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Mediterranean democracy, Year 2Oxford, 25-6 September 2015Somerville College, Oxford

RE-IMAGINING DEMOCRACY IN THE MEDITERRANEAN: THE BOOK, WORKSHOP

Present – contributors to book: Gonzalo Capellan, Gianluca Fruci, Antonis Hadjikyriacou, Florencia Peyrou, Rui Ramos, Michalis Sotiropoulos

and Joanna Innes, Maurizio Isabella, Mark Philp, Eduardo Posada Carbo

Apologies: David Bell, Javier Fernandez Sebastian, James McDougall, Gabriel Paquette

Others (indicating areas of main interest): Arthur Asseraf (North Africa), Alex Butterworth (anarchism, revoloution), Juan Pablo Dominguez (black legends of Spain), Elena Draghici-Vasilescu (Rumania), Rosie Doyle (pronuniciamentos in Mexico), Michael Drolet (French political thought), Elizabeth Frazer (democratic theory and practice), Graciela Iglesias Rogers (Global Hispanic world), Arthur Learoyd (international hierarchies), Moises Prieto (idea of dictatorship), Paolo Ricci (history of elections), Lucie Ryzova (Egypt), Tristan Stein (maritime relations in the Mediterranean), Laurence Whitehead (democratic theory, Latin America).

Day 1

Joanna Innes welcomed everyone to the workshop. She explained that it was a practical workshop whose object was to move the contributors closer to producing the book which would represent the main fruit of the project. The conception of the project was that the book should be ‘grown’ in the course of a series of encounters between the contributors and others, and that it should be highly collaborative: it should be the product of a continuing dialogue between contributors.

She noted that, when she had first told her sister that the project was now focussing on ‘democracy in the Mediterranean’, she had responded concisely along lines which many academics had echoed more wordily: she had asked Was there any? She thought that there were several reasons why people tended to respond in this way. Often they were not aware that in principle voting had been very widely extended in Spain at certain points in the early nineteenth century and in Greece from 1844: more than in any other parts of Europe at those times. But in any case our contemporaries, academics and others, tend to operate with a strongly normative concept of democracy. Democracy is conceived to imply not just a certain kind of institutional order, but a ‘properly functioning’ political culture: insofar as states which formally give a voice to the people are not conceived to function in modern ‘democratic’ fashion, they are conceived to be not democratic: only good democracies are true democracies. Finally, democracy tends to be conceived genealogically: as a historical imperative that takes on form, given the right conditions, and matures over time. Democracy is supposed to germinate and survive; if it doesn’t survive, there’s a tendency to assume that this indicates some inherent flaw: in ‘properly democratic’ countries, such as Britain and the US, it is supposed that this doesn’t happen. But these conceptions are very limiting. They confuse discussions of democracy in the present – by conflating democracy with other

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conceptions of the good -- and make it difficult to open up historical enquiry about past and perhaps differently directed attempts to institutionalise democracy or related concepts, such as ‘popular sovereignty’.

The object of the current project was not however to assert that at any point Mediterranean states of the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were democratic. It was rather to unpick ‘democracy’ as a historical phenomenon: to look at the way this word and its cognates in particular but also related terms were applied, and at the developing cluster of practice to which the word was sometimes applied. The Ottoman world stands somewhat at an angle to the main project, in that not until after the end of our period were cognates of ‘democracy’ applied to Ottoman circumstances, as opposed to being used to understand the European world (and even in relation to the latter, no clear distinction was drawn during our period between ‘democracy’ and ‘republic’, limiting nuances of conceptualisation). Yet the Ottoman world is of interest as a limiting case: some Ottoman concepts and practices are worth comparing with European practices, to highlight what was and what was not distinctive about the latter. Greece moreover presents an interesting borderline case: in Greek, democracy and republic were also not distinguished – the Greek but not the Roman word was used. And Greece was heir to two cultures.

But the remaining Mediterranean states also all differed from one another: only at the most general level were there European norms. She suggested that Spanish and Portuguese ideas and practices of democracy were inflected by a developing tradition of constitutional monarchy – though they also had each their own distinctive features: the pronunciamento, tradition, thus, became an important feature of Spanish and Spanish-American but not in the same way of Portuguese politics. In Italy, by contrast, democracy was more associated with republicanism – though there were also variations within Italy: Naples could be seen as having a constitutional-monarchical heritage, and Savoy-Piedmont as being capable of being pushed in that direction. Whether these hypotheses about difference stood up, and what differences should be emphasised, was up for grabs in discussion.

A theme of this phase of the project had been that, despite differences between Mediterranean states, and despite the importance of the wider Euro-American context (France, Britain and the United States were all possible reference points), yet there also certain common and (more or less) distinctive themes in Mediterranean experience. The outstanding one, esp from the Napoleonic era onwards, was the experience of being second or third-rate powers, in a world increasingly dominated by ‘northern’ powers: France, Britain, Austria and Russia. Other Mediterranean states – including Ottoman lands – could all look back on times when their own power and glory had been greater. In this part of the world, discourses of ‘national sovereignty’ therefore opened up two difficult intersecting themes: the place of Mediterranean nations in the modern world of nations and questions about the relationship between people and power.

Intertwined with these international and domestic political issues were issues about the changing structure and character of societies. Societies came to be imagined in new ways, old hierarchies of privilege increasingly giving way to new hierarchies of rights. Ideas about citizenship were framed within these new rights discourses – but the binary citizen/non-citizen could not by itself capture all the complexities of the emerging system.

The rethinking of privilege and rights had implications for the church among other institutions, a theme with which Maurizio Isabella would be engaging.

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She outlined some questions which occurred to her as not being addressed in the paper outlines she had seen

Greece: she liked the proposed approach, but some other questions occurred to her

- Most attention to political language had focussed on the enlightenment paradigm, or on ideas of nationhood. There was more to know about languages in play

- Choices about institutional forms: what mix of pragmatic and normative considerations shaped these? Why was the franchise so broadly constructed in 1844 – how did people talk about what was being done?

- Mobilising rhetorics: how were ideas about the ancient world and its political forms employed?

- How as the ambiguous term demokratia being used in the political discourses of the 1860s? Did it connote constitutionalism? Unity?

Spain:

- More space needed to be given to uses of democracy/democratic etc pre 1849, given the overall chronological range of the book. It would be helpful if Portuguese patterns could be borne in mind, and similarities or differences noted.

- The term democracy itself might be used only infrequently; very probably in the early nineteenth century, other terms, including liberal, popular and national sovereignty were used much more, but it would be helpful if such use of democracy as there were could be located in relation to prevailing discourses, as also in relation to traditions of thought such as pactism and the idea of a mixed monarchy.

- It also needed locating in relation to broader political concepts and practices, such as the foundational role ascribed to communes, and the developing practice of the pronunciamento. It would be important to convey the distinctive features of Spanish political culture which framed uses of the concept.

Portugal:

- She thought Rui was perhaps sticking too rigidly to the proposed plan, which was only intended to be broadly indicative. A bit more of a narrative would be needed, to orient Anglophone readers who characteristically knew nothing about the history of Portugal in this period. It was helpful that it was now possible to refer them for more detail to Gabriel Paquette’s book.

- If in the Spanish draft, the word was perhaps too readily dismissed, when a bit more could be made of what was illustrated by its infrequent occurrences, in the Portuguese case, by contrast, there was a danger that the word would be made to sound more central than it was. The Spanish and Portuguese accounts needed to be comparable

- The Portuguese seemed to have deradicalised the word by the end of the period, in a way the Spanish had not. If this contrast held, then both sides might want to reflect on why that was the case.

Italy:

- It would be important to focus on the number of words available and make sure they were appropriately divided up.

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- The reasons why democracy was so positively invoked in revolutionary Italy – apparently more than in France – deserved reflection.

Discussion:

Antonis Anastasopoulos: said that what motivated the Greeks during the independence war was the need to differentiate themselves from the Ottomans: in so far as they talked about democracy it was to identify themselves with the west. He expressed doubts about the formulation Ottoman/Arab world: it was important not to run together Balkan, North Africa and peoples under the Ottomans, and Egypt and Algeria were only tenuously part of the Ottoman empire. He also questioned how many even in Greece knew much about ancient glory? Joanna said that talking about democracy in the 1820 was a problematic way of appealing to the west, because the concept was out of favour among many political groupings there. If the Greeks thought that it was a good card to play, that said something about which westerners they were talking to. Re ‘Ottoman-Arab’ world she said the intention was a modest technical one, to include Morocco, which was not part of the Ottoman empire (though within its cultural shadow). Certainly there were many distinctions to be drawn among Ottoman lands. In relation to ancient glory, she took the point, but noted that Makriyannis invoked heroic ancient Greeks: he wasn’t exactly a footsoldier, though he did learn to read and write only in adult life; that suggested some penetration of the idea outside learned culture. Though the emphasis did seem to be more on heroes than on political forms.

Elena D-V asked how widely ‘the Mediterranean’ was to be interpreted: did it include the Romanian principalities, Serbia? She thought that Byzantine identities remained important in that region.Joanna said that they were in principle included, insofar as it was possible to include them given space constraints. She agreed that it was important – in the Greek case too – that more than one model of Christian polity was available.

Florencia Peyrou : she wanted to see more emphasis on what she took to be the primary aim of the book, which she took to be to understand how people in the region at the time imagined democracy or political participation, and whether we could see elements of democracy as we understand it now in past practices, e.g. in legal reforms. Joanna said she agreed with the first: certainly the key point was to uncover past understandings and perspectives. But for that very reason, she didn’t entirely like the second, which implied that our understanding of ‘democracy’ conditions what we should look for, when we needed to be wary of projecting anachronistic concepts backwards.

Michalis Sotiropoulos: suggested that ‘independence’ was a word that had different connotations in different contexts. In Italy, it connoted primarily throwing off foreign rule, but in Greece also freedom from tyranny. Antonis Hadjikyriacou added that the Turkish word for independence (istiklal) developed the same range of meanings – but also came to mean independence from Western influence.

Eduardo Posada Carbo said that deciding what practices to focus on was always a problem, but he agreed that the language of contemporaries should always be given significant weight.

Gianluca Fruci wanted to know where Corsica and the Mediterranean islands more broadly fitted into the story

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Joanna said they would tend to get left out in the state by state approach (though could be referred to if appropriate), but that the sometimes especially interesting role of islands should be considered (when appropriate) in thematic chapters

Florencia said it seemed to her that some chapters were telling a story about democratisation, others about meaningsJoanna said ideally all the country-specific chapters should do both

Paulo Ricci couldn’t see what alternative there was to a genealogical approach: the past influences the present [but is only one among other determinants. The fortunes of democracy in a particular country at a particular time may have much more to do with the pressures on it at that moment than its history]

Gonzalo Capellan said that he agreed with the approach overall. He noted two dangers that had struck him in reading the outlines. Sometimes when there was no clear contemporary debate, the danger is that we substitute what we think. Also it was difficult to discuss meaning without encountering the problem that bedevils historical semantics: that we produce an account of what prominent activists say.

Joanna said that a common theme running through the remarks by Florencia, Paulo Ricci, Gonzalo and others was that bringing together the study of language and practice was a challenge. She agreed that indeed it was, but say that she thought it was best resolved by considering everything people in the country or even in the region included within democracy at the point of its widest use, perhaps (though not necessarily) at the end of the period: not to provide any prehistory in relation to a practice or idea that had older roots but only at some particular point came to be conceived as an aspect of democracy would be odd. Moreover, the door had to be left open to comparisons across space between people whose linguistic practices were different: so things people in the Ottoman world didn’t call democratic but which looked like things people in other states did call democratic would be worthy of attention, to inform comparative understanding. This approach should allow us to talk about a range of practices without succumbing to a teleology oriented to the twenty-first century. But there’s no mechanical way of operationalising this: authors will have to use judgement and think about how best to proceed in order to inform the reader’s understanding of the landscapes of thought and practice within which ‘democracy’ was conceptualised in the past.

Antonis Hadjikyriacou and Michalis Sotiropoulos: Greek world

Michalis noted that they faced two problems: that in modern Greek there is no distinction between democracy and republic. Also, how to define the Greek world – what is ‘Greece’ exactly. The Greek-speaking and ultimately Greek Ionian islands, about which they did aim to say something, e.g. had a very different history in that they were never in modern times ruled by the Ottomans. They planned to construct their account mainly around what they would present as a dialogue between Ottoman practices and the alternative to them.

Demokratia did featured occasionally in Greek discourse, but more towards the end of the period. It didn’t play much role in the rhetoric of the Greek revolution. Nonetheless, people had to deal with related issues. The historiography doesn’t give them much to build on in pursuing this enquiry for this period. It’s commonly cast as a narrative of westernisation:

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liberalism, republicanism and democracy are invoked by historians in that context, though chiefly the first two. Interest in political language has mainly focussed on constructions of the ‘nation’. Post 1830 the historiography is even less developed! The dominant narrative is about the formation of the modern state, again cast with a modernising teleology. The Ottoman context is either ignored, or used to explain ‘backwardness’.

They hoped to construct an account which would show Greek developments as having their own distinctive dynamic: one which would not rely on ‘diffusion’, nor posit ‘rupture’. They would tell a story of long-term transformation in structures of politics. They would address three questions in relation to three periods (Ottoman, revolutionary and the era of the first kingdom – not forgetting the complicating position of the broader Greek diaspora).

- Who constituted the community?- Who represented whom and how? - How did authority legitimate itself? What part did constitutions and petitions play in

constituting this relationship?Practices they aimed to consider included tax collection and the organisation of armed force.

