Une loi de l'Eglise et de l'Etat: Napoleon and the central administration of religious life, 1800 1815

In 1802 the Napoleonic government removed authority over religiousholidays from the Gallican Church. In Old Regime France bishopsdecided which holidays were observed in their dioceses. TheRepublican Calendar had eliminated official recognition of Catholicholidays but not their widespread observance. Napoleon reinstatedthe Gregorian Calendar but not the holidays of the Old Regime.At his request, a papal indult eliminated the weekday observanceof all but four Catholic holidays. The reform drew on the legacyof the Enlightenment, especially Montesquieu. The clergy ofthe Gallican Church oversaw the indult's execution, which wascomplicated by ambiguous wording. Napoleon attempted to mergereligious and political obedience, so the best Christians wouldalso be the best subjects, while making it clear that the governmentwas the dominant power. The Restoration subsequently kept theindult in place, neither adding more holidays nor relinquishingauthority over the matter.     

Ambivalent patriotism: Jacob Aall and Dano‐Norwegian identity before 1814

Abstract. Like many Norwegian elite, Jacob Aall (1773–1844) lived between two national identities – Norwegian and Danish. On the one hand, he was a subject of the Danish crown, educated in Denmark in the refinements of European knowledge and high culture; on the other he was a loyal provincial son of Norway, engaged in building the political and economic autonomy of his homeland. This article examines the two sides of national identity in Jacob Aall's life and work by focusing on the evolution in his understanding of the concept of the Norwegian nation. It argues that the patriotism central to Aall's understanding of modernity and the coming‐to‐age of Norway contains two disparate, but equally necessary sides. The one is characterised by an abiding sentiment of national romantic cultural belonging, the other is a learned commitment to the Enlightenment utilitarian principles that gave force to the Norwegian national movement.     

AIMS AND MEANS IN THE INTER‐NORDIC CONFLICTS 1302–1319

The paper deals with the conflicts from 1302–1319 between King Birger of Sweden and his two younger brothers, the Dukes Erik and Valdemar, which also involved the kings of the two other Nordic countries, King Erik Menved of Denmark on the side of his brother‐in‐law, King Birger, and King Håkon V of Norway, mostly in alliance with the Swedish dukes. It attempts to trace the main aims of the participants, which turn out to be consistent as well as relatively realistic and in which dynastic interests had priority over national and territorial ones. In addition to the struggle over the division of Sweden, the most important issue was who was to marry Håkon V's daughter Ingebjørg who was likely to inherit the kingdom of Norway. Erik Menved's success in gaining this prize for his nephew makes him the main winner and Håkon V the main loser in the peace of Hälsingborg in 1310, whereas this situation changed in Håkon's and Duke Erik's favour when Erik married Ingebjørg in 1312 and Erik Menved had to accept the marriage the year after. Most probably, this success for the dukes led to their fall in 1317–1318, which in turn united the Swedish aristocracy behind Duke Erik's son Magnus who in 1319 became king of both Norway and Sweden, thus fulfilling all Håkon V's wishes for the future of his dynasty. Against this background, the article discusses contemporary political culture, the relationship between military and diplomatic means, the importance of dynasties and marriage alliances and the relationship between monarchy and aristocracy.     

THE VIETNAM WAR

This article investigates the role of the Vietnam War in Danish and Norwegian politics. We argue that Danish and Norwegian membership in NATO and an unstable parliamentary situation may explain why these countries, unlike Sweden, did not take on the lead in the international protest against the war. Non‐socialistic coalitions came to power in Norway and Denmark in the latter half of the 1960s which to an extent explains why the social democratic parties in both countries became more critical of the US. By the end of the 1960s, foreign policy as well as public attitudes towards the war converged in Denmark, Sweden and Norway, and in all three countries powerful protest movements emerged that were remarkably similar. The Vietnam War strengthened the left in general and promoted a leftist politics of solidarity that influenced Swedish, Danish and Norwegian foreign policy‐making of the 1970s.     

