Much in Little Revisited: The Dutch Revolution of 1795 and the History of Republicanism Wyger R.E. Velema, Department of History, University of Amsterdam Paper prepared for the conference ‘The Republican Tradition: From the Hanseatic League to the Era of the Enlightenment’, European University at St. Petersburg, December 7-9, 2012 Not to be quoted or cited without permission from the author

It is more than half a century ago that R.R. Palmer, who was soon to become famous with his magisterial work The Age of the Democratic Revolution, introduced an international scholarly audience to the Dutch revolution of 1795, also known as the Batavian revolution. In his pioneering article ‘Much in Little: the Dutch Revolution of 1795’, he pointed out that the fall of the Dutch ancien régime and the revolutionary transformation of the Netherlands that followed this downfall could best be understood as part of an international and interlinked series of revolutionary events.1 On a small scale, the Batavian revolution therefore could serve to ‘illuminate the whole complex of war and revolution which then gripped the Western world’.2 As he made abundantly clear in the title of his later magnum opus, Palmer had a relatively simple and straightforward view of the struggles that tore the Western world of the late eighteenth century apart. Just as democracy had been at issue in the Dutch revolution of 1795, the whole European and American world of the final decades of the century of Enlightenment saw the rise of a new and historically unprecedented democratic opposition against all sorts of aristocratic ‘constituted bodies’. The international democratic movement of the later eighteenth century opposed ‘the possession of government, or any public power, by any established, privileged, closed, or self-recruiting group of men’.3 In Palmer’s view, this democratic movement was a more or less direct consequence of the progressive political thought of the Enlightenment and was the very embodiment of political modernity. Indeed, the ‘Age of the Democratic Revolution’, of which the Dutch revolution of 1795 was such a perfect example, undoubtedly was the most crucial episode in the rise of the modern political world. In the more than fifty years that have passed since Palmer developed his thesis about the ‘Age of the Democratic Revolution’, scholarship on both the politics and the political thought of the eighteenth century has been transformed.4 From the perspective of the history of political thought, perhaps the most crucial development since Palmer formulated his thesis has been the discovery of early modern republicanism and of its continued importance during the eighteenth century. Already in 1971, just a few years after the appearance of the second volume of Palmer’s Age of the Democratic Revolution, the Italian historian Franco Venturi suggested that ‘it is more worthwhile to follow the involvement, modifications and dispersion

1 R.R. Palmer, ‘Much in Little: The Dutch Revolution of 1795’, Journal of Modern History 26 (1954) 15-35; R.R. Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution. A Political History of Europe and America, 1760-1800 (2 vols. Princeton 1959-1964). 2 Palmer, ‘Much in Little’, 15. 3 Palmer, Age of the Democratic Revolution, I, 4. 4 Recent reassessments of the Palmer thesis include Wim Klooster, Revolutions in the Atlantic World: A Comparative History (New York 2009); Manuela Albertone and Antonino de Francesco, ed. Rethinking the Atlantic World: Europe and America in the Age of Democratic Revolution (Basingstoke 2009) and David Armitage and Sanjay Subrahmanyam, ed. The Age of Revolution in Global Context, c. 1760-1840 (Basingstoke 2010). of the republican tradition in the last years of the eighteenth century, than to examine the emergence of the idea of democracy in those same years’.5 Since then, the work of John Pocock, Quentin Skinner and many of their pupils has provided us with a rich and complex panorama of the varieties of early modern – and ultimately classical – republican thought. Yet until very recently, this new historiography of republicanism presented students of the European revolutions of the late eighteenth century with a curious problem, since it largely ignored Venturi’s illuminating suggestion and therefore failed to include the revolutions analyzed by Palmer in the history of republican political thought. John Pocock, who in his Machiavellian Moment famously described the American revolution as the ‘last act of the civic Renaissance’, has remained remarkably silent about the fate of the Atlantic republican tradition in all other late eighteenth-century revolutions.6 Quentin Skinner, too, has shown himself rather reluctant to discuss the relationship between neo-roman thought and the revolutions of the later eighteenth century in any detail. The eighteenth-century rise of classical utilitarianism and liberalism, he simply tells us, meant that ‘the theory of free states fell increasingly into disrepute, and eventually slipped almost wholly out of sight’.7 The two leading analysts of early modern republicanism thus, for once, seem to agree: the early modern republican tradition came to an abrupt end at some point in time before the eruption of the French revolution and was replaced completely by something else, be it utilitarianism or liberalism. Virtue gave way to rights; liberty no longer meant living in a free state, but just being free from coercion and interference.8 Both the Palmer-thesis and the historiography on early modern republicanism thus present the student of the late eighteenth-century continental European revolutions with the image of a complete watershed. The sudden emergence of ‘democracy’ and ‘liberalism’, almost ex nihilo, is held to constitute a clean break with both the institutions of the old order and its various modes of political discourse. The most obvious problem with this entire line of interpretation is the fact that late eighteenth-century European revolutionaries, while certainly shedding the pejorative connotations which had always been attached to the term ‘democracy’, never used the term liberalism and first and foremost regarded themselves as republicans. Indeed, these were the very decades in which the term ‘republicanism’ was invented and was for the first time widely used in public discourse.9 It might of course be argued that the revolutionary use of republican vocabulary is in fact a case of spurious persistence and that continuities in vocabulary mask fundamental changes in substance. 10 The ‘modern’ republic the revolutionaries envisaged, in other words, was something fundamentally different from both the classical and the early modern republic. There is certainly something to be said for this point of view, for it is undeniably true that many late eighteenth-century republicans considered the republics they were trying to establish as

