concept in his prolific writings. He discussed, for example, what moral value should be attached to love of one's country, and whether it should take precedence over Christian charity towards one's neighbour; and he raised the issue of whether less qualified nationals should be preferred to better qualified 8

M. Eysell, Wohlfahrt und Etatismus. Studien zum danischen Absolutismus und Bauernbefreiung 1787/88 (Skandinavistische Studien, xi, Erlangen, 1979). 9 I. Skovgaard-Petersen, 'Saxo, historian of the Patria', Medieval Scandinavia, ii(1969), 54-77. 10 The following account of the development of early Danish nationalism is based upon O, Feldbaek, 'Kaerlighed til Faedrelandet. 1700-tallets nationale selvforstaaelse' [Love of the Fatherland. National consciousness in the 18th century], Fortid og Nutid, xxxi (1984), 270-88.

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foreigners for official posts,11 But the most important breakthrough came in the mid seventeen-forties, when a group of academics founded a Royal Society for Nordic History and Language and began publishing historical sources in its magazine - printed not in Latin, French or German, as was customary, but in the vernacular.12 It was also significant that the new society deliberately and explicitly appealed not only to the readers' intellects, but to their feelings as well, A consf>lex of national ideas and national sentiments founded upon a common history and a common language became the core of early Danish nationalism. A work in which the term 'fatherland' was given much attention and publicity was a book which appeared in 1759 under the title Reflections on the Love of the Fatherland.13 Its author, Tyge Rothe, had travelled in Germany, France and Switzerland on a royal stipend, and he returned deeply impressed by the national ideas he had found in the works of Montesquieu and by the patriotic attitudes he had met with in the Swiss city states. One of the purposes of his book was to establish a definition of the word 'fatherland'. He explicity defined it as the land in which one lived, and he went to some lengths to emphasize that it should not be defined as the land in which one was born. He also wanted the 'love of the fatherland' to be disseminated throughout the country, and he recommended that this should be systematically done by means of the churches, the schools, the university, the stage, and the arts and sciences. The book passed the censor, and its author was promptly rewarded with a professorship at the University of Copenhagen and the post of tutor to the king's youngest son. The reason for this degree of official approval is undoubtedly to be found in Rothe's definition of'fatherland'. At the time when he delivered his manuscript, all the king's ministers were men who had been born in Germany; most of the leading figures in the civil and military services had likewise been born outside the king's dominions; and Danes travelling abroad were unlikely to meet ambassadors of their king who could - or would - speak Danish. At a time when national ideas and feelings were gaining increasing attention, Rothe's interpretation of the 'fatherland' was very welcome to Denmark's cosmopolitan ruling class. Others, however, had a different understanding of the concept and a different national programme. In 1763 the young professor Ove 11

Holberg-Ordbog. Ordbog over Ludvig Holbergs sprog [The Holberg Dictionary. Dictionary of Ludvig Holberg's language], ed. Aa. Hansen (Copenhagen, 1980-), ii; and Ludvig Holbergs Epistler [The letters of Ludvig Holberg], ed. C. Bruun (5 vols., Copenhagen, 1865-75), ii. 126-30. 12 B. Kornerup, Det kongelige danske Selskabfor Faedrelandets Historie 1745-1945. En Oversigt [The Royal Danish Society for the History of the Fatherland 1745-1945. An outline] (Copenhagen, 1945). 13 T. Rothe, Tanker om Kaerlighed til Faedrelandet [Reflections on love of the Fatherland] (Copenhagen, 1759).

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Guldberg - who was to become the leading political figure from 1772 to 1784 - directed sharp criticism against the members of the ruling class who did not deign to speak the language of the country they inhabited, and he pointedly exhorted them either to learn Danish or to go elsewhere.14 It may well have been the government's awareness of the sensitivity of the national question that made it abstain from reacting against this outspoken attack on the king's choice of ministers and civil servants. Three years later the king died, and new men striving to drive the old ministers from power deliberately used national arguments against ministers and officials of foreign origin.15 Within a year of the new king's accession, a publication appeared which offered a definition of 'fatherland' diametrically opposed to the definition given by Tyge Rothe eight years before. In his Letter on the Love of the Fatherland (1767), Eiler Hagerup put forward the alternative view that one's fatherland is not the country where one happens to live, but the country of one's birth.16 He launched a frontal attack upon the many foreigners in high positions and demanded that they should be replaced, maintaining that men born within the country were now available in sufficient numbers and with sufficient qualifications to take over from them. In respectful but direct terms, he warned the king that the loyalty of his subjects depended on a certain degree of reciprocity. The government and the public were now in a position to choose between two mutually exclusive definitions of the central concept of nationality; and within a very short time the one advocated by Eiler Hagerup emerged victorious. One reason for this speedy victory was the short-lived dictatorship of Johan Friedrich Struensee, the German-born doctor of the mentally deranged young king, and the queen's lover. During his brief spell in power from 1770 to 1772, Struensee tried to ingratiate himself with the public by demonstratively abolishing censorship as the very first of his political measures. But at the same time he alienated himself from his potential base of bourgeois political support by openly showing his contempt for the Danish language, by calling in a considerable number of foreigners, and by failing to make himself acquainted with the ways and customs of the country.17 This meant that the opposition to him came to be partly based upon a national ideology. It also meant that the group headed by members of the royal family which overthrew Struensee and replaced him, was bound once in power to support the cause of Danish nationalism - a support which was all the 14 O. Guldberg, Plinii Lovtale til Trajanum [Pliny's Panegyric on Trajan] (Soroe, 1763). 15 Danske Magazin, 4th series, v (1884), 262-5. 16 [E. Hagerup], Brev om Kaerlighed til Faedrelandet [Letter on love of the Fatherland] (Copenhagen, 1767). 17 C. Bruun, Peter Frederik Suhm (Copenhagen, 1898), pp. 103-4, 118-19 and 127.

94 Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution more to be expected because the leading figure in the group, Ove Guldberg, had long since committed himself to this cause. The new government therefore introduced policies which sharply differentiated it from Struensee's regime. It immediately ordered that Danish should become the official language in political and administrative affairs, and that in the army commands should no longer be given in German, as had hitherto been the case (though the language of the navy had always been Danish). Danish was also made a subject in its own right in the grammar schools, although Latin remained the principal subject. Furthermore, the new government launched a new educational programme aimed at diffusing the concept of 'love of the fatherland'.18 Finally, in 1776 the government crowned its national policy by publishing a law - promulgated as an irrevocable amendment to the constitution - which laid down that positions in the king's service were thereafter to be reserved for those born within the king's dominions. Newly emergent Danish nationalism had thus gained a remarkable victory, in a remarkably short space of time. The law was received with an enthusiasm which showed that national sentiment was not just a superficial phenonemon, but had struck deep roots. The triumph of this nationalism, which appealed especially to the Danish bourgeoisie, was not however quite as complete as it seemed. The members of the government did share the national feelings of the Copenhagen bourgeoisie. Yet they were responsible for governing not only the kingdom of Denmark, but also the kingdom of Norway and the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein; and they were keenly aware that the national sentiment which was awakening in Norway as well as in Denmark constituted a potential danger to the multi-national state. In Norway criticisms had already been directed for some time against the government in Copenhagen for giving priority to Danish economic interests and for denying Norway a university and a bank of its own; and such criticisms were commonly backed by reference to Norway's glorious past and to the contrast between the free status of Norwegian farmers and the vassalage of Danish tenants. The government was well aware of the national character of public opinion in Norway.19 In regard 18 O. Mailing, Store oggode HandlingerafDanske, Norske og Holstenere [Great and good deeds of Danes, Norwegians and Holsteiners] (Copenhagen, 1777), and P. F. Suhm, Historien of Danmark, Norge og Holsten [History of Denmark, Norway and Holstein] (Copenhagen, 1776). 19 V. la Cour, Mellem Broedre, Dansk-norske Problemer i del 18. Aarhundredes Helstat [Among brothers. Danish-Norwegian problems in the eighteenth century] (Birkeroed, 1943); S. Supphellen, 'Den historisk-topografiske litteraturen i Noreg i siste halvparten av 1700-talet: regionalisme eller nasjonalisme?' [Historical-topographical literature in Norway in the second half of the eighteenth century: regionalism or nationalism?], Heimen, iv (1979), 198-211.

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to the duchies there were also problems, though of a different kind. Here, except among the peasants of northern Schleswig, the language and culture were German.20 But the hostility towards foreigners that was inherent in Danish nationalism was principally directed against Germans, and there was little inclination to differentiate between people who came from the king's German provinces (as the duchies were called) and Germans who came from south of the Elbe. On the other hand, the German elite in Copenhagen did not conceal the fact that it regarded German culture as far superior to that which existed in Danish bourgeois circles. It was clear therefore that national feelings and antipathies, if allowed to escalate, might threaten the coherence of the conglomerate Danish state; and the government's response was to avert such a process by cleverly redefining the concept of the nation, even though this meant depriving the Copenhagen bourgeoisie of some of the fruits of its victory. New schoolbooks were written under close political supervision, and the government made sure that the term 'fatherland' was not applied to either Denmark, Norway, or Holstein. Instead, the term was used to describe the whole of the king's dominions, and the focus of loyalty was identified as .king rather than country. To love one's fatherland was to love the king. The History of Denmark, Norway and Holstein, published in 1776 and in common use in the schools till the middle of the nineteenth century, thus ended with the following exhortation: 'There are indeed some differences between your languages. But God understands you all, and one King rules over all of you. Therefore fear God and obey the King.'21 Also, as we have seen, the law promulgated in 1776 did not reserve positions in the king's service for his Danish-born subjects alone, but for all born within his dominions. By transforming the narrow national 'love of the fatherland' of the Danish bourgeoisie into a multinational ideology centred upon the double concept of 'King and Fatherland', the government was doing what it could to preserve the conglomerate state against the dangers of awakening nationalism. In 1776 these dangers did subside. But fourteen years later, in 1790, a minor literary controversy was enough to trigger off a violent national feud between the Danish and the Holstein-German circles in the capital.22 The feud did not last long, but it uncovered an aggressive Danish nationalism which was fuelled by a deep resentment over the contempt shown by the aristocratic German coterie for the Danish 20

G. Japsen, 'Statspatriotisme eller nationalfoelelse i Soenderjylland foer 1848' [Statepatriotism or nationalism in South Jutland before 1848], Historie, xiii (1979), 107-22. 21 Bruun, p. 192. 22 N. M. Petersen, Bidrag til den danske Litteraturs Historie [On the history of Danish literature] (6 vols., Copenhagen, 1853-64), vi, part 1; F. Roenning, Rationalismens Tidsalder [The age of rationalism] (4 vols., Copenhagen, 1886-99), iii, part 1.

96

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language and for bourgeois Danish culture. The pamphlets on both sides make unpleasant reading today, foreshadowing as they do the national controversies of the nineteenth century. One reason why the feud of 1790 was short-lived may have been the fact that public interest was being increasingly absorbed by the French Revolution. But it should be noted that by the time this revolution occurred, a Danish nationalism already existed, and had become a significant aspect of cultural and political life. This is not to say that the French Revolution may not have influenced its further development; but any such influence had to be exerted on a nationalism that was already quite well established by eighteenth-century standards. Revolution and Nationalism 1789-1805 Political relations between France and Denmark had never been close. During most of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Bourbon France had been the regular ally and protector of its northern client state Sweden, the traditional enemy of Denmark. Danish foreign ministers also knew that the support occasionally given by the Court of Versailles to Danish policies of neutrality during the recurrent wars between France and Britain was due not to French enthusiasm for international law, but rather to the fact that France was politically and militarily dependent on neutral shipping.23 The fact that in the early seventeen-nineties French foreign policy came to be conducted in the name of the Republic rather than in the name of His Most Christian Majesty, did little to change the position and interests of France in relation to north European politics. The French Revolution did have a considerable impact upon Denmark in the political and social spheres.24 Its impact on Danish nationalism, however, was less clear, and would seem to have been largely indirect. The news of the revolution was received with enthusiasm in Denmark, not only by the bourgeoisie, but also by part of the aristocracy, and even by members of the royal family and the government. The fall of the Bastille seemed to herald the abolition of despotism and privilege and the renaissance of mankind. The Constitution of 1791 with its Declaration of the Rights of Man was likewise applauded. In Copenhagen the revolution became the main focus of interest, and it had a palpable influence on the content and intensity of public debate. 23 O. Feldbaek, 'Eighteenth-century Danish neutrality: its diplomacy, economics and law', Scandinavian Journal of History, viii (1983), 3-21; idem, Denmark and the Armed Neutrality 1800-1801. Small Power Policy in a World War (Copenhagen, 1980). 24 E. Holm, Den ojfentlige Mening og Statsmagten i den dansk-norske Stat i Slutningen afdet 18. Aarhundrede (1784-1799) [Public opinion and the state in Denmark-Norway in the late eighteenth century (1784-1799)] (Copenhagen, 1888).

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Before 1789 public opinion in Denmark had mainly been concerned with concrete problems and practical reforms. After 1789 there is a clearly discernible rise in the number of magazines and clubs, and at the same time an important shift in public interest. Debate now centred on the principles of government, and there was even discussion about whether absolutism was after all the best constitutional model. In the seventeen-nineties public debate came to involve sharp criticism of the government, vitriolic abuse of the nobility and its privileges, and strong appeals for bourgeois liberty and equality. Danish absolutism was never seriously threatened by this debate. The pamphleteers and their readers were few. Serious and concrete proposals for a different type of constitution and government were not brought forward. Judged by contemporary European standards, it was a debate of a rather parochial character; and it was characterized by many strong declarations of loyalty towards the royal family and by much praise of the policies of domestic reform and international neutrality pursued by the king's enlightened ministers. The general feeling seems to have been that the benevolent Danish absolutism could be expected to bring - as it had already to a certain extent brought - the same liberties and reforms to Denmark as the revolution was bringing to France. In Denmark, as a loyal civil servant and ardent admirer of the revolution put it, 'tout citoyen est roi sous un roi citoyen'.25 In any case, Danish enthusiasm for the revolution did not last long. The growing social chaos in France and the execution of the king alienated most people. The subsequent victories of the revolutionary armies over the combined forces of the reactionary European courts did something to keep alive a bourgeois sympathy for the revolution, but the period of the Terror inspired most Danes with horror and disgust. While the French Revolution did, at least for a time, have a notable impact on political and social debate in Denmark, its impact on Danish nationalism was less strong and distinct; but there are certain specific influences which can be at least tentatively identified. One of these relates to the strongly anti-aristocratic element in Danish nationalism. The feud of 1790 had disclosed that bourgeois nationalism already contained such an element; and although the feud did not last long, it is clear from pamphlets and magazines that anti-aristocratic feelings grew more pronounced during the seventeen-nineties. Although it cannot be proved, it seems likely that this tendency within bourgeois nationalism in Denmark was strengthened by the influence of the French Revolution. Yet it is also possible that the Revolution, and the anti-aristocratic feeling that was intensified by it, had in one respect a negative impact on the spread of the idea associated with bourgeois nationalism; and it is in the field of educational policy that this negative impact can be discerned. 25

Holm, Den offentlige Mening, p. 89.

98 Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution In 1789 a commission was appointed to produce a plan for a comprehensive reform of the ordinary schools in Denmark.26 The papers of the commission show very clearly the impact of the French Revolution, both on those members who were sympathetic to the new ideas and on those who were decidedly hostile to them.27 One might have expected that in the School Ordinance which was eventually produced in 1806, and likewise in the new school curriculum, the national ideas of the bourgeoisie would be prominently reflected. But this was not in fact the case; and the absence of such ideas was attributable to a successful aristocratic reaction. In the anti-German pamphlets and articles of the national feud of 1790, the writers had criticized the leading German aristocratic families - the Bernstorffs, the Schimmelmanns and the Reventlows — though without explicitly mentioning their names. These families were not only personally hurt but also collectively worried by these attacks, especially in view of the fact that they coincided with the arrival of French revolutionary ideas. They saw clearly that aggressive national feeling constituted a serious threat to their positions as ministers and high civil servants, and that if they did nothing to check the growth of this feeling they would soon find themselves displaced by Danes of bourgeois origin. They reacted in two ways to this threat. As great landowners they issued local school regulations on their own estates, and through this medium excluded or watered down national ideas, propagating instead the notion that all men were brothers regardless of their place of birth and that qualifications counted for more than national origin.28 On the School Commission they could not go quite so far in challenging bourgeois Danish nationalism. But they could make sure that national ideas, with their social implications, did not reach the majority of the population; and the School Ordinance of 1806 demonstrated that they were still in power. National ideas were kept entirely out of the curriculum, and all that schoolchildren received were elementary readers containing among other things short accounts of the history and geography of the country.29 Another, quite contrary, instance of the impact of the French Revolution on Danish nationalism can be found in the educational schemes of the young historian Laurits Engelstoft. He travelled in France in the late seventeen-nineties, personally witnessing the coup d'etat of Brumaire. He was deeply impressed by the national emphasis of the 26 J. Larsen, Bidrag til den danske Folkeskoles Historic 1784-1818 [On the history of the Danish primary school 1784-1818] (Copenhagen, 1893). 27 Skoleloveneafl814 og deres Tilblivelse. Aktmaessigtfremstillet [A documentary history of the School Laws of 1814 and their origin], ed. J. Larsen (Copenhagen, 1914). 28 Larsen, p. 30. 29 Skolelovene, p. 86.

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French educational system, and by the use of ceremonies to promote loyalty and public spirit. After his return he published a book on national education in 1802, which was strongly coloured by what he had seen and learnt in France.30 He recommended a 'Citizen's Catechism' for teaching children their civic obligations, a 'Citizen's Code' for making them understand and accept the laws of the society, and national songs for instilling a sense of duty to the nation. He also proposed a solemn national ceremony, at which children upon leaving school would swear a civic oath at their entrance into the society. Like so many other projects of the kind, this scheme leaves an impression of naivety and of a provincial enthusiasm for what a young man had witnessed on the Champ de Mars and elsewhere. The interesting fact is, however, that important elements of the French-inspired plan for a national system of education were indeed transmitted to the Danish milieu in the years from 1807 to 1814, when Denmark was involved in the war on the side of Napoleonic France, and when a 'National Catechism' was actually published and distributed to schools.31 Concluding Remarks

The question of whether the French Revolution significantly influenced the development of Danish nationalism in the years from 1789 to 1805 cannot be answered with a clear yes or no. On the basis of existing research it is possible to demonstrate that at the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 a relatively mature nationalism already existed in Denmark, though it was confined to the bourgeois stratum of society in Copenhagen and in some of the larger provincial towns. It was ideologically based upon the idea of a common past and a common language; it represented a reaction against the ruling aristocracy, with its predominantly foreign national and cultural background; and its claims for political and social change were essentially claims for parity with the ruling elite. Aspirations for bettering the social conditions and enlarging the rights of the lower classes were not part of the programme; nor was there any serious inclination to challenge the system of royal absolutism. Indeed the absolute government had found it expedient to make some 30 L. Engelstoft, Om den Indflydelse Opdragelsen, isaer den ojfentlige, kan have paa at indplante Kaerlighed til Faedrelandet [On the influence of education - particularly public education - in inspiring love of the Fatherland] (Copenhagen, 1802); idem, Tanker om Nationalopdragelsen [Reflections on national education] (Copenhagen, 1808). 31 H. Nyrop-Christensen, Mindehoejtideligheder fra Frederik VI,s tid. Omkring H.C. Knudsens historiske tableauer [Memorial ceremonies in the reign of Frederik VI. The historical tableaux of H. C. Knudsen], Studier fra Sprog- og Oldstidsforskning, cclxxiv (1970); P. O. Boisen, Forsoeg til en Faedrenelandets Katekismus eller kort Begreb om Pligterne mod Konge og Faedreneland [Essay on a patriotic catechism or Short idea of the duties towards King and Fatherland] (Copenhagen, 1811).

100 Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution concessions to bourgeois nationalism in so far as this could be done without jeopardizing the cohesion of the multi-national state. The impact of the French Revolution upon this bourgeois nationalism seems to have been indirect and two-sided. Revolutionary ideas may have strengthened the anti-aristocratic feelings which already existed in Danish bourgeois circles. On the other hand, they may also have strengthened the determination of the ruling elite, with its predominantly aristocratic and German character, to oppose any further dissemination of aggressive bourgeois nationalism. It does not appear, however, that the French Revolution had any direct effect on the ideas or strategy of Danish nationalism, apart from a delayed contribution which can be observed in the years of warfare after 1807.

8

Sweden Erik Lonnroth Sweden had its great experience of primitive nationalism in the late middle ages, when the cause was the pressure from stronger neighbours such as the kingdom of Denmark and the German principalities on the Baltic coast. From 1365, when Sweden was conquered by the Duke of Mecklenburg, until 1523 when Gustaf I was created king, Sweden was deprived of national royalty. The spasmodic attempts of Karl Knutsson to establish his position as a national king in the fourteen-fifties and fourteen-sixties did not signify anything more than a lively desire for Swedish self-government on the part of some leading groups in society. At the same time it proved impossible for the Danish kings to keep a firm hold of Sweden, although they had been officially recognized as legitimate kings since 1396. The resistance from all social groups in Sweden was too strong, and national self-consciousness sought its roots in glorious myths from the remote past. At the ecclesiastical Council of Basel, the delegate of King Erik of the three Nordic kingdoms claimed special honours for his royal master on the grounds that he reigned over the descendants of the Goths, who had conquered Rome and a great part of Europe. It was a parallel to Isidore of Seville and to Jordanes, an effort to identify the Goths with the Swedish tribe 'Gotar' (Gauts) whose name had the same Latin transcription, Gothi, as the Goths of ancient times.1 This glorification of Swedish ancestry was eagerly accepted by national historians in their efforts to prove the superiority of their nation over other peoples, especially the Danes. Later, when the Swedes had overcome their inferiority and been transformed into a conquering nation, the Gothic fantasy continued to inspire their leaders. King Gustaf II Adolf, when urging his nobility to support an attack on the Holy Roman Empire in the Thirty Years War, invoked the spirit of Berk, the mythic first leader of Gothic expansion.2 And when Sweden had established herself as a great European power, the Uppsala professor Olaus Rudbeck even tried to identify his nation with the Atlantides and claimed Sweden to be the original home of all European civilizations.3 This striking exaggeration did not survive 1

Beata Losman, 'Nicolaus Ragvaldis gotiska tal' [Nicolaus Ragvaldi's Gothic speech], Lychnos, 1967-8, pp. 215-21. 2 Curt Weibull, Gustaf II Adolf, Scandia, vi (1933), 8. 3 Sten Lindroth, Svensk lardomshistoria, i, Stormaktstiden [History of Swedish scholarship, i, The era of Swedish great power] (Stockholm, 1975), pp. 235-344. 101

102 Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution Sweden's decline from the status of a great power; but traces of heroic myths, founded on the Icelandic sagas, did remain and were supplemented by more recent tales about the warrior kings of Sweden in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. From the middle of the eighteenth century the rulers of Sweden had to face a new problem of inferiority as a result of the continuous alliance between Russia and Denmark-Norway, both constant enemies of Sweden and determined to deny her any opportunity of regaining her lost provinces and military vigour. In the pre-parliamentary phase of Sweden's constitutional history, the so-called era of liberty, two parties fought each other for power: one, the 'Bonnets', being intent on peace and stability within the new and diminished framework of the Swedish state, while the other had ambitions to revive Sweden's external power and national glory. The latter party, the 'Hats', were supported by France, allied themselves to France when they were in power, and fought two unsuccessful wars against Russia and Prussia. They can be said to have been the champions of national self-assertion, but they can hardly be called nationalists in the modern sense of the word. The groups in society which they chiefly represented were army officers, bureaucrats, great merchants and industrial entrepreneurs, and they had little popular appeal. They were from privileged groups, and few of them had much fellow-feeling with the Swedish people as a whole. For the great majority of the Swedish population - peasants of various degrees of economic independence, most of them freeholders - the notion of Sweden was chiefly associated with the notion of the kingdom, held together by the Lutheran state church of which the king was the head. The ecclesiastical hierarchy of Sweden with archbishop, bishops and clergy, was subject to royal control, and following the wars of religion in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the church was a very significant component of the national identity. The clergy were the natural leaders of their parochial communities and ex officio spokesmen of the Swedish state; it was their responsibility to make royal announcements known to the people. Also the Lutheran state church had few competitors as the outstanding symbol of Swedish identity. The Baltic empire of Sweden in the era of the warrior kings had been a multiethnic union, in which not only Swedes, Finns and Lapps but also Ingrians, Esthonians, Latvians, Russians and a numerous German population were included. When the hated counsellor of Charles XII, Baron Gortz, was awaiting execution after the death of the king, he is said to have written a little poem with these two last lines: On rneurt toujours en grande compagnie Quand on meurt avec son roi et sa patrie.4 4 Stigjagerskiold, Sverige och Europa 17i6-i718 (Dissertation, Uppsala, 1937; printed in Ekenas), p. 464.

