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Peter H. Wilson Imperial Defence Integration Through Military

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Peter H. Wilson Imperial Defence Integration Through Military SHK-80.Buch : 06-Wilson 15 10-09-07 12:49:47 -po1- Benutzer fuer PageOne Integration Through Military Cooperation? 15 Peter H. Wilson Imperial Defence Integration Through Military Cooperation? The relationship between war, nationalism and state development is generally as- sumed to be a feature of modern history. Nations are regarded as having been forged in battle, either through wars of unification, liberation or secession. This is especially true for German history where nationalism is still widely interpreted as having been awakened by the Wars of Liberation against Napoleon, and subse- quently promoted by the process of mid-nineteenth century unification1. The as- sumptions underlying this approach need to be explored, before we can consider whether warfare may already have promoted identification with the early modern old Reich. This is largely unexplored historical territory. It is not yet possible to present definitive answers, and what follows is mainly intended to take stock of what is already known and to suggest a framework for possible future research. The standard approach relates nationalism to political centralisation and the development of large, permanent armies. Certain forms of political and military organisation are considered more likely to foster national awareness than others. War is identified as promoting nationalism primarily through the mechanism of resource mobilisation2. The need to raise soldiers and find the means to pay, feed and equip them forced states to transform their internal structures. Executive authority became centralised in the hands of powerful national governments, gen- erally organised as monarchies. Meanwhile, state infrastructure developed the ability to reach into the provinces, breaking down local particularism and inte- grating communities within a common administrative framework. The general 1 F. Meinecke, Cosmopolitanism and the National State (Princeton 1970); S. Berger, Invent- ing the nation: Germany (London 2004); H. Hughes, Nationalism and society. Germany 1800–1945 (London 1988). 2 This approach has been developed by the British and American literature on state formation which in turn is heavily influenced by the writings of Max Weber and Otto Hintze: C. Tilly, Coercion, capital, and European states, AD 990–1992 (Oxford 1992); B. Downing, The military revolution and political change. Origins of democracy and autocracy in early modern Europe (Princeton 1990); T. Ertman, Birth of the Leviathan. Building states and regimes in medieval and early modern Europe (Cambridge 1997); B. Porter, War and the rise of the state. The military foundations of modern politics (New York 1994); M. Mann, The sources of social power, 2 vols. (Cambridge 1986–93); A. Giddens, The nation state and violence (Berkeley 1985). SHK-80.Buch : 06-Wilson 16 10-09-07 12:49:47 -po1- Benutzer fuer PageOne 16 Peter H. Wilson consensus is that most states followed one of two paths in this process. One route is associated with a liberal reading of classical antiquity, emphasising the Greek city states and republican Rome, to organise the state as a representative govern- ment defended by citizens in arms. Smaller states and those with maritime, mer- cantile economies are widely regarded as having taken this path. The other route is associated with the legacy of imperial Rome, producing authoritarian government and conscript armies3. Most observers regard the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars as the defining stage in linking state formation to modern nationalism. First, the revol- utionary ideology combined new political rights with mass mobilisation. Even though the reality of the levée en masse fell short of the ideal, it left an influential legacy for national integration across the globe4. Second, this conflict is widely interpreted as the world’s first modern war, allegedly involving an unprecedented level of mobilisation. Those states that did not embrace the revolutionary ideo- logy and its associated military forms were nonetheless compelled to adapt. Prus- sia, Austria and other countries introduced more universal forms of conscription and embraced elements of the new ideal of the patriot volunteer5. Even where conscription subsequently became more selective after 1815, it nonetheless served as a school for the nation, fostering the concept of military duty as national service and focusing identity by bringing together men from across a country in a national institution6. The possibility that military service may already have fostered a sense of com- mon identity in early modern Germany is overlooked because the old Reich does not fit the general model through which such relationships have been