The Netherlands, the literary critic Cd. Busken Huet (1826–86) argued in January 1865, was “in fact since 1848 a democratic republic with a prince from the House of Orange as hereditary chairman.” This was the consequence of the liberal constitutional reform of 1848, which had belatedly embraced the democratic spirit of the revolutionary period at the end of the eighteenth century. Huet addressed this sharp analysis to the liberal leader J.R. Thorbecke (1798–1872). As the architect of the constitution and as minister of the interior, Thorbecke had distanced himself from the idea of popular sovereignty. “Where and when have I ever invoked the word or principle of popular sovereignty?,” he had asked the conservative opposition in the budget debate in parliament on November 25, 1864. In Thorbecke’s view such a principle did not exist in the Dutch constitutional monarchy. The constitutional system was an organic, free cooperation of levels and powers of government, each with its own function. But for Huet this was a renunciation of the underlying principle. “Democracy, popular sovereignty, are these terms of reproach? So be a man, and bear that reproach.”1
Half a century after the restoration of independence and the establishment of the monarchical state, Huet’s provocation was tantamount to heresy. He did not care; a few years earlier he had resigned his position as minister of the Walloon church in Haarlem because he could no longer agree with the doctrine of the faith.2 Was he right and had the Netherlands been a disguised republic with an Orange facade since 1848? Huet’s article led to a break within the editorial board of the prominent general-cultural magazine De Gids that was the gathering place of the liberal-bourgeois intelligentsia. In the same January issue, the Leiden professor of constitutional law J.Th. Buys, like Thorbecke, opposed the
In view of later political developments, Huet’s analysis may seem correct – nowadays he would encounter little contradiction – but in the mid-nineteenth century the concepts of “republic,” “republican,” “democracy,” and “popular sovereignty” were taboo. In the first decades after 1814, almost this entire political vocabulary had disappeared from the public domain. Bringing back politicization to government and recognizing the function of party politics and ideology since the 1840s was a liberal reform program in itself. This is why Busken Huet’s challenge caused such commotion. Half a century after 1814, the legacy of the revolutionary years and the relationship with the former Republic were still sensitive matters.
This situation raises two questions. How could republicanism disappear so completely in the nineteenth-century Netherlands? Few states had a longer or richer republican past. In the last quarter of the eighteenth century, republican momentum had even been at a peak. The values of classical republicanism had pervaded Dutch society; the public sentiment was anti-monarchical and anti-Orangist. The stadtholders had been denounced as wretched tyrants who did not belong in a free republic. Any true Dutchman, a contemporary later recalled, uttered “the word King with disgust.” When in 1806 Louis Napoleon took office as the first king since Philip II’s renunciation in 1581, pamphlets protested that the entire history of the nation opposed the principle of the monarchical form of government.5
1 The Historiography of Nineteenth-Century Republicanism
The question of continuity between the Republic, the revolutionary period, the Restoration after 1814 and the constitutional revision of 1848 has only sporadically been the subject of historical scrutiny.7 Experts on the eighteenth century and the revolutionary period seldom venture beyond the turn of the 1800s. Historians of the nineteenth century have long conformed to the seemingly self-evident framework of a modern history that begins with the establishment of the monarchy in 1813. In 1930 the Amsterdam professor J.S. Theissen made an original attempt to trace “the prehistory of modern Dutch liberalism” back to the Patriot movement of the 1780s, but his suggestion was not the fruit of systematic research. W. Verkade likewise looked for a relationship between the Patriot movement in the east of the Netherlands and later liberalism. The controversial historian C.H.E. de Wit believed that between 1780 and 1848 there had been an ongoing struggle of “democrats” against “aristocrats.” For him Thorbecke, who more than his contemporaries had reflected on the time of the revolution, formed the link between the two periods. In his book on progressive liberalism (1992) S. Stuurman put forward the liberal reformer Donker Curtius (1792–1864) as a link between old and new political thinking.8
The recent Leiden research project The persistence of civic identities 1747–1848 looked for continuity in the field of social organization, administrative culture and self-assured urban citizenship. The project questioned the modernization thesis that has come to portray the period around 1800 as a radical transition from old particularism and local forms of civic involvement to modern, national and political citizenship. Unmistakably there is continuity in administrative styles and in forms of civic engagement. The persistence of civic organizations seems likely in the then still fairly closed urban communities.10 This is an interesting point, although the question remains to what extent this engaged citizenship still derived its impetus from a self-conscious classical republicanism.
