Absolutist Regimes Research Articles

SONDERFALL SCHWEIZ: WILLENSNATION (NATION BY WILL) OR MULTICULTURAL POLITY

The article is devoted to the study of the origins of Swiss statehood, regarded through the prism of the political and cultural nation concepts. It traces the main stages of the Old Confederation, features of the formation of unique public institutions, such as direct democracy, communalism, eternal neutrality. Special attention is paid to the linguistic factor in the political life of the country and its conflict potential. The author concludes that the cumulative effect of consociational democracy and cross-cutting cleavages, together with institutionalized quadrilingualism, reduces the probability of ethno-political conflicts. Advocating the concept of «nation by will» (Willensnation) as the main source of Swiss statehood, the author appeals to such factors as the peculiarities of the historical development of the country and its geographical position in the environment of European absolutist regimes, direct democracy, «cantonization», religious landscape, high level of literacy of the population, contributed to social communication, economic modernization, system of «linguistic harmony» (Sprachfrieden). In conclusion, it is argued that in the late 19th century on the basis of civil identity, the cultural national consciousness was gradually formed under the influence of the state patriotic discourse, which united a complex of myths, symbols and narratives with the institutions of the Confederation.

The Effects of Russia’s Great Power Eminence and Sovereign State Perception on the Balkans

At the end of the 20th century, all states over the world faced crucial changes and transformations in the perspective of the perception of sovereign state position and great power eminence. The position of sovereignty for a state means the struggle for its citizens’ rights, economic welfares and its fair governance. But, in spite of these changes and transformations, Russian leaders and policymakers have tried to maintain Russia’s position as a sovereign state and great power in the international system in the mind of the 19th century’s absolutist approach. Concurrently, these attitudes and behaviours of the leaders and policymakers have comprised a basis for Russia-the West conflict including China as a third party today. Russia puts forward absolutist regimes as its preference in the perception of its 21st century’s sovereign state and great power with its foreign policy applications and discourses. In this context, the aim of the article is to analyse Russia’s foreign and security policies in the Balkans by underlining its assertive great power and absolutist regime approaches.

At the Margins of Time and Place

At the Margins of Time and Place

Transformation of representations on the normative content of morality in moral philosophy of the Early Modern Age

The object of this research is the philosophical representations on the normative content of morality in their historical dynamics. Unlike its formal and functional characteristics that include objectivity, universality, priority with regards to other regulators of human behavior, the content of morality implies the general requirements and criteria for approval that form the image of a morally perfect individual and set the parameters of morally appropriate behavior. Although on the level of utmost generalizations, Western European idea of morality retains the normative content typical to the Judeo-Christian tradition; its instantiation constantly varies. The goal of this work consists in tracing the changes of such instantiation occurred in Western moral philosophy of the XVI – XVIII centuries (Early Modern Age). The indicated historical process is the subject of analysis. Research methodology suggests determination of the long-term trends in the history of normative ethics and their correlation with the socio-historical context. The analysis of sources on the topic demonstrates that understanding of ethical requirements and criteria for approval in understanding of moral philosophers of the Early Modern Age have experienced the following fundamental changes: 1)  displacement to periphery of the morality of responsibilities of moral figure before himself, 2) transition towards understanding of the good of other person through the prism of his wellbeing and opportunities for unhindered personal fulfillment, 3) emergence of correlation between responsibilities to other person and regards of his individual rights. In relation to the latter change, the three factors had crucial significance:  advancement of the idea of religious tolerance beyond the religious wars, countering the paternalistic custody by absolutist regimes, as well as the development of universal empathy based on the new forms of description of inner experience of a human. Although some conclusions acquired in evolution of the ideas of recent decades contradict to the explanation of the process of implementation of the individual rights into the moral legal discourse, which relies on the aforementioned three factors, it remains most promising according to the author.

Race and Nation in the Age of Emancipations ed. by Whitney Nell Stewart and John Garrision Marks