The politics of time during the Napoleonic Consulate, 1799–1804

ABSTRACT

The French Revolution generated an acceleration of political time that disrupted old assumptions about the legitimacy and durability of political authority. Following the coup of 18 Brumaire, Napoleon and his counsellors had to confront the challenge of erecting a legitimate regime that would endure in a political environment where regimes that endured very often appeared illegitimate. This article examines how the French Consulate (1799–1804) sought to manage revolutionary time by practising a politics of temporal dilation. The embryonic institutions of the Consulate – from the Légion d’honneur to the lycées – were designed to decompress popular perceptions of time, at least as they related to political life, by charting a verifiable pathway for the nascent regime to develop steadily and incrementally through history. The collective perception of the present was made to expand, re-validating the notion of historical experience and slowing the unruly onset of the political future. Time would cease to be the medium of rupture. This article examines how the temporal assumptions embedded within the regime discourses and political practices of the Napoleonic Consulate were central to the construction of its own legitimacy.     

TWO BIOGRAPHIES OF NAPOLEON

The central argument of this review essay is that the British and French traditions of biography, and specifically Napoleonic biography, are quite different. The two works under consideration are outstanding examples of the differences. Boswell's Life of Johnson is the cornerstone of modern British biography, and Andrew Roberts follows this example. Although Johnson was not a political or military figure but a man of letters, Roberts's biography of Napoleon adheres to the close focus on a single man, with only limited excursions beyond his hero's life and deeds. In addition, Roberts's work is essentially a military biography, and his considerable strengths lie here. The French, without a Boswell, have relegated biography to a lesser role, until recently. Patrice Gueniffey, in what will be a multi‐volume work—this first volume goes only to 1802—is more interested in Napoleon's place in the history of Europe, and especially Revolutionary France. Napoleon is often confined to the wings while Gueniffey sets the stage. Roberts's judgments and assessments, while shrewd and informed, are often more conventional than those of Gueniffey, who sees the Egyptian campaign as one of the important keys to understanding the young Bonaparte and his subsequent career. He is also deeply interested in fixing Bonaparte's place in the French Revolution. Because Gueniffey ends his first volume with the Consulate, a more detailed comparison of the two works is not possible.     

Death on the Seine: The mystery of the pagan king Setric

In 943, a pagan king called Setric arrived with a fleet on the Seine, seeking to ‘take over the whole area without a grant from the king’ and to bring the young Richard and his Rouen Northmen back ‘to the worship of idols, and to bring back pagan rites’. But this was not to be because the young Carolingian king Louis IV d’Outremer was quickly on the scene and engaged Setric and his dux Turmod in battle. Louis’s mounted forces were victorious and both Setric and Turmod were killed. As the great French historian Philippe Lauer said: ‘La défaite du viking Setric et du renégat Turmod est un événement important dans l’histoire de l’établissement des Normands en Neustrie’. The mystery examined in this article is, who was this pagan king Setric (ON Sigtryggr) who had been sent to Valhalla? And where had he come from —York or Denmark? It is shown that whilst a Danish origin for King Setric cannot be completely excluded, the equation of a King Sihtric of York with King Setric on the Seine is more likely and is supported by a plethora of onomastic, chronological, numismatic and contextual evidence.     

LATE GALLEYS: The Fredriksvern Naval Shipyard and the coastal defence in Norway 1750–1814

From the early 18th century the Mediterranean galley experienced a new golden age in the Baltic Sea, as it was well adapted to the shallow sea with the islands and skerries found there. In Norway the Fredriksvern naval shipyard was founded in 1750 to build a galley fleet. For various reasons progress was slow, and when the galley fleet finally was built in the 1760s, it was probably the last one in Europe. New and more efficient inshore vessels were soon developed in the neighbouring countries, but they were not put into use in Norway in the 18th century. The explanation for Norway’s poor performance was probably too much peace: when Denmark-Norway became involved in the Napoleonic Wars, naval development was dramatically improved.     

