Sperber on Rowe, 'From Reich to State: the Rhineland in the Revolutionary Age, 1780-1830'

H-German Sperber on Rowe, 'From Reich to State: The Rhineland in the Revolutionary Age, 1780-1830'

Review published on Thursday, January 1, 2004

Michael Rowe. From Reich to State: The Rhineland in the Revolutionary Age, 1780-1830. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. xi + 331 pp. $65.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-521-82443-9.

Reviewed by Jonathan Sperber (Department of History, University of Missouri)Published on H- German (January, 2004)

Not Quite so Revolutionary, after All?

The Rhineland was one of the regions of central Europe, and in fact of the entire continent, most strongly affected by the upheavals of the French revolutionary and Napoleonic era. The effects of the revolutionary period lasted deep into the nineteenth century, and, for just as long in the twentieth, a debate has raged concerning the nature and popularity of revolutionary and Napoleonic rule in the region. For most of this debate, scholarly investigation and political controversy have been closely intertwined. In the shadow of the First World War, sides were chosen in nationalist fashion. German historians denounced the French occupation of an integral part of the Fatherland, and insisted that the Rhinelanders, as good German patriots, had remained discontent and hostile subjects, yearning for liberation. Their French counterparts emphasized the progressive aspects of French rule, portraying the Rhinelanders as appreciative of them and content with the revolutionary and Napoleonic governments.

The Cold War and the division of Germany produced another version of this difference of opinion. Historians of the GDR wrote studies of the revolutionary activists in the Rhineland, the "German Jacobins," whose emancipatory efforts to end the oppression and tyranny of the central European old regime required the fraternal assistance of French revolutionary soldiers. Western scholars, at least those not situated politically on the left, took a quite different position. Exploring the decentralized and federal world of the German old regime, particularly as it existed in the Rhineland (far from the bureaucratically organized German great powers), and seeing in it a precursor to the Federal Republic or the European Union, they emphasized the space for reform existing before 1789. By contrast, the two decades of revolutionary and Napoleonic rule appeared as a disaster. Invading armies ruthlessly stripped the region of its subsistence, indigenous and imported revolutionary activists gratuitously offended the native population by their arbitrary policies--particularly their anti- clerical ones--while long-suffering inhabitants, finding many forms of everyday non-cooperation, affirmed their attachment to Germany and refused to accept the legitimacy of foreign rule. The most avid proponent of this position among English-speaking historians has been T. C. W. Blanning of Cambridge, whose many works, especially the 1983 book,The French Revolution in Germany: Occupation and Resistance in the Rhineland 1792-1802, have offered impressive and well- documented arguments in support of it.

Post-1989 political developments have been favorable to this argument, but have perhaps also helped to de-link the history of the revolutionary and Napoleonic era with contemporary politics. Recent studies of the Napoleonic era--in the German states, those of Lothar Gall and his students; in a broader European context, those of historians such as Isser Woloch and Michael Broers--have adopted a more detached and scholarly attitude. In this spirit, we can note one substantial empirical problem with the argument advanced by Blanning, namely the retrospective attitude of the Rhinelanders to the era of French rule. From the Congress of Vienna until the revolution of 1848, they demonstrated a considerable Napoleonic nostalgia, showed little enthusiasm for the German states that replaced the emperor's rule, and clung fiercely to the "institutions," introduced under the French government, particularly the Napoleonic Codes of civil, criminal and commercial law. If French rule was so despised, why were the memories of it so favorable?

In the book under review here, Blanning's student, Michael Rowe, investigates this question in a revised version of his Cambridge dissertation. Rowe's answer is that Napoleonic rule was popular in the Rhineland, to some extent at the time it was exercised and certainly in retrospect, precisely because it was not revolutionary. Rather, it was successful because it took up the ideas and attitudes of the old regime. Demonstrating an impressive mastery of the voluminous literature on the topic, making good use of published primary sources and exploring a host of unpublished documents in the archives of Paris, Berlin, Duesseldorf, Cologne and Koblenz, Rowe has written a book containing solid empirical support for an interesting thesis.

Beginning in the footsteps of his mentor, Rowe emphasizes the positive features of the old regime Rhineland. The region's many small states, counting for their defense on the institutions of the Holy Roman Empire, had no military establishment, and hence little state bureaucracy and thus a modest tax burden. Seigneurial relations were increasingly market-oriented and capitalist; economic progress in both agriculture and manufacturing was considerable. Enlightened rulers, especially the three prince-bishops in Cologne, Mainz and Trier, promoted public education and introduced a regime of religious and intellectual tolerance. The judicial system of the Holy Roman Empire enjoyed a growing popularity and effectiveness.

