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Mediterranean democracy, Year 3
Oxford, 24-5 September 2015
Somerville College, Oxford
RE-IMAGINING DEMOCRACY IN THE MEDITERRANEAN: THE
BOOK, WORKSHOP
Present – contributors to book: Gonzalo Capellan (24th only), Gianluca Fruci, Antonis
Hadjikyriacou, James McDougall (24th only), Rui Ramos, Javier Fernandez Sebastian,
Juan Luis Simal, Michalis Sotiropoulos
and Joanna Innes, Maurizio Isabella, Mark Philp, Eduardo Posada Carbo
Apologies: David Bell, Florencia Peyrou
Others (indicating areas of main interest) – many were present for only a part of the
proceedings: Ambrogio Caiani (Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, Italy), Elena
Draghici-Vasilescu (Rumania), Michael Drolet (French political thought), John Elliott
(Spain), Ludovic Frobert (French artisans and politics, mid C19), Abigail Green
(international humanitarianism), Peter Hill (Arabic culture in eastern Mediterranean C19),
Graciela Iglesias Rogers (Global Hispanic world), Idriss Jebari (North Africa), Mark
Knights (C17-C18 English political culture), Javier Lopez Alos (anti-modern trends in C1819 Spain), Philippe Roussin (democracy and literature), Rebeca Vigueira Ruiz (liberalism
in C19 Spain).
Day 1
The Introduction (Joanna Innes)
Mark Philp introduced discussion.
He suggested that the summary draft gave the impression that events drove responses, when
that surely wasn’t more than partly true. Moreover, he thought it important to emphasise that
the word was used rhetorically, for its connotations, as well as descriptively. And it wasn’t
necessarily about empowering the people: it could be about obtaining the nominal sanction of
the people for some form of elite politics, about what we might now call populism. In relation
not just to the intro but the volume as a whole, he thought we needed not to write too
casually about ordinary people being actors or giving them more voice.
He also suggested that it would be good to do a bit more to disentangle the categories of
‘normative’ and ‘genealogical’ in discussing other approaches. He wasn’t sure genealogy is
helpful given the ways in which it’s been corralled by Foucault and his followers.
He suggested that something should be said about state building and rebuilding [this is
touched on on p. 7 of the continuous text version]; it should be made clear that resistance
was directed against this, as well as against local systems of rule and foreign domination.
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He also noted that thought the past history of Spanish power in the Mediterranean was
touched on, the ‘soft power’ exercised by Italians was not, and it would be worth noting that
rather different kind of presence - indeed more might be said to refer to the role of
commerceas a vehicle for the spread of ideas.
He wondered if more could be said about how states influenced each other: by what
mechanisms?
Joanna said that she accepted most of this, and agreed particularly that if she gave the
impression that what was in question was characteristically empowering the people, that
needed clarifying. Though in relation to events driving change, she said as she stood back
from this phase of the project and thought about the general picture that emerged, she did
think that any answer to the question, Why was there so much talk about democracy at this
time, and why did some start aspiring to establish it? had to make much of post-Frenchrevolutionary turmoil, and the delegitimisation of regimes. Of course that wasn’t a sufficient
explanation – periods of turmoil and legitimation crisis in the past had met with different
responses – but she thought that these things should be assigned a crucial part in any
explanation.
Maurizio thought that it would be worth saying more about historiography, and particularly
about ways in which the book challenged existing accounts of the region. Among other
things, it did something novel in bringing the Ottoman world into the same optic, and that
wasn’t sufficiently highlighted.
Joanna said that she had been considering this since he had first made the observation to her,
and that there might be merit in adding a section to the introduction about historiography,
following the introduction to the region. She thought such an introduction would probably
begin by talking about the history of concepts, and the value of work done under that rubric,
while also explaining in what senses and why this book was not conceived straightforwardly
within a history of concepts tradition. What she didn’t want to do was to spend very long on
critique of existing historiographies. Hopefully the book would be read for a long time, and a
critique of the historiographical status quo would lose topicality. Moreover, she thought that
in criticising other people’s work it was hard to avoid setting up straw men. She would prefer
to insofar as possible to align an account of what the book aimed to do with current
developments in the field: to position it positively more than negatively. She would welcome
suggestions as to how contributors saw the book as being located in relation to the
historiographies of their regions or themes.
James McDougall observed that his chapter did say quite a lot about historiography. The
main point that he was making was that what he was doing stood at an oblique angle to the
historiography.
He thought that more needed to be said about why the northern shore of the Mediterranean
received proportionately so much more attention than other shores. Clearly, differences in
political languages employed were crucial here, but if the book aimed to discuss both
language and practice, then that did not settle things.
He also wondered whether something shouldn’t be said in the introduction about nations and
nationalism. [This is currently briefly touched on, again on p. 7].
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Javier Fernandez Sebastian said that he thought it would be worth saying in as many words
that there were advantages and disadvantages of treating the Mediterranean as a region. It
didn’t make the same kind of sense as in Braudel’s era, and it should be acknowledged that
other geographies had other merits. Above all, Spain and Portugal were more oriented
towards the Atlantic than the Mediterranean world. Making it plain that this was only one
possible way of cutting things up might help to deflect criticism.
Joanna said that was a useful suggestion.
Juan Luis Simal said he thought that the introduction did not make use of the concept of
emulation, and wondered if that might not be a useful one to introduce.
John Elliott thought that invoking current interest in comparative and connected history
might be helpful, in the context of addressing Javier’s point.
Antonis Hadjikyriacou thought that the fact that France was not numbered among
Mediterranean powers needed explaining: the reader might expect to find it there.
In relation to historiography, he said that there was a debate going on within Ottoman/Arab
historiography about what defined the early modern era; it could be seen as representing a
distinctive phase in W-E relations.
Joanna said that she thought the historiographical discussion might helpfully introduce the
concept of non-synchronicity, and debates around that.
Rui Ramos agreed with Javier about the need to stress that this was only one of several
possible regional frameworks.
He also thought it important to stress that democracy was as if not more often a threat than an
aspiration.
He wasn’t sure that it was clear enough what was intended by the term ‘genealogical’. Did it
relate to modernisation theory?
He agreed with Mark about the need to make clear the distinction between the people being
political actors and ‘democracy’: either could apply without the other.
Idriss Jebari wondered if the introduction might not say more about issues of legitimacy,
varying approaches to representing or challenging that.
James McDougall thought we should spell out to the reader that we are not ourselves using
‘democracy’ as an analytical category, precisely because we wanted readers to appreciate that
in the past (as in the present) it was often not a descriptive term but carried a positive or
negative charge.
Javier thought that maybe we needed a term to denote the approach that we were
recommending.
Gonzalo Capellan was wary of too sharply contrasting language and practice. Language was
also a form of practice.
Gianluca Fruci suggested that one sense in which the Mediterranean was a region was that it
provided a field of action for certain iconic figures, such as Guglielmo Pepe.
In relation to ‘narrow’ Italian suffrage, he thought it needed to be explained that Italian states
sometimes used an extremely broad suffrage, esp at constitutional, foundational moments.
They thought broader and narrower suffrages were appropriate in different contexts.
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Eduardo Posada Carbo wanted to highlight the issue of the importance of Spanish and
Portuguese colonies (in effect following up on what Javier and Rui had said about the
region). Colonial rebellions in fact had an impact beyond Iberia.
Michalis Sotiropoulos thought that some relevant historiographical developments had taken
place within the history of empires – certainly this had been important in a Greek sense,
encouraging conceptualisation in terms of transitions rather than ruptures.
Mark Knights thought that something might be learned from early-modernists interest in
what ways of governing towns contributed to thinking about ways of governing states.
Abigail Green wondered whether something shouldn’t be said about the concept of
dictatorship.
Italian states (Gianluca Fruci)
Joanna Innes introduced discussion.
She said there were some points all authors of regional chapters needed to bear in mind.
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Now was the point at which they could think hard about what to say to make the most
of the scope for comparison the book opened up
The imagined Anglophone reader should have a general knowledge of main trends in
European history of this period, and know about the French revolution, Napoleon and
1848 revolutions, but might know next to nothing about the history of southern
Europe in this period. Chapters needed to be made accessible to that reader, not by
long slabs of exposition, but by helpful introductions, and glosses along the way,
identifying people and events, perhaps just by words within a sentence. A lot could
be achieved by brief allusion. She thought that James McDougall’s chapter handled
this kind of thing well.
Historiography should figure in the text only inasmuch as it helped to frame the
argument of a piece (in this respect, the McDougall chapter, while doing that, also
talked too much in other contexts about historians, when they could stay in footnotes).
All chapters needed to situate language in the context of practice, though the balance
between the two would vary from case to case. The reader needed to get a sense of
who was talking about democracy, with reference to what, and with what intended
effects. Beyond that, some sense of the character of the political culture as that varied
and developed throughout the region should be conveyed. How much of a political
public sphere was there? What was its character?
Mark had urged that chapters needed to engage with developing ideas of the nation
enough to help the reader who had ideas about national identities and nationalisms,
more than about democracy, to see how the two might fit. One bridging concept might
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be that of citizenship. Who was formally acknowledged to constitute the community
or nation that political institutions served?
In relation to Luca’s indicative outline more specifically, she said that a little more would
need doing at the start to introduce the region to non-specialists.
Since this would be the first in the sequence, there was less scope in this than in other cases
for starting by setting up comparisons. But some comparison with France would be worth
developing near the start – Italy seemed to be the place which followed French rhythms most
closely. It would be worth reflecting on why that was – but also she thought Luca was keen to
emphasise that French ideas were given a distinctive Italian spin, and that would also be very
much worth bringing out as a general theme.
She said that, given the shape of Italian use, she thought he was right to focus on the 1790s
and 1840s. There was a question about what should be said about the intervening period.
What she had suggested to Luca so far was that he should talk about anything which helped
the reader to see why the 1840s was different from the 1790s. In that context, the question of
to what extent there was a political public sphere in Italy in this period, or over what period it
developed (or how it opened and closed) might be considered. Her impression was that it was
less developed than in Spain or Portugal, though it was quite possible she was wrong. But it
would be good to address the issue.