During the Ottoman period, tax collection, directed from the centre, was managed through communal organisation. The Ottoman period saw a shift in practice towards collective taxation. This required that the community be in some way represented to higher authority. New practices and concepts were not suddenly introduced: they evolved. In Greek sources, the Ottoman word ‘vekil’ was employed, untranslated. Widespread use of petitions to express grievances underline authority’s need to win acceptance from below. Other forms of political action included seeking tax exemption as poor, and ‘peasant flight’. The informal character of these practices allowed for considerable ambiguity about the basis of rule.

During the revolutionary period authority was constituted by a mixture and new; Ottoman legacies were drawn upon, but in innovative ways. There were three main layers of authority: villages; regional assemblies and a national assembly. Until 1823, relations between the three were quite smooth. In that year, however, the national assembly decided to dismiss the regional assemblies. The national assembly was itself constituted by representatives of regional assemblies. Terms used for representation at this time derived from legal usage, from the notions of standing in for someone else, wielding plenipotentiary power on their behalf. Representatives had to be able to demonstrate formal authorisation by producing documents. This practice probably differed from Ottoman practice. Representatives were people authorised to speak for those they represented. They were not conceived as channelling the nation’s voice. Only gradually did they come to be conceived as representing/standing for the nation. In this period, attempts by the centre to collect taxes or raise an army were largely unsuccessful. What are now referred to as constitutions weren’t clearly conceived at the time in those terms; the word was first used in 1827. Previous statements were described as charters or by-laws. Relations between centre and localities were conceived of in broadly contractual terms; administration was imagined in that context. Most texts invoking democracy were written by Greeks outside Greece. The word had connotations of mob rule. The first Greek treatise of constitutional law, published in Paris in 1828, did talk about democracy in the context of discussing the mixed constitution. It seems unlikely that the concept entered local political discourse at this time.

During the era of the first Greek kingdom: this was initially an enlightened absolutism that became a constitutional monarchy as a result of the pronunciamento of 1843. In 1863, manhood suffrage was established, but this was not understood as ‘democracy’. The object

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was to allow for the orderly participation of the people in government. However, the constitutional debates of this period provided the context in which democracy was first discussed. The reference point was the USA (and Tocqueville). The preferred constitutional option emerged as bicameral constitutional monarchy; democracy was associated with single-chamber government. So conceived it was however not incompatible with monarchy. Why did the term acquire more positive resonance in the 1860s? Importantly, the preceding period had seen a long crisis, financial, economic and political. The monarchy was seen not to be responding to the need for reform. In this context, a contrast was drawn with democratic Athens, which had been shaped by the reforms of Solon. The new constitution did not conceive of the relationship between king and nation as contractual. Rather, the nation was in the driving seat. The king was elected to serve the nation. The constitution was valid without his ratification. The main thrust was the establishment of national sovereignty. Representation was now also nationalised: the point was to contribute to national discussion; it was no longer necessary that the representative be a native of the place he represented.

He concluded with two more general observations. First, it was striking that talk of democracy emerged in the context of crisis. Secondly, that in that context it was deployed as a conceptual device to frame ideas about how to renovate monarchy; it was not republican.

Discussion

Tristan Stein: welcomed the revisionist character of the chapter, but thought the focus remained on the construction of the Greek state. He wanted to hear more about its relation to the wider Greek world.Antonis H said this was a good point. The historiography sets up that relationship around irredentism: the project of extending the reach of the Greek state in relation to the diaspora. They wanted to consider that process from the perspective of the periphery: to stress diasporic consciousness of their peripheral position and their attempts to address that.

Joanna said she had two editorial-type comments. She liked the conceptualising, and thought the chapter would do very important work in exploring the relationship between Ottoman and post-revolutionary Greek cultures. If possible she would like to hear a little more about language and its use: about the terms in play. What part did demokratia understood to mean republic play in the political discourse of the revolutionary era? What terms and concepts were used in relation to the mobilised people. Though the Greeks were unusual in a European context in having only one word to convey what in other cultures were conveyed by two words, democracy and republic, yet those words were not always clearly distinguished from one another, and which meant and connoted what could change over time. Perhaps the stress on the peculiarity of Greek discourse needed to be set in that larger context of ambiguity. Also in relation to crisis, she wanted to restate the question interestingly formulated by Jim Livesey in an earlier workshop: to what question was democracy the answer? Was it associated eg with unity as against factionalism? With concord as against tumult? She also asked if the term ‘pronunciamento’ was used of the 1843 revolt at the time.Michalis answered the last question: no, it was called stasis, revolt.

Several questions were collected:Florencia thought more attention to gender was needed, in this as in other chapters, in relation to both discourse and practice. In relation to discourse about women, there may well be nothing very distinctive to say, but she wondered if more could not be said in relation to practices [JMI: there is certainly a historiography, even in English, though perhaps not much

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on ‘political’ activity as such: Butorovic ed; Doxiadis; Varikas]. She also said she had no sense of conflict from the account, and wondered if that was partly because of the sources used: legal texts, constitutions etc. She wanted to know more about who was in power and that their aims were.Gianluca: agreed with Joanna about the blurry relationship between democracy and republic in other discourses. In relation to tensions in national-local relations, he wanted to know more about whether difficulties were essentially practical – was this a struggle over who had what powers in practice -- or was there an argument about principles? There were debates over such issues in principle in France and Belgium, where it was argued from an early date that representatives represented the nation, not the province. Similarly in Italy: the Statuto Albertino (constitution granted to Piedmont 1848) asserted the same. In Tuscany and the Papal states, representatives were said to represent electoral colleges [he has now added that In 1848 the constitutions of Tuscany and the Papal States said not that the deputies represented the nationa, but on the contrary that they represented their electors or the districts for which they had been elected. In fact, even the Statuto Albertino of 1848 and the Belgian constitution of 1831 remained ambiguous because they said that deputies represented the nation and ‘not only’ the districts which had elected them. (Constitution of Belgium, article 32); Statuto, article 41]

Moises Prieto said that he wanted to hear more about the role of religion in this context, about the significance of tensions between Muslim, Orthodox and CatholicGonzalo said he had a question about the concept of community (with variations in the meaning of the Spanish pueblo in mind). What was the geographical location of the demos? Could you be the demos of a particular community? And were distinctions drawn between people and plebs/rabble. What meanings did people want to distinguish within the broad category? If you figured among the people, what followed: political rights, social rights?Antonis Anastasopoulos said that focussing on democracy might entail putting the Greek state at the centre of the analysis, inasmuch as it was in relation to that that the term came into play. He thought it might be useful though to say more about representations of the Greek past. The decision to try to make Greece part of the western world had consequences in terms of how its past was represented: its contribution to the shaping of the west through civilisation and democracy were emphasised. In that context, Ottoman practice was occluded. In terms of reinstating Ottoman practice in the story now: it’s a problem that the limitations of the archives mean that we don’t know very much about how far Ottoman practices extended, or what forms they took where. Petitioning, though, was not a distinctively Ottoman practice but had been universal since antiquity. It was difficult to periodise Ottoman rule: he was always struck by the way in which historians’ attempts to do this became reified as truths.Eduardo said that he remained unpersuaded by the proposition that democracy was largely absent from Greek discourse until the 1820s. Surely at the very least it figured as an elite notion, eg in the Hellenic Library of Korais. In relation to the proposed structure of the chapter, he thought there was a danger that it might become too schematic. The scheme would need to be applied flexibly in practice.Mark noted that early in their remarks they had talked about people being involved in politics, but he thought it important to pause on whether the activities we conceptualise in that way were so conceptualised at the time. In relation to legal traditions, he wondered what their roots were: did they perpetuate Ottoman legal ideas, or turn to western models, and if so which? Arthur Learoyd thought it important to recognise that what was in question in the founding of the modern Greek state was the entry of a new state into an international system: they had

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to pay a price for entry in terms of the kind of government they got, and the identity of their king. He wondered what the international discourse around these questions was, and whether notions about democracy or the like figured at all in that context. Elena D-V: building on Luca’s comments, she suggested that democracy and monarchy were usually opposed. Mark however said that there was also a tradition of democratic monarchy in the West (drawing on ideas of mixed government).

Antonis Hadjikyriacou said that they would consider all these points. Eduardo might be right that they had understated use of the word [though they had said ‘Most texts invoking democracy were written by Greeks outside Greece’, which would cover Korais]. He commented on the coinage nomarchia for rule of law: in effect an attempt to coin a Greek word for republic in a modern sense. In relation to vekil, he noted the difficulty of translating it into English: he had had a discussion with Joanna about the relative merits of ‘representative’ and ‘deputy’. Exact meanings, and therefore appropriate translations, arguably varied with context. He was particularly interested in islands, which often served as political laboratories.Michalis said to Eduardo, though they were thinking about these issues, they didn’t just want to repeat the usual enlightenment narrative. He accepted that they might not have given enough weight to conflict, though it should come in on the back of ‘crisis’. He said that Antonis was more conflict-oriented than he was. He agreed that it would be important to include some discussion of women. Among women who paid taxes, some had the opportunity to take part in elections. He thought the topic was understudied. In relation to the international context, certainly terms used in treaties etc were taken up on the ground. Vattel was translated into Greek in 1825, and published within the Greek state; Vattel could be seen as a champion of state sovereignty, but the Greek state was only semi-sovereign. Mark Mazower has described it as a protectorate, but he thought that went too far. Treaties were invoked in terms of legitimating the overthrow of the king. Indeed, they had neglected religion. The king, it might be noted, was a Catholic, though he expected to bring up his son as Orthodox. From the very first revolutionary constitution of 1822, it was stated that orthodoxy was the religion of the majority [on the French model], but other religions would be tolerated.Antonis said in relation to language that they were keen to look at languages that were adapted to serve political purposes, eg languages of law, justice. He thought tax collection processes particularly worthy of attention.

Gonzalo Capellan (and Javier Fernandez Sebastian, in absentia) – Spain

Their discussion would focus on the Spanish monarchy. In their outline, they had proposed to mix discussion of languages and practices. Some of the points they wanted to make would recur in many chapters, eg they would stress the importance of religion, and the interrelations between liberalism and democracy. But these broader themes needed to be explored in a specific national context. Lamennais, for instance, played an especially important part in Spain. There were Spanish specificities to the reception of more general ideas.

In the Spanish case the international dimension necessarily stretched beyond the Mediterranean. Within Europe, Spain stood in an intermediary position. France, Italy and Germany were all sources of influence – in the latter case esp in relation to Krause, whose philosophy of law, expounded by his follower Ahrens in a course in Paris was published in Spain 1840 as A Course in Natural Law. His organicism appealed to later Spanish democrats

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as a basis for imagining the possibility of synthesising apparent opposites, such as unity and variety, local and central government, province and nation. The Spanish America was important, as a site in which republics were springing up in the 1820s. And another important author was the Cuban-born Calixto Bernal, who published La Démocratie au XIX siècle ou La Monarchie Démocratique. Pensées sur des réformes sociales (1847). Later he also published an influential work, key in the democratic debate, La democracia y el individualismo (Madrid, 1859).

The development of digital resources – eg of parliamentary speeches 1808-68, and of newspapers – facilitates exploration of the way words were used. But still, even these sources provide a relatively narrow base for enquiry. If a wider range of sources are consulted, still more meanings and uses are exposed.‘Democracy’ figured in public debate from the 1830s, though it had limited application to practice. In terms of practice, not all popular politics can be equated with ‘democracy’: thus Carlism has a wide social base.

He outlined what he saw as the main phases in the development of the word.

1750-1808: uses were rare; it was mainly used in an academic fashion to classify forms of government. It was commonly associated with the past, though exceptionally the Real Diccionario of 1734 defined it as popular government and exemplified it by the case of Switzerland. This definition was repeated until 1884.

1808-30s: it gained negative associations from the French Revolution: it was associated with violence and seen as anti-religious. However, it was used differently by some liberals, to mean pacific, progressive, ordered. This usages were influenced by the writings of the French liberal Alletz, who conceptualised a ‘democracy’ based on the middle classes rather than the populace.

1840-69 ie to the revolution, which established a ‘democratic’ constitution, providing for universal male suffrage and freedom of faith. In the context of revolution, the word democracy was used frequently, with positive connotations: all political groups strove to appropriate it. It also acquired a socio-economic dimension, relating to the ‘social question’. Broadening of the term’s semantic field was evident esp from 1849.

He said that they intended to begin their chapter with a narrative of political experience. They would talk about the emergence from the 1830s of a division among liberals, the term democrats sometimes being applied to left-liberals. After the biennio of 1854-6, Queen Isabella clearly intervened in the political process in favour of the moderates: the political centre of gravity shifted to the right. Some then called for revolution, and refused to take part in the political process. A more radical discourse involving calls for ‘democracy’ developed.

They would then focus on political discourse and its relation to practice, exploring a number of themes, thus:

Religion and democracy – democrats strove to portray themselves as embodying a religious impulse [echoing Lamennais]. This rhetoric figured in 1869, when Garrido eg quoted Jesus in support of democracy.

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Accidentalism – it was increasingly suggested that democracy was compatible with either monarchy or a republic. This was to some extent a strategic position, but also reflected the centrality of monarchy in Spain. In 1869, what was demanded was above all democratic monarchy.

Progress – Castellar eg associated democracy with a providential plan, worked out through history, involving passage from rights for one to rights for everyone. The story of democracy was linked to the story of the development of modern constitutionalism.