5 Franco Venturi, Utopia and Reform in the Enlightenment (Cambridge 1971) 90. 6 J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment. Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton 1975) 462. 7 Quentin Skinner, Liberty Before Liberalism (Cambridge 1998) 96. 8 J.G.A. Pocock, ‘Virtues, rights, and manners: A model for historians of political thought’ , in: J.G.A. Pocock, Virtue, Commerce, and History. Essays on Political Thought and History, Chiefly in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge 1985) 37-50; Skinner, Liberty Before Liberalism, 96-99. 9 On the conceptual history of ‘republic’ and ‘republicanism’ see Wolfgang Mager, ‘Republik’ , in: Otto Brunner, Werner Conze and Reinhardt Koselleck, ed. Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. Historisches Lexikon zur politisch- sozialen Sprache in Deutschland (8 vols. Stuttgart, 1972 - 1997) V, 549-651. 10The term ‘spurious persistence’ was coined by Peter Gay in his polemic with Carl Becker. See Peter Gay, ‘Carl Becker’s Heavenly City’, in: Peter Gay, The Party of Humanity. Essays in the French Enlightenment (New York 1971) 188-210. something new and historically unprecedented.11 Yet it is equally undeniable that a great number of the conceptual problems they were wrestling with were rooted in the pre-existing republican tradition. Rather than constituting a clean break with the republican past, late eighteenth-century revolutionary republicanism should therefore be understood as an extremely complex intellectual struggle to adapt classical and early modern republicanism to the circumstances of the modern age. That such a case can indeed be convincingly argued has particularly transpired in recent scholarship on the French case. In a rather dramatic shift of emphasis, historians have started to argue that viewing French revolutionary republicanism as an attempted transformation of rather than as a complete break with classical and early modern republicanism allows us a much deeper and better understanding of French late eighteenth-century republican discourse than was the case hitherto.12 It also allows us to see the eventual emergence of liberalism more as a gradual development than as a sudden and dramatic rupture with the republican past. In the words of Andreas Kalyvas and Ira Katznelson: ‘liberalism as we know it was born from the spirit of republicanism, from the attempts to adapt republicanism to the political, economic, and social revolutions of the eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth’, or more succinctly: ‘political liberalism burst from the shell of a republican chrysalis’.13 Both the rise of the historiography of republicanism in general and our recent renewed understanding of the relationship between classical and early modern republicanism on the one hand, and the republican revolutions of the later eighteenth century on the other, provide ample reasons to take a new look at the Dutch revolution of 1795. Palmer was indeed right in suggesting that the Batavian revolution of 1795 offered ‘much in little’ to the historian, but his preoccupation with the sudden rise of modern democracy prevented him from seeing that the true richness of this revolution must be sought in its attempt to transform the classical and early modern republican tradition and to adapt it to the modern age. It is the purpose of the present article to explore this topic and to show how the Dutch, during the final years of the eighteenth century, engaged in an active and creative dialogue with the heritage of classical and early modern republican political thought and how their revolution took shape in and through that dialogue. After a brief look at the political developments during the years between the fall of the Dutch ancien régime in January of 1795 and the adoption of the first modern republican constitution in the Spring of 1798, this article will focus on three areas of Dutch republican debate. It will, first of all, analyze the heated revolutionary discussions over the issue of federalism versus the unitary state. It will then proceed to investigate the tension in Dutch revolutionary discourse between republican participation and democratic representation. Thirdly, this article will attempt to demonstrate that most Dutch republican revolutionaries, even though they were perfectly aware of living in a polite and commercial nation, were unwilling or unable entirely to give up the ancient republican ideal of disinterested virtue in the construction of their modern republic. From the Old to the New Republic

11 Lynn Hunt, Politcs, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution (Berkeley, etc. 1984) 19-51; Biancamaria Fontana, ed. The Invention of the Modern Republic (Cambridge 1994). 12 Keith Michael Baker, ‘Transformations of Classical Republicanism in Eighteenth-Century France’, Journal of Modern History 73 (2001) 32-53; Raymonde Monnier, Républicanisme, Patriotisme et Révolution française (Paris 2005); Andrew Jainchill, Reimagining Politics after the Terror. The Republican Origins of French Liberalism (Ithaca and London 2008); Annelien de Dijn, French Political Thought from Montesquieu to Tocqueville. Liberty in a Levelled Society? (Cambridge 2008). The most wide-ranging formulation of this new interpretation of late eighteenth-century republicanism may be found in Andreas Kalyvas and Ira Katznelson, ed. Liberal Beginnings. Making a Republic for the Moderns (Cambridge 2008). 13 Kalyvas and Katznelson, ed. Liberal Beginnings, 4-5. When, in January of 1795, French troops marched into the Republic of the Seven United Provinces and helped topple the Dutch ancien régime, the country had been torn by intense political and ideological unrest for well over a decade. During much of the second half of the eighteenth century, Dutchmen had been worrying about what they perceived as the moral corruption of their once so glorious republic. It was not, however, until the outbreak of the fourth Anglo-Dutch war in 1780 that this rather diffuse criticism of the moral decline of the Dutch nation transformed itself into a political program for republican renewal. The so-called Patriot movement of the 1780s started out in a classical republican vein, suspecting the Stadholder of monarchical and even despotic ambitions and blaming him and his corrupt court for undermining both the mixed constitution and the republican moeurs of the nation. Yet very soon the Patriots moved beyond such traditional staples of republican opposition. Within just a few years, and liberally supplementing classical republican vocabulary with the Enlightenment language of inalienable individual rights, they came to the conclusion that the Dutch Republic in its present political form was beyond saving and that its institutions needed a thorough overhaul. The desire for constitutional restoration gave way to the ambition to create a fundamentally new republic. Indeed, it was not uncommon for the more radical Patriots to maintain that the Dutch had never been free in their entire history, since citizens had never been sovereign, inalienable rights had systematically been ignored, and there had never existed a proper written constitution. For all its conceptual radicalism, Patriot political thought left a great many problems unexplored and a multitude of pressing questions unanswered. Given the predominantly local nature of their movement, the Patriots did not systematically reflect on the problem of federalism versus the unitary republican state: they simply took the federal structure of the Dutch Republic for granted. Nor did they develop a coherent theory of political representation. The importance of the Patriot movement therefore must primarily be sought in the fact that it exploded the old political division between adherents of the State party and Orangists, and thereby opened the way for a thorough rethinking of the meaning of republicanism.14 It would take some time before this rethinking of republicanism could come to practical fruition. The violent counterrevolution of 1787, in which the Stadholder was fully restored to power with the help of Prussian troops and British money, drove thousands of Patriots into foreign exile and led to harsh repression in the Dutch Republic itself.15 Despite these unpropitious circumstances, however, reflection on the nature of republicanism continued. The exiled Patriots in the Southern Netherlands and Northern France witnessed the outbreak of the French revolution from close by and tirelessly produced scenarios for the establishment of a revolutionary republic in their own country.16 In the Dutch Republic, in those same years, political reformers had to tread carefully, but nonetheless managed to keep discussing such topics as the importance of inalienable natural rights, the lack of liberty evident throughout Dutch history, and the bleak state into which Dutch republican manners and morals had sunk