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Gortz, who was a Holsatian and consequently a German, may have regarded the Baltic empire of the Swedish kings as his fatherland, although his original sovereign, the duke of Holstein-Gottorp, was an ally and not a vassal of Charles XII. This fatherland succumbed for ever with King Charles, fighting alone against Russia, Denmark, Prussia, Poland and Great Britain in a gallant but hopeless battle. Thereafter, the remaining parts of the kingdom did not lend themselves to easy definition. They comprised the whole of original Sweden, most of Finland, some newly conquered provinces of Denmark and Norway, and two bridgeheads on the Baltic coast of Germany, Pomerania and Wismai", another piece of Finland was lost to Russia in 1743 after a short and unfortunate war. Other problems arose from the size and composition of Sweden's leading estate, the nobility. It constituted a corps of army officers and civil servants which was too large for what remained of Sweden; it included a considerable number of immigrant families; and its members were international in outlook and had little understanding of the Swedish people. The older immigrant families of the high aristocracy, such as the French De la Gardies, the Irish Hamiltons and the German-Baltic Wrangels may have been fully integrated, but more recent immigrants, such as the German Tessins, Scheffers and Hopkens, the German-Baltic Fersens, the French CpsswaAnckarsvards and the German Schafer-Ehrensvards were most of them leading members of the Hat party but were not altogether Swedish. The three Sprengtporten brothers, who were to play leading roles in the reign of Gustaf III, were sons of an ennobled German army officer and all three of them were born in Tobolsk, where their father was living as a prisoner of war. One may add that the two kings who reigned in Sweden from 1720 to 1771, Fredrik I and Adolph Fredrik, were Germans who came to Sweden as adults and continued to speak their native language. The first Swedish-born king after Charles XII, Gustaf HI, had developed as a young man an ardent interest in promoting national feeling and restoring the greatness of the Swedish nation. He lacked sympathy with the unique constitutional experiment which was being conducted in his country: one involving a parliament which represented all the estates (including the peasants) and wielded real political power. The dependence of the elections on the shifting opinions of the Swedish population seemed to him very undesirable, and so did the fact that foreign powers expended large sums on Swedish elections and on the direct corruption of uncommitted members of the nobility.5 To CrownPrince Gustaf and the growing group of royalists forming around him, this interference seemed especially deplorable because the envoys of Russia and Great Britain exercised a great influence on the policies of the leading Bonnets. The parliament of the estates represented the Swedish 5

'Reflexions' written by Prince Gustaf on 16 Oct. 1768, MS F 414 (Gustavian collection), Uppsala University Library [UUB].

104 Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution nation but, according to Gustaf, it did so in a very unsatisfactory way. He wrote in 1766 of its apathetic attitude towards the honour and glory of the fatherland.6 His idea of Sweden was a kingdom of glorious traditions, led by heroic kings who had complete authority over the people. At the beginning of1772 there was a wave of national feeling in some sections of the Hat party, which founded a new political club called 'Svenska Botten' ('On Swedish Ground'). The founder of the club, one of the Sprengtporten brothers, became the chief adviser of Gustaf III in his coup d'etat of 19 August 1772, when the 'era of liberty' came to an end and monarchical power was re-established in Sweden. This was a revival of national tradition as well as a victory of royal policy. But it was also a victory for French foreign policy, as Louis XV and his court had been encouraging Gustaf III to take action against the Bonnets. French influence was overwhelmingly strong in Sweden, not only in the politics of the court but also (and above all) in the culture and manners of elite society. Count Axel von Fersen, one of the Hat leaders and later head of the aristocratic opposition to Gustaf HI, once wrote to a natural son of his that it would be interesting to make an experiment in letter-writing. This should be an effort to write in Swedish; naturally French was the language used by educated people for this purpose, but although, he said, Swedish was a rude and simple language its use should in principle be encouraged.7 The implied assumption was that the French language offered possibilities of subtelty and literary association, appropriate to that particular art of civilized communication, which Swedish could not provide. Obviously this was a problem for the upper classes and not for the common people. The common people did not write letters; if they could read and write at all, their communications were usually confined to a few words or sentences. But the men and women of the upper classes were the conveyors of opinion, the people who absorbed and diffused ideologies. For them a command of French was vital if they had any ambitions to take part in higher social life and to exercise leadership. Fersen's notions about letter-writing reflected practical realities, not just snobbery. When King Gustaf HI was preparing an attack on Denmark in 1783 he wrote to his chief aide-de-camp, Colonel Toll, that he was extremely busy and needed to write in French rather than in Swedish because it took so much less time.8 It is true that he was unusually good at French: even Vergennes, who did not like him at all, acknowledged his

6

Letter to Count Creutz, envoy to the court of Versailles, Aug. 1766, MS F 497, UUB. 7 A volume of letters from Count Fredrik Axel von Fersen, in the archives of the Swedish Academy, Stockholm. 8 MS in the Toll collection, Lund University Library.

Sweden 105 9 exceptional command of the French language. But he was not unique. The whole of northern Europe was dominated in the same way by the French language and French culture. Frederick II of Prussia, the Empress Catherine II of Russia, the Emperors Joseph II and Leopold II of Austria, the kings of Denmark and Poland - all of them spoke and wrote French fluently; and some of them, like Catherine II, wrote it in a fine, literary style. King Adolf Fredrik of Sweden and his queen both came from Germany as adults, but their son Gustaf never learned to understand German. French was the language in which he was educated, and Queen Louisa Ulrica insisted in his youth that he should write one letter in French to her every day. Indeed correspondence between members of the royal family was generally carried on in French at this time. Of course the common people of Sweden spoke their national language and its provincial dialects, as did the common people in every country. They had little interest in the new plays and operas staged in the theatres of Paris, of which the higher circles of society received immediate information. But all people knew - if they knew anything at all - that fashions and impulses from France would sooner or later leave their mark on their own environment. Diplomats stationed at the court of Versailles sent new books as well as dresses and jewels to the royal family. The aristocratic gatherings at watering places such as Aix-laChapelle and Spa spread the dictates of fashion in behaviour and thought to the upper classes all over Europe. Fenelon's Telemaque, printed in French in 1743, must have been read by many members of the upper middle class. Lower middle class people in Stockholm greeted one another with a distorted version of the phrase 'Comment allez-vous?', to which the reply was 'farben, traben', which means in Swedish 'sheep's leg, wooden leg' but derived from the French 'fort bien, tres bien'. Gallic influences may have found an unusually fertile soil in Sweden, as Sweden was the traditional ally of France in northern Europe. In the provinces the impact of international fashion was weaker than in Stockholm: the reading of middle-class people was chiefly restricted to the basic books of religion, the Bible and various hymn books, and the peasantry had still less contact with enlightened mentality and the cultural emanations from Paris.10 But indirectly, for instance through the teaching and intellectual ambitions of the Lutheran clergy in the late eighteenth century, some glimmers from the French enlightenment were refracted to peripheral and sparsely populated parts of the Swedish kingdom. In general, the pattern of an international French-influenced culture was obvious in Sweden, as it was to a greater or lesser extent in other European countries. The existence of this culture was an important 9 On Gustaf III and the French language, see Gunnar von Proschwitz, introduction to his Gustave III par ses lettres (Stockholm, 1986), pp. 10-12. 10 Gosta Lext, Bok och samhalle i Goteborg 1720-1809 [Book and society in Goteborg 1720-1809] (Dissertation, Goteborg, 1950).

106 Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution precondition for the rapid spread of revolutionary ideas. At the same time it hampered in some degree the development of the native language. King Gustaf III himself, in spite of his close contacts with French political debate and French literary culture, was aware of the need for a stronger Swedish self-consciousness in literature and the arts. As one of several means of promoting this, he founded the Swedish Academy in 1786, modelled on the French Academy but nevertheless an original creation. It consisted (and consists) of only eighteen members, and the choice of the original members - thirteen of them appointed by the king, and the remainder elected by the first group - provided from the start a pattern of independence from political manipulation, which has continued until the present time. The Academy contained four members of the high nobility in leading political positions, all of them critical of Gustaf s current policies, and several poets and authors distinguished for their integrity. It was given a position of independence from the king, marked by ceremonial liberties and by the absence of the word 'Royal' from its name. Its task was to cultivate the Swedish language as a literary medium and to write memorials and eulogies of great men in Sweden's past and present, as examples for their living descendants and compatriots. The Academy became in this way an instrument of national self-praise. It might also have become an instrument for influencing opinion in favour of a warlike foreign policy, but in this respect its members were too independent to fall in with their royal master's wishes. Its. most important poet, Johan Henrik Kellgren, a royal secretary but at the same time an independent publicist, was a supporter of the ideas of the French Revolution from its commencement; and in spite of King Gustaf s close contacts with the Academy, several of its members in the seventeen-nineties were to a certain extent Jacobins.11 Another means of strengthening Swedish self-consciousness that was employed by Gustaf III was the creation of a national theatre and, above all, a national opera. He was himself fervently involved in writing plays on high national themes, in which his two predecessors and namesakes on the throne of Sweden, Gustaf I and Gustaf II Adolf, were the favourite heroes. He seems to have had his doubts about how far the Swedish language could be adapted for use in dramatic productions, and throughout his reign he kept a French theatre troupe in Stockholm alongside the Swedish one of the Royal Theatre. Consequently he invested his main hopes in the opera, especially the model national opera 'Gustaf Wasa' about the liberation of Sweden from the Danes by Gustaf I. It was launched at the Royal Opera in Stockholm in January 1786, with the obvious intention of influencing public opinion in favour of war against Denmark, and became a tremendous success. The immediate 11 Ingrid and Sverker Ek, Kellgren: Skalden och kulturkdmpen [Kellgren: poet and cultural controversialist] (2 vols., Stockholm, 1965-80), ii. 214-85.

Sweden 107 political purpose was frustrated because of changing circumstances, but the lyrical and musical qualities of the work kept its ideas and sentiments vivid long after the death of Gustaf III. In his policy of strengthening Swedish self-consciousness both politically and culturally, and also in his reforms aimed at reducing social inequality, Gustaf III was in some ways a forerunner of modern nationalism. Meanwhile some concepts which were to be central to nationalist ideology were appearing in Swedish political debate before 1789. One example can be found in the changing meaning of the term 'fatherland'. It could be used in a fairly neutral way as a florid word for the home-country. But in the political language of the eighteenth century it usually echoed Ciceronian lines of thought, the republican ideals of classical antiquity, by way of contrast to the kingdoms and principalities of contemporary Europe. In Sweden during the era of liberty there appeared in 1760 a party fraction calling itself lantpartiet, 'the country party'. It was an anti-royalist party, led by the man who thirtytwo years later was to organize the murder of Gustaf HI.12 After 1772, when the constitution was changed and the old parties of the Hats and the Bonnets were prohibited, the opponents of the king and his partisans were called 'the patriots' by themselves and their supporters.13 It must have been a popular label to adopt, for King Gustaf himself in his opening address to the assembly of the estates in 1786 claimed to have assembled the estates for purely 'patriotic reasons', not for warlike purposes.14Xater, during the war with Russia in 1788-1790, oppositional elements in Sweden were called 'Russian patriots' in pamphlets with royalist tendencies.15 This indicates that 'patriotism' had come to be associated with a feeling for a certain country or nation and not just with republican ideals. In 1788, on the eve of war with Russia, oppositional members of the estates also called themselves the 'national party' in their struggle for peace against the king's plans for an attack on Sweden's traditional enemy.16 This may seem strange, but the explanation is that constitutionally the estates were meant to represent the 'nation' in the pre-parliamentary system of Sweden, in contradistinction to the king and his officials. The word was occasionally used in the same sense by the 12

Gunnar Olsson, Hattar och mb'ssor, Studier over partivasendet i Sverige 1751-1762 [Hats and Bonnets. Studies on the party system in Sweden 1751-1762] (Goteborg, 1963), pp. 113-19. 13 Stig Hallesvik, Axel von Fersen och gustaviansk politik 1771-1779 (Dissertation, Goteborg, 1977), pp. 162, 167, 228. 14 Riksarkivet [National Archive of Sweden], Stockholm: Riksdagshandlingar 1786, R 5023. 15 Riksarkivet, Kungliga Arkiv K 380, pamphlet entitled Besynnerligt nytt [Strange news], by an anonymous 'Justificator'. 16 Despatch from the Austrian envoy in Stockholm Stadion, 9 May 1788, Haus-, Hofund Staatsarchiv, Vienna.

108 Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution king, but he also spoke and wrote about la nation in the wider sense of the people and the state as a whole.17 In the same year 1788, for instance, he apostrophized his brother Carl, commander of the royal navy, as vengeur de la nation.18 According to political ideas in royalist circles, one nation, that of the Swedish people, could be oppressed by another Swedish nation, the estates, who in the era of liberty held absolute power during their periods in session. In August 1788 some rebellious army officers in Finland proclaimed a Finnish nation, which was to be separate from Sweden and supported by the Russian empire. It is important to note that these few champions of the national independence of Finland were Swedes, Swedish-speaking members of the Swedish nobility, and totally distinct from the majority of the Finnish population which had its own quite different language.19 It would have seemed at this time an absurd idea that the linguistic barrier between Swedes and Finns should constitute a difference in terms of nationality. They were all subjects of the Swedish crown, whoever represented the crown. They were all represented in the Swedish estates and were all members of the Swedish state church. The men who proclaimed the Finnish nation wanted permanent peace with Russia and better government of a sometimes neglected part of the kingdom, not a change of cultural identity. The unique Finnish 'soul', preserved in the Kalevala tradition, was still far from being discovered. The impact of the French revolution on Swedish opinion was strong but complicated. Because of the special constitutional developments during the era of liberty. Sweden had experienced a long and open debate about the foundations of government, and some very advanced theories about democratization had been presented in this debate. One of the constant factors was the condemnation of sovereign royal power. In the seventeen-forties the doctrine of 'principalate' which asserted that the electors should exercise continuous control over their elected representatives in the estates (the riksdag) had been rejected, and its author had had to escape to England. But in the seventeen-sixties the leading radical theorist of the Bonnets, Anders Nordencrantz, advocated a new representative system, founded on an egalitarian peasants' community and composed of regionally elected representatives of the historical counties of Sweden, with all officials, bureaucrats and functionaries

17

For instance in the introduction to a draft of a constitution by Prince Gustaf in November 1768, MS F 414, UUB. 18 Ericsbergsarkivet, deposited in Riksarkivet, Stockholm, Collection of Queen Hedvig Elisabet Charlotta, July 1788. 19 A.R. Cederberg, Anjalan Liiton historialliset Idhteet [Historical sources concerning the Anjala Confederation] (Helsinki, 1931); Erik Lonnroth, Den stora rollen [The great role] (Stockholm, 1986), pp. 177-9.

Sweden 109 being excluded. A younger theorist of the Bonnets, Anders Chydenius, wanted to abolish all social privileges and all monopolies and to introduce a market economy instead of the still dominant mercantilism.21 Their party leaders were more cautious, but in the assembly of the estates in 1771-2 they none the less wished to abolish some of the most important prerogatives of the nobility. The coup d'etat of Gustaf III in 1772 checked their revolutionary programme and resurrected monarchical power, but the king's ideal was not the reestablishment of an ancien regime or an absolutist royal government. Gustaf III was well educated, had studied the French philosophers, and had been especially influenced by Mercier's Ordre de la nature. In a memorandum for the French minister in Stockholm in 1768 he explained his interpretation of the pre-parliamentary system of the era of liberty. The rule of the party-majority in the council between the sessions of the estates signified, according to him, an aristocratic form of government, which changed into democracy during election periods, and then into sheer despotism when the assembly was in session and the party majority had established its sway.22 This was la nation in the bad sense of the word: an oppressive power. After his coup d'etat the King tried to introduce a monarchia wtxta; but in February 1789, after a serious controversy with the estate of the nobility, he again flouted the legal constitution, assumed almost absolute power, and, with the help of the three unprivileged estates, abolished part of the privileges of the nobility in a move that somewhat resembled the programme of the radical Bonnets in 1772. At the outbreak of the French revolution Swedish public opinion was already accustomed to new political ideas and to constitutional changes effected by force. King Gustaf himself had just carried out a social revolution in line with some of the best principles ofthephilosophes, but had at the same time usurped political power, only leaving decisions about taxation and financial policy to the estates. The most shocking aspect of the news from France was the violence and turbulence of the events. France was also traditionally the great ally of Sweden; and the revolution destroyed the practical value of the alliance at a time when Sweden desperately needed help in the deadly struggle against Russia. National feeling was mobilized through royal propaganda, but the response to this from the different classes of society was chiefly 20

20

Anders Nordencrantz, Til riksens hoglofl. slander forsamlade vid riksdagen ar 1760 [To the esteemed estates of the kingdom, assembled at the Riksdag in 1760]{Stockholm, 1759). 21 Anders Chydenius, Hvad kan vara orsaken, att saden myckenhel svenskl folk drligen flyllar ulur landet? [What can be the cause of the departure of so many Swedish people from Sweden each year?] (1765), Kalian till rikets vanmakl [The source of our national impotence] (1765), and other works collected in Politiska skrifter af Anders Chydenius, ed. E.G. Palmen (Helsinki, 1880). 22 Draft of a constitution, mentioned above, MS F 414, UUB.

110 Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution determined by their respective reactions to Gustaf Ill's provocative domestic policies. At the same time, although France had become inactive as an ally, French cultural influence was still strong, and the rebellion of the French people naturally gave an impulse to radical opinions in Sweden. King Gustaf was appalled. The news from France has horrified me so much that I could not get to sleep last night until 4 o'clock,' he wrote in French from his headquarters in Finland to his favourite and assistant Baron Armfelt on 19 August 1789. 'And this is the delightful Paris where all the nations of Europe gathered to seek their pleasures and assuage their sorrows!. . . What horrible people! They are the orang-outangs of Europe. How could so much grace and amiability be combined with such deliberate ferocity?'23 It was the humiliation of the royal family which shocked him most, but he also lamented the loss of a cultural paradise. For the immediate future, however, the war absorbed his attention. The Swedish nobility was enraged against the king, but some members of the leading families had personal connections in France and felt the revolution deeply. Many had served in the 'Royal Swedish' regiment whose officers were Swedish, or in the French navy in the American war. Axel von Fersen junior, the admirer and perhaps lover of Queen Marie Antoinette, became so absorbed by the French drama that his family played no part in the domestic opposition to the Swedish monarch. Other noblemen of the younger generation were attracted by revolutionary ideas, and especially by the classical notion of tyrannicide; such men were later to be involved in the conspiracy against the life of Gustaf III. Among the intellectuals the two leading literary figures and publicists, Johan Henrik Kellgren and Thomas Thorild, were ardent supporters of the revolution. As for the politics of the common people, it may be mentioned that the popular leader of the craftsmen in Stockholm, the brewer Abraham Westman, was a firm enemy of the nobility and thus a radical Bonnet until 1772, a royalist in the later years of Gustaf III, subsequently a rebel, and in 1810 organizer of the murder of Axel von Fersen, the figurehead of Sweden's ancien regime.24 In 1789 however King Gustaf personified Swedish national feeling in the war against Russia. When in 1790 a great naval victory made it possible to make peace with Russia, he took the daring step of approaching the former enemy with a view to organizing a crusade against revolutionary France. For that purpose he spent some months of 1791 in Aix-la-Chapelle, claiming to be the accepted leader of a European crusade. Among his papers there is an unfinished draft of an appeal to the 23

Gustave HI parses lettres, ed. V. v. Proschwitz (Stockholm, 1986), p. 316, Joran Wibling, Opinioner och stamningar i Sverige 1809-1810 [Opinion and sentiment in Sweden 1809-1810] (Dissertation, Uppsala, 1954). 24

Sweden

111

French nobility, in which he eloquently presented himself as the chief ally of France and invoked the historic virtues of French chivalry.25 The real purpose of this policy was to revive his historic ally and thus gain real independence from his temporary friend and constant enemy the Russian empire. When he failed to obtain support for his leadership of the projected crusade, he seems to have considered the possibility of totally changing his contemptuous attitude towards the national assembly of France.26 But the murder of King Gustaf in March 1792 put an end to the active continental policy of Sweden. The new nationalism was not born in Sweden until 1809, when Czar Alexander attacked Sweden and conquered the eastern half of the kingdom, Finland. A revolution put an end to Gustavian autocracy, and the new national leaders dreamed of revenge in alliance with the French emperor. For that purpose Marshal Bernadotte was elected hereditary prince of Sweden. That very competent general and statesman, who soon took the lead in political concerns, did not however share the feelings of his new subjects. Hostile to Napoleon since the coup d'etat of Brumaire and by no means in favour with the emperor, he took the opportunity in 1812 of allying himself with Sweden's natural enemy Alexander and of leading Sweden into the coalition against Napoleon. This meant giving up the reconquest of Finland; instead Bernadotte forced Denmark to surrender Norway, which was joined to Sweden in a union subject to a single king and having a common foreign policy. This unexpected'turn of events left mixed feelings in Sweden, but in the long run it changed the new nationalism into romantic dreams of Scandinavian unity.

25 26

MS F 415, document 156, UUB. Ibid., document 157.

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9 Poland Michael G. Muller The conditions under which modern Polish nationalism emerged differ in at least two respects from those encountered in other European countries. The first and the most obvious peculiarity of the Polish case is that modern nation-building was interrupted exactly at the time when the French Revolution accelerated similar processes in other countries. The second and third partitions of Poland (1793 and 1795) not only annulled the constitutional reforms introduced since the seventeeneighties, but also caused a severe crisis in the economic structure of the country, which considerably retarded social change within the still predominantly feudal society. This latter aspect is connected intricately with the second peculiarity of the Polish case: Polish nationalism remained, even after the revolutionary crisis of the seven teen-nineties, essentially an affair of the landed gentry as well as of those social strata which, like the emerging inteligeneja, originated from, and were still linked with, the traditional feudal elite. It is true that the constitutional patriotism of the gentry during the reform era after 1788, and especially during the Kosciuszko insurrection of 1794, took on radical forms and that the reformers proved increasingly receptive to republican concepts of social and political change. However, even the 'Kosciuszko democracy' failed to inject into the Polish bourgeoisie and the peasant masses a feeling of national solidarity strong enough to outlast the loss of political independence and the restoration of social conservatism under the absolutist governments of the partitioning powers. The question as to how this specific case fits into the history of modern European nationalism has not been discussed exhaustively among historians. Some scholars, especially Russians and Germans, have subscribed since the nineteenth century to the radical thesis that the insurrectional nationalism of the Poles in the period from 1794 to 1864 cannot be subsumed under the model of nationalism that is associated with the French Revolution.1 Poland's feudal nationalism, they argued, 1

Cf. M.H. Serejski, Europa a rozbiory Polski. Studium historiograficzne [Europe and the partitions of Poland. A study in historiography] (Warsaw, 1970); idem, 'L'aspect europeen de la question polonaise. Les reflexions des historiens etrangers sur les partages de la Pologne', in Poland at the 14th International Congress of Historical Sciences in San Francisco (Warsaw, 1975), pp. 135-47; J. Topolski, Toglady na rozbiory Polski' [Interpretations of the partitions of Poland], in Stosunki polsko-niemieckie w historiograjii (Part I, Poznari, 1975), pp. 410-515; idem, 'The partitions of Poland in German and Polish historiography', Polish Western Affairs, xiii (1972), 3-42.

113

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aimed primarily at restoring the rule of the Polish gentry over the polyethnic population of the former Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth. It was, therefore, an obstacle to national emancipation in a modern, bourgeois sense. However, neither this concept, nor the opposite thesis of the 'normality' of early Polish nationalism, can be considered as substantiated sufficiently by comparative research. Certainly, by now we have a better understanding of the process of modernization in Poland thanks to recent research on the social structures and mentalities of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is also true that some light has been cast on the role of different groups behind this development.2 Yet the results of this research still await interpretation in the context of the international discussion on modern nationalism. The following is an attempt to formulate some theses on this subject. Even on the threshold of the revolutionary era, the social and political order of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth was characterized by structures originating in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.3 Economically, the country was almost entirely dependent on the export of agrarian products, especially grain. Since the European grain boom of the sixteenth century, Gutswirtschaft (a manorial economy based on serfdom) on noble and ecclesiastical estates had become the dominant factor in Poland's economy, while industry and trade stagnated. Politically, Poland was a feudal republic of nobles that secured for the Polish or polonized szlachta the unchallenged rule over the polyethnic state. The estate of the knights alone, which represented approximately eight per cent of the population, had the privilege of passing parliamentary legislation. Its members were, at least de jure, equal and considered themselves as constituting the Polish nation of free citizens. The dissolution of this pre-modern nation had, however, set in long before the revolutionary crisis of the seventeen-nineties. It lasted throughout the eighteenth century, reaching its climax at the time of the French Revolution when traditional patriotism was on the verge of turning into modern national consciousness. 2 For a summary of post-war research in this field see T. Lepkowski, Polska — narodziny nowoczesnego narodu [Poland - the birth of the modern nation] (Warsaw, 1967); cf. also J. Jedlicki, 'Native culture and western civilization. Essays from the history of Polish social thought of the years 1764-1863', Ada Poloniae Historica, xxviii (1973), 63-85; K.G. Hausmann, 'Adelsgesellschaft und nationale Bewegung in Polen', in O. Dann (ed.), Nationalismus und sozialer Wandel (Hamburg, 1978), pp. 23-47; and B. Grochulska, 'The place of enlightenment in Polish social history', inJ.K. Fedorowicz (ed,), A Republic of Nobles. Studies in Polish History to 1864 (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 239-57. 3 The most general studies of these questions are A. Wyczariski, Polska - Rzeczq Pospolitq Szlacheckq [Poland as a republic of nobles] (Warsaw, 1960); andJ.K. Hoensch, Sozialverfassung und politische Reform. Polen im vorrevolutionaren Zeitalter (Cologne/ Vienna, 1973); cf. also E. Rostworowski, 'Polens Stellung in Europa im Zeitalter der Aufklarung', in Polen und Deutschland im Zeitalter der Aujklarung (Braunschweig, 1982), pp. 11-21.

