Creating Links and Innovative Overviews for a New History Research Agenda for the Citizens of a Growing Europe
Thematic Work Group 6
Europe and the Wider World III
CLIOHRES.net is a largescale research project, supported by the European Commission through the Sixth Framework Programme of its Directorate General for Research as a “Network of Excellence” for European History. It includes 180 researchers (90 staff and 90 doctoral students) from 45 universities in 31 countries. Working together in six thematic work groups, their aim is to achieve greater understanding of both the histories and the representations of the past current in Europe today, highlighting both diversities and connections.
The Consortium Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz (Austria) Universiteit Gent (Belgium) Sofiyski Universitet “Sveti Kliment Ohridski” (Bulgaria) Univerzita Karlova v Praze (Czech Republic) Panepistimio Kyprou (Cyprus) Roskilde Universitetscenter (Denmark) Tartu Ülikool (Estonia) Turun Yliopisto (Finland) Université Pierre Mendès-France, Grenoble II (France) Université de Toulouse II - Le Mirail (France) Forschungszentrum Europäische Aufklärung (Germany) Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg (Germany) University of Aberdeen (Great Britain) Cardiff University (Great Britain) University of Sussex (Great Britain) Ethniko kai Kapodistriako Panepistimio Athinon (Greece) Aristotelio Panepistimio Thessalonikis (Greece) Debreceni Egyetem (Hungary) Miskolci Egyetem (Hungary) Háskóli Íslands (Iceland) National University of Ireland, Galway/Ollscoil na hĖireann, Gaillimh (Ireland) Università di Bologna (Italy)
Università degli Studi di Milano (Italy) Università degli Studi di Padova (Italy) Università di Pisa (Italy) Latvijas Universitāte, Riga (Latvia) L-Università ta’ Malta (Malta) Universiteit Utrecht (The Netherlands) Universitetet i Oslo (Norway) Uniwersytet Jagiellonski, Krakow (Poland) Universidade de Coimbra (Portugal) Universidade Aberta (Portugal) Universitatea Babeş Bolyai din Cluj-Napoca (Romania) Universitatea ‘Stefan cel Mare’, Suceava (Romania) Moskowskij Gosudarstvennyj Oblastnoj Universitet (Russian Federation) Univerzitet u Novom Sadu (Serbia) Slovenskej Akademie Vied (Slovakia) Univerza v Mariboru (Slovenia) University of KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa) Universidad de Alcalá de Henares (Spain) Universidad de Deusto (Spain) Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain) Universitat de Valencia (Spain) Universität Basel (Switzerland) Orta Dogu Teknik Üniversitesi (Turkey)
Europe and its Empires
edited by Mary N. Harris and Csaba Lévai
Europe and its Empires / edited by Mary N. Harris and Csaba Lévai. - Pisa : Plus-Pisa University Press, 2008. – (Thematic work group. 6., Europe and the Wider World ; 3) 940 (21.) 1. Europa – Storia 2. I. Harris, Mary N. II. Lévai, Csaba CIP a cura del Sistema bibliotecario dell’Università di Pisa This volume is published thanks to the support of the Directorate General for Research of the European Commission, by the Sixth Framework Network of Excellence CLIOHRES.net under the contract CIT3-CT-2005-006164. The volume is solely the responsibility of the Network and the authors; the European Community cannot be held responsible for its contents or for any use which may be made of it.
Cover: Anonymous, The “Strozzi Panel”, Naples, Museo di San Martino (detail). © 2003. PhotoScala, Florence, by concession of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali.
© 2008 CLIOHRES.net The materials published as part of the CLIOHRES Project are the property of the CLIOHRES.net Consortium. They are available for study and use, provided that the source is clearly acknowledged.
[email protected] - www.cliohres.net Published by Edizioni Plus – Pisa University Press Lungarno Pacinotti, 43 56126 Pisa Tel. 050 2212056 – Fax 050 2212945
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ISBN: 978-88-8492-557-2 Informatic editing Răzvan Adrian Marinescu
Contents Preface Ann Katherine Isaacs, Guðmundur Hálfdanarson........................................................... pag. VII The CLIOHRES Network of Excellence................................................................................ »
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Introduction Mary N. Harris, Csaba Lévai............................................................................................ »
VII
The New Age of Imperialism: British and South African Perspectives Saul Dubow........................................................................................................................ »
1
Classical Legacy and Imperial Ideal in the Early Renaissance: the Artistic Patronage of Alfonso V the Magnanimous Amadeo Serra Desfilis..........................................................................................................»
17
Within Two Imperial Systems: Hungary and the British Colonies in North America Compared in the Writings of Gergely Berzeviczy (1763-1822) Csaba Lévai........................................................................................................................ »
31
The Russian Empire: Main Features and Particularities Viktor N. Zakharov............................................................................................................ »
47
The Danish Empire: the Special Case of Iceland Anna Agnarsdóttir.............................................................................................................. »
59
Notions of Empire: Anglo-French Rivalry in the Newfoundland Fisheries in the 18th Century Mark Williams................................................................................................................... »
85
Belgium’s Expansionist History between 1870 and 1930: Imperialism and the Globalization of Belgian Business Jan-Frederik Abbeloos......................................................................................................... »
105
Environment and Empire: a Major Theme in World Environmental History Vinita Damodaran............................................................................................................. »
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The End of the Imperial Track: Factors Retarding the Destruction of the Big Game of Zululand, South Africa Donal P. McCracken........................................................................................................... »
141
Turbans or Top Hats? Indenture, Indian Interpreters and Empire: Natal, 1880-1910 Prinisha Badassy................................................................................................................. »
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Ángel Ganivet and the Crisis in the Idea of the Spanish Empire María Jesús Cava Mesa, Emilio Sáenz-Francés San Baldomero........................................ »
179
Notes on Contributors...................................................................................................... »
199
Index................................................................................................................................... »
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Preface We are very pleased to present Europe and its Empires, the third volume of research results produced by the Sixth Thematic Working Group of the Network of Excellence, CLIOHRES. This Group is dedicated to exploring and exploiting new research directions on “Europe and the Wider World”. It has very opportunely chosen the theme of “empires” as a tool to investigate how new approaches and sources can be employed for innovative studies on important and often forgotten aspects of the relationship between Europe and other parts of the world. The volume looks at Europeans and nonEuropeans as they acted and moved in empires; at how empires operated, how they were used, what kind of knowledge and information became available because of them, and what countervailing strategies they stimulated. Imperium, the Latin word at the root of our term “empire”, meant legitimate power of command. Long before the Roman empire was consolidated, Romans gave imperium to various magistrates, including generals and consuls. In time and with reference to the Roman empire and its successors, European countries came to see themselves as creating new empires, articulated organisations including many peoples, often in farflung lands. European empires as understood in the 19th century came to a surprisingly sudden end. What was once perceived as a normal state of affairs – the world-embracing competition of Europe’s “great powers” for hegemony – gave way by the mid 20th century to a very different world. Europe today dedicates its energies to building a new kind of polity which includes only “Europeans”, citizens and residents of its member countries, which rarely entertain more than privileged relationships, linguistic and cultural, with their ex-“colonies” or ex-colonial metropolises. European Union countries are no longer imperial powers or parts of empires; debate centres on whether or not and how the United States – or the Russian Federation – can be understood to be or to aspire to be the centres of new empires. Nonetheless, all EU countries have imperial histories embedded in their past: perceived, according to the case, as a time of power and hegemony, a humiliating period of occupation and loss, a shameful period of aggression – perpetrated or experienced. In past decades, there have been numerous attempts, none entirely satisfactory, to provide general interpretations of empires and “imperialism”. Empires and nation-states can be seen as linked but mutually incompatible forms of government: powerful aggressive imperial centres lead to developing national strategies of opposition. By placing their consolidation in the context of world systems and their requirements in terms of organisation of labour, more than thirty years ago Immanuel Wallerstein gave critical stimulus to the elaboration of articulated and coordinated interpretations of the formation and development of European empires. At the same time, voices from the former empires reminded historians that imperial ‘domination’ was based on violence
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and exploitation, but also on the consent, complicity and utility of local elites, both in the European “cores” and in the so-called peripheries and semi-peripheries. The idea of “imperial systems” formed by elites operating in all parts of empires came to the fore. Empires could be seen as systems of territories whose exponents chose the advantages of participating in broader polities, as in the case of the clearly symbiotic Italian-Spanish relationship established under Charles V or Philip II. How else to explain why the urban and financial core did not always coincide with the empire’s dynastic centre? In the New World too it became clear that tens, hundreds or even thousands of conquistadores could only ‘conquer’ the American territories thanks to alliances and synergies with local elites. Europe and its Empires goes farther, not only looking at the powerful as agents, but also drawing attention to unexpected aspects, relating, inter alia, to cultural history, environmental history, history of investments and the formation of myriad new social and professional categories. The volume does not attempt to give a general overview of the history of empires within and outside of Europe: rather its various chapters reflect work in progress, building on the Group’s previous volume, Sights and Insights. Interactive Images of Europe and the Wider World, and proposing directions for future studies. Reconsidering the proposals made, extending them and applying them to other areas and times will be one of the Groups’s tasks for its fourth year programme of research on minorities and diasporas. The cover illustration, from the Tavola Strozzi [Strozzi Panel], depicts the port and city of Naples. Castel Nuovo, the 13th-century Angevin castle rebuilt by Alfonso the Magnanimous in the mid 15th century, dominates the foreground. There – not in Catalonia – Alfonso had his court, and various strands of the imperial discourse were woven together to give legitimacy to an “empire” built on military and political conquest. A chapter in this volume discusses the cultural arms used for this propaganda effort: in Alfonso’s strategy we see an aspect of all empires, as in varied ways, according to time and place, they use the tools of art and culture, including complex re-readings of history, to sustain their right to dominion, playing on the hopes that men and women have placed in them – usually wrongly – as guarantors of peace and prosperity. In presenting this volume, our thanks go to the European Commission for its moral and financial support; to the University of Pisa and the Pisa team for carrying out the complex administrative and editorial tasks that make our project possible. We thank Mary Harris and Csaba Lévai for guiding the Group and bringing the volume to completion. We are particularly grateful to Mary Harris for her careful preparation of the texts. Above all we thank the authors of the chapters and indeed all the members of Thematic Work Group 6 for their hard work and intelligent collaboration. Ann Katherine Isaacs University of Pisa
Guðmundur Hálfdanarson University of Iceland
The CLIOHRES Network of Excellence CLIOHRES is a consortium of 45 universities and research institutions in 31 countries. Each institution is represented by two senior researchers and two doctoral students coming from various academic fields – primarily from history, but also from art history, archaeology, architecture, philology, political science, literary studies and geography. The 180 researchers in the network are divided into six “Thematic Work Groups”, each of which deals with a broadly defined research area – ‘States, Institutions and Legislation’, ‘Power and Culture’, ‘Religion and Philosophy’, ‘Work, Gender and Society’, ‘Frontiers and Identities’, and ‘Europe and the Wider World’. Furthermore, the Network as a whole addresses ‘transversal themes’ of general relevance. These include ‘Citizenship’, ‘Migration’, ‘Tolerance and Discrimination’, ‘Gender’ and ‘Identities’; one of these is targeted each year. As a Network of Excellence, CLIOHRES is not an ordinary research project. It does not focus on a single research question or on a set of specific questions. Rather it is conceived as a forum where researchers representing various national and regional traditions can meet and elaborate their work in new ways thanks to structured interaction with their colleagues. The objective is not only to transcend the national boundaries that still largely define historical research agendas, opening new avenues for research, but also to use those very differences to become critically aware of how current research agendas have evolved. Thus, the goal is to examine basic and unquestioned attitudes about ourselves and others, which are rooted in the ways that the scientific community in each country looks at history. Historians create and cultivate selective views of the national or local past, which in turn underpin pervasive ideas about identities and stereotypes: national, religious, gender, political, etc. National historiographies today are still largely shaped by problems and preoccupations reflecting previous political and cultural contexts. CLIOHRES aims to create and promote a new structure and agenda for the community of historical research, redirecting its critical efforts along more fruitful lines. The Network began its work in June 2005, thanks to a five-year contract with the European Commission through the Sixth Framework Programme of its Directorate General for Research, under Priority 7, dealing with “Citizenship”. Its activities aim to contribute to the development of innovative approaches to history as regards both the European Research Area and European Higher Education Area. The Network works for a closer connection between research and learning/teaching, holding that this is essential in order to ensure that European citizens possess the necessary information, conceptual tools and more in general the vital critical and self-critical abilities which they will need in the future.
All the thematic groups have worked from the start according to a common research plan, beginning in the first year with reconnaissance or mapping, of how the questions perceived as important for the thematic area appear in the different national historiographies. During the second year they defined “connecting” themes, which are relevant for research in a wider geographical and chronological context. The third phase has concentrated on comparing and reviewing sources and methodologies; the fourth will focus on cross-fertilisation, that is on showing how problems identified in the previous phases can be developed in new contexts. During the last phase, the groups will define new and relevant projects, in the broadest sense, for future research in the sector. Each Thematic Work Group publishes one volume a year in order to share and discuss the results of their work with the broader academic community. The volumes are not conceived as the final word on the issues that they deal with, but rather as work-in-progress. In addition to the six Thematic Work Group volumes, the Network publishes one common volume per year dealing with the transversal theme targeted. It also publishes abridged versions of the dissertations written by doctoral students who have participated in its work. Together the volumes already published form an invitation to discuss the results of the Network and the novel directions that are emerging from its work; they also constitute a unique patrimony of up-to-date studies on well-known and less well-known aspects of Europe and its history. All publications are available in book form and on the www.cliohres.net website. Thei can be downloaded without charge. A list of publications to date can be found at the end of this volume.
Introduction This volume is the third in a series published by the sixth thematic workgroup of CLIOHRES.net, which is a Sixth Framework Network of Excellence. This workgroup is dedicated to the study of the historical contacts between Europe and the wider world, and it has members representing twelve different European and African universities from Moscow to Galway, and from Reykjavik to Durban in South Africa. Each thematic workgroup holds a meeting twice a year. Our second meeting in Year 2, organized by the University of Sussex (Brighton, United Kingdom) on 16-17 March 2007, focused on the theme of Empire. The aim was not to engage in a comprehensive survey of the topic but to explore and learn from the research specialisms of participants. Topics for discussion included some imperial ventures and aspects of imperialism that have often been overlooked in mainstream studies. Most of the chapters in this volume were presented at that meeting and the members of the thematic workgroup discussed them vigorously. Utilizing the observations and the remarks of their fellow members and independent reviewers, the authors of the chapters revised the original versions of their contributions. The result of these revisions is this volume in its present form. The title of the volume is Europe and its Empires. One can argue that much of the history of historical contacts between Europe and the wider word can be equated with the history of Europe and its empires within and beyond Europe from ancient times to the second half of the 20th century. The Roman Empire included territories within and beyond Europe. At that time the modern concept of Europe did not exist and the boundary between the “civilized” Roman world and the “barbarous” world outside it was not the same as the boundaries of Europe in the modern geographical sense of the world. Europe also had its empires in the medieval period , and these were in many senses the heirs of the European empires of the ancient world. The great geographical discoveries from the 15th century onwards provided Europe with the opportunity of expansion towards the continents outside Europe. Even the smaller countries of Europe, such as Denmark, Portugal and later Belgium, founded overseas empires. Imperial experience was not confined to countries that could establish colonial empires in other continents of the world. We can argue that all European nations had their own imperial experience whether they were the founders of empires or parts of larger imperial structures. The European countries on the Atlantic coast (Portugal, Spain, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, England) had their respective colonial empires all over the world, and these also included European territories such as Ireland, for example. In Central Europe and much of Italy, there was the Holy Roman Empire, whose roots went back to Charlemagne and which lasted until 1806. The countries of East Central Europe became parts of the Habsburg or Russian Empires in different periods of their history. The Balkans
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were part of the Ottoman Turkish Empire for five hundred years, and there were the Danish, Swedish and Russian Empires in Northern Europe. We usually think that the age of empires is over and the history of empires irrevocably belongs to the past. But on the other hand, many scholars argue that we still live in the age of empires, and the behaviour of such structures as the United States or even the European Union is very similar to the behaviour and characteristics of older empires. This means that the members of our group could utilize this rich imperial inheritance of Europe in composing their contributions to this volume. CLIOHRES.net co-ordinates its activities according to a five-year plan, and each year involves the completion of a particular task. The first year’s task was mapping, that is evaluating how the question of Europe and the world had been treated in the different historiographical traditions of our member countries. The agenda of the second year was the identification of “connecting themes”, which represent the common fields of interest of the members of our thematic workgroup. And the task of the third year was to emphasize different sources and methodologies of historical enquiry. As a result, our members who presented papers in Brighton were asked to highlight a specific methodological approach to the study of history. Consequently, readers of this volume can find very different methodological approaches, ranging from the special methods of art history, intellectual history and economic history through to the comparative analyses of very different empires. What is an empire? What is imperialism? In Chapter 1, Saul Dubow (University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom) analyses current perceptions of these concepts and examines the historiography associated with them. Applying the comparative method, Dubow draws parallels between the historic British empire and the new empire of our globalized age, the United States. He compares the underlying structural causes of the Boer War in South Africa at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries with the causes of the recent invasion of Iraq by the United States and its allies. The leading protagonists’ rationalization of their actions and their conduct of the wars are also considered. Dubow concludes that the recent hegemony of the American empire is even more vulnerable than the hegemony of the British Empire was, more than one hundred years ago. Earlier imperial powers employed a range of strategies to exert their authority. Amadeo Serra Desfilis (University of Valencia, Spain) uses the methodology of art history to demonstrate the power of art and ideology in the process of consolidating empires. His chapter on the imperial project of Alfonso V the Magnanimous (1416-1458), King of Aragon, Sicily and Naples, analyses Alfonso’s attempts to legitimise his strongly centralised authority and integrate diverse peoples by drawing on a combination of classical Roman imagery, humanist ideas and Christian principles. The use of classical iconography as well as classical and biblical inscriptions in his imperial art and architecture promoted a sense of continuity with the past. Serra Desfilis sees Alfonso’s own legacy
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for European empires in his combination of different cultural traditions and his idea of a widespread sea-borne empire. Csaba Lévai (University of Debrecen, Hungary) compares two very different imperial structures. Through an analysis of the writings of the outstanding 18th-century Hungarian economic theorist, Gergely Berzeviczy (1763-1822), he draws attention to some very interesting similarities between the position of Hungary within the Habsburg Empire on the one hand and the position of the mainland colonies in North America within the British Empire on the other. Although only a few people were aware of these similarities in Hungary at the end of the 18th century, many of them, including Berzeviczy himself, belonged to the group of leading enlightened Hungarian intellectuals. Victor N. Zakharov (Moscow State Regional University, Russia) also uses the comparative method to identify and analyse the general and particular characteristics of the Russian Empire. He argues that the 18-20th-century Russian Empire had characteristics in common with other European empires: much territorial expansion, for example, came through conquest, though some enlargement resulted from strategic decisions by ruling elites in neighbouring countries on how to preserve their own privileged positions when they found themselves in zones of conflict. But there were also some special features differentiating Russia from other European Empires. According to Zakharov, the high level of centralization, the consolidation and multinational character of the elite and the low living standards of the “dominant” Russian population, liable for heavy taxes and military service, were particularly important features of the Russian Empire. Echoing the trend identified by Serra Desfilis in relation to early modern Spain, Zakharov also notes the emphasis on tradition, on continuity from antiquity, in Russian imperial ideology. It is not very widely known that Denmark also had its overseas empire. It is generally known that Norway, Greenland, the Faroes and Iceland belonged to Denmark, but not that the small European kingdom also had dependencies in India, Africa and the Caribbean. Anna Agnarsdóttir (University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland) examines the various ways in which Denmark acquired its multi-ethnic empire, noting the remarkable lack of force involved in its early expansion and examining the significance of trade between Denmark and its overseas possessions. Much of this chapter focuses on the special status of Iceland within the imperial structure, comparing its position with that of other parts of the Danish Empire. The author examines the evolution of a sense of national identity in Iceland, and its struggle for independence, which it won through persuasion rather than violence. Empires are usually known, not for their peaceful coexistence, but for their rivalry. The most important imperial rivalry of the 18th century was between France and Great Britain. Mark Williams (University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom) analyses a particular aspect of this rivalry at micro level: disputes between French and English
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fishermen in the waters of Newfoundland. Drawing on official records and correspondence from this period, Williams examines the attitudes and concerns of the fishermen and those of political figures who became involved in the dispute. He examines not only the strategic, diplomatic and economic significance of Newfoundland in the above mentioned imperial rivalry, but he also emphasizes its importance with regard to the formation of modern national and imperial identities. The significance of economic factors in empire building is also investigated by Jan-Frederik Abbeloos (University of Ghent, Belgium), who analyses the relationship between Belgium’s efforts of overseas colonization in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and the globalisation of Belgian business interests. This study focuses on the role of Belgian investment companies, such as the Brussels-based Société Générale de Belgique. Abbeloos comes to the conclusion that before World War I there was no strong connection between the two, and significant Belgian investment occurred in areas where Belgium was seen as politically neutral. Belgian investors showed limited interest in Congo, despite the urgings of King Leopold who controlled it as a private colony, until the Belgian state took it over in 1908. Another interesting and evolving aspect of imperial history is environmental history. Vinita Damodaran (University of Sussex, Brighton, United Kingdom) traces the development of this field since the mid-20th century, and explores the environmental consequences of the geographical expansion of Europe from theoretical points of view. Damodaran points out that besides the catastrophic environmental consequences of European expansion, some kind of environmental sensibility was present among Europeans who discovered the world beyond Europe, sometimes drawing on the botanical knowledge already elaborated there, from the 17th century. This sensibility is evident, for example, in steps taken to protect the environment in the Caribbean. Environmental history draws heavily on the writings of European naturalists and administrators who traveled beyond Europe from the 17th to the 19th century. A further aspect of the field is the artistic representation of landscape, which heightened environmental awareness in Europe. Environmental issues also feature prominently in the contribution of Donal P. McCracken (University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa). Noting the attention of historians to environmental degradation and the destruction of wildlife as a result of European expansion in South Africa, he turns his attention to the particular case of Zululand, where this process of destruction was delayed. Official British figures for exports of wildlife products provide an insight into the extent of hunting. McCracken then considers the factors retarding wildlife destruction in Zululand, a black-governed political entity that survived longer than most such entities. Politics, economics, infrastructural factors and disease all played a part, and contemporary records testify to outsiders’ unfavourable image of Zululand at the time. As a result, there remained a core of game that has survived in reduced numbers until the present day.
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Migration of population was an important consequence of the founding of empires. Prinisha Badassy (University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa) studies the ambiguous position of one group of immigrants from India to South Africa, who were in the service of the imperial authorities. In late 19th- and early 20th-century Natal, Indian interpreters occupied a liminal position between the colonial world and that of their own Indian community. These interpreters were pioneering in the improvement of the Indian population’s position in Natal on the one hand, but they were also active agents of colonial oppression on the other. Drawing judicious conclusions from documents such as court records and personal testaments, Badassy reveals the Indian community’s high level of frustration with these interpreters, often motivated by self-interest. While the British empire flourished in the late 19th century, Spain was coming to grips with the end of its empire. María Jesús Cava Mesa and Emilio Sáenz-Francés San Baldomero (Deusto University, Bilbao, Spain) examine the ideological consequences of the loss of an empire. Through their analysis of the ideas of outstanding Spanish thinker Ángel Ganivet (1865-1898), they explore the effects of the fall of the Spanish Empire on the social and intellectual life of Spain. At a time when many European countries were enthusiastically engaged in the “Scramble for Africa”, Ganivet presented a highly critical view of Spain’s imperial past and believed that Spain should focus its attention and energies on its own national territory. His writings were to have a profound influence on a generation of Spanish intellectuals. In his above-mentioned chapter, Saul Dubow highlights the need for attention to “zones of interaction at multiple levels and at different scales”. This volume has investigated aspects of imperialism at different levels, examining imperial policies and strategies, but also illuminating aspects of imperialism as experienced on the ground by English and French fishermen as well as those who promoted their causes in Newfoundland, by the Indian community in Natal struggling to communicate with local administrators through self-serving interpreters, by Icelanders seeking to promote a sense of national identity in the face of Danish imperialism and by Spanish intellectuals disillusioned with the Spanish political system. It is hoped that these studies will contribute to an understanding of the diversity of imperial experiences and the benefits of examining imperialism by drawing on a range of historical methodologies.
Mary N. Harris National University of Ireland, Galway Csaba Lévai University of Debrecen
The New Age of Imperialism: British and South African Perspectives Saul Dubow
University of Sussex
Abstract We are constantly reminded that we live in an age of global empire and that the United States is the 21st century’s new imperium. Several well-known commentators, not only those associated with the neo-conservative movement, have welcomed this on the grounds that the United States is best placed to spread ideas of freedom and democracy. Parallels with the British empire abound. This chapter tests such ideas and draws parallels between the invasion of Iraq and the South African war of 1899-1902 in order to do so. It also examines the concept of imperialism and suggests that the hegemony of American empire, like its British counterpart a century ago, is rather more vulnerable to forces of resistance and fragmentation than might seem apparent1. The topic of “Empire” is back with us. After a period of relative abeyance, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq have forced the issue to the surface – along with new interest in globalisation – and the word appears constantly in editorial columns, books and in public debate. George W. Bush’s first term as president was seen by many as marking the triumph of a new form of American imperialism whose ascendancy since the Second World War has been traced in relation to the demise of the British colonial empire and, on some accounts, to the evisceration of the Soviet empire. Those who denounce American imperialism as the embodiment of global oppression and injustice are angrier and more vocal than ever. But there are others who seek to defend American hegemony, arguing from a variety of positions that the spread of Western institutions and cultural values is essential for the maintenance of international order and civilised values. Neoconservatives, like the signatories to the Project for the New American Century have been especially enamoured of this position. In less hawkish tones, writers ranging from the British diplomat Robert Cooper2 to Michael Ignatieff and Niall Ferguson argue in favour of what they term a “liberal” empire, an empire designed to secure humanitarian objectives and to provide the forces of globalisation with political ballast3.