Association with freedoms and rights – in Spain, democracy grew out of liberalism, which shaped it. But he suggested that democrats were more inclined to see freedom as inalienable and pre-constitutional. Moreover they talked not just of political but of social rights.

Individualism vs socialism – debate about the respective merits of these was characteristic especially of the 1850s.

Decentralisation/federalism. Progressives always favoured decentralisation. They saw federation as a step towards the federation of mankind; the pueblo provided a microcosm for the human race.

Spain’s democratic character – increasingly it was argued that the Spanish people were democratic by nature.

These themes would be explored in parallel with accounts of various local political practices, including juntas, the national militia, pronunciamentos, exile culture, print culture, associational life.

Discussion

Joanna speaking from an editorial perspective noted that the outline focussed on the period after 1849. Even if the word was used much more rarely earlier, noting patterns of use, and also what occupied the semantic field where it would later operate would be useful, to facilitate comparison between different arenas. Although the guidelines had suggested separating discussion of language and practice, that wasn’t meant to tie contributors’ hands: in practice, it might well work better to integrate them; different contributors were welcome to experiment with whatever forms of integration they thought worked best for their material. Distinctive features of Spanish thought and practice – pactist and communalist traditions, juntas, pronunciamentos etc – would be worthwhile; she agreed that discourses about the Spanish people being naturally democratic provided a way to link discourse and practice in this regard. Her impression was that the Spanish were unusual in the prominence they gave in mid-century debates to the choice between individualism and socialism, and centralism vs decentralisation. Or perhaps what was distinctive was how these debates were constructed, or even how they figured in the historiography. She’d be interested to hear anyone’s thoughts on this.

Mark said he thought it was going to be important to get the referent clear. The chapter needed to unfold in such a way that readers weren’t left free to bring their own preconceptions about democracy to it; the specific meanings it had for people using the term at the time needed to be brought to the fore. Was the focus above all on equality?

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Gonzalo said he thought that in the revolutionary context it was above all a legitimating language, that represented the new regime as fulfilling historical lines of development.

Several comments and questions were collected:Juan Pablo Dominguez said that he thought both liberalism and democracy had many roots within absolutism. Anti-democrats at Cadiz weren’t defending monarchy, but intermediate bodies. Blanco White said if there was just one sovereign that was a problem, whether it was a king or the Cortes. Portillo Valdes, writing about the first liberal revolution, says that the first constitution brought popular sovereignty but not individual freedoms: it transferred sovereignty to the people as a collective (he didn’t entirely agree with this). There was accordingly no Declaration of Rights. In relation to the idea that the Spanish people were by nature democratic, he noted that there was a similar early-modern tradition. Voltaire said many critical things about Spain, but one of his criticisms was of fueros. Condorcet said it would be easier for the Spanish to reform their government since they had a tradition of democracy. Benjamin Constant said the Spanish had a tradition of democracy from the middle ages.Antonis Hadjikyriacou said that the Greeks were sometimes represented as a naturally democratic people, but not until C20. In relation to religion, and the relationship between pueblos and citizenship, he thought that there was scope for exploring similarities and differences between Spanish and Greek patterns. He cautioned too that there were many different ways of conceptualising both monarchies and republics: monarchs could be elected.Florencia also thought it was important to say more about people, pueblo and citizenship. Many Spanish democrats had negative images of the people. Citizenship was a key issue, and provided a focus for debates about individual vs collective and decentralisation/federalism. She also thought there were other sites of politicisation that were distinctive to Spain, eg bullrings. She noted that until 1840 voting at the municipal level was very broad and even included some women. In relation to accidentalism, saying that some forms of monarchy were acceptable wasn’t the same as saying the form of government didn’t matter. The Spanish always rejected the French presidential model.Eduardo wondered if there shouldn’t be more reference to the Americas in the Spanish and Portuguese chapters; even conceivably more words should be allocated to allow discussion of them. There were various specific incidents which deserved attention, eg the Comuneros revolt in New Granada 1781; Spanish-American input at Cadiz. He wondered to what extent Latin American experience was a reference point when democracy was characterised negatively? He noted too the significance of Latin American experience in the rise of some military figures in Spanish politics, notably Espartero. Finally, when considering citizenship, it was important to discuss how people living in the colonies were treated. Whereas at Cadiz, the idea had been to recognise them as equal citizens and to represent them, in the 1830s, Cubans were excluded from citizenship and representation.Rui thought it might be necessary to say more about negative uses. Later republic became more problematic, democracy less so. He also noted that it was often argued that it was necessary to make and not just to empower the people.

Gonzalo said that he recognised that the narrative of the period was not yet well balanced, and that this could be redressed partly by paying more attention to negative uses. They had emphasised the later period more because they thought they had more innovative things to say about that. To what extent America should figure was something on which the editors should give directions: much work had been done for the Iberconceptos project which would make it possible to say more about this. One distinctive feature of Spanish experience was the emergence and endurance of an explicitly ‘democratic’ party, and the more general fact that

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from the 1840s everyone showed interest in associating themselves with the term. As to fueros, he noted that a book in the 1840s described fueros as ‘costumas democraticos’.

Rui Ramos - Portugal

He said that he would focus on European Portugal, which for the first part of the period was one part of the larger United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil etc. Formally Brazil became an independent empire 1822; the emperor of Brazil became king of Portugal 1826, but abdicated as king of Portugal, and afterwards as emperor in order to return to Portugal and defend his daughter’s right to the throne. Even before the definitive split, two polities were emerging, and debates were rather different, though they certainly interacted: the Constitution of Portugal in 1826 was a copy of the constitution of Brazil. Portugal also had strong similarities to Spain; their political cycles ran in tandem. For example, their first liberal experiences were 1812 but especially in 1820s – liberals vs absolutists were the main divisions. And in debates the Portuguese frequently referred to the Iberian system – because they saw themselves as having an identity with Spain. When the Holy alliance invaded Spain in 1823/4 the Portugal constitution also collapsed. Britain was prepared to protect Portugal’s borders, but not her constitution.

The crucial context for debate in the early nineteenth century was provided by the collapse of the monarchy during the Napoleonic wars. This was financial, commercial – trade dropped 80% during the first thirty years of the nineteenth century -- territorial (a consequence of the monarch’s evacuation to Brazil) and for these and other reasons involved a crisis of legitimacy. Liberalism and absolutism represented contrasting responses to these challenges. (Liberalism was a label liberals applied to themselves; absolutist was a label liberals applied to their rivals). Different visions of the character and roles of monarchy, church and people were involved. But both sides talked about the ‘nation’ and both called themselves ‘legitimist’. In the 1820s, liberals were more associated with central power and the power of the king; so called absolutists were really more provincial, popular and anti-establishment. Liberals were themselves divided: radicals and conservatives may be distinguished, but in reality there were many factions; lines between them were often personal and contingent. There were nonetheless two opposing political visions, radical to moderate, mirroring French divisions, between which people could be roughly arrayed. Monarchy and Catholicism were never explicitly called into question – and yet all political agents were aware that monarchy and Catholicism were at stake. Some commentators said at root all divisions were about religion. Liberals tended to favour a national form of Catholicism, opposing the pope, and entailing a civic more than a revealed form of religion.

The word democracy was initially used academically to characterise a kind of regime. In the early nineteenth century, it did figure in contemporary political discourse. It could mean various things. It could refer to a popular, that is, non-aristocratic element in a mixed regime. It could connote a broad franchise, with no very clear limits (except that it didn’t extend to women, who weren’t even allowed to attend the Chamber).

During the 1830s and 40s the term came to be associated with the violent participation of the populace. The name democrat was associated with those who wanted to broaden the franchise or encourage popular participation: it was associated with the opening up of the political sphere. Democrats in parliament might want citizens’ voices to count for more in parliament, or might want more power devolved to the localities.

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A philosophy of history developed by 1840s and 50s in which democracy was conceived as a more or less inevitable trend towards equality. Completing this might be held to imply revolution and the establishment of liberal ascendancy, entailing destruction of the power of the aristocracy (and probably of the upper chamber) and the power of the clergy. The challenge was to find appropriate institutional forms, and to prepare the people for self-rule. The hope was that this could be achieved by education and by the opening up of markets so that the people could become wealthier.

To summarise: there were three main stages in terms of how democracy was conceived. First, it related to either mixed government or popular government. Then it was used of Portuguese society or its potential. In the 1830s and 40s, it was one of the ideas at stake in political conflict. Ultimately a new consensus was forged: the future would be democratic, but it would take time to achieve this and make it work.

Discussion: several questions and comments were collected

Joanna noted that he had talked about Portuguese chronology echoing Spanish, and this did appear to hold through 1820s and 30s, maybe 40s, but less clearly true from 1850s, when the Spanish political scene remained riven by conflict, while Portugal became much more stable. Mark wanted to hear more about the sources of the ideas that he had described. Were they indigeneous, or rather borrowed from Constant and the doctrinaires? He also wanted to know how important ‘moderatism’ was as a political category, and what content it was givenElena DVwould have liked to have heard more about the role of the Church and its place in Portuguese society.

Rui said in response to Joanna’s question that contemporaries would have said the explanation lay in the character of the Portuguese people, who were less bloody-minded than the Spanish. Another line of explanation would be British influence. The British didn’t want to see a civil war developing. They had prevented one from erupting – and Spain from intervening – in 1846-7. The more extreme radicals tended to say that British influence was preventing progress. The Portuguese developed, esp from 1860s and 70s, a conception of themselves as tolerant and moderate. Even during conflicts of the 1830s and 40s, there were limits to conflict. He suggested that this was partly a question of scale: this was a small elite; people in different factions knew eachother well. From 1850, there developed a concern to neutralise the army and keep its influence out of parties and parliament – that was seen to have been an element of troubles in the 1830s and 40s; the army itself tended to agree that they shouldn’t intervene in civil matters.

As to sources of ideas: yes, certainly French thinking was influential. Some French writer Edgar Quinet developed a theory that the British had oppressed the Portuguese to the point of extinguishing their desire for political rights. Labels such as liberal, conservative, democratic, progressive came from other countries. Debates in the French chambers were reported in the press. Some liberals had been exiled in France or Britain and some knew Guizot and Tocqueville personally. Even King Pedro V (1853-61) was an avid reader of Tocqueville, making summaries of his arguments, and in correspondence with his ministers he cited French debates. They saw themselves as cosmopolitan. The term ‘moderate’ tended in the 1840s to be preferred by conservatives; they called those to the left of them radicals, while they called themselves progressives: so moderate and progressive were the preferred terms, conservative and radical the denigrated ones. Moderate ideology was more elaborate than

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progressive ideology, drawing on doctrinaire thought. They had to work harder to explain what they stood for.

As to religion: the church was a site of conflict. There were many liberal clergy, esp parish clergy, many of whom were also freemasons, whereas regular clergy tended to be absolutists. These two groups were distinguished as the church of the temple and the church of the forest. 1834-43 the Portuguese church split between those recognised by the Vatican and liberal priests appointed by the parliament, whom the Vatican did not initially recognise. Only 1843 did the Vatican recognise the legitimacy of the constitutional monarchy; the government then reverted to asking for approval of ecclesiastical appointments. This closed down more radical possibilities, eg the creation of a less hierarchical national church. Radicals took over this notion from the 1850s, but once agreement with the Vatican had been secured this issue was no longer at the forefront of politics. Religious orders however continued to be banned and debate about that continued. French friars and nuns came in and were periodically expelled.

Moises Prieto asked about the role of universities in this context. His question was inspired by the Swiss case: the university of Zurich was founded 1833; Berne 1834. He asked if universities became important as factories for a new kind of citizen, offering a secular route to gain prestige. Rui said that Coimbra university was historically the only university, serving both Portugal and Brazil – all the elites are educated there. From the 1810s it clearly was a factory of liberal ideas. Teaching on the scholastic model – presenting all the positions, and encouraging critical enquir –allowed students to read extensively in enlightenment classics (Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau), supposedly to learn how to refute them, though some surviving notes show students taking less interest in the refutations. (Café society, salon society were also important; even monasteries had collections that include extensive enlightenment holdings.) The form of social life in universities was also important: students lived in common, in something called a republic; their authorities protected them from state authorities. In 1820s there was a massive upsurge of liberalism in universities. Lecturers were seen as relatively reactionary. In the civil war 1846-7 50% students enlisted in the progressive army; there was an academic battalion. All those who took arms against the queen had successful careers. Michalis cited the case of the University of Athens, which was a new institution established when the regime was founded – so identified with the new state; yet it became a site for developing an alternative conception of monarchy and for generating ideas of reform, esp in the law. The University was the only corporate body represented in the Greek assembly. Again, students joined in militias; there was a university battalion.

Eduardo asked whether the chronology of references to democracy differed between Portugal and Spain. Rui said the cycles were similar but not totally synchronous. The British became nervous when Madrid and Paris were aligned, and more so when Portugal threatened to align too. They did not want to see the formation of a ‘continental party’ in Lisbon.