Even internationally, relatively little attention has been paid to the study of republicanism in the nineteenth century. Studies that do exist focus on France or the United States, or are concerned with radical social republicanism and the rise of socialism in its many variants.11 The general picture that emerges from the international literature is that the Revolutionary period passed down
2 Depolitization Under the Restoration Regime
Transformation and transition then, but how can the Netherlands be situated in that process? The consensus view is that republicanism, which was the subject of intellectual and political debate and even ardent defense until 1801 and for some even until 1806, petered out from that year onwards and did not revive after 1813. With her much-read Oproeping van het Bataafse Volk (Convocation of the Batavian People) of March 31, 1806, the militant Maria Hulshoff became the “dying swan of Dutch Republicanism.”13 The generation that had lived through the Patriot years, the Orange Restoration and the Batavian changes of power joined the imposed monarchy under Louis Napoleon with fresh reluctance or pragmatic sense of reform from 1806. After the incorporation of the Netherlands into the Grand Empire in 1810, the breakdown of the revolutionary ethos was evident. Not only did the republican ideal or program disappear, the entire republican discourse, which had been formed over centuries, dissolved like a mist in the rising Orange sun.14
Due to the ever-stricter censorship measures and the fading of the political press, public opinion disappeared after 1801. As the French tightened their grip, the political debate gave way to a cultivation of national feeling, clinging to memories of old glory and patriotic heroes. During the three years of incorporation into the French empire, even former political publicists devoted themselves mainly to literature, which gained ideological meaning.16 The House of Orange, which for two centuries had been a political party opposed to the Loevestein or States Party of Holland, Amsterdam and the States-General, was now nationalized into a monarchy: the connecting force in the new state, even entrusted with sovereignty. Under William I, the image was cultivated of a benevolent, “paternal” rule over a country that was induced to regard itself as a “family” and to find its chief virtue in “domesticity.”
The political language of the revolutionary years was melted down into a soft, depoliticized, moralistic and national discourse in which “order” and the kingship of William I were central elements. In the public discourse of the first half-century and well after that, the entire word field around politics took on a pejorative connotation. Conceived as partisanship and “passion,” politicization had since the Patriot years divided the Republic and led it to ruin, which came in the guise of the ultimate incorporation into the Grand Empire by the bully Napoleon. This, in short, was the analysis of the generation that in 1813–15 made a new design for the unified state of the Netherlands. Until 1840, the
The negative sentiment was even more pronounced in the verb “politicize”: that was a dangerous, baneful disease, “worse than cholera.” “Cowardly politicizing” was opposed to the truly Dutch composure. Politicizing could also be used as a synonym for “the Patriot movement.” In De Nederlander of 1850, politicization stood for “promoting passions, hatred and envy and intrigue.”18 Politicization entailed the threat of revolution and disorder – which indeed erupted in Belgium, France and some German states after 1830.
The same was true of the word field around “republic,” “republican,” and “democracy.” If used at all, those words appeared almost exclusively in reports about foreign countries and never in a positive sense.19 One explanation for avoiding these concepts lies in self-censorship. An atmosphere of danger and subversion was constantly maintained around them. In the repressive press climate of the newly created United Kingdom of the Netherlands, the use of such words was even actively prosecuted. Authors and publishers could face corporal punishment and imprisonment for evoking a “spirit of republicanism.”20 If these concepts occurred in relation to the former Republic, it was seldom in a positive consideration of its form of government. The Golden Age remained an example when it came to mentality, wealth or power, but in the new monarchical state the former republican model of government was never put forward as an explanation for its success. In nineteenth-century retrospections on the Republic, the rejection of oligarchic rule, regional particularism and unfortunate party
Constitutionalism as such was an achievement of the revolutionary period. In the Netherlands, as in most post-Napoleonic Restoration states, some form of constitution was preserved. However, Van Hogendorp’s 1814 constitution, amended in 1815, in every way intended to erase the memory of the democratic Batavian Constitution of 1798. It contained neither a catalog of constitutional rights, nor a single suggestion of popular influence. It was a document to create an entirely monarchical state, to establish a notable, conservative social order and to remedy the governmental deficiencies of the former Republic. In this new polity, the States-General represented “the nation,” but functioned primarily as an advisory body, a kind of sounding board for the king’s policy. Both Houses, as co-legislator, were supposed to support the royal administration. When the States-General occasionally rebelled, as in 1819, 1829 and 1839 when discussing the ten-year budget, it was about issues such as tax burden and state credit. For the rest, everyone within the system of the Restoration period understood politics or governance as administration or management. In the post-Napoleonic state, the administrative and executive powers were the key players. Poverty, rebellion, social and even religious problems – such as the Orthodox-Protestant Secessionist movement in 1837 – were regarded as local public-order issues, not as political matters.23
The constitution and public discourse depoliticized the idea of citizenship. The term “citizen” disappeared from the constitution altogether and made way for the neutral word “residents.” In the new monarchical relationship, citizens became “loyal subjects.” Or else, the old political concept of citizenship was transformed into “Dutchmen,” in the sense of members of the national community.24 Civil society was a social sphere, not a political community. “Exaggerated civic spirit” was all too easily equated with “republicanism.”25
3 The Constitutional Turn
Several explanations have been offered for the evaporation of all interest in republicanism.28 In the first place there was the fatigue of revolution, after 35 years of unrest and upheavals, and an understandable need for peace, order and reconciliation in a barely regained independent state. The discourse of reconciliation and the ending of factionalism had already started in 1801.29 The generation that was born around 1750 and had played a role in the Patriot movement and the Batavian Republic was aged, disappointed and sidelined after 1813. The next generation had mainly experienced regime changes resulting in a shameful Annexation, and in middle age had a particular need for stability. Those who were even younger had no personal memories of the Republic.