Saul Dubow
Ignatieff and Ferguson, both prominent public intellectuals, are of particular interest because they are also historians. And yet, historians are distinctly in the minority when it comes to discussing the contemporary nature of imperialism. Academic historians guard their patches jealously and are disinclined to draw analogies and parallels between the present and the past; historians habitually shy away from slick generalisations, and tend to disdain decontextualised grand theories, preferring to deal in the currency of probing questions and analytical distinctions. This is a respectable position to adopt but we cannot then complain when others cannibalise the past in order to lay claim to the present. And there is no shortage of prophetic theorists who do so: take, for example, an influential tome on the subject by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, published by Harvard in 2000. They choose to characterise empire – spelt with a capital E of course – as “a decentered and deterritorialising apparatus of rule that progressively incorporates the entire global realm within its open, expanding frontiers. Empire manages hybrid identities, flexible hierarchies, and plural exchanges through modulating networks of command”4. Seemingly, the power of this new empire is limitless. Whether we are in fact in the midst of a new age of imperialism, dominated by the hyper-power of America, is still very much an open question. The debacle of the Iraq aftermath and the political demise of neo-conservatives like Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz may signal a significant shift away from American global interventionism, but, as Zhou Enlai once remarked when asked about the consequences of the French Revolution, it is too early to say. Not so long ago a great deal of attention was devoted to the ideas of the historian Paul Kennedy who warned of the dangers of American “imperial overstretch”, suggesting that America was in “relative decline” as a consequence of its vast military expenditure. This was in the mid-1980s when the Cold War was nearing its climax and when the rise of Japanese economic power seemed inexorable. Re-reading Kennedy’s projections about how the start of the 21st century might look provides an object lesson in the dangers of predicting future trends. Yet, Kennedy may still be right about the fragility of American global power: the similarities he detects between America’s vulnerability at the turn of the 20th century and the British empire’s weaknesses in 1900 may not be altogether wide of the mark. Kennedy’s final, prospective chapter is also a salutary reminder of the important role of historical contingency. Had Al Gore been declared the winner of the 2000 American election by the Supreme Court, would America be in Iraq and, if not, would charges of imperialism be levelled so readily? And if September 11th had not occurred, might George Bush have reverted to policies of imperious isolationism rather than imperial interventionism? One further reason to resist pronouncements about American imperialism is that we are living at a time of palpable uncertainty, where reason is not at a premium, and where the broadcast media are quicker to pronounce than to reflect. The ideological vacuum caused in large measure by the implosion of eastern European communism offered wonderful opportunities to provide catch-phrases with which to characterise our age.
The New Age of Imperialism: British and South African Perspectives
Francis Fukuyama’s triumphalist announcement of the dawn of a New Order, is a prime example. But the end of communism did not augur either the end of history or the end of ideology. Nor, despite appearances, does it portend its alarmist ideological counterpart, Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilisations”5. The demise of the Soviet Union, which was wholly unanticipated by the strategists who were paid to foresee such things, ought probably to have entailed the winding up of the realist school of international relations. Instead, the mantra of globalisation arrived as a saviour, not only for the right, which readily embraced the idea of minimal states and unbounded markets, but also for those on the left who feared the unrestrained spread of multi-national capitalism. It did not take long, however, for the theoretical limitations and empirical weaknesses of the globalisation model to become apparent. 9/11 posed a particular challenge because it entailed an unprecedented tightening up of national borders and a powerful restatement of national sovereignty. It also focussed attention on the Molloch of Globalisation, the Imperial Republic of the United States (whose response to terrorist attack serves as a reminder that global pretensions and rampant nationalism can all too easily coexist). The inadequacies of globalisation as an explanatory model have therefore encouraged a more scaled down version of the thesis, in particular, the notion that 21st century America is replicating 19th century Britain as an imperial power. In the not too distant future we may look back on such attempts to define the epoch as symptoms of a more general millenial anxiety, heightened by the breakdown of a bipolar world, propelled by the revolution in information technology, and fuelled by a fracturing of belief in binary logic and enlightenment (of which post-modernism is both cause and symptom). Fear, and often irrational fear, seems to be a defining feature of the current age – yet we lack even the most rudimentary capacity to gauge or calibrate collective danger: Was human life more or less threatened in the cold war world of mutually assured nuclear destruction than it is now in the shadow of the twin towers; Can we comprehend the threat of global climate change? Did we really believe on the eve of the millenium that Y2K would threaten civilisation as we knew it? Happily, the sense of radical uncertainty that pervades the post-modern millennium has been good to the guild of history. In Britain, so-called “telly-dons” like Simon Schama, David Starkey, and Niall Ferguson have succeeded in restoring a breach between popular and academic history by virtue of their skilful reassertion of narrative order. Evocations of Britain’s wartime role – and its empire – have the capacity to offer comforting views of the past, often laced with nostalgia. In the hands of Niall Ferguson, Britain’s mostly benevolent empire provides moral absolution for the past together with instructive lessons for the future. For Ferguson, and others like him, the problem with America is not that it is an imperial power but that it is not imperial enough. The shrewd formulation of Slavoj Žižek is closer to the mark: in his view the problem “is not
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that the US is a new global empire, but that it isn’t one, though it pretends to be. In fact the US continues to act as a nation state, ruthlessly pursuing its own interests”6. Our analysis of empire depends to a large extent upon what we mean by it. The great commonwealth historian Keith Hancock argued that “imperialism” is a word “so arrogantly and capriciously used that it has become a positive hindrance to thought”7 – and advised scholars against its use. But we cannot banish a word simply because we do not like it; it is more helpful instead to consider how changing meanings and uses of the term may be indicative of broad shifts in historical understanding. In Britain, the idea of empire once meant simply the United Kingdom. Imperialism was frowned upon, not only because it was a disagreeable abstract noun – and a concept at that – but because of its association with strutting continental dictatorships, a contempt for liberty, and a lust for military glory. In the mid-19th century, Britons despised the regime of Louis Bonaparte, which was said to exemplify the evils of imperialism. It was therefore “entirely possible for patriotic, freedom-loving Englishmen to love the British empire while simultaneously hating imperialism – and praying that it might never cross the Channel to threaten their homeland.”8 As the so-called second and third British empires developed, a distinction was drawn between the white dominions of Canada, Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand (where forms of responsible self-government were envisaged from as early as the 1830s and 40s) and the dependent empire (eg. India and Africa) where liberty and self-government were seen as distant possibilities at best. The word “imperialism” began to be used more widely during the late 1870s when it came to serve as a slogan against the British prime minister Disraeli. But it was only in 1878, when the term “jingo” was coined as part of a wave of fierce patriotic sentiment prompted by the Russian advance towards Constantinople, that imperialism came to be adopted as a term of approbation. And yet the view that Britain was not by nature or tradition an imperial power persisted. It was partly in order to challenge this happy state of national denial that the Oxford historian John Robert Seeley famously declared in 1883, at the height of the scramble for Africa, that the British seemed to have “conquered and peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind”. Seeley wished to remind his contemporaries that empire was a serious reality and that the ideal of a “Greater Britain”, a term originally proposed by Charles Dilke, ought to be pursued vigorously. Seeley also wanted to show that empire embodied progress and moral purpose: in particular it marked the victory of liberty and free institutions over despotism and backwardness9. In 1878 Gladstone denounced the Tories for having “drunk deeply of the intoxicating beverage of [what he called] the new Imperialism”10. Increasingly, however, imperialism was adopted as a badge of honour. Liberals like Rosebery, who had previously denounced imperialism as a version of oriental despotism, now embraced the idea of an
The New Age of Imperialism: British and South African Perspectives
ethically-based imperial mission11. By the late 1890s many liberals had become proud imperialists. Thus, in just 20 years “the word had changed” from a term of “abuse” to something approaching a “national gospel”. Its reversion to a term of moral revulsion was mainly a result of the Boer War which reopened party divisions, this time on the question of imperialism’s relationship to capitalism12. Imperialism, understood in its secondary, economic sense, was probably first used in 1898, in the United States, during the Spanish-American War which led to America’s annexation of the Philippine Islands – and, indeed, Guantánamo Bay. Norman Etherington has shown how the Bostonian editor of a weekly newspaper, the “United States Investor”, “announced his sudden conversion to the cause of ‘imperialism’”, while observing that the word was “new to [the] political vocabulary”. Like most of the financial press, the “Investor” had favoured peace up to this point, on the familiar grounds that war was bad for commerce. Saving “oppressed Cubans from the atrocious rule of the senile Spanish empire did not seem to be a principle worth fighting for”13. During the course of the Spanish war, the editor changed his mind, and in an article headlined “The Benefit of the War to Commercial and Financial Interest – How the Thing Will Work”, argued that war served to stimulate business by opening up new fields for investment, trade and government contracts. A lengthy discussion ensued in which arguments outlining the economic advantages of imperialism were frankly admitted14. Just a year later, in 1899, the outbreak of hostilities in South Africa offered fresh opportunities to debate the merits of imperialism. One of the leading opponents of the war was J.A. Hobson, a radical liberal journalist and economist, who published Imperialism: A Study in 1902. Hobson blamed the Boer or South African War on the machinations of a clique of financiers and politicians who were seeking to gain control of the fabulous gold riches of the Transvaal. Abetted by a kept press and by means of clever appeals to jingoistic nationalism, this clique – in which Jews were said to be especially prominent – had been able to persuade the nation that the war was being fought in the interests of all Britons, whereas in fact the war benefited the class and institutional interests of only a tiny minority. Hobson’s economic analysis of capitalist imperialism was taken seriously. It was refined by Marxist theoreticians like Bukharin, Kautsky and Luxemburg, but most importantly by Lenin, who linked imperialism with the development of monopoly capitalism. For Lenin, it was the monopoly phase of capitalism that had made the First World War inevitable. Because imperialism was the “highest stage of capitalism” – the title of his famous 1916 wartime tract – it also signalled the imminent collapse of the capitalist system. This brief exegesis of the word “imperialism” resonates strongly with contemporary discussions. Not only is it evident that terms like “liberal imperialism”, the “new imperialism” and “capitalist imperialism” were all debated at length a century ago, it is also striking that the principal protagonists of these discussions were journalists, politicians and historians – and that Britain and the United States were in the forefront of their Europe and its Empires
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thoughts. Just as the Victorians referred back to the Roman Empire for guidance – Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, written at the time of the American Revolution, was a common reference point – so our more reflective commentators today look back to the British empire. Some see the current situation as a re-enactment of the hubris of Suez. Others, with longer memory spans, look back for guidance to the British conquest of Egypt and the Sudan in the 1880s, or, indeed, the occupation of Iraq after the First World War. At least as compelling an historical example is provided by the Anglo-Boer (or South African) War of 1899-1902, which, for many historians, marks the culmination of Britain’s 19th-century pretensions to global dominance and therefore stands as a key “test of empire”. On the vexed question of its causation most historians would agree that the desire to control the Transvaal’s gold is a vital if not a sufficient explanation of the war. But there can be little doubt that had this remote and mostly poor part of the African interior not been rich in gold, the British empire would probably have passed up the opportunity to fight what turned out to be its costliest war since the defeat of Napoleon. The case of Iraq may be explained similarly. Control of Middle Eastern oilfields is by no means the sole, or even the determining reason for these conflicts, but without the presence of oil it is very doubtful that Saddam Hussein would have been considered worth waging a war against by one Bush, let alone two15. If the underlying structural reasons for the Boer and Iraq wars can be compared so, too, can their leading protagonists. The Boer war was provoked by a small tightly-knit group of politicians – men like Rhodes, Milner and Chamberlain – who were every inch the neo-cons of their day. Driven by a conviction that the British empire needed to renew itself in order to survive, these conservatives (in the case of Milner and Chamberlain, Liberal Unionists aligned with the Tories on account of their hostility to home rule for Ireland) were more than visceral reactionaries. They were calculating modernisers, and often conservative idealists, who relished the opportunity to reform the British nation and put it to the test. Their belief in Anglo-Saxon racial destiny may sound anachronistic today; but their promise that the British were destined to bring good government, economic progress and sound institutions to the rest of the world, sounds very familiar. As a result of the actions of these 19th century neo-cons, Britain became committed to a war that involved nearly half a million imperial troops and which went on far longer than anticipated: the capture of Pretoria, far from ending the conflict, prompted the Boers to enter a prolonged phase of guerilla struggle. The horrors that this involved, which included farm-burnings and concentration camps, were the Abu Ghraibs and Guantánamo Bays of their day; such behaviour aroused widespread international condemnation and led to an admission by the Liberal Prime Minister Campbell-Bannerman, that Britain had resorted to “methods of barbarism”.
The New Age of Imperialism: British and South African Perspectives
The Boer war deeply divided contemporary opinion. Within Britain pacifists, liberals, non-conformists and anti-capitalists took the moral high ground. They clashed with flag-waving patriots and jingoes who rushed to demonise the Boers. President Kruger, leader of the Transvaal Republic, was widely portrayed as a corrupt and tyrannical feudal potentate who had shamelessly denied British residents of the Transvaal their citizenship rights, so reducing them to the status of “helots”. The anti-war movement was rich in passionate anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist rhetoric. The likes of contemporary radicals like George Galloway, Tony Benn and John Pilger sound almost tepid by comparison with their radical forebears a century ago. Just as today, the liberal left of a century ago was left divided and confused by events. Supporters of the Boer war included many reluctant imperialists, Fabians and socialists amongst them, whose generalised opposition to the manipulations of financiers and plutocrats came to be outweighed by a belief that Kruger had to go in the name of progress and civilisation. In the view of the Fabian intellectual Sidney Webb, for example, the Boer war was wholly unjust and yet wholly necessary. Bernard Shaw took a similar position and wrote Fabianism and the Empire to explain why. By contrast, trade-union aligned Labour MPs like Keir Hardie remained resolutely anti-imperial16. A century on, these fierce debates resonate strongly in the British left’s condemnation of Tony Blair. They are reminiscent in many ways of the conflicts between 19th-century Liberal Imperialists of the Rosebery variety and opponents of imperialism, like Harcourt, who located themselves firmly in the anti-imperialist tradition of Cobden and Gladstone. While many protestant churches opposed the war, millenarian-minded Christians and evangelicals were quick to see the conflict as an “instrument of God’s judgement, in which Britain was [cast as] the Almighty’s agent”17. Religious fundamentalism was evident here too. For a conflict fought in a distant part of the world, the South African war aroused a huge international outcry. The era of telegraph despatches and mass journalism fed a hunger for news, heroes and scoops. The relief of the sieges of Ladysmith and Mafeking was accompanied by public orgies of patriotic rejoicing, which resulted in the entry into the English language of the verb “to maffick”. Some two hundred journalists, Winston Churchill, George Steevens, Leo Amery, Flora Shaw and Arthur Conan Doyle, among them, followed the action or embedded themselves with the troops. In Donal Lowry’s opinion, international views of the war were conditioned by the fact that “the British Empire had come to represent the highest stage of capitalist modernity” in what he calls the “first age of ‘globalisation’ ”. Contemporaries saw the conflict “as a struggle between two conflicting global ideologies: British imperialism and capitalism [on one side] versus anti-imperialism and nationalism [on the other]”18. The war drew Canadians, New Zealanders and Australians in on the side of the British, though it was as much for their own developing sense of nationhood and self-esteem as Europe and its Empires
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for the glory of the empire that representatives from the dominions were fighting. Beyond the empire, international pacifists and humanitarians found common cause with romantic nationalists, who idolised the Boers as noble savages or instinctive republicans. Volunteer detachments including French, Russian, German, Irish, Italian, Dutch, Scandinavians and Americans, fought on the side of the Boers. Irish republicans identified particularly closely with Boer fellow victims of British imperialism: one of these pro-Boer fighters was Major John MacBride of the Transvaal Irish Brigade. He went on to marry another passionate Boer sympathiser, Maud Gonne, ending up as a republican martyr in the 1916 Easter Rising19. John and Maud’s son, the Nobel prize-winner, anti-colonialist – and anti-apartheid activist – Sean MacBride, slowly broke with family tradition, left the IRA and emerged as a leading figure in the international anti-apartheid movement, though as late as 1954 he presented an ex-Boer rifle with Kruger’s profile carved on the stock to the South African High Commissioner to London20. Such was the curious bond between Irish and Boer republicanism. In 1986, there was a further twist to the MacBride story: Robert John MacBride, a “coloured” member of the ANC’s military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe, was arrested and put on death row in South Africa for his role in the bombing of a Durban pub. By strange irony, Robert John turned out to be a direct descendant of John MacBride21. This compressed account of the three-generational story of the MacBrides serves as a reminder that anti-imperialism is an unstable and inconsistent ideology. Many highminded pro-Boers ignored the trampling of African rights – which was in many ways the most important consequence of the post-war settlement. They only gradually woke up to this fact after the Second World War when Afrikaners became, all too conveniently for a forgetful British liberal conscience, the much mythologised white tribe of Africa. Attitudes to American imperialism betray similar inconsistencies and lie at the heart of American fury with pusillanimous Europe – France in particular. We should recall that the United States’ reluctance to enter the Second World War was strongly conditioned by its anti-colonial self-image and its disinclination to defend the British and French empires. Decolonisation and Vietnam changed all that. But the change in the imperial guard means that we might consider whether some of the more sanctimonious anti-American sentiments of today ought to be understood in terms of European discomfort at its diminished role in a post-colonial world. Historical comparisons are never perfect and parallels can only be indicative. But, staying with the South African example, we may push the analogy one stage further in order to contrast the aftermath of British involvement in South Africa with the current situation in Iraq. Most historians would accept that Britain’s phase of hyper-imperialism came to a fairly abrupt end after the South African War. Almost a half century was to elapse before the independence of India set in motion a much wider process of decolonisation, yet the beginnings of the doubt and retreat that began this process can
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be traced back to the bruising experience of the South African War. Only time will tell whether Iraq and Afghanistan mark the high point of American global influence, or the start of a new phase in America’s worldwide projection of power22. One thing we can be relatively sure of is that Britain handled the reconstruction of South Africa rather better than the US coalition has managed in Iraq. Just eight years after the treaty that ended the conflict, South Africa became a self-governing (but effectively independent) unitary state under the leadership of two ex-Boer War generals, Botha and Smuts. For some historians this proved that Britain won the war only to lose the peace. This conclusion is oversimplified. Although Britain lost direct control of the country after 1910, vital economic and strategic interests were secured eg., British use of the naval base at Simonstown and significant holdings in the mining and industrial sector). In both world wars South Africa fought on the side of the empire, notwithstanding massive opposition from hard-line Afrikaner republicans. Jan Smuts duly became a stalwart of the Commonwealth, perhaps its most lionised figure. He helped to inspire the Covenant of the League of Nations and had a hand in the making of the United Nations too. One of Smuts’ great adversaries in South Africa was Mahatma Gandhi, who volunteered as a stretcher bearer for the British during the South African War and began his early experiments in passive resistance while opposing the South African government’s moves to restrict Indian land ownership in the Transvaal. Though the trajectories of their lives could not be more different, Smuts and Gandhi went on to play key roles as post-colonial nation-builders and both leaders enjoyed high regard as symbols of world freedom. Smuts’ claim to be a champion of freedom was, to say the least, narrowly based, and even Gandhi’s avatar has been tarnished. Yet, in different ways and in different circumstances Smuts and Gandhi both won their reputations through opposing imperialism and then coming to terms with it, in such a way that they helped to lay the foundations of a post imperial world. It is unlikely that the Karzais and Allawis, lacking popular legitimacy and hastily shuttled into government by a nervous occupying power, will be remembered as anything other than American stooges. They have proved incapable of releasing America from its imperial entanglements. And this continues to be a source of great instability. Broadening this discussion from the South African case study, historians of empire and commonwealth would cite several structural differences between Britain and America in their capacity as imperial powers. The first, and most striking, is that Britain was predominantly successful as a colonial occupying power. Britain’s informal empire, that is to say, its economic sphere of influence, stretched well beyond those parts of the map coloured in red: Latin America and parts of China in particular. But it is Britain’s accumulated record in colonial governance that distinguishes it most acutely from America’s limited experience of direct rule. The United States’ global reach is most forcefully expressed in terms of economic, military and cultural influence and only to a very limited extent through formal territorial acquisition. Europe and its Empires
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The standard distinction between imperialism and colonialism, alluded to here, is often lost in contemporary discussions. Direct foreign rule is very different from diffuse notions of hegemony or influence. These qualitatively different forms of domination provoke qualitatively different responses. Britain’s colonial empire, it should be remembered, developed over centuries. As a small island on the north-western fringes of Europe, it could only spread incrementally through forging alliances with indigenous elites and powers. It is astonishing to consider that British India was governed by a tiny cadre of approximately 1,000 professional administrators attached to the Indian Civil Service. Kenya, in 1947, was administered by fewer than 200 colonial officers. Underlying the “thin white line” of colonial administration was the system of Indirect Rule. This version of the “light touch” was a form of administration whereby power was diffused through local intermediaries and functionaries. It was status-based and strongly hierarchical. The time-honoured practice of Divide and Rule meant that competing subject groups generally neutralised each other, while the army or police ensured that the balance of power was maintained in favour of colonial authority – the so-called pax-Britannica. Historians of empire rightly lay stress on the importance of collaboration with indigenous peoples. The word has an intriguing double-meaning since collaboration can imply cooperation as well as complicity. Either way, the fact of mutual dependence meant that Britain’s subject peoples often enjoyed considerable autonomy. Studies of the socalled dependent empire in Africa and India have devoted a great deal of attention to the complex forms of social and historical agency that determined the real lived relations of colonisers and colonised. Domination was seldom complete, hegemony had constantly to be achieved. The subaltern was neither silent nor passive. Another way of putting this is that the British empire, though relatively weak, was resilient, because it mostly recognised the limits of its power. Indeed, if success is measured by longevity and endurance, the most successful empires may be said to be characterised by the possession of decisive rather than absolute power. This paradox does not seem to be sufficiently appreciated by those who either romanticise the British empire or seek to shape a putative American empire in the image of its British forerunner. Both Niall Ferguson’s claim that America should wake up to its imperial responsibilities by learning from the British, and Robert Nye’s suggestion that America should adopt techniques of “soft power” based on gentle persuasion23, sit uneasily with the fact that America is a superpower which currently dominates the world as no nation-state ever has before; moreover, the United States seems more comfortable with being a super- than a supra-national state24. Unless the United States seeks to become a colonial empire, which is extremely doubtful, there are few compelling reasons for it to exercise power through subtle forms of hegemony, and probably not enough time to do so in any case, before its outright economic and military supremacy is challenged by countries like China. One might add that another vital ingredient for
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colonial-style empires has gone: the existence of intricate pre-modern social hierarchies with their supporting cultural tissue of deference and paternalism. These structures allowed the British to imagine their empire as a vast feudal estate and facilitated colonial officers’ interaction with, and understanding of, parallel local elites. Plainly, such relations no longer pertain in an age where global democratic consumerism and nationalist assertion have expunged forever the mystique of power and position that David Cannadine refers to as “ornamentalism”25. No mainstream British historian has done more to foreground the question of empire in recent years than Niall Ferguson. His study of the British empire has not been well received by experts in the field. But, whatever one concludes about his overly sympathetic and often nostalgic interpretation of Britain’s apparently liberal empire, Ferguson has rendered an important service by restoring the topic to a central position in British and European history, not least in his view of the world wars as imperial conflagrations. Indeed, if one dispenses with the introduction and conclusion to Ferguson’s provocatively titled Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World – whose calculated iconoclasm is often at odds with the evidence he adduces – we are left with nothing less than a compelling and mostly sensible reading of key works in imperial and commonwealth history26. Hopefully, this is indicative of a reconnection between the spheres of (domestic) British and imperial historiography. For much of the 20th century, and certainly in the post-war era, the imperial and British historians had little to say to each other. The experience of decolonisation in the 1950s and 60s, and the sense of national failure that attended it, had the effect of reinforcing traditions of historical “little Englands”, a term which came to prominence during the Boer war and which carries with it the idea that empire is an excrescence, an aberration, or merely an embarrassment in the long sweep of English history. Interestingly, “Little Englandism” enjoys both a left and a right wing pedigree: its left-wing strain can be traced from the laissez faire and pacifist doctrines of Cobden and Bright, through J.A. Hobson, John Morley and Goldwin Smith, and also in the writings of A.J.P. Taylor who regarded the empire as being of little consequence to Britain’s domestic story27. Such insular reflexes are also apparent in a great deal of cultural and social history or “history from below”, not least in attempts to argue that ordinary people cared little for empire in their daily lives28. For the political right the idea of the English (or British) as an “island race”, fortuitously separated from Europe and naturally superior to it, has had obvious appeal. (“Minding Britain’s Business” was a popular slogan of the British Union of Fascists during the 1930s)29. Inter-war appeasement drew on similar assumptions. In Max Beloff ’s view, “The British were not an imperially-minded people; they lacked both a theory of empire and the will to engender and implement one”30. End of story.
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Fortunately, this is not the end of the story. In 1975 the New Zealand-born intellectual historian J.G.A. Pocock wrote a powerful manifesto in which he criticised A.J.P. Taylor’s wilful insularity, arguing instead that British history should be written in terms of the “intercultural” story of “conflict and crossbreeding between societies differently based”31. Since then groundbreaking works have been published by leading historians including Linda Colley, David Cannadine, Norman Davies and Catherine Hall32. To this list one should add the names of a younger generation of historians amongst whom we should number Andrew Thompson, Stuart Ward, Alan Lester and Zoë Laidlaw. One of the important messages of these writers is that British identity cannot be understood by reference to the United Kingdom alone33. Britons made themselves both in relation to Europe and in the context of their imperial experience. One of the functions of empire was to provide a broad stage for the expression and performance of Britishness, and within that notions of Irishness, Scottishness – as well as that most understated but persistent of nationalisms, Englishness. This was well understood by late-19th-century commentators like J.A. Froude and Anthony Trollope who toured the empire in order to promote and to reflect upon the meaning of British national identity. Rudyard Kipling famously put this in terms of a rhetorical question: “What should they know of England who only England know?” In the field of social history, the work of John Mackenzie and the Manchester University Press series that he inspired, deserve special mention. Mackenzie’s original collection on popular imperialism has been followed by studies on imperial propaganda, on literature and theatre, soldiering, masculinity, gender, travel, medicine, science, hunting and conservation. Linking these diverse contributions is the simple but surely incontestible claim that imperialism “had as significant an effect on the dominant as on the subordinate societies”34. The latest British-based scholarship seeks to cast the imperial experience in global terms, stressing empire – or empires – as fields of interaction, of mutual influences, of complex networks and circuits. Christopher Bayly’s major intervention into global history, The Birth of the Modern World: Global Connections and Comparisons (2004), is an outstanding example. John Darwin’s After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire (2007) is another major study. Bayly encourages us to transcend the limits of national history and to adopt a multi-centric view of world historical change, one that does not assume the rise of western dominance and is ever alert to challenges to such dominance. His work begins in the era of the French revolution and ends in 1914, but it speaks eloquently to our moment: it poses radical questions about cherished Western presumptions and adds analytical sophistication as well as time-depth to contemporary concerns with globalisation, modernity, religion and imperialism. There are few better demonstrations of how the study of history, rooted in context but expansive, global and international in scope, can serve as a guide to our understanding of the present35.