Poland 115 This transformation process had its origins in the structural crisis of Poland's economy which, at the turn of the seventeenth century, developed into a general crisis of state and society. During that period, the collapse of the international grain market coincided with a sharp fall in the productivity of the Gutswirtschaft, and the population decreased drastically as a result of incessant wars. While the traditional economy now proved unable to recover by its own means, attempts at structural reforms were bound to fail on account of the lack of capital. The result was a depression that lasted well into the second half of the eighteenth century. Activity on the internal market diminished dramatically, urban development came to a standstill, and the majority of the noble landowners suffered losses of revenue which could not be recouped even by the increased exploitation of the enserfed peasantry.4 One major social effect of the crisis was, therefore, a profound differentiation within the nobility.5 On the one hand, the large estates of the magnates grew rapidly; on the other, the impoverishment of the lower layers of the szlachta accelerated, as more and more petty landowners turned into tenants or were pushed out of agriculture completely. Also the status of the middle landowners deteriorated considerably in the face of competition from latifundia which were in a better position to maintain the level of productivity. Consequently social antagonisms arose which were gradually to undermine the solidarity within the noble estate. The discrepancy in economic status between the oligarchic elite of the magnates and the majority of the szlachta started to be perceived as a conflict of political interests, as both sides reached the conviction that the traditional system of the egalitarian republic of nobles no longer provided adequate and efficient political representation. Thus the attempts at governmental and military reform, which since the first half of the eighteenth century had become the major issue in Polish parliamentary politics, posed from the very beginning the question of constitutional change, and the parliamentary dispute about the 'improvement of the republic' eventually took on the form of a fierce 4

J, Rutkowski, Le regime agraire en Pologne au xviiie siecle (Paris, 1927); W. Kula, 'L'histoire economique de la Pologne du xviiie siecle', Ada Poloniae Historica, iv (1961), 133-46; J, Topolski, 'Gospodarka' [The economy], in B. Lesnodorski (ed.), Polska w epoce Oswiecenia (Warsaw, 1971), pp 171-216; K. Kuklinska, 'Les roles joues par les marches interieurs et exterieurs dans le developpement du commerce Polonais au xviiie siecle', Studia Historiae Oeconomicae, xi (1976), 87-100; W. Szczygielski, 'Die okonomischen Aktivitaten des polnischen Adels im 16. bis 18. Jahrhundert', ibid., ii (1967), 83-101. 5 A comprehensive introduction to the question isj. Kowecki, 'Les transformations de la structure sociale en Pologne au xviiie siecle', Ada Poloniae Historica, xx (1972), 5-30. The fullest examination of social differentiation within the Polish nobility since the late 18th century is J. Jedlicki, Klejnot a bariery spoteczne. Przeobrazenia szlachectwa w schylkowym okresie feudalizmu [Nobility and social barriers. The transformation of the Szlachta during the final period of feudalism] (Warsaw, 1968).

116 Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution conflict between the competing sections of the traditional feudal elite.6 Of course, it was only in the course of several decades that the different factions shaped into 'parties' and that the conflicting interests were moulded into clear-cut political programmes. Indeed, in almost all cases the initiative in the reform movement lay with the few magnate families which held the most influential positions at the court and in the country's administration. The enlightened oligarchs headed the pro-reform court faction at the Polish diet throughout the eighteenth century, and, at least during the early stages, they appeared to be able to impose on the whole movement a rather anti-republican concept of reform closely following absolutist patterns of centralized modern statehood.7 However, as the szlachta's opposition to magnate oligarchy became more articulate, the aristocratic 'party leaders' had to reach a compromise with them concerning the demand for a republican solution to the reform problems, taking into consideration not only the economic and social interests of the noble majority, but also their traditional right of political participation. Poland's republican pluralism, previously threatened by the social crisis among the nobility, was to be restored on the basis of a modified constitution. By the time of the Four Years' Diet, the so-called Great Sejm of 17881792, the different groups supporting the reform had united into something like an informal party capable of successfully taking parliamentary action. It was considered the camp of the 'patriots', and they identified themselves with this term. The 'patriots' were headed by a group of magnate senators and by the king, Stanislaw August Poniatowski, whose own father had been one of the key figures in the reform movement since the seventeen-thirties. In the chamber of deputies at the diet, this aristocratic party was, however, not only supported by a clientele of in some way or other socially-dependent members of the szlachta (a form of support which traditionally every magnate party received): they could also count on a substantial number of followers within the anti-magnate faction of the nobility, who associated with the 'patriots' in opposition to aristocratic 'abuses' as well as in their demand for a reform of the state, thus securing to the szlachta exclusive access to administrative and military positions. Furthermore, representatives of the enlightened clergy and a number of bourgeois journalists joined the 'patriots' in producing propaganda for reform; they 6

Cf. Hoensch, p. 82 and nn.; M.G. Miiller, Polen zwischen Preussen und Russland. Souveranitdskrise und Reformpolitik, 1736-1752 (Berlin, 1983); D. Stone, Polish Politics and National Reform 1775-1788 (New York, 1976). 7 J. Staszewski, 'Pomysly reformatorskie czasow Augusta H' [Concepts of reform in the age of Augustus II], Kwartalnik Historyczny, Ixxxii (1975), 736-64; E. Rostworowski, Sprawa aukcji wojska na tie sytuacji polity cznej przed Sejmem Czteroletnim [The question of military reform against the background of the political situation before the Four Years' Diet] (Warsaw, 1957).

Poland 117 demanded substantial modernization, thus paving the way for bourgeois participation in public affairs.8 The vast majority of the dispossessed szlachta, however, played no part in the reform movement. Lacking proper parliamentary representation, the impoverished former members of the feudal elite had been unable to put forward their claims for a more secure position in society. On the contrary, they became the major victims of the reform initiative. In fact, the idea that the dispossessed szlachta should be excluded from the political nation was the least controversial issue of the reform debates among the 'patriots'.9 Of course, the different groups within the reform movement had varying reasons for supporting this proposition. For the middle layers of the landowning szlachta one of the motives might have been to get rid of their competitors in the scramble for administrative and military positions. More importance, however, should be attributed to the fact that in the past the propertyless szlachta had been the mainstay of the magnate oligarchy. With the poor nobility in the provinces being entirely dependent on magnate patronage, the aristocratic families had always been in a position to manipulate the outcome of provincial elections and to secure for themselves the allegiance of certain factions of the deputies at the diet. But it was not only the anti-magnate elements belonging to the middle strata of the nobility that opposed the supporters of szlachta egalitarianism. The same position was held by the more radical propagandists of constitutional reform who favoured an entirely new concept of citizenship based on the possession of property. For them, depriving the landless szlachta of its political rights was to be only one side of a modernizing process, the other side of which was aimed at integrating the upper layer of the bourgeoisie into the political nation. Although the issue of bourgeois emancipation had thus been raised, the overall tendency of'patriot' ideology was rather moderate. A drastic encroachment on the social status quo was not on the agenda, nor was 'democratization' on the level of political representation. The reform movement aimed primarily at a redefinition of this status quo taking into account the shifts in the social structure which had occurred since the crisis of the early eighteenth century. And controversies within the 'patriot' movement centred mainly around the question of the extent to which the modified concept of the nation should provide for the future

8

W. Kalinka, Sejm Czteroletni [The Four Years' Diet] (2 vols., Krakow, 1886-9; German translation: Berlin, 1886-9); E. Rostworowski, 'La Grande Diete, 1788-1792. Reformes et perspectives', Annales historiques de la Revolutionfrangaise, xxxvi (1964), 30928; Hoensch, p. 214 and nn. 9 Jedlicki, Klejnot, p. 139 and nn.

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integration of newly emerging economic elites.10 Thus even Hugo Ko%taj, considered the most radical protagonist of bourgeois constitutionalism in the seventeen-eighties and nineties, put forward a concept of the nation which, although based on the ideal of natural law, was aimed at a rather modest compromise between the tradition of the republic of nobles and the requirements of bourgeois modernization. 'The closer we want to approach the origins of the contrat social', he wrote in 1778, 'the more we come to the conclusion that individual property lies at the roots of the association of many families into one nation, that the landed proprietors are the legitimate masters of the lands of which monarchies and republics consist.'11 It was not property in general that should entitle the individual to full civil rights, but only feudal landownership or the possession of real estate in a town. This meant in principle that the privilege of nobility was indeed to lose its function as a criterion of legal differentiation. However, with the bourgeois landowners constituting for the time being only a marginal group within a predominantly agrarian society, the effects to be expected from such a reform were more of an ideological than of a social nature. Essentially, Koltjtaj's constitutional programme aimed at paving the way for the future integration of the bourgeois citoyens actifs into the political nation without interfering with the interests of the traditional elite. The reform implemented by the 'Law on Government' of 3 May 1791, and the accompanying decisions of the Four Years' Diet, however, appeared to>fall short of even such modest expectations. It is true that the May Constitution referred to principles of natural law which granted all inhabitants, including the peasants, 'the protection of law and of the country's government';12 furthermore, the law 'on the king's towns' of 1791 recognized the claim for a representation of the urban population,13 while the new statute for the provincial diets of the same year excluded the landless szlachta from participating in the assemblies of the provincial nobility.14 Yet the Four Years' Diet avoided reaching a clear decision on the question of whether or not the nation of the nobles should actually be superseded by a nation of the citoyens actifs. According to the new law, the bourgeois elite as such was not admitted to the political nation. The 10 K.G. Hausmann, Die politischen Begriffe und Wertungen in der polnischen Aujkla'rung. Zum Selbstverstandnis der Polen in ihrer Reformpublizistik am Ende der Adelsrepublik, Ph.D. thesis (Gottingen, 1957); E. Rostworowski, 'Republicanisme Sarmate et les Lumieres', Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, xxvi (1963), 1417-83; cf. alsoj. Maciejewski, 'Pojecie narodu w mysli republikantow lat 1767-1775' [The concept of the nation in republican thought 1767-1775], in Idee i koncepcje narodu w pohkiej mysli politycznej czasow porozbiorowych (Warsaw, 1977), pp. 21-41. 11 Cited in Jedlicki, Klejnot, p. 184. 12 B. Lesnodorski, Dzielo Sejmu Czteroletniego, 1788-1792 [The work of the Four Years' Diet, 1788-1792] (Wroclaw, 1951), p. 226. 13 Volumina Legum, 2nd edn. (9 vols., St. Petersburg/Krakow, 1889), ix. 216-17. 14 Ibid., pp. 233-6.

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representatives of the towns, elected on the basis of a property and tax census, were only to act as advisers to the diet without the right of voting in the chamber of deputies. Instead, it was by way of ennoblement by the diet that individuals from the upper strata of the town population could be given the chance to obtain full civil rights. While already in 1790 a significant number of'capitalists' had been granted the status of nobles, the law of 1791 for the towns established a legal claim for ennoblement for those who purchased estates or held high ranks in the country's civil service or in the army; and it stated that 'at every diet 30 individuals from among the townsmen who hold hereditary real property in their towns will be admitted to the honours of nobility'.15 The 'peaceful revolution' of 1791, as Hugo KoH^taj characterized the constitutional reform, had thus led the republic just to the brink of becoming a modern nation. On the one hand, Poland after 1791 could no longer be considered a feudal republic, since the 'estate of the knights' had ceased to be identical with the feudal elite and the privilege of noble birth no longer secured full citizenship. At least de jure the difference between citizens and inhabitants had now become a difference between landed proprietors and common people, and it should not be overlooked that this constitutional framework, had it not been destroyed in the course of the partitions, could indeed have provided a chance for substantial bourgeois emancipation in the future. On the other hand, however, the reform did not, and was not meant to effect an immediate revolutionary integration of new social strata into the nation. The constitutional patriotism of the reform era remained essentially confined to those groups among the nobility which had been the main force behind the politics of 'conservative modernization' as practised by the Four Years' Diet. The declared readiness of these groups to share the privilege of citizenship with the upper strata of the bourgeoisie was hardly more than an option on the future.16 Accordingly the national consciousness as represented by such 'patriot' reform groups was firmly linked with a sense of noble identity. It was a peculiar fusion of enlightened cosmopolitanism and a revived sense of Poland's unique republican tradition. Thus the problem of administrative and social reform was perceived primarily as a question of Poland's 'westernization'; 'patriot' propaganda was deeply influenced by 15

Ibid., p. 217. A detailed examination of the role of the bourgeoisie in the reform movement is K. Zienkowska, Slawetni I urodzeni. Ruch polity czny mieszczanstwa w dobie Sejmu Czteroletniego [The reputable and affluent. The bourgeois political movement during the Four Years' Diet] (Warsaw, 1976). 16 Cf. Jedlicki, Klejnot, p. 200; B. Lesnodorski, 'La "pacifica rivoluzione" en Italic et ses reflets en Pologne au xviiie siecle. Filangieri et Koftataj', in Venezia et Poloniafra Illuminismo e Romanticismo (Florence, 1973), pp. 195-214; J. Kowecki, 'U poczatkow nowoczesnego narodu w Polsce w epoce Oswiecenia' [At the origins of the modern nation in Poland in the age of enlightenment], in Lesnodorski (ed.), Polska, pp. 106-70.

120 Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution concepts of pre-revolutionary Enlightenment in France and England, and their programme for the 'improvement of the republic' owed to western theorists not only the principles of natural law, but also the understanding that in order to overcome its internal crisis Poland had to catch up with the process of economic and social modernization in the West.17 In their political thinking, however, the vast majority of the 'patriots' strongly believed that Poland's republican tradition was equal if not superior to the political culture of western constitutionalism. Although 'patriot' propaganda in its praise of Poland's 'democratic' heritage voiced many ideas which in fact had their origin in the European Enlightenment, the reformers showed little inclination to identify with the political patterns coming from France in and after 1789. It was, indeed, with a sense of distant sympathy that they witnessed the initial phase of the French Revolution, as it seemed to have little in common with their own concept of republican liberty.18 The events after 1792, however, were to change the political profile of Polish patriotism radically. With Russia's armed intervention against the 'Polish revolutionaries' annulling the constitutional reform of the Great Diet and with the implementation by Russia and Prussia of the second partition of Poland in 1793, the 'patriot' movement was now virtually pushed onto the side of the French Revolution. Indeed, the government of the Kosciuszko Insurrection of 1794 not only aspired to military and political co-operation with revolutionary France,19 it also redefined the republican concept of the nation in a more radical way than the May Constitution had done and based much of its propaganda directly on the rhetoric of the French Revolution. Given the critical situation of an insurrectionary war against the superior forces of both Russia and Prussia, the revolutionary continuation of the reforms begun in 1791 seemed to be the only way to provide Kosciuszko with the means to effect an extensive political and military mobilization of the country. This process of mobilizing the 'nation in danger' was indeed to produce a revolutionary dynamism which brought about the transformation of reform patriotism into popular republican nationalism. General Kosciuszko himself was certainly not a revolutionary republican, nor were the followers who had shared his 'Leipzig 17 Jedlicki, 'Native Culture', p. 71; J. Michalski, 'Sarmatyzm a europeizacja Polski w xviii wieku' ['Sarmate' ideology and Poland's westernization in the eighteenth century], in Swojskosci cudzoziemszczyzna w dziejach kultury polskiej (Warsaw, 1973), pp. 113-68. 18 Ibid., p. 116 and nn.; cf. also H. Rzadkowska, Stosunekpolskiej opiniipublicznej do Rewolucji Francuskiej [Polish public opinion on the French Revolution] (Warsaw, 1948), p. 17 and nn. 19 The most detailed account of the Kosciuszko Insurrection is still T. Korzon, Kosciuszko (Krakow, 1894); cf. also A. Prochnik, Demokracja Kosduszkowska [The Kosciuszko democracy] (Warsaw, 1947); W. Lukasiewicz, Targowica a powstanie kosciuszkowskie [The Targowica Confederation and the Kosciuszko Insurrection] (Warsaw, 1953).

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emigration' since 1792 and who were to be the initiators and leaders of the insurrection. Although the majority of them can be considered the advanced radicals of the patriot movement, their political concept was essentially confined to the idea of the reinstitution of the May Constitution, a measure to be negotiated with Russia in the course of an insurrectional war.20 The king's failure to achieve a compromise with Russia in 1792 and the subsequent dismemberment of Poland had, of course, confirmed doubts as to whether a moderate course of political reform could prevent anti-revolutionary intervention. And they clearly recognized that one of the major shortcomings of the reform of the Great Diet was that it had not followed the French example of at least establishing a revolutionary militia system, thus providing for a levee en masse against a Russian invasion. But even in their approval of cooperation with France, the Polish emigrants were far from identifying with what they called the 'democratism' of the French Revolution, and they obviously felt little sympathy with the Parisian population involved in the bloodshed of autumn 1792.21 It is, therefore, hardly suprising that Kosciuszko's negotiations in Paris in early 1793 had little success.22 Although France had good reason to welcome Poland's military assistance against Prussia, apparently neither the Jacobins nor the Girondins could be convinced that Kosciuszko represented a revolutionary movement deserving full-scale ideological and financial support from France. Obviously both sides were aware of the fact that the radicalism of the Polish insurgents, prompted by the war, provided only a narrow bridge between the French and the Polish concept of republicanism. Kosciuszko, however, had to take into account the increasingly tense political atmosphere in the country, especially in the major towns. The Russian invasion of 1792, the subsequent partition and the large-scale repressions imposed by the Russian-supported regime of the Targowica Confederates had indeed brought the country to the brink of revolution. The major force behind the massive resistance which had become apparent since 1793 was, of course, those patriots who had been actively engaged in the reform movement of 1791 and who had immediately experienced the effects of the counter-revolution. But officers of the Polish Army, who had fought the Russian invaders in 1792 and who now 20

Lukasiewicz, p. 264 and nn. Korzon, p. 276 and n.; B. Lesnodorski, 'Robespierre vu de la Pologne', XHe Congres international des Sciences historiques a Vienne (Vienna, 1965), pp. 151-6. In general Polish post-war historiography (Rzadkowska, Prochnik, Lukasiewicz) rather over-estimated Polish sympathies for revolutionary France in 1792-3. 22 H. Kocqj, Francja a upadek Polski [France and the fall of Poland] (Krakow, 1976), p. 121 andnn.; cf. alsoj. Godechot, 'Robespierre et la Pologne', in A. Zahorski (ed.), Wiek XVIII. Polska iSwiat (Warsaw, 1974), pp. 369-79; J. Grossbart, 'La politique polonaise de la Revolution frangaise', Annales historiques de la Revolution fran$aise, ii (1929), 35-55, 24255, 476-85, and iii (1930), 129-51. 21

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faced discharge as a result of the drastic reduction of Poland's armed forces ordained by the partitioning powers, were also engaged in resistance. Finally, the economic crisis caused by war and occupation stimulated considerable social unrest as thousands of impoverished nobles, unemployed factory workers and starving peasants sought help in the major towns in the winter of 1793/94.23 The egalitarian dictatorship, which Kosciuszko established in March 1794,24 again constituted an effort to reach a compromise. Its aim was to catch up politically with the revolutionary developments in the country and simultaneously to permit a broad basis for mobilization for insurrectionary war, without abandoning the political foundations of reform patriotism. Thus behind the provisional constitutional laws there was, on the one hand, a genuinely radical enlargement of the political nation. For these laws not only formally eliminated the distinction between 'citizens' and 'inhabitants of the country', and thereby removed titles of nobility from the political vocabulary (which was essentially a logical consequence of the reform laws of 1791). A more important result was that the barriers between the estates were now practically overcome: in particular through the equal participation of the bourgeoisie in the revolutionary courts and the so-called 'committees of order', and even more through the partial emancipation of the peasants which was effected by the promise of liberation from serfdom made to those peasants who were serving in the army, and by the general reduction of the burden of compulsory labour.25 On the other hand, in distributing power within the insurrectionary regime, Kosciuszko had to insure the continuity of the patriotic movement of the May Constitution; that is to say, he also had to integrate the traditional elites, including the King's supporters. The equal participation of 'Jacobins' and 'Moderates' in the Supreme National Council established a temporary balance in the leadership of the insurrection. And since the validity of the revolutionary laws was restricted to the period of the insurrection - afterwards a diet was to deliberate anew about the laws - the decision about the extent of revolutionary change was basically left open. To what extent it would have been possible to return to the constitutional status quo of 1791, as envisaged by the 'moderates', if the insurrection had proved to be successful, is questionable. For the 'radicals' within and outside the insurrectionary leadership gained 23

A. Zahorski, Warszawa w powstaniu Kosciuszkowskim [Warsaw during the Kosciuszko Insurrection] (Warsaw, 1967), p. 128 and nn. 24 The most important documents are printed in Akta Powstania Kosciuszki [Documents relating to the Kosciuszko Insurrection] (3 vols., Krakow/Wroclaw, 191855). 25 J. Kowecki, Pospolite ruszenie w insurekcji 1794 r. [The general levy during the insurrection of 1794] (Warsaw, 1963), p. 78 and nn.

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influence and developed their own political profile during the dictatorship.26 The 'Clubbists', who were recruited primarily from the young officers, urban intellectuals and the lower clergy, were 'Jacobins' only in the eyes of their enemies. But the republican laws of the insurrectionary regime acquired through them the status of a constitutional programme, and their propaganda was effective not only among the lower urban classes, but also among a section of the politicized nobility, from which reform patriotism had previously won followers. Dictatorial rule as such also had a radicalizing effect. Especially in implementing general conscription, the insurrectionary government was dependent on applying egalitarian principles. Thus the most important intervention in the rural feudal order came about by way of army recruitment: the conditional liberation of the enserfed peasants. The use in warfare of the peasant 'scythe regiments' and of town militia as in the case of the liberation of Warsaw at the beginning of the insurrection - accounted for an increased demand to participate in national affairs. The economic and tax policies of the insurrectionary government, in the formulation of which the 'radical' Hugo Koffl^taj as chairman of the Treasury played an important role, had a similar effect. With the newly introduced progressive taxes, the requisitioning of property assets and even factories and workshops, or the regimentation of the food supply, a kind of 'war socialism' was practised, which was welcomed ideologically by the 'Jacobins'. The motto of the 'nation in danger', which was borrowed from France, became an egalitarian slogan against the traditional elite.27 Finally, public opinion in the capital had a dynamism of its own. The controversy between the moderates and the radicals was carried out more in public than during the Great Diet - by way of leaflets, political journalism and agitation.28 In other words, on certain crucial questions the conflict was transferred from the institutions of the insurrectionary government to urban public opinion. This was particularly so on the question of 'revolutionary' legal jurisdiction. The mobilized urban population succeeded in condemning the 'traitors' of the Targowica regime and in having them publicly executed. And in June 1794 there was also a case of lynching: the masses managed to take some accused people from prison by force and hanged them.29 In the course of these events, Jacobin propaganda was important as an instrument in furthering 26

Cf. B. Lesnodorski, Lesjacobinspolonais (Paris, 1965). Zahorski, Warszawa, p. 199 and nn. 28 Lesnodorski, Jacobins, p, 226 and nn,; Zahorski, Warszawa, p. 230 and nn.; A. Woltanowski, Prasa powstania kosciuszkowskiego [The press and the Kosciuszko Insurrection] (Ph.D. thesis, University of Warsaw); cf. also B. Lesnodorski (ed.), Kuznica Kottqtajowska. Wybor zrodd [Knoflataj's forge. Selected sources] (Warsaw, 1949). 29 Zahorski, Warsaw, p. 133 and nn. 27

124 Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution revolutionary terror. Thus, after the capture of Kosciuszko by the army of intervention, some 'Clubbists' demanded the execution of the king in order to prevent the insurrectionary regime from concluding a compromise peace. The Kosciuszko revolt in one way imitated the French Revolution. Although the political starting point was fundamentally different, there were comparable developments, including analogous forms of politicization.30 It is true that Kosciuszko himself and his government participated in this process of radicalization only to the extent required by the revolt. The willingness of the insurrectionary government to reach a compromise with the radicals was dependent on the military situation. But the traditional elites could control only to a very limited extent the process of political change ushered in by the revolt. At least on the ideological level the transition to a concept of nationhood that was democratic in tendency was not subject to reversal in Poland after 1794. At the social level, the degree of change was less marked. It can safely be said that all social strata developed and articulated a national consciousness to the extent to which they participated in the insurrection: this applied to the politically active noble landlords as well as to bourgeois propertied groups and the urban population in general, and also to the peasants who had served in the insurrectionary army. But the circle becomes very small when one tries to identify the groups which carried on this newly developed national consciousness. There is no doubt that the national mobilization of the peasants was very partial and ephemeral. The period of the insurrectionary dictatorship was too short to allow the legal changes relating to the agrarian structure to become social reality. The levee en masse had only a minimal effect in social terms. The peasants were only a minor part of the insurrectionary army of 140,000 men which served until the end of the insurrection, and in relation to the rural population as a whole, their number was extremely small.31 The revolt could not establish any tradition of national consciousness among this section of the population, and until the second half of the nineteenth century the peasants did not participate in any of the uprisings for national independence.32 Nor can it be said that the bourgeois population in the towns became a major repository of the new national consciousness. One reason for this was the fact that the urban population was very heterogeneous with respect to ethnic background and religious affiliation. But more important was the fact that the processes of political and social 30

A very interesting contemporary account of the atmosphere in Warsaw during the insurrection is J.G. Seume, Einige Nachrichten uber die Vorfdlle in Polen im Jahre 1794 (Leipzig, 1796). 31 Kowecki, p. 279. 32 S. Kieniewicz, L'Independance et la question agraire. Esquisses polonaises du xixe siecle (Wroclaw, 1982); idem, The Emancipation of the Polish Peasantry (Chicago, 1969).