investigated. First, it was dissolved in 1806, thus failing to make the transition to modernity and predating the standard era of nationalism. Second, it was not a centralised state and lacked other features commonly associated with the rise of nationalism, such as a single metropolitan centre comparable to London or Paris. Many historians interpret the Reich as only ‘partially modernised’, emphasising that it remained a passive entity in an international system characterised from the late sixteenth cen- tury by aggression and expansion7. Third, it does not appear to have been a mili- tary power. There was no permanent Reichsarmee; instead the Reich developed a 3 Further discussion and critique in P. H. Wilson, Defining military culture, in: Journal of Military History 72 (2008) 11–41, at 22–28. 4 D. Moran, A. Waldron (eds.), The people in arms. Military myth and national mobilization since the French Revolution (Cambridge 2003). 5 P. Paret, Conscription and the end of the old regime in France and Prussia, in: W. Treue (ed.), Geschichte als Aufgabe (Berlin 1988)159–182; K. Hagemann, ‘Männlicher Muth und teutsche Ehre’. Nation, Militär und Geschlecht zur Zeit der antinapoleonischen Kriege Preu- ßens (Paderborn 2002). 6 E. Weber, Peasants into Frenchmen. The modernization of rural France, 1870–1914 (Stan- ford 1974); D. Moon, Peasants into Russian citizens? A comparative perspective, in: Revol- utionary Russia 9 (1996) 43–81. 7 H. Schilling, Konfessionalisierung und Staatsinteressen 1559–1660 (Handbuch der Ge- schichte der internationalen Beziehungen Bd. 2, Paderborn 2007) 352f. SHK-80.Buch : 06-Wilson 17 10-09-07 12:49:47 -po1- Benutzer fuer PageOne Integration Through Military Cooperation? 17 system of collective security that mobilised contingents from its component terri- tories when necessary. Writing on this system has been affected by the ‘Rossbach syndrome’, interpreting its entire history through the lens of the army’s defeat at the hands of Frederick II of Prussia in November 17578. In the following, I want to reassess these assumptions by exploring three areas where war might have promoted the integration of the old Reich. The first is the institutional integration through the development of collective security and the associated system of peaceful resolution of internal conflicts from the late fif- teenth century. I will spend the least time on this aspect, because it is already the best known. The second is normative integration with the dissemination of com- mon norms and values through the incorporation of the Reichsstände within im- perial defence. The third area is that of identity and involves the question whether the experience of Reichskriege and military service may have fostered identifica- tion with the Reich among soldiers and civilians. Institutional Integration The development of collective imperial defence (Reichskriegsverfassung) did not follow a simple path. The process was certainly not one of progressive decentrali- sation with the emperor devolving military authority to the Reichsstände. Instead, imperial defence evolved unevenly in response to circumstances as emperor and Reichstände forged new institutions together. These institutions involved varying combinations of three elements. The Reichsstände themselves provided the funda- mental building blocks once the matricular system of contributions was adopted as the method of raising resources for war-making across the Reich. This system evolved from the 1420s and was consolidated during the era of imperial reform a century later. It allowed the Reich to call on its constituent territories to provide fixed quotas of soldiers and/or their cash equivalent when required for defence. Acceptance of these burdens was the deciding factor in Reichsstandschaft, or full political integration within the Reich. Those lords and cities that were unable or unwilling to shoulder their share lost their status of imperial immediacy (Reichs- unmittelbarkeit) during the sixteenth century. Though excluded from Reichs- standschaft, the Reichsritter nonetheless retained their immediacy by paying a special, nominally voluntary, contribution to common defence directly to the em- peror9. The fundamental character of the matricular system for the Reich’s politi- 8 The term ‘Rossbach syndrome’ was coined by H. Neuhaus, Das Problem der militärischen Exekutive in der Spätphase des Alten Reiches, in: J. Kunisch, B. Stollberg-Rilinger (eds.), Staatsverfassung und Heeresverfassung (Berlin 1986) 297–346, at 299f. See also M. Plass- mann, Krieg und Defension am Oberrhein. Die Vorderen Reichskreise und Markgraf Lud- wig Wilhelm von Baden (1693–1706) (Berlin 2000) 520–526. 9 S. Wefers, Versuch über die “Außenpolitk” des spätmittelalterlichen Reiches, in: Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 22 (1995) 291–316; E. Isenmann, Reichsfinanzen und Reichs- steuern im 15. Jahrhundert,
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