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A conspicuous weakness of metropolitan-based theories of globalisation is the tendency to view the non-European world in homogenous, totalising terms – which is ironical given the professed identification of anti-globalists with the mute victims of imperialism. Sadly, quite a lot of the literature inspired by Edward Said’s orientalist thesis, and a great deal of writing on globalisation, unwittingly reproduce these totalising tendencies, seemingly oblivious to what should be self-evident: that only a grounded historical, anthropological, and literary engagement with extra-European societies can explain and understand their particularity. There are simply no short-cuts. As Anthony Hopkins puts it, if globalisation is to be more than a reprise of “the rise of the West – and the fall of the rest” only a truly global history of globalisation will suffice36. This point underlines the need to understand global (and imperial) history at multiple societal levels. One of the weaknesses of Niall Ferguson’s “anglobalisation” approach is that it is mainly concerned with the outward spread of ideas, institutions, and financial systems from the towering heights of imperial policy and practice. The top-down approach means that there is far too little attention to zones of interaction at multiple levels and at different scales. The successes of British imperialism until mid-way through the 20th century, such as they were, had much to do with its appreciation of the power of what were termed “traditional societies” and, indeed, the capacity of the colonial state to manipulate such knowledge. This was an intrinsic assumption of the cultural relativism that underwrote indirect rule with its accompanying slogans of the Dual Mandate and the White Man’s Burden. Ferguson ends his most recent book on American imperialism, Colossus: The price of America’s Empire, with wistful quotes from Kipling’s White Man’s Burden (though he covers himself by saying that such archaic language may not be appropriate for the building of the 21st-century liberal American empire that he so heartily endorses). He charges American policy-makers, who “lack the imperial cast of mind”, with a failure to see their project through and advises that note should be taken of British precedents. But Ferguson seems wilfully ignorant of the fact that indirect rule, which formed the basis of its empire in Africa and India, dissolved as a direct consequence of the very capitalist market relations that he so fulsomely welcomes. Nor does he recognise that industrialisation, urbanisation and market-based modernity created the conditions within which modern mass nationalism could flourish. Ferguson fails to appreciate this because his view of empire remains entirely metro-centric and top-down: it is a perspective that allows him to avoid any consideration of the internal dynamics of what he and others so glibly dismiss as the third world’s “failed states”. The British colonial office made similar miscalculations in the post-war era. So certain and, indeed, dependent was the British empire on the otherness of the other, that it was confounded when modern nationalists wrong-footed their masters by speaking back in the language of universal rights and freedoms. Paradoxically, American imperialism in its neo-conservative guise is vulnerable for precisely the opposite reason: it inhabits Europe and its Empires
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a manichean world of good and bad, one that takes no account of the history, culture, language or values of those it seeks so eagerly to convert to individual freedom and collective democracy. It is captive to Iraqi and Afghan leaders who cynically parrot its mantras but blind to, and hastily dismissive of those who do not. Iraq provides a paradigm example of this self-deceiving cultural and historical tunnel vision. For this reason as well as a host of others, the neo-conservative vision of America’s global destiny is manifestly bound to end in failure even more rapidly than its earlier, British model.
Notes My thanks to Mary Harris and Donal Lowry for their comments on this text.
1
Why we Still Need Empires in “The Observer”, 7 April 2002; or see the journalism of Christopher Hitchens, collected in A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq, New York 2003.
2
See e.g. M. Ignatieff, Empire Lite: Nation Building in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan, London 2003; N. Ferguson, Empire: How Britain made the modern world London 2003 Id., Colossus: The price of America’s empire, London 2004.
3
M. Hardt, A. Negri, Empire, Harvard 2000, p. xii. See F. Cooper Empire Multiplied. A Review Essay in “Contemporary Studies in Society and History”, 46, 2, 2004, who refers to them as “anarcho-Marxists” (p. 248).
4
S.P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations? in “Foreign Affairs”, Summer 1993, 72, 3, pp. 22-49.
5
London Review of Books, 17 September 2004, 26, p. 12.
6
W.K. Hancock, Survey of British Commonwealth Affairs, Vol. II, Part 1, London 1942, pp. 1-2.
7
N. Etherington, Theories of imperialism: war, conquest and capital, London 1984, p. 6.
8
W.R. Louis, Introduction, Oxford History of the British Empire, Vol. V, Oxford 1999, p. 8.
9
R. Koebner, H.D. Schmidt, Imperialism. The story and significance of a political word 1840-1960, Cambridge 1965, p. 157.
10
Ibid.
11
Ibid., p. 221.
12
Etherington, Theories cit., p. 7.
13
Ibid., pp. 7 and ff. Cf. Koebner, Schmidt, Imperialism cit., p.p. 236-7.
14
Cf. T. Benn, “The Guardian”, 22 September 2004: “The real reason for the invasion was to topple Saddam, seize the oil and establish permanent US bases to dominate the region. And we know that Tony Blair privately shared these objectives, and used the weapons issue to persuade parliament and public”.
15
B. Porter, Critics of Empire, London 1968, p. 137.
16
G. Cuthbertson, Preaching Imperialism: Wesleyan Methodism and the War, in D. Omissi, A. Thompson (eds.), The Impact of the South African War, Basingstoke 2002, p. 157.
17
D. Lowry, “The World’s no Bigger than a Kraal”: The South African War and international opinion in the first age of “globalization”, in Omissi, Thompson, The Impact cit., pp. 270, 271.
18
D. Lowry, “The Boers were the beginning of the end”? The wider impact of the South African War, in Id. (ed.), The South African War Reappraised Manchester 2000, pp. 212-3.
19
Ibid., p. 239. Lowry, personal communication, points out that MacBride Jr wanted to commemorate the Irish Transvaal Brigade with a monument in Johannesburg in 1948. By the 1950s the IRA and the broader republican movement had ‘forgotten’ its pro-Boer past.
20
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E. Boehmer, in Bloodlines, Cape Town 2000, has told this remarkable story in novelistic form. One of her characters repeats as a refrain: “we carry our cocked-up history inside us.”
21
E. Todd, After the Empire, London 2002, p. xviii.
22
R. Nye, Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics, New York 2004.
23
True, 19th-century nationalism and new imperialism were closely associated. But the “greater Britain” propounded by imperialists like Seeley was to a considerable extent intended to be trans-national.
24
D. Cannadine, Ornamentalism: How the British saw their Empire, London 2001.
25
Ferguson, Empire cit.
26
J. Mackenzie, introduction to Imperialism and Popular Culture, Manchester 1986, p. 2.
27
The fullest recent statement is B. Porter, The Absent-minded imperialists: Empire, Society, and Culture in Britain, Oxford 2004. For a critique see Stuart Ward’s introduction to British Culture and the End of Empire, Manchester 2001, p. 4.
28
E. Green, M. Taylor, Further thoughts on little Englandism, in R. Samuel, Patriotism Vol. 1, London 1989, p. 103.
29
Ibid., p. 19.
30
J.G.A. Pocock, British History: A plea for a new subject in “Journal of Modern History”, 1975, 47, pp. 604-5.
31
Note, however, that leading imperial and commonwealth historians like Peter Marshall and Shula Marks have themselves made similar points.
32
For a good statement of the new approach to Britishness and the “British World” as an integrated concept, see the special issue of the “Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History” 31, 2 (2003) edited by Carl Bridge and Kent Federowich.
33
General statement in “Studies in Imperialism” series.
34
Such work, one hopes, will help to counter a growing provincialism in British public life, from which universities are sadly not immune. As Martin Jacques has noted, it is paradoxical that while globalisation has “made the world interdependent to an extent never imagined in the past”, post-imperial Britain seems to be becoming “deeply parochial” and self-absorbed. Martin Jacques, Our problem with abroad, “The Guardian” 21 August 2004.
35
A.G. Hopkins, Introduction to Id. (ed.), Globalization in World History, London 2002, p. 2.
36
Bibliography Bayly C.A, The Birth of the Modern World: Global Connections and Comparisons, London 2004. Bridge C., and Federowich K (eds.), special issue of the “Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History”, 2003, 31, 2. Cannadine D., Ornamentalism: How the British saw their Empire, London 2001. Etherington N., Theories of imperialism: war, conquest and capital, London 1984. Ferguson N., Empire: How Britain made the modern world, London, 2003. Id., Colossus: The price of America’s empire, London 2004. Id. (ed.), Globalization in World History, London 2002. Hardt M., Negri A., Empire, Harvard 2000. Ignatieff, M., Empire Lite: Nation Building in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan, London 2003.
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Koebner R., Schmidt H.D., Imperialism. The story and significance of a political word 1840-1960, Cambridge 1965. Omissi D., Thompson A. (eds), The Impact of the South African War, Basingstoke 2002. Nye R., Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics, New York 2004, Basingstoke 2002. Pocock J.G.A., British History: A plea for a new subject in “Journal of Modern History”, 1975, 47, pp. 601621. Porter B., The Absent-minded imperialists: Empire, Society, and Culture in Britain, Oxford 2004.
Classical Legacy and Imperial Ideal in the Early Renaissance: the Artistic Patronage of Alfonso V the Magnanimous Amadeo Serra Desfilis University of Valencia
Abstract A very influential aspect of the classical legacy during the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance was its association with imperial concepts. The reign of Alfonso V the Magnanimous (1416-1458), King of Aragon, Sicily and Naples, involved an imperial project that aimed to integrate several populations, territorial and cultural identities and superimpose a powerful centralized court over a polycentric system of government institutions. Within this framework art had a decisive role and a diversity of media, artists and languages served Alfonso’s policy, providing an imperial art inspired by the classical legacy. The use of humanism and the Roman classical tradition is the specific focus of this study as it reveals one of the first attempts of the Renaissance to define an imperial political programme. Our initial hypothesis is that the king drew on the stock of knowledge of the humanists and on the work of artists with a practical outlook, always opting to put his personal interests before coherence. In this way, Alfonso V handed down a valuable legacy for European empires both in terms of a flexible combination of diverse cultural traditions and in the idea of an imperial power based on widespread territories linked by sea routes and a network of ports. La supervivencia de la tradición clásica a lo largo de la Edad Media es uno de los grandes temas de la historia cultural de Europa. Un aspecto muy influyente del legado clásico en la Edad Media y el Renacimiento es su vinculación con la idea de imperio. La noción de la unidad perdida de la Cristiandad y el deseo de incorporar diversas identidades y tradiciones propiciaron intentos sucesivos de revindicar la tradición del Imperio Romano con el propósito de afirmar la supremacía de un poder único, personal y dinástico, de alcance teóricamente universal, opuesto a la tendencia de división de poderes políticos y territoriales en diferentes niveles característica de la Edad Media. El reinado de Alfonso V el Magnánimo (1416-1458), rey de Aragón, Sicilia y Nápoles supuso un proyecto imperial que debía integrar identidades ciudadanas, territoriales, culturales y superponer una poderosa corte
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centralizada a un sistema policéntrico de instituciones de gobierno. En este contexto el arte tuvo un papel decisivo al servir a la política de Alfonso con diversidad de medios, artistas y lenguajes como un auténtico arte imperial inspirado en el legado clásico, al estilo de los que se formularán en la Europa de la Edad Moderna. Precisamente la utilización del humanismo y de la tradición clásica romana son los aspectos que centrarán este estudio en la medida en que pueden servir para revelar uno de los primeros intentos en el Renacimiento de definición a través de ellos de un programa político imperial. La hipótesis de partida es que el rey se sirvió del bagaje de los humanistas, del trabajo de los artistas y de los medios de expresión con sentido práctico, libertad de prejuicios y siempre anteponiendo sus intereses a una presunta coherencia de opciones. Se plantea incluso la posibilidad de que el rey y sus cortesanos entendieran la tradición clásica de modo muy diferente no sólo a como la definimos actualmente sino también a la concepción histórica que se abría paso en el Renacimiento de otras regiones de Italia. Esta manera de entender y apreciar el legado clásico concierne más a las funciones que a las formas; más a los contenidos ideológicos que a los logros artísticos y nunca es excluyente, sino más bien integradora con otras tradiciones medievales que fueran también útiles para el programa político de Alfonso el Magnánimo. Así Alfonso V ofreció a su vez un legado valioso para los imperios europeos tanto en la combinación flexible de tradiciones culturales diversas como en la idea de un poder imperial basado en territorios dispersos conectados por una red de puertos y rutas marítimas.
Introduction The survival of the classical tradition throughout the Middle Ages is one of the great subjects of European cultural history and art in particular. Unlike the vision propounded by the humanists and Renaissance historians of the Middle Ages – a parenthesis between classical Antiquity and the revival of its legacy through philology and archaeology – modern historiography has shown the continuity of the tradition and the multiple forms of recycling, reference to and assimilation of Roman and Greek models both in Latin and Byzantine Europe1. A very influential aspect of the classical legacy during the Middle Ages and the early Renaissance was its association with imperial concepts from the time of Charlemagne or Frederick II up to Charles V of the Habsburg dynasty, who may be considered the first emperor of the Renaissance in Europe. The notion of the lost unity of Latin Christendom and the desire to incorporate diverse identities and traditions favoured successive attempts to vindicate the Roman imperial tradition and the desire to affirm the supremacy of a single, personal and dynastic power of theoretically universal scope, as opposed to the tendency for division of political powers at different levels, characteristic of the Middle Ages2. As a result, imperial projects frequently resorted to some form of classical tradition as a mean of legitimizing and asserting a policy of international unity under a single strong authority.
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Alfonso V the Magnanimous: imperial ideas and artistic patronage in the early Renaissance Alfonso V the Magnanimous (1396-1458) was King of Aragon, Catalonia, Majorca, Valencia and Sicily from 1416. Following its conquest in 1442, Naples became more than just the new domain of the Spanish monarch and seemed destined to become the centre of a Mediterranean empire spreading north towards Corsica and Provence (on account of Alfonso’s rivalry with the Angevins, with whom he had disputed the right to the Neapolitan throne), southwards to the coasts of Tunisia and Morocco and eastwards to Hungary, Croatia and Albania, though Alfonso was wary of conducting a crusade against the Turkish empire, in spite of the urgings of the Papacy. On casting his nets in Mare Nostrum and setting foot on the Italian peninsula, it is no surprise that he came up against all the powers present in this scenario: Genoa, Florence, Venice, Milan, the Angevins and the Papacy. On the death of the king, his inheritance was divided up between his brother John II, King of Aragon and Navarre (1458-1476), and Alfonso’s illegitimate son Ferdinand, King of Naples, and the project to construct a Mediterranean empire based in southern Italy had to wait until the generation of Ferdinand II the Catholic (King of Sicily from 1468 and Aragon from 1479 to 1516, King of Naples from 1504), when Iberian horizons had broadened dramatically following the discovery of America. However, the figure of the monarch and his reign occupy a distinguished place in the history of Mediterranean culture as it served to strengthen relations between humanist Italy and the Iberian peninsula within the framework of an imperial project designed to integrate populations, territorial and cultural identities and superimpose a powerful centralized court over a polycentric system of government institutions3. As indicated by Evelyn Welch, southern Italy was then “the possession of a crown, often a non-Italian crown, which required an image of rulership that reflected both the institutional nature of kingship and the personal qualities of the incumbent”4. Within this context, art played a decisive role and a diversity of media, artists and languages served Alfonso’s policy, providing a form of imperial art inspired by the classical legacy and in the style of those that would be formed in Europe in the early Modern Age. The use of humanism and Roman classical tradition is the specific focus of this study as it reveals one of the first attempts of the Renaissance to define an imperial political programme by these means. In this way, Alfonso the Magnanimous similarly handed down a valuable legacy for European empires both in terms of a flexible combination of diverse cultural traditions and in the idea of an imperial power based on widespread territories linked by sea routes and a network of ports: a seaborne empire. In the historiography of art in the reign of Alfonso the Magnanimous, focus has frequently ranged from 15th-century Spain, marked by its medieval past, and the political formation of the Crown of Aragon5, to its setting in 15th-century Italy, and compariEurope and its Empires
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sons with the republics and princely courts to the north of the peninsula, such as Florence, Venice and Milan6. The combination of Spanish and Italian elements in the Kingdom of Naples has held greater weight with political and economic historians7 than with cultural historians, as the latter have simply observed a juxtaposition of scarcely compatible traditions or have placed emphasis on the transfer of Italian humanist tendencies to the Iberian peninsula through the court of Alfonso the Magnanimous8. The relationship of humanists and court historians with art and, particularly, the manner in which this was represented by the King’s artistic patronage, has been explored by various historians9, but the specific significance of the use of the classical legacy is the subject of our study. Our initial hypothesis is that the king drew on the humanists’ stock of knowledge, on the work of artists and on their means of expression in a manner not unlike that employed in economic and institutional affairs, that is to say, with a practical outlook, free from prejudice and always following his personal interests rather than opting for any apparent coherence influenced by the anachronistic concepts of historians. The possibility has also been raised that the king and his courtiers understood the classical tradition in a very different way both from that defined today and from the historical concept forged during the Renaissance in other Italian regions. This approach to understanding and appreciating the classical legacy placed greater emphasis on function over forms, regardless of how admirable these might have been, and on ideological content over artistic achievement. This was never conducted in an exclusive manner but rather with an integrating approach, drawing on other modern and, specifically, gothic traditions, which were also useful for the political programme of Alfonso the Magnanimous. These characteristics were soon seen as limitations by latter day humanists and historiography, relegating the Neapolitan court of Alfonso V to a secondary role in the general context of the rinascita dell’antichità [rebirth of Antiquity] in the Italian Quattrocento [15th-century] art. Reference is frequently made to the formal triumph of Alfonso as King of Naples on 26 February 1443 as a clear example of the idea of royal power modelled on the empire of the Caesars and many aspects of the staging of this event corroborate this interpretation. However, the idea of a royal entry draws on local traditions in many Mediterranean cities (traditions remotely based on the Roman precedent of Adventus) in which the population established or renewed their ties as subjects of the prince, and on much genuinely medieval imagery: the king was dressed in a red tunic lined with ermine and tucked into a highly jewelled belt, and the royal carriage was set under a canopy held by twenty-four of the leading citizens. There was a feudal investiture ceremony of nobles, a display of relics, Arthurian emblems such as that of the Siege Perilous, allegorical figures of Christian virtues by way of interlude, a mock battle of knights and a concluding ceremony in the cathedral of Naples10. A figure dressed as Caesar handed the sceptre and a laurel wreath to Alfonso and hailed him as the Most High and pacifying King worthy of the title of new Caesar11. Curiously enough, the triumph, which also included laurel
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wreaths, images of the 12 Caesars and Aristotelian virtues as well as ambivalent elements such as Fortune, was commemorated over the following years by a procession in which the image of the Virgin handed the city over to Alfonso, intending to confirm the divine intercession in the monarch’s victory with an appearance befitting Late Gothic paintings12. The great hall of the Castel Nuovo combined different medieval traditions of the Mediterranean, such as the Islamic qubba [dome] and the main halls of European palaces with the intention of evoking ancient monuments, with cubic proportions, a high gallery and the central opening of an oculus in the rib vault in the fashion of the Late Gothic style and technique. Furthermore, the recourse to a model generally applied to religious architecture (chapter houses and funeral chapels), the decoration with tapestries of the Passion by Roger van der Weyden and Valencian ceramic paving with tiles bearing the motto Dominus mihi adiutor et ego despiciam inimicos meos [‘The Lord is my helper and I will look down on my enemies’, Psalms 117 (118): 7], echoed in the inscriptions borne by angels and prophets sculpted in the hall windows, all served as a means of exalting the monarch’s power, in keeping with the policy of Alfonso the Magnanimous, who did not hesitate to enter into conflict with the papacy, which opposed his ambitions and, instead, aspired to demonstrate a direct relationship with divinity13. The royal collection of manuscripts assembled by Alfonso and later extended by his successors Ferdinand and Alfonso II, retained some of the character of the prince’s library because of its title and its location in the royal residence. It was organised to a certain extent according to inherited interests, largely court literature, but it also contained books expressly produced for the library shelves and had a specialized staff to attend to it (librarians, illustrators, copyists, bookbinders). Moreover, it had the dual function of serving the court humanists and the interests and prestigious intent of the sovereign. This collection prefigured what was to become the Vatican Library, under Pope Sixtus IV: an ideological mirror and symbolic portrait of a supreme power14. In this project the contribution of the classical legacy was dominant and, in addition to the selection of authors and subjects in accordance with the studia humanitatis [classical studies], also embraced the script and presentation of the texts with their Roman style ornamentation, added by the miniaturists at the service of the court. In this latter regard, however, it is possible to discern the fascination that other artistic forms and, particularly, Flemish painting, continued to hold over the miniaturists and the monarch’s tastes15. However, it was impossible to renounce the idea of a book as a treasure and an expression of royal power as demonstrated by the motto and icon Liber sum [‘I am a book’, but also ‘I am free’] and in the reading times staged for the greater glory of the monarch: Vir sapiens dominabitur astris [‘A wise man can rule the stars’]. From the Psalterbook of hours of Alfonso the Magnanimous (London, British Library, ms. Additional 28962), illuminated by Leonardo Crespi, the Satyrae by Francesco Filefo (Biblioteca històrica de la Universitat de València, ms. 772) and the Virgil of Valencia (Biblioteca Europe and its Empires
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històrica de la Universitat de València, ms. 837) to the exquisite manuscripts decorated on the basis of Florentine models such as the works of Seneca now at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (ms. Latin 17842), illustrated by Matteo Felice shortly before the death of the king of Naples, one may observe the various decorative styles of the luxurious books of Alfonso the Magnanimous. Lorenzo Valla, Antonio Beccadelli, known as il Panormita, and Bartolomeo Facio would benefit from this library and direct the reading of Latin texts of the Roman Imperial code, translations of the Greek classics and geographical treatises such as Ptolemy’s Cosmografia and the maps of known or unknown lands, almost always tempting for the extension of Alfonso’s domains (a map of Italy made in Valencia, a map on fabric showing Ethiopia). The three men placed philological arms at the service of Alfonso by declaring that the presumed donation by Constantine was a fake (Valla), and by constructing the figure of an imaginary Alfonso V through the De Rebus Gestis ab Alphonso Primo Neapolitanorum Rege (Beccadelli) and the De dictis et factis Alphonsi by Facio together with the supplement De Viris Illustribus (1456). All these texts served purely as propaganda for a monarch and attempted – with success – to show him as a pious, cultured, decisive and impartial ruler and as a perfect synthesis of Christian principles and the Roman Caesar. The medals retained something of the noble and antique nature of classical coins with the effigy of the king in profile, the pertinent message in the inscriptions and the symbols accompanying the portrait. These medals were made to order and could be adapted in form and content for the recipient of the gift. The medal and the coin were taken as exclusive forms of the imperial portrait and their revived form in the Renaissance was not dissimilar to the figures of the Eastern emperor, John VII Palaeologos, and in the West, Sigismund. For these very same reasons, the humanist Guarino da Verona preferred medals over painting and sculpture as a means of transmitting the image of the prince. The medals, showing a profile of Alfonso V with the motto Divus Alphonsus triumphator et pacificus [Holy Alfonso, victor and peacemaker], are reminiscent of the portraits of the Roman emperors but with additional features such as the helmet and open book. On a medal dated 1449, the eagle and the inscription liberalitas augusta [august liberality] illustrate the magnanimity of a king who let his subjects share the spoils of the kill. In the case of a medal held in the British museum (Inv. Coll. George III Naples M2) a bust of Alfonso above a crown appears on the obverse and the motto Divus Alphonsus Aragoniae Utriusque Siciliae Valenciae Hierosolymae Hungariae Maioricarum Sardiniae Corsicae Rex, Comes Barcinonae Dux Athenarum et Neopatriae ac Comes Roscilionis Ceritaniae [Holy Alfonso, King of Aragon, Two Sicilies, Valencia, Jerusalem, Hungary, Majorca, Sardinia and Corsica, Count of Barcelona, Duke of Athens and Neopatria and Count of Roussillon and Cerdanya]. On the reverse of the medal a triumphal chariot pulled by four horses carrying a figure with a sword aloft bears an accompanying
The Artistic Patronage of Alfonso V the Magnanimous
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inscription proclaiming the divine help received in the victory: Fortitudo mea et laus mea Dominus et facus est michi in salutem [‘The Lord is my strength and my praise and he is become my salvation’, Exodus 15: 2], in spite of the adverse conditions represented by the carriage’s progress over rough ground16. The medals exalting the king as an intrepid hunter, venator intrepidus, show on the obverse an image of Alfonso based on a medallion of the emperor Trajan and, on the reverse, a hunting scene inspired by a Roman sarcophagus, one which Pisanello copied: it shows a heroically naked young man completing a boar hunt, one of the king’s pastimes, and evoking the classical characters of Meleager and Hercules17. Cristoforo di Geremia designed a medal at the end of Alfonso’s reign, depicting the monarch as a Roman emperor crowned by Mars and Bellona and bearing the inscription Coronant victorem regni Mars et Bellona [Mars and Bellona crown the victor of the kingdom] on the reverse, claiming the legitimacy of a king who was never crowned and here shown with a shining crown such as that of Apollo, while on the obverse the legend Rex regibus imperans et bellorum victor [King, ruler of the princes and victor of the wars] accompanies the bust of Alfonso (London, Victoria and Albert Museum)18. The arch of the Castel Nuovo has an evident precedent in the great funerary monuments of the Angevin kings of Naples and, particularly, the tomb of King Ladislao of Durazzo in the church of san Giovanni Carbonara (1428) with its equestrian statue and the glorification of the virtues of the monarch through allegoric figures. To a certain extent, the inspiration in these models also reinforced the ever questionable dynastic legitimacy of Alfonso. The king wanted Donatello to make a statue of him on horseback, or a portrait, but the project did not materialize. The triumphant and imperial connotations were taken from Roman arches such as that of Trajan in Benevento, within the Kingdom of Naples and that at the gate of Capua raised by Federick II (1198-1250), though reference may also be made to the Arch of the Sergii in Pula (Croatia). The work on the arch began in 1453 under the direction of the Dalmatian architect Onofrio di Giordano, who was later joined by his fellow countryman Pietro da Milano and by Francesco Laurana, Paolo Romano and the Catalan Pere Joan. The triumphal frieze dated back to the end of Alfonso’s reign and was sculpted by the Roman sculptors Isaia da Pisa and Andrea dell’Aquila. These architects and sculptors managed to adapt a classical model to a new function and a difficult setting and the humanist Antonio Beccadelli was responsible for composing the two inscriptions celebrating the triumph and the culmination of the work the Castel Nuovo. These inscriptions read: Rex hispanicus siculus italicus pius clemens invictus [King of Spain, Sicily and Italy, pious, merciful, unconquered] and Alfonsus Regum Princeps hanc condidit arcem [Alfonso, first among the kings, built this castle]19. The Greek humanist Manuel Crisolaras, who had a considerable influence over Italian writers, referred to the triumphal arches, describing the images they bore and their purpose to reveal the true past: “but in these sculptures one can see all that existed in those Europe and its Empires
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days among the different races, so that it is a complete and accurate history, or rather not a history so much as an exhibition, so to speak, and manifestation of everything that existed anywhere at that time”20. In this regard, Alfonso the Magnanimous wrote to the painter Leonardo da Besozzo on 19 September 1449, declaring that remembrance of past exploits should not be left to poets and historians alone, that it was not beyond the scope of painters; as the ancients testified, poesis nichil aliud est quam pictura loquens21 [poetry is no different from eloquent painting]. This sentiment of the Greek author Simonides, commented on by Plutarch in his Moralia, is repeated in De Viris illustribus by Facio22. In this way the humanists wished to leave for all posterity an image of the king that would legitimise their past action and glorify their memory in the future.