Also following Blanning, although more briefly, Rowe points to the destructive effects of the revolutionary warfare on this situation, the rise of an activist Jacobinism, whose ranks were filled with former old-regime Enlightened reformers, the lack of indigenous support for revolutionary measures, and the widespread desire for a return to the old regime, or perhaps a reformed and improved version of it. It is at this point that the novelty of Rowe's argument begins. He sees post-1800 Napoleonic rule in the Rhineland as just this sort of return to a reformed old regime. The full incorporation of the Rhineland into the French Empire meant a reversion to civilian rule after almost a decade of military despotism. The promulgation of the Napoleonic Code and the creation of a new legal system, largely staffed by German old regime jurists, restored continuity with pre-1789 circumstances. While most historians regard the Napoleonic versions of municipal self-government and the elections to the imperial legislature as a fig leaf for the regime's authoritarianism, Rowe takes these quite seriously. He shows that the Rhineland's notables used these political institutions to oppose initiatives of the emperor and his leading bureaucrats, imported from pre-1789 France, and to demand positions and influence for the indigenous inhabitants, once again taking up old regime ideas.

Rowe investigates the state of public opinion and attitudes toward the Napoleonic regime. He finds a good deal of passive acquiescence, exemplified in the government's ultimately successful attempts to enroll conscripts in the French army. Here as well, he downplays the importance of the emperor's bureaucracy and emphasizes the significance of local cooperation, voluntary or coerced, for the success of the regime. The possibility of purchasing substitutes for their draft-eligible sons pacified the area's notables, while the practice of quartering troops in a recalcitrant village or town, encouraged villagers and municipal governments to pressure the families of draft-dodgers to get their reluctant young men to appear for the draft call.

The author does not find much evidence that the Rhinelanders came to see themselves as Frenchmen. There was relatively little progress in the knowledge of French; German remained the language of everyday life and of much public business, while cultural and intellectual ties with areas to the east of the Rhine River remained strong. However, this attitude, as Rowe insists, is not to be confused with nineteenth-century German nationalism. Political sympathies, instead, followed lines of confession and dynastic allegiance. Catholic areas in the north and center of the Rhineland, formerly ruled by prince-bishops from or with close ties to the house of Habsburg, remained loyal to the old Empire. Even after its demise, the inhabitants demonstrated continued sympathies for the Austrians. Former Prussian enclaves in the far north of the region maintained strong loyalties to the Hohenzollerns. Napoleon, Rowe suggests, played on these religious and dynastic loyalties. The Concordat re-establishing normal relations to the Catholic Church, presented the emperor as a defender of religion. Consciously modeling himself on Charlemagne, Napoleon also tried to conflate his reign with that of the Holy Roman Empire. This stance was more difficult in the former Prussian territories, but it was characteristic of French rule that when General Yorck changed sides in 1813, going from an ally of the French to one of the Russians, Napoleonic propaganda denounced this act as disloyalty to the Prussian monarch. In all these respects, Rowe's portrait of a non- or anti- nationalist Napoleonic regime is very much in line with Michael Broers's recent history of Europe under Napoleonic rule, although he disagrees with Broers who sees the Rhineland as a stronghold of Napoleonic rule.[1]

Rowe's theme of continuity takes the reader into the final part of the book, the years of the Restoration. In this period, the author suggests, the Rhinelanders continued the defense of their local values and elites, stemming from the old regime, now against Prussian or Bavarian rather than Napoleonic governments. The author traces the interplay between reforming bureaucrats in the trans-Rhenan states and the Rhineland's notables, determined to maintain their Napoleonic--or as they were quickly renamed--"Rhenish" judicial and municipal institutions. In the end, reformers' plans to use the Rhenish institutions to help bring about broader reforms in the trans-Rhenan core states faltered, in view of the growth of Restorationist sentiment--noticeably stronger and earlier in onset in Prussia than in Bavaria--but the Rhenish provinces retained their institutions in spite of the increasingly conservative course steered by the governments now ruling them. In an epilogue/conclusion, Rowe argues that the attitudes and institutions developed in the Napoleonic era, would be influential for much of the nineteenth century. He discusses the revolution of 1848 in terms of these, as well as the rise of political Catholicism and the Kulturkampf.