Especially during the three odd years of Annexation, there was a widespread need for a return of “Orange,” no longer as a party but as an emblem of national
The monarchical, paternal role had been prepared by the kingship of Louis Napoleon. Internationally, there has been a tendency towards the formation of monarchies with a constitutional element since 1805.32 Thinking about the nature and role of kingship evolved. In 1814 Benjamin Constant presented a novel vision of the monarchy as a pouvoir neutre, exalted above the parties, powers and institutions.33 Such a conception was attractive because it elevated a new kingship above the former parties. In theoretical reflections on the role and position of the king and the principle of ministerial responsibility, this idea would indeed come to play a role in the Netherlands around 1830.34 It was also important that William I found the appropriate style with his managerial, enlightened, bourgeois and Protestant kinghood. It was felt to be truly national at a time that called for it.35
Although relatively little political reflection and discussion took place in the Northern part of the Netherlands in the first decades after 1813, a similar train of thought was displayed there, in brochures and in a magazine such as De Weegschaal (The Scale, 1818–32), which for more than a decade was virtually the only locus of public political opinion formation in the northern part of the United Kingdom. The “Wegers” had a more or less republican background, and that spirit was still evident in their emphasis on active citizenship, involvement in the public interest, and the guarantee of rights and freedoms.38 What was new was that they defended those values within the accepted framework of the constitutional monarchy. De Weegschaal left no doubt that a new era had begun in 1813. The centuries of the Republic had become “barren” for the present in every respect. “The history of our former national existence belongs to a closed period.”39
The political order realized in 1813–15, with a “presidential” type of monarchy, a notable governmental class and a represented “nation” still resembled Montesquieu’s gouvernement mixte. It was also in line with the cherished self-image of the eighteenth-century Republic, which had taken pride in being the exemplary regnum mixtum. Despite the fierce aversion to the “pernicious aristocracy” in the revolutionary decades – a criticism that was still alive after 1813 among former republicans – the Restoration order was once again upheld by a new, mixed upper class that managed to present itself as essential for a balanced order. In France, Montesquieu’s theory about the function of an intermediate aristocracy was still topical.42 In the Netherlands his name only occasionally came up because of his praise for the civilizing and enlightening effect of commerce. Gradually he turned from a relevant theorist into a historical object of study.43
Nevertheless, the model of a composite government with three levels, or with an intermediate power between monarch and people, has long remained
4 Republicanism in the Margins
What was left of the republican heritage, in terms of the spirit of anti-monarchism, aversion to the aristocracy, and the ideals of civic self-government, active citizenship and the right to form civic militias? In the Southern Netherlands, especially in Brussels, after 1815 all sorts of French and other refugees found a more or less safe shelter: republicans, regicides, Bonapartists and after 1824 also Philippe Buonarotti, the leader of the Carbonari.44 There were radicals from different generations who still adhered to the Jacobin ideology. Their clubs, societies, lodges and magazines spread older and current French political ideas and formed centers of agitation and opposition, which gradually turned against William I’s restoration regime in the course of the 1820s. In these circles, a new romantic liberalism developed, revolving around such demands as constitutional guarantees, freedoms and rights, ministerial responsibility and a regulated kingship. Although the old republicanism was still present in the militant spirit, the democratic orientation and the rejection of William I’s monarchism, the new liberalism mainly sought its course within the structure of the constitutional monarchy.45
The first wave of opposition in the Northern Netherlands, in The Hague and Amsterdam, exemplified by new magazines such as De Bijenkorf, De Standaard and De Noordstar (1828–31), also honored this new constitutional liberalism,