Reviewed by: Race and Nation in the Age of Emancipations ed. by Whitney Nell Stewart and John Garrision Marks Brian Kelly Race and Nation in the Age of Emancipations Edited by Whitney Nell Stewart and John Garrision Marks. Foreword by Julie Saville. Series on Race in the Atlantic World, 1700–1900. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2018. This wide-ranging collection of essays, based on a symposium held at Rice University in 2012, explores common threads in the idiosyncratic configurations of race and nation across the Atlantic world over the long nineteenth century, reflecting both the centrality of emancipation to the remaking of these societies and the persistence of racial hierarchy and "variant forms of exclusionary citizenship" after abolition. Building upon a generation of local studies and rich comparative scholarship, the editors highlight the central role played by people of African descent in the fundamental reimagining of national communities during and after slavery's demise. Although "black freedom varied immensely" across the diverse societies of the Atlantic world, their involvement at the heart of this process imbued freed slaves and their descendants with a "shared vision of freedom" that transcended national boundaries, placing them at the center of what Paul Gilroy has called a "counter-culture of modernity." Race and Nation in the Age of Emancipations is constructed around four main themes: law, mobility, labor and the public sphere. In a concise foreword that situates the volume in an expansive literature, Julie Saville explores the paradoxical relationship between abolition and citizenship at the irregular boundary between emancipation and nation-making: "State-sponsored abolition produced more noncitizens than citizens," she reminds us. Denied their rights within new polities, free people of color and former slaves embraced a "multiethnic, pluralist" vision of nationhood that "remains unrealized more than two centuries later" (xi–xii). The eleven essays comprising the volume range expansively over time and place, from revolutionary and antebellum era North America to post-independence Haiti, the British Caribbean under apprenticeship, mid-nineteenth-century Mexico and post-abolition Brazil. The transregional, Atlantic world vision pursued in the introduction justifies the inclusion of two compelling essays on Liberia—one on its attraction as a laboratory for entrepreneurial nation-making among upwardly mobile African Americans, a second on the demarcation between "civilized" colonists from the US and Barbados on one hand and recaptives and Indigenes on the other. The opening section, on mobility, reflects the formative role of "networks and movement" in shaping Black politics before and after emancipation. Matthew Spooner reflects on spaces opened up by revolutionary upheaval in Britain's North American colonies for "individual and collective routes of escape" from slavery. Challenging an ostensibly cheery historiography that understates the hardship inscribed in Black experience during the revolutionary era, Spooner acknowledges the "chaos" that "allowed enslaved men and women an unprecedented degree of movement" (14) but insists that this was temporary. As conditions settled, White elites reasserted control, introducing "new restrictions on black mobility" and reenslaving substantial numbers who had tasted freedom briefly. The argument is persuasive, though perhaps not so out of line with recent historiography. Over the period that followed, a growing free Black community weighed its options in a society regarding them as a "troublesome" presence. Andrew Wegmann argues that an upwardly mobile Black middle class dispersed across the urban US (and particularly in creole New Orleans) came to regard Liberian emigration as its most promising course. They sought a "nation" of their own, where they might escape indignity, realize their entrepreneurial ambitions and, paradoxically, "remake themselves in the image of America's [sic] political elite" (42). Wegmann sees in Black elite "volition" a corrective against the traditional view of colonization as a pet project for White separatists, but passes over the relative exceptionalism of his cohort. Further north in Canada, Black refugees from the post-revolutionary United States forged exile communities that understood their own condition as akin to the forced movement of peoples fleeing absolutist regimes that had weathered revolutionary challenges in mid-nineteenth-century Europe. Canada's Black abolitionists were alert to the contrast between White valorization of "noble" freedom seekers like Kossuth and their own denigration, Ikuko Asaka observes: they presented themselves not as a...

The Paradox of Power: Principal-agent problems and administrative capacity in Imperial China (and other absolutist regimes)

Tax extraction is often low in absolutist regimes. Why are absolutists unable to convert power into revenue? Supported by evidence from Imperial China, we explain this puzzle with a principal-agent model which reveals that absolutists, unconstrained by rule of law and unable to commit to not predating on their tax-collecting agents (and the masses), may find it optimal to settle for a low wage-low tax equilibrium, while permitting agents to keep extra, unmonitored taxes. Our analysis suggests that low investment in administrative capacity is a conscious choice for an absolutist since it substitutes for credible commitment to refrain from confiscation from its agents.

The Paradox of Power: Understanding Fiscal Capacity in Imperial China and Absolutist Regimes

Tax extraction is often low in absolutist regimes. Why are absolutists unable to convert power into revenue? Supported by evidence from Imperial China, we explain this puzzle with a principal-agent model which reveals that absolutists, unconstrained by rule of law and unable to commit to not predating on their tax-collecting agents (and the masses), may find it optimal to settle for a low wage-low tax equilibrium, while permitting agents to keep extra, unmonitored taxes. Our analysis suggests that low investment in administrative capacity is a conscious choice for an absolutist since it substitutes for credible commitment to refrain from confiscation.