The image of Alfonso V The image that the humanists and works of art commissioned by the king presented of Alfonso the Magnanimous was one of a heroic figure in the mould of the Roman emperors, the knights of Arthurian legends and the wise kings of the Old Testament. The king had overcome and would continue to defeat his enemies through divine will, as Alfonso also took care of his pious image. Alfonso wished to be seen as a courageous knight, a hunter and as a man of both letters and arms, as in Italy at that time these attitudes could confer prestige on a foreign king of debatable legitimacy. His leaning towards a classical past also reveals a recognition of Italian sentiment which viewed Roman heritage their own, as against other foreign powers. These associations with the imperial past strengthened the authoritarianism of the monarch while offering a common heritage and one that attempted to underline the Spanish element through the personalities of Hadrian or Trajan. Alfonso’s attitude towards the classical legacy may be demonstrated by his reading of De Architectura by Vitruvius, written in the times of the emperor Augustus but never forgotten during the Middle Ages. This treatise defined the institutional and even political meaning of architecture as a technique and art at the service of power. Both the concept of architecture as an expression of royal majesty and its value as a source of knowledge of Roman buildings made Vitruvius’s text one of essential reading for a humanist prince, as Alfonso saw himself. The official court biographer, Antonio Beccadelli, recalled that the king, when ordering the reconstruction of the Castel Nuovo in Naples, held up a creased and unornamented copy of Vitruvius’s work and considered it unfitting that such an important book should lack a proper cover, though, in reality, the influence of the Roman author is in no way evident in the royal residence. The rebuilding work was more a self-serving association by the monarch with the imperial Roman heritage and one where architecture was less an expression in itself and more a statement of power. The example of the Castel Nuovo should be classified as a hybrid as it combines Gothic, Mudejar (particularly in the wooden ceilings), ‘Neapolitan’ and ‘Catalonian’ elements as well as classical intentions to recall the grandeur of Roman architecture23.
The Artistic Patronage of Alfonso V the Magnanimous
25
In order to allow the artistic expression of such a political programme, the king adopted means befitting imperial art. Local identities were sacrificed at the altar of a higher unity, bound to his personal power. This unity was defined by the court on the basis of both classical and modern models, such as Flemish painting, of which Alfonso showed particular appreciation following the conquest of Naples. Commissioning letters and orders were dispatched by Alfonso requesting the attendance of artists (Guillem Sagrera, Jacomart, Pere Johan, Pisanello, including Donatello or Dello Delli, if possible) and all manner of materials and manufactured products were shipped out, such as the Gerona or Majorca stone employed to build the Castel Nuovo24 or tiles from Manises in Valencia25. Models were built to allow the supervision of works from afar26 and all the resources available to the king in all his territories were pooled for this purpose. Artistic media were directed towards exalting the power of the king and his triumph through words and ideas: the inscriptions on medals, the triumphal arch, the figures of angels and prophets in the great hall of the Castel Nuovo, all transmitted a clear and categorical message reinforced by eloquent images (emblems, mottoes, scenes of supernatural assistance to Alfonso in his book of hours in London or the Virgin of Peace painted by Jacomart) in parallel with the pomp of the court, in keeping with late medieval tradition, with its accumulation of jewels, splendid gowns, tapestries and precious objects27. In conclusion, while the artistic language used by Alfonso the Magnanimous resorted to some classical elements, it also drew on contemporary elements (painting, heraldry or the pomp of the court) and cleverly combined these features in accordance with the political interests, local traditions and the public circles whom it addressed. The classical tradition acted as a stabilizing and legitimizing element for a new and foreign power, and one that appealed to the Roman imperial antecedent and that of Frederick II, with the undying values that these represented28. In addition to auctoritas [authority], this legacy also bore a share of vetustas [antiquity], forming part of a model past worthy of study, yet different and closed, with a sense of historic distance. This made it possible to adapt the tradition for different purposes in the new period of the Renaissance.
Notes E.R. Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, Princeton 1990; E. Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art, Stockholm 1960; R. Weiss, The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity, Oxford 1969; M. Greenhalgh, The Classical Tradition in Art, London 1978; W. Treadgold, Renaissances before the Renaissance. Cultural Revivals of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, Stanford 1984; S. Settis, Von auctoritas zu vetustas: die antike Kunst in mittelalterlicher Sicht, in “Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte”, 1988, 51, pp. 159-179.
1
A. Black, Political Thought in Europe, 1250-1450, Cambridge 1992.
2
A. Ryder, Alfonso the Magnanimous, King of Aragon, Naples and Sicily, 1396-1458, Oxford, 1990. See also by the same author A. Ryder, The kingdom of Naples under Alfonso the Magnanimous: the making of a modern state, Oxford 1976.
3
Europe and its Empires
26
Amadeo Serra Desfilis
E. Welch, Art and society in Italy, 1350-1500, Oxford 1997, p. 22.
4
F. Español Bertrán, La cultura figurativa tardogótica al servicio de Alfonso el Magnánimo. Artistas y obras del Levante peninsular en Italia, in J. Alemany, X. Barral, J.E. García Biosca (eds.) Mediterraneum. El esplendor del Mediterráneo medieval siglos XIII-XV, Barcelona 2004, pp. 161-171, J.V. García Marsilla, El poder visible. Demanda y funciones del arte en la corte de Alfonso el Magnánimo, “Ars longa. Cuadernos de arte”, 1996-1997, 7-8, pp. 33-47; J.V. García Marsilla, La estética del poder. Arte y gastos suntuarios en la corte de Alfonso el Magnánimo (Valencia, 1425-1428), in XVI Congresso internazionale di Storia della Corona d’Aragona (Napoli 1997), 2, Naples 2001, pp. 1705-1718.
5
M.A. Skoglund, In Search of the Art Commissioned and Collected by Alfonso I of Naples, Notably Painting, Ph.D. thesis, University of Missouri, Columbia 1989; A. Cole, Art of the Italian Renaissance Courts, London 1995, pp. 45-65; M. Hollingsworth, Patronage in Renaissance Italy. From 1400 to the Early Sixteenth Century, Baltimore 1996.
6
M. Del Treppo, The Crown of Aragon and the Mediterranean, in “Journal of European Economic History”, 1973, 2, pp. 161-186.
7
A. Gómez Moreno, España y la Italia de los humanistas. Primeros ecos, Madrid 1994.
8
M. Baxandall, Giotto and the orators, Oxford 1971; J.P. Bentley, Politics and Culture in Renaissance Naples, Princeton 1987, pp. 202-244; J. Woods-Marsden, Art and Political Identity in Fifteenth-Century Naples: Pisanello, Cristoforo di Geremia and King Alfonso’s Imperial Fantasies, in C.M. Rosenberg (ed.), Art and Politics in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Italy, 1250-1500, Notre Dame, Indiana 1990, pp. 11-37.
9
Ryder, Alfonso the Magnanimous cit., F. Massip Bonet, La monarquía en escena: Teatro, fiesta y espectáculo del poder en los reinos ibéricos. De Jaume el Conquistador al príncipe Carlos, Madrid 2003; A. Pinelli, Fatti, parole, immagini. Resoconti scritti e rappresentazioni visive del trionfo napoletano di Alfonso d’Aragona, in G. Alisio, S. Bertelli, A. Pinelli (eds.), Arte e politica tra Napoli e Firenze. Un cassone per il trionfo di Alfonso d’Aragona, Modena 2006, pp. 33-75.
10
H.W. Kruft, M. Malmanger, Der Triumphbogen Alfonsos in Neapel: Das Monument und seine politische Bedeutung in Acta ad Archaelogiam et Artium Historiam Pertinentia, vol. 5, Rome 1975, pp. 213-305, especially pp. 290-292.
11
J. Molina, La hagiografía del poder. Acerca del sentido político de las imágenes de santos producidas en Nápoles y Barcelona a mediados del Cuatrocientos in El Mediterráneo y El Arte Español. XI Congreso del Comité Español de Historia del Arte, Valencia 1997, pp. 87-92.
12
A. Serra Desfilis, “È cosa catalana”: la Gran Sala de Castel Nuovo en el contexto mediterráneo, in “Annali di architettura”, 2000, 12, pp. 7-16.
13
T. De Marinis T., La Biblioteca napoletana dei re d’Aragona, 4 vols. Milano 1947-1952, T. De Marinis, La Biblioteca napoletana dei re d’Aragona. Supplemento, Verona 1969; A. Petrucci, Biblioteca, libri, scritture nella Napoli aragonese, in G. Cavallo (ed.) Le biblioteche nel mondo antico e medievale, Bari 1988, pp. 187-202.
14
G. Toscano, La biblioteca reale di Napoli al tempo della dinastia aragonese, Valencia 1998.
15
Woods-Marsden, Art and Political Identity cit., pp. 11-37.
16
D. Cordelier, P. Marini, Pisanello. Le peintre aux sept vertus, exhibition catalogue, Paris 1996, pp. 435439.
17
Woods-Marsden, Art and Political Identity cit., pp. 21-24.
18
G.L. Hershey, The Aragonese Arch at Naples, 1443-1475, New Haven 1973; R. Di Battista, La porta e l’arco di Castelnuovo a Napoli, in “Annali di architettura”, 1998-1999, 10-11, pp. 7-21.
19
M. Baxandall, Giotto cit., p. 18.
20
The Artistic Patronage of Alfonso V the Magnanimous
27
J. Rubió Balaguer, Alfons el Magnànim, rei de Nàpols, i Daniel Florentino, Leonardo da Bisuccio i Donatello, in Miscellània Puig i Cadafalch, vol. I, Barcelona 1947, pp. 25-35, see in particular pp. 31-32.
21
M. Baxandall, Bartholomeus Facius on Painting. A Fifteenth-Century Manuscript of the Viris Illustribus, in “Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes”, 1964, 27, pp. 90-107.
22
Hershey, The Aragonese Arch cit.,pp. 16-18.
23
F. Español Bertran, Los materiales prefabricados gerundenses de aplicación arquitectónica (siglos XIIIXV), in F. Fité, J. Yarza (eds.), L’artista-artesà medieval a la Corona d’Aragó, Lleida 1999, pp. 77-127, in particular, pp. 93-94.
24
G.J. De Osma, Las Divisas del Rey en los pavimentos de “obra de Manises” del Castillo de Nápoles (14461458), Madrid 1909.
25
J. Sanchis Sivera, La escultura valenciana en la Edad Media, in “Archivo de Arte Valenciano”, 1924, 10, pp. 3-28, especially pp. 21-22.
26
García Marsilla, El poder visible cit., pp. 33-47.
27
S. Settis, Continuità, distanza, conoscenza. Tre usi dell’antico, in S. Settis (ed.), Memoria dell’antico nell’arte italiana III: Dalla tradizione all’archeologia, Turin 1986, pp. 484-486.
28
Bibliography Baxandall M., Bartholomeus Facius on Painting. A Fifteenth-Century Manuscript of the Viris Illustribus, in “Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes”, 1964, 27, pp. 90-107. Id., Giotto and the orators, Oxford 1971. Bentley J.P., Politics and Culture in Renaissance Naples, Princeton 1987. Black A., Political Thought in Europe, 1250-1450, Cambridge 1992. Cole A., Art of the Italian Renaissance Courts, London 1995. Cordelier D., Marini P., Pisanello. Le peintre aux sept vertus, exhibition catalogue, Paris 1996. De Marinis T., La Biblioteca napoletana dei re d’Aragona, 4 vols., Milan 1947-1952. Id., La Biblioteca napoletana dei re d’Aragona. Supplemento, Verona 1969. De Osma G.J., Las Divisas del Rey en los pavimentos de “obra de Manises” del Castillo de Nápoles (14461458), Madrid 1909. Del Treppo M., The Crown of Aragon and the Mediterranean, in “Journal of European Economic History”, 1973, 2, pp. 161-186. Di Batista R., La porta e l’arco di Castelnuovo a Napoli, in “Annali di architettura”, 1998-1999, 10-11, pp. 7-21. Driscoll E.P., Alfonso of Aragon as a Patron of Art. Some Reflections on the Decoration and Design of the Triumphal Arch of the Castel Nuovo in Naples, in Sandler, L.F. (ed.), Essays in memory of Karl Lehmann, New York 1964. Español Bertrán F., Los materiales prefabricados gerundenses de aplicación arquitectónica (siglos XIII-XV), in Fité F., Yarza J. (eds.), L’artista-artesà medieval a la Corona d’Aragó, Lleida 1999, pp. 77-127. Id., La cultura figurativa tardogótica al servicio de Alfonso el Magnánimo. Artistas y obras del Levante peninsular en Italia, in Alemany J., Barral X., García Biosca J.E. (eds.), Mediterraneum. El esplendor del Mediterráneo medieval siglos XIII-XV, Barcelona 2004, pp. 161-171.
Europe and its Empires
28
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García Marsilla J.V., El poder visible. Demanda y funciones del arte en la corte de Alfonso el Magnánimo in “Ars longa. Cuadernos de arte”, 1996-1997, 7-8, pp. 33-47. Id., La estética del poder. Arte y gastos suntuarios en la corte de Alfonso el Magnánimo (Valencia, 1425-1428), in XVI Congresso internazionale di Storia della Corona d’Aragona (Napoli 1997), 2, Naples 2001, pp. 17051718. Gómez Moreno A., España y la Italia de los humanistas. Primeros ecos, Madrid 1994. Greenhalgh M., The Classical Tradition in Art, London 1978. Hersey G.L., The Aragonese Arch at Naples, 1443-1475, New Haven 1973. Hollingsworth M., Patronage in Renaissance Italy. From 1400 to the Early Sixteenth Century, Baltimore 1996. Kruft H.W., Malmanger M., Der Triumphbogen Alfonsos in Neapel: Das Monument und seine politische Bedeutung, in Acta ad Archaelogiam et Artium Historiam Pertinentia, vol. 6, Rome 1975, pp. 21-305. Massip Bonet F., La monarquía en escena: Teatro, fiesta y espectáculo del poder en los reinos ibéricos. De Jaume el Conquistador al príncipe Carlos, Madrid 2003. Molina J., La hagiografía del poder. Acerca del sentido político de las imágenes de santos producidas en Nápoles y Barcelona a mediados del Cuatrocientos en El Mediterráneo y El Arte Español. XI Congreso del Comité Español de Historia del Arte, Valencia 1997, pp. 87-92. Panofsky E., Renaissance and renascences in Western Art, Stockholm 1960. Patrone N., Príncipe y mecenas: Alfonso V en los “Dichos y hechos” de A. Beccadelli, New York 1995. Petrucci A., Biblioteca, libri, scritture nella Napoli aragonese, in Cavallo, G., (ed.) Le biblioteche nel mondo antico e medievale, Bari 1988, pp. 187-202. Pinelli A., Fatti, parole, immagini. Resoconti scritti e rappresentazioni visive del trionfo napoletano di Alfonso d’Aragona, in Alisio G., Bertelli S., Pinelli, A., (eds.), Arte e politica tra Napoli e Firenze. Un cassone per il trionfo di Alfonso d’Aragona, Modena 2006, pp. 33-75. Rovira J.C., Humanistas y poetas en la corte napolitana de Alfonso el Magnánimo, Alicante 1990. Rubió Balaguer J., Alfons el Magnànim, rei de Nàpols, i Daniel Florentino, Leonardo da Bisuccio i Donatello, in Miscelllània Puig i Cadafalch, I, Barcelona 1947, pp. 25-35. Ryder A., The kingdom of Naples under Alfonso the Magnanimous: the making of a modern state, Oxford 1976. Id., Alfonso the Magnanimous, King of Aragon, Naples and Sicily, 1396-1458, Oxford, 1990. Sanchis Sivera J., La escultura valenciana en la Edad Media in “Archivo de Arte Valenciano”, 1924, 10, pp. 3-28. Serra Desfilis A., “È cosa catalana”: la Gran Sala de Castel Nuovo en el contexto mediterráneo, in “Annali di architettura”, 2000, 12, pp. 7-16. Settis S., Continuità, distanza, conoscenza. Tre usi dell’antico, in Settis, S., (ed.), Memoria dell’antico nell’arte italiana III: Dalla tradizione all’archeologia, Turin 1986, pp. 373-486. Id., Von auctoritas zu vetustas: die antike Kunst in mittelalterlicher Sicht, in “Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte“, 1988, 51, pp. 159-179. Skoglund M.A., In Search of the Art Commissioned and Collected by Alfonso I of Naples, Notably Painting, Ph.D. thesis, University of Missouri, Columbia 1989. Soria Ortega A., Los humanistas de la corte de Alfonso el Magnánimo, Granada 1956. Toscano G., La biblioteca reale di Napoli al tempo della dinastía aragonese, Valencia 1998.
The Artistic Patronage of Alfonso V the Magnanimous
29
Treadgold W., Renaissances before the Renaissance. Cultural Revivals of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, Stanford 1984. Weiss R., The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity, Oxford 1969. Welch E., Art and society in Italy, 1350-1500, Oxford 1997. Woods-Marsden J., Art and Political Identity in Fifteenth-Century Naples: Pisanello, Cristoforo di Geremia and King Alfonso’s Imperial Fantasies, in Rosenberg C.M. (ed.), Art and Politics in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Italy, 1250-1500, Notre Dame, Indiana 1990, pp. 11-37.
Europe and its Empires
Within Two Imperial Systems: Hungary and the British Colonies in North America Compared in the Writings of Gergely Berzeviczy (1763-1822) Csaba Lévai
University of Debrecen
Abstract The author of this chapter compares the 18th-century historical development of Hungary within the Habsburg Empire on the one hand, and the mainland British colonies in North America within the British Empire on the other. He comes to the conclusion that several similarities were observable between the two territories. Both regions could enjoy widespread political and economic autonomy within their respective empires during the first half of the 18th century. But, for similar reasons, both imperial centers initiated a new policy towards the peripheries in the second half of the century, and some elements of this new policy were also similar, such as the mercantilist economic policy. The new policy of the imperial centers resulted in resistance on the part of local elites, whose methods were also somewhat similar. This resistance led to an armed conflict in North America, but Hungary also arrived at the brink of open revolt by the end of the 1780s. Nevertheless, the end result of the conflicts between the imperial centers and the peripheries was different in the two places. By skilful manoeuvering the new ruler of the Habsburg Empire, Leopold II (1790-1792), could reach a compromise with the Hungarian estates. A tanulmány arra vállalkozik, hogy összehasonlítsa egymással Magyarország helyzetét a Habsburg Birodalomban, illetve az észak-amerikai szárazföldi brit gyarmatok pozícióját a Brit Birodalmon belül a 18. század folyamán. Arra a következtetésre jut, hogy a két terület helyzete között számos hasonlóság volt megfigyelhető. Hasonló volt alkotmányos pozíciójuk, mivel Magyarország, Mária Terézia (1740-1780) és II. József (1780-1790) reformjai előtt, a szárazföldi brit gyarmatok pedig a hétéves háború befejeződését (1763) megelőzően, jelentős körű gazdasági és politikai autonómiával rendelkeztek a két birodalmon belül, s ezzel a helyzettel a helyi elitek is alapvetően elégedettek voltak Az osztrák
32
Csaba Lévai
örökösödési, illetve a hétéves háború hatására azonban mindkét birodalom vezetése olyan új politika mellett kötelezte el magát, amely egy egységesebb és központosítottabb módon igazgatott birodalom megvalósítására irányult. Mivel mindkét birodalom jelentős szerepet játszott a 18. század nagyhatalmi konfliktusaiban, az 1760-as évekre mindkettő államadóssága jelentősen megnőtt. Ezért a Habsburg, illetve a Brit Birodalom vezetése is arra törekedett, hogy megnövelje a Magyarországról, illetve az észak-amerikai szárazföldi gyarmatokról származó bevételeit. Ezek az új intézkedések pedig mindkét terület esetében oda vezettek, hogy felborult a birodalmi vezetések és a helyi elitek közötti azon kompromisszum, amely a korábbi időszakot jellemezte. Az újfajta politika egyik legfontosabb eszközét mindkét birodalomban a merkantilista gazdaságpolitika jelentette, amely mindkét esetben a birodalmi központok érdekeit tartotta elsősorban szem előtt a periférikus területek kárára. A birodalmi központok új politikájának egyik következménye a magyarországi, illetve az észak-amerikai gyarmati elit ellenállásának kibontakozása volt. Az ellenállás fő színterei mindkét esetben a helyi törvényhozások – a magyar rendi országgyűlés és a megyei gyűlések, illetve a gyarmati törvényhozó testületek – voltak. Mindkét területen voltak azonban a helyi elitnek olyan tagjai, akik támogatták a birodalmi központok új politikáját, vagy legalábbis egyfajta kompromisszum létrehozására törekedtek a centrum és a periféria között. Észak-Amerikában ilyen helyzetbe kerültek a lojalisták, Magyarországon pedig azok a jozefinisták, akik hivatalt vállaltak II. József uralkodása idején. A birodalmi központokkal szembeni ellenállás kibontakoztatásában és irányításában, mindkét helyen kulcsszerepet játszottak a helyi elitek. A magyar nemesség egyrészt kiváltságai megőrzésére törekedett a Habsburgok új politikájával szembeni ellenállása során, ezzel azonban az ország önállóságát is védelmezte a birodalomba történő teljes integrációval szemben. A gyarmati elitek is az élére álltak a birodalmi központ új politikájával szembeni ellenállásnak, ugyanakkor azonban ellenezték a kibontakozó amerikai forradalom radikalizálódását. Az új politikával szembeni ellenállás vezetői nagyon hasonló érvelést is alkalmaztak. Mindkét területen azt hangoztatták, hogy ellenállásukkal nem kívánnak radikális változásokat, csupán vissza akarnak térni az „új politika” előtti évek, mindkét fél számára kielégítő kompromisszumához. A birodalmi központokkal szembeni ellenállás a helyi lakosság identitásának átértékelődéséhez vezetett mindkét régióban. Magyarországon a nemzeti öntudat megerősödéséhez, a magyar kultúra megújulásához vezetett. A gyarmatosok kezdetben azt hangoztatták, hogy ők az „ősi angolszász szabadság” valódi letéteményesei, később azonban identitásuk sajátosan amerikai elemeit emelték ki. A birodalmi centrumok és perifériák közötti konfliktus Észak-Amerikában fegyveres összecsapáshoz vezetett és Magyarország is közel került egy nyílt lázadáshoz. Az események végkimenetele mégis eltérő lett a két területen. A nemzetközi helyzet kedvezőtlen alakulása és a birodalom csaknem mindegyik tartományában kibontakozó ellenállás arra késztette II. Józsefet, hogy halálos ágyán rendeletei zömét visszavonja, utódja pedig ügyes politikával újból kompromisszumot kötött a magyarországi rendekkel. A tanulmány befejező részében, Berzeviczy Gergely (1763-1822), a neves gazdasági szakíró írásai segítségével azt igazolja a szerző,
Within Two Imperial Systems: Hungary and the British Colonies in North America
33
hogy a magyarországi kortársak tudatában voltak az észak-amerikai brit gyarmatok és a Magyarország helyzete között megfigyelhető hasonlóságoknak.
Introduction In this chapter I compare the 18th-century historical development of Hungary within the Habsburg Empire on the one hand, and the mainland British colonies in North America within the British Empire on the other. In order to be able to compare the historical development of Hungary and the British colonies in mainland North America, first I give a very brief summary of 18th-century Hungarian history. Then I try to point out some interesting similarities between the developments in the two territories. In the last part of the text, by using the example of the outstanding economic theorist Gergely (Gregory) Berzeviczy (1763-1822), I demonstrate that contemporary Hungarians were well aware of these similarities. For my analysis of the special and common characteristics of the Habsburg and the British Empires I use the comparative method. I try to identify common points in the histories of the two empires, and to set their characteristics against each other. Analyzing the features of the two empires I use mainly secondary sources. Besides comparing the characteristics of the Habsburg and the British Empires, my other aim is to show that contemporary Hungarians were aware of the similarities between their homeland and the mainland British colonies in North America. I demonstrate this through analysis of the published writings of Gergely Berzeviczy, as primary sources.