Michael Drolet asked whether political economists talked about democracy, and if so how? He also wondered whether there was a Portuguese equivalent of the Ecole Polytechnique, provding a scientific education with a policy orientation.Rui responded to the second question, saying that there were such institutions, in Lisbon and Oporto, which later became universities. These were the most liberal schools, producing

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engineers, army officers etc. It’s there that we find Comte’s ideas penetrating. These students stood in a different relation to society. They were not regarded as forming a corporate body, with their own traditional form of dress etc. They aimed to rescue the country from backwardness: this was an important theme in public discourse in the 1850s and 60s. Earlier in the century, the impact of the loss of Brazil had received more attention; at mid century, attention shifted to the technological gap opening up, and to the relatively uneducated state of Portugal’s largely rural population. There was no great sense at that time of a choice to be made between the market and collectivism: the hope was that the national market could be opened up, but in such a way as to advantage producers and craftsmen. The liberals in 1834 had abolished the old corporations; the theory was that new associational forms now needed to be invented. So freemasons promoted eg associations of printers. Even manuals of political economy blurred the boundaries between old ways and new.Michalis said that much of this equally applied to Greece, notably in relation to the preoccupation with backwardness and the lack of a sharp sense of difference between socialist and laiser faire argument.

Gianluca Fruci: Italian States

He said that there was a Catholic democratic tradition, which continued to exert influence in Italy’s first democratic phase, in the 1790s. The term gained new legitimacy at the end of the century, partly from developments at the end of the century, from the US but more from France. In Italy the ‘republic’ was associated with traditional aristocratic republics. Democracy by contrast was seen to look both to the past and to the future. The idea was that with French help it would be possible to restore some of the glory of the Italian past: this appealed in eg Lucca and Venice. Enthusiasm for democracy in Italy seems to have run higher than in France; there was also conceived to be a role for women.

He suggested that it is in Italy that we consistently find the most advanced forms of mobilisation: thus in 1796-1799, 1805, 1820, 1848-49. There was a preference for non-pluralist solutions, and for plebiscitary mobilisation. In that context, women and even children might be encouraged to participate, though they didn’t have the right to vote. The repeated practice of holding plebiscites – inaugurated in the late 1790s – created a distinctive tradition. There was also interest in the lot as a selection mechanism. In his chapter he planned to focus on certain key moments.

Mazzini might not have been saying anything very different from democrats in different parts of Europe, but the context of practice in which he operated was distinctive.

Discussion: several questions and comments were collected

Florencia said that she liked the emphasis on the history of the suffrage, but still, it seemed necessary to find more room for discourse. What did ‘democracy’ mean in the period under focus; when did ‘democrats’ appear. What different meanings did democracy have for different political groups? And maybe other forms of participation needed to be looked at too.Joanna said that the Italian case seemed very distinctive, partly she thought because of Italy’s republican tradition, but also the French-Italian relationship was particular. Probably more Italians identified and continued to identify with the French revolutionary tradition than elsewhere, presumably because the French were seen as having attempted to restore rather

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than undermining nationhood. Italian patriots could continue to be proud of having fought for the French in Spain, even if in the present they were sympathetic to the liberal cause in Spain. Italy had an 1848, whereas in other Mediterranean countries it was much more muted. In relation to Mazzini, she said that it wasn’t clear to her that when he started invoking democracy he did so in the context of an Italian tradition of discourse. Florencia said Mazzini had to figure. Joanna said that his context might be as much cosmopolitan as Italian. Gonzalo Capellan said that he liked the broad picture, but wanted to hear more about what happened in the trienio. That was also a period of counterrevolution, a counterrevolution with a popular dimension; he thought that we needed to hear more about that.

Gianluca agreed that he would need to provide a richer picture of the trienio. It has been the subject of much work, especially from a linguistic point of view. However he thought the denigratory terms they used were above all ‘jacobins’, ‘terrorists’ and ‘anarchists’.

In relation to Mazzini, he thought that Anglo-Saxon writers had overstated his democratic orientation. In fact he always put the nation first. Joanna objected that whatever we thought of Mazzini’s ideas and intentions, we needed to pay attention to how they were received. She agreed with Florencia that his reception by ‘democrats’ elsewhere at the time made him an important figure in the story, even if he looked more ambiguous in an Italian context. How he became such an important international figure seemed to her unclear, though it was an interesting question.Florencia said that in her view Mazzini’s emphasis on the priority of the nation made him distinctive among democrats, but didn’t mean that he was not a democrat.

Laurence Whitehead said that if the goal was to unify Italy then attention had to be paid to the question of how best to unify places in which democracy was varyingly popular. He also noted that the Vatican’s generally anti-democratic attitude complicated attempts to annexe religion to the democratic movement.Gonzalo would like to hear more about how the religious question played out in Italy.

Rui said that he liked the paper because he thought that it opened up a different perspective. But he would have liked to hear more about how experiences varied in different parts of Italy. He liked the idea of a democratic ideology that was both backward and forward-looking. He said that he thought the Italians were precocious in developing a kind of democratic-authoritarian tradition [though building on their experience under France]. He thought it took other countries (other than France) a long time to see that possibility. He would however have liked to hear more about discourse, and about the role of the church. He thought that Mazzini evoked democracy above all in an international context: this gives the term a different remit from what we might expect. The effect though was to challenge ways in which regimes legitimated themselves.

Luca said that, the official church apart, there was a literary tradition linking religion and democracy: presenting religion as the people’s cause. This continued after the Restoration, in a subterranean way, and became visible again 1820-1. This discourse posited the need to find a different kind of basis for sovereignty. He agreed on the need to say more about discourse, especially about how ordinary people expressed themselves.He did not want to see plebiscites as just authoritarian; emphasising their very inclusive base.The challenge was certainly to find ways of integrating discourses and practices.

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Gabriel Paquette - State-Building (in absentia)

Joanna kicked off discussion with some general comments. This was the first of the thematic as opposed to country/regional papers to be discussed. She emphasised that which would come first was not yet set in stone, and comments on what would make the best order were welcome.She said that in its present state Gabe’s paper offered more a chronological sequence than an analysis. In its later parts it shifted attention from the state apparatus, the apparatus of executive government and state projects to constitutional arrangements, but this was not in her view the purpose of the chapter, which was supposed to resist the constitutional historiography and keep its eye on the state and the ways in which state projects did and didn’t change through different political eras. Clearly the context changed in some ways with the end of the ‘long eighteenth-century’ of warfare, but the need to maintain a military-security apparatus remained, as did the need to finance these operations. So although the goals may have changed a bit, perhaps the greater change was in the environment in which these goals had to be pursued. Certainly the need to legitimate state power through formal constitutional arrangements was a element of a new environment, but that theme was arguably too familiar to need more than brief rehearsal. Other changes might include changes in the hierarchies of rights and obligations within which states operated (in this respect, the state and the society thematic chapters would overlap). States developed new grids within which to classify subjects: new bases for determining who should be taxed and how; who should perform what kind of military service; who should mediate between centre and locality. As older ways of dealing with these needs were called into question, and new ideologies suggested possible new answers, states developed new strategies.The ways in which states operated also changed the ways in which people could imagine relating to them. Thus, as the professionalization of officeholding reduced the need to draw on the cooperation of local elites at community or village level, popular participation in government had to take new forms, involving eg the election of councils to check appointed officials.She also suggested that ‘regeneration’, already an enlightenment aspiration, could provide an umbrella slogan within which state and social projects could be linked: the aspiration could be recast in new terms.

Discussion

Mark said that he thought in general a challenge for the thematic chapters was to make plain what they contributed to an understanding of democracy. He thought that a focus on the fiscal crisis and the consent nexus might help in the case of Gabe’s chapter.

Gonzalo Capellan thought that it was difficult to debate the chapter at length when it wasn’t clear what it would argue. But a focus on the relationship between reform and revolution might help. Reform came to be seen as necessary to stave off revolution; revolution was seen as a possible response to a lack of reform. But the relationship between reform and democracy was not straightforward. He noted that democratic programmes often had things to say about taxation and the military. Focussing on the state projects democrats had ideas about, and what ideas they had about them, might be helpful. He noted that Spanish historians

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wrote about the development of an ‘administrative monarchy’ [from the early eighteenth century].

Rui said that he thought in the current form the outline was kind of note to self: Gabe was saying to himself ‘remember to fit this in somewhere’. What was missing was a clear analytical or explanatory focus. He suggested that a central question to pose was: what was it that created an environment in which democracy could become central to political debate? He suggested that crises in the fiscal-military state helped to put democracy – more equal treatment of citizens, fuller involvement of citizens – on the table.

Laurence Whitehead worried that concepts like fiscal-military state were too general to be very useful when they were applied to many different types of regime. One possible approach would be to start with France: the French effort to state-build, implement fiscal reform and democratise sent shock waves through the whole of Europe. But responses took different forms in different settings.

Juan Pablo Dominguez wanted to build upon his earlier point [in discussion of the Spain chapter] about liberalism and democracy having important roots in absolutism. He has himself worked on absolutist reformers and had been struck by continuities between their discourses and liberal/democratic reforming discourses. He said one notable feature of absolutist reforming discourse was that such rulers argued it to be their right to interfere in every aspect of life: they wanted to get beyond the rhetoric of the subordination of subject to monarch to claim much greater powers. In this context they opposed privilege and aspired to create in its place forms of equality. It would be worth asking whether these aspirations carried across to shape ideas about what the sovereignty of the people entailed. Public happiness could be identified as the goal of government under both systems.

Michalis said that he thought a teleological narrative was strongly embedded in the historiography, and in the paper. It was suggested that there was a need to reform; reform failed; this produced revolution; then a new era was ushered in. One could find this line in both Italian and Greek historiography, certainly. But he thought that it should be questioned. He was not sure the Ottoman state was trying to centralise, or consistently trying to centralise. The Greek state under Otto did not try to centralise. The object of the Bavarian rulers was rather to establish a polizeistaat: that was the word that they used. By this they meant a functional entity serving certain basic internal and external requirements. Critics invoked the idea of the rechtstaat, of the need to subject the state to the rule of law. He suggested that when the language of democracy gained currency in Greece, it was perhaps more in the context of attempts to construct effective municipal structures to which political and administrative authority could be delegated. Antonis Anastasopoulos wanted to reflect on how the Ottoman empire might fit into the story. He thought that the timar system was largely extinct by late C18. Gabe’s outline overstated the importance of the Deed of Agreement, which was the product of a momentary political crisis. The missing word in the account was ‘ayan’, local notable. Hanioglu, whose general account is cited, is a specialist in the C20. It would be important for Gabe to read more of the specialist literature. Antonis Hadjikyriacou said that he agreed with the other Antonis about the Deed of Agreement, though it did have a certain symbolic importance. The paper talked about the Tanzimat: but the Tanzimat was a complicated and prolonged affair. Which of its elements was in question needed closer specification. The dichotomy centralised/decentralised didn’t really work: these were not mutually exclusive options. He thought Ariel Salzmann was the

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historian who had dealt most effectively with such matters, with her formulation ‘centripetal decentralisation’.

Eduardo wondered if the chapter should look at the changing international order. Joanna thought that was the subject of another paper, and this one should be more concerned with the domestic repercussions of existing within a certain kind of international order.

Arthur Asseraf suggested that one approach might be one idea might be to tie the notion of state building into the question of where sovereignty lies. Absolutism is supposed to be bound up with patrimonial kingship, the idea that the state is the property of the king. Vattel argued against this. Questions arise about the boundaries of the state and the political community.

Tristram Stein said that he wasn’t sure Eduardo and Jo’s ideas were in practice so different. He thought that in C18, being a subject was thought to be a good thing, and indeed it was even better to be the subject of various monarchs. This chapter could look at how it came to be thought better to be the citizen of a small power than the subject of a large one.Joanna but were states so clearly triumphing over empires in C19. Arguably one could hold either view in either century.

Mark, building on Laurence’s comments but not wanting to reproduce his Francocentric emphasis, suggested that the chapter could be constructed around the different ways in which states were precipitated into crisis – often by the actions of other states as much as because of internal difficulties – and how they responded to crisis and the risk of collapse. Joanna thought that we read the nature of crises partly through the ways they were responded to. It would be quite difficult to construct a typology.

Antonis Hadjikyriacou said that what he wanted to pick up on from Eduardo’s comment was the notion of order. This was a central concept in Ottoman thinking: the term was nizam. It didn’t derive from Europe. It had the same root as ‘Tanzimat’. Every new arrangement was called a new order: nizam-i cedid. That term was also used when individual provinces were being governed in a new way, eg in terms of how a governor was appointed.Joanna asked if that term was also applied to the international order?Antonis said they did talk of nizam-i alem, the world order, but didn’t use the concept to conceptualise reordering at that level. He also thought fiscal systems and taxation offered a promising focus. The end of C18 saw important fiscal changes in the Ottoman empire. Tax farms were broken up into smaller units and sold as shares (esham) – essentially broadening the state’s borrowing base. Fiscally, this move was a failure, but it brought in its train important new ideas about the relationship between the tax farmer and government function. Previously the farmer was also the face of government; now he came to be appointed by the government, though theoretically representing the interests of the shareholders.

David A Bell – Armies and Armed Force (in absentia)

Joanna again kicked off discussion. She suggested that the piece needed more of an analytical framework. Currently it was quite descriptive, without it being clear what principles governed the description. Although popular participation in armed forces was one

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obvious topic to cover, people participated in many different kinds of armed force, and there was another agenda of questions about states and armies: about subjecting armed force to civil expressions of the popular will. The piece was also weighted towards France, and also towards the period up to 1815, when much of the book would have a later focus, so this chapter needed to give a good account of the later period. There were many innovations in the construction of armed forces everywhere in this period, but given that the Mediterranean was in effect an enduringly unstable frontier, these issues had special significance and urgency there.

Mark worried about the centrality accorded to the rag-tag rebel. To take such a figure to represent democracy was to make initial assumptions about what democracy was at this time, when that should be the question. He thought national guards/militias also needed attention (esp in Spain and Portugal). Also we needed to hear more about how regular armies were organised, eg in relation to rank and status.