Betül Başaran, Selim III, Social Control and Policing in Istanbul at the End of the Eighteenth Century. Between Crisis and Order

The year that Selim III ascended the throne in 1789, assuming the title of sultan from his uncle Abdülhamid I, was the year that the revolutionary movement in France had begun. What followed the revolutionary turmoil in France spread throughout Europe, intrinsically changing the structure and absolutist regimes of European states. It is this particular period in time that Başaran chooses to begin her account—namely the first three years of Selim III’s reign—to better elucidate the Ottoman Empire’s reaction to the radical changes surrounding it. In modern historiography Selim III was primarily recognized as the ”reform-minded” sultan who pioneered the modernization of the Ottoman military and administrative by turning to contemporary Western models. This modernizing attempt was only to be hindered by the successive wars with Austria and Russia, and internal discord, eventually resulting in Selim’s deposition and subsequently costing him his life.

George II: King and Elector by Andrew C. Thompson

Reviewed by: George II: King and Elector by Andrew C. Thompson Michael Schaich Andrew C. Thompson . George II: King and Elector. New Haven and London : Yale , 2011 . Pp. xii + 315 . $40 . Writing a biography of George II (1727–1760) is not easy or, for that matter, particularly attractive. He has gone down in history as one of the duller figures on the British throne—personally boorish and petty, not known for the splendor of his court, and politically insignificant. More than either his predecessor or his successor, he has been victimized by clichés about eighteenth-century Britain and an unbalanced record of sources. The enduring image of the king was shaped by the acerbic memoirs of one of his courtiers, the vice-chamberlain Hervey (although covering only the first years of his reign, they indelibly marked George II’s reputation). Hervey portrayed the Hanoverian as loquacious, overbearing, moody, in constant need of the guiding hand of a cunning minister, Robert Walpole, and an intellectually superior wife, Caroline of Ansbach-Bayreuth. This depiction emphasized the rise of parliament and cabinet government, and decline of the court and monarch’s role. It did not help that George II conducted business mainly in face-to-face conversations with his ministers and left very few traces of his personal views and opinions to posterity. Recently the historiographical tide has shifted. A revival in court studies over the last decade has rescued the image policy of the early Hanoverians from oblivion. Biographical essays on George II by Mjindert Bertram (2003) and Jeremy Black (2007) are superseded, however, by Mr. Thompson’s judicious and extensively researched account based on sources in British as well as German archives. It is now difficult to see how a more rounded treatment can be achieved. Although it contains chapters on the dynastic background and George II’s early years, the relationship to his parents, wife, and mistresses and life at his two courts in London and Hanover, Mr. Thompson has written a political biography, for the most part, a book about the king’s dealings with factions and parties at court and in parliament, with ministers, diplomats, and foreign powers. He has done so with good reason: it is in the political realm that his study can best overturn received wisdoms. One of its main findings is the persisting power of the monarch in government. It is only in Mr. Thompson’s detailed analysis that the full extent of the involvement of the king in decisions about—primarily—foreign policy issues becomes apparent. For all the talk about the ascent of independent-minded ministers such as Walpole and Newcastle, no major political step was taken without the king’s approval. Most governments during George II’s long reign tried to be as accommodating to his wishes as possible. This does not mean that he always got his way. Ministers put pressure on him, tried to talk him round, and at least in one case gave him an ultimatum. This was not altogether different from other European monarchies. Even in absolutist regimes formulating policy was the result of negotiations and discussions between the king and his ministers. George II also had the good fortune of being British king and Hanoverian elector. This dual role gave him considerable maneuvering room. Whenever he went on one of his regular trips to his German dominions accompanied by only one secretary of state, fears in London about unexpected policy changes mounted, and not without justification. During the War of the Austrian Succession, for example, George II signed a neutrality agreement for the electorate with France that clearly affected Britain, but came as a shock to [End Page 164] Whitehall. The stays in the electorate, however, did not have merely disruptive effects. In an intriguing line of argument Mr. Thompson links the development of the cabinet to the repeated absences of the king from London. Concern about the loss of control over foreign policy fostered a sense of identity among the ministers left behind and enhanced the pressure to formulate policies as a collective body. In addition, the king’s travels gave British secretaries of state the chance to familiarize themselves with developments in Central...