Hungary in the 18th-century Habsburg Empire Since the Ottoman Turks were forced to withdraw from the central regions of Hungary with the crucial aid of the Habsburg army, at the end of the 17th century the Habsburgs started to govern the country as an occupied territory. They tried to ignore the traditional rights and privileges of the Hungarian estates and the autonomous status of the country within the Habsburg Empire. The result was the outbreak of the war of independence led by Ferenc Rákóczi (1703-1711), who was aided by Louis XIV of France (1643-1715). Consequently, the defeat of France in the War of Spanish Succession (1701-14)1 also sealed the fate of Rákóczi’s struggle in 1711. Fortunately for the Hungarian cause, the Habsburgs’ war against Louis XIV only came to an end with the Peace of Rastatt in March 1714, and the new ruler, Charles III (1711-1740, as Emperor, Charles VI) wanted peace in the Hungarian hinterland. He was ready to reach a compromise with the privileged strata of Hungarian society. In 1712 he summoned the Hungarian Diet, and in his coronation charter he promised to maintain the territorial integrity of Hungary and to govern it in conformity with its customs and statutes. In exchange for that the Hungarian estates accepted the rule of the Habsburgs in Hungary Europe and its Empires
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and recognized succession in the female line of the dynasty in 1723. In that year the hereditary provinces of the Habsburgs and Hungary were declared by the Hungarian Diet to be linked “indivisibly and inseparably”, and to be obliged to defend each other in case of aggression by foreign powers. This compromise worked quite well after the outbreak of the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-1748). The Hungarian estates did not take the opportunity to attain their independence from the Habsburgs. On the contrary, the Hungarian Diet ordered an insurrection of nobles, and offered four million florins of war subsidy and thirty thousand recruits to the young queen, Maria Theresa (1740-1780). The main reason for this offer was that the Hungarian estates recognized that on the whole their situation was more favorable than that of the estates in the Bohemian or Austrian lands. Consequently, the Hungarian estates proved to be faithful to the Monarchy during the Seven Years War (1756-1763) too2. During that war, the Habsburgs were not able to regain Silesia, which they had lost in the War of the Austrian Succession. As László Kontler put it, the lessons of the wars made the Viennese court realize that its “vast territory and natural resources destined Hungary for a central role among the bases of the Habsburg Monarchy’s power”3. This was the background of the governmental, administrative and economic reforms launched in the Empire from the 1740s onwards. One of the fundamental elements of these reforms was a program of remodeling the economy of the Habsburg Empire. The first step was taken in Hungary in 1754 with the introduction of new tariff regulations. Inspired by the principles of mercantilism, the government erected an internal customs barrier between Hungary and the other parts of the Empire. The government substantially subsidized the development of manufactures and trade in Austria and the Czech lands. The Viennese court intended to modernize agriculture in all parts of the monarchy, but it was its intention to make Hungary the main supplier of foodstuffs and industrial raw materials for the industrial regions of Austria and the Czech lands. Low duties were levied on the manufactured products of the Western provinces delivered into Hungary, and much higher ones on goods that were imported from outside the monarchy. High tariffs were imposed on all kinds of Hungarian goods that were to be exported outside the empire, and also on Hungarian industrial products exported to the Western provinces of the empire. This means that the Habsburg government wanted to establish a division of labor between Hungary and Austria and the Czech lands. These regulations were clearly discriminatory, but the inequality regarding the industrial development of Hungary and the western Habsburg provinces did not emerge as a result of the new regulations, and did not increase as a result of them. The Viennese government tried to develop the established branches of the economy in both halves of the empire: agriculture, the production of food and raw materials in Hungary, and manufactures and industrial output in the western lands4.
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Maria Theresa tried to raise more revenue from Hungary in other ways too. The queen grew increasingly impatient with the insistence of the Hungarian estates on their privileges, especially those concerning taxation. Maria Theresa decided to dispense with the Diet, and for nearly three decades, Hungary was governed by decrees. On the other hand the queen also made some efforts to appease the nobility, and during her reign the growing disaffection between the bulk of the nobility and the monarch did not transform into an open resistance movement5. But with the accession of her son and successor Joseph II (1780-1790) in 1780, the style of Habsburg policy changed markedly. The new monarch did not care about the old compromise at all. Inspired by the ideals of enlightened absolutism, he tried to create […] a unitary state not made up of heterogeneous parts, but established on the clear principles of reason and ruled by one ruler and a centralized bureaucracy and army… Joseph recognized that the privileges of the nobility and the Catholic Church, regional rights and institutions were major obstacles in attaining these objectives”6.
Joseph also tried to centralize the government of Hungary. In May 1784 he made German the language of all official communication and education in Hungary. He argued that Latin was a dead language, and that Hungarian was not civilized enough for the requirements of a modernized government, not to mention the fact that it was spoken by less than 50 per cent of the population of the country. Officials had to learn German within three years. Joseph also ordered a national census and land survey, which were regarded by the nobility as a first step towards abolishing its privileges concerning taxation7. The administrative system of Hungary was traditionally based on the county system, in which the government of the counties was in the hands of the nobility. In March 1785 Joseph abolished the old county system and introduced ten districts, headed by royal commissars appointed directly by the monarch. In August 1785 Joseph “abolished by decree the name serf and conceded the right of free migration, of the free choice of profession and of the free disposition over property to the peasantry”. Through the patent of February 1789 the monarch levied a uniform tax on all landed property, which nobles were also expected to pay8. The measures of Joseph II violated the traditional positions of the privileged groups of contemporary Hungarian society. The counties led by the nobility protested vehemently against the census and the land survey. Due to the resistance of the counties it proved to be impossible to put the language decree into practice. The estates wanted the Diet to be summoned, and dissatisfied nobles devised plans for an insurrection and for inviting an English or Prussian prince to the throne of Hungary. By 1789 Hungary was on the brink of armed revolt9.
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If one compares the position of Hungary within the Habsburg Empire to the position of the mainland colonies in North America within the British Empire in the 1770s and 1780s, many interesting similarities can be found.
The constitutional position of the two territories Before the reforms of Maria Theresa and especially Joseph II, Hungary enjoyed some kind of autonomy and self-government within the empire. The current ruler of the empire was the king or queen of Hungary at the same time, and Hungary had its own legislative body, the Hungarian Diet. The mainland colonies in North America also enjoyed widespread self-government within the British Empire. The king of Britain was the ruler of the colonies, but the colonies also had their own legislative bodies. The governments in Vienna and London were required to approve the decisions of the local legislative bodies, but it was also in the interest of the imperial governments to assure their cooperation. This means that before the reforms of Maria Theresa and Joseph II in Hungary, and before 1763 in North America, the local and imperial elites could reach a well-working compromise. The North American colonies as well as Hungary profited from participation in imperial structures. Both of them needed military assistance for example, against the Turks and the French. This is not to say that the situation on both sides of the Atlantic was the very same. The two systems of representation were very different. In the Hungarian Diet only the traditional estates (nobility, Catholic clergy, inhabitants of the so-called royal free towns) were represented, and they constituted a small minority of the total population. It is true that colonial assemblies were also controlled by the local elites, but in North America far more people had a say in politics than in Hungary. The social structure of Hungarian society was also very different, of course. In Hungary serfdom was still in existence and serfs constituted by far the largest stratum of society. The bourgeoisie was much smaller and weaker, and society was still dominated by the privileged estates of the nobility and the Catholic clergy10.
The reasons for the split between the peripheries and the cores of the empires
Both empires were deeply involved in the international conflicts of the 18th century. It is very interesting that the attitude of the two elites concerning these wars was quite similar again. They supported the war efforts of the empires, but always in view of their own special interests. The consequences of the Seven Years War were also similar in Hungary and North America. The British government initiated a new policy towards the colonies at the end of the war, in order to reorganize the structure of the enlarged empire. The Viennese court experimented with the same, in order to mobilize the resources of the empire to be able to take revenge. Both states became severely indebted, and in order to raise revenue, imperial governments tried to invent more efficient gov-
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ernmental structures. In doing so, the Viennese and the British governments kept in view the ideal of a more centralized and unified empire, serving basically the interests of the imperial centers. They subordinated the local interests of their peripheries to the welfare of the empire as a whole11.
The means of imperial intervention Mercantilist economic policy The economic policies of both empires were inspired mainly by mercantilism. In mercantilist theory, the value of an empire came to be defined by its utility as both a supplier of raw materials and a market for finished products. To promote its economic interests, the British government introduced several measures for regulating its colonial economy during the 17th century and in the first half of the 18th century12. But British administrations in the first half of the 18th century also developed an approach to colonial affairs known as “salutary neglect”. The result of this policy was that the executive power was occasionally lax and always selective in the enforcement of legislation. This meant that the colonists “enjoyed the benefits of British protection and the advantages of trade within the imperial system, while they avoided many of the restrictions aimed at them”13. The Hungarian economy was in a similar position within the Habsburg Empire in the first half of the 18th century. The expulsion of the Turks did provide Hungary with a chance to revive its economy. The growing demand for foodstuffs in the more populous and industrialized Western Habsburg provinces stimulated Hungarian agricultural production. This development was suited to the plans of the Viennese court. Consequently, the Habsburg government, just like the British government in North America, tried to promote the sectors of Hungarian economy that seemed to be the most useful from the point of view of the imperial center. The Viennese court promoted the introduction of better methods of cultivation and animal husbandry in Hungary. It helped to popularize such new plants as corn, tobacco, the potato, hemp, and the mulberry tree in Hungary. Since most cultivated lands were in the hands of the nobility and the Catholic Church, these developments proved to be profitable for the privileged estates of Hungarian society. Under these circumstances they were ready to reach a compromise with the Habsburgs, and to accept the integration of the country into the empire14. But under the pressure of urgent need for the reorganization of the structure of their empires, both imperial governments ended the compromises of former years. The Viennese court introduced the new tariff regulations of 1754, and made preparations for the reform of the tax system. The London government also invented new methods to raise revenue in the colonies, and to tighten the control of them15. And in contrast to the former decades, decision-makers in Vienna and London made it clear that they were determined to enforce the new regulations. Europe and its Empires
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The reaction of the Hungarian estates and the North American colonists to the new intervention of imperial centres
Fluctuations in the balance of power On both sides of the Atlantic a peculiar fluctuation was observable in the relationship between the imperial peripheries and centres during the 18th century. The oscillation of the pendulum depended upon the actual balance of power between the two sides. The passing of the Declaratory Act in 1766 after the repeal of the Stamp Act, the Townshend Acts a year later in the British Empire, and the accession of Joseph II to the throne in 1780 in the Habsburg Empire, were clear signs that both imperial governments were determined to continue their administrative reforms. The role of the local legislations In the North American mainland, the colonial assemblies were bastions of local selfgovernment and centers of resistance against the encroachments of the British government. In Hungary, local government and administration were managed by the county assemblies, in which only the nobility was represented. These assemblies were not only bastions against the encroachments of the Habsburgs, but also the main defenders of the traditional privileges of the nobility. No wonder that one of the principal aims of Joseph II was to eliminate the counties from the administrative system of the country. Instead of having more than sixty counties, he organized ten districts, which were headed by loyal royal commissars. The twofold aim of this measure was to rationalize and modernize the administration of the empire, and to crush the resistance of the Hungarian nobility. The British government also tried to crush the resistance of the colonial assemblies, and loyal colonial governors had the same conflict with the assemblies as the royal commissars with the counties in Hungary16. Loyalists in British North America and Hungary Nevertheless, not all Hungarians were hostile towards the measures of Joseph II. He had quite a little group of devoted followers, the Hungarian Josephists. They realized the backwardness of their homeland, and as faithful disciples of the Enlightenment, they had confidence in an enlightened monarch. As royal commissars and other civil servants appointed directly by Joseph, Hungarian Josephists played a crucial role in Hungarian state administration during his reign. They were shocked by the resistance of their compatriots to the “benevolent” reforms of Joseph. But they were also Hungarians who worried about some their ruler’s measures, especially the language decree and the subordination of Hungarian interests to the ideal of a centralized monarchy. The American loyalists, especially the royal governors of American origin – Thomas Hutchinson (1711-1780), the last civilian royal governor of Massachusetts, is the best
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example – were in a very similar position in revolutionary North America. They also tried to reconcile their loyalty to the mother country and their homeland. On the other hand, loyalists constituted a much larger proportion of colonial society than the tiny fraction of Hungarian Josephists. According to some estimates, loyalists constituted some 20-30 per cent of the total population of the thirteen North American colonies, and the representatives of all social strata could be found among them. The proportion of Hungarian Josephists in the total population was much lower and they were almost exclusively noblemen and intellectuals17. The role of the local elites Hungarian nobles were eager to maintain their traditional privileges and also their leading role against their social inferiors on the one hand, and they were the defenders of the country’s independence against the absolutist tendencies of the Habsburg emperors on the other. In some ways, colonial elites were in the same position. They dominated the colonial assemblies and they were the leaders of the resistance against the new measures of the British. But on the other hand they were also eager to maintain their privileged position and opposed the radicalization of the revolution18. Similarities in the arguments of the opposition It is very interesting that the arguments used by the local assemblies in Hungary and North America were very similar too. They argued that they simply defended their “ancient rights and liberties” against the tyrannical intrusions and innovations of their respective rulers. They emphasized that they wanted nothing more but to return to the “good old days” of the former compromise19. Changing identities in British North America and Hungary Resistance to the encroachments of the imperial centers proved to be a major catalyst in the birth of modern nationalism and national consciousness in both places. The resistance to the language decree of Joseph gave a major impetus to the movement for the modernization of the Hungarian language. These were the days of the birth of modern Hungarian literature and science. Every “true Hungarian” gentleman and lady wore stylized national costumes to demonstrate their national identity and resistance against Joseph. The breach with Great Britain also forced the American colonists to try to redefine their identity. First, they emphasized that they were the true heirs to English liberties, but after independence, they had to take a step forward and they started to stress their peculiar American characteristics20. The resistance to the measures of Joseph II brought Hungary to the brink of an open revolt. Nevertheless, in contrast to the mainland colonies in North America, this dissatEurope and its Empires
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isfaction with the policy of the imperial center never led to an open rebellion, despite the above-mentioned similarities. Under the pressure of international and domestic events, the disillusioned and mortally ill Joseph revoked all his decrees except the Patent of Toleration and those relating to parishes and the peasantry four weeks before his death, at the end of January 1790. His successor and younger brother, Leopold, shared the fundamental principles but not the rigidity of his brother, and was a more tactical politician. Leopold II (1790-1792) summoned the Hungarian Diet, which ended with a compromise again. The Hungarian estates acknowledged the rule of the Habsburg dynasty in Hungary again, while a law passed by the Diet and adopted by the king, described the country as a “free and independent kingdom”, to be governed by its laws only. The ruler was obliged to summon the Diet every three years and the exclusive right to vote taxes and recruitment was also given to it21. For me, as a Hungarian historian of 18th-century British North America, the most important question is whether contemporary Hungarians were aware of these similarities revealed by a 21st-century historian, or not. On the basis of investigation of contemporary Hungarian press and the ideas of some members of the enlightened elite, I came to the conclusion that contemporary Hungarians were well aware of the similarities in the position of Hungary and the British colonies in North America, and they used the example of the American colonies to analyze the situation in their homeland. I would like to demonstrate this through analysis of the works of Gergely (Gregory) Berzeviczy (1763-1822), the outstanding economic theorist of his age22. Berzeviczy, who was among the first admirers of Adam Smith in his country, was born into a well-to-do noble family. After the completion of his university studies in Göttingen, Germany, he made an extensive tour of Western Europe. He visited not only Germany and the Austrian Netherlands, but also France and England. Before his journey he joined the Freemasons, and as a Lutheran he admired the Patent of Toleration of Joseph II at that time. But after his visit to the Austrian Netherlands, which also resisted vehemently the encroachments of Joseph, and to England, the home of parliamentary government, his faith in the benevolent reforms of a despotic monarch was shaken23. After the death of Joseph II, Berzeviczy and the enlightened nobility had some hopes in the accession to the throne of Leopold of Habsburg, the younger brother of Joseph, who was still Grand Duke of Tuscany at that time. Leopold summoned the Hungarian Diet after a quarter century. In preparing for the Diet, the rebellious traditional nobility, as well as the enlightened reformers, set about formulating their program. Berzeviczy was not an exception. He read out a short statement on May 12, 1789, a few months before the death of Joseph, at the Freemasons’ Lodge at Buda, entitled Meg jegyzések a kőművességről (Notes on Freemasonry). Referring to Joseph’s policy, he noted that, It is the characteristic of human nature that it takes advantage of unrestrained power, and often uses it with cruelty. England, the home of liberty, where humanity and law are held in high esteem, still treated its American colonies with oppressive tyranny. I do not wish to
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sink into an analysis… of whether or not what the Americans did was just. The results are validated. For us, the Americans are the embodiment of a courageous free people24.
It is clear that Berzeviczy used the example of the oppression of the American colonies by Britain as an analogy for the subordination of Hungary to the interests of Austria. He repeated this argument in another lecture delivered at the same Freemasons’ Lodge of Buda a few months later. He began this lecture with the analogy of slavery, so familiar for the American pamphleteers. Quoting Montesquieu, Berzeviczy stressed the demoralizing effect of slavery on the master. His Hungarian audience could interpret this notion as referring to Joseph who was still alive at that time. It was also clear from this argument that under the circumstances of slavery and subordination, even the most benevolent monarch was not able to improve the conditions of Hungary. In this speech, Berzeviczy used the theory of social contract to condemn the measures of Joseph. According to him, Hungary was a free country, which had given her approval to the reign of the Habsburgs in the country only on special conditions. But the Habsburgs repeatedly abused and usurped the rights and privileges of Hungary. In this “long train of abuses and usurpations”25, the rule of Joseph was the last straw, since the monarch himself destroyed the foundations of his contract with the Hungarian nation. Consequently, the contract was null and void, and Hungary was not obliged to be obedient to the Habsburg monarch any more. The logic of Berzeviczy’s argument is the very same as the logic of the American Declaration of Independence. We know that he owned a copy of the American Declaration in the handwriting of one of his friends26. As I mentioned before, Joseph died in January 1790, and Berzeviczy felt that Hungary would seize the opportunity to bring an end to the rule of the Habsburgs in Hungary. He composed a detailed analysis of the rule of the Habsburgs in Hungary in April 1790, in Latin, entitled De Dominio Austriae in Hungaria [On the rule of Austria in Hungary]. In this writing Berzeviczy gave a detailed historical analysis of the relationship of more than three centuries between Hungary and the Habsburgs. Using the theories of natural law and social contract, he argued that the Habsburgs infringed their contract with the Hungarian nation. He wrote: This is reinforced by the examples of countries blessed by freedom and oppressed by tyranny as in the case of Sardinia, America and Belgium; when they had invested the ruler with absolute power and he showed himself unworthy of it, they merely reclaimed the sovereignty bestowed on them, they resumed their former position. And this deed seems as natural as when, in a written contract, if one party were to break the contract, it should become null and void27.
In language similar to that of the American Declaration of Independence, Berzeviczy declared that serfs “are also human beings, equal with us, and they were created by the Creator to the same happiness”28.
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As I mentioned before, due to the clever political maneuvering of Leopold II, the Diet ended with a compromise again, based on the pre-Josephine status quo. In his tract Magyarország kereskedelméről és iparáról [On the Trade and Manufacture of Hungary] written in 1797, Berzeviczy criticized heavily the economic policy of Austria towards Hungary. More than fifteen years after the end of the American Revolution he did not refer to the example of the American colonies directly, but he described Hungary as a colony of Austria. He tried to analyze the effects of the French and Napoleonic wars on the economy of Hungary. An Austrian company had a monopoly in tobacco trade and under these circumstances Hungarian tobacco was not able to compete with American tobacco. Consequently, Hungarian producers could not seize the opportunity created by the Napoleonic wars. Berzeviczy was clearly aware of the pace of economic growth in the United States. Poland was a traditional market for Hungarian products. But, according to Berzeviczy, the third and final partition of Poland, and the “amazing economic development and competition of the United States” could endanger the position of Hungarian products on that market29. In 1814 Berzeviczy tried to convince the leaders of Europe convened at the Congress of Vienna to assist the development of an alternative trade route to the East through Russia. He hoped that Hungary would profit from it. He was a determined adherent of free trade policy and he used again the example of the rapid economic growth of the United States to convince his audience30. In 1819 Berzeviczy summarized his views about political economy. He criticized vehemently the mercantilist policy in general and the mercantilist policy of Austria in particular. He argued that improvement in the Hungarian economy would promote the development of the empire as a whole, including Austria, in the long run. This is the reason why “America promotes the improvement of all of its neighbors[…] since mutual trade is useful for both parties involved”31. Berzeviczy used the example of the United States again to condemn the economic policy of the Habsburg government. On the basis of his analysis of the history of world trade, Berzeviczy came to the conclusion that the core of world trade would move from Europe to America.
Conclusion It is clear that Gergely Berzeviczy was fully aware of the parallels between the position of Hungary and the mainland British colonies in North America. He was a brilliant economic analyst and one of the brightest thinkers of his age. But it is also true that his influence in contemporary Hungary was quite limited. Only a few intellectuals were well informed about the position of the American colonies. Berzeviczy could reach only a limited audience. As I mentioned before he formulated his ideas in speeches for the members of a Freemason’s lodge or in proposals that were never printed or published in his lifetime. Nevertheless, I think it is important to know that there was
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somebody in contemporary Hungary who was not only aware of the parallels between the position of Hungary and the British colonies, but who explained them with great intellectual sophistication.
Notes The War of Spanish Succession ended with three separate peace treaties. France, Spain and Great Britain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Prussia and Savoy concluded the Peace of Utrecht in 1713. France signed the Peace of Rastatt with the Habsburgs and the Peace of Baden with the estates of the German Empire in 1714. L. Kontler, Millennium in Central Europe: A History of Hungary, Budapest 1999, pp. 195-201. On the 18th-century history of the Habsburg Empire in general see J. Berenger, A History of the Habsburg Empire, 1700-1918, Harlow 1997; C.W. Ingrao, The Habsburg Monarchy, 1618-1815, Cambridge 1994.
1
Kontler, Millennium cit., pp. 201-202.
2
Ibid., p. 203.
3
Ibid., pp. 202-205. On the reign of Maria Theresa see K.A. Roider, Maria Theresa, Englewood Cliffs 1973. On the economic policy of Maria Theresa see P.G.M. Dickson, Government and Finance under Maria Theresa 1740-1780, Oxford 1987. On the reforms of Enlightened Absolutism in Hungary see É.H. Balázs, Hungary and the Habsburgs 1765-1800: An Experiment in Enlightened Absolutism, Budapest 1997.
4
Ibid., pp. 205, 213. The queen created a fund for Hungarian nobles to study in Vienna in 1749, and established the Royal Hungarian Bodyguard in 1760. She re-acquired the Saxon towns of Szepes from Poland in 1772, reintegrated some military frontier regions into the Hungarian administrative system, and annexed the port of Fiume (now Rijeka in Croatia) on the Adriatic to Hungary.
5
Ibid., p. 212. On the reign of Joseph II in general see T.C.W. Blanning, Joseph II, Cambridge 1994.
6
Ibid., p. 215.
7
Ibid., p. 217. On the census and land survey see P.G.M. Dickson, Joseph II’s Hungarian Land Survey, in “English Historical Review”, 1991, 106, 420, pp. 611-634.
8
Ibid., pp. 217-218.
9
J.P. Greene, Peripheries and Center: Constitutional Development in the Extended Polities of the British Empire and the United States 1607-1788, New York 1990, pp. 7-76; R. Middleton, Colonial America: A History, 1607-1760, Cambridge, Mass. 1992, pp. 316-339; I.K. Steele, The Anointed, the Appointed, and the Elected: Governance of the British Empire, 1689-1784, in P.J. Marshall (ed.), The Oxford History of the British Empire: The Eighteenth Century, Oxford 1998, vol. 2, pp. 105-127.
10
C. Bonwick, The American Revolution, Charlottesville 1991, pp. 69-77; P. Lucas, American Odyssey, 1607-1789, Englewood Cliffs 1984, pp. 212-218.
11
For example the Navigation Acts of 1651, 1660, 1663, 1673, the Wool Act of 1699, the Trade Act of 1705, the Hat Act of 1732, the Molasses Act of 1733, or the Iron Act of 1750. On British mercantilist policy see J. Hughes, American Economic History, Boston 1990, pp. 65-81.
12
There is still a debate among economic historians about the impact of British rule on the colonial economy. On these debates see Hughes, American Economic History cit., pp. 65-81; Lucas, American Odyssey cit., p. 133. On mercantilism and “salutary neglect” see ibid., pp. 57-72, 127-142.
13
Kontler, Millennium cit., pp. 191-192, 197-201, 209-211.
14
For example: the Proclamation of 1763, the American Revenue or Sugar Act of 1764, the Stamp Act of 1765.
15
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On the colonial assemblies see for example J.P. Greene, Peripheries cit., pp. 19-76; P. Lucas, American Odyssey cit., pp. 169-176. On the role of the counties in Hungary see Kontler, Millennium cit., pp. 215217.
16
It should be also added that regions differed greatly in regard to the proportion of loyalists in them. The proportion hardly exceeded 10 per cent in New England, while in the South as a whole it was around 25-30 per cent. Regarding the middle states we know for example that 27 per cent of adult males voted against independence in Queen’s county (New York) in September 1776. On loyalists see C. Bonwick, The American Revolution, Charlottesville 1991, pp. 96-101. On the Hungarian Josephists see Kontler, Millennium cit., pp. 212-213. On the role of colonial governors see Greene, Peripheries cit., pp. 21-22, 34-42, 46-47. On the life and career of Thomas Hutchinson see B. Bailyn: The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson, Cambridge, Mass. 1974.
