Ed.) the Civilising Offensive New Perspectives on the History of Liberalism and Freethought
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Christoph De Spiegeleer (Ed.) The Civilising Offensive New Perspectives on the History of Liberalism and Freethought Edited by Liberas/Liberaal Archief Guaranteed Peer Review Series Volume 1 The Civilising Offensive Social and Educational Reform in 19th-century Belgium Edited by Christoph De Spiegeleer ISBN: 978-3-11-057842-3 e-ISBN (PDF): 978-3-11-058154-6 e-ISBN (EPUP): 978-3-11-057917-8 This publication is graciously funded by Liberas/Liberaal Archief. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 Interational License. For details go to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 2018958370 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover image: Dining hall open-air school Diesterweg in Heide-Kalmthout (1904–1930), Liberas/Liberaal Archief Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com TableofContents Christoph De Spiegeleer 1New Perspectives on Social and EducationalReform during the Long Nineteenth Century.AnIntroduction 1 Part I Social-Pedagogical PerspectivesonSocial and Educational Reform Lieselot De Wilde, Bruno Vanobbergen &Michel Vandenbroeck 2 “On voit bien que c′est un petitmalheureux des Hospices”.The Child, the Body and the Bath in Nineteenth-Century Belgium: aCurefor the Future? 29 Evelyne Deceur, Maria Bouverne-De Bie &Angelo VanGorp 3The Social Question as an Urban Question. ASocial-Pedagogical Analysis of ParticipatoryInitiatives in Rabot (Ghent) during the Nineteenth Century 51 Part II New Topicsinthe HistoryofSocial and Educational Reform Stijn VandePerre 4Catholic Fundraising to Educatethe Poor.The Historyofthe SociétéCivile du Crédit de la Charité (1855–1878) 75 Christina Reimann 5Putting the Rural World on the Road of Progress? Experiences of Failure by Local Activists of the Belgian Education League (c. 1865– 1884) 103 Jeffrey Tyssens 6Schools of Decency and Discipline.Social Reform andPeople’s Restaurants in the Low Countries (1860s–1914) 131 VI TableofContents Part III Transnational Connections and Circulations Carmen VanPraet 7The OppositeofDante’sHell? The Transfer of Ideasfor Social Housing at International Congresses in the 1850s–1860s 163 Amandine Thiry, ThomasD’haeninck &Christophe Verbruggen 8(Re‐)educational Internationalism in the Low Countries, 1850 – 1914 189 ThomasD’haeninck 9The Intellectual Mobility of Auguste Wagener (1829–1896) in a Transnational NetworkofSocial Reform. ACross-Border History 217 Notes on Authors 233 Index of Names 235 Christoph De Spiegeleer 1New PerspectivesonSocial and Educational Reform during the Long Nineteenth Century. An Introduction This book is the first volume of anew academic seriesdevoted to the results of scientificworkshops and colloquia organised by Liberas/Liberaal Archief, the central archive and documentation centreofthe liberal movement in Belgium/ Flanders.¹ On 10 February 2017,the institution organised an academic workshop on 19th-century social and educational reform movements. This topic connects well with the expertise and collection of Liberas/Liberaal Archief on reformist and educational initiativesset up by social or progressive liberals in Flanders. The largest part of this volume consists of amultifaceted selection of studies pre- sented at the colloquium.² All contributions explore an array of 19th-century bourgeois initiativesinBelgium that tried to solve the ‘social question’ by ‘civi- lising’ and moralising the lower classes. ‘Social reform’ refers to awide variety of efforts taken by an engaged elite to deal with the social question. The concept of the ‘social question’,inits turn,became in voguefrom the 1880s onwards.Itisa catch-all term used to describe awide set of problems related to the processes of urbanisation and industrialisation, which led to extremelypoor living conditions for the urban and industrial proletariat.Social problems were related to crime, deviancy,public health, hygiene and their moral side effects.