Napoleon,Jefferson, and the Louisiana Purchase

Why did Napoleon sell Louisiana to the United States? Unfortunately, he left very few written traces of his Louisiana policy and, therefore, historians disagree. Their explanations tend to emphasise one of three factors: the diplomacy of President Thomas Jefferson; France's coming war with Britain; or the impact of the black rebels of the French colony of Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti). The most heated disagreements revolve around the differing assessments of the role played by Jefferson. This article argues that Jefferson played no role in Napoleon's decision to sell the colony. It acknowledges that the British were crucial, because war with Britain meant that Louisiana would be lost to France. But why was Louisiana undefended? The troops Napoleon wanted to send there never arrived. They went instead to Haiti. And they remained there. If black resistance in Haiti had collapsed quickly, as Napoleon expected, there would have been thousands of French soldiers in Louisiana by the spring of 1803, when the French war with Britain began. By defeating Napoleon, the men whom Jefferson deemed ‘cannibals’ made it possible for him to acquire Louisiana and achieve what an eminent US historian has called his ‘greatest triumph’.     

Greenland in the center: what happened when the Danish–Norwegian officials met English and Dutch whalers in Disko Bay, 1780–1820

Between 1780 and 1820 crucial changes took place in the economic and cultural relationship between Denmark–Norway and its North Atlantic dependencies. In Greenland, the state imposed a stringent set of social and economic controls, at the same time when the restrictions on trade in Iceland and Northern Norway were relaxed. In 1776 the Royal Greenlandic Trading Company was established, but during the eighteenth century the waters around Greenland were a hub of international whaling trade as Dutch, American, and British ships came into contact with the Inuit, who were legally under Danish-Norwegian social regulation. This article uses records of Danish officials in Greenland and those of incidental observers to understand the disjuncture between the law of Denmark–Norway and the realities of Disko Bay. The officials contended with better equipped foreign ships, the Inuit desire to trade with these ships, and communication problems with the capital. This period is characterized by experimentation with different methods of production, contrasting strongly with the later nineteenth century, in which Danish–Greenlandic policy became more restrictive. By the nineteenth century international whaling trade had followed the declining whale stocks westward to the Canadian and American waters, so Denmark-Norway could impose these restrictions more easily.     

Peace through the lens of human rights: Mapping spaces of peace in the advocacy of Colombian human rights defenders

What kinds of peace do human rights defenders advocate? This question has become controversial in light of heavy criticisms raised against the scholarly paradigm that peace and human rights are co-constitutive universals. In this article, I explore how Colombian human rights defenders navigate potential tensions, erasures, and vested politics in their peace advocacy during the current peace process with the FARC-EP. I follow the trend in the geographies of peace literature to study the articulation of peace with human rights as situated and constitutive practices. My analysis of published activist statements maps out the discursivity of peace advocacy, that is, how human rights defenders articulate different political demands as interconnected conditions for peace and maintain a common activist space that cuts across the uneven geographies of violence in Colombia. The visualization of my results as discursive networks shows how activist practices open social and discursive spaces that integrate multiple understandings of peace, instead of obliterating differences in a single and homogenized, ‘local’ representation of peace. I further submit that elucidating how human rights defenders address peace beyond the end of guerrilla insurgency, the ambiguous role of the state, societal discrimination, and structural transformations helps us nuancing conceptual debates. We can learn from Colombian activists to move beyond rigid conceptual juxtapositions of human rights as either panacea or liberal fuel for conflict and to pay attention to how concepts are animated in political struggles to end violence.     

Upwardly Mobile Footnotes: German References in the Encyclopédie des gens du monde 1

Images should be released from the monopoly of art history and integrated into the study of history itself. For culture, in the strict sense of the term, is an essential aspect of political history, especially in a state as centralised as 18th- and 19th-century France. This is the context in which visual images of Napoleon should be explored. Under the Directory, he began shrewdly to exploit paintings and engravings in his first campaign to win over public opinion, rapidly achieving renown by putting a face to his name. The development and profusion of images under the Consulate and Empire reveal the way, or ways, in which Napoleon sought to present himself to contemporaries and posterity. They also illustrate his main objectives: the strengthening of his power and the consolidation of his dynasty. The number and variety of these images suggest that he was acutely aware of his lack of legitimacy. Napoleon himself realised just how much he resembled a 'colossus with feet of clay'. In order to base this colossus on firmer foundations he set to work all the means at his disposal, not least painting and sculpture.     