This is an excellent and challenging work, putting forth an interesting thesis supported by good documentation and presented in clear and readable form. I find most of the author's ideas quite convincing. There are, however, three points at which I have some reservations. One concerns the

Citation: H-Net Reviews. Sperber on Rowe, 'From Reich to State: The Rhineland in the Revolutionary Age, 1780-1830'. H-German. 09-30-2014. https://networks.h-net.org/node/35008/reviews/43792/sperber-rowe-reich-state-rhineland-revolutionary-age-1780-1830 Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 3 H-German question of old regime reforms, and revolutionary and Napoleonic innovations. It is certainly true that much use was made of both the courts of the Holy Roman Empire and those created by the Napoleonic Code. But were the oral and public judicial proceedings of the Napoleonic regime, with jury trials for criminal offenses and a relatively quick and simple justice, comparable with the secret, written, and very lengthy judicial arrangements of the pre-1789 era? Rowe himself notes that proposals for reform of the old regime continued to insist on corporate social institutions, such as the guilds, and made sharp distinctions between city and countryside, both swept away by the Napoleonic codification of the revolutionary initiatives. Equality under the law for members of all religious confessions was another revolutionary and Napoleonic import that had not existed under even the most tolerant of old regime rulers. The author makes much of the Cologne City Council's 1786 offer of greater rights to the Protestants living in the city, but downplays the fact that the massive and bigoted opposition of many of Cologne's Catholic inhabitants forced the city council to revoke its decision.

A second point is the question of regional or sub-regional differences within the Rhineland. Most of the book is concerned with developments on the lower and middle Rhine; the upper Rhine, south of Mainz, receives less attention. Lingering old regime loyalties to the Wittelsbachs and the many petty princes who ruled the region before 1789 were noticeably less present there after 1800 than in the more northern territories with their Habsburg and Hohenzollern connections. As the author himself notes, Napoleonic rule in the southern Rhineland had a more Jacobin face, especially considering that the long-term prefect in Mainz, Jeanbon-Saint Andre, was a former member of the Committee of Public Safety during the Reign of Terror. Between 1815 and 1850, politics in the upper Rhine region were persistently further to the left than was the case on the middle or lower Rhine. In his conclusion, the author attributes this distinction primarily to the greater repressive effectiveness of post-1815 Prussian rule, but this assertion is not entirely convincing. It is quite possible that there were differences in attitudes toward both the old regime and revolutionary rule, at least among the notables and intellectuals, but probably in the mass of the population as well, in the more northern and more southern portions of the Rhineland.

Finally, I have to wonder about the extent to which political ideals formed in the old regime and resurrected in the Napoleonic era continued to shape politics in the Rhineland throughout the nineteenth century. Political Catholicism in the region, with its support for federalism, opposition to centralizing Prussian rule, demands that government positions be reserved for the local inhabitants and poorly disguised Austrian sympathies, fits this pattern best. Yet political Catholicism only obtained a hegemonic position in the Catholic areas of the northern and central Rhineland after the wars of 1866/71 had created a new political situation, breaking all remaining ties to the old regime. Nineteenth-century ultramontanist Catholic religion, very important for the successes of political Catholicism, was quite different from either the baroque or the enlightened Catholicism of the Rhenish old regime.

By contrast, both liberal and radical movements in the Rhineland during the years 1815-66 had a definite basis in the experiences of Napoleonic rule, but not much connection to the old regime. Indeed, their clear skepticism of such key aspects of eighteenth-century Rhenish life as corporate social structures, ties to the Habsburgs, and a political system of small states in a larger, federalist, or semi-federalist governmental structure, suggest that the left side of the political spectrum emerged from a break with the old regime rather than a continuity with it. Liberals' and radicals'

These objections notwithstanding, I found From Reich to State to be an excellent monograph, and useful reading for anyone interested in Napoleonic Germany (or Napoleonic Europe, more broadly), or in the development of political life in nineteenth-century central Europe. The book is part of a new monograph series, "New Studies in European History," in which impressive studies in modern and early modern German history have already appeared, such as Marc Forster's Catholic Revival in the Age of the Baroque, Abigail Green's Fatherlands, and William Hagen's Ordinary Prussians. From Reich to State is a work that fully deserves to be in such excellent company. Cambridge University Press is to be commended for sponsoring the publication of such first-rate scholarly investigations at a time when so many academic publishers are cutting back on scholarly monographs or eliminating them altogether.

Note

[1]. Michael Broers, Europe under Napoleon 1799-1815 (London, 1996).

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Citation: Jonathan Sperber. Review of Rowe, Michael, From Reich to State: The Rhineland in the Revolutionary Age, 1780-1830. H-German, H-Net Reviews. January, 2004.URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=8662

Copyright © 2004 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For any other proposed use, contact the Reviews editorial staff at [email protected].