14 For more detailed discussions of Patriot political thought see S.R.E. Klein, Patriots Republikanisme. Politieke cultuur in Nederland (1766-1787) (Amsterdam 1995); N.C.F. van Sas, De metamorphose van Nederland. Van oude orde naar moderniteit, 1750-1900 (Amsterdam 2004) 173-274; Wyger R.E. Velema, Republicans. Essays on Eighteenth-Century Dutch Political Thought (Leiden and Boston 2007) 115-177. 15 For a discussion of the political repression during the Orangist counterrevolution see C.H.E. de Wit, De Nederlandse revolutie van de achttiende eeuw 1780-1787 (Oirsbeek 1974). 16 The story of the Patriot exile in France is told in Joost Rosendaal, Bataven! Nederlandse vluchtelingen in Frankrijk 1787-1795 (Nijmegen 2003). See also Jacques J.M. Baartmans, Hollandse wijsgeren in Brabant en Vlaanderen. Geschriften van Noord-Nederlandse patriotten in de Oostenrijkse Nederlanden, 1787-1792 (Nijmegen 2001). in the course of the eighteenth century.17 Yet all of this would have led to very little, had not the French decided to march to the north. When the French troops crossed the frozen Dutch rivers early in 1795, the old and by then thoroughly delegitimized republic collapsed with a minimum of resistance. The Stadholder fled to England, the Batavian republic was proclaimed and the great work of building a new republican political structure could finally begin in practice. In the predominantly monarchist and nationalist Dutch historiography of the nineteenth century – and indeed of a considerable part of the twentieth century – the Batavian revolution was generally depicted as a rather sad and ineffective little affair, utterly lacking in the greatness of the French revolution and remarkable only for its capacity to generate a seemingly endless stream of boring and windy republican rhetoric.18 In the light of the revisionist scholarship of the second half of the twentieth century, however, such a facile dismissal of the Batavian revolution no longer carries any conviction, to say the least. It is now generally recognized by historians that the Dutch republican revolutionaries were allowed to operate with a great measure of independence from the French during the crucial first years after 1795, that they conducted political and constitutional debates of the first importance, and that they finally succeeded in founding a constitutional republic based on the principle of representative democracy.19 While the general contours of the crucial first years of the Batavian revolution are therefore now widely known and the importance of these years has been recognized by historians for some considerable time, it is still true that detailed research into the politics of the Batavian revolution and the political thought of the Batavian revolutionaries remains rather rare. Thus, it is only very recently that the first comprehensive studies of the National Assembly and of the political thought of the years between 1795 and 1801 have been published.20 It is therefore no exaggeration to say that we are only beginning to see the Dutch revolution of 1795 in its full complexity.

17 E.g. Pieter Paulus, Verhandeling over de vrage: in welken zin kunnen de mensen gezegd worden gelyk te zyn en welke zyn de regten en pligten, die daaruit voortvloeien? (Haarlem 1793). This extremely popular pamphlet by the man who would become the first chairman of the National Assembly in 1796 went through three printings in a year’s time; [Samuel Iperuszoon Wiselius], Tafereel van de staatkundige verlichting der Nederlanderen, naar aanleiding van ‘s lands geschiedenissen (3 vols. S.l. 1793-1795); IJsbrand van Hamelsveld, De zedelijke toestand der Nederlandsche natie op het einde der achttiende eeuw (Amsterdam 1791). 18 H.T. Colenbrander, De Bataafsche republiek (Amsterdam 1908)1 and 89. On Colenbrander, who detested the Patriots and the Batavians, but nevertheless spent much of his career studying them, see P.B.M. Blaas, Geschiedenis en nostalgie. De historiografie van een kleine natie met een groot verleden. Verspreide historiografische opstellen (Hilversum 2000) 82-98. A general overview of the historiography on the Batavian revolution until ca. 1980 may be found in E.O.G. Haitsma Mulier, ‘De geschiedschrijving over de Patriottentijd en de Bataafse Tijd’, in: W.W. Mijnhardt, ed. Kantelend geschiedbeeld. Nederlandse historiografie sinds 1945 (Utrecht and Antwerp 1983) 206-227. 19 Apart from the work of R.R. Palmer discussed above, some of the more important studies worth mentioning in this context are 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 1965); I.L Leeb, The Ideological Origins of the Batavian Revolution. History and Politics in the Dutch Republic 1747-1800 (The Hague 1974); Simon Schama, Patriots and Liberators. Revolution in the Netherlands 1780-1813 (New York 1977); Van Sas, Metamorfose van Nederland, 275-398; Joost Rosendaal, De Nederlandse Revolutie. Vrijheid, volk en vaderland 1783-1799 (Nijmegen 2005); Annie Jourdan, La Révolution Batave entre la France et l’Amérique (1795-1806) (Rennes 2008). 20 Joris Oddens, Pioniers in schaduwbeeld. Het eerste parlement van Nederland 1796-1798 (Nijmegen 2012); Mart Rutjes, Door gelijkheid gegrepen. Democratie, burgerschap en staat in Nederland 1795-1801 (Nijmegen 2012). These two groundbreaking studies have been of enormous value to me in writing the present article and I emphatically wish to thank their authors not only for their published work, but also for years of constructive and stimulating conversation on the Batavian revolution. The atmosphere in the new Batavian republic during the first months after the fall of the old regime was one of exhilaration and optimism. The French slogan of ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’ was heard everywhere and within weeks declarations of the rights of man and of the citizen were adopted in most provinces.21 The old regents were swiftly removed from their posts, but in doing so the Batavian revolutionaries took great care to operate with moderation and to refrain from political violence. They were highly aware not only of the bitter heritage of violence and exile of their own recent history, but also of the appalling atrocities committed during the French terror. As Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninck, later to become one of the leading statesmen of the Batavian republic, remarked in February of 1795: ‘The system of terror, now wholly removed from the French Republic, cannot be tolerated in our country for even the briefest of moments, for it would ruin us forever’.22 Caution and moderation would remain characteristic of the Batavian revolution throughout most of its history, justifying the many later descriptions of it as a ‘velvet revolution’. While the first domestic revolutionary measures were implemented, the Batavians also reached an agreement with their French liberators. In the Treaty of The Hague of May 16, 1795, the French – in return for, among other things, a substantial sum of money – promised to respect the sovereignty and independence of the new Dutch state.23 It seemed as if everything was now in place for the rapid establishment of a new form of government, based on the written constitution so fervently desired by the Dutch revolutionaries. Yet the initial appearance of revolutionary unity turned out to be quite deceptive. It soon became clear that there existed very little agreement among the revolutionaries about the nature of republican government. Indeed, it took the Batavians more than a year even to bring together their first National Assembly, which first met in The Hague – in the old ballroom of the Stadholder – on March 1, 1796.24 The relief that this at least had been accomplished was immense and hopes for the future were still high, despite the obvious existence of deep political divisions. As the representatives for the first time filed into the small ballroom, ecstatic crowds cheered them on with cries of ‘Vivat the Republic!’. Pieter Paulus, the first chairman of the Assembly, then addressed the men who faced the difficult task of designing a new constitution. Greater steps towards the establishment of true liberty had been taken in the past year, he assured his audience, than in all the previous 200 years of Dutch history. And all of this had been brought about without even a trace of the ‘murderous scenes’ recently witnessed in other revolutionary parts of Europe. The only thing now needed was to crown this remarkable achievement with a constitution ‘based on the eternal rights of man and of the citizen.’ What could be so difficult about that? After all, the Americans and the French had