The 1840s section was currently very brief. He referred to his paper of last year, but the
discussion there focussed almost entirely on plebiscites, whereas as she understood it he now
proposed to reorient discussion, eg to say much more about how democracy was talked about
in the Roman Republic. Luca had told her that elsewhere that he thought the term was used
more sloganistically, but that didn’t mean it didn’t need discussing: on the contrary, precisely
that point should be made and illustrated.
In relation to the kingdom of Italy, though the franchise was certainly narrow, she thought
that Alessio Petrizzi’s point about the assembly being presented as open to and channelling
the voices of the people would be worth acknowledging.
In relation to nation/citizenship, it had been suggested at one of the Athens’ workshops that
both Italy and Greece developed forms of citizenship that suited diasporic nations. Was that
true in the case of Italy? If so, how was that achieved?
Luca said it was self-evidently a work in progress.
A novel contribution of his chapter was to stress the importance of the American republican
tradition. In that regard, he built on Venturi.
He wanted to stress too that the Italian conception of democracy was very much not an
elective aristocracy (on the French doctrinaire model). They were keen to find ways of
making representation truly democratic. Both in the 1790s, and again in the 1840s, esp in the
Roman Republic, this was an important theme.
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He intended to say more about the relation between democracy and nation. As he saw it
generally in the 1840s – other than in Rome -- democracy was advocated primarily as a
means to achieving national unity. In that connection plebiscites had a special role to play.
In the intermediary period, the constitution of Cadiz was important, and that would need to be
acknowledged.
Joanna suggested that perhaps the importance of what happened in the 1820s in Italy was not
so much that it represented a new effusion of democracy (since that word wasn’t much
employed), but rather that it helped to expunge the demons of the 1790s. Liberals regained
their nerve about mobilising the people.
Maurizio Isabella observed that as he saw it, the chapter was intervening in a debate about
the relationship between enlightenment and revolution, eg about the role of Filangieri.
He thought that it would be important to focus on the question, how did people get scared
away from talking about democracy in Italy? The story wasn’t necessarily the same as in
France.
Michael Drolet suggested that it might be worth thinking more about liberty and how that
term might be unpacked. Was the liberty admired by liberals ancient or modern liberty? Or
was there perhaps an important ambiguity?
Rui Ramos suggested that something needed doing to disaggregate Italy.
He wondered if Mazzini, so strongly associated with the cause of democracy, didn’t deserve
more attention.
Eduardo Posada similarly wondered if Garibaldi should not figure more.
Luca responded:
In relation to dropping the term, he said it didn’t disappear; it continued to be applied
uncontroversially eg to Switzerland and America. It disappeared only from discussions about
possible futures for Italy. In that connection, he said that on the one hand there was a strong
critique of democracy, and then on the other hand Bonapartist language displaced it.
Bonaparte didn’t define himself against democracy; he just defined himself in other terms.
The term acquired historic connotations: it referred to the French revolutionary period. In the
nineteenth century it continued to be and was more particularly associated with America.
In relation to ‘Italy’, he thought there was a common Italian debate, partly because of the
shared Napoleonic experience.
He thought that Mazzini wasn’t really an important player in debates about democracy in
Italy. In the Roman Republic, he was much less interested than some others in constitutionmaking processes. He was much more concerned with making war.
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He saw Garibaldi as important esp in terms of the circulation of ideas, and in terms of
personifying a certain political vision. To some extent this applied to Mazzini too.
Juan Luis Simal asked about Buonarroti. Was he not relevant to Italy?
Luca said that he thought his role had been exaggerated, esp. by Marxists. Galdi and
Compagnoni were both much more important.
Joanna observed that it was striking that Italy produced these three internationally important
figures, Buonarroti, Mazzini and Garibaldi. Quite where they were to figure in the book, as
between Luca’s chapter and Florencia and Juan Luis’ chapter was unclear; that would need to
be coordinated. But Italy’s role in producing these transnationally significant figures was
striking.
Javier Fernandez Sebastian said that he thought the Italian case was distinctive. He had
been very struck by the point that in the Italian context, democracy did not mean elective
aristocracy; the concept was not effectively restructured by Doctrinaires. The American link
seemed to be important in this regard.
[Perhaps the absence of a mixed monarchy tradition in Italy mattered here?]
Luca said that Mazzei provided an interesting link. Mazzei was struck by American use of
the right to petition. Compagnoni also commented on that. If you looked at essay
competitions in Napoleonic Italy, there as much writing about America. Condorcet was cited,
and also Thomas Paine. In practice, though, the kind of democracy that took root in Italian
practice was more Bonapartist, plebiscitary: the democracy of acclamation. The imaginary
and the practice were distinct. In the context of plebiscites, a very wide conception of the
people operated, including even women.
Representative democracy was said to be superior to ancient democracy. That notion was
credited to Paine.
Michael Drolet asked if Sieyes was much cited, eg in the context of his debate with Paine.
Luca said not much.
Ludovic Frobert asked if there were any echoes of French urban artisanal democratic
culture, of the kind that he had explored in his work on Lyon.
Luca said that it appeared not. The lack of industrial towns mattered, There was an urban
artisanate, esp in Genoa and Venice, but nothing comparable to what is found in Lyon had
been found in Italy, even by specialists who were looking for it.
Joanna noted that it was an interesting absence, and one which probably needed to be
emphasised – even if it remained unclear whether part of the problem was just the lack of
appropriate sources. She wondered if it mattered that artisanal culture did not suffer the same
sort of attack from the state that it did in both Britain and France.
Eduardo said that something of this kind had been found in Mexico.
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Javier noted that Guy Thomson had found an instance in which a popular crowd shouted
Viva la Democracia, but it seemed that in this context Democracia meant common people.
Spain (Javier Fernandez Sebastian and Gonzalo Capellan)
Joanna Innes introduced discussion.
She said that the chapter represented a deeply researched account of changing uses of the
word, which she appreciated as such. Given that the word was extensively used in Spain, it
was appropriate that lots of space should be given to language. However, more was needed to
set talk and writing in the context of institutions, practices and events – esp because the
imagined reader wasn’t assumed to know anything about Spanish history in this period,
beyond the fact that there was a war against Napoleon. She thought that the easiest way to
make space for this would be to abbreviate the material on 1850 and after, particularly that
going beyond 1860. Because the years after 1850 saw an explosion of democratic language,
and debate about what democracy might entail, they certainly deserved attention, but she
thought it should be possible to convey the richness of this debate more briefly. And although
the big surge in talk about democracy just beyond the time horizon, in association with the
1868 revolution, certainly needed to be acknowledged, it should be given more cursory
treatment.
Currently the chapter started by noting changes in the way democracy was talked about that
were not particular to Spain. This was a perfectly good way of opening the piece, insofar as it
was conceived as a stand-alone piece, but in the context of the book, it was more important to
begin by giving a more concrete sense of Spanish specificities, and of what was distinctive
about the shape of the story to be told about Spain. Since the Spanish chapter would follow
the Italian chapter, that provided an obvious point of comparison. Talk about democracy
came later in Spain (if Google ngrams could in any way be relied upon, there wasn’t much of
a surge in use, positive or negative, in the 1790s). However, there was more, if scattered,
reference from 1812 fairly continuously forwards. It looked as if the explanation for that
might lie at least partly in Spain’s then revived mixed-monarchy tradition.
She suggested that a bit more should be done to give a sense of how important the term was
or was not (her impression was, before the 1840s, not very important – and probably quite
socially confined). One way of doing that would be to say something about the broader
semantic field into which it fitted. What other terms were more prominent in discussing
institutions and practices modern readers might be inclined to discuss in terms of democracy
(and which were so discussed even later in the nineteenth century).
Broadening the semantic field might help in terms of finding a way to bridge the discussion
of the term with some account of distinctive features of Spanish political culture, notably its
turbulence, and the related distinctive tradition of pronunciamentos. Her impression was that
elections did not provide tools for changing governments; governments were seen to depend
on particular constitutions. Therefore struggles for power tended to take the form of extra-
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constitutional struggles to determine what constitution should operate. In this context, Spain
had, at least from the early 1830s, a relatively open political culture, associated with its
liberal political institutions, but alongside that, more turbulence and extra-constitutional
activity than the Anglophone reader might expect. Did that affect ways in which people
talked about democracy? Putting that question would provide another way of linking an
account of the culture with an account of language. The fact that the Spanish people had a
history, at least in recent times, of being drawn into turbulent politics perhaps helped to
explain on the one hand endorsement of the Doctrinaire search for an alternative to populism,
and on the other hand characterisations of national culture as intrinsically democratic.
Whatever position the authors wanted to take on this, she thought they needed to give the
reader a sense of how formulations that they might be familiar with in other contexts were
playing out, and took their local meaning, from a particular, local politics.
In relation to the 1850s, her impression was that Spanish discussions were in important ways
at this period distinctively local in formulation, not just in setting. But how far they echoed
themes in broader European debate, and in what ways they were distinctive, could helpfully
be brought out. And insofar as they were distinctive, whether that had to do with the Spanish
political scene presenting distinctive challenges, or what.
Javier responded first. He said that they had found it difficult to fit everything in. They had
decided to omit some possible topics, eg the motin de Esquilache of 1766; ‘second
scholasticism’, the Coimbra school etc. He liked the idea of making links with Italy.s
Gonzalo said that they had written about the 1850s and after at some length because they had
been keen to demonstrate the breadth of discussion, also to use many different sources.
He cited some instances of perceptions from the time as to how Spain compared. The first
reference to the Cadiz Cortes as ‘democratic’ came from a Swedish merchant. An Italian
philosophical and democratic dictionary, providing a key to the supposedly dangerous words
and concepts promulgated by the French revolution, was translated into Spanish in the
context of the Cortes. The trienio also had the effect of encouraging negative uses of
democratic language.
John Elliott was struck to find people in the nineteenth century saying things like ‘the blood
of democracy flows through the veins of Spain’. He wondered if in effect episodes from the
Spanish past, such as the revolt of the Comuneros, were being recast in terms of ‘democracy’.
And more generally he wondered what nineteenth-century commentators did with that past
tradition of revolt.
Rui Ramos suggested that ‘democracy’ could play a role in political discussion insofar as it
was conceived of as an element within a balanced constitution. Or indeed, it could be
associated with a particular constitutional form, unicameralism. It did not necessarily connote
popular movements.
In Portugal at least there was a process of re-imagining the past as a pre-history of
democracy, as John Elliott suggested, particularly in relation to municipal councils.