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integration, which had been significantly affecting the major towns since 1791, were abruptly cut off with the suppression of the Kosciuszko revolt. With the abolition of yrban self-government and the onset of the economic crisis after the revolt, the majority of the bourgeois population was again segregated from the political nation.33 On the other side of the political spectrum, the traditional social elites clearly dissociated themselves from the Kosciuszko concept of nationhood. The willingness to accept a social compromise in the spirit of the constitutional laws of 1794 diminished as the pressure for solidarity weakened after the end of the revolt. This was true of a large number of the magnates and the wealthy nobility, regardless of whether they had participated in the revolt; and it was also true of the section of the urban bourgeoisie which had been integrated into the nation of the citoyens actifs as a result of the reforms carried out since 1788. The specific interests of the traditional elites in constitutional modernization had already been satisfied in the 'conservative revolution' of the May Constitution, and at least the social, if not the political, achievements of their reform patriotism were not reversed by the partitioning powers after 1794.34 These social strata had no compelling need to cling to the emancipatory nationalism of the Kosciuszko period. Only the group of nobles with little or no property remained as the future supporters of the new concept of the nation. This was the section of the nobility which had lost social status as a result of the crisis of the eighteenth .century without having found a fresh opportunity for integration on another step of the social ladder. Such an opportunity was offered by the state reform policies of the Four Years' Diet and the Kosciuszko dictatorship. The conservative policies of the partitioning powers, however, permitted them only a marginal position in society. Reduced to a client role within the agrarian framework or to membership of the intelligentsia professions, they developed into a quasi-bourgeois class. Their social interests were defined by their opposition to the rural feudal elite (and to the old bourgeoisie) as well as

33

R. Kofodziejczyk, Burzuazja polska w XIX i XX wfeku [The Polish bourgeoisie in the 19th and 20th centuries] (Warsaw, 1979), p. 52 and nn.; W. Molik and K. Makowski, 'Breaking of social barriers as an expression of the emergence of a modern society in the mid-19th century - based on the example of selected Polish towns', Historical Social Research, xxxix (1986), 86-100. 34 I. Rychlikowa, Ziemianstwo polskie 1789-1864. Zroznicowanie spoleczne [The Polish landed gentry 1789-1864. Its social differentiation] (Warsaw, 1983); cf. also Jedlicki, Klejnot, pp. 217 and nn., 283andnn.;R. Czepulis-Rastenis, *Wzor obywatela ziemskiego w publicystyce Krolestwa Polskiego' [The ideal of the noble citizen as seen by the publicists of the Kingdom of Poland] in Z. Stefanowska (ed.), Tradycje szlacheckie w kulturze polskiej (Warsaw, 1976), pp. 55-77.

126 Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution to the powers responsible for the partition. Their situation was ideologically reflected in the egalitarian nationalism that had taken shape in!794.35 Thus developments in the course of the Kosciuszko revolt and the consequent third partition of Poland led to a paradoxical result. The concept of the nation became more radical - as a result of a process comparable to the French Revolution - and in principle became an egalitarian ideology without, however, enlarging the circle of its supporters to any note-worthy extent. The 'conservative revolution' of 1791 was essentially a process of social adjustment typical of the age. With the Kosciuszko revolt and the restoration that followed, the ideological development of the concept of nationhood in Poland was completely divorced from the realities of Polish society. The effects of this breach on the history of Polish nationalism can be traced far into the second half of the nineteenth century. The period of 'statelessness' meant that economic modernization and the related social processes were delayed for generations.36 The new effort at reform patriotism during the Napoleonic age remained only an episode. The varying processes of social change in the three parts of Poland more or less ignored the Polish nation. Where economic innovation was given a chance, it could hardly favour the emergence of native Polish entrepreneurship.37 Thus the traditional identification of nation and noble society continued, and this social isolation of Polish nationalism strengthened as the political points of reference for the national movement - the May Constitution and the Kosciuszko revolt - became increasingly remote. This effect was somewhat modified by the process of social change within the nobility itself. For the social disintegration of the* traditional elites continued in the nineteenth century. The legal requirement for noble titles to be tied to property gained final acceptance and thus confirmed the social breach between the landless szlachta and the agrarian, feudal elite. Among those of noble descent who were declassed, the movement towards incorporation in a new middle class accelerated, and these people clearly had different interests with respect to the national movement from those of the propertied nobles.

35

Lepkowski, p, 160 and nn.; cf. also J. Szacki, Ojczyzna-Narod-Rewolucja. Problematyka narodowa w polskiej mysli szlachecko-rewolucyjnej [Fatherland-nationrevolution. The national question as seen by the revolutionary nobility] (Warsaw, 1962); J. Skowronek, 'The direction of political change in the era of national insurrection 17951864', in Fedorowicz (ed.), A Republic, pp. 262-81. 36 Cf. Zarys dziejow kapitalizmu w Polsce [An outline of the history of capitalism in Poland] (Warsaw, 1974), p. 33 and nn. 37 Lepkowski, p. 406 and nn.

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A separate factor making for social innovation in the nineteenth century was the national movement in exile.38 This was especially true after the November revolt of 1830, as a result of which the most active supporters of the movement for national independence left the country. For the consciousness of the emigrants was affected not only by the political environment in which they found themselves, but also by their new social status in exile: the obligatory egalitarianism of the 'nation in exile' was bound to colour their concept of nationhood. Despite these changes, however, the social elements which provided the main component of the national movement did not merely act as a surrogate for the bourgeois elements which commonly performed this role elsewhere in Europe. For one thing, they were actually unfriendly towards bourgeois interests and values: a general contempt for the bourgeoisie characterized not only the conservatives but also the radical, democratic wing of the national movement. The social concepts of the nationalists ranged from feudal-conservative ideas to radical models of agrarian socialism, but they almost unanimously rejected a * capitalistic' mode of nation-building.39 This meant that the national movement was in effect turning its back on forces of modernization and national integration which were operating in most parts of the continent. Not until the second half of the nineteenth century did it come to terms with the new economic forces and break out of the mould of insurrectional nationalism inherited from the seventeen-nineties.40 But the social isolation of Polish nationalism was also attributable to the effects of partition as such. Since the national movement was in no position to influence developments, or hardly even public opinion, within the country, few dialectical reactions could be obtained from Polish society to the new concepts of nationhood that were being developed by the emigre organizations. The contradictions within the national movement therefore remained unresolved. The pre-modern, elitist patriotism of the May Constitution coexisted with the Kosciuszko concept of nationhood, and also with an emancipatory brand of 38 R. Czepulis, 'Uwarstwienie spoleczne krolestwa w swiadomosci wspofczesnych' [The social stratification of the Kingdom of Poland as seen by contemporaries], in Spoleczenstwo krolestwa polskiego, i (Warsaw, 1965), 325-92; Przemiany spoleczne w Krolestwie Pohkim 1815-1864 (Wroclaw, 1979); H.H. Hahn, 'Die Organisation der polnischen Grossen Emigration 1831-1847', in Th. Schieder and O. Dann (eds.), Nationale Bewegung und soziale Organisation, vol. i (Munich/Vienna), 1978, pp. 131-279. 39 J. Jedlicki, 'Polskie nurty ideowe lat 1790-1863 wobec cywilizacji zachodu' [Polish thought on western civilization, 1790-1863] in Swojskosc i cudzoziemszczyzna, pp. 186213; P. Brock, Nationalism and Populism in Partitioned Poland (London, 1973); A. Walicki, Philosophy and Romantic Nationalism. The Case of Poland (Oxford, 1982), p. 64 and nn. 40 H. Wereszycki, 'Polish insurrections as a controversial problem in Polish historiography', Canadian Slavonic Papers, ix (1967), 107-21; S.B. Blejwas, 'The origins and practice of "organic work" in Poland 1795-1863', The Polish Review, xv (1970), 2354; Jedlicki, 'Polskie nurty', p. 220.

128 Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution nationalism that was simultaneously democratic and agrarian. And even if modern concepts of nationhood did replace corporative patriotism during the first half of the nineteenth century, this had little impact for the time being on the actual integration of the nation. The political radicalization that took place within the national movement could not prevent the majority of the rural and urban population from considering Polish nationalism (even as late as the January revolt of 1863) as an affair of the nobles.41 The question posed at the beginning of this essay as to Poland's place in the history of modern European nationalism cannot be answered clearly. 'One can certainly say that during the French Revolution - and indirectly in connection with it - the threshold between corporative patriotism and modern nationalism was already reached and in some respects crossed. It also seems clear that the developments which followed in Poland did not lead to a modern nationalism of the bourgeois type. The rupture which was caused by the partitions of Poland brought forth a peculiar variety of nationalism which was characterized primarily by the discrepancy between its advanced political content and the traditional limitations of its social base.

41 S. Kieniewicz, Powstanie Styczniowe [The January Insurrection] (Warsaw, 1972); R.F. Leslie, Reform and Insurrection in Russian Poland 1856-1865 (Westport, Conn., 1963).

10

Hungary Kalman Benda To understand the position of the Hungarian Jacobins on the^national question, one needs to consider the ethnic pattern of the population of Hungary in historical perspective.1 According to the census taken in 1784, in the countries of the crown of St Stephen - i.e. in the kingdom of Hungary, in the grand principality of Transylvania, in Croatia and Slavonia and on the military frontiers - there was a total of nine million inhabitants, around 45% of the population of the Habsburg monarchy. Only a part of this population was Hungarian, since historic Hungary was a multinational state. Some of its peoples had lived in the Carpathian basin since before the Hungarian conquest, others had been installed there by the kings of the house of Arpad in the Middle Ages, and others again had settled there as a result of spontaneous infiltration over the centuries. Moreover three hundred years of conflict with the Turks and 150 years of Muslim rule had affected the proportions of the different nationalities. It was the southern and central regions, inhabited by Hungarians, which suffered most destruction, while the other ethnic groups in the borderlands and the mountain areas were able to ride out these hard times in relative safety. By the end of the seventeenth century, when the Turks were driven out of the country, the proportion of Hungarians in the population, 75-80% in the Middle Ages, had fallen to less than 50%, and this proportion was reduced further in the course of the eighteenth century as a result of the colonization policy of the Viennese Court. Towards the end of the eighteenth century the population of northern Hungary was composed mainly of Slovaks and, in the north east, of Ruthenians. Transylvania and the eastern fringe of the great Hungarian plain were inhabited by Hungarians and Rumanians, and the southern part of the country - the Voivodina of today - by Hungarians and Serbs, the latter having settled there during the period of Turkish rule. In 1 For what follows see: K. Benda, 'La societe hongroise au xviiie siecle', in Les Lumieres en Hongrie, en Europe centrale et en Europe orientate. Actes du Colloque de Mdtrafured 3-5 Novembre 1970 (Budapest, 1971), pp. 17-29; and idem, 'Nationalgefiihl und Nationalitatenkampfe in Ungarn am Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts', Anzeigen der philosophisch-historischen Klasse der Osterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, cviii (1971), 43-56.

129

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Croatia and Slavonia the majority of the population was Croatian, but there were also Serbs in the eastern region, and Slovenes in the west. On the western frontier of Hungary, the present Burgenland, the population consisted largely of Germans, but these constituted only a fraction of the German inhabitants of Hungary, most of whom lived in the towns. Parts of the German population had been established in the country as early as the Middle Ages, the so-called Saxons in Transylvania and in the Zips in northern Hungary, while the scattered German colonies in Transdanubia, in southern Hungary, and around the capital, Buda and Pest, were of eighteenth-century origin and were due to the systematic policy of settlement pursued by the Habsburgs. The Magyars mainly occupied the great Hungarian plain and Transdanubia. Their settlements extended to the edge of the mountains, and even projected into them along the river valleys, whereas the Szekelys (Sicules) occupied the eastern Carpathians. The Magyars, some four million of them, formed the largest of the ethnic groups in the kingdom, but, as we have stated, did not constitute an absolute majority. Ethnic multiplicity was compounded by religious division. The bulk of the population was Roman Catholic, this being the faith of the majority of Hungarians, of almost all the eighteenth-century German settlers, and of most of the Croatians, Slovenes and Slovaks. The Saxons in Transylvania and in the Zips, most of the long-established German town-dwellers, and some of the Slovaks were Lutherans. Those who subscribed 'to the Calvinist faith were essentially Hungarians, their numbers being most significant in the eastern part of the great plain and in Transylvania. Unitarianism was also gaining ground among the Transylvanian Hungarians. The Serbs, Rumanians and Ruthenians belonged to the Greek Orthodox Church. At the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Habsburg policy succeeded in converting a number of the Ruthenians and Rumanians to the United Greek Catholic Church, but it proved impossible to disrupt the religious unity of the Serbs, who unanimously clung to Orthodoxy. In the eighteenth century this kaleidoscopic society lived under a feudal system which had come into existence in the middle ages, when ethnic diversity had not been so prevalent. The society had a basically feudal structure: it was divided into nobility, bourgeoisie, and serfs, irrespective of ethnic or linguistic allegiance. The internal conflicts that were common in Hungarian history never arose from differences of nationality. They resulted rather from antagonism between estates and classes, and later to some extent between religious denominations; they were conflicts between the nobility, the bourgeoisie and the serfs, and between the privileged Catholics and the persecuted Protestants and Orthodox. The determining factor was social status rather than ethnic identity. Thus Magyar and non-Magyar peasants always formed a

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common front against the Hungarian nobility, which also, of course, included non-Magyar members. Croatian, Slovakian and Rumanian noblemen proudly declared themselves to be members of the Hungarian nobility, and it never entered their heads, in times of conflict, to take the side of the serfs who were ethnically related to them and spoke their own language. Similarly, the German townsmen always declared themselves to be Hungarian. In the seventeenth century, in the struggles against the absolutism and oppressive policies of the Habsburgs, non-Magyars were always siding with Magyars. In the great war of independence in the early eighteenth century, the army of Prince Francis Rakoczi included not only Magyars but Slovakian, Ruthenian and Rumanian regiments, and also German townsmen, quite often in the higher ranks. The fact that in the first half of the eighteenth century the non-Hungarian nationalities described themselves by the Latin term Hungari signified their solidarity with the Magyars, and their acceptance of the social and political system dominated by the nobility. In the era of feudalism, of the ancien regime, it was the nobility alone that embodied political and national identity. Yet the bourgeoisie that was slowly growing to maturity was increasingly inclined to resent the feudal system and to challenge the dominance of the nobility. As against a regime of privilege, this class appealed to the natural law and to the equality of human beings, and set up the bourgeois ideal against the ideal of the aristocratic nation. Thereafter, the criterion of national identity was not feudal hierarchy but language and natural rights. It was in the second half of the eighteenth century that the ideas of the French Enlightenment reached the peoples of the Habsburg monarchy. In Hungary, ideas about the importance of language had a special influence. At that time the official language of Hungary was Latin. This was the language in which laws were promulgated, the language of the Diet, and the language in which learned works were written. The Enlightenment, which mooted the possibility of raising the cultural level of the masses, drew attention to the vernacular languages, as it was obviously through them alone that the masses could be reached. This new concern with vernacular languages had the effect of emphasizing the multilingual character of Hungary, and thus of underlining the ethnic diversity of the peoples of the Carpathian basin. A drive for cultural improvement, developing into a campaign for civil rights for those outside the circles of privilege, in the end broke the feudal unity of the ancien regime. The feudal Hungarian nation was replaced by the various bourgeois nations - Magyar, Slovakian, Croatian, etc. - each bound together by its respective mother tongue.2 2

F. Zwitter, Lesproblemes nationaux dans la Monarchic des Habsbourg (Belgrade, 1960); J. Szekfii, *Le hongrois, langue d'etat', in J. Szekfu, £tat et Nation (Paris and Budapest, 1945).

132 Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution The linguistic movements which began in Hungary in the last third of the century originally had only cultural objectives, but in due course they took on a political significance involving hostility towards the Hungarians. The movement of the Hungarians themselves, on the other hand, had a political character from the first, as its aim was to make Hungarian the official language of the state. This was especially the case after the language ordinance issued by Joseph II, which substituted German for Latin as the official language of Hungary. The agitation, now clearly political, was directed against Vienna, and revived the spirit of the old struggles for independence. Consequently, imperial policy showed little interest in the linguistic movements of the non-Magyar peoples, as the aspirations of the Hungarians were of much more immediate concern. While the Croatians, Slovenians, Serbs and Rumanians became increasingly committed to a struggle against Hungarian supremacy, the Hungarian movement was obstructed by the determination of the Viennese court to establish a single, unified monarchy.3 While the Hungarian nobility was anxious to preserve the feudal state of affairs, it took up the cause of autonomy and national independence. From the seventeen-eighties the French conception of the nation as a linguistic unity, whose political frontiers would conform to linguistic ones, was brought into play; and what this signified in the last resort was a programme for the assimilation of the non-Hungarians. At the .same time, in the seventeen-eighties, the Hungarian bourgeoisie looked to the enlightened monarch as an ally in its fight against the nobility and the feudal system. Clearly this bourgeoisie was not a revolutionary class, merely a reformist one. It saw the national question as only of secondary importance, the issues of independence and of the Hungarian language being overshadowed by that of social reform. As the eminent economist Gregory Berzeviczy put it in 1791: 'In Hungary, where different nationalities, political groups and religious denominations live together, and where as a result religious fanaticism is widespread, what is most needed is that people should be brought to regard themselves in the first place as human beings and citizens.'4 It was only by the Hungarian Jacobins, who emerged as a party in 1794, that the two movements, national and social, were brought together. Their programme gave equal weight to the need for national independence and to the need for social reform. Their leading representatives harped continuously on these twin themes. 3 Endre Arato, A nemzetisegi kerdes tortenete Magyarorszdgon [History of the question of nationalities in Hungary], 1790-1840 (3 vols., Budapest, 1960); K. Benda, 'Probleme des Josephinismus und des Jakobinertums in der Habsburgischen Monarchic', Stidostforschungen, xxv (1966), 38-71; £va Balazs, Berzeviczy Gergely a reformpolitikus (Budapest, 1967), p. 87. 4 K. Benda, A magyar jakobinus mozgalom tortenete [History of the Hungarian Jacobin Movement] (Budapest, 1957), pp. 21-32.

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Let us examine how the national ideal was expressed by the Hungarian Jacobins, and what particular concepts they had to offer for the political system of a multinational country. One of their outstanding personalities and ideologists was an erudite lawyer, Joseph Hajnoczy. In a pamphlet issued as early as 1790, he insisted on the protection of national interests and the importance of autonomy. At the same time he pressed enthusiastically for civil reforms and for the elimination of 'feudal backwardness'. With regard to the linguistic and national questions, however, he was still partly attracted to old ideas. Making no distinction among the country's inhabitants on ethnic grounds, he confined himself to declaring that all who were born within the country were members of the 'Hungarian nation'. He did not think of giving special rights to minorities; on the contrary, he wanted the Hungarian language to be the official language of the state and to be taught in all schools.5 On the question of nationality Hajnoczy represented the general standpoint of the Hungarian intelligentsia, and this view was fundamentally similar to the position of the nobility. Some of the intellectuals had views that were even more uncompromising than those of Hajnoczy. The physician Samuel Decsy went so far as to say: 'Whoever eats the bread of Hungary should learn to speak Hungarian.'6 Francis Kazinczy, the greatest writer of the age, who was to spend six years in prison for participating in the Jacobin movement, was of the opinion that the general use of the Hungarian language would have a stimulating' effect on trade and industry, and that 'foreigners in our country will either become Hungarian, or starve'.7 Ignatius Martinovics, however, was a leader of the Jacobin movement who professed radically different views. He broke completely with the idea of the feudal nation-state. His family was of Serbian origin, and this probably made it easier for him to transcend old prejudices.8 The first of his pronouncements on this subject dates from the beginning of August 1793,9 when he wrote his pamphlet entitled Entwurfeinerneuenfur Ungarn bestimmten Konstitution (Draft of a new Constitution for Hungary). In the very first chapter he declared that Hungary would become in the future an independent republic, but he added straightaway that if the republic seceded from the Habsburg monarchy it would be divided up into provinces along lines of nationality. 'All countries that have so far 5 A magyar jakobinusok iratai [Acts of the Hungarian Jacobins], ed. K. Benda (3 vols,, Budapest, 1952-7), i, 75-87. See also A. Csizmadia, Hajnoczy Jozsef kozjogi-politikat munkdi [The works of J.H. on constitutional law] (Budapest, 1958). 6 S. Decsy, Pannoniaifeniksz, avagy hamvdbolfeltdmadott magyar nyelv [The Phoenix of Pannonia, or the Hungarian language resuscitated from its ashes] (Vienna, 1790). 7 Kazinczy Ferenclevelezese [Correspondence of F.K.] (2nd edn., Budapest, 1891), pp. 45-6. 8 For Martinovics see V. Fraknoi, Martinovics elete [Life of Martinovics] (Budapest, 1921); K. Benda, A magyar jakobinus mozgalom tortenete. 9 A magyar jakobinusok iratai, i. 897-908; also E. Arato, i. 63-7.

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belonged to Hungary, such as Hungary proper, Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Sirmia, Banat and Transylvania, will receive new regimes appropriate to the nations which inhabit them.' A special commission of the Diet would make decisions about their names and boundaries. These provinces, enjoying full autonomy in their internal affairs, would form collectively'an indivisible republic'. Chapter XVIII of the pamphlet sets out in detail the jurisdiction of each province. 'Each of the provinces has the right to create its own constitution,' he writes, 'provided that this contains no provisions that are inconsistent with the national constitution.' The provinces would not be sovereign states and would not therefore possess armed forces of their own, but they would each, in proportion to their numerical size, appoint a number of officers and non-commissioned officers in the federal army. Also they would each have representatives, in the same numerical proportions, in the Diet. With regard to language, however, they would have full liberty. 'Each province has the right to introduce its own language in the schools and in the public service, and to practise its own customs if these are not in conflict with the national constitution.' In another pamphlet, also drafted in August 1793 and addressed to the counties,10 Martinovics gave further consideration to the plan for turning the country into a confederation. The division of the country into provinces inhabited by different nations is necessary, says this pamphlet (written in Latin), 'since the inhabitants of Hungary belong to different nationalities, and each one wishes to use its own language for official purposes', an aspiration which ought not to be obstructed. In this work he gave specific information about the provinces he had in mind: first, Illyria, comprising the territories inhabited by the southern Slavs, i.e. Dalmatia, Croatia and Slavonia, and Syrmia; secondly Slovakia, covering northern Hungary; and thirdly Wallachia, embracing the areas inhabited by Rumanians in Transylvania and the Banat. The central part of the country would be the province of the Magyars. Each province would use its own language in its own Diet, but in the Diet of the Confederation, which would meet in the capital of the country, the language would be Hungarian. In April 1794 Martinovics drew up the so-called catechisms which summarized the aims of the Hungarian Jacobins. In these booklets it was unambiguously laid down that after the achievement of independence Hungary should be reorganized on a federal basis. At the same time, it was stated that the term 'Hungarian nation' should be understood as including 'all the nationalities inhabiting provinces belonging to Hungary'. Also, the point was made that the several provinces should be entitled to live according to their own customs, and should enjoy full religious liberty. 10

A magyarjakobinusok iratai, i. 909-10.

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The ideas of Martinovics concerning the question of nations and nationalities were very unusual at that time not only in Hungary but in Europe generally. It is well known that the programme of the French Jacobins, for instance, was a highly nationalistic one. Also, the programme of Martinovics is remarkable because it enunciated for the first time the idea that territorial autonomy should be granted to the nonHungarian nationalities. There is no evidence that these principles were contested by members of the Jacobin movement, so it may be inferred that, in spite of the different views which we have noted as being expressed by some people connected with the group, most members were willing to follow Martinovics' lead in 1794. This indicates that they were able to take a realistic view of their own situation, and were not servile imitators of the French Jacobins. It is certainly the case that the generous concessions made in the Hungarian Jacobin programme were instrumental in winning support from members of the non-Hungarian nationalities who were fiercely opposed to the nationalism of the Hungarian nobility. We know that when the Hungarian Jacobin movement was broken up by the police after only a few months of organized activity and the Jacobins were put on trial together at the beginning of 1795, there were both Hungarians and non-Hungarians among those who were prosecuted. We also know that the activities of the organization were not confined to the territories inhabited by Hungarians; recruits were obtained elsewhere, notably among Croatians and Slovaks, but also among Serbs and Rumanians, in both towns and rural villages.11 This was the last social movement in Hungary which combined the advocates of change in a single organization, without distinctions of nationality. In the nineteenth century, this no longer happened: in 1848-9 Hungarians and non-Hungarians were for the most part taking opposite sides. It is true that the plans of the Hungarian Jacobins for a confederation and their notions relative to the nationalities question did not found a school, and even sank into oblivion after the suppression of the movement in 1795. This was because, on the one hand, the Hungarians would not give up the idea of a unified nation-state, while on the other hand the national movements of the non-Hungarians, as they developed in the nineteenth century, were no longer interested in the sort of autonomy the Jacobins had offered: they aspired to independent statehood. Thus federalism, the solution proposed by the Jacobins, was rejected from both sides.

11 See the official notes of Prince Alexander Leopold, Palatine of Hungary, ibid., iii, 23-292.

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11 Germany Harro Segeberg /. German Literary Life at the End of the Eighteenth Century The greatest obstacle to the creation of a nation-state was the territorial fragmentation of the German-speaking world under the aegis of the Holy Roman Empire, presided over by the Habsburg dynasty. At the end of the eighteenth century, Germany was still divided into over 300 territories of differing sizes, ruled partly by lay sovereigns and partly by prince-prelates of the German Catholic Church, in addition to which there were some 1500 minor principalities whose rulers were directly answerable to the Empire.1 There were also a number of Germanspeaking areas outside the borders of the Empire. Although the Empire retained its formal authority, its power as a whole had declined relative to that of its larger member-states, such as Prussia; consequently the muchdiscussed plans for its revival had no real chance of success.2 As a result of these political circumstances, many commentators have assumed that for the Germans the achievement of nationhood was initially a cultural rather than a political ideal. The conventional view still held by historians and literary scholars is that the creation of a focus for German national identity was primarily the work of writers and thinkers such as Goethe, Schiller, Kant, Fichte and the Schlegel brothers, the instigators of the Classical and Romantic movements in literature and of the Idealist revolution in philosophy which revitalized German intellectual life at the end of the eighteenth century.3 However, this idea has lead to the mistaken assumption that the high culture represented by Kant, Goethe and Schiller was the shared property of the German people as a whole, transcending social and political boundaries. As recent research on the social history of German literature between 1770 and 1830 has shown, the actual literary tastes of 1 See H. Schulze, Der Weg zum Nationalstaat. Die deutsche Nationalbewegung vom 18. Jahrhundert bis zur Reichsgrundung (Munich, 1985), pp. 58-62. 2 K.O. von Aretin, Heiliges Romisches Reich, 1776-1806. Reichsverfassung und Staatssouveranitat, (2 vols., Wiesbaden, 1967). John G. Gagliardo, Reich and Nation. The Holy Roman Empire as Idea and Reality, 1763-1806 (Bloomington/London, 1980). 3 This view was first put forward by F. Meinecke in his Weltburgertum und Nationalstaat, ed. H. Herzfeld (8th edn., Munich, 1962, orig. publ. 1908).