17
C. Bonwick, The American Revolution, Charlottesville 1991, pp. 38-42, 45-48, 61-65, 112-114, 126129, 197-198 On Hungarian nobility see Kontler, Millennium cit., pp. 198-200.
18
B. Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, Cambridge, Mass. 1967; G.S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic 1776-1787, Chapel Hill 1969. J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition, Princeton 1975; G. Barany, Hoping Against Hope: The Enlightened Age in Hungary, in “American Historical Review”, 1971, 76, 1, pp. 319-357; P.F. Sugar, The Influence of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution in EighteenthCentury Hungary, in “Journal of Central European Affairs”, 1958, 17, pp. 331-355.
19
J.P. Greene, Empire and Identity from the Glorious Revolution to the American Revolution, in Marshall (ed.), Oxford History of the British Empire cit., pp. 208-230 Kontler, Millennium cit., pp. 215-216.
20
Kontler, Millennium cit., pp. 217-220.
21
On the life and works of Berzeviczy see J. Gaál, Berzeviczy Gergely élete és művei, Budapest 1902, pp. 15-220; É.H. Balázs, Berzeviczy Gergely a reformpolitikus 1763-1795, Budapest 1967, pp. 7-216; G. Závodszky, American Effects on Hungarian Imagination and Political Thought, 1559-1848, Highland Lakes 1995, pp. 45-46; Kontler, Millennium cit., pp. 213, 219, 221-222, 228, 234.
22
Balázs, Berzeviczy cit., pp. 7-133.
23
G. Berzeviczy, Bemerkungen über Mauerey, Den 12 May 1789, in Balázs, Berzeviczy cit., pp. 313-316 and G. Závodszky, American Effects on Hungarian Imagination and Political Thought, 1559-1848, Budapest 1995, pp. 45-46.
24
G. Berzeviczy, Über Oesterreichs Grundsätze in der Regierung Ungarns, in Balázs, Berzeviczy cit., pp. 317-326. According to É. H. Balázs, the argument in this writing by Berzeviczy was heavily influenced by the social contract theory of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Balázs, Berzeviczy, cit., p. 147.
25
Balázs, Berzeviczy cit., p. 145.
26
G. Berzeviczy, Ausztria uralma Magyarországon, in K. Ballai (ed.), A magyar függetlenségi nyilatkozatok története, Budapest 1935, pp. 37-56 and Závodszky, American cit., p. 45.
27
Ibid., p. 55.
28
G. Berzeviczy, Magyarország kereskedelméről és iparáról, in J. Gaal, Berzeviczy Gergely élete és művei, Budapest 1902, p. 250.
29
G. Berzeviczy, Az északi kereskedelemnek széleskörűvé tétele, in Gaal, Berzeviczy cit., p. 309.
30
G. Berzeviczy, A közgazdaságról, in Gaal, Berzeviczy cit., p. 52.
31
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Bibliography Bailyn B., The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, Cambridge, Mass. 1967. Id., The Ordeal of Thomas Hutchinson, Cambridge, Mass. 1974. Balázs É.H., Berzeviczy Gergely a reformpolitikus 1763-1795, Budapest 1967. Id., Bécs és Pest-Buda a régi századvégen, Budapest 1987. Id., Hungary and the Habsburgs, 1765-1800: an Experiment in Enlightenment Absolutism, Budapest 1997. Barany G., Hoping Against Hope: The Enlightened Age in Hungary, in “American Historical Review”, 1971, 76, 1, pp. 319-357. Berenger J., A History of the Habsburg Empire, 1700-1918, Harlow 1997. Berzeviczy G., Ausztria uralma Magyarországon, in Ballai K. (ed.), A magyar függetlenségi nyilatkozatok története, Budapest 1935, pp. 37-56. Blanning T.C.W., Joseph II, London 1994. Bonwick C., The American Revolution, Charlottesville 1991. Dickson P.G.M., Government and Finance under Maria Theresa 1740-1780, Oxford 1987. Id., Joseph II’s Hungarian Land Survey, in “English Historical Review”, 1991, 106, 420, pp. 611-634. Gaál J., Berzeviczy Gergely élete és művei, Budapest 1902. Good D.F., The Economic Rise of the Habsburg Empire, 1750-1914, Berkeley 1984. Greene J.P., Peripheries and Center: Constitutional Development in the Extended Polities of the British Empire and the United States 1607-1788, New York 1990. Id., Empire and Identity from the Glorious Revolution to the American Revolution, in Marshall P.J. (ed.) The Oxford History of the British Empire, Oxford 1998, vol. 2, pp. 208-230. Hughes J., American Economic History, Boston 1990. Ingrao C.W., The Habsburg Monarchy, 1618-1815, Cambridge 1994. Kontler L., Millennium in Central Europe. A History of Hungary, Budapest 1999. Lucas P., American Odyssey, 1607-1789, Englewood Cliffs 1984. Middleton R., Colonial America: A History, 1607-1760, Cambridge, Mass. 1992. Okey R., The Habsburg Monarchy, 1765-1918: from Enlightenment to Eclipse, Basingstoke 2001. Pocock J.G.A., The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition, Princeton 1975. Roider K.A., Maria Theresa, Englewood Cliffs 1973. Steele I.K., The Anointed, the Appointed, and the Elected: Governance of the British Empire, 1689-1784, in Marshall P.J. (ed.), The Oxford History of the British Empire: The Eighteenth Century, Oxford 1998, pp. 105-127. Sugar P. F., The Influence of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution in Eighteenth-Century Hungary, in “Journal of Central European Affairs”, 1958, 17, pp. 331-355. Wood G. S., The Creation of the American Republic 1776-1787, Chapel Hill 1969. Závodszky G., American Effects on Hungarian Imagination and Political Thought, 1559-1848, Highland Lakes 1995.
Europe and its Empires
The Russian Empire: Main Features and Particularities Victor N. Zakharov
Moscow State Regional University
Abstract From the 18th to the early 20th century the Russian Empire had many features in common with other empires. Thus, it would be an exaggeration to insist on the ‘peculiarity’ of its historical development, social structure and foreign policy. Indeed Russia, like other empires, pursued a policy of territorial expansion. It included different countries of unequal political and administrative status. At the same time there are some specific features that differentiate Russia from other European empires. Of these one should mention the high level of centralisation of power, the consolidation of the elite and the multinational character of that elite, the significant role of Russian tradition, indissolubly linked with Orthodox religion in imperial ideology, and the low living standards of the ‘dominant’ population – the Russians. Российская империя официально существовала с 1721 по 1917 гг. Она представляла собой монархию, под властью которой находилась обширная территория, включавшая различные страны с неодинаковым политическим и административным статусом, с многонациональным и поликонфессиональным населением. То же можно сказать и о других державах имперского типа. Очевидно, что разного рода версии об исключительном своеобразии исторического пути России, выглядят, по меньшей мере, преувеличением. Россия оставалась типичной континентальной империей, во многом напоминая империю Габсбургов или Османскую империю. Некоторое сходство, каковое в частности, проявилось в освоении Сибири, имелось у России и с так называемыми «транc-океанскими» колониальными империями, в частности с Британской. Вместе с тем Российская империя обладала целым рядом особенностей. Она выделялась исключительными масштабами своей территории, которая представляла собой непрерывный континуитет, в рамках которого проживало множество народов, крайне многообразных по укладу жизни и быта, верованиям, происхождению.
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Правящий класс Российской империи был многонациональным по своему составу и генезису. Российское дворянство, высшая бюрократия в значительной мере формировались из представителей знати многих народов, населявших империю (выходцев из татарской Орды, польских магнатов и шляхты, князей Кавказа, немецких баронов Восточной Прибалтики и др.), а также иммигрантов из стран зарубежной Европы. Рост могущества Российской империи в 18 – начале 19 вв., успехи в территориальной экспансии, были обусловлены высоким уровнем централизации власти и консолидации правящих сословий. Однако, это снижало возможности модернизации в период бурного развития индустриального капитализма во второй половине 19 – начале 20 вв. Тогда же имперская идеология, основанная на православии, оказывалась все в более остром противоречии с ростом национального самосознания народов, населявших Россию. Подобные противоречия во многом обусловили гибель империи в результате революции 1917 г. The Russian Empire was one of the greatest world powers of the early modern era. The Russian state acquired imperial features as early as the period of its formation in the 16th and 17th centuries, i.e. before Russia was officially proclaimed an empire in 1721, during the reign of Peter I. With the demise of Nicholas II in early March of 1917 the Russian Empire ceased to exist. The main trends and peculiarities of imperial Russia’s historic development reflected the most significant features of the Russian state in general. It is important to identify these trends and peculiarities and compare them with those of other empires of the early modern period in order to understand the essence of Russia’s historical development in all periods, including the significance of European and non-European trends in its development. A great number of books and articles published in Russia and other countries are devoted to the Russian Empire and its specific characteristics. Among recent works the most important are key studies by L.V. Milov, B.N. Mironov, D. Lieven, R. Pipes and A. Kappeler. These authors draw on the findings of studies by many other historians, which is naturally the case in studying most general problems in the development of the Russian Empire. As far as strictly historical sources are concerned the most important are legislative acts, international agreements and official statistics. The most significant of these are published, as a rule, in many volumes or in series. In this connection it is necessary to note the Complete Collection of Laws of the Russian Empire, consisting of 128 volumes and containing more than 130,000 legislative acts for the period 1649 - 19131. This collection also contains all the international agreements of the Russian Empire. Statistical studies and surveys allow us to examine the territory, population, cities and villages of the empire, as well as the specific features of its regions and territories. The most fundamental of such documents is the Military Statistical Review of
The Russian Empire: Main Features and Particularities
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the Russian Empire, consisting of 17 volumes and 70 books, published by the General Staff of the Russian Army2, as well as the materials of the first general census of Russia in 1897, published in eight volumes3. Russia presented itself as a typical land empire of the early modern period and in this sense it was similar to other European powers of the type. We generally include the Habsburg and Ottoman empires in this category. (Other European powers – Great Britain, France, Denmark, Spain, Portugal – are usually characterized as transoceanic empires, though the French Empire created by Napoleon I was to a large extent a land empire, as was as the German Empire, “das Zweite Reich” [the Second Empire], founded in 1871.) Across a whole range of basic imperial features Russia did not differ from other European powers of similar status. This should be emphasized, as there is a widespread belief that Russia was something special, having its own lines of development. Like other empires of the time, Russia was a monarchy that controlled an extensive territory including different countries of unequal political and administrative status, with various levels of social development and a multinational and multi-religious population. Russia conducted an active foreign policy aiming at both the acquisition of new territories and the preservation of its own lands. In historiography and in propagandist literature there is no consensus on the ways in which Russia acquired new territories, quite contrary views being expressed. Some thinkers in the West, including Karl Marx himself, noted the particularly aggressive nature of Russian foreign policy4. On the other hand, in the Soviet historiography of the 1970s - 1980s there was an overtly propagandist thesis about the voluntary uniting of many peoples with Russia and about the entirely positive effects of entering into union with Russia for other nations and peoples5. Nevertheless, Russian foreign policy involved different approaches to territorial expansion. Some territories were acquired by conquest (the eastern part of the Caucasus, the northern parts of the Black Sea region, Central Asia, Livonia, Estland, the Central and Lowlands of the Volga region, the south of West Siberia and others). Other countries joined with Russia as a result their own initiatives and resulting agreements (Georgia, Ukraine, the biggest part of Kazakhstan, some nations in the extreme northeast of Europe and others). Furthermore, it happened quite often that some of the countries that united with Russia were situated in a zone of rivalry between two or more powers, and the élite of the smaller countries sought to a choose the suzerain likely to allow the best possibility of preserving their privileges. The territories of other empires were formed in a similar way. In this respect Russia, like other empires, pursued its own geopolitical, strategic and economic interests. In this sense Russia’s imperial expansion does not differ either in methods or aims from the policies of other powers.
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In spite of the fact that all empires possessed a number of common features, each of them, including powers of the same type, had its own peculiarities. The Russian empire is no exception. With regard to the peculiarities of the Russian state, it is important to concentrate primarily on those features that influenced its imperial status, leaving aside Russia’s many other peculiarities, such as the role of the Orthodox Church, the significance of the agrarian sector in the economy, the relatively weak development of urban life, and the persistence of serfdom. In the first place the following basic features of the Russian Empire that can be considered as its peculiarities should be noted: - The particular vastness of Russian territory as a continuous expanse of a land empire - A land empire inhabited by an exceptional variety of nations - The multinational origin and composition of the ruling élite - The unusual position of the ‘dominant’ Russian people in the empire, as regards their standard of living and the extent of their exploitation - The significant role of Russian tradition and Orthodox religion in imperial ideology - The highly centralized control and consolidation of the leading classes, and the upper class’s ability to exploit available resources for pursuing the main objectives of imperial policy - The contradictory role of modernization in determining the high point of the empire in the 18th and early 19th centuries as well as its decay and ruin in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries
The Russian territory was formed not as a result of exploration of overseas colonies, but by joining with adjacent countries and territories. The territories of other land empires were built similarly. However Russian territorial expansion was perhaps the greatest success, taking into consideration the size of the territory. Of all other European land empires Russia possessed the vastest territory, exceeding Turkey and Austria with their possessions, to say nothing of the French and German empires, which appeared in the 19th century. The territory of the Russian Empire at the end of the 19th century comprised 22.4 million sq. km, whereas Austria-Hungary comprised 0.6 million sq. km. The Ottoman empire at its height controlled up to 6.2 million sq. km. At the end of the 19th century only Great Britain with all its possessions had a greater territorial area (25.2 million sq. km)6. Already by the early 19th century Russia had possessions on three continents – in Europe, Asia and North America7. Moreover, Russian possessions from Europe to America constituted an unbroken area, unlike the case of the so-called transoceanic empires. But what accounts for such a large-scale spread of the Russian territory, which began long before Russia officially declared itself an empire? The following factors should be pointed out:
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- its effective military policy, particularly in the 18th century (The conditions providing for such success will be explored later.) - the historic fates of nearby states - the geographical position of Russia - the colonizing movement of peasantry
The decay of the states surrounding Russia falls within the period of the 16th-18th centuries. The disintegration of the Golden Horde, the most extensive state created by Genghiz Khan’s descendants in Eurasia, occurred in the 15th century. The Khanates, which appeared as a result of the disintegration of the Golden Horde (Kazan, Astrakhan, Siberia) in the 16th century could not resist the expansion of the Moscow state and were joined to it. The significant extension of the territory of Russia westward in the 17th-18th centuries was conditioned by the decay and crisis of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (Rzeczpospolita), and the weakening of Sweden and Turkey during the 18th century8. Other land empires of Europe had no such obvious advantages as Russia had. The Habsburg Empire was located in the centre of Europe surrounded by rather densely populated lands and powerful states. The Ottoman Empire had strong enemies not only in the west, but also on their own eastern borders with Iran9. Russia is situated in the north of the Eurasian continent. At that time it was a sparsely populated region, a periphery of Europe. On the one hand, this circumstance objectively slowed down the rates of economic and social development of Russia; on the other hand, it promoted the extension of its territory. Many areas extending outward from the historic core of the Russian state were sparsely populated and came to be colonised by Russian peasants. As a result farming had extended throughout the vast territory. Such colonising activity on the part of Russian peasants was also one of the factors that promoted the extension of the Russian territory, particularly in the northeastern direction, as well as in the south (the region of the “Wild Field”, then the northern parts of the Black Sea region), in the south-east (Trans-Volga region), and, finally, exploration of Siberia and the Far East. Thus, with agricultural colonization as a factor of territorial expansion, as well as conquest, 18th-century Russia resembled some trans-oceanic empires. One may comment on the obvious analogy between the exploration of Siberia and other fringes of the Russian Empire on the one hand, and colonization of the “Wild West” in North America, exploration of South Africa and Australia by white colonizers etc, on the other hand. The analogy will be more obvious when we recall that during the 18th and early 19th centuries hundreds of thousands of peasant-colonists from the countries of Central and South-Eastern Europe arrived in Russia. First of all there were Germans, as well as Serbs and Greeks, Bulgarians who settled in the south of Ukraine, in the Volga and Trans-Volga regions. For them the sparsely populated territory of the Russian Empire was the same as the New World for the emigrants from England, Ireland, France, Spain and the German states. Europe and its Empires
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It is the composition of its nations and lands that gives the Russian state imperial status in the full sense. Strictly speaking the Russian state was multinational in character from the very beginning of its existence. Without mentioning the epoch of Kievan Rus, the Moscow state at the end of the 15th century included many peoples that had lived in the northeast of Europe from ancient times. In the 18th and 19th centuries, at the high point of territorial expansion, the Russian Empire comprised up to 200 different nations. Yet it is not the number of nations but their extraordinary variety, a characteristic also of trans-oceanic empires, which was most unusual for a European land empire. Thus, in the multinational Habsburg Empire nearly all nations were Christian and did not differ much in their levels of cultural and social development. In the same way in the Ottoman Empire the majority of population were Muslims, though they spoke different languages. In Russia, however, all types of economies and social organization co-existed: huntsmen and fishermen living in tribes in Siberia and the Far North; cattle breeders and nomads in Asia; countries and nations having developed husbandry, urban life and multicultural traditions of state (the Transcaucasia, the Baltic states, the lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Crimea). For a long time, at least during the whole 18th century, imperial authorities kept to the principle of non-intervention in the way of life of the nations and tribes that had joined with Russia, preserving many privileges of the local elite. In a number of regions the form of local government that had existed before Russian rule was preserved for a long time. For instance, up to the middle of the 18th century the hetman10 rule in Levoberezhnaya [Left-bank] Ukraine and Magdeburg law in the cities of Livland (Livonia) and Estland (up to 1780s) were preserved. In the early 19th century (up to the rebellion of 1831) the Polish Kingdom (the Polish lands incorporated into Russia) had its own constitution and the autonomy of Finland survived up to 1917. The Kazaks of the Little Horde (Zhuz) and the Middle Horde, who were incorporated into Russia in the middle of the 18th century, kept their divisions into clans and tribes and their patriarchal slavery, the power of the tribal elite (bays) resting on common laws. The principle of tolerance in questions of faith was also observed: each nation, including foreigners, enjoyed freedom of religious belief. Still, national and regional policies were to a considerable degree “asymmetric” in that the degree of autonomy and self-government at the fringes of the empire varied. In some regions (the Crimea, the Caucasus) all structures of local administration were quickly liquidated as soon as they became fully incorporated into the Russian state. Even in this case, however, the daily lives of the people remained unaffected. A similar policy is typical of many other imperial powers, but, in the Russian case, one can notice certain particularities in the position of the Russian people and the composition of the ruling class. As has been stated in specialised studies, Russians, though the dominant nation of the empire, on the whole had a lower standard of living than a number of other nations in the empire. In their level of literacy, their share of intellectu-
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als and qualified workers and incomes per capita they were inferior to the majority of nations in the western regions of the empire, as well as Kazan and Crimean Tatars11. In comparison with many other nations, Russians bore the heaviest tax burdens and other obligations to the state. Thus, capitation, the main direct tax of the empire, was mainly levied on the Russian population. During the 18th century it was gradually extended to the Baltic states, Byelorussia and Ukraine. Siberian tribes paid jasak, a special tax charged on fur obtained from hunting. But from a per capita analysis it follows that the cost of the jasak charge on fur was several times less than capitation. The majority of the Russian nations were exempt from military recruitment obligations, i.e. the requirement to supply soldiers for the army fell primarily on Russians12. Finally the population of the central, mainly Russian provinces, as well as peasantry of the Ukraine, Byelorussia and Baltic states, was subjected to the heaviest exploitation in Europe in the form of serfdom. The upper class of the Russian Empire – the gentry, as well as the bureaucracy – had quite a multinational character. The Russian monarchy willingly attracted descendants of people from other countries to their service and actively cooperated with the elite of many incorporated lands. The representatives of the local elite were easily incorporated into the ruling class of the empire. Conversion to Orthodoxy was desirable, but not obligatory. Usually it was the Muslims who converted to Orthodoxy. The adherents of non-Orthodox Christian religions could retain the faith of their forefathers while occupying high posts in the Russian empire. Certainly in many other European countries there were descendants of immigrants from other countries or representatives of ethnic groups among ruling classes. But in Russia this was one of the most important factors defining the ruling elite. For example, in 1786, of 90 representatives of the higher level of the bureaucracy (heads of central departments, governors, members of the Imperial Council) 19, that is, approximately 20%, were immigrants from Western Europe or their descendents13. As far back as the Middle Ages a lot of descendents of immigrants from the Golden Horde entered the Russian gentry. There were dozens of their descendants amongst Russian noble surnames of the 18-19th centuries, including those who were celebrated for their activity in the field of Russian culture (Karamzin, Derzhavin, Turgenev, Aksakov and others.). An enormous contribution to the development of Russian national culture in the early 19th century was made by Mikhail Lermontov (the descendant of a russified Scotsman), Nikolai Gogol and Mikhail Glinka (whose ancestors were Polish nobles), and even Aleksandr Pushkin was a great-great-grandson of an immigrant from Africa. The descendants of immigrants from the Caucasus also became a part of the Russian nobility: since the 16th century – the princes Cherkassky, then the offspring of the royal Georgian dynasty of Bagratid, and a great number of princes were of Georgian and Armenian origin. Some men whose origins lay in western European countries had brilliant careers in the Russian administration and military service: Andrey Osterman, Europe and its Empires
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Burkhard Munnich and Deodat Blumentrost (German), Jakob Bruce (Scottish), Peter Lassie (Irish), Samuel Greig (Scottish), Anton Devier (Portuguese), Cornelius Cruis (Norwegian), Andrey Vinius (Dutch). In the 18th century the descendants of the German gentry of the Baltic provinces incorporated under Peter I joined the Russian nobility and high bureaucracy (the best known include the surnames Lewenwolde, Sievers, Pahlen, Barclay de Tolly, barons Korf, Wolf, etc.). The Baltic barons gained particular importance in the country’s administration under Nicholas I, when the political police was headed by Alexander Benckendorf, the diplomatic service by Carl Nesselrode, and the Ministry of finance by Yegor Kankrin. As a result of Russian law extending to Ukraine, the descendants of the leaders of the Zaporozhian Cossacks and figures in the hetman administration in Ukraine (the surnames Kochubey and Bezborodko became famous in Russia), holders of Polish noble surnames (for instance, Czartoryski, Lyubomirsky, Sangushko) and others gained the status of Russian gentry. Examples are easy to multiply. Thus, a Russian imperial elite of complex ethnic origins was formed, standing over the multinational masses of the empire. At the same time all representatives of the ruling class, regardless of their origin and beliefs, wholly supported the Russian imperial idea, faithfully served the Russian monarchs and acquired the Russian language, more or less. In connection with this one should mention A. Kappeler, who considered the Russian Empire up to the middle of the 19th century a “dynastic empire”. This means that the whole ruling class was united not so much by serving Russia as by serving the ruling dynasty of the empire14. While this observation is true on the whole, it should not be overstated. Great significance was attached to the idea that the Russian state was, first of all, a great Orthodox empire. This idea had emerged long before the Romanov dynasty came to power and Russia was officially proclaimed an empire. Thus, Russian imperial ideology rested on deep historical tradition. Special importance was attached to the idea of continuity with reference to former empires. During the formation of the Russian state as a result of northeastern Russian lands being brought under the power of Moscow, the theory of “Moscow – the Third Rome” appeared. This meant that the Russian state was considered a historical successor to two previous empires of the ancient world and the middle ages – the Roman and Byzantine empires. Thereby the Russian state had already gained imperial status at that point. Tradition was of importance in imperial ideology for quite a number of European powers, but in Russia, the idea of tradition was linked indissolubly with Orthodox religion. The essence of the theory of “Moscow – the Third Rome” is that Russia remained the only Orthodox power, and consequently, the single stronghold of the true Christian faith in the world, the only hope for the salvation of mankind15. One cannot help observing here a messianic idea, peculiar to the largest empires. In 1547 Ivan IV, Ivan the Terrible, took the title of tsar. This Russian word derives from the Latin Caesar – the title of Roman and Byzantine emperors. In this respect Peter I’s
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adoption of the imperial title was nothing new; it did not mean the acquisition by Russia of another earlier, now inappropriate status. In this case it merely meant the translation of the Russian word tsar into a title that was more comprehensible for Europe. It is obvious that no one spoke about succession to Byzantium in Peter’s times, as this was a period of rapid westernization, but the traditional idea of continuity from Ancient Rome and particularly Byzantium to the Russian Empire was repeatedly actualized in the 18th and 19th centuries, primarily in foreign policy programs, for example, the Greek project in the reign of Catherine II and the slogan “The Cross on Saint Sophia” proclaimed during World War I. The traditional basis of Russian imperial ideology is closely connected with religion and faith. The Russian Empire was perceived as an Orthodox power, which was strengthened by the fact that after abolition of the patriarchate by Peter I, the emperor became the head of Russian Orthodox Church. In the 1830s the quintessence of imperial ideology was formulated in three main interconnected elements: “Orthodoxy – Autocracy – Nationality”. Hereafter, this idea gained greater importance in official propaganda. However the traditional idea of Russia as a great Orthodox power was in clear contradiction with the increasingly complex multinational composition of its subjects. With the growth of national consciousness among the nations of the empire, including Russia, in the 19th century this contradiction became increasingly obvious. It could be solved either by way of Russification of the empire’s nations, or the formation of national states and the actual disintegration of the empire. At the end of the 19th century the government attempted a more active Russification policy that caused further intensification of national contradictions. A further peculiar feature of the 18th-century Russian Empire is its immense success in the affirmation of its imperial status, including the extension of its possessions, especially in the west and southwest. These achievements are strikingly obvious in comparison with other land empires, Austria and Turkey, which had much in common with Russia. Вut in what aspects did Russia manage to surpass them? The difference between the Russian Empire and the other two land empires in terms of its inner structure is in the fundamentally different level of centralization, efficiency and methods of mobilization of available resources for maintaining and strengthening imperial status. This is influenced by the specific role of the state that is in its turn connected with the main particularities of Russian historic development. In this regard, as it is noted in modern Russian historiography, natural conditions and geographical position were the most significant factors. The question of whether Russia belongs to Europe or Asia, to the West or to the East has often been raised. But it should be borne in mind that first of all Russia is neither a western nor an eastern country, but a northern one. The severe natural conditions of Northern Europe reduced profits from tillage to a minimum. This hindered the deEurope and its Empires
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velopment of capital and enterprise. To mobilize scanty resources for solving national problems (security, development of the infrastructure) strict measures of enforcement were needed, and could only be guaranteed by despotic rule16. The dominance of enforcement at all levels encouraged the establishment and long retention of serfdom, as a particularly heavy form of exploitation of the peasantry. The ruling class under these circumstances was consolidated around the authorities, first, because the main resources of the country were concentrated in the state’s hands, and secondly, because only autocracy could ensure the stability of serfdom, in which the ruling class was highly interested. The power of the Russian state was concentrated to a high degree on the ruling elite surrounding the throne. Russian nobility invariably supported the monarch, much more consistently than elsewhere in Europe. The thesis typical in Russian and foreign historiography of the boyars [high-ranking members of the aristocracy] struggling against the tsar, similar to the opposition of European nobles to their kings, looks obviously exaggerated and stereotyped. In Russian history there are many more examples of unquestioning support for the monarch on the part the elite and all the gentry than of real opposition. Thus, before 18th century autocratic power, consolidation of the elite around the throne and the high degree of exploitation of common people represented the essential premise for the creation of a far more powerful imperial state. In the 18th century the established system of autocracy and serfdom underwent efficient modernization, beginning with the reforms of Peter I, which promoted the conspicuous success in imperial expansion. Drawing on western European experience, the Russian Empire managed to create a powerful army and fleet, strengthen the government, carry out the secularization of culture and provide for the establishment of science and the development of heavy industry. All this occurred under conditions of reinforced centralization, allowing for efficient mobilization of (usually scarce) resources available to promote imperial interests. Efficient modernization and a high level of centralization are a striking particularity of the Russian Empire in the 18th century, unlike, at least, the Turkish Empire, where sultan’s power was also authoritative. But the Ottoman Empire, having been late to modernize, suffered several defeats in collision with its European enemies, and first of all with Russia. In the Ottoman Empire (and possibly in other powers that were adversaries of Russia), the authorities failed to obtain such a high degree of centralization and consolidation of the ruling class. In Turkey many provinces of the empire felt rather independent from the centre, with significant resources remaining at the disposal of local satraps and oligarchs17. However the modernization of 18th-century Russia had a limited and contradictory character. Europeanization occurred in the spheres of administration, the armed forces, culture, sciences and technology. In the sphere of social relations, it was serfdom that
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dominated, as before. The cities and businessmen remained heavily dependent on the autocracy and its bureaucracy. Modernization barely affected property relations, the circulation of commodities and capital, and the security of class interests. Europeanization touched only the upper classes. As a result, the differentiation between the Europeanized gentry and bureaucracy, and the remaining masses of the empire increased. These contradictions could not but be revealed later. That is why, when the industrial revolution occurred in some of the leading empires of the West in the 19th century, Russia was not able to support accelerated development because of the backwardness of its social and economic structure18. From the middle of the 19th century it became clear that it was lagging behind. This was particularly evident in its defeat in the Crimean war. The possibilities for limited modernization as in the 18th century had been exhausted and the above-mentioned contradictions became more and more perceptible. In spite of all their positive importance, the reforms of 1860s were not able to solve these contradictions completely. This conditioned the decay and ruin of the Russian Empire at the beginning of the 20th century. I say ruin because the so-called “Soviet empire” created by Bolsheviks was in many respects a state of a type other than an empire in the classical sense of the word.