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Javier said that indeed, this kind of thing happened in the context of romantic historicism,
but there were larger changes in perception than that, involving what he termed a
‘temporalisation of politics’. In the context of early nineteenth-century revolutions,
‘democracy’ had connoted especially a certain kind of institutional arrangement – though
already in the Cadiz Cortes one finds the term being used in varying senses, sometimes
relating to social forces, sometimes to informal assemblies. By the 1830s and 40s, in the
context of Doctrinaire influence, one found this extended by a more cultural approach:
democracy was conceived of as a matter not just of institutions but of manners.
He said that he thought that ‘mixed government’ was a difficult concept: there were many
different ways of conceptualising it. Renteria conceptualised it in terms of a combination of
monarchy and democracy – monarchy at the national level, democracy at the local level. That
was something quite different from the Aristotelian idea.
Mark Knights said he was surprised not to hear more about aristocracy: about democracy as
an alternative or counterweight to that. He wondered if the small part it played in discussion
didn’t deserve emphasis.
Javier said that in the late eighteenth century there was a self-termed Aristocratic Party,
under the Conde de Aranda. They produced Manifesto de Ricos Hombres in the 1790s
(Discurso sobre la autoridad de los Ricos hombres sobre el Rey y cómo la fueron perdiendo
hasta llegar al punto de opresión en que se halla hoy, 1794) (DEMERSON, Paula de, “El
escrito del conde de Teba: el “Discurso sobre la autoridad de los ricos hombres”, en
Hispania, nº 31 (1971), pp. 137-156; María del Mar Alarcón Alarcón, “Las relaciones entre
la Corona y la aristocracia durante el reinado de Carlos IV: el caso del XIII duque del
Infantado”, Pasado y Memoria. Revista de Historia Contemporánea, 11, 2012, pp. 165-186).
However, it was usually said at the time, eg by Jovellanos, that the Spanish nobility were too
weak to provide a stable base for government. In the 1830s, following Doctrinaire example,
some people talked about the need to create a new form of aristocracy, fit for the modern
world – an aristocracy of talent.
Gonzalo said that in the 1850s some moderates responded to the rising prestige of democracy
by suggesting that an aristocracy was needed to stabilise democracy.
Antonis Hadjikyriacou said that he saw parallels with the Greek case, both in content and
chronology – that is, with the 1850s being a key period. The Ottomans destroyed the Greek
(or Veneto-Greek) aristocracy when they found it surviving on islands they conquered late,
eg Crete. Greece was left with a legacy of no viable aristocracy. In that context it began to be
argued that there was no alternative to developing a democratic monarchy. And a similar case
began to be developed in the Ottoman empire at about the same time. Cyprus was different;
while some Catholics there fled or were enslaved, others converted to Islam or Orthodox
Christianity and occupied positions in the administrative or military elite, or the Church
respectively.
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Michael Drolet asked if there were changes in how people came to talk about municipalities.
Did they come to be seen as a source of stability, when national life was unstable? He noted
that Saint Simonians thought that municipal life in the Ottoman empire was stable.
Eduardo Posada said it might be necessary to say a bit more about the trienio, because of its
impact on other parts of Europe.
He also noted that what struck him from there account was that 1833 marked a big shift in the
way that people talked about democracy. That might need more comment and explanation.
Javier agreed that there might well be a case for putting a bit more flesh on their account of
the trienio. At that time one found arguments about the need for democracy to be part of a
mix of elements. There was also at that time an interesting discussion about the role of public
opinion, in relation esp to the ‘patriotic societies’ which some exaltados were encouraging.
The Cortes decided to ban them, on the ground that they in themselves embodied public
opinion. In general the liberals associated public opinion more with writing; the exaltados,
with speech.
Maurizio Isabella said that this suggested an interesting parallel to debates taking place in
Naples in the 1820s, when Muratists defended their past. Luca said he thought these notions
were already in play in the 1790s. Filangieri’s influence helped to circulate such ideas around
the Mediterranean.
Luca wanted to know if lot did not play some part in the Cadiz Constitution. (Others weren’t
immediately persuaded of this, but he showed that there was a clause in which in cases of
disputed results, lot could be used to settle the matter).
Gonzalo said that it would be possible to add more historical detail about why there was a
shift in talk about democracy in the 1830s.
He noted that in the 1840s, universal suffrage was only one thing that democracy connoted.
That was there in the manifesto of the Democratic Party, but only as one among a host of
other concerns (though in a Spanish context they were innovative in seeking that).
The 1848 revolutions elsewhere encouraged much more talk of democracy. He said that he
thought in the introduction, the impact of 1848 revolutions on Spain was underestimated. The
argument made at that time in Spain was that elections were fraudulent, and that insurrection
was needed to change the character of politics. The government felt itself to be vulnerable on
that front, and pushed the liberals to make democracy more effective and credible. It was this
sense that change was needed, and concomitant opening up of some new opportunities, that
encouraged very general talk about democracy and its implications, not just among
supporters of the Democratic Party. It was in this context that history began to be rewritten,
in ways that people talked about earlier.
Portugal (Rui Ramos)
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Joanna introduced discussion. She noted that Rui clearly had made an attempt to make his
material accessible to the non-specialist reader – but that his method had been to include
slabs of exposition, which wasn’t ideal. It would be better if he could find a way of
integrating exposition more into the analysis.
Similarly, the historiography should be cut back a bit: if it helped frame some interpretative
issues, that might be fine, but most readers would be more interested in getting some ideas
about how to think about Portugal – a country whose history in this period was likely to be
entirely unfamiliar to most – than in hearing about what wasn’t so helpful about what other
Portuguese historians had done.
In his case, the obvious reference point for some initial comparative framing was Spain, to
which the Portuguese case bore many similarities. It would be worth noting these, and why
they were shared, but also highlighting and reflecting on points of difference.
It seemed to her particularly striking that Portuguese politics settled down with a measure of
consensus in the 1850s, as Spanish politics did not. The reader might well wonder why that
was – as well as what effects it had on how the Portuguese talked about democracy.
Rui responded. He agreed that there were many parallels with Spain, not least that both lost
major parts of their empires, if by different processes. Loss of Brazil was particularly
catastrophic to the Portuguese, forcing them to rethink the financial basis of the state.
As to divergence in the 1850s: in Portugal (in a way not entirely dissimilar to what Gonzalo
had described in Spain) ‘democracy’ was integrated into liberal discourse in this period, but
in a relatively consensual way: no ‘democratic party’ emerged. Why less contention? He
thought because in the situation in which Portugal found itself, there was no alternative to
democracy of some kind. Lisbon had been an imperial capital: it looked much more outwards
than inwards. Every institution was geared towards empire, thus the aristocracy, the church.
Royal powers was delegitimised by the complications associated with reconfiguring empire.
So the 1822 constitution, though quite radical in appearance, earned support from moderates,
who saw no alternative. He thought that he did need to give loss of empire much more
prominence in his account.
He also thought that he needed to say more about the civil war of the 1820s and 30s, which
played its part in the destruction of monarchical power – even though Portugal went having a
king. The liberal victors pulled the ancien regime to pieces in order to destroy any basis for
further resistance: so they abolished 6-800 old-style municipalities, guilds, militias – because
all these older institutions had provided support to Dom Miguel. Democracy became a way of
legitimating liberal rule – despite the fact that liberals were largely disappointed with the
people. It also had its uses in integrating Portugal into an international framework: in giving
the state an international persona.
Joanna said this sounded good, inasmuch as it represented a way of linking exposition with
analysis. Though she suggested that the Spanish case showed that invoking democracy, and
13
looking for a source of legitimacy in democracy, didn’t guarantee success, so the question
remained, why in Portugal did this prove a route to political stability?
Javier asked about working-class movements in Lisbon. Were there any such groups who
saw themselves as in some distinctive sense democrats? This wasn’t entirely clear to him.
Rui said that the Septembrists were in retrospect termed democrats, and sometimes described
themselves as democratic. Later they were called progressives, clearly in imitation of Spanish
usage. But by that point everyone was calling themselves a progressive. There were workingclass associations promoted by the liberals, by progressives. These often had a strongly
masonic colouring. But they weren’t very politically significant.
Joanna asked if there was a Lamennaisian strand in Portuguese democratic thinking?
Rui said yes – in general, there was a bit of everything. There was an attempt to create a new
Catholicism, distinct from legitimist Catholicism.
And in terms of popular politics more generally, there were traditions of petitioning etc,
carried over from the past but perhaps taking on some new colouring.
Maurizio noted from his work on Portugal that ‘democracy’ was also used by critics to mean
chaos.
Eduardo wondered if it was true that divergence was most evident in the 1850s. Surely there
were lots of differences before, eg the move of the court to Brazil; the fact that a constitution
initially devised for Brazil became the basis for the Portuguese constitution; the fact that the
absolutist period was very brief. Maybe it was because absolutism never had so much success
that the democratic cause was weaker.
Rui said it was true that it didn’t last long, and its base was effectively destroyed by liberals.
Municipal corporations in the liberal state were essentially just delegations from the
government.
Javier agreed on the many parallels between the Spanish and Portuguese cases, along with
important differences in their historical trajectories. He was particularly intrigued by the
arguably contrasting character of their enlightenments. In the Portuguese case, the Pombaline
enlightened government was much stronger than anything in Spain – Campomanes and
Floridablanca were not really comparable to Pombal. In Spain, there was nothing really
comparable until the trienio.
Maurizio noted that the Portuguese trienio by contrast was less powerful and effective.
Rui said indeed, the Portuguese in the early 1820s were keen to be seen as moderate. He
agreed that under Pombal, there was a violent confrontation between the state and the
aristocracy and religious orders. And later liberals did recognise Pombal as an ancestor. Even
before Pombal though it mattered that the structure of the state was different – indeed, this
helps to explain Pombal. The Portuguese nobility was historically weak. It did not own lands,
14
but held them from the crown. By the later nineteenth century, the nobility were largely
defunct; they knew at the time that this made them different from Spain.
Peter Hill said that it sounded as if there was a pattern of revolution from above, which
might provide a possible basis for comparison.
Joanna observed that it was a pity that the opportunity to bring out differences in state
structures in a more thematic way had been lost with the loss of Gabriel Paquette’s chapter.