The origins of Turkish Republican citizenship: the birth of race*

. This article explores the emergence of the dominance of racialised Turkish citizenship. Contrary to the conventional methods that investigate the early republican era, this paper starts by examining the final years of the Ottoman Empire with a special emphasis on the Balkan Wars as the birth of racialised technologies of citizenship. Then, I analyse the encounters between racialised thought in the Ottoman Empire in the twentieth century and its recurring counterpart in these encounters: ‘European modernity’. Next, I dwell on an illustration of a materialisation of racialised citizenship in the Ottoman Empire: the displacement and elimination of Armenian citizens. Finally, by probing the dominant strand of modern citizenship and nationhood in Europe, I articulate the commonalities of racialised citizenship in Europe and the Ottoman Empire in the early twentieth century. I conclude by arguing that race as a particular identity should not be seen as an institutionalised aspect of citizenship only in ostensibly ‘Oriental and absolutist regimes’. Instead, the focus should be on moments at which ‘European modernity’ and various nationalisms (racial, ethnic, cultural) mutually constitute each other.

Mountain Forest Policy in Austria: A Historical Policy Analysis on Regulating a Natural Resource

Abstract Employing a policy analysis framework, this paper inquires into the role institutions played in regulating mountain forests in different political-institutional eras in Austria. Theories from political sciences and environmental history are used for a critical re-analysis of forest historical literature. The analysis finds that the Austrian forest policy is better explained by the historical importance of fuel wood and timber production (pre-industrial time and early industrialisation) than by the goal of securing the multiple values of mountain forests for the public. Since the mid-nineteenth century the forest administration has been aware of those values, but the formulation and implementation of forest regulations rather serves the interests of powerful groups. This is the case for the sustained yield doctrine which promotes economic development, and likewise for the regulation of protective forests in the interest of railways. The installation of a strong forest authority in the mountainous provinces was justified by the protective effects of mountain forests (in politics as well as in the scientific literature). However, it seems that the small forest owners were simply unable to organise effectively against supervision. Forest uses have been governed by local commons, by absolutist regimes and by the market economy, together with State regulations. The changes in forest regulation over time show that institutional settings shape the perception of problems and the conception of solutions. However, institutional transitions do not take place overnight: different institutional concepts may coexist at the same time and institutions may adapt to problem situations.

The Royal Society and the emergence of science as an instrument of state policy.

The Royal Society took as one of its patron saints Francis Bacon, who envisaged the great calling of science as acting as a means of effecting ‘the relief of man's estate’ through a partnership between philosophers and politicians. The object of this paper is to examine the extent to which this goal was realized from the time of the Society's foundation until the end of the eighteenth century. By doing so it attempts to analyse not only the character of the unreformed Royal Society but also that of the unreformed British state, for the argument of this article is that relations between the Royal Society and the government were not fundamentally different from relations between other academies and their governments.What was different was rather the character of the British state with its oligarchically based patterns of patronage and influence, which contrasted with the clearer lines of government intervention evident in the more centralized and absolutist regimes which predominated on the Continent. From such a perspective the activities of the eighteenth- century Royal Society take on greater significance. The apparent character of a gentlemen's club is transmuted when one considers that in the social and political context of the eighteenth century such an institutional milieu helped to link the Royal Society to the workings of government. True, as the paper demonstrates, in the first half of the century such linkages were more potential than real, but in the second half of the century they began to be realized, setting the stage for a fruitful partnership between British science and government which was to develop in the nineteenth and for much of the twentieth centuries as the Royal Society acted as the principal agent of government advice – a belated realization of the Baconian ideal.

Cameralist thought and public administration

Cameralism, as a set if ideas, refers to a system of “sciences” whose professors, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, recorded and attempted to extend and improve administrative practices to serve the absolutist monarchs of Germany and Austria. This article examines some of the major themes of cameralist political and social thought. Particular attention is paid here to cameralist writings about the nature of the state, the value of science, and the power of the executive. It is concluded here that the cameralists sounded themes that continue to resonate in much of modern American public administration, but that these themes may not be as relevant to a constitutional republic as they were to the absolutist regimes of Germany and Austria.

Notables, Bourgeoisie, Popular Classes, and Politics

In recent years Italian social historians have devoted increasing attention to the nature and morphology of the nineteenth-century bourgeoisie. Traditional historiography viewed the bourgeoisie as key par excellence to the political change played out between 1859 and 1871. It was seen, on the one hand, as integral to the formation of a liberal political regime based on a limited suffrage, and, on the other, as critical to the outcome of the peninsula's national unification of a dozen small states, most of which were previously governed by absolutist regimes.