A particular form of opposition resounded in the radical utopian magazines and “Lilliputians” that appeared all over the country, especially in the 1840s. These mini-sheets voiced social discontent and resistance to the establishment. Their tone and content were democratic. Their authors and ideas were in contact with international radical movements of republicans, social revolutionaries and utopians in France, England and Belgium. The radical magazines were socially concerned, they denounced abuses and social hypocrisy, and they called for club formation, organization or resistance. They stood up for the “oppressed working class” and rejected “aristocratic despotism.”47 But their readership and influence were limited. Besides, these opponents, too, remained within the constitutional framework. They demanded democratic reform of the constitution and placed their hopes more on a “people’s king” who understood their needs than on a republican system.48 Their bête noire was the notable class. Occasional expressions of republicanism sounded unsteady and without a clear ideological foundation. They took their inspiration from the recent French and Belgian revolutions, not from the Dutch republican tradition. All in all, the republican voice remained marginal.49
5 Liberalism and Republicanism
Elements of republicanism were mainly included in liberalism. Indeed, even after 1848 liberalism was suspected by conservatives of having a hidden republican agenda. Politicization as such was believed to revive party strife and political agitation. The liberal insistence on ministerial responsibility was seen as an infringement of the monarchical system, and the call for openness, accountability, direct suffrage and extension of the right to vote as stirring up dangerous popular forces. Whereas “liberality” as open-mindedness and moderation could still be appreciated as an old national virtue, and a little more control over the state finances also seemed sensible, the formulation of an
Liberal publicists always placed the constitution at the center of political issues, as a covenant and as an expression of the balance of powers according to the ideal of “mixed government.” In this presentation, no appeal was ever made to Rousseau or suggestions of an underlying popular sovereignty, as if the “social contract” was a fact sui generis or a consequence of the equilibrium model according to the classical theory, Montesquieu or Constant.52 Liberals avoided any thought of popular sovereignty and preferred to translate the concept into national sovereignty, as an expression of unity and solidarity.53
The men of the 1848 constitutional revision committee, Lodewijk Luzac, Dirk Donker Curtius, J.M. de Kempenaer, Lambert Storm and J.R. Thorbecke, all had some relationship with the revolutionary period at the end of the eighteenth century, personally or through their family. However, they were mainly shaped by their experiences with the Restoration regime and their knowledge of French, British, Belgian and, in part, German political literature. In Donker Curtius’s political beliefs, elements of the republican sentiment were perhaps most present, although he was no less a staunch supporter of the modern constitutional-monarchical state than the other members.54 Before 1848, liberal publicists in the circle of the monthly De Gids sometimes revived the views of the former Loevestein or States Party in their historical analyses of the Revolt and national history. That sentiment was Patriot and republican rather than royalist. Around 1860 it gave way to a historical reflection that resulted
Thorbecke, who was to become the principal architect of the 1848 constitution, was the youngest member of the revision committee charged with this task. Yet, as Leiden professor of constitutional law and as political commentator he had more often than his colleagues reflected on national history and the Batavian-French period.56 Thorbecke showed little interest in the republican legacy. He regarded the former Republic as a rotten oligarchy and a governmental anomaly. However disconcerting it might sound given public sentiment, in the professor’s analysis it had been the Napoleonic interventions that had transformed the decrepit Republic into a modern state. Although he rejected the democratic premise of the Constitution of 1798, he tacitly honored its most important results: the establishment of the unitary state and equal citizenship, the separation of church and state and the guaranteeing of civil rights and liberties. Thorbecke’s political thought was shaped by romantic historicism. His liberalism was based on the idea of evolution. He did not deduce it from the enlightened philosophy of universal rights and equality. Rights, freedoms, institutions and functions had to be in accordance with what society at a certain stage required.
Contrary to what Busken Huet suggested in 1865, Thorbecke’s rejection of popular sovereignty was indeed fundamental. What he and fellow members of the revision committee created in 1848 was not a republic in disguise with a hereditary Orange king. It was a regulated, constitutional state with the character of a regnum mixtum and a separation and balance of powers and functions. In Thorbecke’s conception of ministerial responsibility, the king as the dignified part or moral anchor of the government was still essential, to counterbalance parliament as the representative of the people. Difficult as it was to work with a personality like King William III, Thorbecke still defended the monarch’s position in his equilibrium system.