Antonis Hadjikyriacou found the category of revolution from above very tempting, at least
in his own Ottoman case. It was arguable that the Greek revolution was also in effect a
revolution from above; it was only in its course that regional notables emerged as powerful
figures.
Greek world (Antonis Hadjikyriacou and Michalis Sotiropoulos)
Joanna introduced discussion. She noted that the draft circulated was still very much a work
in progress. At the moment, it was framed too much as an argument with an established
historiography. As she had also said in the Portuguese case, the non-specialist audience was
going to be more interested in being given an account that made sense in its own terms than
in hearing about other accounts that weren’t being endorsed. The authors needed to have the
courage of their own convictions.
She thought that the authors made trouble for themselves by setting up the Greek/Ottoman
relationship in terms of origins and legacies. Lines of descent are always hard to establish.
Some of these difficulties could be side-stepped, and more fruitful fields for enquiry opened
up, if instead the story was in told in terms of hybridity: a continuous blending of Ottoman
and alternative, ‘European’ traditions.
It would help this story if the later part of the account did not focus only on the kingdom of
Greece, but also had something to say about the enduringly large and significant Greek
communities in Ottoman lands. These people continued to have to work within an Ottoman
framework. Comparisons between their experience of interacting with Ottoman and Greek
authorities could also help to illuminate difference.
Antonis and Michalis said that they were happy to be hybrid.
Someone asked about whether the Greeks had any way of talking about republics that didn’t
also potentially mean democracy. Javier suggested politeia. Michalis said yes, that terms
was used, especially in the 1810s and 20s, though chiefly by intellectuals. Joanna said one
shouldn’t get too hung up on distinguishing the concepts, when in other European contexts
‘democracy’ and ‘republic’ were floating signifiers: they did not stand in a stable relationship
to one another. Having two words made it possible to distinguish, but distinctions were drawn
in different ways at different times.
15
There was also some discussion as to what it meant to say that the constitution of 1827 was
the first to be described as such. Joanna asked what word was used, and what if anything it
had previously meant: the fact that it may have been the term that stuck didn’t necessarily
mean it was from the start a word that more decisively captured the idea of a ‘constitution’.
Antonis said the word was a neologism coined by Korais. Previously people had talked about
‘nomos’, law – perhaps echoing the way Ottomans talked about quasi-constitutional
documents in terms of kanun. But, to complicate things further, kanun was itself a loan word
from Greek.
Peter Hill asked if pre-revolutionary Greece wasn’t already marked by cultural hybridity.
Wasn’t it a matter of reconfiguring a hybrid heritage? Antonis agreed that the mix of
elements was constantly changing.
Michalis noted that interest in codifying customs was nurtured by those who had studied in
German universities.
Mark Philp asked how the American constitution was referred to. Michalis said that it
wasn’t translated until the 1820s.At that time, there was no Greek word for federalism, but
nonetheless he thought that in effect important to the appeal of the American constitution was
its federal character. That made it look like something that might map on to Greek realities.
Rui noted the importance of the idea of independence, of becoming an ‘independent’ nation,
in various countries: thus there was talk of a ‘War of Independence’ in Spain; also of Latin
American independence. Michalis agreed that in the Greek case when ‘independence’
became a focus that changed the terms of discussion.
Juan Luis Simal asked whether the Greeks invoked Latin American example when talking
about their own struggle for independence? He said that Latin Americans for their part liked
to invoke the Greek case – a good reference point because the Greek cause was so widely
supported in Europe, even among conservative Catholics.
Maurizio said that the fact that Greek revolutionaries drew on existing practices to craft a
new state was not peculiar in itself: all revolutionaries did that.
Eduardo said that in some countries democracy became associated with universal suffrage –
but that still left open the question, was voting a right or a function? Joanna said that was a
perfectly good and interesting question in its own right, but not one which urgently needed to
be pursued at this stage.
James McDougall said that he was struck by the idea of constructing a state on the basis of a
tradition of local autonomy. Mapping ideas of national autonomy on the one hand, local
autonomy on the other on to two kinds of right seemed to him productive and exciting. He
observed that in the Ottoman tradition, kanun and sharia were not fixed categories: the
boundaries were manipulated in the context of arguments. However, also in the mix among
these notions of autonomy was the idea of resisting slavery – which sounded to him like
Rousseau.
16
Michalis said he thought what was going on was less learned and intellectual. People were
really frightened about what the Sultan might do to them. They were brought hard up against
the very harsh reality of their own subjection. In a real and practical sense, their lives were
not their own.
*
Ottoman and Arab lands (James McDougall)
Joanna Innes introduced discussion. She said that she thought this paper was in pretty good
shape. The references to other historians in the main text needed pruning, with an imagined
non-specialist reader in mind, and the footnotes were too discursive, but otherwise it was
shaping up well. It combined analysis and exposition very effectively.
The argument in the later part of the paper – which was in effect that the Tanzimat involved
the creation of a new and powerful kind of state, but also a new kind of society – could be
more clearly set out, in that the second theme was currently a bit buried in the detail.
She thought it would be worth ending with some references to those people in this world –
Midhat Pasha, Ali Suavi -- who would start talking about democracy shortly after the end of
the period, to show how these traditions had the potential to converge on western traditions of
discourse.
There were two points at which she had reservations about the arguments of the text, though
it could be that James agreed, and simply hadn’t felt he had the space to develop these points
further. One related to the idea that Europeans defined what civilisation was, and found
Ottomans and Arabs wanting. She thought that discourses about civilisation were more plural
than this allowed: there was a notion of civilisations, plural, and there were Europeans who
portrayed European conduct as uncivilised. It seemed odd to emphasise Ottoman exclusion
when it was brought into the European concert of nations in the Crimean war.
She also thought that the Tezcan account tended to idealise the early modern Ottoman world.
James responded. He agreed that there was a danger of idealising the early modern Ottoman
empire, and that he could complicate it a bit more, especially by including more references to
disorder and civil strife. And he agreed that there was scope to be more positive about the
Tanzimat. It could be argued that all Tezcan did was to re-periodise decline.
And he agreed too that civilisation was an ambiguous concept, that could be used for more
than one end. In fact, in the Crimean War the Ottomans were not so much brought into
Europe as brought back, since there had been lots of treaties between them and European
powers before.
And the book as a whole complicated the narrative of the region, which he needed to register
in terms of how he set things up.
17
Peter Hill said that he thought the emergence of a middle-class public sphere in the earlymid nineteenth century was missing from the account. It was in that sphere that talk of
‘democracy’ would ultimately emerge.
Beirut was an important site for these developments. The Beirut diaspora were not stateoriented. They thought of themselves as civilised in a contemporary sense. This movement
had its own hegemonic vocabularies. They moved away from the din u devlet couplet,
favouring words like islah, jumhur, watan.
Idriss said he liked the second part of the chapter. He thought it set out the emerging tension
between languages and practices in the region.
He thought the chapter was covering too much ground in terms of geography, however. North
Africa couldn’t easily be subsumed into an Ottoman story.
James said there might be ways of bringing out the North African story more clearly, Ideas
of government as bound by law, of some sort, could be found in local as well as imperial
terms all across the region (hence there are 'kanun', before the mid-nineteenth century not
only of the Ottoman state but of every tribal confederation in the mountains in N Africa), and
the very broad overall picture of such 'constitutional' arrangements as locally organised,
flexible, negotiated, being replaced by more codified, top-down, imposed systematisations
holds across both the Ottoman provinces and in N Africa, more or less (though admittedly
much less for Morocco until after c.1930...) Different parts of North Africa were however
drawn into very different sorts of geopolitical web.
Rui Ramos wanted to know if there was an internal discourse about the loss of freedoms
under the newly powerful state.
James said yes, esp. in relation to the janissaries, but he hadn’t thought it useful to develop
that theme much.
Michalis Sotiropoulos asked whether what changed was the goal to which state policy
aimed, or the means used to attain that goal. James said he would have to think about that.
Michalis explained that he was thinking about the ideal of the polizeistaat, The happiness of
subjects might be a continuing goal, but the means used to promote it might change. James
said he thought he would need to read Selim Deringil again to have an answer to this.
Antonis Hadjikyriacou wondered how these developments played out at a micro-level
within the provinces.
James said he could use Bruce Masters’ work to talk about how people used new
government initiatives in a provincial context.
Peter noted complexities of timing in this context. In the case of Aleppo, when it was
returned to central Ottoman rule from the rule of Mehmet Ali, it was immediately subjected
to the Tanzimat: it did not experience restoration but a new round of change.
He also noted that Ottoman economic policy was severely constrained by European powers.
All it could really do was try to avoid becoming another Greece.
18
Javier Lopez Alos asked about legitimisation. What kinds of claims worked?
James said various notions were in play. There was something you didn’t want your rule to
be like, which was zulm, tyranny or oppression. The polity was supposed to be moral. The
traditional vision was of a partnership between religion and state, din u devlet. But during this
period its use shifted. It had been the name of an order which protected subjects. It became
the name of an ideal which subjects were supposed to protect.
The idea of the common good was available, but wasn’t much used. This was at least in part
because of a longstanding Islamic legal suspicion of this concept, as one that could be used to
legitimise anything the state wanted to do. It came into greater use only in the twentieth
century.
Peter noted that Tahtawi used it – but in the service of Mehmet Ali’s programme, so perhaps
this underscored the point.
**
DAY TWO
Social order (Joanna Innes)
Maurizio Isabella introduced discussion. He noted that the chapter provided a top-down
account of social reform. There might at points be scope to say a bit more about responses.
Eg, in relation to land reform, its role in provoking peasant unrest. Thus, in Calabria 1848,
conflict around the privatisation of common land were voiced in terms of democracy.
Similarly in relation to the abolition of guilds and corporations. In Palermo in the 1820s, the
artisan corporations provided important support to the revolution (contrary to what Joanna
had suggested in discussion of Luca’s paper, he thought what happened in Italy was
comparable to what happened elsewhere in Europe. In Lisbon in 1820, artisans supported the
Cadiz constitution, but nonetheless wanted to defend their privileges.)
Mark Philp said he thought that the impact of the reforms on political economy was worth
discussion. Joanna queried whether there was enough of a historiography to make this
possible.