137

138 Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution the contemporary readership had little to do with the lofty ideals of Classicism and Romanticism: indeed, the latter were seen as what Bertolt Brecht later called *a high-minded conspiracy against the public'.4 While there can be no denying that a revolution in reading habits occurred in the second half of the eighteenth century,5 as book production rose sharply and new distribution outlets were established in the shape of the reading societies and circulating libraries,6 it would be wrong to overestimate the extent and rapidity of these changes. The commercialization of publishing was a gradual process which only came to a head in the eighteen-twenties;7 at the turn of the century, for example, best-sellers in the modern sense were still a rarity.8 The territorial fragmentation of the German-speaking regions presented formidable problems to the book trade.9 Pirating was encouraged by the proliferation of small states, and the variations in censorship practices between one state and another made publishing a risky, haphazard business.10 One can well understand why the early nationalist writer Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) complained about the 'anonymity' of a literary market which lacked unity and coherence.11 Looking at the material conditions under which books were published and distributed in the late eighteenth century, one immediately realizes that generalizations about the socially integrative effects of literary communi^ition are highly problematical. Towards the end of the century, two developments occurred which at first sight appear to conflict. On the one hand, as the range of available reading matter widened, readers' tastes became more diffuse. Instead of concentrating on one specific medium or genre, people began to read anything and everything: a tendency noted and sharply criticized by Herder, for 4 See H. Brandt, '"Die 'hochgesinnte' Verschworung gegen das Publikum". Anmerkungen zum Goethe-Schiller-Bundnis', in Unser Commercium. Goethes und Schillers Literaturpolitik, ed. W, Earner et al. (Stuttgart, 1984), pp. 19-36. The title of the essay is a quotation from Brecht's diaries. 5 See R. Engelsing, Analphabetentum und Lekture. Zur Sozialgeschichte des Lesens in Deutschland zwischenfeudaler und industrieller Gesellschaft (Stuttgart, 1973)., and Der Burger ah Leser. Lesergeschichte in Deutschland 1500-1800 (Stuttgart, 1974). 6 See Lesegesellschaften und biirgerliche Emanzipation, Ein europaischer Vergleich, ed. O. Dann (Munich, 1981), and Leihbibliotheken als Institution des literarischen Lebens im 18. and 19.Jahrhundert. Organisationsformen, Bestdnde und Publikum, ed. G. JagerandJ. Schonert (Hamburg, 1980). 7 See the collected essays of R. Wittmann, Buchmarkt und Lekture im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert. Beitrage zum literarischen Leben 1750-1830 (Tubingen, 1982), p. 112. 8 R. Siegert, Aujklarung und Volkslekture. Exemplarisch dargestellt an R.Z. Becker und seinem 'Noth- und Hulfsbuchlein' (Frankfurt am Main, 1978: Archiv fur Geschichte des Buchwesens, xix. 565-1347). 9 P. Raabe, Bucherlust und Lesefreuden. Beitrage zur Geschichte des Buchwesens im 18. und fruhen 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart, 1984), p. 55. 10 Kiesel and Munch, pp. 104, 132. 11 J.G. Herder, Briefe zur BefdrderungderHumanitat (1793-1797), ed. H. Stolpe(2vols., Berlin [GDR]/Weimar, 1971), i. 313, 296.

Germany 139 example, who felt that this kind of promiscuous reading behaviour was an obstacle to the development of a unified national standard of taste.12 On the other hand, the reading public became increasingly segmented: the divisions between the various classes of readers took on a more definite character and acquired the twin functions of fostering social homogeneity within a given class and erecting new social barriers which made upward mobility more difficult. Access to the socially exclusive reading societies and the larger, betterstocked circulating libraries was barred to the lower middle class and the bulk of the rural population, who could never have afforded the membership fees levied by these institutions.13 The labouring classes the artisans and peasants - continued to depend on the travelling book peddlers who sold or loaned out the truly popular reading matter of the time, hawking their wares either at fairs and markets or from door to door.14 However, it is interesting to note that in addition to their staple fare of devotional books, reference works, books of practical advice and 'proper' literature, the better class of lending libraries also stocked pulp novels and horror stories; and that educated readers often patronized the small, hole-in-the-corner lending libraries which specialized in this kind of cheap reading matter.15 This indicates that the boundaries between the different sections of the reading public could be crossed from above, if not from below.16 In general, the cultivated class of readers drawn from the educated middle class and the enlightened nobility largely retained its homogeneity and remained undisturbed by interference from below. Popular non-fiction and what librarians would now call 'general fiction' were the main literary fare of this section of the public, which showed relatively little interest in the work of more demanding 'classical' authors.17 Two other facts need to be mentioned. Firstly, as a recent study of eighteenth-century reading habits has argued, if one bears in mind the type and number of outlets for the distribution of reading matter and the probable basic literacy rate of around twenty-five per cent, it would seem 12 J.G. Herder, 'Ober die Wiirkung der Dichtkunst auf die Sitten der Volker in alten und neuen Zeiten' (1781), Herder, Werke, ed. R. Otto (5 vols., Berlin [GDR]/Weimar, 1978; 5th edn.), iii. 235. 13 M. Priisener, Lesegesellschaften im achtzehnten Jahrhundert. Bin Beitrag zur Lesergeschichte (Frankfurt am Main, 1972: Archivfur Geschichte des Buchwesens, xiii. 369594), p. 415. See also Jager and Schonert, p. 14. 14 See R. Schenda, Volk ohne Buck. Studien zur Sozialgeschichte der popularen Lesestojfe 1770-1910 (Frankfurt am Main, 1970), and Lesestoffe der kleinen Leute. Studien zur popularen Literatur im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Munich, 1976). 15 See Die Leihbibliotheken der Goethezeit. Exemplarische Kataloge zwischen 1790 und 1830, ed. G. Jager, A. Martino and R. Wittmann (Hildesheim, 1979). 16 Jager and Schonert, p. 14. 17 On the reading behaviour of the enlightened middle class see Jager, Martino and Wittmann, pp. 482-9.

140 Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution fair to assume that a given book or newspaper aimed at the educated middle-class audience would have been read by between 0.1 and 1 per cent of the population at most. (At this point, the German-speaking population totalled an estimated twenty-five million.)18 The significance of the so-called 'reading revolution' is therefore relative rather than absolute. Secondly, the commercial book market was supplemented towards the end of the century by the efforts of the popular education movements which aimed to raise the cultural level of the lower classes, especially the peasants and the rural poor.19 On the whole, allowing for discrepancies, it would seem that in the second half of the eighteenth century, literary life was characterized by an ever-increasing tendency towards internal differentiation, rather than moving in the direction of a unified national culture. This development was furthered by the emergence of a new elite group of writers and readers. In his Messias (1748-1773), Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (17241803) was the first German writer to follow the dual strategy of addressing a small, select group of readers whom he felt to be capable of genuinely appreciating his work,20 while at the same time endeavouring - partly for commercial reasons - to appeal to the general reading public. The trend towards the growth of an elite audience was also fostered by the dispute over the hero's suicide in Goethe's Werther (1774), which was sharply critidzed by writers such as Friedrich Nicolai who belonged to the utilitarian wing of the Enlightenment: in turn, the representatives of the literary, elite rejected the narrow outlook of middle-class popular educators like Nicolai, which they saw as an obstacle to the development of new literary standards.21 This controversy marked the beginning of the divorce of literary and philosophical high culture from the popular Enlightenment and hence of the movement towards intellectual reform which spawned Romantic literature and Idealist philosophy.22 Before these developments came to fruition, however, the picture of 18 Kiesel and Munch, op. cit., p. 160, and H. Moller, Vernunft und Kritik. Deutsche Aufklarung im 17. und IS.Jahrhundert (Frankfurt am Main, 1986), p. 269, 19 See Siegert, op. cit. 20 R. Alewyn, 'Klopstocks Leser', Festschrift fur Rainer Gruenter, ed. B. Fabian (Heidelberg, 1978), pp. 100-21. 21 See the collection of contemporary documents and introductory essay in K. Scherpe, Werther und Wertherwirkung. Zum Syndrom burgerlicherGesellschaftsordnung im 18. Jahrhundert (Bad Homburg/Berlin/Zurich, 1970). The general intention of the Sturm und Drang authors and the early Romantics was not to sweep away the Enlightenment but to reform it. Goethe, for example, despised Nicolai's utilitarianism and moralism but publicly praised Lessing (in the final section of Werther). Friedrich Schlegel also wrote enthusiastic essays on Lessing and Georg Forster. 22 Despite the rift between the cultural elite and the ordinary public, writers still dreamed of exercising a general popular influence. Schiller's poem 'Das Lied von der Glocke' (1800) and Friedrich Schlegel's essay 'Ober das Studium der griechischen Poesie' (1795-97) are particular examples of this ambition of establishing a new poetry which would appeal to the nation as a whole.

Germany 141 mainstream literary life painted by contemporary commentators is very different from the image of the late eighteenth century projected by subsequent generations of literary historians, concentrating on the classic achievements of Goethe, Schiller and the Romantics. With a more accurate eye for the facts of the situation, popular educators such as Adolph Freiherr Knigge (1752-1796) and Georg Friedrich Rebmann (1768-1824) spoke of a threefold division of intellectual and literary life. Firstly there were the works of philosophers such as Kant and Fichte, whose 'revolutionary' theories of knowledge opened up 'new and exciting avenues' in science and scholarship.23 Secondly, but even more importantly, there was their own work as purveyors of 'useful knowledge' and moral instruction to the general public. Knigge, for example, saw himself as a bold advocate of the values of industry, thrift and public-spiritedness, guiding the middle classes into the ways of enlightened rectitude and encouraging them to participate in politics. The third level was that occupied by imaginative literature, which in Rebmann's view consisted largely of'whimpering and sentimentality'.24 This criticism applied not only to the popular novelists of the period, but also to the representatives of the emergent elite literary culture.25 From a modern point of view, one would have to append to this list those forms of popular educational literature which were specifically aimed at the unlettered rural population and hence differed considerably in tone and subject matter from the work of authors like Knigge, writing primarily for a middle-class audience. A genuinely comprehensive study of the origins of nationalism would have to investigate the emergence of nationalist ideas in each of these separate fields. The present essay can do no more than sketch the outlines of the developments in question. II. Early forms of literary nationalism before 1789

In late eighteenth-century Germany, side by side with the literary culture of Weimar Classicism and Romanticism and the pioneering achievements of Idealist philosophy, there was a thriving middle-class popular culture with a literature of its own in which social problems were frequently discussed. The authors and readers of this type of literature referred to themselves as the Mittelstand or Bildungsstand, the middle or 23

A. Freiherr Knigge, Ober Schriftsteller und Schriftstellerei (Hanover, 1793), p. 75. A.G.F, Rebmann, Wanderungen und Kreuzzuge durch einen Theil Deutschlands (Altona, 1796), pp. 62, 66. The writers to whom Rebmann directly refers are the sentimental novelist J.M. Miller and two leading contemporary writers of popular Gothic fiction, K.G. Cramer and C. A. Vulpius. 25 See Nicolai's version of the events recounted in Schlegel's Lucinde: C.F. Nicolai, Vertraute Briefe von Adelheid B. an ihre FreundinJulie S. (1799), ed. G. de Bruyn (Frankfurt am Main, 1983). 24

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educated 'estate' below the aristocracy and above the Pobel, the unlettered mass of artisans, labourers and poor peasants. This group took the meritocratic view that an individual's social rank should be determined by education rather than birth; its members saw education as a means of breaking down the rigid caste barriers which divided German society. As middle class culture advanced under the banner of the Enlightenment, it did indeed succeed to a considerable extent in drawing together social groups - the professional classes, the men of business and trade, and sections of the nobility - which had formerly stood apart from each other. Given the originally cosmopolitan character of the Enlightenment, it is somewhat surprising to discover that national awareness formed a continuous strand in the thinking of this newly emergent middle-class culture. However, the differences in political and social conditions between the various European countries led German thinkers to realize that the path to Enlightenment could not be the same for Germany as for France or England. The theme of differences in national character, especially between France and Germany, took on an increasing importance. This discussion subsequently played a major role in determining German attitudes to the French Revolution. From the late seventeen-sixties, one notices a marked change in the German conception of the Enlightenment. Although it was still regarded as a general, supra-national movement, the Enlightenment was increasingly seen as a process within which Germany had its own autonomous contribution to make, in competition with other countries. One finds political essays calling for the awakening of a 'German national spirit';26 writers begin to ponder on the possibility of creating a German hero for a specifically German novel or to put forward plans for 'national' education',27 emphasizing the differences between the French, the 'all too polished, too frivolous, too refined, too gallant, too facetious Gauls', and the 'simple, good, reasonable, staunch, modest, diligent, robust, persevering' Germans.28 Surprisingly, though, where the French model of Enlightenment was

26

See C. Prignitz, Vaterlandsliebe und Freiheit. Deutscher Patriotisms von 1750 bis 1850 (Wiesbaden, 1981), pp. 7-35. The newly-awakened 'national spirit* was seen as a force which would complement the enlightened reform policies of individual states such as Prussia under Frederick II. There was also a revival of'imperial patriotism', inspired by Joseph II and directed to the Holy Roman Empire as a whole. 27 F. von Blanckenburg, Versuch uber den Roman (1774), ed. E. Lammert (Stuttgart, 1965), p. 233, 28 J.H. Campe (1785), cit. in H. Konig, Zur Geschichte der Nationalerziehung in Deutschland im letzen Drittel des IS.Jahrhunderts (Berlin [GDR], 1960), p. 90.

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challenged, its critics avoided aggressive nationalist rhetoric. Indeed, the main critical thrust of early nationalist thinking - among the writers associated with the Gottinger Hainbund and the Sturm und Drang movement, for example - was not so much against France or the Enlightenment per se as against a particular restricted version of the Enlightenment, dominated by pedantry and 'bourgeois' utilitarianism. This was the charge levelled by Herder, one of the most important early nationalist writers, in his Journal meiner Reise imjahr 1769, and by the writers who in 1772 seized control of the Frankfurter Gelehrte Anzeigen> which had formerly been regarded as one of the main mouthpieces of the 'traditional' German Enlightenment, with its reputation for dry-as-dust rationalism, its hide-bound conventional approach to literature and its lack of a coherent philosophy of history embodying an overall sense of purpose and destiny.30 The new-found cultural nationalism of these writers is clearly influenced by their status as outsiders in relation to German society as a whole. Against the reality of Germany's situation as a conglomeration of small states, they put forward a vision of the nation as 'a new miraculous region' (Herder), emerging in the first instance from an inner revolution of the mind and the spirit.31 This idea was held in particular reverence by Klopstock and the members of the Gottinger Hainbund, who saw the writer as a kind of prophet, whose duty was to place his magical power over language at the service of this national spiritual revival and to propagate the idea of a universal German fatherland, displacing the traditional form of particularistic territorial patriotism.32 As long as this notion of the universal fatherland remained a 'phantom', as Herder's fiancee Caroline Flachsland put it, writers had no option but to create a 'hidden fatherland' in their own minds.33 There has been much debate among historians on the question whether the idea of spiritual renewal as the point of departure for a revival of the German nation derived at least to some extent from the models of religious experience offered by the radical Pietist circles and Christian revivalist movements of the eighteenth century, with their

29

This is reflected in the moderate response to Frederick H's essay De la litterature allemande (1780), which denied German literature any intrinsic value. See E. Kastner, Friedrich der Grojle und die deutsche Literatur, Die Erwiderungen auf seine Schrift 'De la litterature allemande' (Stuttgart/Berlin[West]/Cologne/Mainz, 1972). 30 See the selection from the Frankfurter Gelehrte Anzeigen 1722, ed. H.-D. Dahnke and P. Muller (Leipzig, 1971). 31 Herder, 'An den Genius von Deutschland' (1770), in Herder, Sdmtliche Werke, ed. B. Suphan, xxix (Berlin, 1889), 331. 32 See G. Kaiser, Pietismus und Patriotisms im literarischen Deutschland. Bin Beitrag zum Problem der Sa'kularisation (2nd edn., Frankfurt am Main, 1973), p. 331. 33 Cit. in Kaiser, above, pp. 49, 306 (letter of 25 Nov. 1771).

144 Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution special 'enthusiasm' and emphasis on the values of the inner life.34 Certainly, there can be no denying that for writers who were forced by circumstances to adopt a contemplative, inward-looking attitude, such models held a considerable appeal.35 Several historians have commented on the volatile mixture of religious and patriotic sentiments seen in the Gottinger Hainbund and on the febrile, sermonizing tone of Herder's early writings.36 The ceremonial burning of the works of Wieland in Gottingen in 1773 showed that this form of Schwdrmerei was not only passive and introverted but could also on occasion inspire its followers to, act on their convictions.37 With slender justification, Wieland was seen as a representative of the French model of court culture which the Sturmerund Drdnger rejected as convention-bound, affected and dishonest. Thus Herder, for example, wrote that 'court manners' had spoiled the French language to such an extent that they had driven out 'genius', 'truth' and 'strength',38 and called for a 'limited nationalism' as an antidote to the French influence in German culture.39 Similarly, in his Deutsche Gelehrtenrepublik (1774), Klopstock declared that it was time for the Germans to reassume control over their own culture; the first step towards the achievement of this aim was to be the rediscovery of the nation's supposedly heroic past, as attempted by Klopstock himself in his Hermann trilogy (176971784/1787).40 This cultural nationalism was not overtly political: the writers concerned refrained from attacking the established political and social order directly. However, Herder saw a definite connection between culture and politics, arguing that the purification and stabilization of the national language depended on the progress of the nation itself in

34 The notion of a unified Pietist 'movement' is quite rightly criticized by G. Sauder in his Empfindsamkeit 1: Voraussetzungen und Elemente (Stuttgart, 1974), pp. 60-2. Kaiser's work is excluded from this criticism; see Sauder, p. 61. 35 However, the statement that this was the point of departure of the ideas of Klopstock and many other writers does not imply acceptance of Kaiser's thesis that their thinking was founded entirely on religious rather than political motives. On the contrary, religious models of experience were employed as a means of buttressing specifically political arguments. This can be seen, for example, in the mixture of religious and patriotic images in German discussions of the French Revolution. 36 See the editors' essays in Gottinger Main, ed. A. Kelletat (Stuttgart, 1967), p. 409, and Herder, Goethe, Frisi, Moser, Von deutscher Art und Kunst, ed. H.D. Irmscher (Stuttgart, 1977), pp. 168, 173. 37 See Kelletat, p. 359. 38 J.G. Herder, 'Journal meiner Reise im Jahr 1769', Werke (1978), i. 353. 39 J.G. Herder, 'Auch eine Philosophic der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit' (1774), Werke (1978), in. 69. 40 See H. Zimmermann, Freiheit und Geschichte. Eine Studie zur Funktion des Historischen in den Werken und theoretischen Schriften F.G. Klopstocks (Bremen, 1979).

Germany 145 41 advancing towards enlightenment and constitutional stability, Instead of conceiving of national culture as an elevated sphere which transcended political divisions, Herder in fact maintained that cultural and political renewal were reciprocally linked.42 Culture therefore had to take account of politics: indeed, it had an important part to play in clearing the ground for future political reform. Hence Klopstock's declaration in his Deutsche Gelehrtenrepublik that 'we have no politics whatever'43 should not be taken to mean that cultural nationalism was content to stand above its political context and quietly accept the status quo. After all, the very notion of the Gelehrtenrepublik as an intellectual aristocracy conflicted with the status quo by substituting education for pedigree as a criterion of social rank. Klopstock's project for the establishment of a nationwide alliance of intellectuals opened up the possibility of injecting a new dynamic element into cultural life: within the hierarchy of the Gelehrtenrepublik, individual members were to be promoted or demoted on merit, and the representatives of the various guilds of writers and scholars were to be chosen by election. At the same time, Klopstock made it quite clear that the uncultured were to be rigorously excluded from his republic of letters: 'We despise them . . . from the bottom of our hearts . . . here, they are at our mercy.' Educated society was busily erecting new caste barriers, trying in a sense to beat traditional society at its own game. Herder's vision of a unified national culture included, as a direct political consequence, the demand that those in positions of authority, 'the legislator and the general', should also be part of the German cultural community and hence be 'raised and educated' together with the nation as a whole.44 On the one hand, Herder was familiar with the views of the authors of contemporary books of etiquette, who emphasized the need to do away with snobbery and class prejudice but were not opposed in principle to the retention of the Stdndegesellschaft\ on the other hand, he also felt a good deal of sympathy for the ideas of radical thinkers who saw the 'member of society' or the 'citizen' as a being existing within a sphere beyond traditional class divisions, a sphere in which 'subjects and their

41 J.G, Herder, 'Idee zum ersten patriotischen Institut fur den Allgemeingeist Deutschlands' (circa 1787/88), Herder, Werke (Munich, 1953), i. 515. Herder argues in favour of the enlightened Reformpatriotismus whose aims and principles are explored by Otto Dann in the introduction to the present volume: see p. 1-11 above. 42 J.G. Herder, 'Ursachen des gesunkenen Geschmacks bei den verschiedenen Volkern, da er gebluhet' (1775), Herder, Werke (1978), iii. 139-77. 43 F.G. Klopstock, Die deutsche Gelehrtenrepublik' (1774), Klopstock, Ausgewdhlte Werke, ed. A. Schleiden (Munich, 1962), p. 891. 44 J.G. Herder, Briefe, i. 295.

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rulers confront each other'.45 This implies that there is a conflict of interests between ruler and ruled, which has to be reconciled through a form of social contract. Furthermore, it is important to note that when talking about the subjects, the Untertanen, Herder represents them as a collective body. Thus the idea of national revival is grafted onto the Enlightenment notion of the social contract. At this point, the irrational, charismatic element in German nationalism was still linked to the rationalist-derived ideal of universal political emancipation: the separation between the two did not occur until the nineteenth century.46 Right from the outset, Herder's reflections on the cultural autonomy of individual peoples and ethnic groups included the idea of a higher form of development towards a goal which he defined in a preliminary draft of his Ideen zur Philosophic der Geschichte der Menschheit (1784-1791) as the complete abolition of political authority.47 The rank or status of a nation can be judged according to the extent of its contribution to this overall development. This means that, unlike in most Western concepts of democracy, respect for ethnic diversity and belief in the missionary vocation of one particular nation are not mutually exclusive. Oh the other hand, individual nations have a specific intrinsic value, but on the other, by virtue of their membership of what Herder called the 'universe of cultured nations',48 their development is part of a the general history of mankind. By reference to this historical model, it was possible to view the French Revolution in a favourable light, as I shall demonstrate in the next section. The real obstacle to the acceptance in Germany of the version of nationalism found in the ideas of the French Revolution, with its antiauthoritarian cast and emphasis on political participation, was not the presence of an insoluble conflict between two separate intellectual traditions but rather the widespread disillusionment among German 45 J.G. Herder, Journal (Herder, Werke [1978]), i. 297. Herder was convinced that enlightened absolute monarchs such as Catherine the Great had a potentially useful part to play in furthering the process of constitutional reform (p. 259). Here, the visionary and cultural revolutionary Herder demonstrates that he was also capable of thinking in terms of practical politics. 46 The relationship between the rational and irrational strands in Herder's thinking has always been one of the central problems in discussions of his work. These two conflicting tendencies are outlined in P.M. Barnard, Zwischen Aufklarung und politischer Romantik. Eine Studie tiber Herders soziologisch-politisches Denken (Berlin, 1964). The development of the relationship between rationalism and irrationalism in the nineteenth century is dealt with by W.D. Gruner, Die deutsche Frage. Ein Problem der europaischen Geschichte seit 1800 (Munich, 1985): see especially p. 28. 47 J.G. Herder, 'Audi eine Philosophic1 (Herder, Werke [1978]) iii. 71, and Herder, Ideen zur Philosophic der Geschichte der Menschheit (1784-1791) (2 vols., Berlin [GDR]/ Weimar, 1965), i. 506. 48 J.G. Herder, Briefe, ii. 134. For a comparison between these ideas and the universalist concept of democracy which was current in America at the time, see C. von Krockow, Nationalisms als deutsches Problem (Munich, 1962), pp. 42-9.