Florencia thought that making the rag-tag rebel central risked orientalising southern Europe. Rag-tag people were seen as problematic in Spain, even by democrats. Even when their actions were welcome, they raised worrying questions about how far the people could be trusted. Guerilleros also fought for absolutists. She thought it would be interesting to consider the army as a democratising space. Participation in organised armed forces could provide a basis for claims of political right. Attention also needed to be given to the participation of armies in politics, and the meaning and effects of that. Armies forwarded all kinds of political goals, but the use of armies in politics also raised troubling issues. Conscription also deserved attention: it often served to incite rebellions. It wasn’t so easy for progressives/democrats to find acceptable ways of levying efficient forces.

Antonis Anastasopoulos welcomed the question he thought that the approach taken opened up: how might those not themselves concerned to promote democracy nonetheless help to shape it.

Eduardo agreed that the piece was currently too narrowly focussed. He thought that the sometimes levelling effects of war might be worth attention: in Spanish America war led to the end of slavery. He also wondered if, in the 1840s and 50s, as democratic rhetoric took off, was their discussion about the proper role of an army in a democracy, eg should it be limited in size? Moreover he thought it crucial to address the experiences of national guards. Shouldn’t Garibaldi have a role in this chapter? He’s such a seminal figure!

Gonzalo said that he agreed with Florencia: people for the most part didn’t fight for democracy or democratic ideals, just for the defence of the country, in a patriotic spirit. In most of the cases highlighted here, people were mobilised against a foreign army. The relationship between such people and democratic politics was complex. One such fighter who did become a democratic hero was Martin Zurbano, a guerrillero who became famous while fighting the French invasion, and later fought for Espartero against the Carlists. After he rose in 1844 in favour of the 1837 constitution, he and his family were executed by firing squad. He became a hero in the democratic sexenio, part of the pantheon.

Luca: thought more conceptualisation was needed. He noted that Mazzini and others wrote about guerrillas and revolutionaries.

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Rui thought that Florencia was right when she pointed to the danger of falling into a certain exoticism: the piece seems to come from a distant observer. He thought that the Grande Armee and national guards constituted the imaginary of the revolution. Spanish and Portuguese guerrillas often supported absolutists. He suggested furthermore that for radical liberal concerns it was the urban setting that was central – the place where barricades were raised and street fighting took place -- more than disparate groups of armed men in the countryside. Mark said he didn’t think this applied to Greece, where the rural setting was more central.Rui agreed that they were also central in Portugal in the case of the Miguelists.It would also be important, in relation to the preceding period, to address the character of the militia of the old monarchy. Local militias in Portugal were abolished because of their support for absolutism.

Moises Prieto cited the case of Dumouriez, the French general who changed sides (turning against the revolution). He noted that he wrote about guerrilla war, and that his writings were used by the Chouans. He said that as a Swiss he thought we also needed to think about mercenaries, and to consider police forces, gendarmerie. They provided a basis for new states claim to be able to secure liberty; they were also seen as efficient.

Antonis Hadjikyriacou noted that in the Ottoman historiography this topic figured in narratives of the development of state power. He noted that paramilitary forces are still relied upon by states today – so a modern/premodern distinction is difficult to sustain here.

Laurence Whitehead thought that at the beginning of the chapter it would be worth having a little discussion in an abstract way about the relationship between soldiering and imagining democracy. Democracy could be a goal; it could relate to career structures; modes of operation, or popular support. In each case it looks as if the army is an example of a precarious and controversial contribution to democracy, and that might be the strongest theme.

Rui thought that an interesting issue was the imaginary; the place of arms in visions of democracy – people in arms is very common trope. In radical democratic circles, the idea of abolishing the professional army and having an army of citizens was a commonplace – and coupled with suspicion of professional and elite military forces. Professional armies were often composed of mercenaries and often many of them were not even nationals. One element in the 1820 coup in Portugal was that people were trying to expel British officers from the national army.

Michalis said the he didn’t like ‘rag-tag’, but, from the Greek perspective, he did think it was appropriate to foreground the bandits. In Greece as in southern Italy 1860 they effectively made the revolution. But it is important to remember that they were not always on the ‘right’ side. So it’s worth trying to think through what was and wasn’t democratic about bandits. At some point in the revolution their loyalty became a problem.

Day 2

Joanna : Consent/Legitimacy in the international context

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Said she was going to present some evidence and intuitions in search of an argument. Her intention was to try to bring together into some kind of meaningful relationship ideas about the need for consent in national and international arenas.

She said that the pre-revolutionary international order is sometimes presented, notably in international-relations literature, as an order of sovereign monarchs. But contemporaries also conceptualised it as an order of ‘nations’, whose relations were the subject of the ‘law of nature and nations’ (thus e.g. Vattel). Monarchs were not conceived to be entirely unfettered, but to operate within the context of fundamental laws or constitutions; the consent of the nation might need to be given for a change to the constitution – for a change in how the nation was governed internally, or in its relations to other powers. These latent principles were often submerged, but occasionally they surfaced, when it was necessary to negotiate sufficiently significant change. Thus, in Genoa in 1746 when the rumour spread that the city would be transferred to the Austrians, the ancient assembly of the people mobilised against this. In early C19 Spain it was claimed that the Cortes (which was in suspension throughout C18) had been convened in secret session to agree a change to the rules of succession, such that a daughter could succeed to the throne. There is no evidence that such a session was held, but the fact that the claim was made is suggestive.

During the French revolutionary and Napoleonic era, these ideas were given a dramatic boost, originally because the French pushed them, legitimating changes of regime they tried to bring about – involving either changes in the form of government, or changes in boundaries -- by convening assemblies to approve new constitutions, or holding plebiscites. Under Napoleon such gestures became increasingly perfunctory. Meanwhile however the allies had themselves reinforced these notions of the underpinnings of legitimacy, by accusing Napoleon of flouting them: of ruling by conquest rather than consent. Benjamin Constant’s Spirit of Conquest and Usurpation (published in Hanover 1813) developed this critique – though Constant (like Vattel) was prepared to accept tacit consent: the theory could be pushed in a radical, constitutionalist or plebiscitary direction, or could function as a defence of the traditional, legitimated by long acceptance. At pre-congress at Reichenbach 1813, the allies agreed to deny legitimacy to conquest as a technique of reordering within Europe henceforth. That principle was not explicitly affirmed at Vienna, but it did inform discussions: the consent principle was sometimes overridden, esp in the name of the security of Europe (thus, even if the French wanted Napoleon, they couldn’t have him), but still, it was recognised as one among criteria to be considered in the regulation of the international system.

In the context of expectations aroused by these developments, some found the post-Vienna order of southern Europe deeply disappointing. While France, Holland and numerous German states acquired charters or constitutions, monarchies in Portugal, Spain, Piedmont and Naples lacked a constitutional basis, and large parts of northern Italy were subjected to Austrian rule, founded on conquest. Risings and rebellions in this context represented attempts to institute a different kind of national and international order, on the principle of national self-determination – a notion which also infused the Greek rising against Ottoman rule. Their suppression was legitimated not only in terms of the overriding importance of international security, but also by the affirmation of competing principles, emphasising hereditary right and obedience as goods in themselves (though a soft version of the consent principle remained in the notion that one must govern well to win obedience, such that tactless sovereigns might need to be pressed by great powers to avoid excess or reform their was).

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She thought that it was worth pausing on the constitutional notions not merely enunciated but acted out in revolutions of this period. There was an old notion that peoples might rebel for the redress of grievances when attempts to procure redress by lawful means had failed: rebellion could be seen as the ultimate extension of petitioning. That was one theory that could inform revolutionary action in this period: the effect was that revolutions might take the form of confrontational negotiations between monarchs and self-proclaimed representatives of the people – a context which made containment a possible outcome. Alternatively (or as a possible outcome of the first process), would be revolutionaries might simply bypass a ruler whose rule was not founded on explicit consent, by mobilising first informal then perhaps more formal manifestations of consent for their own position: out-legitimating the established ruler, with whom they might then bargain, or seek to depose. The Hundred Days were acted out in this second mode. The French revolution had proceeded from the first to the second mode, but its history suggested the elements of a more radical script: seize power (in the context of putative popular discontent), proclaim a ‘provisional government’ (on the model of the French regime of 1793, and governments instituted by the allies pro tem as the Napoleonic order was wound up), convene a constituent assembly, generate a written constitution, elicit more or less general expressions of consent in the form of oaths to the constitution. In practice, any given revolution might hybridise older and newer approaches, according to the needs of the moment and the impulses of its leaders.

Revolutions in this context presented a two-fold challenge to the international order, in practice and in principle. In practice, they challenged existing, recognised powers, and posed questions about how far an existing ruler should be supported, whether his would-be successors deserved any form of support or recognition (if merely in the form of an offer to mediate), and when and in what circumstances a new regime should be recognised as legitimate. In principle, revolutions acted out ideas about the basis of sovereign legitimacy which other members of the order of sovereigns might find more or less to their taste.

Revolutionaries who got anywhere at all had to think of themselves as addressing two audiences: a national audience and an international audience (each itself composite). This simultaneously inward- and outward-facing aspect of revolutions is very evident in the present: we need to see it in the past too. Of course, potential international support (or opposition) was not only governmental: financial or personal (military or advisory) support from inhabitants of other countries might be useful too – and a successful revolutionary regime might endure for some time without formal recognition from other states, or all other states. External recognition probably involved a mix of pragmatic and principled considerations. The sequence in which things happened, and the relative significance of different audiences, varied from case to case.

In the Ottoman world, principles were different, but there were analogues to recognising a need for consent. Subjects could petition for the redress of grievances and might show themselves to be ungovernable if these grievances were not redressed, by riot, resistance or flight. Deals struck between centre and locality might be enshrined in laws, kanun, corresponding to charters or constitutions (kanun was a word sometimes used to explain the western notion of a charter or constitution to Ottoman audiences). Ottoman and western cultures might hybridise. In Egypt, the Ottoman soldier who set himself up as a local ruler, Mehmet Ali, sought to adapt western practices to his own ends; he instituted consultative councils, and extended them to Lebanon and Crete when he invaded, challenging Ottoman power there. His practices provided one model for Tanzimat reforms, themselves instituted in

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the context of an internationally brokered peace between Mehmet Ali and the sultan. The case of the Danubian principalities represents one extreme: in 1848-9, Rumanian revolutionaries sought to negotiate with local rulers; to act out French notions of revolutionary legitimacy and to position themselves in relation to the principles of the Tanzimat; another such environment was the island of Samos, to which the Ottomans habitually appointed a Christian prince. One Danubian rebel, who had gone to Istanbul to represent their cause, ended up as prince of Samos.

Discussion:

Maurizio agreed that those who wished to change national orders also needed to address international audiences. This is clear eg in the case of Alexander Ypsilanti, who made his case to cities, the nation, armies and the community of nations.Joanna suggested that Catherine the Great’s Nakaz, her address to the legislative assembly she convened, which was translated into and published in several European languages, represents an enlightenment precedent for this kind of thing. Maurizio said that he had heard a paper read in Paris at which it was said that Alexander I wanted the Holy alliance to be read in all the churches. The King of Two Sicilies, struggling with revolution in his kingdom 1820, was invited to attend the Congress of Laibach. Some of the documents arising were read out in churches in Sicily and Naples.He suggested also that one question people were asking themselves after 1815 was what type of state was most likely to survive? Did the small state offer a good matrix to operate within in the context of a competitive and highly pressured international order. Accepting imperial overlordship had its attractions.

Rui also agreed that all political agents in the 1820s consciously operated within and international framework. In the case of the Portuguese revolution of 1820, for example, the army quickly issued guarantees to European powers that they would retain the monarchy, the church etc. They made a formal statement to this effect that was mainly publicised domestically, inserted in the press eg, but also notified to envoys. Ministers etc were all discussing things with envoys and ambassadors of major powers; there was constant interchange between different levels of government and representatives of foreign countries, not just channelled through formal meetings between heads of state – which makes the archives of such foreign representatives a very valuable source for historians. He also noted that grounds for intervention included treaties: thus in 1847, when English and Spanish intervention was based on the treaty of 1834. Finally he noted that rivalries between the great powers offered certain opportunity to lesser powers: exile armies of various kinds were able to form in London or Paris, or across the French border.

Michael Drolet suggested that an account of sovereignty was needed. In the theoretical literature, sovereignty was being reconceptualised; this was a preoccupation for the doctrinaires. They argued for the sovereignty of reason or knowledge. Saint Simon and Dunoyer developed alternative visions of Europe in this context. Saint Simon envisaged a joint Franco-British parliament run by industrialists.

Antonis Anastasopoulos said he would develop an Ottoman perspective. All power needs to attract consent; revolts against the sultan proved that he was not all-powerful. Still there were distinctive features in the Ottoman case worth bringing out. In the nineteenth century, the Muslim empire was seen as a foreigner in the system of European states; they were under pressure to show that they were modern and tolerant. But in some ways Muslim and

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Christian paths increasingly diverged. There is a historiographical problem, in that national histories of the Balkans chart the achievement of national sovereignty; histories of the Ottoman empire are written in terms of top-down reform; it’s hard to make the two stories interact. But both had an eye on European audiences. Rebels saw Europe’s position as decisive; the Tanzimat was announced to foreign representatives: they indeed were its main audience. Some Ottomans sought to claim their own constitutional tradition, saying that the baya, the oath of allegiance, represented that. In relation to the idea of Mehmet as constitutionalist: he thought this was overstated. The ‘charters’ he issued were essentially documents saying on what terms he would rule, though it’s true that he was credited with the first text of this kind.