Michalis said that he thought the natural-law idea of society as an association of property
holders was newly applied to diverse European circumstances; also the idea of equal or sortof-equal ownership, as a past state of things that should also be recreated in some fashion
through legal reforms – related to the revival of Roman scholarship and history, Niebuhrtype history (discussed in ch. 2 of his thesis).. But he thought the chief feature of political
economy in the region was that it was very state-oriented. Thus Sismondi, Romagnosi etc.
The state was conceived of as the fount of reform. They didn’t think it was possible to just
leave the market to function. And they thought that the liberal state should act to prevent too
unequal a division of wealth. The Saint Simonians re-imagined society in the framework of
industrie. Sismondi celebrated the mezzadria, the society of small labourers.
19
Javier Lopez Alos said that he thought something should be said about education, which
was commonly seen as important to public happiness. Spanish reactionaries made much of
the way in which confiscations of religious property undermined some traditional educational
institutions.
Peter Hill said that had also been the case in Ottoman Egypt. A dual system developed in
which mosque schools were paralleld by so called state schools, established by Mehmet Ali
and his successors.
Javier Fernandez Sebastian said he thought that the chapter should include some reflection
on the historical conceptual task of imagining a new society: the very concept of society was
emerging, and this among other things framed worries about individualism.
Eduardo thought that some attention ought to be given to the survival of slavery in Cuba,
still a Spanish colony. In general he thought that there would be a case for highlighting the
American dimension more. Until the 1860s, slavery continued to make an important
contribution to the Spanish economy. In addition, there was a wave of Spanish migration to
Cuba during the first half the nineteenth century. Estimates vary but, for example, between
1852 and 1859, over 10,000 Spaniards travelled to Cuba every year, including members of
the military. During the same period significant number of Italians were heading for
Argentina. [He notes that the best book on this is Christopher Schmidt-Novara, Empire and
Antislavery. Spain, Cuba and Puerto Rico, 1833-1874.]
Michael Drolet thought that discussion of political economy could help to bring out a lot of
other themes. He noted that Sieyes had devised a catechism on political economy, with the
aim of educating craftsmen for the new economic order. This linked to the desire to prevent
excessive inequality.
Joanna said it sounded then as if what was being said was that the creation of inequality in
the new market order hadn’t been fully anticipated.
Michael said no, and when it became clear that it was having that effect, Saint Simonians
reacted. [When was that? Example?]
Juan Luis Simal said that Estrada’s course on political economy was similarly aimed at a
wide audience. Maurizio said that it also circulated in Italy.
Javier Fernandez Sebastian said that he thought one of the Ackermann titles that circulated
in Latin America was a political economy catechism. (J. J. Mora, Catecismo de Economía
Política, Londres, Ackerman, 1825).
Mark Philp noted that there wasn’t a clear opposition between old and new. In France, the
chambers of commerce proposed that they might constitute a fourth estate.
Rui Ramos suggested that it might be worth saying something about statistics. In Portugal, a
man with an Italian name, Franzini, produced a statistical overview of Portuguese society. He
said that he was imitating a similar account of Spain, produced 1801.
20
Joanna noted that Sylvana Patriarca had written about this theme in an Italian context.
Ludovic Frobert noted the rise of the idea of ‘administration’ as an alternative to
government. He said that books on political economy often devoted a chapter to this. He also
thought that a new emphasis on the power of technology deserved attention (though that
word itself was not yet in use; they talked about things like changement de techniques).
Javier Fernandez Sebastian said that reseau, network, came into use from the 1820s and
30s; it was favoured by Saint Simonians. He mentioned an article [Pierre Musso, ‘Geneseet
critique de la notion de reseau’ in Penser les reseaux, 2001, which explored this process.
See also Musso’s book, Critique des reseaux).
Mark Philp said that although the Saint Simonians seemed weird, he thought they were
important.
Maurizio said that Mazzini in his Thoughts on Democracy in Europe discussed these people.
Peter Hill said that a group of Saint-Simonians proper, around Enfantin, went to Egypt in
1833. Their ideas were current among the Frenchmen employed as technicians and
instructors in Mehmed Ali's reform programme from the 1830s onwards. But whether the
core group of St-Simonians themselves had much influence over that programme's direction
he didn’t know. They were apparently impressed by the public works programmes in Egypt
(canal-building etc, the industriousness of Egyptian workers). [There are studies - rather old which should shed some light: A F Abdelnour and P Regnier, Les Saint-simoniens en Egypte
(1989); Jean-Marie Carré, Voyageurs et écrivains francais en Egypte (2e, 1956); Afaf L. S.
Marsot, Egypt in the Reign of Muhammad Ali, pp. 77-8.]
As to statistics in Egypt, he said that geography textbooks were translated with statistical
tables.
He also said that he thought it would be worth mentioning Beirut as an example of a
mushrooming city.
The idea that a new age was dawning was announced in the first Arabic private newspaper,
1858. Such comments can also be found in comments made during the outbreak of sectarian
violence 1860.
He said that he thought one of the reason why translations of Fenelon’s Telemaque were
popular was because they allowed people to imagine the Mediterranean as a region.
He said that Beirutis were interested in circulation, and used metaphors relating to the freeing
up of capital.
Javier Fernandez Sebastian talked about the fashion of the 1840s for publications on the
line of Les francais peints par eux memes. There was a Spanish publication modelled on this.
These publications provided a basis for reflecting on social change, and comparing old and
new forms of society. [The French edition can be found in Gallica; the Spanish in
21
archive.org, Los españoles pintados por sí mismos, 1843:
https://archive.org/details/espanolespinta01madr].
Mark Philp said that in the north one found the idea of an age of transition, in which a new
society struggled to emerge from an old one. Thus in Carlyle, John Stuart Mill. He thought
that Mill perhaps got it from Comte.
Javier said that in the Spanish context there were many reflections on uncertainty, especially
from M.J. de Larra who wrote extensively about this.
Michalis said that he thought in Greek, the most important conceptual category was
regeneration. He noted that Benjamin Franklin’s almanac, translated into French by Say, was
also translated into Greek in the 1820s/30s.
Eduardo asked about views of the position of women.
Michael Drolet said that the Saint Simonians made a lot of this. This concern helped inspire
their search for the mother. They thought that a mother-figure in the east might complement
Saint Simon in the west.
Maurizio Isabella said that travel writing was a genre in which women often published, and
that might offer a way into their perceptions. Cristina Belgioioso for example wrote about the
east.
Peter Hill said that missionary women played an important role among Arab Christians in
this period. They helped inspire some new phenomena in terms of gender, eg the idea of
educating girls in schools, and some new social practices which mixed the two sexes.
Juan Luis Simal said that Eugene Sue foregrounded women as victims.
Peter said that Sue wasn’t translated into Arabic till the 1870s. [He now adds: The earliest I
can find is 1874. Sue was translated into Ottoman Turkish several times in the 1880s. And in
1911 an anticlerical Sue play was performed (not sure whether in Arabic or in French) in
Beirut and sparked an anti-masonic protest (see Hanssen, Fin-de-siecle Beirut, p. 201)]
Rui Ramos suggested that another source for women and their perceptions was the
traditional genre of religious biography. Sometimes these were not unlike novels, and there
was some cross-fertilisation between these genres. There was also confessional poetry.
Joanna said that she had become aware through the work of one of her graduate students of a
literary-critical concept that might help in this field, that is ‘subjectification’: the antonym of
objectification, meaning imagining and writing from the position of a particular subject. She
thought that one could think of writers in the nineteenth century developing new approaches
to portraying women as subjects.
Ludovic Frobert said that the first women’s press was founded by Saint Simonians, or
Fourierists.
Juan Luis Simal said that Monica Burguera and Maria Serra were working in this field in
Spain. Isabel Burdiel’s next book would be on one such woman.
Javier [JFS mentioned a best selling epistolary gothic novel by an ex-friar [Luis Gutiérrez,
Cornelia Bororquia, c. 1800],about a women who suffered at the hands of the inquisition.
22
This played a role in the elaboration of the ‘black legend’. As did the writings of Blanco
White, who portrayed Ferdinand VII as a Philip II figure.
Juan Luis said that Blanco White’s autobiography was quite interesting in terms of how it
compared England and Spain.
Liberalism (Mark Philp and Eduardo Posada)
Joanna introduced discussion. She said that she thought the revised outline provided a good
basis for the chapter, though she still quite liked the old beginning, about the periodical The
Liberal, which she thought had the power to do the work of taking the reader quickly into the
issues. As she saw it, the role of the chapter was to situate democracy, which would have
been given what was in a sense disproportionate prominence in the opening chapters, in the
context of a more powerful ideology, or family of ideas, liberalism. The chapter should also
pursue the question, how did ideas of the liberal and the democratic interact? Was being
liberal a matter of shifting terminology while espousing what might once have been termed
democratic ideas? Or did it involve changing priorities? Was the resurgence of talk about
democracy in the 1830s a reaction against liberalism? And if so, how were democratic ideas
coloured by the new political landscape? How did liberal critics of democracy portray
democrats and their ideals?
She thought one of the big challenges of writing this chapter was to find a middle ground
between nominalism and essentialism. The chapter should offer more than just a list of ways
people talked about liberty and being liberal – the first draft did a bit too much of that. But
nor should it be written as if ‘liberalism’ was a clear thing. She thought this could be
managed by careful writing, but certainly it would require careful handling.
Currently the chapter said nothing about constitutionalism, but that was an important idea,
which it should aim to position.
The chapter told a story about the 1830s as a watershed, which seemed right to her but that
others might wish to comment on.
There were also questions to be explored about how and why these relationships played out
differently in different countries.
Maurizio said that he agreed about the importance of constitutionalism. He thought that
‘liberal’ was a term without much content.
Peter Hill noted that Grassi, the Italian exile who wrote Charte Turque [sic, no article] ,
defending the Ottoman regime against the charge of despotism, talked about constitutional
government.
23
Rui Ramos said that in Portugal ‘constitutionalist’ was the favoured term in the 1820s. The
term ‘liberal’ was more prominent in the counterrevolutionary press. Sometimes indeed the
people we call liberals called themselves ‘legitimists’, not wanting to cede this term to the
reactionaries. In the 1830s, ‘liberal’ came into more common use, and then people began to
compete over that term.
Juan Luis Simal said ‘liberal’ was a term employed in the Spanish trienio, but it wasn’t the
name of a party.