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thinkers in respect of the possibilities for disseminating nationalist ideas. From the beginning of the nationalist movement onwards, it had always been difficult to identify a social group which would provide the basis for a democratic, universal German nationalism. While Klopstock's Deutsche Gelehrtenrepublik found favour with a predominantly uppermiddle-class and aristocratic audience which even included reigning monarchs,49 the Sturm und Drang folk poetry movement initiated by Herder attempted to break down the divisions between the middle class and the low^r sections of society.50 Thus the folk-songs sung by 'peasants, shepherds, hunters, miners, journeymen. . , cabin boys [and] draymeh' were declared by Gottfried August Burger (1747-1794), one of the movement's most radical representatives, to be educational models51 which - as Herder also maintained - would teach the nation to cast off the superficial Veneer' of court manners.52 However, this attempt to draw on plebeian poetic traditions had only a passing significance. There were precious few peasant poets in keeping with the image of the Fo/fe53 projected by writers whose primary interest was in discovering new models for their own work, and Herder's youthful vision of an 'alliance' between 'the philosopher and the plebeian'54 was soon dispelled. Ironically, Herder later aimed his nationalist message at precisely the middle-class culture whose 'bourgeois' and utilitarian elements he himself and others had despised as narrow and philistine.55 There was an obvious affinity between ideals such as 'loyalty, faith, innocence . . . honesty and simplicity'56 and the aesthetic standards of the Mittelstand. Herder's attitude to the French Revolution was shaped by the realization that in a country which was so hopelessly fragmented and 49

H. Pape, Klopstocks Autorenhonrare und Selbstverlagsgewinne (Frankfurt am Main, 1968/69: Archwfur Geschichte des Buchwesens), pp. 3399-3401; 154-61. 50 See J.G. Herder, 'Auszug aux einem Briefwechsel uber Ossian und die Lieder alter Volker' (1773), Herder, Werke (1978), ii. 234. 51 G. A. Burger, 'Aus Daniel Wunderlichs Buch' (1776), Burger, Werke, ed. L, KaimKloock and S. Streller (Berlin [GDR]/Weimar, 1973), pp. 313-25. 52 J.G. Herder, 'Journal', Herder, Werke [197S], L 353. For Herder and others, deutsch, i.e. 'German', was synonymous with volksmaftig, i.e. 'popular' in the sense of belonging to the entire German people: see Irmscher, p. 165. Herder's aim was to expand the scope of traditional middle-class culture: see Barnard, pp. 94-8. 53 H. Stolpe, Die Auffassung desjungen Herder vom Mittelalter. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Aujklarung (Weimar, 1955), pp. 273-84. 54 J.G. Herder, 'Problem: wie die Philosophic zum Besten des Volkes allgemeiner und niitzlicher werden kann', Herder, Sdmtliche Werke, ed. B. Suphan, xxxii (Berlin, 1899), 51. 55 Hence as late as 1796, one still finds Herder referring to Enlightenment culture as a unified movement with no political divisions, encompassing both the Sturm und Drang writers and representatives of the 'traditional' Enlightenment-e.g. Nicolai. See Herder, Briefe, ii. 114-136, especially pp. 125, 131f. and 134. 56 Ibid.,ii. 135.

148 Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution riddled with class and religious divisions, it was impossible even to envisage the creation of a unified national audience. As he wrote in 1795: 'Our nation scarcely knows itself. The very idea of a public interested in matters of taste and education, let alone in general affairs, is inhibited by religious or political divisions or by the insuperable barriers erected by classes or petty groups.'57 The enthusiasm inspired by the French Revolution brought a temporary and final revival of the hope that these obstacles could be overcome by the force of ideas. ///. Klopstock, Herder and the development of middle-class culture in the wake of the French Revolution I have attempted above to show that nationalism was very much a live element in German middle-class culture even before 1789. Moreover, in the work of certain radical German thinkers of the pre-revolutionary period, one can discern traces of a version of nationalism which corresponds to Western democratic traditions. However, the political impact of eighteenth-century cultural nationalism was severely weakened by the absence of a homogeneous public sphere. In this situation, the outbreak of the French Revolution was hailed as a point of departure for the spiritual renewal of mankind as a whole, in the course of which it would be possible to solve the specific problems facing Germany in its struggle to achieve national unity. Although the revolutionary enthusiasm of leading German writers had definite religious overtones, the prevailing tendency to view the Revolution in terms of its imagined spiritual significance did not mean that the writers in question ignored or rejected its concrete political and social aims. Even in France itself, religious categories were often employed as a means of rhetorical emphasis in order to underline the allegedly radical implications of the Revolution, which, it was hoped, would abolish social divisions and subordinate sectional interests to the common interest of the nation. The grandes journees of 1789 and the revolutionary fetes of 1790, with their obvious liturgical associations, are particular examples of this form of semi-religious enthusiasm for the Revolutionary cause.58 German observers of the events in France saw nothing strange in the blending of religious symbolism with republican fervour;59 indeed, 57 58

Ibid., i. 305.

M. Vovelle, Die Franzosische Revolution. Soziale Bewegung und Umbmch der Mentalitdten (Frankfurt am Main, 1985), p. 127. 59 See for example G.A. von Halem and J.H. Campe's eye-witness accounts of the Revolution, in K. Witte, Reise in die Revolution. Gerhard Anton von Halem und Frankreich imjahre 1790 (Stuttgart, 1971), p. 50, and J.H. Campe, Briefe aus Paris, ed. H.W. Jager (Hildesheim, 1977), pp. 34f, 332.

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precisely this aspect of the Revolution was deemed by writers and thinkers including Hegel and Holderlin to have an exemplary significance.60 Thus Herder's poem on the first anniversary of the storming of the Bastille rapturously saluted the transformation of the 'Franks' into 'brothers', whose mission as 'Jehovah's . . . chosen people' was to embark on the 'baptism of mankind' in the manner decreed by the Bible.61 In his odes to the Revolution, Klopstock also celebrated the liberation of 'Gaul' as the first step towards an overall renewal of humanity, for which, however, the Reformation - a German achievement - had originally paved the way.62 Holderlin's enthusiastic hymns 'to the Revolution also contain a large number of religious references.63 The fondness of German writers for religious imagery made it possible to explain in religious rather than political terms the radical turn of events which culminated in the Jacobin dictatorship. For example, Klopstock's famous repudiation of the Revolution in Diejakobiner (1792, 1798) used the Biblical image of Paradise and the fall of man to criticize the Terror: the Jacobin Club is likened to the serpent which tempted Eve.64 Meanwhile Herder saw the Terror as proof that there could be nothing more abominable than 'the rule of a people gone mad'; since the lower orders in France and elsewhere had been completely deprived of education, they were incapable of governing themselves.65 Henceforth Herder was convinced that 'improvement . . . has to start at the top'66 and that the revival of the nation would have to proceed from a small educated elite recruited from the upper echelons of politics and the civil service.67 Herder now saw reform rather than revolution as the path to national revival. His ideas are echoed in several contemporary novels, such as Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795-6) and Friedrich Maximilian Klinger's Geschichte eines Teutschen derneuesten Zeit (1797), both of which called for wholesale social reform, thereby anticipating the actual programme of reforms carried out by Prussia in the early decades of the

60 For the attitudes of Enlightenment thinkers see von Halem and Campe, above; on Holderlin and other Idealist writers see G. Kurz, Mittelbarkeit und Vereinigung. Zum Verhaltnis von Poesie, Reflexion und Revolution bei Holderlin (Stuttgart, 1975), pp. 38-41. 61 J.G. Herder, 'Auf den 14. Juli 1790', Herder, Sdmtliche Werke, ed. B. Suphan, xxix. 659 f. 62 See'Klopstock's 'Sie, und nicht wir' (1790), Klopstock, Werke (1962), pp. 142f. 63 See Kurz, pp. 151-3. 64 Klopstock, 'Die Jakobiner' (1792/98), Klopstock, Werke (1978), pp. 145f. 65 Herder, Briefe, i. 97. 66 Ibid. 67 Ibid., i. 318.

150 Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution nineteenth century.68 Despite their disappointment over the failure of the French Revolution, German writers continued to reflect on the possibilities for political action. When social reform appeared on the agenda, the traditional virtues of the Mittelstand became increasingly coloured by nationalist thinking. The pre-revolutionary literature of the Enlightenment was now regarded as a source of consolation in the hour of national adversity, enabling the reader temporarily to forget the victories of the French armies and the break-up of the old Empire.69 Already in the eighteenth century one encounters a notion which achieved a wide currency in the nineteenth century: the idea that the Germans were a nation of intellectuals - i.e. that, as Rebmann maintained, since their principal concern in the past had been with theory rather than practice, they had acquired a superior set of intellectual skills and were now in fact better equipped to embark on a programme of carefully-considered political reform than the French, whose essential superficiality, in politics as in all things, led only to court intrigues and war. In contrast with the French, the Germans supposedly had 'more reason than ever to be pleased with their national character'.70 Their 'diligence . . . in the study of every area of human knowledge' would weaken absolutist 'despotism' and help to establish a new form of patriotism,71 coupled with social and political reform. The spokesmen of this radical version of Reformpatriotismus insisted that if the traditional rulers of Germany were to remain the guardians of the nation's welfare, they would have to pay more attention to the opinions of the middle class. Literary historians have consistently overlooked the fact that precisely as a consequence of the French Revolution, the Enlightenment populareducation movement acquired an increasing measure of influence by virtue of the nationalist slant which it was given in the seventeennineties. The transformation by the popular educator Rudolph Zacharias Becker (1752-1822) of the Deutsche Zeitung into the highly successful Nationalzeitung der Teutschen (1796-1811, 1814-1829) demonstrated the extent to which the Enlightenment notion of a general 'perfection of mankind' converged with the ideal of German national unity: in Becker's 68

See D, Borchmeyer, Hofische Gesellschaft und franzosische Revolution bei Goethe. Adliges und burgerliches Wertsystem im Urteil der Weimarer Klassik (Kronberg/Ts., 1977), and H. Segeberg, Friedrich Maximilian Klingers Romandichtung. Untersuchungen zum Roman der Spataufklarung (Heidelberg, 1974). 69 A. Kemilainen, Auffassungen uber die Sendung des deutschen Volkes um die Wende des 18, und 19Jahrhunderts (Helsinki/Wiesbaden, 1957), pp. 97, 103. 70 H.C. Albrecht, 'Erlauterungen uber die Rechte der Menschen' (1793), Leben und Werke norddeutscherjakobiner, ed. W. Grab (Stuttgart, 1973), p. 104. On Rebmann see R. Kawa, Georg Friedrich Rebmann (1768-1824). Studien zu Leben und Werk eines deutschen Jakobiners (Bonn, 1978), p. 384. 71 Anon., 'Uber Patriotismus', Beitrdge zur Geschichte derfranzosischen Revolution, ed. P.P. Usteri, vii (1796), 368.

Germany 151 view, the German-speaking countries and states formed an indissoluble cultural and linguistic community72 which would survive the break-up of the Empire and the establishment of the French-controlled Rhineland Confederation.73 The continuing buoyancy of Enlightenment culture, allied with nationalism, is indicated by the fact that even early Romantic writers such as Friedrich Schlegel (1772-1829) started out by publishing their work in journals which were associated with the Berlin Enlightenment.74 Discussing the writings of the explorer and revolutionary Georg Forster (1754-1794), Schlegel spoke of the ideal of an 'authentic, typical and popular* form of education which was to be found throughout Germany, especially among the middle classes, 'the healthiest section of the nation': 'This alone is Germanness, the sacred flame which every patriot. . . should strive to increase.'75 IV. Nationalism and cosmopolitanism from i789 to 1805

In the Idealist aesthetics of Schiller and the early Romantics, the middleclass literature which combined nationalist and Enlightenment influences was peremptorily dismissed as 'mediocre'.76 This condescending attitude obscured the fact that, despite the differences between their respective literary methods, the fundamental aims of these two schools of writing were very similar. But while the one group still clung to Enlightenment ideas, the other reacted to the disappointments of the French Revolution by categorically rejecting the popular traditions of the Enlightenment. The speculative rather than empirical orientation of Idealist thinking influenced political ideas as well as aesthetic theory. By downgrading empirical reality in relation to the realm of ideas, it became possible to explain away historical experience in purely spiritual terms. In this way Holderlin, for example, was able to look beyond the actual events of the French Revolution and speak of its supposed significance as the point of departure for 'a future revolution of ideas and convictions', which would proceed from Germany and far outstrip everything that had gone before.77 Within this general framework of speculative thinking, the 72

R.Z. Becker (1795), quoted in Siegert, p. 778. See M. Kohl, Die Nationalzeitung der Deutschen 1784-1830, Leben und Werk des Publizisten R.Z. Becker (Heidelberg, 1936). 74 P. Hocks and P. Schmidt, Literarische und politische Zeitschriften 1789-1805. Von der politischen Revolution zur Literaturrevolution (Stuttgart, 1975), p. 79. 75 F. Schlegel, 'Georg Forster', Schlegel, Charakteristiken und Kritiken I (1796-1801), ed. H. Eichner (Munich/Paderborn/Vienna/Zurich, 1967: Kritische Friedrich-SchlegelAusgabe, ii), p. 78. 76 J. W. Goethe and F. Schiller, 'Xenien' (1796), Schiller, Werke, i, ed. J. Petersen and F. Beifiner (Weimar, 1943: Nationalausgabe), p. 340. 77 F. Holderlin, letter to J.G. Ebel, lOJan. 1797, cit. in Holderlin, Samtliche Werke, vi, 1, ed. A. Beck (Stuttgart, 1954: Stuttgarter Holderlin-Ausgabe), p. 229. 73

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notion emerged that Germany's lack of political and social unity might in the end be an advantage rather than a weakness, on the grounds that it promoted a higher, ideal unity on a plane far above the reality of the French Revolution. Thus Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) described the 'greatness' of the Germans as based less on politics than on 'delving into the spiritual world' and argued that the lack of a central court or capital city was an advantage in that it left the Germans free to converse with the general 'world spirit'. Although at present the world was dominated by Britain and France, the economic and political superpowers, it was essential to look beyond the real surface of events and to understand that education was the ultimate key to power; therefore the Germans would in the course of time achieve supremacy: their 'humanity' would eventually triumph over the 'dead treasures' of the British and the flamboyant 'glamour' of the French.78 In similar vein, Friedrich Holderlin (1770-1843) characterized the Germans as 'passive and sunk in contemplation' but at the same time held out the hope that the 'priestess Germania' would one day guide the steps of the 'peoples and princes'.79 Like the pre-Revolutionary patriots, those thinkers of the postRevolutionary period who saw Germany's future mission primarily as that of an intellectual and cultural leader80 still continued to hope for a transformation not just of their own country but of the world in general. Belief in the supposedly special destiny of Germany was by no means incompatible with cosmopolitan attitudes. Indeed, one almost gets the impression that the younger generation of thinkers took up where their elders - i.e. writers such as Herder and Klopstock - had left off after the disappointments of the French Revolution caused their original hopes to fade. This, however, is only one half of the story: side by side with the continuities between the two generations, there are also obvious differences, arising from the increasingly idealistic tenor of German thinking, which tended more and more to transpose questions of class interests and political power onto a purely spiritual plane.81 The intellectual elite began to withdraw from society as a whole and adopt a posture of lofty detachment. This trend is already apparent in the series of lectures entitled Uberdie Religion . . , an die Gebildeten unter ihren Verachtern published in 1799 by Friedrich Schleiermacher (1760-1834), which was aimed specifically at an educated minority audience meeting in an atmosphere of conspiratorial intimacy beyond the sphere of 78

F. Schiller, Werke, Teil 1, ed. N. Oellers (Weimar, 1983: Nationalausgabe), 432-5. F. Holderlin, Oden //, ed. D.E. Sattler and M. Knaupp (Frankfurt am Main, 1984: Frankfurter Ausgabe), p. 526, and Holderlin, Samtliche Werke und Briefe, ed. G. Mieth, i (Munich, 1970), p. 364. 80 Prignitz, p. 85. 81 See for example Novalis, 'Fragmente und Studien 1799-1800', Schriften, iii, ed. R. Samuel (3rd edn., Darmstadt, 1983), pp. 640 (no. 513), 654-5. 79

Germany 153 82 popular Enlightenment culture. The conversion of Joseph Gorres (1776-1848) from a supporter of the French Revolution into an ardent advocate of nationalism began during a phase of solitary speculation which eventually led him to join the Heidelberg circle of Romantic writers and philosophers.83 At the turn of the century, Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) reputedly planned to cease publishing his work, or at least to make it inaccessible to general readers.84 His Grundzuge des gegenwartigen Zeitalters (1806) was first presented in lecture form to an invited audience in the winter of 1805-6 and was only published after the shock of the Prussian defeat at the battles of Jena and Auerstedt in the following year.85 Even Ernst Moritz Arndt (1769-1860), whose essays and travel books were mainly addressed to the general reader, complained of the growing distance between writer and public.86 Writers felt increasingly cut off from reality. Their frequent use of religious metaphors to describe this sense of isolation opened the way for the emergence of a new form of religious thought which had little to do with the dogmas of the established Church. Exploiting the possibilities of religious imagery, the writers of the post-Revolutionary period sought to decipher the hidden meaning behind the chaotic surface of events. For example, the image of Adam's fall was used to describe the process whereby the ideals of the French Revolution became warped, resulting first in the bloodshed of the Terror and then in the establishment of the Directory, the dictatorship of the bourgeois profiteers.8? Thus in the eyes of Fichte, the Revolution was part of an era of'absolute sin', in which man had grown indifferent to spiritual ideals.88 A religious revival was necessary because only religion offered the possibility of true self-sacrifice, motivated by a genuine love of humanity rather than by an abstract sense of duty.89 Similarly, August Wilhelm Schlegel (1767-1845) argued that only wars of religion could be just and honourable wars, since they were directed towards intangible, purely spiritual ends, instead of being inspired by wordly interests.90 82 H. Timm, Die heilige Revolution. Das religiose Totalitdtskonzept der Fruhromantiker. Schleiermacher, Novalis, F. Schlegel (Frankfurt am Main, 1978), p. 18. 83 R. Habel, Studien uberden Zusammenhang von Natur, Geschichte undMythos in Gorres' Schriften (Wiesbaden, 1960); H. Raab, J. Gorres, Deutsche Dichter der Romantik, ed. B. von Wiese (Berlin, 1971), pp. 341-70. 84 J.G. Fichte, Ausgewahltepolitische Schriften, ed. Z. Batscha and R. Sorge (Frankfurt am Main, 1977), p. 11 (essay by Z. Batscha). 85 J.G. Fichte, Grundzuge des gegenwartigen Zeitalters (1806), ed. A. Diemer (Hamburg, 1978), pp. 1,3. 86 See E.M. Arndt, Germanien und Europa (Altona, 1803), and Reisen durch einen Teil Deutschlands, Italiens und Frankreichs (parts 1-6, Leipzig, 1801-3). 87 Arndt, Germanien und Europa, p. 5, and Reisen, iv. 18, 43, 60, 62, 97, 281, 287. 88 Fichte, Grundzuge, pp. 21, 52. 89 Ibid., pp. 251,37-55. 90 A.W. Schlegel, Geschichte der romantischen Literatur (1803/04) (Stuttgart, 1965: A. W. Schlegel, Kritische Schriften und Briefe, ed. E. Lohner, iv), pp. 87f.

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The example of the Crusades was frequently cited, and the catholic middle ages were contrasted favourably with the present. However, rather than wishing to restore the actual political and social conditions of the middle ages, writers such as Novalis (i.e. Friedrich von Hardenberg, 1772-1801) used history as a source of raw material for the development of a set of Utopian models which kept alive the idea of a community of nations united by love.91 The appeal of the idea of chivalry for the poet Ludwig Tieck (1773-1853) rested on the hope that it might be possible to found a new order of knighthood which would be capable of uniting Europe through 'love and religion', as had allegedly been the case in the Middle Ages.92 Political and social institutions were therefore seen in exclusively spiritual terms. Republicanism was no longer associated with specific institutions of government: instead it was defined as a kind of spiritual principle involving the values of harmony and cooperation, for which the monarchy paradoxically offered the most favourable conditions. One of Novalis's pet notions was that there could be 'no king without a republic and no republic without a king'. A monarch who succeeded in putting the republican principle of 'public-spiritedness' into practice would act as a beacon to mankind as a whole; eventually, everyone would be capable of rising to the throne.93 Up to now, these ideas have been regarded as the starting-point for the emergence of a conservative ideology which drew nationalism into the orbit of a reactionary traditionalism.94 However, this view ignores the fact that the writers concerned saw themselves as part of a philosophical movement seeking to abolish conventional political categories, which were deemed to be superficial and meaningless. Rather than laying the foundations for a genuinely political conservatism, the Romantics attempted to introduce a new spiritual dimension into politics, based on poetry and religion. Novalis's plea for the spiritualization of the political sphere, a process analogous to the miracle of transsubstantiation,95 had precious little to do with political action in the real world. This labelling of Romantic ideas as 'nationalist' is in any case problematical. According to the writers and thinkers of the postRevolutionary period, the exemplary status of the German Kulturnation depended precisely on the rejection of narrow, purely national perspectives in favour of a kind of intellectual cosmopolitanism. In the words of Novalis, Germany had to strive for a 'universal individuality', 91

Novalis, 'Die Christenheit oder Europa' (1799), Novalis, Schriften, iii. 510. L. Tieck, 'Die altdeutschen Minnelieder' (1803), Tieck, Ausgewahlte Werke, iv, ed. G. Wittkowski (Leipzig, n.d.), p. 9. 93 Novalis, 'Glauben und Liebe' (1798), Novalis, Schriften, ii, ed. R. Samuel (3rdedn., Darmstadt, 1981), pp. 489-96. See also A.W. Schlegel, op. cit., pp. 45-8, 83, 92. 94 Prignitz, pp. 90, 100. 95 Novalis (1798), p. 498. See also Novalis (1799), p. 523. 92

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Germany 96

in order to fulfil its mission of reforming mankind. This idea that the German national character could only develop by renouncing the ideal of nationhood in the political sphere is neatly encapsulated in one of Schiller and Goethe's Xenien: 'Forget, O Germans, your hopes of becoming a nation I Educate yourselves instead . . . to be human beings.'97 The view, first questioned by Hegel,98 that Germany was a land of intellectual rather than political revolutions is still generally accepted today, both within Germany and elsewhere. In a sense, the view is an accurate one. Adopting the kind of global historical perspective which is characteristic of Romantic and Idealist thinking, one might even say that the massive influence of the ideas of Marx - rooted as they are in the philosophy of Hegel - on nineteenth- and twentieth-century politics represented a vindication of the Idealist project of educating the rest of the world through German literary and philosophical culture. Nevertheless, the question still arose whether Romantic and Idealist thinking could have any effect on the actual politics of their day. Following the defeat of Prussia and the final dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1805-6, the advocates of 'spiritualized' politics and national cosmopolitanism began to reconsider the relationship between Germany and the destiny of mankind as a whole. August Wilhelm SchlegePs defence of 'wars of religion' took on an unexpected real significance.99 It remained to be seen in the years following 1806 whether or not Romantic ideas of this kind would preserve their immunity from appropriation by politicians pursuing short-term goals. V. Results and perspective Comparing the modern type of democratic nationalism with the forms of national awareness seen in Germany prior to 1805, one is immediately struck by the extent to which the specific conditions of German literary life had produced a rift between two different strands of development: on the one hand, the 'national cosmopolitanism' of the intellectual elite, and on the other, the species of national awareness present in the culture of the Mittelstand. Nationalist ideas already played a prominent part in the thinking of the educated sections of late eighteenth-century society. In some cases, as the essay by F. Dumont in this volume shows, Enlightenment writers and thinkers went as far as to challenge the traditional class structure of German society, basing their criticism on the idea of the nation as a 96

Novalis (1799), p. 519. Goethe and Schiller, 'Xenien', p. 321. 98 G. W.F. Hegel, Vorlesungen uber die Philosophic der Geschichte (Frankfurt am Main, 1970: Werke, xxii), pp. 525f. 99 A.W. Schlegel, p. 88. 97

156 Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution democratic community of the entire people.100 On the whole, however, the political demands of the new educated middle class were far from radical: its members continued to think in accordance with the established pattern of class relationships, seeing themselves as constituting a separate Stand or estate based on education rather than pedigree. This new educated class was not out to overthrow the state or to revolutionize society; all it wanted was to be allowed to take an active part in the process of national reform. At the turn of the century, political journalism was heavily influenced by this kind ofReformpatriotismus. Despite the generally moderate tendency of middle-class nationalist ideas, in the period leading up to 1789 the traditional aristocracy found its authority challenged by a new intellectual elite. This group successfully initiated a revolution in cultural attitudes, but its attempts to translate its philosophical and literary ideas concerning the concept of the nation into a programme for political action had little real effect. Indeed, even before the French Revolution, the ideas of these writers and thinkers had already begun to lose their radical edge. However, it would be wrong to conclude from this that the specific mode of development in Germany was the result of a fundamental difference in mentality between Germany and France or Britain. Initially, Herder and Klopstock had seen the demand for political participation as an integral part of the revival of the nation and had enthusiastically greeted the French Revolution as the fulfilment of their vision of a'Combined political and national renewal. But these hopes were definitively crushed in the aftermath of the Revolution, when the differences between republican France and its 'feudal' opponents were cancelled out by Napoleon's imperial ambitions. In their disappointment at the outcome of the French Revolution, German writers and thinkers began to turn away from the ideas of the 'popular' Enlightenment. Towards the turn of the century, a new model of literary and philosophical discourse emerged, whose exponents subordinated politics to culture and discussed political issues solely in the light of their supposed spiritual significance. The concept of the nation was redefined in strictly idealist terms and emptied of its erstwhile overtly political associations: thus the link established by eighteenthcentury thinkers between nationalism and political reform was dissolved. Consequently the events of 1800-1806 represent a watershed in the history of German nationalism. However, in order to establish whether the divorce between nationalism and the demand for political emancipation was definitive, it would be necessary to examine the development of nationalism between 1805-6 and 1815, at the time of the Napoleonic Wars. 100

See p. 161-2 in the present volume.