21 W.J. Goslinga, De rechten van den mensch en burger. Een overzicht der Nederlandsche geschriften en verklaringen (The Hague 1936) 86-107; F.H. van der Burg and H. Boels, ed. Tweehonderd jaar rechten van de mens in Nederland. De verklaring van de rechten van de mens en burger van 31 januari 1795 toegelicht en vergeleken met Franse en Amerikaanse voorgangers (Leiden 1994). 22 G. Graaf Schimmelpenninck, Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninck en eenige gebeurtenissen van zijnen tijd (2 vols. The Hague and Amsterdam 1845) I, 46. On Schimmelpenninck see, most recently, Edwina Hagen, President van Nederland. Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninck 1761-1825 (Amsterdam 2012). 23 Schama, Patriots and Liberators, 192-210; Raymond Kubben, Regeneration and Hegemony. Franco-Batavian Relations in the Revolutionary Era, 1795-1803 (Leiden and Boston 2011) 141-463. 24 The complex story of the making of the first National Assembly is told in Oddens, Pioniers in schaduwbeeld, 73-100. already erected a ‘grand edifice of liberty’. Little more than unity and the avoidance of party strife was needed for the Batavians to take their place beside these nations.25 In reality, it took much more to achieve what Paulus, who died shortly after his rousing speech to the new representatives, had so fervently desired: a first constitution rejected by the popular vote, a second National Assembly, a coup d’état and more than two years, to be precise. Rather than bringing about the hoped for unity, the National Assembly served to make the deep political divisions among Dutch republicans more visible than ever. It might be said that, for the first time in Dutch history, it created a central platform for political debate. Its activities were reported upon in great detail in the regularly published Dagverhaal, its meetings were open to the public, and its deliberations were the subject of running commentary in such periodicals as De Republikein and De Democraten.26 Closely scrutinized by public opinion, the generally highly educated elected representatives conducted, be it in the various constitutional committees or in the plenary sessions of the parliament, a debate about the nature of republican government that was quite astonishing in its depth and intensity.27 Although they made swift progress on certain topics – the separation of church and state is a prime example – the new parliamentarians failed to reach even the beginning of a consensus on the main issues, so that finally the most divisive matters had to be resolved by a brute, although relatively non-violent, display of political power in January of 1798.28 To many contemporary commentators, it was quite evident that the root cause of the ceaseless conflicts among the representatives was their inability to agree on the meaning of republican government. Already in 1795, De Republikein observed that the words ‘Republic’ and ‘Republican’ were more often used than properly understood.29 Two years later, De Democraten published an essay entitled ‘Some remarks about the Origin and Progress of Republicanism in Europe’. Although its anonymous author was clearly certain of the eventual and inevitable triumph of ‘philosophical republicanism’, he nevertheless had to admit that republicanism at the moment was an exceedingly fluid concept, subject to a great many different interpretations: ‘To desire a Republic is to desire a state of affairs about which only the basic principles are known, and these basic principles themselves may be applied in a great many different ways, since they are generally described in abstract words with extremely broad and indeterminate meanings’. He went on to demonstrate how different interpretations of the meaning of concepts such as ‘equality’ and ‘liberty’ had, over the past

25 Dagverhaal der handelingen van de nationaale vergadering representeerende het volk van Nederland (9 vols. The Hague, 1796-1798) I, 5-8. On Pieter Paulus see E.J. Vles, Pieter Paulus (1753-1796). Patriot en staatsman (Amsterdam 2004). 26 On De Republikein see Simon Vuyk, ‘De republikein van Jan Konijnenburg (februari 1795 – augustus 1797)’, in: Pieter van Wissing, ed. Stookschriften. Pers en politiek tussen 1780 en 1800 (Nijmegen 2008) 217-230 and René Koekkoek, ‘”Eene waare en vrije republiek”. Jan Konijnenburg, De Republikein en de uitvinding van de moderne republiek’, De Achttiende Eeuw. Documentatieblad Werkgroep Achttiende Eeuw 42 (2010) 236- 259; on De Democraten see Herman de Lange, ‘De politieke actie van een bewuste publieke opinie’, De Gids, 1971, no. 8, 505-515 and Allard de Buijzer, De Democraten, 1796-1798. Een politiek weekblad in roerige tijden (MA-thesis, University of Amsterdam, 2011). 27 On the background of the members of the first and the second National Assembly in general see Oddens, Pioniers in schaduwbeeld, 101-145; for detailed information on individual representatives see A.M. Elias and Paula C.M. Schölvinck, Volksrepresentanten en wetgevers. De politieke elite in de Bataafs-Franse tijd 1796-1810 (Amsterdam 1991). 28 The most recent discussions of the coup d’état of January 1798 are Niek van Sas, Bataafse terreur. De betekenis van 1798 (Nijmegen 2011) and Oddens, Pioniers in schaduwbeeld, 302-317. 29 De Republikein (3 vols., 176 numbers. Amsterdam [1795-1797])I, number 2 (January 30, 1795) 13 (‘Onderzoek, wat eene Republiek zij?’). few years, given rise to extreme conflicts between republicans.30 And in 1799, in the introduction to his Dutch translation of Benjamin Constant’s Des réactions politiques, the distinguished parliamentarian Jacob Hahn once again pointed out that revolutionary politics was largely about words and that it was therefore imperative to use them in an unambiguous way: ‘The power of words over our minds is unbelievably strong; and the more certain words are used, the greater the influence of their meaning is; it is therefore all the more necessary to avoid vagueness and all its attendant perils.’31 Given this contemporary awareness of considerable conceptual confusion, it is little wonder that the Batavian revolutionaries ceaselessly tried to clarify the meaning of key republican political concepts and of republicanism in general. They did so in a great number of political catechisms and political dictionaries, published in the course of the first revolutionary years. Although widely varying in sophistication, these publications all demonstrate a deeply felt need to clarify what the new republican political order was to be about.32 Yet despite all such efforts, it remained extremely difficult to reach a new consensus on many major points. In the remainder of this article, it will be seen what the most crucial areas of republican contestation were. The Unitary versus the Federal Republic After the political structures of the old regime came crashing down in January of 1795, few republican revolutionaries had anything to say in favor of the old republic. It was generally regarded as an outdated ‘old Gothic building’, run by a self-appointed oligarchy and a power- hungry Stadholder, who had together ruled the country on the principles of ‘lust for domination, bad faith, and greed’. The old republic had been utterly lacking in liberty and equality and was little more than ‘a political system of violence’. It was therefore highly unlikely that anything useful could be learned from it in implementing the task at hand: ‘the adoption of a true Republican Constitution’. 33 Such blanket condemnations of the political structure of the old republic tended to include the federalism that had characterized the Seven United Provinces. To many Batavian revolutionaries – and in this they clearly differed from their Patriot predecessors – federalism appeared to be no more than the handmaiden of pre- revolutionary aristocratic domination and was to be avoided at all cost in the future. Greatly reinforcing such views was the fact that more than a few Batavians found the French revolutionary doctrine of ‘unité et indivisibilité’ highly attractive and worth imitating in their own new republican state. Finally, the dynamics of the revolutionary political process itself favored the adoption of the unitary state. While the first National Assembly was not in any formal sense committed to establishing a unitary state when it first met, to many Batavians the creation of a central political platform nevertheless seemed a logical first step in that direction. Indeed, in his speech opening the first session of the new parliament, the respected and prestigious chairman Pieter Paulus emphatically celebrated the meeting of the National