Javier Fernandez Sebastian said that its origins lay in the French revolution. In the 1830s,
moderados and progressistas began to be distinguished – but necessarily prior to that
distinction was the ‘temporalisation’ of politics about which he had previously spoken. He
referred to Craiatu’s work on moderation as a concept. He said that ‘moderation’ wasn’t
necessarily on the same axis as liberalism. It could be the name of a virtue. But by the 1830s
the term acquired a temporal dimension (regarding the desirable pace of sociopolitical
changes: rapid, slow, or moderate).
Rui Ramos said that he thought one of the liberals’ ambitions was to put an end to the
revolution (that French conundrum) by establishing a government under law.
He suggested that liberal had particularly strongly religious connotations.
In the 1840s, Portuguese Septembrists started calling themselves Progressives, clearly on the
Spanish model. Those who had called themselves Chartists began calling themselves
Moderates, or even Conservatives. [In effect they Europeanised their party terminology].
However, they were all liberal: they had all been on the same side in the civil war, which was
a defining experience.
Juan Luis Simal said that one way of complicating ideas about identity would be to look at
personal biographies. The same person might be associated with a variety of parties during
their life time, as much because the meaning of the labels shifted as because they themselves
changed.
Maurizio said that he had found an article published in Naples as early as 1820 that
distinguished between moderate and progressive liberals. But that terminology gained more
prominence in the 1830s.
Javier Fernandez Sebastian said that when there were two rival constitutions, of course
there were two ways of being a constitutionalist.
Luca Fruci said that perhaps it would be better to talk of ‘liberalisms’. He thought the
significance of the phrase ‘idee liberale’ was ambiguous in both France and Italy. It was
Bonaparte who first used the word in France. When Cuoco called himself a liberal, he was
professing allegiance to Bonaparte. In the 1820s, some Italian liberals looked to Spain to
define their identities, but others to Bonaparte. There was talk of true and false liberals –
Mazzini eg used those terms.
24
Mark Philp observed that there were many references to liberals in the Charterhouse of
Parma.
Maurizio said that when Stendhal talked about liberals, he meant Napoleonists.
Rui said that in Portugal it was reported that Napoleon said existing institutions were not
liberal and would have to go.
Javier FS said that marshal Sebastiani [Napoleonic soldier in Spain] said the emperor offers
us a liberal constitution. But this could mean just ‘generous’. The adjective liberal had more
diffuse meanings than the noun ‘a liberal’. He said that the noun emerged at Cadiz, and it was
the Spanish example that gave it new significance in Europe. One can find books on
‘liberalismo’ by 1814.
Michalis Sotiropoulos said that in the Ionian islands by the 1840s liberals were pitted against
reformers. Liberals came to be called radicals [or root-smashers, rhizospastai].
In Greece itself, moderatism was not an identity. In the 1910s, the liberals became the major
party. They called themselves the modern party, but others called them liberals.
Joanna asked about whether the terms English, French and Russian party mapped at all on to
party labels used elsewhere in Europe.
Michalis said that the French party were the old revolutionary elites. The English party were
in effect the liberal constitutionalists. The Russian party had a more religious orientation; it
comprised old warlords. The English and French parties were both constitutionalists. The
French were stronger advocates of centralisation. These terms were not used in Parliament,
but in the press and in public discussion. After 1844 in fact these identities dissolved: the
English and French parties were no longer clearly distinguished, though the Russian party
still had a discrete identity.
Michael Drolet suggested that moderate was a term used to particular audiences. It wasn’t
peculiar to liberals; it was also used by monarchiens.
Juan Luis said that divisions in Spain during the civil war were not just ideological; they
also had to do with career patterns, friendship groups etc.
Peter Hill noted that Albert Hourani characterised this period in the Arab world as the
‘liberal age’. The vocabulary associated with this was one of rights.
Mark Philp said that it was hard to know where democrats came from. They might draw on
republican as much as liberal ideas.
Maurizio said that some people interpreted liberty in a very republican way. They might call
themselves liberals, but look to us more like republicans.
He said that during the Risorgimento, liberal was a general term applied to all critics of the
status quo. Divisions within their ranks came later.
25
Mark Philp said he was still uncertain whether Italy had a single or a plural political
culture.
Maurizio said that there were regional differences. For example, in Naples the Cadiz
constitution was particularly important.
Javier FS said that he thought that in the Spanish case differences within liberal ranks
emerged in the 1830s. Values of liberty came into tension with values of equality. There were
disagreements about who should govern and how to govern. Ortega y Gasset in the early
twentieth century said that those were two different questions, so that they divided people
along different lines.
Mark Philp said that he thought that the fact that in France liberals came to power started to
make a difference.
Javier Lopez Alos suggested that there was a distinction between those who emphasised
intelligence as a crucial basis for power, and those who emphasised rather will.
Rui Ramos said it mattered whether or not there was a powerful anti-liberal force around.
When there was, that always encouraged liberal rallying.
Emergence of an international democratic culture (Peyrou and Simal)
Joanna introduced discussion. She said if the function of the previous chapter was to correct
the impression that might be gained from the regional chapters and situate democracy within
the much larger landscape of liberalism, the function of this chapter was to correct the localist
bias of the regional chapters, by exploring the extent to which the culture of democracy was
transnational.
She said that she thought the current draft assembled the right material, but came across as
miscellaneous. It took secret societies, exiles and an international democratic culture as
discreet topics, and identified various interconnections between them, when she thought that
it needed a more single focus. She thought that should be ‘the emergence of an international
democratic culture’. The chapter should engage with the question, What did exiles and secret
societies (among other things) contribute to the emergence of an international democratic
culture?
She thought it might help to start at the end: to look at the kind of international democratic
culture that had taken shape by the 1840s, and to see to what extent that was and wasn’t
anticipated by previous developments.
She stressed that thematic chapters should not try to be encyclopedic. While they should aim
to give readers some idea about how the experiences of different regions were similar and
different, they need not always pay the same degree of attention to each region. It might be
more effective to be selective so as to be able to explore a few examples of some
phenomenon within the larger account in more depth. She suggested for example that in the
26
case of secret societies, since the term covered a wide variety of phenomena, there might be
merit in considering two or three cases in more detail, to illustrate that.
In relation to the general topic of political culture, which she had suggested should be
illuminated by the regional chapters, she thought this chapter also had a contribution to make
here, particularly in talking about varying and changing degrees of openness, which made
different forms of politics possible in different places and at different times. It would be
worth noting the limits to liberal tolerance: liberals in power opened up the public sphere to
some extent, but there were often marked limits to their tolerance.
Mark Philp asked Joanna to say what she understood by ‘international democratic culture’:
he wasn’t sure what it was that was supposed to have emerged by the end of the period
Joanna said she thought Florencia had explored this world effectively in her own work. Off
the top of her head, she would say it had four aspects.
-
-
-
-
First, one might identify as a democrat internationally. There was by the 1840s a kind
of international public sphere, constituted esp by exile culture in places like Paris and
London, within which ‘democrat’ became a recognised identity. Someone might
meaningfully describe themselves as a ‘democrat’ in this context, when they wouldn’t
have prioritised the term to the same extent in their own country. Mazzini seems to
provide a case in point. This above all was what made it meaningful to talk of an
international democratic culture. The key is how people identified themselves.
Elements of this culture were in place earlier, but without the identity having the
same salience.
Secondly, providing an infrastructure for this culture, there were international
networks, based on face-to-face encounters, which linked people who espoused some
version of the democratic cause in different nations. Again exile was important here,
though there were all kinds of reasons why people travelled abroad, for longer or
shorter periods
Thirdly there were other forms of linkage not taking the form of face-to-face contact.
People tracked what was happening in other countries, and became familiar with each
other’s political activists and writers, perhaps through word of mouth, letters,
newspaper reporting or books. A kind of international democratic pantheon developed
in this context (as Florencia has described)
Finally, it wasn’t just that people drew on developments elsewhere to think about their
own national affairs; they also often thought the international dimension of current
affairs was crucial in determining what was possible at the national level. Democrats
had reason to make common cause across nations, because they needed a benign
configuration of international affairs to make it possible to advance their cause. There
were of course precedents for this among admirers of the French revolution, and
liberals.
27
Juan Luis Simal said that he agreed about the need to give the piece analytical focus, but
wasn’t convinced that beginning at the end would work. It might make it difficult to avoid
teleology.
Joanna, Mark and Maurizio all said they didn’t think that teleology was entailed.
Comparisons across time could provide means to distinguish how things were different at
different moments.
Rui Ramos said that he thought another thing the chapter could helpfully to would be to
stress the underdetermined character of nationalisms. He cited Clare Mar-Molinero and
Angel Smith eds, Nations and nationalism in the Iberian peninsula, competing and
conflicting identities for the potential for a broader Iberian identity. Juan Luis agreed that
that would be a good thing to do.
Antonis Hadjikyriacou asked whether there was one or several international worlds. And
was it transnational or international?
He thought that it would be worth saying something about the Young Ottomans [the group is
usually said to have been formed in 1865, though some of its older members, eg Ibrahim
Sinasi, were active earlier]. This was a quintessential transnational organisation.
He also wondered about anarchists? Where did they fit into this account?
Juan Luis thought that they didn’t become an international movement until later.
He said he wasn’t sure how much he should talk about Filiki Heteria. How important was it?
He wondered if the role often assigned to it didn’t belong more in the realm of revolutionary
mythology than history.
Antonis said that he thought it illustrated his point about there being more than one
international world. The Filiki were very much eastern-Mediterranean oriented, beginning in
Odessa.
Eduardo asked whether it was possible to quantify the scale of exile. And was it possible to
distinguish migrants and exiles. Similarly secret societies: how many people might have been
involved with them.
Antonis thought that being an exile was itself a form of identity.
Javier FS remarked that one problem with international was that it assumed that the building
block was the nation. In fact, various kinds of link were important, including the
intercontinental, and the internal – there were also issues about internal coordination.
He noted that there was a pamphlet by John Cartwright - Diálogo político entre un italiano,
un español, un frances, un alemán, y un ingles, tr. [from Palim] por un apasionado suyo,
1825 [though oddly there doesn’t seem to be an English version] which featured a
conversation between men of different nationalities talking about Europe as a whole, and the
prospects for republicanism, constitutionalism, a universal constitution, fraternity etc.