Notes Полное собрание законов Российской империи, собрание 1, Т. 1-40, Saint Petersburg 1830; собрание 2, Т. 1-55, Saint Petersburg 1830-1884; собрание 3, Т. 1-33, Saint Petersburg 1885-1917.
1
Военно-статистическое обозрение Российской империи, Т. 1-17, Saint Petersburg 1848-1858.
2
Первая всеобщая перепись населения Российской империи 1897 г., Вып. 1-8, Saint Petersburg18971905.
3
K. Marx, Secret Diplomatic History of the Eighteenth Century and The Story of the Life of Lord Palmerston, London 1969, pp. 108, 122-124.
4
М.П. Ким (ред.), Советский народ – новая историческая общность людей. Становление и развитие, Мoscow 1975, p. 24.
5
La Grande Encyclopédie inventaire raisonné des sciences, des letters et des arts, Paris, n.d., vol. 4, p. 782; vol. 11. p. 1103; vol. 28, p. 1151; vol. 31, p. 515.
6
Russia had possessions in North America. It had owned Alaska since the 18th century, and sold it to the United States in 1867.
7
D. Lieven (ed.), The Cambridge History of Russia, Vol. 2, Imperial Russia, 1689-1917, Cambridge 2006, p. 13.
8
Ibid., p.15.
9
The term hetman here refers to the head of the autonomous Ukrainian government, which existed from the entry of Left-bank Ukraine into the Russian state in the mid-17th century up to the abolition of hetmanate in the mid-18th century.
10
Б.Н.Миронов, Социальная история России периода империи (XVIII – начало XX в.), Т.2, Saint Petersburg 2000, p. 47.
11
А.Б.Каменский, Российская империя в XVIII веке: традиции и модернизация, Moscow 1999, p. 305.
12
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Victor N. Zakharov
Author’s calculation based on Н.А. Ратынский, Двор и правительство в России сто лет назад, in “Русский архив”, 1886, 2, p. 149-176.
13
A. Kappeler, Russland als Vielvölkerreich. Entstehung. Geschichte. Zerfall, Munich 1992, pp. 198-199.
14
В.Н. Синицына, Третий Рим. Истоки и эволюция русской средневековой концепции (XV-XVI вв.), Мoscow 1998, p. 238.
15
Л.В. Милов, Великорусский пахарь и особенности российского исторического процесса, Мoscow 2006, p. 534, 543.
16
D. Lieven, Empire. The Russian Empire and Its Rivals, London 2000, pp. 146-147.
17
В.В.Шелохаев, Основной фактор крушения Российской и Советской империи, in Уткин А.И. (ed.), “Tысячелетняя история России. Проблемы, противоречия и перспективы развития”, Moscow 2004, p. 371.
18
Bibliography Зайончковский П.А., Российское самодержавие в конце XIX столетия (политическая реакция 80-х – начала 90-х годов), Моscow 1970. Kahan A., The Plow, the Hammer and the Knout, Chicago 1985. Каменский А.Б., Российская империя в XVIII веке: традиции и модернизация, Moscow 1999. Kappeler A., Russland als Vielvölkerreich. Entstehung. Geschichte. Zerfall, Munich 1992. Lieven D. Empire. The Russian Empire and Its Rivals, London 2000. Lieven D. (ed.), The Cambridge History of Russia, Vol. 2. Imperial Russia, 1689-1917, Cambridge 2006. Marx K., Secret Diplomatic History of the Eighteenth Century and The Story of the Life of Lord Palmerston, London 1969. Милов Л.В. (ред.), История России с древнейших времен до начала XXI века, Т. 1-3, Моscow 2006. Милов Л.В., Великорусский пахарь и особенности российского исторического процесса, Моscow 2006. Мироненко С.В., Самодержавие и реформы. Политическая борьба в России в начале XIX в., Moscow 1989. Миронов Б.Н., Социальная история России периода империи (XVIII – начало XX в.), Т. 1-2, Saint Petersburg 2000. Pipes R., Russia under the Old Regime, New York 1974. Шелохаев В.В., Либеральная модель переустройства России, Moscow 1996. Id., Основной фактор крушения Российской и Совесткой империи, in Уткин А.И.(ed.) Tысячелетняя история России. Проблемы, противоречия и перспективы развития, Moscow 2004.
The Danish Empire: The Special Case of Iceland Anna Agnarsdóttir
University of Iceland, Reykjavik
Abstract The Danish Empire was at its peak in the 18th century. It comprised the Kingdom of Denmark-Norway, the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, the North Atlantic dependencies of Greenland, the Faroes and Iceland, trading stations in India and on the Guinea coast, the Nicobar Islands off the coast of India and three sugar islands in the Caribbean. How did the King of Denmark acquire this multi-ethnic and disparate empire? What were the driving force and the characteristics of empire? Today Denmark only retains Greenland and the Faroes. How was the Danish Empire lost? This chapter deals with various aspects of the Danish empire, the aim being to compare the Danish domains in order to analyse Iceland’s special status within the Danish empire, a position which was in many ways unique. Í þessari grein er fjallað um danska heimsveldið og stöðu Íslands innan þess. Danaveldi á 18 öld samanstóð af konungsríkinu Danmörk-Noregur, hertogadæmunum Slesvík og Holtsetalandi, hjálendunum þremur í Norður-Atlantshafi, Færeyjum, Grænlandi og Íslandi, verslunarstöðum á Indlandi (Tranquebar og Serampore) og á Gullströndinni í Guineu, Nicobar eyjum og þremur sykureyjum í Vestur-Indíum, St Thomas, St. Jan og St. Croix. Hvernig varð þetta fjölþjóðaveldi til? Hvað einkenndi það? Í dag eru eingöngu Færeyjar og Grænland eftir, að vísu með heimastjórn, en tilheyra enn konungsríkinu Danmörku. Hvernig fóru Danir að því að missa nýlendur sínar? Og síðast en ekki síst – hver var sérstaða Íslands í Danaveldi?
The Danish Empire Recently an attempt has been made to put the Danish empire squarely on the map. Two books on the subject have appeared in the last few years: Det danske imperium- storhed og fald [The Danish Imperium – greatness and decline] in 20041 and two years later The Oldenburg Monarchy. An Underestimated Empire?2, a collection of articles on the
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various territories comprising the empire. The authors of the former volume boldly date the beginning of the Danish imperium to the first centuries AD, when the Danes were a force in the Baltic3. Since early medieval times there had existed an imperium which could be called the Danish Empire. In the 9th and 10th centuries the Danes had ruled large regions in northern and eastern England – the Danelaw - and at one point they owned the Orkneys and Shetlands, which famously were pawned as part of the dowry of Margaret, daughter of King Christian I, when she married King James III of Scotland in 14694. In the late medieval period Denmark was the most powerful of the three Nordic countries, the others being Norway and Sweden5. The Danes often squabbled with their neighbour Sweden for hegemony over certain territories such as Skåne, Halland, Bleking and Gotland6. Denmark dominated the Baltic until the rise of Sweden in the 17th century. However, Denmark’s strategic position at the gateway to the Baltic, the source of naval stores for the major maritime European powers, ensured that Denmark was always an important presence in Northern Europe. During the 17th to the 19th centuries, the period under research in this study, the Danish Empire consisted of the Kingdom of Denmark-Norway, the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, trading stations in India (Tranquebar and Serampore) and Guldkysten [the Gold Coast ] on the Guinea coast, as well as the Nicobar Islands off the coast of India. Denmark possessed in addition three sugar islands in the Caribbean: St. Thomas, St. John [St Jan] and St. Croix and last, but certainly not least, the North Atlantic islands of Greenland, the Faroes and Iceland. But was it an empire? The word empire comes from the Latin imperium, which at first meant “sovereignty” or “rule”. Eventually size became a factor and imperium came to mean “rule over extensive, far flung territories, far beyond the original ‘homeland’ of the ruler”, with ‘diversity’ as its essence7. The Danish Empire – this multi-ethnic conglomerate of monarchies, duchies, colonies and dependencies – was little different from other European empires at the time and with possessions in Africa, Asia and the West Indies. It was certainly “far-flung” and “diverse”. To that extent it fits the definition above. The only question regards size, always a relative term and it has to be admitted that the Danish Empire did not compare for example with the immense empires of Britain or Portugal. What united these disparate territories was the same ruler, the King of Denmark8 and the central administration in Copenhagen. Authority was imposed on this far-reaching empire by Crown officials, almost exclusively Danes, and local elites. Military garrisons provided protection. The first question is: How did Denmark aquire her empire?
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The Acquisition of Empire The Duchies: Schleswig-Holstein The Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein had been part of Denmark almost from time immemorial. The history of the relations between them and Denmark is too complicated to tackle in this chapter. However, though the duchies cannot be termed colonies or dependencies Danish scholars traditionally include them when discussing their empire. In brief, Schleswig, a number of petty chiefdoms which had united during the 8th to 10th centuries, was a fief of historical Denmark. Holstein was a fief subordinate to the Holy Roman Empire. King Christian I of Denmark was elected as Duke of Schleswig and Count of Holstein in 1460, which became a dukedom in 14749. Subsequently the duchies were part of the inheritance of the Kings of Denmark-Norway. The Monarchies: Denmark-Norway The monarchies of Denmark and Norway were united in the late 14th century in the person of King Olav III, son of Haakon VI of Norway and Margrethe, daughter of Valdimar IV Atterdag of Denmark. Olav became King of Denmark in 1376 at the age of 16 and four years later, in 1380, succeeded his father as King of Norway and the kingdom of Denmark-Norway was created. Denmark quickly became the dominant partner in the dual monarchy. Though Norway at the time had sovereignty over Iceland, Greenland, the Faroes, the Orkneys and Shetland, the inhabitants of these islands soon came to be regarded as the subjects of the Danish king. During the reign of Christian II, Danish commandants took over the three principal Norwegian fortresses10. Lutheranism was imposed on Norway by Christian III in 1536 and that same year the king’s charter proclaimed that the Norwegian kingdom was “an integral part of the kingdom of Denmark, and subject to the Danish Crown forever.” The Norwegian Council ceased to exist and the main fiefs were ruled by Danish nobles11. The Norwegians were initially governed by officials who were Danes but by the 18th century, however, the majority of the officials were Norwegian12. The Norwegian historian, turned politician, Lars Roar Langslet, writes that after the Reformation Norway hardly had “sufficient resources to ensure ... [its] survival as an independent state”13. The Norwegian Dependencies: The Faroes, Greenland, and Iceland The Faroe Islands became subject to the King of Norway early in the 11th century. In what manner is unclear14. However, in 1273, the Norwegian crown took over the Faroese trade15, and in 1380, when Denmark-Norway was created, the Faroes came under the rule of Denmark, where they still remain. The Faroe Islands were a fief, the owners in the latter part of the 17th century being the Gabel family, who never visited the islands. In 1709 the Crown took over the political administration of the islands, appointEurope and its Empires
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ing a Danish bailiff, and the trade was conducted as a royal monopoly. A fort manned by thirty soldiers was built in Tórshavn. In 1720 the Faroes and Iceland were governed by a joint governor (the stiftamtmand). Only the first one visited the islands and near the end of the century the Faroes were separated from Iceland, becoming part of the province of Zealand (Sjælland). From the economic point of view the consensus seems to be that the Faroes were “of little importance” to Denmark-Norway16 and “meant very little for the state as a whole”17. According to tradition, Eric the Red sailed from Iceland and discovered Greenland ca. 985. Greenland subsequently came under the Norwegian Crown in 1261, the Greenlanders promising to pay a tax but nothing is known of what they expected to gain in return18. The Norse lived in two settlements, both situated on the southwest coast of Greenland. The Western Settlement came to an end ca. 1350 and the inhabitants of the Eastern settlement had disappeared by the end of the 15th century. What the fate of the Norse was or where the Norse settlers may have gone is a subject of great debate and many theories19. After that Greenland was abandoned until the early 17th century when the King of Denmark sent out several expeditions in search of the descendants of the Norse, only finding Inuits. The Danes successfully asserted their claim to the island in 1721 when the Bergen Company established a trading post and the most famous Norwegian missionary, Hans Egede, a mission in Godthảb on the west coast. After the company’s bankruptcy in 1728 Greenland was declared a Royal Crown Colony and efforts were made to settle the country. Twelve military convicts, two female convicts and ten unmarried mothers were sent to Greenland. Before their departure they were married in the garrison church in Copenhagen, lots being drawn to solve the problem of who should marry whom20. Unfortunately most of them died of scurvy. The trade was conducted by a series of monopoly trading companies, culminating in the Royal Greenland Company in 1776 and new trading stations were established along the coast. By 1850 there were thirteen major trading stations and about 50 outposts with 150 Europeans manning them21. Iceland freely united with the Norwegian Crown in 1262, after decades of internal strife. An agreement (the Old Covenant22) was made between the Icelanders and the King of Norway, the Icelanders promising to pay tribute in lieu of the King sending six ships a year from Norway. In 1380, with the unification of Denmark and Norway, Iceland, like the Faroes and Greenland, came under Danish rule. We will return to Iceland later in this chapter. The Colonies The King of Denmark did not wish to be left behind in the race for colonies. Asia, Africa and the Caribbean were all being exploited by European nations in search of commodities such as spices, gold and sugar. The Honourable East India Company had
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been given a charter by Queen Elizabeth I at the end of 1600 granting a monopoly on all trade in the East Indies. The States-General of the Netherlands founded the Dutch East India Company in 1602 granting a monopoly on trade in Asia. King Christian IV followed this trend and the acquisition of colonies by Denmark was based on the mercantilist principles of the age and must be seen in the perspective of European expansion as a whole. India A Danish East India Company [Ostindisk Kompagni] was founded on the Dutch mercantilist model in 161623. This was a joint-stock company with King Christian IV as the major shareholder24. The aim was to establish direct trade with Ceylon and India. Subsequently the first voyage was made in 1618 with five ships, reaching Ceylon and eventually Tranquebar on the Coromandel Coast (about 250 kilometres south of Madras) in 1620. A treaty permitting the Danes to conduct trade was concluded with the Rajah of Tanjore in exchange for European military hardware and an annual sum of 2-3000 rixdollars25. Fort Dansborg was immediately erected and by the end of the 18th century it had a garrison of 24 officers and 100 European soldiers26. Tranquebar was to become the Danish headquarters in India for two centuries and also administered the trade in Bengal and the considerable number of small trading posts on the Malabar Coast. One or two ships a year sailed until 1639 when the trade came to a stop, the primary cause being Christian IV’s involvement in the Thirty Years War. There were no expeditions for the next 25 years. In fact Frederik III in the 1650s and 1660s was seriously attempting to sell the factory to European states such as Brandenburg and France, unsuccessfully27. In 1668 a ship was sent out to Tranquebar. To their surprise the crew still found the Danish flag flying over Fort Dansborg and the Danish garrison in place28. The Danish East India Company retained its monopoly until 1732 when it was reorganised under the name of the Asiatic Company [Asiatisk Kompagni]. In 1772 it lost its monopoly of the Indian trade, paving the way for private mercantile expeditions, though it retained the monopoly of the China trade. Five years later the Indian colonies were taken over by the Crown, appointing a governor and 25 European officials to administer the territory29. In 1755 Serampore, or Frederiksnagore as was its official Danish name, in Bengal was bought from the local Indian ruler. This factory was just north of Calcutta (near modern Bangladesh) and was completely surrounded by British territory to the extent of having to pay duties to the British for the transport of its exports to the coast30. During the late 18th century its importance increased in relation to Tranquebar. The Danes later distinguished themselves by establishing the first university in India at Serampore in 182731.
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The Danes also easily acquired the Nicobars, a group of 19 islands on the sea-route between the Coromandel Coast and the Straits of Malacca, in 1756. European powers had not shown that much interest in them32. On the first of January 1756 they were solemnly proclaimed the Frederik Islands [Frederiksøerne] or New Denmark! The Danes tried several times to colonise the islands, with little success, malaria being the chief hazard. The Nicobars became “a graveyard” for the Danish of Tranquebar, writes the Danish historian Ole Feldbæk33. Thus these islands did not have much significance for the Danish Empire34. Like other European nations the Danes had a waterfront office in Canton35, which received ships every year, and besides this trade was conducted with Sumatra, Ceylon, Java, Manila, and the Isle de France [Mauritius]. Guinea Coast – The Gold Coast The Danes followed the Portuguese, English, Dutch and Swedes to Guinea, forts and trading stations with flags of different nations being dotted along the coast. The Gold Coast was always the most attractive of the West African coastal strips to the Europeans, asserts the Danish historian Georg Nørregård 36. Christian IV (1588-1648) made several unsuccessful attempts to gain a foothold and it was not until 1654 that the first ship was sent from Copenhagen to Guinea. The following year the ship returned with an extremely valuable cargo of sugar cane, ivory, palm oil and gold37. In 1658 the Danes managed to oust the Swedes from Fort Carlsborg, only to lose it the following year. The Danes bought a castle that same year 1659 with coast and harbour from its African king, Hennique, King of Fetu, and Fort Frederiksberg was established only to be lost to the English in 168538. It proved to be very difficult to hold onto the forts against the aggression of other European nations. It was also very important to keep on a friendly footing with the African rulers who supplied the cargo. It was only after 1697 when the West India and Guinea Company [Vestindisk-Guineiske Kompagni] intent on purchasing slaves for its West Indian plantations that a Danish settlement in Guinea gained a permanent place in the economy of Denmark39. Fort Christiansborg became the headquarters. In 1754 the Crown was forced to take on the administration of the Gold Coast forts because the slave trade was not sufficiently profitable for private merchants to take on the burden40. The Crown revoked the company’s monopoly and opened up the trade to most Danish subjects. However, the trade did not prove to be as profitable as expected so it was transferred again to a private company – commonly known as the “Slave Trade Company” only to take over again in 1782 when trade was booming in the wake of the American Revolution. The monopoly was granted to a new company the Royal Danish Baltic-Guinea Trading Company [Kongelige Danske Østersøiske og Guineiske Handels-Kompagni]41. The 1780s saw the greatest expansion of Danish territory with several forts being built42. All in all the Danish territory covered about 10,000 square kilometres, most of it round the Volta estuary43.
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The Caribbean In the 17th and 18th centuries an island in the West Indies was the most prized colonial possesion. The Danes, following the example of other European nations, were eager to gain a foothold in the Caribbean and had some success. The Danish West India-Guinea Company acquired three islands in the Caribbean: St. Thomas in 1672 with one of the best harbours in the Caribbean and St. John in 1718. As both were uninhabited it was a question of planting the Danish flag on the islands and erecting fortifications. Finally, in 1733, St. Croix was purchased from Louis XV. This was Denmark’s most valuable sugar island, “the biggest jewel in the Danish Crown”, in the opinion of one of Copenhagen’s leading merchants, Niels Ryberg44. In 1792 86% of the Danish sugar plantations were in this island. There was also interest in Crab Island45, the next island to the west of the three Danish West Indian Islands, between St. Thomas and Puerto Rico. Crab Island, also called “No Man’s Island”, was, still in the late 18th century, uncolonised, with Spain and England as well as Denmark laying claims to it. At times the Danes had contemplated occupying this island, but the opposition of these two nations had forced them to abandon the idea. However, in the 1780s there were plans afoot for the cession of Iceland to Britain on condition that Britain would support Denmark’s claim to Crab Island. Even though Pitt and Dundas discussed these plans with Danish representatives, nothing came of it46. This is how Denmark acquired an empire: by inheritance (Norway and the duchies), by purchase from the suzerains (trading stations in West Afria, India and St. Croix), by covenant (the North Atlantic dependencies) and by claiming uninhabited islands (St. Thomas and St. John). It is remarkable that nowhere were the Danes initially obliged to use force.