The Wages of Collaboration: the German food crisis 1939–1945 and the supplies from Denmark

The problem of limited food supplies left its mark on Germany and the Nazi regime during World War II. The Germans faced diminishing food rations and to a great extent had to rely on supplies from occupied Europe. To a small state like Denmark, with its precarious geo-political position, this turned out to be crucial. Thanks to its advanced agricultural production and fisheries and a generous German price policy, Germany was able to extract a maximum of food from Denmark without damaging the structure of Danish agricultural production. Deliveries culminated in 1943–1945, as Denmark supplied German big cities with 14% of their consumption of meat and pork and more than 20% of the Wehrmacht’s consumption, while Danish butter constituted nearly 9% of consumption in big cities and as much as one third of the Wehrmacht’s consumption during the same period. On this account, Denmark obtained a certain political freedom of action. In internal reports, German authorities in Copenhagen and in the Foreign Ministry repeatedly pointed to the fact that any attempt at changing the occupation regime in Denmark would rid Denmark of its democratically based government and jeopardize the abundant food supplies to Germany. The article argues that Danish food supplies to Germany provided the main reason why democratic Denmark was allowed to maintain its political system despite the German occupation.     

Niels Bohr's Diplomatic Mission during and after World War Two

The Danish physicist Niels Bohr is best known for two major achievements: first, his model of the quantum atom, published in 1913, for which he received the Nobel Prize in 1922; and second, the “Copenhagen interpretation” of quantum mechanics developed together with colleagues at his institute in the latter half of the twenties. Having turned his institute toward nuclear physics, making it a pioneer institution in this emerging field, Bohr escaped from Nazi-occupied Denmark in 1943. Learning in England about the advanced state of the secret project to develop an atomic bomb, which Bohr had so far considered impracticable in a foreseeable future, he agreed to join the project. Bohr decided instantly that the prospect of such a weapon of mass destruction would require what he came to call an “open world” among nations, and he worked conscientiously toward this end until he died in 1962. In the process, statesmen, including Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt, as well as diplomats from several countries, came to encounter Bohr and his political mission. Although not as successful as his scientific achievements, his mission was considered by Bohr himself as equally important. Yet it constitutes a hitherto relatively neglected part of Bohr's career.¹     

Book review

The article discusses some features of the political culture of late medieval Norway by focusing on the broader strata of the people and their political influence. To what extent could these groups express their own political goals and act to achieve them? The point of departure is the 1448–50 struggle for the Norwegian throne, the claimants being the Danish‐German Kristian I and the Swedish Karl Knutsson (Bonde). The Norwegian Council of the Realm was divided into two ‘parties’, both of which recognized the importance of the common people's support and acceptance of their candidate. However, the article argues that there were interesting differences in the two parties' tactics and rhetoric towards the common people. It was no coincidence that it was the supporters of Karl who mobilized the common people in the political struggle. Several central political, social and geographical arguments made by supporters of Karl were not employed in favour of Kristian. The supporters of the latter had to base their tactics on constitutional law and tradition. Nevertheless, it was concrete, contemporary political and economic interests that motivated the representatives of the common people, when they could not have a domestic king, to want Karl rather than Kristian,. This contemporary situation overshadowed a possible underlying constitutional conservatism among the common people. The popular representatives fought for what has been called ‘The Norwegian System’ in order to defend their own interests.     