News and politics in the age of revolution: Jean Luzac's Gazette de Leyde

At the center of this book stands the story of a great but forgotten newspaper: the Gazette de Leyde, edited by Jean Luzac from 1772 to 1798. A French-language biweekly newspaper published in the Dutch city of Leiden from 1677 to 1811, the Gazette de Leyde was regarded as the international newspaper of record, occupying the cultural niche filled today by the New York Times and Le Monde.Jeremy D. Popkin reconstructs the Gazette's history, providing a comprehensive picture of the environment that produced it, how it gathered and printed its reports, its relationship with its readers, and the way it depicted the great events of three critical decades. In rich detail he shows that absolutist regimes often cooperated with the Gazette's editors, providing information and condoning its publication in open violation of their own censorship regimes.He also examines the Dutch context which fostered both the freedom that made the paper's publication possible and the technology and business skills that allowed for its rapid publication and successful marketing. In addition, he draws on a wide reading of the press of the period to compare the Gazette with other major newspapers. He concludes with a treatment of the paper's fortunes during the era of the French Revolution.

Institutional and Political Impediments to Spain's Settlement of the American Rebellions

Spain's imperial government, in facing the political and military threat posed by the Wars of Independence in America, could be no stronger than the sum of its parts. Among the important questions not previously detailed concerning Spanish American independence, a significant one is why metropolitan Spain itself responded so weakly and indecisively to the danger. There were, of course, severe constraints on resources as well as limitations in terms of the leadership. These two elements, however, while they were certainly real, need not have been automatically decisive. After all, despite incredible hardship and difficulty, the Spanish Comisión de Reemplazos—the Cádiz-based supply committee made up of merchants—alone and by its own tally between 1811 and 1820 dispatched thirty expeditions of peninsular troops to America involving more than 47,000 men and a cost of 350 million reales. The Morillo expedition in 1815involved 12,254 men. The so-called “Great Expedition” that gathered at Cádiz for use in Buenos Aires consisted of 14,000 men before it revolted in January 1820. In July 1820 the minister of War told the Cortes that Spain had sent a total of 27,342 troops to America since the king's restoration in 1814. Thus there was a military response from the metropolis, to say nothing, of course, of the more critical military mobilization of the American viceregal governments. One could also argue that, despite the undoubted failings of individual Spanish leaders under both the Cortes and the absolutist regimes, the political chaos at least brought a number of differing political persuasions to power. After all, Spain experienced in these years six major transformations of its political system. The leadership ran the gamut of political ideology, from extreme conservatives to extreme liberals. Pintos Vieites, in an attempt to revise Ferdinand VII favorably, even argues that the king in the first restoration purposely appointed moderates in order to hear their advice. While the parliamentarians of 1812 and 1820 tended to be young and relatively inexperienced, most of the ministers had served in the previous reign or had substantial experience.

Institutional and Political Impediments to Spain's Settlement of the American Rebellions

Spain's imperial government, in facing the political and military threat posed by the Wars of Independence in America, could be no stronger than the sum of its parts. Among the important questions not previously detailed concerning Spanish American independence, a significant one is why metropolitan Spain itself responded so weakly and indecisively to the danger. There were, of course, severe constraints on resources as well as limitations in terms of the leadership. These two elements, however, while they were certainly real, need not have been automatically decisive. After all, despite incredible hardship and difficulty, the Spanish Comisión de Reemplazos—the Cádiz-based supply committee made up of merchants—alone and by its own tally between 1811 and 1820 dispatched thirty expeditions of peninsular troops to America involving more than 47,000 men and a cost of 350 million reales. The Morillo expedition in 1815involved 12,254 men. The so-called “Great Expedition” that gathered at Cádiz for use in Buenos Aires consisted of 14,000 men before it revolted in January 1820. In July 1820 the minister of War told the Cortes that Spain had sent a total of 27,342 troops to America since the king's restoration in 1814. Thus there was a military response from the metropolis, to say nothing, of course, of the more critical military mobilization of the American viceregal governments. One could also argue that, despite the undoubted failings of individual Spanish leaders under both the Cortes and the absolutist regimes, the political chaos at least brought a number of differing political persuasions to power. After all, Spain experienced in these years six major transformations of its political system. The leadership ran the gamut of political ideology, from extreme conservatives to extreme liberals. Pintos Vieites, in an attempt to revise Ferdinand VII favorably, even argues that the king in the first restoration purposely appointed moderates in order to hear their advice. While the parliamentarians of 1812 and 1820 tended to be young and relatively inexperienced, most of the ministers had served in the previous reign or had substantial experience.