30 De Democraten (81 numbers. Amsterdam 1796-1797) number 37 (January 19, 1797) 269-276 (‘Eenige aanmerkingen over den oorsprong en voordgang van het republicanismus in Europa’). The quotation is on page 274. 31 Van wederwerkingen in den staat (politike réactien), naar het Fransch door J.G.H. Hahn (The Hague 1799) xxviii. 32 E.g. Wabe Kamp, Patriotsche catechismus, der zedenleere, voor de burgeren van het Bataafsch gemeenebest (Amsterdam 1795); Republikeinsch vraagboek, behelzende eene korte uitlegging van de staatsregeling voor het Bataafsche volk, door een Zwolsch burger (Zwolle 1798); Jan Greeven, Beredeneert constitutioneel woordenboek, etc. (Dordrecht, Amsterdam, etc. 1800). From number 29 (December 8, 1796) on, De Democraten also intermittently published a ‘political dictionary’ in its pages. 33 The quotations are from De politieke opmerker (Amsterdam 1795) number 34, 289; De vriend des volks (Middelburg 1796) number 1, 2 and De Republikein, I, number 1, 1 and 12. Assembly as ‘the dawn of unity and indivisibility in the country’s political system’.34 Despite the fact that circumstances thus seemed to favor the establishment of a unitary state, however, and despite even the fact that ‘unity and indivisibility’ was adopted as the basis of all further constitutional discussion in the National Assembly on December 2, 1796, a large group of revolutionaries remained unconvinced of the compatibility of unity and republican liberty.35 Republicans in favor of establishing a unitary state certainly did not lack in powerful arguments to support their case. One of their most prominent spokesmen, from the very start of the revolution, was the tax collector, inventor, enlightened historian and political publicist Cornelis Zillesen. In a seemingly endless stream of publications during the years 1795 and 1796, he kept spelling out a simple and straightforward case for unity and indivisibility.36 Much given to developing his arguments on the basis of general ‘Philosophical Principles’, Zillesen began by pointing out that it was impossible to deny that there could exist only one will in any well-regulated state, just as there could only exist one will in a human body. The introduction of political unity therefore was simply a matter of following the order of nature.37 In a republican state based on popular sovereignty, this meant that a system of representation had to be created in which political power smoothly flowed from the people to its representatives in a central national assembly. Having made this basic point, Zillesen moved on to a discussion of the many practical political advantages of a unitary state. History showed, he insisted, that federal states suffered from an alarming incapacity to defend themselves against external enemies. It was only unity that could ensure military security and success, as the example of ancient Rome made perfectly clear: ‘To what did ancient Rome owe its enormous power? To the fact that it possessed a one and indivisible Republican government’.38 A unitary state, however, had much more to recommend it than just military effectiveness. Whereas in a federation all the parts were solely interested in promoting their own interests, a unitary state was almost by definition geared to the promotion of the general interest of all of its inhabitants. This in turn meant that it generated a love of country in its citizens that was largely unknown in federal states. And was not the love of country the basis of all viable republics?39 With particular reference to the Dutch situation, Zillesen moreover pointed out that the establishment of a unitary state was by far the most effective way to prevent the return of the Stadholder, since the inhabitants of those formerly sovereign provinces where loyalty to the House of Orange was still rampant would easily be outnumbered in a national and unitary system of representation.40 In putting forward his case

34 Dagverhaal, I, 6. For a discussion of revolutionary unitarism see Thomas Poell, The Democratic Paradox. Dutch Revolutionary Struggles over Democratisation and Centralisation (1780-1813) (Utrecht 2007) 61-100. The most recent treatment of the political and intellectual struggle between Dutch unitarism and federalism in the years between 1795 and 1798 may be found in Rutjes, Door gelijkheid gegrepen, 29-67. 35 For the vote of December 2, 1796, see Dagverhaal, IV, 212 and Cornelius Rogge, Geschiedenis der staatsregeling, voor het Bataafsche volk (Amsterdam 1799) 236-241. 36 E.g. Cornelis Zillesen, ‘Antwoord op de vraag der representanten van het volk van Friesland’, in: Verzameling van stukken betreffende het bijeenroepen van eene nationaale conventie. Op uitdrukkelijke last der repraesentanten van het volk van Friesland in het licht gegeeven (Leeuwarden 1795) 1-27; Cornelis Zillesen, Ontwerp hoedanig der Bataaven één en onverdeeld gemeenebest-bestuur, langs grondbeginselen van de rechten der menschheid, vryheid, gelykheid en broederschap dient ingerigt te zijn, etc. (Leiden 1795) 15-22; Cornelis Zillesen, Wysgeerig onderzoek, wegens Neerlands opkomst, bloei, en welvaard; het daarop gevolgd verval, en wat de nog overgeblevene middelen van herstel zijn, etc. (Amsterdam 1796) 257-289; Cornelis Zillesen, Vrije gedagten en aanmerkingen over het ingeleverd ontwerp der constitutie, ter nationaale vergadering (Leiden 1796) 8-14. 37 Zillesen, ‘Antwoord’, 11; Zillesen, Wysgeerig onderzoek, 259-260. 38 Zillesen, ‘Antwoord’, 7. For the same argument see Zillesen, Wysgeerig onderzoek, 267. 39 Zillesen, ‘Antwoord’, 11-12; Zillesen, Wysgeerig onderzoek, 272. 40 Zillesen, ‘Antwoord’, 9. for the strongest possible unity, Zillesen displayed an unmitigated contempt for all possible counterarguments. Sweeping aside centuries of reflection on the proper size of republics, he simply remarked that, as far as he could see, there was no significant difference between small and large republics.41 Commenting upon the Swiss confederation and the recently established United States of America as possible examples of successful federalism, he dismissed them out of hand. Switzerland was a geographically isolated, mountainous country, too poor to be of interest to its neighbors as a possible prey, too undeveloped to engage in significant commerce, and in general an anomaly in the modern world. The new American state only demonstrated that he was right, since it had already needed to provide itself with a very powerful president to counteract the divisions necessarily brought about by the continued existence of thirteen individual states.42 For Zillesen, in short, philosophical reflection, the lessons of history and the observation of contemporary politics all unambiguously pointed in the direction of the unitary state. Zillesen’s uncompromising case for the unitary state was echoed by many, both in parliament and in the political press. Among the more exciting parliamentary debates on the matter of the future shape of the state were those conducted late in 1796, when the members of the National Assembly for the first time received a draft constitution from the Constitutional Committee and had to decide what to do with it. Some of the republicans in favor of the unitary state were so disgusted with what they regarded as the crypto-federalist character of the constitutional draft that they pulled out all the stops. Thus Pieter Vreede, one of the most radical republicans of the entire Batavian period, described it as a disastrous mixture of federal and unitary elements and wondered aloud if the Constitutional Committee had perhaps tried its best to present the National Assembly with the worst possible proposal. He then went on to castigate federalist thought, remarking that separate provinces were no more than ‘hungry Egotists’ and that those in favor of a federalist constitution implicitly also desired ‘a Tyrant; a Stadholder’ and were therefore guilty of ‘criminal love of slavery, and hatred of liberty’.43 Others preferred to eschew such rhetorical extremes and tried to argue the case for the establishment of the unitary state in a more quiet and reasonable manner. Among these, Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninck stood out for his well-considered arguments. In a long parliamentary speech held on November 21, 1796, he praised many aspects of the constitutional proposal, but he also made it clear that it had failed to resolve the matter of unity versus federation in a satisfactory way. Schimmelpenninck had, so he assured his fellow parliamentarians, given the matter deep thought and had in the end reached the conclusion that ‘the general interest of the Dutch people demands that its future Constitution be built on the principle of one single People, and not on the principle of a federation between peoples’.44 The constitution, in other words, should be a contract between individuals, not between separate societies. Having stated this fundamental preference, Schimmelpenninck then spent much of the rest of his speech attempting to allay the fears of the opponents of a unitary state. Their greatest worry, as he saw it, was that the introduction of unity would lead to the creation of an all- powerful central assembly, which would decide on literally everything and would as a result utterly destroy republican liberty. To Schimmelpenninck, such a scenario for a great number of reasons seemed highly unlikely. First of all, he observed that great theorists such as Montesquieu and Rousseau had been perfectly right in arguing that a free republican