Trade and Empire Trading Companies and the Crown Trade was the driving force of empire. The Danish trading companies, like the West India and Guinea Company and the Asiatic Company, led the way for the establishment of tropical colonies in the early 17th century. They were controlled by Copenhagen merchants but could not survive without the support of the King who granted royal charters, monopolies and other trading privileges to the companies. Among the shareholders were the royal family, leading statesmen, wealthy merchants and other members of the élite. Thus the colonies in Asia and Africa were under the King’s sovereignty even though they were formally administered by private enterprise, by the companies themselves. When a company found itself in a “hopeless economic plight” the Crown stepped in, the King paying a sum which covered both the company’s debts and refunded the full value of the shares to the shareholders47. This eventually happened in all Europe and its Empires
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the colonies, in the Caribbean islands and on the Gold Coast in 1755 and in India in 1777. The factories, lodges and forts were transferred to the Crown and royal officials were appointed, in most cases merchants on the spot, the trade thus benefiting from their expertise. The monopolies were revoked and private enterprise permitted. As the Crown took over new government departments were created in Copenhagen for the central administration of the empire. In the dependencies the same pattern emerged. As has already been seen, the Crown had taken over trade in the Faroes (1709)48 and in Greenland (1776). In 1602 the Danish government introduced monopoly trade in Iceland, a series of trading companies subsequently bidding for the monopoly. The Crown took over in 1774 (until 1787), but owing to a series of natural disasters in the 18th century49 a substantial loss was incurred50. In 1784, with a change of government in Denmark, the commercial situation in Iceland was assessed with an eye to improvement. The new administration was enlightened, favouring liberal policies in the spirit of Adam Smith and the physiocrats. Much discussion took place on the subject of the commercial state of Iceland, many top-ranking Icelanders hoping for complete freedom of trade. This was too radical for the Danish government, but as it was concluded that the trade monopoly was damaging to the Icelanders, the Iceland trade was thrown open to most Danish subjects in 178851. Norwegians and Holsteiners began trading and an Icelandic native merchant class was born. Iceland’s neighbours, the Greenlanders and Faroese, however, at the mercy of their Crown monopoly trades, were prohibited from trading with Iceland. The Danes also considered establishing free trade in the Faroes but the Faroese feared its consequences52. Free trade was finally introduced in Iceland in 1855 and in the Faroes in 1856. Greenland was not left out. The first commission to consider the introduction of free trade was appointed in 1788, to be followed by many others. The dismal conclusion finally reached in 1865 was that the introduction of free trade “would condemn the Inuit to their imminent extinction”53. And the monopoly trade continued. The hub of the empire was Copenhagen. In 1801 Copenhagen was by far the most populous city in the Danish Empire, with 101,000 inhabitants54. Almost all trade was carried on by merchants and shipowners resident in the capital. This was to change in the latter half of the 18th century when, as already mentioned, the monopoly trades were revoked and opened up to private enterprise, sometimes with great success. For instance when in 1772 the Crown revoked the Asian monopoly and permitted private merchants to sail to India these private voyages outnumbered those of the Asiatic Company (that continued to trade) until 1807. An average of 2.5 private ships went out to Asia annually in the mid-18th century. From 1772 this increased to seven and after 1794 to more than 15 voyages a year55. Thus Danish trade both in the colonies and dependencies followed the same trend. Beginning as ventures of trading companies, the trade of both colonies and dependen-
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cies was eventually taken over by the Crown, which, while revoking the monopolies, ensured that the trade was kept firmly in the hands of their subjects in Denmark and the hereditary lands. The Fruits of Empire From India the ships sailed with a cargo of lead, iron and silver to be traded initially for spices, especially pepper, and cotton goods. In the Crown period 1772-1808 the return cargoes consisted almost exclusively of piece goods (textiles), along with spices, saltpetre and bamboo. Silver56 was mostly traded in exchange as well as European goods. The China trade was controlled by the Asiatic Company and the Danes sent two ships to Canton every year during the 18th century, taking out silver and returning home with tea and, to a lesser extent, chinaware. From the Gold Coast came gold, ivory and of course slaves in exchange for muskets and gunpowder, from the Caribbean, sugar cane, tobacco, rum and cotton. Greenland supplied seal and whale-oil, the Faroes (which means Sheep Islands) woollen goods, mainly knitted stockings (fish only became the major export in the 19th century) and Iceland mainly fish, stockfish and klipfish, and train-oil. Finally, Norway exported that prime commodity, timber, as well as fish, iron, silver and copper. The importance of Schleswig-Holstein to the Danish empire lay both in its agriculture and animal husbandry and in its geographical location – and hence in the transfer of goods between the North Sea and the Baltic, connecting the trade route through Russia with the trade routes along the Rhine and Atlantic Coast. Denmark proper was not a country rich in resources. Geographically small, with a correspondingly modest population, this agricultural country had little to export and it was in fact Norway’s export of timber and iron which was of crucial importance to the economy of Denmark-Norway57. Virtually none of the goods exported from Copenhagen to Asia originated in Denmark but came from Norway, Sweden, Russia and the Baltic or from France, in the case of luxury items and wines58. Moreover, 80-90% of the imported Asian goods were re-exported from Denmark at enormous profits to the Asiatic Company59. The Asian trade was by far the most profitable. The number of ships and quantity of goods transported during the years 1772 to 1808 “mark the absolute climax of DanishIndian trade” states Professor Feldbæk. It was a “flourishing” trade even by European standards60. The value of the Asiatic Company’s cargoes from India 1772-1807 was 35 million rixdollars while the most lucrative trade of all was with China. From 1772 to 1807, 61 voyages were made to Canton and the incredible value of the cargoes was about 40,000,0000 rixdollars61. Taking into consideration trade with other Asian destinations Erik Gøbel’s research shows that the average annual value of all Asian cargoes to
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Copenhagen around 1800 was on par with the total government revenues of DenmarkNorway at that time62. The Triangular Trade The possession of forts on the Gold Coast and islands in the Caribbean made a triangular trade possible: at it simplest slaves were transported from the Gold Coast to the Caribbean to work on the plantations, sugar cane was then sent to Copenhagen where a sugar refinery was established and Danish muskets and gunpowder, liquor, textiles and metal goods such as knives and kettles were sent from Copenhagen to the Gold Coast in exchange for the slaves. The Danes began trading slaves from the Gold Coast in 1660, the number of them increasing after the foundation of the West Indian-Guinean Company in 1674, two years after the acquisition of the first Caribbean island, St. Thomas. It has been estimated that about 75,000 slaves were transported by Danish merchants over the Atlantic during the 150 years the slave trade endured. It was abolished in 1803 and the Danes take some pride in being the first country to do so. Slavery itself was another matter and was not abolished until 1848 by the Danish governor Peter van Scholten, of necessity after a slave rebellion on St. Croix63. In 1800, the merchant fleet sailing under the Danish flag was the fourth largest in Europe – after Britain, France and Holland64. The Danish golden age of commerce, the so-called period of flourishing [florissante] trade had its beginnings in the Seven Years War in 1756-63, continuing in the War of American Independence and culminating in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars up to 1807. The European powers at war were unable to trade and a huge demand emerged for neutral shipping and cargoes. It is important to point out, however, as both Ole Feldbæk and Erik Gøbel have shown, that a significant slice of the profits went to foreigners, especially the British and to French and Dutch owners of ships and cargoes flying under the Danish flag65. Denmark’s neutrality was exploited by subjects of the belligerent powers who needed to have capital conveyed from Asia to Europe66. Denmark-Norway successfully managed to remain neutral, reaping enormous profits in international trade and shipping67. In 1807 the Danes made the fatal mistake of joining the Napoleonic camp, understandably, since the British had sailed off with their fleet. But now Denmark was pitted against the world’s greatest naval power and the Royal Navy had little trouble in cutting off Danish trade with the North Atlantic dependencies and occupying the colonies in Asia and the West Indies for the duration of the war, hastening the demise of the Danish Empire. The “flourishing period” of Danish trade and shipping came to an end with the advent of peace following the Napoleonic Wars. The former belligerents resumed their traditional trade and had little use for neutral vessels. The British began a concerted effort to
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subdue all India, pushing out the Danes. Indian textiles had difficulty competing with the arrival of cheap American cottons to the European market. Last but nor least, the abolition of the slave trade in 1803 proved to be the death-knell for the Danish possessions in Africa and the West Indies, as will now be discussed. The Dissolution of Empire The Danish Empire was dissolved in the period from the mid-19th century to the mid20th century, except of course for Greenland and the Faroes. The causes were manifold. The questions are how and why? The first to go was Norway. Denmark was on the losing side in the Napoleonic Wars and was forced to cede Norway to Sweden in 1814 at the Treaty of Kiel, managing, however, to retain the (Norwegian) Atlantic islands. The Norwegians were not prepared to accept this and, imbued with revolutionary fervour, convened an assembly at Eidsvoll where a constitution for an independent constitutional monarchy was adopted. Christian Frederik, cousin and heir-presumptive to the Danish throne, was only too eager to become king of an independent Norway. Norway was declared to be “free and independent” and the newly-founded parliament was given the name Storting [the big assembly]. This was unacceptable to Sweden and after a short conflict the abortive revolution ended with the establishment of a new dual monarchy, Sweden-Norway. Bernadotte, however, accepted the constitution and the Norwegians had considerable power in relation to the monarchy68. In Asia, it was the beginning of the end when, after the Napoleonic Wars, the British slowly but surely increased their hold on India. By 1800, all of southern India was effectively under English control69. Tranquebar had been occupied by the British during hostilities between Denmark and Britain both in 1801-1802 and 1808-1815. From 1807 to 1814, no ships sailed from Denmark to Asia and the trade never recovered. Only one ship was sent to India and five to China before the Asiatic Company was finally dissolved in 184470. The Asian trade was no longer profitable. Serampore was sold in 1839 and Tranquebar in 1845 to the British East India Company for a modest sum71. The Nicobar Islands were handed over to England gratis (the Danes were so glad to get rid of them) in 1868. The British were to use the islands as a prison colony for prisoners from British India. The case of the forts on the Gold Coast is of particular interest. The Danes had never really been able to compete in the second half of the 18th century with the Dutch and English – at most they sent five slave ships across the Atlantic while the other European powers had hundreds. The forts on the Gold Coast were kept on for up to half a century after the abolition of the slave trade, in spite of the fact “they did not earn one penny” according to the specialist in the field, Professor Nørregård72. Europe and its Empires
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The Danish government almost begged the British to take the forts over, feelers first being put out at the Congress of Vienna. And in 1818 the Danes tried to sell the forts to the United States, which at the time was looking for a suitable home for their freed slaves, eventually leading to the founding of Liberia in 1822. A Swedish plan for the exchange of the Caribbean island of St. Bartholomew for the Danish forts to be used as a penal colony was not favourably received in Denmark. But as their trade on the coast increased, British merchants on the Gold Coast maintained that the Danish territory possessed some of the best soil there. In the words of the British governor: “there is no doubt that from a commercial point of view, the Danes possess the finest part of the Coast; and were they commercially an enterprising people, their possessions here would be of great importance to them”. When the French showed interest in buying the forts, Lord Palmerston speedily signed a treaty on 31 December 1849 where for ₤10,000 the five forts with cannons and munitions and all other Danish rights and possessions on the Gold Coast were sold to Britain73. Today the Danish territory is in Ghana. Holstein was an Imperial Duchy until the dissolution of the Empire in 1806, when it was immediately annexed to Denmark. After the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 Holstein joined the German Confederation, the King of Denmark retaining the title of Duke of Holstein74. The Schleswig-Holstein question occupied Denmark, Prussia and Austria throughout the first half of the 19th century. In 1864 the two duchies were finally lost to Denmark after two wars with Prussia and Austria. At the time Denmark was so intent on keeping Northern Schleswig, because of its Danish-speaking population, that it was suggested that the remaining Danish imperial possessions, Iceland and the Caribbean islands, be exchanged for Northern Schleswig75. Bismarck, however, showed no interest in this. After a referendum in 1920, in the wake of World War I, the people of Northern Schleswig elected to join Denmark. In the Caribbean, the decisive factor was the abolition of slavery in 1848. Subsequently the Caribbean islands with an economy based on sugar cane were no longer economically viable. After an abortive attempt in 1868 the three islands were finally sold to the United States in 1917 for $25 million. The Americans were afraid that the Germans would establish a submarine base there during World War I. They are now called the United States Virgin Islands. This was the last time in world history that a colony was sold between states76. This only left the three North Atlantic dependencies. During the 19th century, the Faroes were “more closely integrated in the Danish monarchy, politically, culturally and economically”77. In Greenland, the rule of Denmark was being consolidated with whaling and sealing proving economically profitable and throughout the 19th century the Danes applied themselves to keeping the Greenlanders alive and well by protecting the Inuits from westernization 78. That only leaves Iceland, the status of which will now be examined.
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The Special Status of Iceland Iceland was the only possession within the Danish Empire that had to struggle for almost a hundred years for independence from the mother country, despite the fact that the island had become a financial burden. The revenues from Iceland did not match Denmark’s subsidies. As has been seen, Denmark was only too happy to relinquish her colonies when they ceased to be profitable. The question must be asked: Why were the Danes so reluctant to grant unprofitable Iceland independence? Iceland was a poor agrarian country with animal husbandry as its major occupation, while fishing was carried on in a primitive manner. The inhabitants lived on isolated farms and there were no towns. There were few resources (the fishing industry only became significant around 1900). As in Norway, it was the introduction of Lutheranism in the mid-16th century which strengthened the power of the Danish king. He seized 17% of the church property and slowly but surely increased his power in the country. Monopoly trade was introduced in 1602, as already mentioned, and the Icelanders were forced to accept absolutism in 1662. In the 18th century, while the population of Europe doubled, Iceland suffered severe demographic crises. At the beginning of the century in 1707-1709, a smallpox epidemic carried off about a third of the population while the volcanic eruption of Laki in 1783 – with the largest lava flow in recorded history – extensively destroyed vegetation and a large proportion of the domestic animals perished, including 75% of the sheep. This was followed by a great loss of life, a quarter of the population died in “the famine of the mist” (móðuharðindi). The situation was so desperate that the Danish government declared Iceland uninhabitable and began planning to move the whole population from devastated Iceland to the heaths of Jutland. These plans were, however, quickly abandoned when the country began to recover. In 1751, a group of Icelandic officials formed a joint-stock company for the regeneration of the Icelandic economy. They received extensive subsidies and grants of land from the King, who actually gave the Icelanders more capital than they asked for. Woollen mills were built at the farm of Reykjavík and a large variety of textiles was produced. Moreover, this enterprise laid the foundation of the first town in Iceland, Reykjavík, boasting a population of 300 in 1800. Sulphur was refined, salt was boiled at hot springs and there were experiments in agriculture and with new methods in fishing. However, this ambitious venture proved on the whole a failure and heavy losses were incurred. Though no economic historian has actually done the sums, there is a general consensus that Iceland was from the economic point of view a dependency worth having from at least the mid-16th century to the last decades of the 18th century, when the consequences of the Laki eruption became apparent. Even Danish historians stress the importance of the Iceland monopoly trade for the growth of the important Copenhagen mercantile community79. But by the 19th century, when the struggle for independence began, Iceland was not economically viable. When for instance Prince Jerome NapoEurope and its Empires
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leon visited Iceland in 1856, the Danish governor Count Trampe told him that there was a substantial deficit each year in the island, whereupon the Prince asked “Why does Denmark wish to be lumbered with such a burden?”80. Quite. Iceland had, however, always enjoyed a rather special status within the Empire, in part due to its relatively isolated geographical location. The royal administration was in the hands of mostly native Icelanders81. The governor of the island, to be sure, was almost invariably a Dane, occasionally a Norwegian, but he only rarely visited. The sheriffs and clergy, including the two bishops, were almost all Icelanders. Moreover, some Icelanders reached high administrative posts within the Danish government as admittedly did a number of Norwegians82. “These high officials were the truly absolute rulers of Iceland” writes Professor Gunnar Karlsson83 of the University of Iceland; according to the research of the Swedish historian Harald Gustafsson the Icelandic officials, the social and economic élite, were in a strong position, being “at a comfortable distance from the centre of power in Copenhagen”84. They could largely do as they wished as the central administration had limited opportunity to control them. The influence of the central administration was “both sporadic and erratic”85. The officials were well-educated, first in the Latin schools in Iceland and then at the University of Copenhagen. During the 18th century, university education became a necessary criterion for office. In Iceland the requirement that officials have law degrees from the the University of Copenhagen was imposed slightly earlier than in Denmark-Norway. According to Gustafsson, the Icelandic sheriffs towards the end of the 18th century were probably “the best-trained group of local officials in the Nordic countries”86. An anomaly in Iceland was that the taxes were farmed out to the sheriffs for a fixed amount and the difference was their salary. This was the general practice in Europe but non-existent in the other Nordic countries87. The Icelanders had always enjoyed certain privileges denied to the other dependencies. The medieval Icelandic law-codes remained in force and the officials tended to disregard new laws coming from Denmark they did not approve of. The Icelandic assembly, the Alþingi, founded in 930, was not abolished when the Icelanders swore their allegiance to the absolute king in 1662 as should have been the case (absolutism rendering assemblies unnecessary), but at the wish of the Icelanders themselves in 1800. By then it had, however, long lost any pretence at law-making and functioned mainly as Iceland’s High Court of Justice, convening once a year at Þingvellir (the ancient site of the parliament) under difficult circumstances. It was re-established by the Danish king in 1845, when he was still formally an absolute monarch, again at the wish of the Icelanders. This will be discussed in more detail later. In 1579 the King decided that all Icelandic students at the University of Copenhagen should have free board and lodging in the student halls for the first five years of study at the university88. This continued until 1918 when Iceland gained sovereignty from
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the Danish Crown. At the end of December 1828, it was further decided that students from the Faroes, Greenland and Iceland should have the unrestricted right to lodging in university halls of residence and a couple of years later the stipend was doubled for Icelandic students89. Some Norwegians, Faroese and poor Danish students also enjoyed this privilege but not for the length of time that the Icelanders did. Moreover, in 1759 the two schools in Iceland were permitted to send one each “of the best and most diligent” students to study in the Latin schools of Denmark. They would enjoy free transport, tuition, board and lodging90. Thus Icelandic men had the opportunity to receive a good education. Denmark-Norway was frequently at war with its neighbours at a huge cost. In Norway young Norwegian peasants were conscripted into the army and navy. Conscription was a real burden also in Denmark and the Duchies91. After the turbulence of the Reformation, when the last Catholic bishop of Iceland was beheaded with two of his sons, the King thought it safer to officially disarm the Icelanders. This was done by decree in 1581. There was never a militia in Iceland and Icelanders were never asked to serve in the King’s army or navy. In fact the country was hardly fortified at all, unlike all the other Danish dominions – there was, as already mentioned, a fort in the scantily populated Faroes with a militia of 30 “ill-trained” Faroese soldiers92. Even Greenland was fortified, albeit briefly. Hans Egede wanted a garrison in Greenland manned with thirty soldiers. They only stayed for a couple of years before being ordered back to Denmark in 173093. During the 17th century, a small skans or entrenchment was dug at Bessastaðir where the governor resided, fortified by seven pieces of cannon. This did not prove very useful when the Barbary corsairs descended on Iceland in 1627 and made off with 400 captives. Entreaties from successive governors that Iceland be fortified fell on deaf ears in Copenhagen. Most importantly, the Danes never tampered with the Icelandic language or culture. Professor Gunnar Karlsson does not doubt that it was Iceland’s role “as the keeper of the old Nordic culture” or the role of the Icelanders as the “supposed guardians of the Nordic spirit” which was the determing factor in the Danish authorities’ reluctance to grant Iceland independence. After all the Icelanders had in medieval times written the histories of the Kings of Denmark. Though Iceland was a poor agrarian country it was in fact “a small jewel in the Danish Crown”94. In Norway, Danish had become the language of government, the Church and polite society. The Bible used was in Danish95, while Bishop Guðbrandur Þorláksson had translated the Bible into Icelandic in 1584. In Norway, the written language became Danish “through a national development” and a Norwegian written language had to be “invented” in the mid-19th century96. In fact until just before World War I “Copenhagen remained to a certain extent the cultural capital of Norway”97. In the Faroes, Faroese was spoken in the home but Danish had established itself as the island’s official language by 1620. The clergy was predominantly Danish and of course conducted Europe and its Empires
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church services in the Danish language98. The same applied to Greenland. Faroese was considered a Danish dialect and, as in Norway, there was no written language until the mid-19th century99. In Denmark itself, polite society, courtiers, aristocrats and the bourgeois of Copenhagen were bi-lingual, speaking both Danish and German100. In 1807, in the Duchies it was required that all the officials speak Danish and that Danish theologians educated at the University in Copenhagen should have the right to ecclesiastical appointments in Schleswig. In 1811, a professorship in Danish was established at the University of Kiel101. In fact, Danish was the official language throughout the Danish Empire, even though, for instance, in the Caribbean English became the language of use, as many Dutch and English merchants settled in these islands. Not all agreed that the Icelandic language should be preserved. For instance, in the latter half of the 18th century, Bjarni Jónsson, the rector of the Latin school in Skálholt, Iceland’s southern bishopric, deemed it both “useless” and actually “harmful” to preserve the Icelandic language, no longer understood by other Nordic nations. “Let us follow the Norwegian and Faroese examples and take up the Danish language, as we are under Danish rule and in communication with the Danish people”102. His was probably a minority opinion.
The Beginning of Iceland’s Struggle for Independence The 1830s are traditionally accepted as the beginning of Iceland’s nationalist movement, when for the first time demands for political autonomy were made. The Icelanders had, however, always believed they formed a society apart. This was demonstrated quite clearly when they insisted on living under Icelandic law, after accepting the rule of the Norwegian king in 1262-64103, though they were to accept certain Norwegian legislation. In the nationalistic ideology that sustained the Icelanders through their struggle for independence, the importance of the Icelandic language in the political discourse has been emphasized by historians104. The roots have been traced back to the humanist scholar Arngrímur Jónsson (1568-1648) who devoted a chapter of his historical work Crymogæa, published in Latin in 1609105, to a discussion on the nation’s language. He asserted that only the Icelanders among the Nordic peoples still spoke the language of medieval times, pure and uncorrupted. In other Nordic countries the ancient common language, which he called Norse (Norvegica), had been contaminated by the languages of their neighbours. He urged his contemporaries to preserve Icelandic in its pure form, free from foreign influence. The publication of Crymogæa was extremely important as it opened the eyes of its readers to the fact that the Icelanders had an ancient literature and a special culture. In 1813-1815, the Danish linguist Rasmus Christian Rask visited Iceland and declared that contemporary Icelandic was in fact the common language of medieval Scandina-
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via, echoing Arngrímur Jónsson. However, Rask had also noticed that Icelandic was in danger of being contaminated by Danish – especially in the only major “town”, Reykjavík. In 1816, it was at his initiative that the Icelandic Literary Society (Hið íslenska bókmenntafélag) was founded, its aim being to maintain the purity of the Icelandic language. The society’s journal Skírnir was first published in 1827. Now published biannually, it is the oldest journal in the Nordic countries still flourishing. At the time Romanticism, with its emphasis on nationalism and admiration for the medieval past, reigned supreme in Denmark. The major poet Adam Oehlenschläger found his inspiration in the old Nordic literature and N.F.S. Grundtvig, the architect of the Danish national identity, translated the Icelandic literature into Danish in search of “the original Nordic or Danish mind”106. The countries shared a common cultural heritage. In fact the Danes rarely doubted the value of the Icelandic language or that the Icelanders formed a nation apart. Indeed, a professorship in the Nordic language was founded in 1844 at the University of Copenhagen, with another lecturer appointed soon after. The problem for multi-ethnic Denmark was that the nationalist movement threatened the helstat [the Danish composite monarchy]. A third of the inhabitants of the Danish realm in the 1830s were Germans, Icelanders, Faroese and Inuits who all had their own languages (not to mention the languages of the Danish colonies in the Caribbean, Africa and India). But at this point in history it was first and foremost the political status of the duchies Schleswig and Holstein that occupied the Danish government. At the Congress in Vienna in 1815 the German Confederation had decided that all member states should establish diets. King Frederik VI of Denmark, as Duke of Holstein, was thus bound to this promise. He was in no hurry. Denmark was an absolute state par excellence with no representative institutions whatsoever. Not until 1831 did the king bow to the pressure and announce the creation of four separate diets [stænderforsamlinger] for the Danish realm, in fact consultative assemblies. The Icelanders had two representatives in the Island Diet at Roskilde, both appointed by the king. Surprisingly, it was a Dane, Count F.A. Holstein of Ledreborg, who in 1831 first suggested that the Icelanders should have a diet of their own107. The Icelandic intellectuals in Copenhagen agreed emphatically and proposed that the ancient Icelandic assembly Alþingi should be re-established108. They published journals, one of their aims being to awaken pride in the Icelanders as a special nation by emphasising the importance of the Icelandic language, “this invaluable treasure, the common property of all those who can be called Icelanders”109. Christian VIII, formerly Christian Frederik, the short-lived King of Norway, succeeded to the throne in 1839. He was an admirer of the Icelandic Sagas. Shortly after his accession he granted an audience to a group of Icelanders. The King told them that he had
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Iceland’s well-being and interests at heart and he would gladly do something to improve the conditions in the country110. True to his promise, Christian VIII decreed in 1843 the re-establishment of the ancient parliament Alþingi. This would be a consultative assembly for Icelandic affairs only (i.e. the fifth diet). The language of the assembly would be Icelandic. The Crown official (the governor) would be permitted to speak Danish but would be assisted by an interpreter. Alþingi would meet every other year in Reykjavík for a month or so111. This was an important political step forward in the minds of the Icelanders signifying to them that they were not only a separate nation but that they enjoyed a special status within the Danish realm. As Professor Karlsson has pointed, out the other Danish assemblies represented areas with populations in the hundreds of thousands, while the Icelanders only had a population of 58,000112. Another point is that in the 19th century it was faintly ridiculous to grant autonomy to a country of that size113. Curiously, as Guðmundur Hálfdanarson has remarked, the Danes were promoting “the use of the Icelandic language at the time it was becoming a symbol for Icelandic separation and national identity.”114 The fact that people believed that Iceland had preserved Old Norse, the old language of the whole Nordic world115, and that the Icelandic heritage was that of Denmark also is an important factor in why the Danes were reluctant to lose Iceland. However, other factors must be considered. First, a question: Was Iceland coveted by other European powers? In times of financial straits the Danish king had attempted to sell or pawn Iceland to the English Crown; thus Henry VIII was several times offered Iceland in this manner, but refused to be tempted116. In the 18th century, after the loss of Canada in the Seven Years War, Louis XV’s government was assessing the possibility of exchanging Iceland for Louisiana. Iceland would become a naval base for the French navy and squadrons could be sent from there over to the east coast of Canada in an attempt to regain their lost colony. Danish settlers, on the other hand, would enjoy the mild climate of Louisiana117. And in the late 1760s and 1770s, French expeditions were sent to Iceland par ordre du roi to map the coast. As Thomas Riis has pointed out, all the possessions of the Danish Empire were situated in regions where Britain had interests – in the North Atlantic, the Caribbean, West Africa and India118. When necessary the British had little trouble in occupying the Danish territories. During the period of hostilities between the Danes and British during the Napoleonic Wars in 1801, and again in 1807-1814, the Danish colonies in India and the West Indies were quickly occupied and the question was raised whether Iceland (and the Faroes) should follow suit119. During the late 18th and early 19th centurys the British government received many detailed plans for the annexation of Iceland to the British Empire. The greatest advo-
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cate was Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820) who had sailed with Captain Cook on his first Pacific voyage on the Endeavour and subsequently led a scientific expedition to Iceland in 1772. Now President of the Royal Society, a friend of George III and many ministers, he was untiring in his efforts to bring Iceland under the “benevolent” (as he firmly believed) aegis of the British Empire. In 1801, during a period of hostilities between Denmark and Britain, he wrote for example to Pitt and Dundas that the “conquest of Iceland”, could easily be accomplished by a small force and would subject Denmark to “a considerable political humiliation in the eyes of Europe”. He wrote 120: In conquering Iceland and Ferroe, the United Kingdom would annex to itself the Dominion of all the respectable Islands in Northern Europe, a proud Pre-eminence for the British Isles to obtain. - She would emancipate from an Egyptian Bondage a Population…that would rapidly increase under her mild Government, and… would furnish in a short time a supply of Seamen to the British Navy, of no inconsiderable importance… She would possess herself of the Iceland Cod Fishery [which] would no doubt, by the force of British Capital recover some portion of its former importance…and by depriving Denmark of a part of the Ancient Hereditary Dominions of the Danish Crown, would probably produce a greater effect on the Public Opinion of Europe, than would be done by depriving her of the whole of her Colonies, both in the East and the West Indies.
Prestige is a potent weapon121. There is no doubt that a major reason for the Danish kings’ and their officials’ reluctance to grant Iceland independence was a question of prestige. The loss of Norway in 1814 and eventually the Duchies in 1864 were bitter pills for Denmark to swallow. The loss of Iceland must be seen in this perspective. As has been seen the Alþingi was re-established as a special consultative assembly, a big step forward. This was in 1845. One hundred years were to pass before Iceland g