Mark said he was worried about consent, and wondered if it shouldn’t be seen as a problem rather than a solution – not really a basic grounding for states, so much as something whose absence became pressing in particular contexts, then representing a problem that was addressed in particular ways. He thought the great powers didn’t have any clear vision of consent as such, but rather pragmatically sought to create new coalitions to underpin rule as the need arose. He thought that Constant might be read as responding to Burke, taking on his ideas about tradition and habit – and setting an agenda for the doctrinaires by suggesting that the histories of states were crucial to an understanding of the political forms to which they can be subordinated.

Graciela said she too was concerned about consent, which was surely not associated with democracy only. She did not think what Rui described in terms of interactions with ambassadors was novel. What was novel in the political scene of this period was foreign military intervention.

Michalis said that he agreed with Michael Drolet about the importance of the concept of the sovereignty of reason. This notion could legitimate intervention. Guizot in 1841 representing the protecting powers of Greece thought he could tell them what to do in terms of establishing a council, a senate etc. Though not published his comments were widely known. The British were much more reserved about trying to shape Greek domestic arrangements.

Antonis Hadjikyriacou wanted to build on things that both Mark and the other Antonis had said, in looking at how the Ottomans perceived the Greek revolution. They began by calling them bandits; later they called them traitors. So notions of what was entailed in the withdrawal of consent changed over time. In relation to the texts specifying forms of rule over particular provinces, kanun-name, he agreed that they were top down, but they did pay attention to local peculiarities and established practices, so did represent a kind of synthesis between the central and the local, though clearly one based on an asymmetrical power-relationship.

Arthur thought it worth distinguishing between consent to the basic principles of the international order and consent to particular states within the international order. There were further questions about the rights of states within that order.

Florencia thought there was a danger that the account might be too state-centred. More emphasis should be placed on local division and conflict. It was this that provided opportunities for international intervention, as in the case of the expedition to Rome 1849. Perceptions of the international scene affected mobilisation: there was a rebellion against

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mobilisation to defend Spanish power in the New World in 1820; by contrast, there was massive mobilisation to assert Spanish power in Morocco 1859.

Gonzalo Capellan noted the development of a conception of international public opinion. The Spanish liberals in the 1820s saw themselves as appealing to that. Joanna said that she agreed with both Florencia and Gonzalo: appeals to international public opinion and to other states were not always clearly distinguished; it might be hoped that appealing to the first would aid with the second, as David Armitage and others have suggested was the case with the US Declaration of Independence.

As to consent: though it was no doubt true in practice that the absence of consent in particular cases was the issue, she thought it notable that in certain theories, eg Vattel’s, it was argued to provide the basic ground for rule. She thought that that notion played an increasingly important part in the discourse of great powers during early C19. Of course, as Rousseau recognised, that theory itself raised problems: it was hard to ground the origins of rule on consent, when first you had to have some way of deciding whose consent was needed. He solved that problem by invoking a primordial ‘lawgiver’, who formed peoples whose consent was then constructed as the basis of rule. This theoretical conundrum made it hard to actualise the notion in international politics. But still it was part of the discourse and informed practice.

Florencia: Secret societies, exile, and the emergence of an international democratic culture

She said that she would focus on exiles, and would break her discussion down into two main time periods: 1789-1815 and 1820-1850. In the first period she thought that few people called themselves democrats: other names such as liberals, radicals, exaltados were preferred. In the 1830s and 40s they did use the name, but also used other names, such as radicals, republicans or socialists. In this second period a form of international democratic culture did emerge.

She identified some conceptual issues. She wasn’t sure how to employ the category ‘democratic’. She found Markoff’s account useful, but he explicitly didn’t worry about whether people called themselves democratic. She wasn’t sure that there was an international political culture: perhaps transnational would be a better term. Though the book was supposed to focus on the Mediterranean, Mediterranean exile culture had other focuses, and their significant contacts were often with other groups. Moreover, their ambitions were European: they wanted to see democracy established everywhere in Europe.

Discussion:

Joanna said she had four points to make. First, she agreed that limiting attention to those who called themselves democrats would make it hard to cover a long chronological span in this chapter (though Babeuf and his circle talked about democracy). She thought that in the thematic chapters vocabulary was less important: the point was to explore contexts in which concepts of democracy emerged and were deployed. Still, in Florencia’s chapter it was of some importance, since the story to be told was about the emergence of a culture in which ‘democracy’ was among key words deployed. It would be worth her exploring what function that word performed in this context. It seemed to be on the one hand a party word,

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distinguishing some exiles from other exiles (royalists, moderates), and saying something about who else might figure in the networks they were trying to build. And on the other hand a lowest-common-denominator word, a banner under which in some ways diverse people could rally. Secondly, she thought the chapter needed to consider not just those driven from their countries – exiles in a strong sense of the term – but also those who chose to go to other countries – volunteers or emigrants. The two categories overlapped, but not all those who politicked or fought abroad were exiles. Some radicals went to France in the 1790s because they wanted to take part in the revolution – and then perhaps became exiles from France as the revolution came under new controls. Thirdly, she thought it possible that transnational would be a better word, though on the other hand inasmuch as such people aimed to democratise Europe, that sounded like an international project. The meaning of these terms was currently in flux, as historians coined new terms and introduced new kinds of differentiation. Finally she said the Ottoman world shouldn’t be ignored.

Rui: said that in Portugal the word used was emigrant, not exile. He thought that democracy as a European project was an important part of the story, a precondition for the emergence of self-proclaimed democrats in some local situations. He wondered where secret societies and freemasonry would fit into her account. In Portugal freemasonry was very much an international organisation, lodges being linked to rival Spanish head lodges. The idea that plots were instigated by foreign agents was moreover made a pretext for repression.

Graciela didn’t think it was appropriate to use a modern conception of democracy as a frame. She also noted that secret societies extended to Latin America and the Philippines.

Luca did not think it possible to employ a retrospective definition. Early modern democrats were not political pluralists. In relation to ‘international culture’, he thought C18 culture had been more cosmopolitan; in early C19 it was more nationalist. There was an important tension between the nationalist trends and transnational networks. Attempts to institute a transnational project locally might founder on lack of local enthusiasm, as in Rome 1849. He didn’t think democrats at this period had a viable political strategy.

Mark agreed with Joanna that in the thematic chapters the point was to set context. In relation to culture, he suggested that it might be worth thinking about the difference between a conjuncture and a culture, a conjuncture being accidental. She thought her chronology in relation to the emergence of an international democratic culture was probably right: before then there might be democratic conjunctures, but they did not relate to an international movement. He also thought it was necessary to specify carefully who was part of which networks? How far did Serbs, Greek merchants and Maltese interact with others. In relation to secret societies, he noted that they could support many kinds of politics, not just democratic ones.

Juan Pablo said he chiefly knew about Spanish political exiles between 1814 and the 1820s. He thought they provided a good case study in tensions between northern and southern Europe. The Spanish on the one hand wanted to emulate France and Britain, but on the other hand were concerned to defend Spanish honour against northern slights.

Maurizio said he didn’t agree with Luca: being a nationalist was compatible with being an internationalist. Mazzini was certainly a nationalist but he set up international committees all his life. At some point Mazzini might have decided the nation was more important than

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democracy, but that may have been no more than a pragmatic judgment about what was possible at that time.Luca said he had chiefly wanted to question whether their horizon was really European democracy. Moreover, he had not said that there was a contradiction, but a tension.Joanna thought it might be hard to divide people up in terms of what their horizon was. Because even if your greatest emotional investment was in your own country, you might think that it’s fortunes were very dependent on the international situation: a Pole for example might well conclude that. What interested her more was what an international democratic identity might be defined against in an international context. When did democrats start defining themselves against liberals in an international context (if they did...) Was it only at the point when constitutional forms began to be debated in the aftermath of 1848 revolutions that such divisions emerged?Maurizio suggested that the sense that to be a democrat meant something other than to be a liberal emerged first in an international setting.

Antonis Hadjikyriacou said that the Young Ottomans were founded by exiles in 1865. There was a historiographical problem, in that they were usually situated in a modernisation trajectory, in terms of getting westernised, which we were trying to avoid, instead situating Ottoman developments more squarely within a broader pattern. It would be easier to include Ottomans if the category were broadened beyond exiles as usually understood to include other expats, such as merchants and diplomats, though again most writing on these situated them in a westernisation framework. He thought freemasonry was worth considering: there were lodges in Greece, Serbia and the Danubian provinces, elsewhere more in the later nineteenth century. Students were another group worth thinking about, and here he had in mind particularly Muslim students. He noted that there was a new literature on Ottoman enlightenment exploring links with the west. There was for example an interesting podcast by Harun Küçük which included a bibliography. http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2013/10/enlightenment-ottoman-empire-intellectuals.html

Antonis Anastasopouls said that Rhigas Velestinlis represented a good example from an early period of an internationally networked Greek radical. He noted of Murad V that the Masonic lodge he belonged to tried to bring him back to the throne after he was deposed in 1876.

Michalis said that he would be happy to summarise the relevant Greek literature for Florencia – or others.

Florencia said that she wanted to change the title to transnational and drop democratJoanna said that it wouldn’t help to have to discuss all forms of transnational political culture, royalist etcJuan Pablo thought that the approach proposed previously – to talk about things that led up to what would be called democracy at the end of our period – seems perfectly practicable in this case. Gonzalo didn’t think she should be trying to define democracy. In relation to language it was important to emphasise that, as Koselleck conceived of key concepts, they are by definition polysemic, contested, and controversial; they are marked by traces of past experiments and imply visions of the future: it would be wrong to expect them to be precisely defined. Mark On the other hand there is a difference between words to fight with and to think with – where the former may have little substantive content aand the latter might have a relatively

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complex internal structure. Democracy sometimes functions in the former, sometimes in the latter way. He thought that democracy progressed from being more the former to more the latter, thus Robespierre vs Tocqueville. Rui added that labels might change but content remain much the same: thus in the 1810s Portuguese émigrés called themselves patriots, then liberals, and in the 1840s democrats, but this had more to do with changes in the constellation of terms within which they operated than with changes in the content of their thinking

Eduardo noted that the introduction would need to explain what the thematic chapters were trying to do.

Mark Philp (with Eduardo Posada Carbo): The dialogue between liberalism and democracy

He said that he didn’t think there was much of a dialogue, because liberalism emerged relatively late in the story. Though it gained some political presence from the 1810s, it didn’t become common parlance until later.

Application of the term to things we now think of as liberal was slow. As an adjective, the term has a long history, mixed up with an older language of liberality. In early C19, it acquired increasingly complex content. It wasn’t linked to laisser faire in any tight way, but retained a link to virtue. He’s found instances in which it’s tied to freedom of the press, but not so much to political rights. He thought it was associated more with a Montesquieuian pattern of thought, in which what was advocated was a constitutional order that prevented the law from being used in arbitrary ways. People called ‘liberals’ also emerged as political actors, positioning themselves between absolutism and democracy. French liberals developed a historicising account, in which liberal institutions represented the culmination of a historical process, because they work and can mobilise consent. The problem French liberals found though was that thought they could make themselves look good when in opposition, they found it harder to retain support when in power.

He noted that the outline precirculated was too French in its emphases – but he thought that the French story was central to the European story more generally. Liberalism was caught between left and right, taking on different colourings in different contexts.

The secondary literature wasn’t very helpful, because it applied the term retrospectively without much attention to contemporary usage.

He wasn’t sure what approach to adopt in the chapter, whether to proceed country to country. He had yet to think about the cases of the Ottomans and the Greeks.

Discussion:

Laurence Whitehead asked how important America was as a reference point. And wondered if the Swiss didn’t deserve attention.Mark said that he thought liberal was not a central political term in America. [But mightn’t America be important as something European liberals need to think about?]

Joanna noted that questions of usage were treated at great length in Jorn Leonhardt, Liberalismus. She thought the paper currently focussed too much on liberalism: indeed, it

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only covered about one third of the ground the chapter needed to cover. The French revolution, described especially by its enemies but sometimes by its friends as democratic put that concept on the stage first. Liberals when they came on the scene had to position themselves in relation to democracy. Then later democrats had to position themselves in relation to liberalism, and liberals had to respond. Both of these processes needed more attention.

She also thought there was a danger in getting too hung up on the word liberal, when many of those historians have called liberals called themselves Moderates. The key thing was to look at how democracy was positioned in relation to other forms of anti-absolutist ideology.

Also the piece was too British and French at the moment: we were telling other contributors that though Britain and France of course provided important context the focus had to be on the Mediterranean. That had to apply to this chapter too. It seemed very plausible that the French doctrinaires were crucial in defining what European liberalism/moderatism became in 1830s/40s, but still the focus needed to be less on the French and more on what people in Italy, Portugal and in Spain were picking up on and how they were using it.

Rui said that from a Portuguese perspective he found it hard to see liberalism and democracy as in tension with eachother. Moderates were the first in 1840s to contrast liberals and democrats, saying some among us are not truly liberal but democrats. In Portugal from 1834 everyone on the left called themselves liberals, not democrats. On later, after 1848, were there people who referred to themselves as republicans and as against liberals. Liberal was a very embracing identity. Parties had more particular names, like Cabralists or Septembrists: these are the kinds of names that show up in political debate as the names of warring parties. He thought it would be dangerous to turn contemporary partisan accusations into categories of analysis.