28
Luca said he thought that the chapter in its current form focused more on vehicles than on
goals. Was new internationalism different from old cosmopolitanism, in the vision it
embodied? If so, how?
Rui said he thought that it might help to indicate something of the diverse reasons why
people moved. Some networks predated their use by exiles – eg freemasonry.
Joanna suggested that Juan Luis and Florencia might find it useful to read the final chapter in
the first Re-imagining Democracy collection, Synergies, which tried to deal with some of
these issues, including the various bases of international networks. She also suggested that
they might want to look back to the minutes of the September 2013 New York meeting,
where some related issues – particularly to do with idealized visions -- had been discussed. In
terms of complicating ideas of the nation and thinking about the role of international
networks here, she thought that Dominique Reill’s Nationalists who feared the nation might
be useful – and would provide a basis for bringing in Dalmatia, a Mediterranean coast that
was not going to get much attention in this book.
Michael Drolet suggested that the period saw the development of self-conscious liberal
internationalism, but this took various forms. See thus competing forms of peace movement,
with very different profiles.
[later note by JMI: Angela Jianu, A Circle of Friends: Romanian Revolutionaries and
Political Exile, 1840-1859 may also be of interest. Dimitrije Djordjevic, The Balkan
Revolutionary Tradition 1981 has a lot on Balkan secret societies in the 1850s – though it’s
old and a rather undiscriminating compendium]
Michalis suggested that it would be worth mentioning the role of Italian exiles in the first
Greek constitution. He thought that volunteering in Greece deserved more attention, as also
the role of Ypsilantis, as one of a significant group of Greeks who had been in Russian
service. Juan Luis agreed.
Peter Hill suggested that there was more to say about the Ottoman empire as a place of exile.
Freemasonic networks already extended there in the late eighteenth century. Europeans in the
Ottoman world continued to join lodges through the nineteenth century, and some reformist
Ottoman governors also belonged. He doesn’t know whether this experience contributed to
the associational forms used by the Young Ottomans.
In 1818, the Ottoman secret police reported that there was a secret society in Egypt run by the
French consul Drovetti, who was an anti-legitimist. It was supposedly headed by the Pasha
himself, then seen as a French tool. In international politics, Mehmet Ali was then on the
liberal side. It supposedly had links to the Ionian islands.
Juan Luis Simal said that Spanish exiles in North Africa were usually received by Sephardic
Jews.
Maurizio said that there was a PhD by a pupil of Gilles Pecout, Anthony Santilli, now based
in Rome about Italians in North Africa during the Risorgimento.
29
Javier FS said that the boundary between the militant and the adventurer was quite fuzzy.
Javier Fernández Sebastián, “Liberales sin fronteras. Cádiz y el primer constitucionalismo
hispánico”, en Cadice e oltre: Costituzione, Nazione e Libertà, Vittorio Scotti Douglas, ed.,
Roma, Escuela Española de Historia y Arqueología (CSIC) - Istituto per la Storia del
Risorgimento Italiano, 2015, pp. 465-490, in fine, forthcoming)
Antonis said that the Ionian islands were well known for their freemasonic lodges, and
provided a point from which they disseminated into the Ottoman empire: Smyrna, Cyprus,
Egypt and Bulgaria. Freemasonry also linked to the Filiki Heteria. While Freemasonry is
better studied for the period at the end of the nineteenth century we know very little for
preceding periods.
*
Church and religion (Maurizio Isabella)
Joanna opened discussion. She said that she thought this chapter was taking shape nicely.
She noted that it was unusual among the thematic chapters in not being organised
chronologically, but she thought that that worked fine in this case. Nonetheless, Maurizio
might want to think about how to bring out a story about what changed (or varied) over time,
within his thematic framework.
At the moment, the chapter said little about the appeal of reform ideologies backed in
religious terms to the people. She wondered if e.g. there would be merit in saying more about
popular anticlericalism, and how that was or was not effectively exploited by reformers.
She wondered if the relationship between Jansenism and liberal reformism was not more
complicated than this chapter made clear; Dale van Kley’s recent article in Past and Present
had interested her in this connection – though of course there were always limits to the depth
of complexity one could bring out in a short space.
Maurizio said that he would like to change his title: he would not be talking about changes in
ecclesiastical institutional structures, but rather focussing on the role played by religion in
political projects.
He agreed that he should say something about popular anticlericalism.
He said that van Kley’s argument was not original. Maria Rosa e.g. tracked Jansenists going
in various directions. Nonetheless, there was a link between Jansenists and democrats.
Peter Hill said that both Tahtawi and Khayrredin wanted to see Ottoman and European
developments as reconcilable. The Young Ottomans were critical of Ottoman reality,and
wanted to revive older versions of the polity. They invoked the time of the prophet.
Antonis said that an important element of their thought was the idea that Islam had the
potential to reform modernity.
30
Peter noted some other political uses of religion in Ottoman space. Al Jabarti refuted
Napoleon’s proclamation to the people of Egypt in religious terms.
In 1860, in Syria and Lebanon there was violence sparked by Christian popular mobilisation,
claiming religious legitimisation for what they were doing. But in the case of sectarian
violence in Damascus, Muslims mobilised against both Christians and the Ottoman reform
programme.
It was the traditional wisdom of the ulama that they should not be too close to the state - this
went back to medieval times. It wasn't linked to multiconfessionality, being just as strong in
Egypt as Syria: Mehmed Ali had difficulty winning over and recruiting ulama (like Attar or
Tahtawi) to his service, despite the obvious incentives he could offer. The continual
glorification of Mehmed Ali and the blessings he has bestowed on Egypt which you find in
the works of Tahtawi and the Bulaq press must have been partly angled towards this audience
(one of the few audiences in Egypt which was literate in Arabic).
Antonis said that the Bektashi order was targeted specifically during the purge of janissaries
in 1826, and the order was attacked for not being orthodox enough. In the 1820s and 30s, the
Nakshibandis became very influential and particularly close to imperial power, and even the
Sultan. Their influence was quite prominent.
Elena Draghici-Vasilescu said that the church in Greece reached a point where it was
prepared to integrate the revolutionary tradition in the 1860s and 70s. Dogma was then
changed to make it possible to accept progress.
Javier Lopez Alos said that while Villanueva came across as anti-liberal in his Catecismo de
Estado, in fact he was also critical of the Jesuits. He was a Jansenist, who during the Cadiz
Cortes represented liberal Catholicism – though he had been involved with the Inquisition.
He thought that his position was shaped by the question of sovereignty, and of the position of
regular and secular orders – whether these should obey the state or the Pope, as well as
controversiesabout regalism and Royal Patronage within Bourbon reformism. He thought that
it might be worth developing more the distinction between regular and secular clergy.
Maurizio said however that even regulars could be pro-revolutionary, thus for example in
Greece, Sicily.
Eduardo said that he thought that to emphasise religious homogeneity within southern
European Catholic states ran the risk of understating divisions among Catholics.
Also he wanted to hear more about democracy specifically.
Luca noted debate around the time of the constituent assembly [which one? Rome?] on the
question of papal sovereignty. One might also look at debate in the case of the sister
republics on the role of religion in the constitution.
31
Rui Ramos said that he agreed with Maurizio that religion became more and not less
important as time passed. He thought that he might do more to deconstruct the idea of the
church as an organisation, and to develop the alternative idea of it as a community of the
faithful. He noted the temptation to try to build a national church. In general it was a time
when the question what kind of thing a church should be was up in the air.
He thought it important to be careful not to overstate how important religion was to people’s
thinking. When the Portuguese constitution of 1822 defined the Catholic religion as the
religion of the Portuguese nation, some contemporaries saw this as an attack on religion.
They favoured an alternative formulation, that the Catholic religion was the only true
religion.
In terms of chronology, as he saw it the 1830s were a time of Catholic renaissance, when
liberals thought that they too needed to embrace religion. In the 1840s, democrats and
sometimes even republicans also developed a strong religious imaginary.
Javier FS said that the clergy played many social roles. They might serve as deputies, be
journalists etc. This should be brought out.
Against the secularisation thesis, he noted that churches were often used for voting, and that
parishes served as electoral districts.
Armed force (David Bell)
Joanna introduced discussion. She had meant to find a way of involving David in this
discussion, and apologised for having failed to remember that until too late. We need to
know from David how he plans to write at three times the length of his workshop paper. She
said she thought a longer paper probably needed to have some kind of chronological
dimension, distinguishing the long era of revolutionary-Napleonic war from the less wardominated period that followed.
As others had commented at the Athens workshop where his paper was discussed, a wider
variety of forms of armed force needed attention.
And variations in regional experience needed bringing out – though as usual not in an
encyclopedic way, but indicatively and illustratively.
Javier FS wanted to pick up on the issue of chronology. He thought that there were
important differences in the enlightenment and under liberalism in Spain. In the
enlightenment, senior officers were members of the intellectual elite class. Many had an
important role in political discussion. Most scientists were soldiers, and some important
writers.They included advanced constitutional thinkers. By contrast, after the Peninsular War,
32
there was a huge change. Most professional had been Josefinists. The new military class was
drawn from parvenus. Moreover their outlook was shaped by having participated in a
‘national war’ (first so-called in German treatises).This provided the context for the
development of the pronunciamiento as a form.
Mark Philp said he thought there were changes in military culture [in England?] associated
with recruitment from very diverse groups, such as changes in codes of honour.
Joanna questioned this, saying that soldiers were the people most likely to duel into the
nineteenth century.
Javier Lopez Alos thought that something should be said about the sacralisation of war,
creation of heroes, notions of sacrifice, martyrs.
Michalis said that in the Greek case this theme could be overplayed. Irregulars did their best
not to sacrifice themselves. Their battle strategies aimed at keeping themselves alive. They
were also shaped by lack of ammunition.
Peter Hill suggested that it might be worth observing that the dominant navies in the
Mediterranean through this period were the navies of the ‘northern powers’. The Ottomans
tried to hold their own, but failed, most notably at Navarino.
Eduardo said that Rafe Blaufarb had interesting things to say about navies.
Peter asked if there was any equivalent to janissaries elsewhere.
Joanna thought not (subject to correction) in the sense that there was no military caste so
deeply implicated in ordinary ‘middle class’ civilian life.
Eduardo remarked on the importance of the militia to progressistas: they saw it as a means
of socialisation.