The constitutional revision of 1848 built on the structure of 1814–15, not that of 1798. Only the placing of fundamental rights in the first chapter still recalled the Constitution of 1798. The constitutional revision intended to improve the system of 1814–15, to regulate kingship and to promote active citizenship. The middle class became politically and socially the new intermediary power,
Active and political citizenship had been the core of classical republicanism. Research continues to investigate the extent to which the old urban citizenship disappeared as a result of the abolition of the guilds, the town militias and urban independence.58 Although all kinds of sociability and civic organization continued to function at the local level after 1814 and urban pride persisted alongside the sense of nationhood for a long time, the Restoration system in no way encouraged active citizenship, let alone political citizenship. “Abstinence seemed civil duty,” Thorbecke later summarized the period.59
Perhaps the main objective of the 1848 Constitution and the ensuing liberal policies, then, has been to empower civil society, to activate citizenship through direct suffrage, the broadening of the right to vote at the urban level and the establishment of the right of association and meeting. By promoting education and removing all kinds of obstacles, an ever-broader class of citizens would be formed. As a result, political and socio-economic citizenship would not grow apart, but converge. That liberal program was the legacy of the old republicanism, within the new framework of the constitutional monarchy.
6 Conclusion
In the Netherlands, republicanism did not revive until the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when it made its comeback as an element of socialism. At the beginning of the century, working-class neighborhoods had been strongholds of Orangism. Social discontent usually turned against the bourgeois establishment, not against the king or the monarchy.60 In the absence of an
From the 1870s on, republicanism and socialism were occasionally discussed in theoretical considerations in learned social-liberal magazines such as Vragen des Tijds. After 1879, a firm and militant republicanism regained a permanent platform in the more popular social-democratic weekly Recht voor Allen. In this journal, republicanism roughly coincided with democracy or universal suffrage. Confronted with such demands, the confessional parties, liberals and conservatives began to elevate the monarchy into an emblem of nationalism and of the rejection of revolution and socialism; for the socialist workers’ movement it became the personification of the despised establishment.
The tone and rhetoric of socialist and anarchist authors was somewhat reminiscent of that of their Patriot and Batavian predecessors a century earlier. Yet this revived republicanism never actually drew its inspiration from the national tradition of the Republic. While a historiographical consensus grew that liberalism and the bourgeoisie in general were the heirs of the French Revolution, the image of the former Republic and its political system remained essentially negative, except for the glory of the Golden Age. Socialism was a transnational ideology that entered the Netherlands through France, Germany and England. How the revolution of Patriots and Batavians might have provided inspiration for contemporary republicans would become apparent only much later, in the historical research of the end of the twentieth century. But by then national history had long ceased to be a source of ideological inspiration. Modern republicanism is a consequence of the theory of democracy and no longer refers in any way to two and a half centuries of indigenous political heritage.
Notes
Een Geabonneerde van het Bijblad [Cd. Busken Huet], “De Tweede Kamer en de Staatsbegroting voor 1865,” De Gids 29, vol. I (1865): 42–63, quotations 62–63; Parlementaire Redevoeringen van Mr. J.R. Thorbecke. Ministerie. Van September 1864 tot September 1865 (Deventer: Ter Gunne, 1870), 311.
Olf Praamstra, Cd. Busken Huet. Een biografie (Amsterdam: SUN, 2007).
Roel Kuiper, ‘Tot een voorbeeld zult gij blijven. Mr. G. Groen van Prinsterer (1801–1876) (Amsterdam: Buijten & Schipperheijn, 2001).
The issue has been extensively covered in: Remieg Aerts, De letterheren. Liberale cultuur in de negentiende eeuw: het tijdschrift De Gids (Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1997), 295–302.
“Jubeljaar 1825,” De Weegschaal 8, no. 1 (1825): 6; Bart Verheijen, Nederland onder Napoleon. Partijstrijd en natievorming (1801–1813) (Nijmegen: Vantilt: 2017), 101–04; Wyger Velema, “Lodewijk Napoleon en het einde van de republikeinse politiek,” De Negentiende Eeuw 30 (2006): 147–58. About republican zeal and the Patriot and Batavian revolutions: Het Bataafs experiment. Politiek en cultuur rond 1800, ed. by Frans Grijzenhout, Niek van Sas, and Wyger Velema (Nijmegen: Vantilt, 2013); Mart Rutjes, Door gelijkheid gegrepen. Democratie, burgerschap en staat in Nederland 1795–1801 (Nijmegen: Vantilt, 2012); Stefan Klein, Patriots republicanisme. Politieke cultuur in Nederland (1766–1787) (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1995); Simon Schama, Patriots and Liberators. Revolution in the Netherlands 1780–1813 (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1977); A. Jourdan, La Révolution batave. Entre la France et l’Amérique (1795–1806) (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2008)
Gerrit Schimmelpenninck, “Notanda,” in: H.T. Colenbrander, “Bijdragen tot de kennis van het jaar 1848,” Onze Eeuw 4, vol. I (1904): 173–210.