Tacitus and Tacitism in Johannes Meursius’ historia danica (1630–38).∗

The article examines the role of Tacitus in the Latin history of Denmark (1630–38) by Johannes Meursius. It is argued that “Ta‐citism”; ‐ a contemporary movement influenced by Tacitus both as a stylist and as a political writer ‐ is reflected in Meursius’ work in various ways. The first part deals with Meursius’ introduction and his use of Tacitus’ famous avowal of writing sine ira et studio. Next, Meursius’ Latin prose style, with its brevity, antitheses, and paradoxes, is seen in the context of the contemporary “Attic”; movement, which advocated primarily Seneca and Tacitus as prose models. Thirdly, Meursius’ portrait of the Danish king Nicolaus is shown to be inspired by the Tacitean archtyrant Tiberius. Fourthly, it is argued that Meursius also drew extensively on one of the seminal works of Tacitism in Northern Europe, Justus Lipsius’ Política (1589). Finally, the apparently incongruous union of Tacitean cynicism and Meursius’ generally Christian and moralistic outlook is taken up.     

How God Disappeared from Europe: Visions of a United Europe from Erasmus to Kant

This article traces the development of European ideas of peace and unity from the time of Desiderius Erasmus to Immanuel Kant. The argument will be made that these ideas, which were initially strongly determined by Christian religious thinking, gradually changed, and from the seventeenth century onwards were put forward in more political and legal terms. Erasmus's way of reasoning about peace and war was still strongly influenced by his firm orientation on the New Testament and the teachings of Jesus Christ. Emeric Crucé, a French writer, was of the opinion that all human beings in the end had God in common, and so had to live peacefully together. Duc de Sully was one of the first not to argue as a religious man but as a politician: a system of balance of power could bring international stability. According to the English Quaker William Penn and the French Abbé de Saint-Pierre only the acceptance of international rules of justice could produce everlasting peace. Immanuel Kant finally directed attention to the form of government and to the founding of a federation of free republics. So God seems to have disappeared from Europe?…?but with what consequences for today?     

Secondary schools in Napoleonic Italy (1802–14)

Napoleon conceptualized public education, especially at the secondary level, as a tool designed to unify and strengthen the state. In France, he set up forty-five secondary schools, lycées, characterized by uniformity, a hierarchical structure, centralization, state control, and a standardized curriculum. He exported the French education system to his satellite states to help in ‘frenchifying’ them. This article discusses the establishment of secondary schools, licei, in the Republic and Kingdom of Italy (1802–14), exploring educational legislation and its implementation and the Direzione generale di pubblica istruzione that ran public education. The government created a liceo in each of the twenty-four departments. This article studies academic disciplines, teachers, books, student numbers, and other aspects that concerned the functioning of the schools. It assesses the consequences of the educational reforms and argues that the Napoleonic authorities laid the foundations of a modern public secondary school system in Italy.     

‘The Sustenance of Salisbury’ in the era of Decolonization: The Portuguese Politics of Neutrality and the Rhodesian Oil Embargo, 1965–7

This article investigates Denmark's international legal status during the Second World War. In exploring this theme it brings together two emergent research perspectives on twentieth-century international political history: (1) a growing interest in small states as actors and active interpreters of international political events in times of crisis and war; and (2) a focus on international law as an independent and so far underexplored research theme. From this double perspective the article highlights and analyses the unprecedented and unparalleled character of the legal relationship between Denmark and Germany after the German occupation of Denmark in April 1940. In doing so it places particular focus on how this situation was viewed and conceptualised by Danish politicians and legal experts. Thus it explores the complex entanglement of politics and law that characterised Danish attempts to bring about and consolidate the particular peaceful and ‘normal’ relationship with Germany as well as efforts to change this relationship and make Denmark a belligerent state. By analysing the four concepts of neutrality, non-belligerence, peaceful occupation, and war the article shows how these legal concepts served as political instruments that were pushed forward by competing and changing understandings of Denmark's international position and interests during the war. But it also shows how these legal conceptualisations were fundamentally structured by the general international legal and political developments of the war (the deterioration of neutrality and the emergence of long-term military occupation and guerrilla warfare throughout Europe). And it demonstrates how they gradually took on a life of their own and came to frame and shape perceptions of Denmark's international position - both among Danish politicians and bureaucrats during the Second World War and among historians to this day.