Graciela said that this could be related to the progressistas interest in championing the local
against the national.
Javier FS agreed that the question of the militia in Spain was bound up with issues about
centralisation.
Peter noted that the new order of the Tanzimat depended on the enhanced coercive power
that the government acquired through its new, conscripted troops. New recruitment policies
also stirred up sensitivities about the role of Christians and Jews.
Eduardo thought that the question of the rights of soldiers, and of the internal politics of
armies might deserve attention.
Juan Luis Simal noted how conscious officers were of their own image. They admired
Washington and behind him, Cincinnatus. They thought that though they might usefully
intervene in politics, they should then withdraw: thus Riego, Espartero.
Joanna added, Garibaldi.
33
Antonis Hadjikyriacou wondered how ayan, traditional Ottoman regional leaders, fitted into
the picture. They characteristically commanded large private armies. Were they praetorians?
Peter wondered if the changing role of the aristocracy had to do with them losing a military
base from which to intervene.
Joanna said that some of the themes that had been raised were well established in the
historiography, and historians had taken various positions on them. David would need to say
something about the historiography: to make it clear where he stood in relation to existing
arguments (if not just acknowledging them), and what if anything was new about what he had
to say.
Juan Luis said he didn’t understand why Anglophone scholars consistently wrote
pronunciamento when the correct Spanish was pronunciamiento. If the spelling was an
alternative English spelling, it shouldn’t be in italics. Luca said it was an Italian spelling.
Joanna said (not speaking for David in particular) she thought it was simply a case of
ignorance, and she would make sure they got it right.
Popular consent and the European order (Joanna Innes)
Maurizio introduced discussion. He said that he thought this was an original and interesting
discussion.
He thought more might need doing to tease apart consent and legitimacy. Regimes that could
make a case for their legitimacy did not necessarily elicit consent.
He said that not all revolutions aimed at establishing new states had an international
dimension. He thought that juntas might be worth mentioning in this context.
He said that drawing up a constitution was not always an option; sometimes people had to
use different tools.
He thought that it might be worth being more explicit about, including quoting from, key
texts, such as declarations of independence and addresses to the people. E.g., Bentinck’s
famous declaration to the Italians, calling upon them to rise against Napoleon. In the
Portuguese case, there were clearly addresses written with international audiences in mind.
He thought that more might be done to at least hint at some of the related theories. He noted
that Constant and Vattel were mentioned in passing. There were other more local authors. In
the Italian case, Galdi was important for his idea of a new diplomacy based on republican
principles. He wondered whether the term ‘consent’ had any significant place in these
theories.
34
He noted that intervention by foreign powers was sometimes criticised, as in relation to
slavery.
Joanna said that she found this topic a difficult one to assemble ideas about, because there
was very little helpful historiography. She had expected to get some help from International
Relations literature, but found that it just didn’t tend to engage with such issues, but had a
very particular conception of its own subject matter: international relations as defined by
treaties and diplomatic rules, not so much the active working out of relations between states
in the course of events.
She also thought that the topic linked up with other underexplored topics, such as the
development of a revolutionary script: a set of notions about what the proper stages and
methods of a revolution were. Contemporaries shared ideas about these things. In a sense, all
revolutions had an external dimension, insofar as they followed an internationally developed
script. She had become interested in the notion of provisional government in that context: this
appeared not to be an eighteenth-century concept, though there were various terms for
functional equivalents – as junta effectively was. The founding example of a provisional
government/ gouvernement provisoire seemed to be the first republican government of
France. The term was thereafter widely employed, both by revolutionaries and by the allies as
they toppled Napoleonic regimes. It became the normal name for a holding operation,
preceding the establishment of a proper, often constitutional government. The question of
how that transition was effected and legitimised was an interesting one.
She agreed that the international audience mattered to different degrees in different contexts,
and she would try to make that clear.
She said that as far as she could see there was no process that one could go through that
sufficed to get international recognition: that was always more ad hoc.
She would very much welcome suggestions as to texts that she could read and cite.
Rui Ramos said that he also thought that the outline developed an important perspective.
However, he thought it was difficult to distinguish national and international audiences. Did
an ‘international audience’ consist of all powers, a special ally, or international public
opinion. He also suggested that would-be rulers might evoke the support of foreign powers
as one means to legitimise their position.
He noted that international treaties sometimes put some powers in the position of guarantors,
and they might intervene against that background: thus Spain and Britain in Portugal 1847.
Joanna observed that that practice had a long history.
Juan Luis Simal said that when the French intervened in Spain in 1823, they hoped to
establish a regime modelled on their own Charte regime, and thus to increase their influence.
Similarly, the French ambassador in Turin advocated a charte as a device for increasing
French influence against the Austrians. Gonzalo Butron had written about this. The French
talked about their Sagrada Causa.
35
Javier FS wanted to look at the language dimension. He noted that the law of nature and
nations and civil law overlapped. The same vocabulary was employed in both contexts:
independence and national sovereignty were terms with both internal and external
significance. They were sometimes employed in constitutions. In article 2 of the Spanish
constitution, it was said that the Spanish nation is free and independent; it was not the
property of a dynasty. In the case of Spanish America, metaphors drawing on civil law were
employed to characterise the independence process: images of children growing up (as a
natural process of emancipation from parental tutelage). He cited Capmany pamphlet, one of
the most important produced in the War of Independence [Centinela contra franceses, 1808].
In making this case, Antonio de Capmany had domestic as well as international
relationships in mind: what kinds of power should Ferdinand VII enjoy? (‘national
sovereignty’ undertood as domestic rule – i.e., by a Spanish king, as Ferdinand VII was,
while Joseph Bonaparte wasn’t –, not as popular will). He also cited Chiaramonte’s book,
Nation and State in Latin America: Political Language during Independence.
Joanna noted that there were similar transfers between spheres in Ottoman usage, as
described by Bernard Lewis, in relation to serbestiyet.
Peter Hill said this could be right, though he always distrusted Lewis, who certainly
sometimes got things wrong.
He suggested looking at Richard Wood’s correspondence from the Lebanon. He wondered
whether he talked about the wishes of the people. It tended to be taken as given by Europeans
that Christian subjects would not willingly choose to be ruled by Druze.
Elena noted that sometimes external powers appointed rulers, as in the case of Rumania.
Joanna said, and Greece.
Michalis said that the British said that they had guaranteed the monarchy as an institution,
not any particular king. Therefore it was alright to get rid of one king, so long as he was
replaced by another.
He said that Nikolaos Saripolos, constitutional and international lawyer, developed a theory
of national sovereignty as both internal and external. This theory was developed as a criticism
of what happened in Greece after the Crimean war. It was argued that ‘independence’ did not
go far enough, since foreign powers kept intervening; Vattel did not go far enough. What was
needed instead was a theory about the rights of states. This author favoured international
tribunals who could retrospectively judge states.
He thought that contingency often played a large part in determining what happened: thus at
Navarino it doesn’t seem that European navies had clear orders to act as they did. What
happened had to be legitimised in retrospect.
He said that Greece was the first nation to be brought into being by international treaty.
36
Joanna wondered if that could really be so. What about the United Provinces – wasn’t this
why the Treaty of Westphalia was said to have founded sovereignty (rather oddly, it might be
thought, if it took international agreement to bestow it). What about Portugal in 1640?
Rui Ramos said that in the case of Portugal it was notable that Protestant powers recognised
it first. The Pope was the last but the most important.
Javier FS said in any case that was conceptualised as a restoration.
Rui agreed. He said that it was only during the nineteenth century that people talked about
this process in terms of establishing the independence of Portugal. The Spanish were not at
the time conceived to be occupying it. It had always retained its status as a kingdom. The
question was about which monarchy was subject to. A distinct dynasty was restored to it.
Michalis said that in the Treaty of London of May 1832, which ratified the offer to and the
acceptance from Ludwig of Bavaria of the Greek crown, it was said that the Great Powers
(GB, France and Russia) had come to that agreement with the authority of the Greek nation.
Antonis noted that on p. 164 of the draft, something was said about islands and peninsulas.
He noted that in 1808, Christian and Muslim notables of the Peloponnese appealed jointly to
the French to ask to be allowed to establish a confederacy for their shared patrie under a
French protectorate. Something similar happened in Crete during the Greek revolution. A
narrative account by a Christian said that Christians appealed to their Muslim brethren
(brethren in a particular sense, since these would have been Christian converts); again it
talked of a shared patrie.
Mark Philp said that he also thought that the outline was doing something interesting and
different. He agreed that IR literature was not much help. He wondered if it might be helpful
to think in terms of forum-shopping. There wasn’t really a stable international order whose
rules and institutions could be appealed to – at least not until the Treaty of Vienna.
Joanna said not really even then, given that everything continued to hinge on great powers,
with their own ideas about spheres of influence.
Maurizio noted that the Tsar wanted the Holy Alliance to be read in all churches. He
wondered if there were other examples of trying to publicise the terms of treaties. A similar
instance he knew of was that when the King of the Two Sicilies went to Laibach (supposedly
for medical reasons, but in fact to seek help in putting down revolution in his kingdoms)
before he left he took an oath to defend the constitution, which was exhibited on church
doors.
Joanna said there were great public festivities in London to mark the Congress of Vienna,
though that was mixed up with celebrating the visit of the Allied Kings.
Maurizio noted that Brian Vick in his recent history of the Congress of Vienna had much to
say about mementos etc manufactured.
37
He also cited revolutionary leaders visiting the parliaments of other countries, eg Guglielmo
Pepe visiting the Portuguese Congress.
He noted that petitions to the parliament of Naples said that Europe was mesmerised by the
regeneration of Naples.
Peter Hill suggested that it would be helpful to bear suzerainty in mind alongside
sovereignty. In the Ottoman case, it wasn’t always clear when suzerainty was accepted to
have been yielded. Ottoman geography books continued to treat Greece and Algeria as
Ottoman long after one might have expected that to stop.
Joanna suggested that the Ottomans handled the Serbians very cannily, letting them enjoy a
marked degree of independence, and then reining them back in when things started falling
apart internally.
Peter noted that in the case of Muslim rulers, it was hard to break away without threatening
their own title to power. This was a constraint on Mehmet Ali’s freedom of action.
He noted too that Arabic accounts didn’t portray Greece as seeking her own independence, so
much as great powers intervening to wrest her away.