Cf.. Matthijs Lok, “The Bicentennial of 1813–1815 and National History Writing: Remarks on a New Consensus,” BMGN-LCHR 130 (2015): 111–20.
J.S. Theissen, Uit de voorgeschiedenis van het liberalisme in Nederland (Groningen: J.B. Wolters, 1930); W. Verkade, Thorbecke als Oost-Nederlands patriot (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 1974); C.H.E. de Wit, De strijd tussen aristocratie en democratie in Nederland 1780–1848. Kritisch onderzoek van een historisch beeld en herwaardering van een periode (Heerlen: Winants, 1965); Siep Stuurman, Wacht op onze dagen. Het liberalisme en de vernieuwing van de Nederlandse staat (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 1992), chapter 3.
N.C.F. van Sas, De metamorfose van Nederland. Van oude orde naar moderniteit, 1750–1900 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2004); Niek van Sas, “De Republiek voorbij. Over de transitie van republicanisme naar liberalisme,” in Bataafse experiment, ed. by Grijzenhout, Van Sas, and Velema, 65–102.
NWO Free Competition research project The Persistence of Civic Identities in the Netherlands, 1747–1848 (2015–2020). See Judith Pollmann and Henk te Velde, “Introduction. New State, New Citizens? Political Change and Civic Continuities in the Low Countries 1780–1830,” BMGN-LCHR 133, no. 3 (2018): 4–23, as well as the other articles in this special issue.
Pamela Pilbeam, Republicanism in Nineteenth-Century France 1814–1871 (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 1995); Philip Nord, The Republican Moment: Struggles for Democracy in Nineteenth-Century France (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 1995); Jürgen Heideking, James A. Henretta and Peter Becker (eds.), Republicanism and Liberalism in America and the German states, 1750–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Bruno Leipold, Karma Nabulsi, and Stuart White (eds.), Radical Republicanism: Recovering the Tradition’s Popular Heritage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020); Els Witte, Belgische republikeinen. Radicalen tussen twee revoluties (1830–1850) (Kalmthout: Polis, 2020).
Bernard Manin, The Principles of Representative Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
Van Sas, “De Republiek voorbij,” 94–95; Verheijen, Nederland, 102–03.
Velema, “Lodewijk Napoleon,” 147–58.
Matthijs Lok, Windvanen. Napoleontische bestuurders in de Nederlandse en Franse Restauratie (1813–1820) (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2009); Jeroen van Zanten, Schielijk, Winzucht, Zwaarhoofd en Bedaard. Politieke discussie en oppositievorming 1813–1840 (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek, 2004); Joke Roelevink, “Opklauteren naar het Binnenhof of rondbuitelen in de provincie: loopbanen van bestuurders 1750–1850,” in De leeuw met de zeven pijlen: het gewest in het landelijk bestuur, ed. by Ida Nijenhuis, Joke Roelevink, and Ronald Sluijter (The Hague: Instituut voor Nederlandse Geschiedenis, 2010), 123–45.
Van Sas, Metamorfose, chapter 3; Lotte Jensen, Verzet tegen Napoleon (Nijmegen: Vantilt, 2013).
Based on bibliographical search and word search in the Delpher online repository of books, newspapers and magazines in Dutch (https://www.delpher.nl).
“Losse gedachten,” Leeuwarder Courant, June 28, 1831; Algemeen Handelsblad, June 7, 1838; Utrechtsche Courant, July 9, 1838; “De Boer en de Landheer,” Arnhemsche Courant, June 14, 1832; De Nederlander, September 26, 1850.
Henk te Velde, “De domesticatie van democratie in Nederland. Democratie als strijdbegrip van de negentiende eeuw tot 1945,” BMGN-LCHR 127, no. 2 (2012): 3–27, particularly 7–9; Henk te Velde, “Democracy and the Strange Death of Mixed Government in the Nineteenth Century: Great Britain, France and the Netherlands” in Democracy in Modern Europe. A Conceptual History, ed. by J. Kurunmäki, J. Nevers, and H. te Velde (Oxford: Berghahn, 2018), 42–64.