Michael Drolet agreed there was a risk in becoming too preoccupied with France. Moreover, the French themselves were looking elsewhere: thinking about other places and drawing on other intellectual traditions. A key innovation in doctrinaire thought was to import notions from political economy: to emphasise that the rise of commercial society had brought democratisation of condition, and entailed that the key social distinction was between producers and idlers, producers being associated with liberty and idlers with licence. It is true that these ideas often weren’t very clearly articulated by those writing about them: Constant for example never really makes it clear what he means by liberty. It’s not the Montesquieuian concept, but it’s hard to say quite what he thinks it entails and for whom.

Maurizio suggested that in the 1820s ‘democrat’ was not a party label, and liberal only sometimes so, and in that context there was no necessary tension between the two identities. They became incompatible only when they came to be associated with partisan political positions and parties.

Juan Pablo Dominguez said that there was some tension between core liberal and democratic ideas – between commitment to liberty and to the people’s will. Although liberalism aimed to be an embracing ideology, suspicion of the people endured.

Eduardo said that he and Mark did not mean to suggest that there two clearly distinct ideologies; rather there was a complex and multi-stranded dialogue between ideas.

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Joanna thought that Spanish ‘liberalism’ was and remained unusually broadly defined – though there were more conservative (or moderate) strands within it, which strengthened under doctrinaire influence in 1830s, they recognised that there was a broad liberal family. Moreover even Spanish moderates were prepared to operative within a broadly conceived constitutional culture, in contrast say to Italian moderates who might wish to move in that direction but with many hesitations. She noted though that it was possible to welcome endorsement from the people without welcoming participation.

Juan Pablo Dominguez wanted to stress that Spanish radicalism was strictly relative; they remained very worried about democracy. Though they used the language of popular sovereignty, they were keen to limit its implications. They wanted the Cortes to be able to set a reforming path.

Eduardo reiterated that as he saw it there were many varieties of thought in question, and that positions changed significantly over time. He suggested that Tocqueville played an important role in putting liberalism and democracy into dialogue.

Rui wanted to try a thought experiment: to consider how one might describe politics in Portugal in the 1820s without using any of these problematic labels. There was a constitutional impulse and there was a lot of popular mobilisation, but it wouldn’t be right to describe all those associated with popular mobilisation as democrats. He said that in the nineteenth century Spanish historians regarded much conflict as being above all about religion; we bring other concerns to it and see other issues.

Mark agreed that views on religion often played a large part in placing people politically at this time: in England, people were often called ‘liberal’ because of the views they had about the Church of England.

Michael Drolet noted that it was possible for royalists to appropriate the idea of the sovereignty of the people and turn it to paternalist ends: thus in the run up to the Hundred Days.

Michalis said that this topic was of great interest to him because his doctoral thesis focussed on Greek liberalism. He wasn’t sure how much the Greek case corresponded to others. He said it was shaped especially by French and German influences – German legal thought was particularly important in relation to various practical questions: the rule of law, promotion of industry etc. He said that it was only in the 1840s and 50s, after the revolution of 1843, that the need to devise and work within the framework of a constitution forced lawyers to think more about ideological issues. It was only then that they really had to think about democracy – in relation to such questions as who should be involved in politics in what ways; how the land should be distributed; what belonged to the nation and what to the king. They addressed these questions in relatively democratic condition: they saw Greek society as essentially democratic, because it rested on a foundation of social equality, not privilege. He noted that Greek liberals often referred to the American case, especially during the revolution/war of independence.Joanna asked how the parties that Petropoulos describes fit with his account.Michalis said that the liberals were those linked to the British and French parties. The British party was more interested in constitutional reform; the French party was more influenced by Guizot and emphasised the need to promote prosperity. From the 1840s onwards, now with a parliament in being, party identity was determined by more ad hoc and tactical concerns.

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Eduardo noted that it was difficult to place the United States on the landscape of liberalism, that not being a concept at play within American politics. By contrast, once one focussed on constitutions, the USA was an obvious reference point.

Tristan Stein wondered whether it was possible to find a way of talking about liberalism that didn’t take North Africa and the Ottomans off the agenda. Perhaps one could note how these attitudes shaped responses to things like the occupation of Algeria; or one might engage with Chris Bayly’s attempt to identify a liberal tradition in South Asia.

Maurizio Isabella: ReligionHe said that he did not want to try to write some form of narrative account, and therefore had begun by looking for common themes, which might frame his account across the region, and then tried to find case studies. His main hypothesis was that religion played a normative role in shaping arguments for and against democracy. All thought about the political order in this period had sacred foundations.

Conceptions of the Mediterranean, moreover, were often religiously framed: the region was seen as the cradle of civilisation and that was linked to the sense that it was the region in which Christianity had originated and from which it had spread northwards. Such conceptions of the region were revised and rethought in the period, especially by Italian and Greek patriots. Protestants meanwhile also looked at the Mediterranean through a religious lens: Protestant missionaries hoped to alleviate the region’s backwardness by spreading the Protestant religion. The Maltese publishing house which published religious texts in Arabic and Greek was the source of the majority of printed texts circulating in Greece in the 1820s.

He asked what were the C18 roots of these ways of thinking. It was necessary to take into account various brands of Catholic and Orthodox enlightenment, which sought to reconcile reason and religion. Within Catholic Europe, the Jansenist movement was very important. A key theme was that the interests of the nation were bound up with the interests of religion: authoritarianism and centralism were antithetical to both. Cults needed revision in the direction of moral austerity. Returning to the early church, conceived as a community, could be posited as an ideal. The first democrats were often Jansenist priests – thus in the 1790s. In this context, Christianity and democracy could be brought into a mutually reinforcing pattern of thought. Constitutionalism in the 1820s often attempted a similar synthesis: he cited a priest in Oporto talking about the Biblical origins of the constitution. In Spain, the Cortes was seen as a parallel to the ecclesiastical councils which the Jansenists admired.

In the 1830s, Lamennais emerged as a new source of ideas; his influence was widespread, though as his ideas spread they were transformed and adapted in various ways. Lamennais approved of the 1830 revolution in France. He argued that democracy needed religion: democracy without religion would be dangerous. His Paroles d’un croyant shaped language, introducing notions of providence. He influenced people in Portugal, Spain and Italy. Herculano in Portugal was a Lamennaisian, but he used Lamennais’ ideas to condemn democracy, advocating instead the 1826 constitution. He distinguished between the good people and the problematic plebe.

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The 1830s saw the emergence of moderate parties. They tended to endorse the notion that Christianity had played and would continue to play an important role in emancipating humanity, in the abolition of privilege and of slavery. (He thought that Guizot – himself a Protestant -- helped to shape this way of thinking).

The development of new historical narratives played a crucial role in the rethinking of democracy. An important binary was that of decadence and regeneration. The challenge was to escape from decadence. The Church had to do this too. Protestants presented themselves as saviours from decadence, blaming the Catholic church as such – thus Sismondi, but others rejected this story – so Manzoni argued that the Church had a crucial role to play in developing intermediary powers. In Spain, a Catholic nationalist historiography developed. Balmes idealised the Spanish rebellion against the French, identifying Catholicism as a key source of national values. In both Italy (in the case of Gioberti) and in Spain we find some arguing that their nation was the chosen nation. Engagement with Protestantism played an important part in shaping the terms of the narrative, but that’s not to say that the Protestant account was accepted. Rather, the most common response was to seek reform from within.

Among other things, this entailed identifying it as a key responsibility of the clergy to educate the nation: Korais thought this should be the case in Greece; Mazzini in Italy.

Of course both liberalism and democracy were contested ideas, at issue in civil wars. Religion lay at the heart of these conflicts. We can see this in the way that religious invective was flung against reformers, who might be called Protestants or Jansenists. But we also find those wanting to defend the established order appropriating some democratic tropes, eg saying the people are with us.

1848 marked a traumatic moment in this context. The revolutions forced religious thinkers to revise their thinking, which they did in many different ways. Some came to favour authoritarian rule as the only way to defend the church; some, like Gioberti, turned democrat.

He concluded by saying that he wasn’t sure how to bring the Ottoman world into his story.

Discussion: several questions and comments were collected

Antonis Hadjikyriacou said that if it was intended to bring Islam into the story then it might be necessary to take ‘church’ out of the title. He said he could make suggestions about Islamic thinkers and people thinking about the role of religion who could be discussed, though some came later, eg Ali Suavi. He mentioned the sufi order of the Nakshibandis as worth considering, It would be ground-breaking to make a link between Ottomans and West in this respect, though he wasn’t sure that the existing secondary literature would support the attempt. Muhammad Ali’s role in Egypt would also be worth considering in this context.

Rui welcomed what he said was an excellent paper. He agreed that religion provided a common language. Many political actors were either members of the clergy or educated by priests; irrespective of their own religious feelings, they were steeped in religious habits of thought and feeling. He agreed too that liberals understood their project as in part a religious reform project: so they wanted to end the inquisition and to abolish religious orders, seen as detaching themselves from the nation. But the nation itself was also conceived in religious terms: to be Portuguese required being Catholic. He noted that the development of the notion

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that the religion of the majority should be given a special place marked a step back from the ideal of civil religion.

Antonis Anastasopoulos said that Ottoman approaches to modernisation also necessarily entailed taking on religion. Thus, saying that Muslims and non-Muslims were equal challenged Islamic law, but could be seen as essential to making the state stronger.

Florencia liked the approach, but said that it made the Church itself seem passive, whereas in fact it was an important actor eg in Spanish civil wars. She suggested that as well as Lamennais, Tocqueville was influential in Spanish religious thinking in the 1840s and 50s: he was associated with the idea that religion might have an intimate, effectively private role in society.

Gonzalo Capellan thought this would be a crucial chapter in the book. As he saw it the church faced a challenge in the form of the new idea of democracy which it had to work to integrate. He thought that two points needed to be taken further. Lamennais indeed presented a marvellous example of the circulation of ideas. He thought it would be useful to be able to say more about who was translating him, why, in what local contexts, and with what intentions. He mentioned that he was himself preparing a new edition of the Spanish edition of the Paroles d’un croyant. He thought presenting democracy as part of Christianity made it easier for many people to embrace it. Larra presents a nice instance: he was a liberal who translated Lamennais and then came to describe himself as a democrat.

Eduardo suggested that the 1864 Syllabus of Errors was important in making it more difficult to combine liberalism and Catholicism.

Joanna liked the paper. Wondered how something about institutions could be fitted into his framework. Church reform looked likely to be a topic that impinged on several chapters: his, Gabriel Paquette’s and her own chapter on the social order. Formal legal issues about criteria for citizenship and about toleration also needed to figure somewhere: her impression was that in general the period saw a shift from attempts to conflate Christianity and civil religion towards the notion that it was better to provide religious freedom.

Maurizio responded to several of these comments. To Rui he said that Catholicism was always more than a mere civil religion. To Florencia, he agreed on the need to bring in the Church as an actor. To Gonzalo, he noted that there was also a Lamennaisian form of counterrevolutionary rhetoric. He broadly agreed with Joanna’s scheme: there was a trend in favour of toleration, though it emerged with difficulty; even liberals and democrats were often sceptical about it.

Laurence Whitehead agreed that this was an important chapter for the book, linking as it did to both fiscal questions and liberalism, in different ways. . He thought that the papal states might make an interesting case study. Anti-clericalism in Emilia Romagna was possibly as much political as religious in character, because inspired by experience of Papal rule. Liberals made some headway by promising to provide state not church schooling.

He wondered whether there was some connection between Catholic ferment and imperialism, the latter being conceived of as a form of crusading.

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Moises Prieto wondered where the Jews fitted. Did they have a place – or was democracy anti-semitic?

Michael Drolet worried that ‘democracy’ itself sometimes seemed to disappear from sight in the account. He agreed that Jansenism was crucial. He wondered if alongside Lamennais Montalembert was important. He also wondered if American theologians such as Channing had any influence.

Luca also wondered about the significance of Lamartine’s intervention in 1848. He stressed that sovereignty comes from God, but its execution was vested in men. He also suggested that Montanelli [Tuscan political activist of 1840s, then exiled in Paris] was an important figure. He called for a national democratic and Christian faith.

Juan Pablo Dominguez thought that general enlightenment literature deserved attention alongside Jansenism. It was in that setting that the Spanish black legend took root as a story that the Spanish told about themselves – though Spanish censorship set limits to what could be said. However, when people went to France, they often became more vocal about blaming the Church for Spain’s problems. Prosecutions for heresy in the early nineteenth century haven’t been much studied by historians, though there were some 6000 of them; they had often got into trouble for blaming the Church for Spain’s decline. But Spanish leaders critical of the Church were often nonetheless profoundly religious. Toleration was a very important issue in Spain, he said: it was a key issue at the moment of the birth of the Democratic party.

Mark wondered how much of the discourse presented was an elite discourse (something he said he also worried about in relation to his own paper). He wondered if it was possible to get closer to the ground. Eduardo countered that sermons surely reached reached a wide audience.

Maurizio again responded to several speakers. To Laurence, he said that some Catholic thinkers were pro-imperialism, others condemned it. To Moises, that Jews were crucial. In Greece they were slaughtered or kicked out, seen as siding with the Ottomans. The Pope in 1848 grudgingly accepted a constitution, but refused to give rights to the Jews. To Michael he said yes, Montalembert was important; Balmes was also influential across Catholic southern Europe. He also agreed with Luca about Montanelli. He has found references to Channing among Italian exiles in England, but that’s all he can say about him. He thought that he had perhaps influenced Mazzini. Sermons indeed reached lots of people; ordinary people also often came to the defence of the church against reforms. He welcomed Juan Pablo’s remarks.