³ Hence, education- al reform initiativescan not be set apart from the social question, as education was considered to be one of the most efficient instrumentsfor reform. See: www.liberas.eu. Both the colloquium and this publication weremade possible thanks to the continuous sup- port of Peter Laroy, Director of Liberas/Liberaal Archief, and the efforts of all those whopresent- ed and discussed papers at the colloquium. Iwould liketothank all the authors whosubmitted chapters for this book for their time and patience, as well as the reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions.Aspecial word of thanks goes to Rabea RittgerodtatDeGruyter Old- enbourgfor her commitment and guidance. Chris Leonardsand Nico Randeraad, “Transnational Experts in Social Reform, 1840 –1880,” International Review of Social History 55,no. 2(2010): 219. OpenAccess. ©2019 ChristophDeSpiegeleer,published by De Gruyter. This work is li- censed under the CreativeCommons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110581546-001 2 Christoph De Spiegeleer Civilising offensive,educationalisation and social legislation Through anumberofconcrete case studies, all chapters in this volume contrib- ute to abetter understanding of the mechanisms behind the 19th-century ‘bour- geois civilising offensive’.Inthe late 1970s-early1980s, Dutch historians coined the term ‘the bourgeois civilising offensive’ (“het burgerlijk beschavingsoffen- sief”). Thisreferred to 19th-century middle-classattemptstoimprovethe fate of the lowerclasses, and ‘raise’ them to ahigher, ‘civilised’ standard of conduct. Initiativesranged from model factory villages to educational and recreationalac- tivities and health campaigns.⁴ The term wasinspired by the work of Norbert Elias on the civilising process,⁵ Michel Foucault’sstudy⁶ on the disciplining of the body, and Christopher Lach’sbook⁷ on forces of organised virtue during the 19th century. The coreofthe Western civilising processis, in the judgment of Elias’ theory, along-term development in emotion management,anincreasing tendencyto- wards self-control that started in the upper strata of society (in the Ancien Ré- gime the nobility,inthe 19th century the bourgeoisie) and spread over wider lay- ers of the population through distinction and imitation. Elias’ civilisation theory permits little socio-historical differentiation and constitutes onlyone side of the history of educational and social reform,thereby neglectingthe actual effects and impact of these external civilising forces on individuals.⁸ The samegoes Forthe first uses of the term, see: PietdeRooy, Werklozenzorg en werkloosheidsbestrijding 1917– 1940.LandelijkenAmsterdams beleid (Amsterdam: VanGennep, 1979); BernardKruithof, “De deugd- zame natie.Het burgerlijkbeschavingsoffensief vandeMaatschappijtot Nutvan ‘tAlgemeentussen 1784 en 1860,” Symposion. Tijdschrift voor maatchappijwetenschap 2, no.1(1980):22–37.For arecon- struction of the intellectual contextinwhich the conceptwas born in the Netherlands,see:Ali de Regt, “Beschavingsoffensief (civilising offensive): from Sociological ConcepttoMoral Appeal,” Human Figurations 4, no.1(2015); BernardKruithof, “TheDutch Bourgeois CivilisingOffensive in the Netherlands,” Human Figurations 4, no.1(2015) (accessible viahttps://quod.lib.umich.edu/h/ humfig/11217607.0004.1*?rgn=main;view=fulltext).For an overviewofthe various ideas and initiatives of late19th-centuryDutch reformers against an international background, see: Christianne Smit, De volksverheffers.Sociaal hervormersinNederland en de wereld, 1870–1914 (Hilversum: Verloren,2015). See: Norbert Elias, Über den Prozess der Zivilisation (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 1976 [1939]); de Regt, “Beschavingsoffensief (civilising offensive)”. Michel Foucault, Surveiller et punir:Naissance de la prison (Paris:Gallimard, 1975). Christopher Lash, Haven in aHeartless World. TheFamily Besieged (New York: Basic Books, 1977). One could arguethat the concept ‘bourgeois civilisingoffensive’ does not fit with Elias’ civi- lisation theory.Elias regards the civilising process as an unintended, unplanned social develop- New Perspectives on Social and EducationalReform 3 for the normalising paradigm of Michel Foucault,wherehospitals, prisons, fac- tories and schools exert disciplinary power over the individual, making no dis- tinctionbetween disciplining strategies and the actual effects of these interfer- ences.⁹ The concept of ‘bourgeois civilising offensive’ has gone somewhat out of use because of its association with aone-sided top-down interpretation of the history of social and educational reform,with afocus on disciplinary inter- ests of reformers.¹⁰ Even though few authorsinthis volume stillexplicitlyuse the term, alot of the case-studies analysed here address various ambiguitiesof19th- century civilising activities and initiativesofbourgeois reformers,inparticular with regard to theireffects and targetgroups.Together they allow for aless one-sided take on the 19th-century ‘bourgeois civilising offensive’. When studying the 19th-century ‘bourgeois civilising offensive’,wehaveto take into account various nuances.First,although the term ‘civilising offensive’ has amilitary and disciplining connotation, this does not exclude the benevolent intentions of manyreformers, as well as the fact that