Civic Continuities in an Age of Revolutionary Change, c.17501850: Europe and the Americas (Palgrave Studies in Political History)

This open access book explores the role of continuity in political processes and practices during the Age of Revolutions. It argues that the changes that took place in the years around 1800 were enabled by different types of continuities across Europe and in the Americas. With historians of modernity tending to emphasise the rise of the new, scholarship has leaned towards an assumption that existing modes of action, thought and practice simply became extinct, irrelevant or at least subordinate to new modes. In contrast, this collection examines continuities between early modern and modern political cultures and organization in Europe and the Americas. Shifting the focus from political modernization, the authors examine the continued relevance of older, often local, practices in (post)revolutionary politics. By doing so, they aim to highlight the role of local political traditions and practices in forging and enabling political change. The book argues that while political change was in fact at the centre of both the old and new polities that emerged in the Age of Revolutions, it coexisted with, and was indeed enabled by, continuities at other levels. Judith Pollmann is Professor of Early Modern History at the Institute for History at Leiden University, the Netherlands. Henk te Velde is Professor of Modern History at the Institute for History at Leiden University, the Netherlands.-- Provided by publisher Contents 6 List of Contributors 8 1 Civic Continuities in an Age of Revolutionary Change: Europe and the Americas, c.1750–1850 9 Introduction 9 ‘Residual Powers’ 17 The Power of Practice 20 Experiencing and Domesticating Change 23 Part I Residual Powers 27 2 Distance and Proximity. Parliamentary Representation and the Persistence of Local Ties in Britain, France and the Netherlands, C. 1780s–1850 28 Edmund Burke: (In)dependence of the MP 30 French Representatives: Austere Independence (In Theory) and Mutual Deference (In Practice) 33 Local Self-Government, Corruption and Representation in Britain 40 The Local Dimension of Politics: Parochialism, Oligarchy, Private Interestand Democracy 45 Public vs. Private Law and Interest in the Netherlands 48 Conclusion 52 3 Post-revolutionary France: The Ultimate Test Case? 56 Local Politics 61 Sociability 64 Pays. The Politics of Place 67 Repertoires of Contention 71 4 Regional Resilience in the Age of Revolutions: The Persistence of the Dutch Provinces, 1748–1848 76 Concordia Res Parvae Crescunt 79 The One and Indivisible Republic 81 Unity or Diversity? 84 The Many-Faced Nation 88 The Old Times Will Revive 91 Conclusion 97 5 Order, War and Religion: The Chilean Republic Between Tradition and Change 100 The Possibility of the Republic 100 Order 103 Religion 107 War 110 Rituals 114 Concluding Remarks 118 Part II The Power of Practice 120 6 The ‘Sanction of Precedent’: Publishers and Political Dissent in Central Europe During the Age of Revolution 121 Censorship and the Repertoire of Circumvention 124 A Decentralized Publishing Landscape 135 Bookshops and Local Civic Practice 141 Conclusion 146 7 Maintaining Order in Revolutionary Times—The Political Practices of a Mercantile Elite in the Rhineland, 1770–1830 150 Ruling and Squabbling in Stable Times 151 Looking for Stability: The Wupper Valley During the Revolutionary Wars 157 Rupture Above, Stability on the Ground—The Wupper Valley as French Territory 1806–1813 160 The Continuous Effects of Political Tradition: The Wupper Valley as Part of Prussia 168 The Maintenance of Order in Ever-Changing Times 173 8 Indigenous Citizens and Black Republicans: Continuities and Evolutions of Subalterns’ Political Visions and Repertoires in Post-independence Colombia and Mexico 176 9 Restoring the Moral Order of the Community: The Symbolic Repertoire of Collective Action in the Dutch Age of Revolutions 202 The Narrative of the Dutch Revolution 205 The Patriot Era 210 The Orangist Restoration and the Batavian Revolution 214 Blurred Boundaries 218 Conclusion 222 Part III Experiencing and Domesticating Change 224 10 The Experience of ‘Reform’ in English Local Governance in the Era of the ‘Reform Ministry’ (1830–1841) 225 The ‘Age of Reform’ 227 Reforming English Local Governance 234 Reform Remembered 245 An Experiential Perspective 248 11 ‘The Free Action of the Collective Power of Individuals’: Vernacular Democracy and the Sovereign People 252 From Nothing to Start, into Being 255 Declaring Interdependence 259 We the People 262 Mobs in Myriad 268 12 The Spirit of the Belltower: Chronicling Urban Time in an Age of Revolution 274 Accelerated Time and the Benefits of Hindsight 275 Domesticating the New 279 Public Space and Local Change 282 Chronicling Change 287 The Return of the Golden Age 291 Conclusion 294 Bibliography 297 Index 336