12

The Rhineland Franz Dumont On the Rhine 1789 was a special year of remembrance: a hundred years had passed since the French armies destroyed many towns and villages on the orders of Louis XIV. In the centennial addresses and publications of 1788-9, laments over those devastations were accompanied by expressions of philanthropically enlightened confidence in a better, more peaceful future. Occasionally anti-French voices were heard: the French were reminded of their misdeeds, or the Germans were urged to prevent a repetition of the 'incendiarisms' of 1688-9 by concentrating on national solidarity. At the end of the eighteenth century, a national consciousness amounting at least to a feeling of solidarity was possible in the Rhineland, being based on the same tongue, culture, and traditions and on the loose bond provided by the Holy Roman Empire.1 The intellectual elites on the Rhine had taken up the discussion of'patriotism' since the seventeenfifties, while the mass of the people remained untouched by it. Such consciousness as there was of collective identity was connected to the territory, or homeland, in which people lived. But on the Rhine territorial fragmentation was so extreme that territorial patriotism such as existed in Austria, Prussia, Bavaria or Hanover could not be developed. Moreover the ecclesiastical states were electoral monarchies, and thus lacked any dynasty which could have served as a basis for a feeling of community and union. Consequently in the small states along the Rhine, the idea of allegiance to the Empire, Reichspatriotismus, was still alive and significant, for they could not have survived in the face of the larger states without clinging to it. The knowledge of belonging to the Holy Roman Empire, even 'being the Empire', is to be found not only among the political and administrative elite of the Rhenish imperial cities (Aachen, Cologne, Frankfurt, Worms and Speyer) but also among the imperial knighthood.2 At least for the Catholic Imperial Knights, the 1 Ch. Prignitz, Vaterlandsliebe und Freiheit. Deutscher Patriotisms von 1750 bis 1850 (Wiesbaden, 1981), pp. 1-38. 2 M. Braubach, 'Vom Westfalischen Frieden bis zum Wiener Kongress', in Rheinische Geschichte, ed. Franz Petri and Georg Droege (3 vols., Diisseldorf, 1976-83), ii. 227-365; T.C.W. Blanning, The French Revolution in Germany. Occupation and Resistance in the Rhineland 1792-1802 (Oxford, 1983), pp. 18-58; Mainz - 'Centralort des Retches': Politik, Literatur und Philosophic im Umbruch der Revolutionszeit, ed. Chr. Jamme and O. Poggeler (Stuttgart, 1986: Deutscher Idealismus, xi).

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158 Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution institutions of the Empire and the church still offered attractive opportunities for a political career. It is still uncertain however how far peasants, guildsmen or domestic servants had any sense of allegiance to the Reich or indeed any clear understanding of it. A new concept of the German nation was emerging in the Rhineland from the middle of the eighteenth century onwards, for example within the 'patriotic societies' and around the plans for a 'national theatre'. These circles rejected the corporative system of the ancien regime and introduced a broad and comprehensive image of the 'nation'. It is true however that another image, of a regional or even more localized kind, persisted along the Rhine, as is clear from the fact that the Mainz Jacobins spoke of a 'Mainz nation' in 1792-3.3 The more modern or 'liberal' brand of patriotism was confined to small groups of intellectuals. The modern concept of a self-determined, democratically constituted nation, as popularized by Sieyes in 1788-9 was brought to the Rhinelanders by means of newspapers and journals.4 While the majority of journalists described the Revolution as a French event, magazines soon appeared which perceived the universal character of the Revolution and warned about its possible replication in Germany. Such warnings were sometimes accompanied by an emphasis on the reforming potential of German 'enlightened despotism', and sometimes reflected a defensive conservative position which viewed any kind of radical change as harmful and ineffectual. There were also journals, such as the Politische Gesprache im Reich der Todten, published in Neuwied, which stated from the beginning that such a revolution could only happen in France!5 Apart from demonologizing the supporters, institutions and ideas of the French Revolution, these journals used a kind of 'national' argumentation: the causes and nature of the revolution were explained in terms of the character of Germany's neighbours. The French, supposedly restless and light-minded, had to resort to revolution, while the 'calm and serious' Germans could achieve the same ends without any need for revolt. Thus a pattern of interpretation was formulated which was long to persist. At the same time, revolutionary ideas and 3 See the statements of the Mainz Jacobin Mathias Metternich in his journal Der Burgerfreund (no. 3, 3 Nov. 1792, p. 12), and of the merchants of Mainz in their 'Konstitutionsvorschlage des Handelsstandes zu Mainz, beantwortet von Karl Boost', Mainz, Nov. 1792, reprinted in: Quellen zur Geschichte des Rheinlandes im Zeitalter der Franzosischen Revolution, ed. J. Hansen (4 vols., Bonn, 1931-8), ii. 569 seq. See also E. Buddrus, 'Daniel Dumont und die Konstitutionsvorschlage des Mainzer Handelsstandes', Mainzer Zeitschrift, Ixxix-lxxx (1984/85), 155-68. 4 Cf. Quellen zur Geschichte des Rheinlandes, ed. Hansen, i, passim; F. Dumont, 'La Declaration des Droits de rHomme et du Citoyen en Allemagne', Annales historiques de la Revolutionfrancaise, 1 (1978), 220-45. 5 Many extracts from this journal are reprinted in Quellen zur Geschichte des Rheinlandes, ed. Hansen, i; cf. K. d'Ester, Das politische Elysium oder die Gesprache der Todten am Rhein (Neuwied, 1936: Zeitung und Leben, xxx).

TheRhineland 159 movements were portrayed as alien and malicious. Subversive and violent activities were treated as 'un-German* (undeutsch) by conservative journalists, who recalled the Gallicization (Franzosierung) of Europe in the seventeenth century and warned that the French example should not again be followed. These interpretations were still exceptional, as for the most part the changes in France were not yet being looked at from a 'national' perspective. The governments which soon became apprehensive about an extension of the Revolution into their territories made few appeals to national feelings when recommending virtues such as quietness, allegiance and obedience. It was only in the conflicts concerning the rights of German princes in Alsace and Lorraine that 'national' interests or rights were sometimes invoked. When the Mainz chancellor Albini called the French the 'Erbfeind9, i.e. the hereditary enemy of the Germans,6 this term reflected the longstanding view of France as a power ambitious to expand its territory at Germany's expense. To some diplomats of the ancien regime, however, it was apparent that the 'Alsatian question' was not merely a confrontation between France and Germany, but one between the traditional law of nations and the .revolutionary ideas of self-determination and popular sovereignty. A different source of conflict soon arose in the relations between Paris and the Rhenish states: the problem of the emigres. The increasing number of these assembled on the Rhine led to pressures from France, and the emigres' arrogance and profligacy gave much offence to the local population. Their behaviour served to confirm old resentments against the French people. At the same time, their noble status turned some of the Rhinelanders' animosity against the aristocracy, whose international connections were strongly denounced. Besides, French propaganda could plausibly contend that, although these nobles might resemble those Frenchmen who were traditionally feared on the Rhine, they had nothing in common with the grande nation, which had been totally transformed by the Revolution. The conservatives, however, questioned how real this transformation was. They issued, in the war propaganda of early 1792, a call to arms against the hereditary enemy, recalling the devastation of 1688-9, and hinting that all the well-known features of the French people had simply been exacerbated by the Revolution.7 6

Cited from G. Menzel, * Franz Joseph von Albini 1748-1816, ein Staatsmann des alten Reiches', Mainzer Zeitschrift, Ixix (1974), 1-126: letter of 29 Oct. 1791, at p. 34. 7 Anrede eines alten osterreichischen Feldkapellans an seine wakern Kriegskameraden aufdem Marschgegen Frankreich, 8 pp. 8° (n.p., n.d. [Spring 1792]); Schlachtgesang eines hesslschen Grenadiers, 2 pp. 8°, (n.p., [Nov.] 1792). Cf. for the pro- and counter-revolutionary propaganda, E. Schneider, 'Das Bild der franzosischen Revolutionsarmee (1792-1795) in der zeitgenossischen deutschen Publizistik', in Deutschland unddie Franzosische Revolution, ed. J. Voss (Munich/Zurich 1983: Beihefte der Francia, xii), pp. 194-213.

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It was with anxiety, and at the same time with curiosity, that the Neufranken (as the French Revolutionaries were called) were awaited on the Rhine. In October 1792 French troops under General Custine marched into Mainz. This was the beginning of the 'Mainz Republic', which was to reveal much about the French expansion revolutionnaire and about the reception of revolutionary ideology in Germany.8 Did the 'Mainz Republic', lasting from October 1792 to April/July 1793, play a significant role in the development of German nationalism? Let us first consider this question in relation to the contribution made by the Mainz Jacobins. One may start by noting that the active members of the Mainz Jacobin club, founded on 23 October 1792 - most of them intellectuals and officers - called themselves and were called 'Patriots' rather than 'Jacobins', indicating the importance of patriotism in their own theory and practice. A further hint is the title of the journal which was their chief organ: Der Patriot. These pieces of evidence suggest that they were attaching themselves to the conceptions of patriotism that had been developed in pre-revolutionary Germany and France. But although some continuity of this kind can be traced in content as well as nomenclature, the patriotism of the Mainz Jacobins was not a simple copy of the French model, because it had - apart from strong cosmopolitan traits - important characteristics which were understandable only in terms of the specific Rhenish situation against which these men were reacting.9 One can illustrate this point by considering the term 'fatherland'. For the Mainz Jacobins neither the city nor the Electorate of Mainz (nor any other 'freed' territories) could be seen as their 'fatherland'. This was not because their leaders came from outside, or because of the narrow extent of the country.10 It was due rather to the Jacobins' feeling that the states 8 Die Mainzer Republik, ed. H. Scheel (2 vols., East Berlin, 1975-81); K. Tervooren, Die Mainzer Republik 1792/93. Bedingungen, Leistungen und Grenzen. eines burgerlichrevolutiondren Experiments in Deutschland (Frankfurt/Main and Bern, 1982); F. Dumont, Die Mainzer Republik von 1792. Studien zur Revolutionierung in Rheinhessen und der Pfalz (Alzey, 1982: Alzeyer Geschichtsblatter, Sonderheft 9); T.C.W. Blanning, Reform and Revolution in Mainz 1743-1803 (Cambridge, 1974), pp. 267-302. 9 B. Lomparski, 'Patriotisms' und 'Vaterland' im Mainzer Klubismus 1792/93. Bin Beitrag zur Begriffs- und Ideologiegeschicte des ausgehenden 18. Jahrhunderts (Dissertation, Saarbrucken, 1974); Prigmitz (see n. 1), pp. 54 seq; R. Dufraisse, 'De la Revolution a la Patrie: La rive gauche du Rhin a 1'epoque fran^aise (1792-1814)* in Actes du Colloque patriotisme et Nationalisme a 1'epoque de la Revolution fran^aise et de Napoleon (Paris, 1973), pp. 103-41; H. Scheel, Deutscher Jakobinismus und deutsche Nation (East Berlin, 1966); Tervooren (see n. 8), pp. 124-9. 10 For the role of foreigners in the Mainz Republic, cf. T.C.W. Blanning, 'German Jacobins and the French Revolution', Historical Journal, xxiii (1980), 985-1002, especially p. 995; and F. Dumont, 'Mainz und die Franzosische Revolution', in Deutschland und die Franzosische Revolution (seen. 7), pp. 132-48, especially p. 145.

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of the ancien regime lacked the basic precondition for a fatherland: a constitutional order guaranteeing human and civil rights. Referring to French patterns, they defined 'fatherland' not only as a birthplace and a home, but as a political entity with a definite internal structure. A 'fatherland' only existed where 'citizens' lived, and citizenship was only possible where political participation was guaranteed. Conversely this meant that where people were suppressed, treated as subjects, and excluded from political activity, no fatherland could exist. Wedekind, the leading theorist of the early Mainz Republic, summed up this contention in the maxim: 'Just as the donkey does not own its stable, the subject'does not have a fatherland!'11 Hence the idea that the Holy Roman Empire might have the qualities of a fatherland was rejected, as the Empire gave a participatory role only to the nobles, and denied any voice to the subjects of the numerous princes. As for the smaller territorial states, in these it was at least possible for the inhabitants to develop some sense of community. But this feeling had little to do with patriotism as the Jacobins understood it. For them, true 'love of the fatherland' could only exist where every individual felt himself to be not only a part, but also a co-proprietor, of the state; and the free union of citizens with equal rights was the indispensable basis for the development of a 'real' nation. While geographical, historical, and cultural communities were more or less accidental, what was necessary to make a true nation out of a mass of people living together was a free and deliberate decision to form a political union. Thus for the Mainz Jacobins the idea of nationhood was defined in terms of voluntaristic or 'subjective' criteria, and 'objective' conditions which did not depend on the will of a country's inhabitants paled into insignificance.12 If collective self-determination was the prerequisite of a nation, it was also essential that the political system should be an appropriate one, based on freedom, equality of rights and a democratic constitution. Genuine patriotism was only possible in a democracy: 'Patriotism can only germinate, blossom, ripen and bear fruit where equality, freedom and security of property are found, and only in these conditions does happiness exist.'13 In linking patriotic consciousness to a certain mode of government, the Mainz Jacobins were propounding a special form of 11

G. Chr. Wedekind, 'Uber Freiheit und Gleichheit, eine Anrede an seine Mitburger . . .', 30 Oct. 1792, cited from Mainzer Republik, ed. Scheel, i. 85. Cf. H. Mathy, 'Georg Wedekind (1761-1831). Die politische Gedankenwelt eines Mainzer Medizinprofessors', Geschichtliche Landeskunde, v/1 (1968), 178-206; M. Weber, Georg Christian Gottlieb Wedekind 1761-1831. Werdegang und Schicksal eines Arztes im Zeitalter der Aujklarung undder Franzosischen Revolution (Dissertation, Mainz, 1985). 12 Cf. Lomparski (see n. 9), pp. 234-81. 13 Cited from Der kosmopolitische Beobachter (ed. by the Mainz Jacobin Anton Fuchs), no. 3, 20 Jan. 1793, p. 48; cf. no. 1, 1 Jan. 1793, pp. 10-16, and no. 2, 10 Jan. 1793, p. 31 seq.

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'constitutional patriotism'.14 Tied to a well-defined ideology, and emotionally charged, this seemed a potent force for 'modernizing' the governmental and social order of the Rhineland. However, although this brand of patriotism had played a strong 'progressive' and integrating role in revolutionary France, in Germany the Mainz Jacobins were almost alone in adopting it. It is true that since the seventeen-fifties there had been much discussion of patriotism in Germany, and that the concept had been closely associated with demands for an enlargement of civil rights and liberties. But these demands could not by any means be equated with the French-influenced aspirations of the Mainz Jacobins.15 Patriotism as understood by the latter was something quite new in Germany. The fact that they were isolated in their own country was recognized by the Mainz 'patriots' with the self-confidence of an avant-garde. At the same time they set out to demonstrate the intellectual superiority of their own ideas to those that were currently accepted. One of the ideas that they were anxious to combat was the widespread notion that only people of the same origin, the same mentality, and above all the same language, could share a common fatherland and constitute a nation. The German Jacobins did not deny the differences between peoples, but they regarded them as politically secondary, if not irrelevant. They took it for granted that ideological communities superseded the social and cultural variations which differentiated one 'nation' from another. Georg Forster, the* most famous of the Mainz Jacobins, gave classic expression to this view when he asked: 'Our languages are different - must our concepts be different also? Are Liberte and £galite not just as precious to mankind when we call them Freiheit and Gleichheitr16 In contrast to Herder, for example, Forster and his colleagues did not consider unity of language as an essential constituent of nationhood. The priority of political consent over linguistic and cultural homogeneity was especially emphasized by the Mainz 'patriots' when they were considering whether their Rheinisch-deutsche Republik should be united with France. Some of them (having in mind Rousseau's ideal of small republics) saw this as a provisional and temporary solution. But for the leading group around Hofmann, Forster and Metternich, a desire for union with France was the natural corollary of their constitutional patriotism. They longed to be French citizens: not to be French in the 14

The German term Verfassungspatriotismus was first formulated by Dolf Sternberg; cf. W. Heun, 'Die Mainzer Republik. Eine verfassungsgeschichtliche Studie', Der Staat. Zeitschrift fur Staatslehre, offentliches Recht und Verfassungsgeschichte, xxiii (1984), 53-74, especially p. 66, n. 98. 15 Chr. Prignitz (see n. 1), pp. 34-8 and 48-58, gives a different interpretation of the roles of German 'liberal' and 'jacobin' patriotism in the 1780s and 1790s. 16 Georg Forster, 'Uber das Verhaltnis der Mainzer gegen die Franken . . .' [15 Nov. 1792], cited from Mainzer Republik, ed. Scheel, i. 219.

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socio-cultural sense, but in the sense of becoming free people. France had become their 'Fatherland' because it was there alone that human and civil rights existed. Separation from Germany did not seem an act of treason; on the contrary, it was an act of true love towards their Fatherland. The 'Rhenish-German nation' which was constituted in March 1793 was not aspiring to independence and did not therefore need to develop a political or cultural identity. This was only thought of as a preliminary stage on the route to union with the grande nation. According to the Jacobins, it was only through a supposedly voluntary union of the two 'sovereign' states that the 'tyrants' who wished to sow dissension among the people could bfe defeated. In their view, it had been a subtle ruse on the part of kings to highlight the differences between the Germans and the French and thereby to put obstacles in the way of international understanding. In this way the idea of 'national consciousness' was treated as ideologically suspect and came to be seen as an instrument of ruling-class manipulation. Those who were identified as foreigners were not the 'hereditary enemies' of the German people, but kings, princes, priests and aristocrats: in short, the privileged classes. The German and French peoples - said the Jacobins repeatedly - should not let themselves be set against each other, but should recognize that they had common enemies, and that it was social rather than 'national' distinctions that were of decisive importance. It is understandable, therefore, that patriotism and cosmopolitanism were not antithetical for the Mainz Jacobins. As the basic struggle was being waged against the tyrants of all countries, the true patriot was fighting for all other oppressed peoples as well as for his own. Love for one's own country and love for mankind were blended together, and patriotism and cosmopolitanism became two sides of the same coin. The ruling principles of the future community of states would be voluntary union and self-determination, and no tensions, let alone wars, would exist between nations. In fact the Mainz-Jacobin concept of patriotism was not quite so monolithic and uncomplicated as is suggested in the account given above. There are two main qualifications which need to be stated. In the first place, the Jacobins did advert from time to time to 'objective' national factors, especially when they tried to explain opposition to their revolutionary methods by arguing that the German 'national character' was averse to radical change. In letters, periodicals and speeches, Forster and Metternich repeatedly spoke of the 'phlegm' of their compatriots which prevented them from spontaneously imitating the French example;17 and it was on this account that they showed little inclination to attempt a general 'municipalization' of the right bank of the Rhine or 17 Cf. the address of affiliation of the Mainz Jacobins to the Paris Jacobin Club, 12 Dec. 1792 (ibid., p. 372) and the Konstitutionsvorschlage of the Mainz merchants, Nov. 1792 (ibid., p. 155).

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to launch a pan-German revolution. Secondly, it should be noted that within the Mainz Jacobin club some opposition was shown to the idealistic formulation of constitutional patriotism propounded by Forster and Wedekind, a formulation which disregarded regional antecedents and allegiances. In a discussion relating to the distribution of new posts in the revolutionary administration, a student named Theyer made a notable intervention, urging that special consideration should be given to people of local origin. He did not directly challenge the notion of constitutional patriotism, but he attached to the term 'patriotism' some of its traditional connotations of emotional attachment to one's native environment. Theyer was not alone in this opinion, because anger about the privileges given to foreigners (and even to protestants!) by the Elector had helped to stimulate the local discontents which facilitated the emergence of Mainz Jacobinism. Furthermore it was significant that the French, who played a crucial part in setting up and supporting the Mainz Republic, did not always conform to the principles of constitutional patriotism in their behaviour on the Rhine in 1792-3. Their pronouncements were often inconsistent with the voluntaristic or 'subjective' concept of nationhood, for French military men and politicians tended to impute to 'the Germans' an immutable collective character which naturally compared unfavourably with the qualities they attributed to their own countrymen.19 Moreover, in their orders, laws and proclamations there was a transparent desire to advance specifically French interests. Cosmopolitanism was distinctly overshadowed by a kind of 'patriotism' which put less emphasis on diffusing the benefits of revolution than on promoting the historic or 'natural' claims of France (for example, to the establishment of a frontier on the Rhine). ///

The conception of constitutional patriotism propagated by the Mainz Jacobins - one that was intrinsically linked to policies of social and political modernization - constituted a very important strand in German political debate in the seventeen-nineties and offered a much more concrete programme than the vague notions of public welfare and freedom associated with earlier brands of patriotism. However, it would 18 G. Chr. Wedekind, 'Uber die Anstellung von Auslandern' (ibid., pp. 318-22); P. N. Theyer, * Wedekind iiber die Anstellung von Auslandern, beantwortet von H. N, Deyer' [sic] (ibid., pp. 339-47). Cf. Lomparski (seen. 9), pp. 193-223; F. Dumont, 'Jakobiner und Jurist. Der Alzeyer Notar Peter Nikolaus Theyer (1773-1831)', in 700 Jahre Stadt Alzey, ed. F. K. Becker (Alzey, 1977), pp. 385-404. 19 Cf. F. Dumont, 'Liberte und Libertat. Dokumente deutsch-franzosischer Beziehungen imJahre 1792/93', Francia, vi (1978), 367-406, especially p. 401; and Quellen zur Geschichte des Rheinlandes, ed. Hansen, ii. 563 n. 1, 639 n. 1.

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be wrong to suppose that the Jacobin conception was the dominant one in the discussions of patriotism that took place in these years. For, largely as a result of the formation of the Mainz Republic, a strong countercurrent developed which carried with it quite different interpretations of the terms 'fatherland', 'nation* and 'patriotism'. There are two levels of argument which need to be considered here. On one level, discussion focused on actual events in the Rhineland; on the other (deeper) level, there was a more theoretical debate over the definition of terms and the appropriation of vocabulary. What both lines of argument had in common was the conviction that the importation of the French Revolution should be seen as a national danger; and the anti-Jacobin publicists - whether bourgeois journalists, clerics, or representatives of the ancien regime (often writing under pseudonyms) - were always concerned to controvert the universal claims of the Revolution. It was portrayed as a French event, and as a product of French conditions. For Germany it was regarded as inappropriate, and where an inclination to imitate it was discernible, what was considered necessary was an immunization of the people by means of'national' arguments. Like the Jacobins, their opponents were not sparing in the use of sharp polemic and vituperative language.20 However, there is a striking difference between the pamphlet literature which appeared on the (occupied) left bank of the Rhine and that which appeared on the (unoccupied) right bank. While on the latter the style of argument was more direct and aggressive, on the former the tone was, not surprisingly, more moderate in the face of the occupying power, though attitudes of hostility and opposition were made apparent. While concentrating on criticism of the Revolution, many conservative pamphleteers of the period of the Mainz Republic played also on 'national' themes. Criticism of the French was directed both against their conduct as an occupying power and against their claims to be acting as liberators. Again and again the gulf between theory and practice, between profession and reality, was referred to. Conservative propaganda made use - as did the Jacobins - of a technique of 'unmasking'. In relation to the French as an occupying power, this technique was used in contrasting Custine's claim to be the 'friend of the people' with the financial contributions he squeezed out of the inhabitants of Speyer, Worms, or Frankfurt. Tempers ran especially high over the immense Frankfurt contribution; and this was seen not as 20 K. Scherpe, *". . , erlaubt sich da der ehrliche Mann eine solche Ubertreibung?" Strategic und Funktion konterrevolutionarer Agitationsliteratur im Umkreis der Mainzer Revolution', Die demokratische Bewegung in Mitteleuropa im ausgehenden 18. und fruhen 19. Jahrhundert, ed. O. Biisch and W. Grab (West Berlin, 1980), pp. 290-335; J. Hashagen, Deutschland und die franzosische Hemchaft. Beitrage zur Charakteristik ihres Gegensatzes (Bonn, 1908); E. Sauer, Die Franzosische Revolution in zeitgenossischen deutschen Flugschriften und Dichtungen (Weimar, 1913), especially pp. 31-89; Blanning (see n. 2), pp. 247-53; Dumont (see n, 8), pp. 231-8.

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the act of a single general, but as a deed that was typical of the French people as a whole.21 Their mode of warfare was once again showing itself to be predatory and extortionate, especially in its impact on noncombatant civilians, and it was not Custine alone but the French in general who were held to have given the lie to their own motto, 'Paix aux chaumieres, guerre aux palais!' So, in the satirical and popular 'Lord's Prayer of the Southern German peasants5,22 the Trenchy' (Franzmann) was given all the negative attributes of a rowdy soldiery, being accused of robbery, murder, vandalism, maltreatment of peasants, and violation of their wives and daughters. The French soldiers were represented as a wild rabble, and by extension the French people at large were condemned and reprobated. Other pamphlets spoke more generally, without going into details, about the 'ravages' committed by Custine's troops in Germany.23 It was easy to draw parallels with the events of 1688-9, and the inhabitants of Speyer, Worms, and the Palatinate were reminded of those earlier devastations.24 What else, it was frequently asked, could be expected of a Cation that was capable of committing such crimes? The counter-revolutionary journalists not only used this unmasking technique in relation to the French as conquerors and occupiers; they also levelled charges of hypocrisy against the French in their role as professed liberators. Right at the start, the call for unrestricted self-determination which Custine issued to the citizens of Mainz in October 1792 was depicted as* a clever feint. Far from being a genuine offer, it was an instance of the deviousness for which the French had been famous in the seventeenth century. When, in December 1792, the French Convention put aside the right of self-determination and ordered the compulsory 'liberation' of the occupied territories, and when in February/March 1793 this 'municipalization' was forced on the lands between Landau and Bingen, the conservative nationalists were confirmed in their view that the French were untrustworthy and rapacious and that the Revolution had by no means changed their nature. Thus a German observer concluded after an examination of transactions in France since 1789: 'I have looked for Neufranken and have found only Frenchmen.' For all the talk of idealism and new attitudes, he found them as greedy and conceited as ever. The arrogance with which French journalists and speakers praised 21

For the numerous Frankfurt pamphlets against the French (and against the Mainz Jacobins) see K. Klein, Geschichte von Mainz wdhrend der ersten franzb'sischen Occupation 1792-1793 (Mainz, 1861), pp. 385-8; andcf. I. Kracauer, 'Frankfurt und die Franzosische Revolution', Archivfur Frankfurts Geschichte und Kunst, ix (1907), 211-98. 22 Das Vater Unserderschwabischen,frdnkischen, Odenwalder und WetterauerBauern (n.p., n.d.). 23 Cf. Aufruf (beginning 'Einige Freunde ihres Vaterlandes rufen jeden biedern Deutschen auf. . .') 8 pp. 8° (n.p., n.d. [printed on the right bank of the Rhine, Feb./ March 1793]). 24 Cf. the Worms appeal An meine deutschen Mitbruder, 1 March 1793, 4 pp. 4°.