41 Ibidem, 16. 42 Ibidem, 12-13; Zillesen, Wysgeerig onderzoek, 287-289. 43 Dagverhaal, III, 731-736. The quotations are on 734-735. 44 Dagverhaal, IV, 45. constitution could not exist or survive in a unitary and extended state with a large population. That argument, however, was irrelevant to the Dutch case, since even after the introduction of political unity, the Batavian republic would still be minute in size and have a relatively small population. He continued by pointing out that the assembly so dreaded by the federalists would not only depend on and be kept in check by popular elections, but would also, should it decide to act in a despotic way, be confronted with a fiercely republican population, ‘for it is the necessary effect of a good commonwealth government to gradually enlighten the national intelligence and to bring into existence an ever increasing republican pride’.45 Liberty would, moreover, also be protected by an independent judiciary, ‘the sheet anchor of true civil liberty and security’.46 Fourthly, Schimmelpenninck remarked that it was erroneous to equate unity with complete centralization: after the introduction of unity, departments and municipalities would still be able to decide for themselves on matters not directly related to the general interest of the country as a whole. What, finally, could be said of the counterexample to all of this provided by the young American republic? Very little indeed, Schimmelpenninck maintained, for not only could this vast state not be compared to ‘our little dot on the Map of the World’, but it was also simply too soon to tell, for it was still highly uncertain that the American republic would survive in its present form.47 To those Batavian republicans who were opposed to the creation of a unitary state, all such arguments remained entirely unconvincing. Analyzing federalist thought from the early years of the Batavian Republic is far from easy, since the term covers an immense variety of opinion, ranging from pleas for almost total provincial independence to arguments for a ‘modified unity’.48 Even a superficial acquaintance with Batavian federalist thought, however, is sufficient to establish that it was far from the unimaginative defense of the old Dutch political system it has sometimes been held to be.49 Indeed, given their tactical disadvantage in the political discussion, the Batavian federalists were forced to come up with highly sophisticated arguments for a new federal republic. Despite their internal disagreements, Batavian federalists shared some basic convictions. The first of these was that the proponents of the unitary state were completely misguided in equating federalism in general with federalism as it had existed in the old Dutch Republic. This elementary intellectual misunderstanding had led them to use federalism as a term of opprobium. That they were remarkably successful in doing so is clear from Herman Vitringa’s 1796 observation that federalism had become a word as feared and loathed in many circles as heresy had been in the middle of the sixteenth century.50 Yet the Batavian federalists kept insisting that while much had been wrong with the old Dutch Republic, there was no reason to throw out the baby with the bathwater. On the contrary, federalism and revolutionary republicanism could very well go together, as both the practical example of America and the writings of Montesquieu and Rousseau amply demonstrated. The Batavian federalists were also largely in agreement about the dangers of overly abstract political argumentation. The ‘philosophical principles’ marshaled in favor of unity by the likes of Cornelis Zillesen might be fine in theory, they pointed out, but would not function in practice, because they ignored historical circumstances.

45 Ibidem, 45. 46 Ibidem, 46. 47 Ibidem, 46-47. 48 An argument for almost complete provincial independence – in this case for Zeeland – may be found in De vriend des volks, no. 42, 345-360; for the term ‘modified unity’(‘gemodificeerde eenheid’) see e.g. Dagverhaal, III, 724 and 756 49 De Wit, De strijd tussen aristocratie en democratie in Nederland, 107-185; C.H.E. de Wit, ‘De Noordelijke Nederlanden in de Bataafse en Franse Tijd 1795-1813’ in: Algemene Geschiedenis der Nederlanden 11 (Weesp 1983) 158-175. 50 Dagverhaal, III, 723. Jacob de Mist, for instance, opposed the introduction of the unitary state on the grounds that it might work for ‘an entirely new People’, but would never work for a people of settled federalist habits.51 This same line of argument was used by the Batavian federalists in pointing out that the French model of ‘unity and indivisibility’ was unsuitable for universal application and should therefore not be introduced in the Batavian republic. Was it not patently absurd, De Mist asked, that a system of government ‘fit for a country of 25 million people, that has been governed by a single head since centuries’ should now be proposed for the Dutch? The third and final point of agreement between the Batavian federalists was, as Schimmelpenninck had correctly observed, their deep distrust of undivided and concentrated political power. This old republican fear surfaced over and over again in the debates about the form the new republican state should take. Johannes Luyken, one of the architects of the first constitutional proposal, was convinced that the introduction of a completely unitary state would eventually result in ‘Eastern Despotism’. 52 Not all federalists used similarly strong language, but most of them undoubtedly agreed with Cornelis de Rhoer that it was a sad fact of experience that ‘power has a natural tendency to expand’ and that ‘substantial power can almost never safely be entrusted to human beings’.53 Virtually all of these themes were already present in the writings of the remarkable federalist republican Joan Hendrik Swildens. In the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Dutch old regime, he flooded the country with federalist writings, just as Cornelis Zillesen was at the same time doing in the unitarist cause.54 By 1795, Swildens was a veteran of the political reform movement. During the Patriot era, he had been one of the architects and adherents of the policy of ‘constitutional restoration’.55 The failure of the Patriot revolt, however, had convinced him of the necessity to go beyond constitutional restoration and to move forward in a radical way. He therefore now explicitly embraced the notion of constitutional renewal.56 Yet this new position by no means implied that the Dutch republican past had suddenly lost its relevance and that an entirely new start should be made. Indeed, Swildens emphatically rejected the view he ascribed to hotheaded revolutionaries that virtually nothing could be learned from the ‘experience of previous times’ and everything exclusively ‘from our own new experience’.57 He repeatedly warned against the seduction of abstract and universal theory and pleaded for political reform grounded in local circumstance and history.58 From this perspective, it was entirely clear to him that the Dutch should not be imitating the French in their constitutional arrangements. Instead, they should adopt a constitution that reflected their special circumstances as a small commercial state with a long history of republican