[J.B.D. Wibner], Pleitrede van de schrijver der Utopiaansche Courant (Amsterdam: A. Vink, 1819): 32; Van Zanten, Schielijk, 123–27.
According to the moderately liberal member of parliament J.G. van Nes in Handelingen Tweede Kamer 1832–1833, 581 (Bijlagen), quoted in Te Velde, “Domesticatie van democratie,” 9.
P.G. Witsen Geysbeek, Algemeen Noodwendig Woordenboek der Zamenleving (Amsterdam: Diederichs, 1836), 428–29.
Matthijs Lok, ““Herwonnen vrijheid”. 1813 als Nederlandse oorsprongsmythe,” Jaarboek Parlementaire Geschiedenis (2013): 19; Ronald van der Wal, Of geweld zal worden gebruikt! Militaire bijstand bij de handhaving en het herstel van de openbare orde 1840–1920 (Hilversum: Verloren, 2003).
Cf. Witte, Belgische republikeinen, 87.
Ido de Haan, Het beginsel van leven en wasdom. De constitutie van de Nederlandse politiek in de negentiende eeuw (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek, 2003), 101.
Remieg Aerts, Geschiedenis van Amsterdam, vol. III, Hoofdstad in aanbouw 1813–1900, ed. by Remieg Aerts and Piet de Rooy (Amsterdam: SUN, 2006), 50.
Lauren Lauret, Regentenwerk. Vergaderen in de Staten-Generaal en de Tweede Kamer, 1750–1850 (Amsterdam: Prometheus, 2020).
Velema, “Lodewijk Napoleon,” 147–58.
Verheijen, Nederland, 30. Autobiographical reviews of the revolutionary period in: Arianne Baggerman, “De dynamiek van de herinnering. Autobiografische terugblikken op een tijdperk van revolutie,” in Bataafse experiment, ed. by Grijzenhout, Van Sas, and Velema, 275–302.
Verheijen, Nederland, 100, 193, 263.
Verheijen, Nederland, 263. On the reception of the king, see also: Jane Judge and Joris Oddens, “Father Figures and Faction Leaders: Identification Strategies and Monarchical Imagery among Ordinary Citizens of the Northern and Southern Low Countries (c.1780–1820),” BMGN-LCHR 133, no. 3 (2018): 72–97.
Martin Kirsch, Monarch und Parlament im 19. Jahrhundert: der monarchische Konstitutionalismus als europäischer Verfassungstyp. Frankreich im Vergleich (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999).
Benjamin Constant, Principes de politique, applicables à tous les gouvernements représentatifs et particulièrement à la constitution actuelle de la France (Paris: A. Eymery, 1815).
Pauline J.E. Bieringa, “Vrijheid in het Nederlandse politieke vocabulaire, 1814–1840” in Vrijheid. Een geschiedenis van de vijftiende tot de twintigste eeuw, ed. by E.O.G. Haitsma Mulier and W.R.E. Velema (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1999), 305–24, in particular 321–22.
C.A. Tamse, “Plaats en functie van de Nederlandse monarchie in de negentiende eeuw” in De monarchie in Nederland, ed. by C.A. Tamse (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1980), 89–132; Joris van Eijnatten, “Oranje en Nederland zijn één. Orangisme in de negentiende eeuw,” De Negentiende Eeuw 23, no. 1 (1999): 4–22; Jeroen Koch, Koning Willem I 1772–1843 (Amsterdam: Boom, 2013).
W.R.E. Velema, “Revolutie, Republiek en Constitutie. De ideologische context van de eerste Nederlandse Grondwet,” in De eeuw van de grondwet. Grondwet en politiek in Nederland, 1798–1917 ed. by N.C.F. van Sas and H. te Velde (Deventer: Kluwer, 1998), 20–44; Wyger Velema, “Republikeinse democratie. De politieke wereld van de Bataafse Revolutie, 1795–1798” in Bataafse experiment, ed. by Grijzenhout, van Sas, and Velema, 27–63, in particular 45–57; Rutjes, Door gelijkheid gegrepen, chapter 1.
Manin, Principles, chapter 5.
“De staatsburger is verplicht zijn gevoelen te zeggen over publieke zaken,” De Weegschaal 2 (1819): 181–91. About the editors and readership of this magazine, see Van Zanten, Schielijk, chapter 5.
“Oud en Nieuw Nederland,” De Weegschaal 6, no. 12 (1823): 421–31; “Publieke opinie,” De Weegschaal 5 (1822): 235–42.
“Populariteit,” De Weegschaal 5 (1822): 243–48.