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their own nation was as striking as their contempt of other people who thought differently from themselves.25 The same writer, dealing with the liberation-policy of the French, said that although they were pretending to aim at the emancipation of the world, they were in fact aspiring to rule it; and with reference to the experience of the Palatinate and the Rhineland he asserted that the French legislature, government and political clubs were no different from the Chambres de reunion of Louis XIV. Parallels were also drawn between the French expansion of 1684-9 and that of 1792-3, and between the forced re-catholicization of the Palatinate under Louis XIV and the secular messiariism of the Revolutionaries. Some publicists went so far as to say that instead of becoming a nation regeneree the French had actually undergone a national deterioration of character as a result of the Revolution. Their behaviour towards Frankfurt, it was alleged, revealed 'the old French in Germany rendered still worse behind their new French mask'.26 The seventeen-nineties say a revival of the term Erbfeind (hereditary enemy).27 It had originally been applied to the Turks, as for many centuries the 'natural' enemy of Christendom. But the continuous hankering of the French for expansion towards the east, and their participation in almost every war in Germany, had led Imperial publicists to transfer the term to them. During the eighteenth century it nearly fell into disuse because of relative inactivity on the FrancoGerman borders. When it was reactivated - together with the maxim 'gens gallica, gens perfida'2^ - at a time of growing popular involvement in politics, it signified not only a concern about the concrete threat to Germany from the western Reichsfeind (enemy of the Empire), but also a belief that there was a 'natural' and irreconcilable contrast between the Germans and the French. The Germans were collectively characterized as open, upright and God-fearing, while the French were portrayed as sly, frivolous and unreliable.29 Such extreme black-and-white comparisons were still perhaps the exception rather than the rule in antiFrench propaganda. But crude appeals to national prejudice and xenophobia were certainly made; and it was argued that in view of the fundamental incompatibility between the two peoples the desire of the 25

Ich habe Neufranken gesucht und bios Franzosen gefunden. Bin Sendschreiben eines Teutschen aus Frankreich, 8 pp. 8°, (n.p., [end of 1792?]), 26 Die alien Franzosen in Deutschland hinter der neufranktschen Maske verschlimmert, 10 pp. 8° (n.p., n.d. [spring 1793?]). 27 A.O. Reichard, Revolutionsalmanach von 1794, p. 97. Cf. Dumont (seen. 8), p. 236; Schneider (see n. 7), p. 213. 28 Cf. Chr. Girtanner, Die Franzosen am Rheinstrom, no. 2 (1793), p. 97: 'Gens gallica, gens perfida, ist ein altes Spriichwort: die Franzosen sind und werden bleiben was sie allezeit waren.' 29 H.Th. Stiller, An die Franken und ihre Reprasentanten in Deutschland von einemfreyen deutschen Biedermann, 13 pp. 8° (n.p., 'Deutschland', 1793). Cf. Lomparski (seen. 9), p. 317 seq.; Blanning (see n. 8), p. 294 seq.

168 Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution Mainz Jacobins for union with France was impracticable and absurd. Besides general contrasts in terms of character and moral worth, one finds in conservative pamphlets distinctions of a more directly political kind. It was claimed that whereas the French had a natural penchant for revolution, the Germans were by nature averse to it. The trustiness (Biedersinn) of the Germans involved loyalty to the 'legitimate authorities', obedience to laws 'from above', piety and the fear of God, respect for tradition and the achievements of the past, and an instinctive distrust of new-fangled foreign ideas.30 Trench liberty', equated with licentiousness, was contraposed to 'German liberty'. The latter (though not often defined in specific terms) was conceived as embracing religious freedom, freedom of thought, and a restricted freedom of expression such as was supposed to exist in the German states. Even the acceptance of the established framework of society was treated as an ingredient of this 'true liberty'; and there were sometimes echoes, as well, of the old corporative term 'Liberties'.31 It was stated that the inhabitants of the imperial cities of Frankfurt, Worms, and Speyer already lived under a free constitution and thus had no need of liberty, which was in any case no more than a fraud (Freiheitsschwindel).32 Such arguments were calculated to foster feelings of superiority among 'true, genuine Germans', and a belief that the situation in Germany was almost as good as it could be and that whatever improvements were desirable could be achieved by means of reform. Every German, it was claimed, could be proud of his homeland; and hence the term 'patriotism', like the term 'liberty', was given a distinctively conservative or 'German' meaning which was antithetical to the Jacobin interpretation of the word. As against a conception of patriotism which was invested in the public mind with revolutionary connotations (and which made it possible to label counterrevolutionaries as 'anti-patriots'), the conservatives set out to publicize a brand of German patriotism which was designed to idealize the existing order and to provide immunity against the 'French contagion'. The 'national' arguments of 1792-3 served not only as a means of differentiation as against the French, but also as a means of extruding the 30 These qualities are mentioned in all the pamphlets cited above, and also in many counter-revolutionary journals (e.g. PolitischesJournal and Politische Gesprdche im Reich der Todten) and in the contemporary Darstellung der Mainzer Revolution, written by the Mainz lawyer Anton Hoffmann (Frankfurt/Leipzig/Mainz, 1793). However, the expressions bieder and Biedersinn were also used by the French commissioners and the Mainz Jacobins in their pamphlets and proclamations during the 'municipalization' of Jan./March 1793; cf. Mainzer Republik, ed. Scheel, ii, passim, and Dumont (seen. 8), p. 361. 31 Cf. J. Schlumbohm, Freiheit. Die Anfange der burgerlichen Emanzipationsbewegung im Spiegel ihres Leitwortes (Diisseldorf, 1975). 32 See, e.g., J. Ph. Auerbach, An Herrn Prdsidenten Dorsch . . ., 4 pp. 4° (Frankfurt, [Nov.] 1792); Die Burger von Frankfurt an den Frankischen Burger und General Custine, 4 pp. 4° (Frankfurt, 5 Nov. 1792); [L. Ph. Hahn], Meisterjohann Ehrlichs . . . Correspondenz mit dem Burgerfreund zu Mainz, 32 pp. 8° (n.p., 6 Nov. 1792).

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Mainz Jacobins from the German community. Liberty and equality, the rights of man, and the sovereignty of the people were asserted to be merely French ideas, which could not be propagated by a true German. The Mainz Jacobins, it was said, in addition to betraying their town to the French, and to committing high treason by deposing the princes on the left bank of the Rhine in March 1793, were above all guilty of being traitors to their country.33 To be German involved adhering to the norms of German Biedersinn, and those who departed from them and espoused other values forfeited their national identity. Various literary devices were used to put across this message: for instance, the satirical account of a German blockhead who adopted * wicked French principles' out of sheer naivety; a polemic addressed to the German princes which concluded by saying: 'Be German and remain German, and spit in the face of anyone who says a single word in favour of French liberty'; and the pamphlets published by the Mainz chancellor Albini in 1792 under the pseudonym of'Doctor Gottlob Teutsch9.34 It is also worth noting that the charge of attachment to France, which was levelled against the members of Jacobin clubs, was quite often used more generally to throw suspicion on intellectuals.35 They were the people who, as illuminati or freemasons, were held to have undermined the authority of the princes; they had been the first to introduce fanciful French ideas; and they thus came to be accused of *un-German' attitudes and behaviour. In sum, therefore, it can be seen that the conservative interpretation of patriotism was a combination of several elements: Conspiracy-theory, xenophobia, traditionalism and antiintellectualism. This mixture was to leave its mark on the political and cultural world of the German Vormarz of 1815-48. 33

See, e.g., Ein Wort an die Maynzer zum neuenjahre 1793, 14 pp. 8° (n.p., 1793); Gedanken eines Antipatrioten aus Preussen uber das Betragen des Hrn. General Custine auf deutschen Boden, 16 pp. 8° (n.p., n.d. [Dec. 1792?]); Antwort auf das lasterhafte Blatt des . . . Daniel Stamm in Mainz . . . von einem deutschen Patrioten, 4 pp. 4° (n.p., n.d. [Frankfurt, 1792/93]). See also the counter-revolutionary journals Der Antipatriot and Der deutsche Menschenfreund, published on the right bank of the Rhine with support from the government of the Mainz Electorate. 34 Empfindungen bey der Hinrichtung des unglucklichen Konigs Ludwigs des Sechzehnten zu Paris den 21.Janner 1793, 4 pp. 4° (n.p., n.d. [1793]); leaflet entitled An alle Deutschen Fursten [1793]; [FJ. Albini], Etwas uber die mainzische Konstitution in einem Sendschreiben des Doktors Gottlob Teutsch an den Verfasserdes mainzischen Burgerfreundes, 15 pp. 8° (Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1792). Cf. K. Fuchs, 'Albini's Schrift "Uber die Mainzische Konstitution" von 1792', Mainzer Zeitschrift, Ixvii-lxviii (1972/73), pp. 94-8. 35 Deutschlands Volkeran ihreguten Fursten, 4 pp. 4° (n.p., n.d. [1793]). For the hostility towards savants and illuminati, see also Darstellung der Mainzer Revolution (especially the preface, pp. 1-10), and the pamphlet by P. A. Winkopp, Ober die Verfassung von Mainz oder Vergleich des alien und neuen Mainz, von einem Mainzer (n.p., 'Deutschland', [Nov.] 1792). Cf. Lomparski (see n. 9), pp. 298-319; J. R. von Bieberstein, Die These von der Verschworung 1789-1945. Philosophen, Freimaurer, Juden, Liberate und Sozialisten als " Verschworer" gegen die Sozialordnung (Bern, 1976).

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The Mainz Republic aroused strong reactions from both its friends and its enemies, for it was the first direct encounter of Germans at all social levels with the French Revolution - though this encounter took place during the second phase of the Revolution and was complicated by the problems of military occupation. In the contemporary debate about events in the Rhineland, the dominant theme was the confrontation between an aristocratic ancien regime and its revolutionary-democratic alternative, while the 'national' dimension was still a secondary one. None the less, the Mainz Republic was important for the awakening of German nationalism, and the influence of the episode can be traced in two directions. In the first place, the leaders of the Republic were the first group of people in Germany who specifically committed themselves to 'constitutional patriotism' as a political programme. In contrast to the liberal patriotism of the seventeen-seventies and seventeen-eighties, the Voluntaristic' patriotism of the Mainz Jacobins was directly related to democracy. But although it broached some ideas that were to reappear during the Vormdrz period, its importance should not be overestimated, for another kind of nationalism was to have a more decisive impact on Germany's historical development. The reasons for this are partly to be found in the subsequent course of the French wars and in the experience of Napoleonic rule, but they can also be traced in part to the nature of the Mainz Republic itself: its short duration, its internal contradictions and, above all, its close dependence on France. These factors help to explain why the liberation movement of 1809-15 and the democratic movement of the German Vormdrz did not look back to the Mainz Jacobins for inspiration but needed to seek a new basis for a German constitutional patriotism. The brand of nationalism that was more powerfully stimulated by events in the Rhineland in 1792-3 was the conservative variety. The negative reaction produced by the Mainz Republic resulted in the strengthening and popularization of a nationalism which emphasized community of language, history and descent; and the episode was to serve for a long time as a prime example of the expansionist tendencies of the French and of their antagonism towards Germany. So one sees emerging in the seventeen-nineties the kind of nationalism that was to be dominant in Germany in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: conservative, ethnocentric, and decidedly Gallophobic. The principal effect of the French Revolution on Germany was not to promote liberation and modernization, but rather the reverse. For while the constitutional patriotism of the Mainz Jacobins was espoused by only a small minority, the Revolution provoked the dissemination of conservative nationalism as a popular creed.

13

The United Provinces Henk Reitsma Introduction Modern nationalism always grows out of a previous stage, which can be called national consciousness, and any analysis of nationalism needs to start with this national consciousness and its various forms or traditions.1 In the case of Dutch national consciousness it is possible to distinguish three traditions. Each of them is characterized by two main elements, a distinctive version of Dutch history and a specific set of ideas about politics. The first of these traditions was the Orangist one, which liked to see the history of the Dutch republic, and indeed political power within that republic, centred upon the Stadholderate, the executive office of the Princes of Orange. In opposition to this view stood the staatsgezinde tradition, which saw the basis of legitimate political power in the Netherlands as being located in the provincial estates or Staten, the assemblies which represented the cities and nobility of the seven Dutch provinces, and which were in turn represented by the Estates General. The 'regents' (regenten) who had seats in the provincial estates belonged to an elite of a few hundred interconnected families which had established a prescriptive claim to participation in politics and administration; and according to them the Stadholder was no more than the servant of the Estates General. The third tradition was the Calvinist one, which saw the republic as the outcome of a special covenant between God and the Netherlands, and firmly believed that the wellbeing of the state depended on the degree to which the Dutch were able to live in accordance with the commandments of God, as interpreted by the clergy (predikanteri). Indeed, the Dutch republic was seen as a new Israel, and the authorities, especially the Stadholder, were deemed to be the natural protectors of the work of God.

1

J. Haak, in his paper, 'Het nationaal besef bij G.K, van Hogendorp' [The national consciousness of G.K. van H.], Tijdschrift voorGeschiedenis, Ixxix (1966), 407-17, regards Dutch nationalism as a post-1813 phenomenon and recognizes only national consciousness in the 18th century. I prefer to follow Otto Dann (ed.), Nationalisms in Vorindustrieller Zeit (Munich, 1986), Introduction, p. 9.

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The main political confrontation during the life of the Dutch republic, which lasted from 1588 until the formation of the Batavian Republic in 1795, was the one between the Orangist and staatsgezinde positions. Characteristic of the latter was a concern to invest the power of the provincial estates with an ancient pedigree, and its heroes were opponents of the Stadholder such as Johan van Oldenbarneveld and Jan de Witt. The Orangists (a heterogeneous group on which more research is needed) were by no means believers in absolute monarchy. They included some members of the ruling elite of regents who wanted the Stadholder to have enough power to restrain the forces of centrifugal provincialism. What held the group together - apart from ties of selfinterest which bound them to the House of Orange - was a conception of the Stadholder as the traditional protector of the Republic's unity and of its distinctive blend of freedom and religion. The Republic was a curious mixture of the old and the new. It was a bourgeois society in that the nobility did not have an important role, and a capitalist society in that the, interests of the trading and banking elite in the coastal provinces were predominant. But constitutionally the Republic was an example of a medieval polity living on into modern times, and was comparable in this respect to Switzerland and the Republic of Venice. The ruling class was a basically urban patriciate, internally divided between Orangists and staatsgezinden, but selfperpetuating and to a large extent exclusive. The 'burghers' of the middle and lower levels of the urban middle class had in general no political influence. It should also be mentioned that the catholics (a third or more of the population) and the non-Calvinist dissenters were shut out of political life by religious disabilities. As well as being oligarchical, the political system was a cumbrous one. Sovereignty formally resided in the seven provincial estates, in which all the members had the right of veto on important issues. The system was ill-adapted to deal with any emergency, and a crisis in foreign relations usually called for a central coordination of defence measures and thereby strengthened the position of the Stadholder. This happened in 1672 when the English, French and Munsterians attacked the country, and again in 1748 during the War of the Austrian Succession. Within this system there emerged in the seventeen-eighties a form of modern nationalism, which was associated with a deterioration in the

2

C. Huisman, Neerlands Israel. Het natiebesef der traditioneel gereformeerden in de Achttiende Eeuw (Dutch Israel. The national consciousness of the traditional Calvinists in the 18th century] (Dordrecht, 1983).

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relative position of the Dutch Republic in Europe and with the appearance of the burghers on the political scene. As E.H. Kossmann has written, . . . social tensions increased considerably during the second half of the century, and it seems that it was precisely the declining middle class of merchants and industrialists that constituted the dynamic force in the political conflicts of the seventeen-eighties. It was this group that aspired to the ancient greatness. Looking back over a magnificent and wealthy past, it now found inspiration in an over-excited nationalism.3 This nationalism was generated within the Dutch context, and was quite well developed by the time the French Revolution took place; and it was heralded in the immediately preceding decades by symptoms of nationalism that were cultural and economic rather than political. 'Patriotism' in the Seventies and Eighties In 1763 a pamphlet entitled Defence of the Honour of the Nation of Holland was printed as a response to a negative description of the Dutch national character in a British publication, the Modern Part of an Universal History, where the terms 'phlegmatic, uninventive and brutal' were used to describe the Dutch. The defender of the honour of Holland - E.M. Engelberts of Hoorn, a Calvinist predikant - used the name of his province rather than the name of his country, but explained in the foreword to the second edition of 1776 that he meant his defence to apply to the other six provinces as well. In his view the Dutch were far too indulgent towards foreign influence, and even tended to despise their own mother-tongue. The authors of the Universal History, on the other hand, were inspired by prejudice, credulity and sheer malice; and this was not surprising, as the English were well-known for their inability to control their passions and brutality. The national character of the Dutch, by contrast, was described by Engelberts as moderate, freedom-loving and reasonable. Moreover, they had a cultural heritage of which they should be extremely proud. Reacting to such insults in the Universal History as the charge that Dutch poets could be compared to grapes in Siberia, he argued that the agile and studious nature of the national mentality was an ideal basis for distinction in the arts and sciences, and that considering the smallness of the country it produced an amazing number of famous poets, painters and sculptors.4 3

E.H. Kossmann, The Low Countries 1780-1940 (Oxford, 1978), p. 39. E.M. Engelberts, Verdediging van de eer der Hollandsche Natie [Defence of the honour of the Dutch nation] (Amsterdam, 1763; 2nd edn., 1776). Cf. Vaderlandsche Letteroefeningen, iii (1763), part ii, 317. 4

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A similar desire to strengthen the cultural self-confidence of the Dutch is apparent in other publications of the same period: for instance in the socalled 'spectatorial' reviews such as the Vaderlandsche Letteroefeningen.5 The need for this kind of self-assertion may have been connected to a feeling that the position of the United Provinces in Europe and the world was declining. Economic historians deny that there was a decline in national income in absolute terms,6 but there is no doubt that changes in the structure of world trade were undermining the staple market which had been the basis of the prosperity of the Dutch coastal provinces. Although the continued growth of the banking sector and the rising income'from agriculture compensated on a macro-economic scale for losses on the transit trade, the decline of the industries and occupations that were linked to the latter - finishing trades, ship-building, warehousing - threatened the livelihoods of large numbers of people. These factors help to explain the 'economic patriotism' which arose in the seventeen-seventies, when publicists began to argue that a more balanced national economy should be promoted through the stimulation of industry, in order to revive prosperity and check the alarming growth of pauperism.7 This set of ideas found organizational expression when the oldest of the learned societies in Holland, the Hollandsche Maatschappij van Wetenschappen (Dutch Society of Sciences) which had been founded in Haarlem in 1752, set up the Oeconomische Tak in 1778. This 'economic branch' grew into the earliest nation-wide organization in the country. In no time its departments cobwebbed the Republic, there being fifty-five of them by 1778 with a total of more than 3,000 paying members. When the patriot movement became politicized during the seventeen-eighties, economic patriotism lost its momentum: by 1795 only eleven departments were still in existence with a total of 274 members. But it was to be revived in a bureaucratic form in the economic ministry set up under the Batavian regime of 1798, and was to be reflected in the economic policy of King William I after 1814. Economic patriotism shared with cultural patriotism an emphasis on 5 See J. Hartog, De spectatoriale geschriften van 1741-1800 [The spectatorial reviews of 1741-1800] (Utrecht, 1890); PJ. Buynsters, 'Spectatoriale geschriften in Nederland (1781-1800)', in his Nederlandse Uteratuur van de Achtiiende Eeuw [Dutch literature of the 18th century] (Utrecht, 1984), pp. 36-47. 6 Theo P.M. dejong, 'Sociale verandering in de neergaande republiek' [Social change in the declining Republic], Economisch en sociaalhistorisch Jaarboek, xxxv (1972), 15-19; Simon Schama, Patriots and Liberators: Revolution in the Netherlands 1780-1813 (New York, 1977), pp. 32-45. 7 Johan de Vries, De economische achteruitgang van de Republiek in de Achttiende Eeuw [The economic decline of the Republic in the 18th century] (Leiden, 1968), pp. 180-4; H.J.F.M. van den Eerenbeemdt, Armoede en arbeidsdwang: Werkinrichtingen voor onnutte Nederlanders in de Republiek [Poverty and enforced labour. Workhouses for useless Netherlanders in the Republic] ('s Gravenhage, 1977).

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the need to revive the traditional moral strengths of the Dutch character: 'Let everyone embrace the virtues of his brave forefathers; thus economy, industriousness and probity will once more be the virtues of our nation and the old fruitfulness and prosperity will return. '8 A similar preoccupation with morality and with the past was again evident when 'patriotism' became a political movement in the seventeen-eighties. There is much to be said for regarding 1780 as the starting-point of modern Dutch nationalism. The old provincial particularism was still very much alive at this period, and the idea of forming a unitary state had not yet been ventilated, but one can see the emergence of a federal brand of natiohalism. Also, whereas the patriotic movement in its cultural and economic phases had been confined to intellectuals, businessmen and officials, it broadened after 1780 to embrace social elements down to the petite bourgeoisie. Moreover, a geographical as well as a social broadening took place. Whereas the staatsgezinde opposition to the Stadholder had been traditionally based in Holland and the other maritime provinces, the new patriotic movement drew some of its strongest support from inland provinces such as Overijssel and Gelderland. A major precipitant of these developments was the Anglo-Dutch war of 1780-4. We have observed the anti-English slant of Engelberts' pamphlet of 1763; in the seventeen-eighties there was a stream of further publications expressing vehement hostility towards England.9 At the same time, because of the longstanding links between the House of Orange and the English court, and the incompetent and seemingly halfhearted conduct of the war by the Stadholder William V, the forces of opposition to the Orange establishment were greatly strengthened. In addition, many Dutch people identified strongly with the American cause, which they saw as comparable to their own war of independence against Spain; and influences stemming from the American Revolution contributed to the Dutch patriot movement and to the widening of its social base. An important work which both reflected and greatly stimulated these tendencies was the manifesto To the People of the Netherlands (1781), written, as we now know, by the Overijssel nobleman Joan Derk van der Capellen tot den Pol, who had been a warm supporter of the American cause and had translated Richard Price's Observations on Civil Liberty.10 8

De Vaderlander, iv (1779), 8. N.C.F. van Sas, Onze natuurlijkste bondgenoot, Nederland, Engeland en Europa 18131831 [Our most natural ally. The Netherlands, England and Europe 1813-1831] (Groningen, 1985), maintains in his introduction that the relationship between England and the Dutch Republic was a complex and ambiguous one. With regard to the 1780s, he says (p. 31) that public opinion in the Republic was vehemently anti-English, and that in this period a modern Dutch consciousness developed with England as the enemy. 10 L.H.M. Wessels, 'Over invloed en traditie: een plaatsbepaling van Joan Derk van der Capellen*, in E. A. van Dijk (ed.), De wekker van de Nederlandse Natie [The awakener of the Dutch nation] (Zwolle, 1984), pp. 121-37. 9

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Nationalism in the Age of the French Revolution

Much of the manifesto reads like a polemical history of the Netherlands written from a staatsgezinde standpoint. But it also contained novel features, especially his recommendation that the people should arm themselves: the staatsgezinde regents would never have countenanced this kind of appeal to popular power. The manifesto concluded: Assemble in your towns and villages and choose from your midst a number of good, virtuous and pious men; choose good patriots whom you can trust. Send them as your representatives to the places where the Estates of your provinces assemble and instruct them to come together in due course to investigate in the name and on behalf of this nation, together with the Estates of each province, why the protection of the country against a redoubtable and active enemy is managed with so much sluggishness and weakness.11 The answer to this question was strongly suggested in the text of the manifesto. Because of his English connections, the Stadholder - the military commander of the Republic - could not be relied upon to uphold the cause of his own people and his powers were detrimental to the public welfare. Van der Capellen's message was actively disseminated by the press, and did much to encourage association and arming among the civil population. The movement gathered strength in 1783 and began associating on a national scale in 1784, and its aim was a piecemeal takeover and 'reconstruction' of the existing political machinery. If the patriots had had their way, all urban governments would have been filled with opponents of the Stadholder, and so in due course would the provincial estates and the Estates General; and the political institutions of the Republic would have been reconstructed on a genuinely representative basis. The latter objective was legitimized by elaborate expositions of Dutch constitutional history and was presented as a plan to 'restore' a system which had existed in the days of the Republic's greatness. The ideas of the French philosophes seem to have contributed little or nothing to the movement. No mention was made of Rousseau, and indeed the Contrat social was not translated into Dutch until 1788, just after the patriot movement had been crushed.12 Although occasional references were made to Locke, Price and Priestley, and the traditional language of opposition was enlarged to include some use of concepts such as natural rights and popular sovereignty, it was the staatsgezinde view of the Dutch past that provided the core of the patriots' ideology. In addition there was a strong element of moralism in their propaganda. As against the orthodox Calvinist view that the Stadholder and the 1 * Joan Derk van der Capellen tot den Poll, Aan het volk van Nederland [To the people of the Netherlands], ed. W.F. Wertheim and A.H. Wertheim-Gijse Weenink (Amsterdam, 1965), p. 130. 12 C.H.E. de Wit, 'De Nederlandse revolutie van de Achttiende Eeuw en Frankrijk' [The Dutch revolution of the 18th century and France], Documentatieblad van de werkgroep J&*«