51 Ibidem, 766. 52 Ibidem, 717. 53 Dagverhaal, IV, 28. 54 [J.H. Swildens], Memorie van zaaken wegens ’s lands constitutie, etc. (Amsterdam, etc. [1795]); [J.H. Swildens], Circulaire missive van eenen vryen Hollandschen burger aan de representanten des volks, etc. (Haarlem, etc. [1795]); [J.H. Swildens], Politiek belang-boek voor dit provisionele tydperk, etc. (Amsterdam 1795); [J.H. Swildens] Zes-daagsche staats-brief over ’s lands hoogste zaak aan den burger Vitringa, etc. (Amsterdam 1796). On Swildens see W.B.S. Boeles, De patriot J.H. Swildens. Zijn arbeid ter volksverlichting geschetst (Leeuwarden 1884); Barry J. Hake, ‘Between patriotism and nationalism: Johan Hendrik Swildens and the 'pedagogy of the patriotic virtues’ in the United Dutch Provinces during the 1780s and 1790s’, History of Education 33 (2004) 11-38; Van Sas, Metamorfose van Nederland, 281-284. 55 Swildens is generally held to have been one of the authors of the important Patriot publication Grondwettige herstelling van Nederlands staatswezen, zo voor het algemeen bondgenootschap, als voor het bestuur van elke byzondere provincie, etc. (2 vols. Amsterdam, 1784-1786). On this work see Leeb, Ideological Origins of the Batavian Revolution, 185-197. 56 [Swildens], Circulaire missive, 59. 57 [Swildens], Politiek belang-boek, 145. 58 E.g. Ibidem, 133. freedom. That France had little choice but to introduce a unitary republic was quite evident to Swildens. France was, first of all, a very large country that could only by means of a strong central authority prevent itself from being torn apart by political strife. Perhaps even more important was the fact that France was a great military power and therefore, as a republic, needed ‘all the military advantages of the most concentrated and powerful monarchy’. Given its size and military role and ambition, the only way for France to survive as a republic, in other words, was to become a ‘monarchized republic’: a unitary state with relatively little political participation of the citizens and therefore relatively little liberty.59 Since he was highly familiar with the miserable failure of previous extended republics, particularly that of Rome (‘France’s mirror’), Swildens had grave doubts about the viability of the French republican experiment.60 He had no doubts at all about the undesirability of following the French model of ‘unity and indivisibility’ in the Batavian republic. There was not a single good reason why the Dutch should turn themselves into a ‘monarchized republic’ and thus pave the way for the eventual introduction of monarchy itself. On the contrary, it was entirely obvious to Swildens that ‘provincial sovereignties and therefore a federal constitution are absolutely necessary for the continued existence and prosperity of our republic’.61 To prove this fundamental point, he adduced an almost endless number of arguments, ranging from the need of a commercial country for small administrative units to the salutary influence of a federalist structure on the prevention of wars of aggression.62 His most fundamental point, however, concerned the nature of republican government. The defining essence of a republic, Swildens maintained, was that it was a form of government in which citizens governed themselves, if necessary through representatives closely bound to their wishes. The introduction of a sizeable unitary state with elected representatives far removed from the citizen and largely free to act as they pleased would therefore spell the death of republican liberty.63 In such a state, the expression ‘I govern myself’ would inevitably lose all meaning.64 Although he freely used the vocabulary of inalienable popular sovereignty and considered himself to be a follower of Richard Price, Swildens’ ideas about what constituted a proper republic, with their emphasis on smallness and on the necessity of close ties between rulers and ruled, were evidently rooted in pre-revolutionary republican thought.65 Suspicious as he remained of the notion of an extended republic, the example of the new American federalist republic meant very little to him. Many other federalists, however, freely used the American case to reject the introduction French ‘unity and indivisibility’ in the Batavian republic.66 Thus in 1795, well before the first National Assembly convened, Jan Willem van Sonsbeeck reminded Batavian republicans ‘that in these most enlightened times of the world (…) Franklin and Washington have not hesitated to divide their liberated and sovereign people into independent provinces and to give each of these quasi-sovereign powers’.67 Without doubt the

59 Ibidem, 148 and [Swildens], Memorie van zaaken, 24-25. 60 [Swildens], Memorie van zaaken, 24. 61 [Swildens], Zes-daagsche staats-brief, 4. 62 Ibidem, 6-49. 63 Ibidem, 14-16 and 28-30. 64 Ibidem, 15. 65 On Price see e.g. [Swildens], Politiek belang-boek, 173-182 66 The best general study of the impact of the American revolution on Dutch late eighteenth-century politics and political thought still is Jan Willem Schulte Nordholt, The Dutch Republic and American Independence (Chapel Hill and London 1982). 67 [J.W. van Sonsbeeck], Verhandeling over het nadeel eener nationaale conventie en daar uit voortspruitende eenheid van bestuur voor de Nederlandsche Republiek (s.l., [1795]) 48. On this intriguing pamphlet see Arno Neele, De ontdekking van het Zeeuwse platteland. Culturele verhoudingen tussen stad en platteland in Zeeland 1750-1850 (PhD Dissertation, University of Utrecht, 2011) 109-110. most knowledgeable commentator on the relevance of American federalist republicanism was the enlightened historian and Overijssel statesman Gerhard Dumbar.68 Since well before the Batavian revolution, he had been making an effort to acquaint the Dutch with both American constitutional documents and the Federalist Papers.69 After 1795, he so deeply disapproved of the gradual political drift towards the unitary state that he refused to take a seat in parliament. Not even after the formal introduction of the principle of unity in the constitution of 1798 did Dumbar, by then ‘the country’s most notorious federalist’, give up his campaign.70 Shortly before his death in 1802, he exhorted his compatriots to mend their political ways in one last pamphlet against the unitary state.71 His basic argument in this last tract was clear and simple: recent history showed that a unitary state, regardless of its size, was essentially incompatible with ‘the true goals of Republican Government’, the preservation of popular liberty being the first of these.72 This was the reason why America was still a stable and free republic, whereas Europe since the introduction of French- sponsored unity had seen nothing but instability and was therefore now facing the threat of Bonapartist dictatorship.73 But what exactly was it that, according to Dumbar, made a federal system so much better suited to protect republican liberty than a unitary one? Firmly dismissing Schimmelpenninck’s argument that the dangerous accumulation of political power in a unitary state could be prevented through all sorts of constitutional mechanisms and guarantees, Dumbar insisted over and over again that ‘he who is master of the Treasury and of the Army, is master of the Country’.74 The preservation of republican liberty was not primarily a matter of paper constitutions, but a matter of the distribution of real, physical political power. The true importance of federalism, as the Americans had understood so well, was to be found in the fact that it spread financial and military power over several quasi- independent centers and thereby made it impossible for any single authority to extinguish liberty. Given the fundamental nature of federalist arguments such as these, but also those of Swildens and many others, it is quite evident that the Batavian republicans could find very little common ground on the future organization of their republican state and that the choice between federalism and unity could not be decided on the basis of intellectual debate. Neither party relented. It is therefore less than surprising that, in the end, the unitary republic had to be introduced by force. Representative Democracy and Republican Participation Unable as they were to reach agreement on the shape of their future republican state, the Batavian republicans also ceaselessly argued about the most desirable republican form of government. This second great republican debate had already got off to a flying conceptual start in the Patriot era. During the 1780s, when their criticism of both the Stadholderate and