James McDougall– Ottoman territories and North Africa (in absentia)

Joanna kicked off discussion with some comments on the circulated outline. Currently she thought the introduction was too long and too general for the immediate purpose: it was more important to move quickly on to suggest how the Ottoman world and North Africa could constructively. The challenge of covering such a large and diverse area over such a long period, when moreover it wasn’t obvious how its experiences were most helpfully compared or contrasted with those of southern European states was certainly considerable. She wasn’t sure that the three thematic sections proposed would do the job, though. Among other things, they didn’t find a place for topics that seemed to her important to explore: about consultation, representation, and such modes of action as petitioning.

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Mark said that he worried that it was trying to cover too much. Given its necessary breadth, it was important that it not attempt to be encyclopaedic but that it should be driven by some distinct strands of argument, perhaps focussing on points of comparison and contrast. Though he could see that emphasising difference risked reinforcing exceptionalist stereotypes.

Antonis Anastasopoulos said that in the title the Ottoman empire should come first, North Africa second. He noted that millets only gained clear definition at the end of the period. He thought the top-down reform process needed more attention. Laurence Whitehead thought that the chapter should be about whether democracy had the potential to work in this setting. He noted some shared notions: Algerian liberals in the 1830s drew on Constant to argue against French occupation. It might be useful to give readers concrete ideas about proximity and shared space: how close was Algiers to Naples?

Joanna said that it might be possible to use talk about democracy in the Ottoman world in the 1870s as an end point: just as it had been suggested in discussion with Florencia that what people were talking about in terms of democracy at the end of the period might help guide choices as to what one could appropriately talk about earlier, without merely imposing modern concepts, that approach might have some mileage in the Ottoman case.

Antonis Hadjikyriacou worried about how he was to find connecting glue when what was in question was by no means a unitary space, and there wasn’t much in the way of an existing narrative spanning the region. However, he liked the way in which he tried to employ Islamic and Ottoman political concepts, and stressed that the latter were not purely Islamic. He thought absence of a clear existing narrative was a problem for the chapter: if the book on the whole set out to engage selectively with existing narratives, this was much harder when there was none to engage with. In the absence of something to bounce off, the chapter risked not being innovative enough.

Mark wondered if one way of presenting the region might be in terms of Cem Emrence’s tripartite scheme, which distinguished the forms of political culture and experience in three zones: coastal, hinterland and backcountry. Might that device help to establish a basis for comparison with southern European states?Rui objected that the same approach would then have to be applied to the southern European chapters. Mark thought there might be merit in that. Perhaps the book risked being trammelled by a fiscal-military state framework, when that might not always be appropriate to its subject, and risked disguising internal difference. There was further discussion of issues raised by this approach. Joanna thought that there was some merit in the suggestion in that it at least acknowledged diversity within the region.

Picking up on Laurence’s earlier remark, she said in the terms of their project it couldn’t be said that democracy wasn’t established in the Ottoman world. Democracy was not understood in this project as a determinate political practice, but as a descriptive term that could be and had in the past been applied, often polemically, to a variety of political practices. There were very few instances anywhere in the region in this period (or indeed, anywhere else in Europe in this period) of a regime being established that officially described itself as democratic. In the Ottoman world there were practices that could be seen as were very occasionally described as democratic – but that precise language had little currency. In the terms of the

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project, difference in language use posed more problems than difference in practice, she thought.

Maurizio said that ideas didn’t always circulate everywhere, and that needed to be acknowledged.

Laurence Whitehead wondered if it mightn’t be helpful to discuss Barbary pirates. Barbary states were not democratic, but nor did they behave like other states. The British navy paid a regular amount each year to avoid conflict. The problems the US had in the region when it was no longer under Britain’s umbrella led to the Barbary wars. Joanna said they weren’t alone in marauding. The Greeks were also doing this in the post-Napoleonic years especially, helping to prompt European intervention in Greece.

Joanna Innes: Social Order

She said that she had a clearer vision of this last topic than of the international order topic – but perhaps too clear a vision. She would welcome having the story complicated – up to a point, since there had to be a story. She’d also welcome suggestions for further reading.

The main story as she saw it was about the abolition of privilege. In France, the abolition of privilege was said by some intellectuals – esp the Doctrinaires -- to have brought into being a ‘democratic’ society, in a way that Annalien de Dijn has explored. All nineteenth-century Mediterranean societies became in this sense more democratic. In this context, people saw the need to create new kinds of political order, though there were then rival theories about how this could be done.

The story about the abolition of privilege could be told from the historiography. It was harder to get a grip on characterising post-privilege societies, societies in which other ways of conceptualising social ordering occurred. She thought that such societies were often conceptualised as natural, creating a context in that there was more need than before to elaborate theories of natural inequality – on the basis e.g. of gender or race. Groups were increasingly regarded as voluntary formations: things people belonged to by choice. In practice, however, states continued to interact with individuals and groups on the basis of decisions they made about how to classify people: who had what civil rights; who had what political rights; who had what fiscal, military or other duties. Citizenship was a crucial concept in this context – but it needed unpacking; there were many different levels and forms of entitlement and obligation. Citizenship as formally constructed might relate to some and not others of these. Insofar as one focus of interest needed to be how states constructed their relationships with people, her chapter potentially interacted with Gabriel Paquette’s chapter, and that would need sorting out.

She thought that the first section would deal with the attack on privilege, in itself and as a principle structuring state-society relations (again raising issues about managing potential overlap with Gabe’s chapter).

The second section would explore the ordering of post-privilege societies, and the ways in which they were imagined: as being shaped by natural forces (esp. biological and economic), by voluntaristic association (including in tolerant and religiously plural societies, religious affiliation) and also by looser forms of belonging, reflecting historically shaped cultural

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variations (cultured/uncultured; townfolk/country folk etc) and their modification by life-style choices. She thought that societies came to be imagined in the nineteenth century, as historically layered, internally asynchronous – a theme that had received more attention in terms of relations between than within national societies. But the idea that some social groups, eg peasants, represented historic survivals; that in some sense they were still living in the past was the kind of thing she had in mind. In fact privilege had only ever been one among several ways in which societies were ordered, so all these alternative ways of imagining social order had longer histories, but arguably these alternative schemes were asked to do more work when formal status differences were abolished or reduced. She would especially welcome suggestions for reading about post-privilege societies: she saw Sara Maza’s study of The myth of the French bourgeoisie, and Lucie Ryzova’s book on the idea of the Effendi in Egyptian culture as examples of the kind of material it would be useful to have – but both these books fell outside the geographical and chronological range of the current project.

This section would also need to look at the more formal ways in which these societies were categorised, in terms of the distribution of rights and obligations. The use of tax-paying or property-owning criteria to determine rights and obligations now appeared intrinsically inegalitarian, but in historical context could be seen as radically equalising, because all those who met these criteria on the basis of what might be a newly achieved station in life acquired the same rights and obligations, regardless of their social origins.

A third section would she thought look at critiques of the post-privilege social order and its endorsement of other forms of inequality. Some such critiques were directed against state choices: thus, why should some but not others have the right to hold public office, or some but not others the right to vote, some but not others (esp women) a range of rights as private persons. But other critiques focussed on the social construction of inequality, because educational opportunity was limited, or because the economic system was constructed in a way that generated markedly unequal returns to effort. Democrats in the 1790s had attacked a variety of forms of inequality; during mid C19 decades, post-privilege forms of inequality became the chief target of criticism. This was what contemporaries referred to as the ‘social question’.

It seemed to her that there were Ottoman analogues of this story. The janissaries had represented a kind of privileged order; slavery also came into question in the Ottoman world – including the privileged, kul form of slavery. An attempt was made to abolish or reduce the implications of religious difference. Land reforms tried to unpick the conflation of governing groups and the wealthy: to distinguish state servants from social elites, such that though the same individual might occupy both roles, the roles would be distinguishable. In the Ottoman context modernity was often conceptualised as foreign, western, though potentially subject to some domestication – so new dress codes clearly quoted western dress, though might quote it in distinctive local ways. But it was probably not only in the Ottoman world that new lifestyles were seen as foreign imports. Elsewhere they were perhaps seen as imitating French or British ways? Rural culture was often imagined as more purely national: to perform authentic nationality, elites and townspeople had to adopt elements of rural culture – indigeneous languages or ‘national’ dress.

Discussion:

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Maurizio said that there was a literature on sociability in the Italian states in the first years of C19, and on the critique of aristocratic moeurs by moderates.

Eduardo asked if privilege was also associated with patronage and clientilism, and the attempt to get rid of the first. The Spanish literature on this mainly focussed on the post 1870 period. Sections of the nobility reinvented themselves as a political class, in alliance with other new recruits; we knew all too little about how this social formation functioned.

Rui said that the Portuguese took just such an idea of democratic society from the Doctrinaires: it was accepted in the 1840s and 50s that there was no longer any privilege but a hierarchy based on merit. At the same time they began to talk about the ‘social question’. France was the chief source of both liberal and socialist ideas. Joanna wondered how far new social vocabularies spread, and how far they varied from place to place. There was surely some spreading, eg of the term ‘middle class’, though according to Sara Maza ‘classes moyennes’ never really caught on in France outside the pages of liberal theorists; the usual term for describing society as it functioned was bourgeoisie – but this was a negative term which everyone applied to others, not themselves. They preferred to think of themselves as citizens and as industrious. Proletarian was another word that must have spread to some extent from its French origins (initially a term of royalist propaganda, according to Rosanvallon: royalists accused liberals of failing to attend to the needs of proletarians).Rui said that in Portugal there was much talk about the middle classes; the term bourgeoisie had much less currency. Both working class and proletarian were used, the latter having a more general meaning. The term ‘productive classes’ was more inclusive, bringing together middle and working class elements.

Laurence Whitehead said he thought that the story was clear but wondered about the evidence for it. He noted that there was no such thing as ‘privilege’ tout court: what were abolished were always particular sets of privileges. And in the international order, new forms of imperial privilege were emerging – thus in Algeria.

Gonzalo Capellan said that in Spain before the French revolution accounts of society generally used the traditional terminology of estates. Some Spanish liberals in the 1830s did identify democracy with the rise of the middle classes. It was possible to emphasise common rights, juridical levelling ( he quoted Castellar on this theme), though of course that levelling was just at a formal level. Inequality of land ownership remained one of the most glaring forms of inequality. In Spain, the first formulations about the social question related to the land question. Before people talked about the social question they talked about ‘pauperism’, and looked to the church, charity etc to alleviate this. He suggested that moral levelling was also worth thinking about: the belief that the social hierarchy did not mirror the moral hierarchy, linked to Christian associations between virtue and suffering.

Antonis Hadjikyriacou liked the discussion of the abolition of privilege, though thought that reconfiguring privilege or obfuscating privilege might be a more accurate way of putting it. He noted that there were not aristocratic structures in the Ottoman world, and indeed there was an impressive degree of social mobility. In relation to the janissaries, he noted a historiography which saw them as representatives of the people, and the attack on the janissaries as an attack on a bastion of popular authority.

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Moises Prieto thought that ‘privilege’ itself would be an interesting word to trace: how did its applications change?

Michael Drolet said that in France the social question was already on the agenda in the early 1830s, when Tocqueville was asked to pursue it; this period saw the formation of statistical societies and the creation of international taxonomies for the classification of societies.

Michalis said that there was not much relevant Greek historiography, though there was some 1970s Marxist historiography on society, some works on cities and islands, eg Sakis Gekas on the Ionian islands. What today makes up Greece was of course in our period a series of distinct political units, with their own social formations and forms of order. He said that Saint Simonians were very influential among the Greeks, with their ideas about the productive classes, the industrious classes etc. Greeks accepted that property ownership might provide a useful principle of social ordering – but they lacked property titles. 75% of land in the Greek state was owned by the state, which was a big problem. The question of how to distribute this land was only resolved in the 1870s.

Luca said that the idea that the censitaires constituted a new privileged class was a theme in some political rhetoric. Guerrazzi, a democrat, eg had a lot to say about this [he ruled Florence in a triumvirate with Mazzini and Montanelli in 1849, and was then proclaimed dictator]. The July Monarchy allowed heads of household to qualify by counting the qualifications of their wives and daughters alongside their own – in a sense they were also vehicles of political rights. Even women household heads were sometimes argued to deserve political rights; under the ancien regime and in the Italian administrative monarchies of the early nineteenth century, there are various instances of them voting by proxy at local level, thus in Lombardy-Venetia 1815-59

Eduardo thought the survival of slavery in Spanish overseas possessions – Cuba – should be acknowledged; this was a major issue for the Spanish. Antonis Anastasopoulos noted the not fully comparable profile of Ottoman slavery: could offer a path into the elite; more of it was domestic.

Mark worried that perhaps we were becoming too Doctrinaire, and talking as if society could generate its own forms of social order. Might it not be better to start with the state. Joanna said that she agreed that the interaction between social and state categories needed to be brought out; many ‘social’ categories, even if not directly sanctioned by the state, gained meaning partly through their functions in political discourse.

Mark also suggested that it might be useful to attend to changing forms of address: how much and how nice a sense of hierarchy and deference they embodied; who deferred to whom and how. Joanna noted an interesting piece by Amy Ericksson in the History Workshop Journal on changing uses of ‘Mrs’ in England, which suggested the potential of this approach.