J.A. Bakker, Beschouwing van de staatkundige instellingen der Oudheid in derzelver toepassing op die der hedendaagsche Maatschappijen (Rotterdam: Arbon & Krap, 1825).
Annelien de Dijn, French Political Thought from Montesquieu to Tocqueville: Liberty in a Levelled Society? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
S.J. Fockema Andreae, “Montesquieu in Nederland,” De Gids 112, no. 4 (1949): 172–83; “Koophandel,” De Weegschaal 5 (1822): 225–34; J. Heemkerk Azn., De Montesquivio (Amsterdam: Van Heteren, 1839).
Witte, Belgische Republikeinen, chapter 1; E. Lemmens, “‘Une terre hospitalière et libre?’ Franse migranten tussen restauratie en revolutie in het Brussel van Willem I (1815–1830),” De Negentiende Eeuw 36, no. 4 (2012): 263–84.
A critical analysis of the differences between liberalism in the Northern and the Southern provinces in Stefaan Marteel, The Intellectual Origins of the Belgian revolution: Political Thought and Disunity in the Kingdom of the Netherlands, 1815–1830 (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).
Van Sas, Metamorfose, chapter 25; Van Zanten, Schielijk, 217–34.
M.J.F. Robijns, Radicalen in Nederland 1840–1851 (Leiden: Universitaire Pers Leiden, 1967) chapter 2, 3, quotations 107.
Ibid., 136.
Ibid., 112–13.
For instance in “Liberaliteit en Liberalismus,” De Weegschaal 6 (1823): 261–76; Henk te Velde, “‘Liberalism’ and ‘Liberality’: The Liberal Tradition in the Netherlands” in In Search of European Liberalisms: Concepts, Languages, Ideologies, ed. by M. Freeden, J. Fernández-Sebastián, and J. Leonhard (New York: Berghahn), 213–32.
Anonymus acrostic on the name of Thorbecke, in the family archive Huyssen van Kattendijke. With thanks to K. Huyssen van Kattendijke, April 29, 2019.
Bieringa, “Vrijheid,” 314–15; cf. the discussion in 1848, in Diederik Slijkerman, Het geheim van de ministeriële verantwoordelijkheid. De verhouding tussen koning, kabinet, Kamer en kiezer 1848–1905 (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2011), 62–72.
Cf. Witte, Belgische Republikeinen, 87.
Stuurman, Wacht op onze daden, chapter 3; Mathijs van de Waardt, De man van 1848. Dirk Donker Curtius (Nijmegen: Vantilt, 2019).
Aerts, Letterheren, 118–25, 261–65.
About Thorbecke’s political philosophy, see Aerts, Thorbecke wil het. Biografie van een staatsman (Amsterdam: Prometheus, 2018); Jan Drentje, Thorbecke. Een filosoof in de politiek (Amsterdam: Boom, 2004).
A somewhat different view in Te Velde, “Democracy,” 47.
See the articles in the special issue “New State, New Citizens?”, BMGN-LCHR 133, no. 3 (2018), especially the introduction: Pollmann and Te Velde, “New State, New Citizens?,” 21–23; and Carolien Boender, “Old Citizenry’ in a New State: Civic Militias and Political Crises in Haarlem and Groningen in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century,” BMGN-LCHR 133, no. 3 (2018): 24–47. A different view in Maarten Prak, Stadsburgers (Amsterdam: Prometheus, 2019) and Maarten Prak, Citizens without Nations: Urban Citizenship in Europe and the World, ca. 1000–1789 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018).
J.R. Thorbecke, “Anton Reinhard Falck” (1861) in J.R. Thorbecke, Historische schetsen (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1861), 171–91.
Verheijen, Nederland, chapter 9; Anne Petterson, Eigenwijs Vaderland. Populair nationalisme in negentiende-eeuws Amsterdam (Amsterdam: Prometheus, 2017); Dennis Bos, Waarachtige volksvrienden. De vroege socialistische beweging in Amsterdam 1848–1894 (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2001).
Henk te Velde, “‘Geheimzinnig schijnende diepte’. De volkskoning en de omstreden band tussen volk en koning in de negentiende eeuw,” Groniek 150 (2000): 7–24.
Petterson, Eigenwijs vaderland; Frans Groot, “Vlaggen in top en stenen door de ruiten. De natie in de steigers, 1850–1940,” in De Verzuiling voorbij. Godsdienst, stand en natie in de lange negentiende eeuw, ed. by J.C.H. Blom and J. Talsma (Amsterdam: Spinhuis, 2000), 17–200.