68 On Dumbar see G.J. Mecking, ‘Mr. Gerhard Dumbar, een Verlicht Historicus?’, Overijsselsche Historische Bijdragen, 100 (1985) 167-193 and Marie-Anne van Wijnen, ‘”Eenheid naar buiten, federalisme naar binnen”. Gerhard Dumbar (1743-1802), pleitbezorger van de Amerikaanse constitutie’, Overijsselsche Historische Bijdragen, 104 (1989) 89-129. 69Gerhard Dumbar, De oude en nieuwe constitutie der Vereenigde Staten van Amerika uit de beste schriften in haare gronden ontvouwd (3 vols. Amsterdam, 1793-1796). For an excellent analysis of this work see Joris Oddens, ‘No Extended Sphere: The Batavian Understanding of the American Constitution and the Problem of Faction’, Early American Studies. An Interdisciplinary Journal, 10 (2012) 382-414. 70 Oddens, ‘No Extended Sphere’, 392. 71 [Gerhard Dumbar], Betoog, dat eene onverdeelde regeeringsvorm, in een gemeene-best, uit haren eigen aart, onbestendig en voor de vrijheid van den staat gevaarlijk zijn moet (Amsterdam, etc., [1801]). 72 Ibidem, 58. 73 Ibidem, 8. 74 Ibidem, 41, 44, 63. the regents grew more and more vehement, many Patriots had given up the old notion of mixed government that had for so long served as a legitimation of the Dutch political system. In its stead, they embraced the Enlightenment concept of inalienable popular sovereignty. Even the most radical Patriots, however, conceded that although the people remained sovereign, it had to be governed (or govern itself) through the mechanism of representation. What the Patriots therefore ended up doing was to redefine a legitimate republic as a ‘democracy by representation’.75 This momentous conceptual shift did not, however, immediately bring them to give much thought to the nature of representation. Since the Patriots still took the federal structure of the Dutch Republic for granted, they simply presumed that close ties between the citizens and their representatives would exist under the new system and that ‘Government and the People’ would ‘almost be one and the same body’.76 It was not until after the fall of the old regime in 1795 that many of the republican revolutionaries began to think deeply about the implications of the concept of democratic representation that had so enthusiastically been adopted during the Patriot era. Indeed, from the moment discussions about the election of a single National Assembly started, representation took political center stage.77 The ensuing discussion was extremely complex. Where in the American constitutional debates of the late eighteenth century the Anti- Federalists generally seem to have favored a ‘mandate’ or ‘actual’ theory of representation and the Federalists an ‘independence’ or ‘virtual’ theory of representation, no such neat and clear-cut division emerged in the Batavian debates.78 The key distinction there, if there was any single one, seems to have been between those republicans who, under the new system of democratic representation, wished to save as much as possible of the classical republican ideal of the permanent participation of the citizen in politics and those who increasingly thought that republican liberty could be guaranteed sufficiently through a system of virtual representation and individual rights. Such preferences, however, did not coincide with the choice for a federal or a unitary state. Republicans who stressed the need for citizen participation and therefore tended to adopt a ‘mandate’ theory of representation, for instance, could be found among both ultra-federalists and radical unitarissen. Thus Joan Hendrik Swildens, whom we have already met as a prominent federalist theorist, not only was convinced that smallness of scale was crucial to the survival of republican liberty, but also that representatives should always remain bound to the citizens who had elected them. A republic should be a pyramid of ‘mandate relationships’ and should never be governed by ‘an independent Collective Body’. 79 Yet in the same first year of the Batavian revolution that the federalist Swildens was warning his fellow republicans not to give away all their political power to independent representatives, Bernardus Bosch, a well-known adherent of the principle of unity and indivisibility, was doing exactly the same. It was the hallmark of a true

75 Klein, Patriots Republikanisme; John Dunn, Setting the People Free. The Story of Democracy (London 2005) 84-87; Velema, Republicans, 139-157. For the actual use of the term ‘Democratie by Representatie’ see, e.g. Ontwerp om de Republiek door eene heilzaame vereeniging der belangen van regent en burger, van binnen gelukkig, en van buiten gedugt te maken (Leiden 1785) 46. 76 Ontwerp, 56. 77 For general discussions of political theories of representation see Hanna Fenichel Pitkin, The Concept of Representation (Berkeley, etc. 1967); Bernard Manin, The Principles of Representative Government (Cambridge 1997); Nadia Urbinati, Representative Democracy: Principles and Genealogy (Chicago and London 2006); Ian Shapiro, Susan C. Stokes, Elisabeth Jean Wood, and Alexander S. Kirshner, ed. Political Representation (Cambridge 2009). For recent discussions of the concept of representation in the Batavian republic see Rutjes, Door gelijkheid gegrepen, 69-120 and Oddens, Pioniers in schaduwbeeld, passim. 78 A comparison between the American and the Dutch cases may be found in Wyger R.E. Velema, ‘Conversations with the Classics. Ancient Political Virtue and Two Modern Revolutions’, Early American Studies. An Interdisciplinary Journal, 10 (2012) 415-438. 79 [Swildens], Zes-daagsche staats-brief, 28-30. republic, he claimed, that everybody participated in the process of governing and being governed. This ancient ideal could, under a system of representation, only be realized if all citizens constantly ‘judged, sanctioned or rejected’ the conduct of their delegates. Should they fail to protect their own supreme power in this way, the consequences would be truly dreadful, ‘because if you lose your sovereignty, in which your moral being as a human consists, you will cease to be human altogether and will once again become an animal, driven by the stick of its master’.80 Perhaps the most fundamental debates on the issue of representation were conducted in the National Assembly itself. Until the adoption of the first constitution in 1798, this body had a double status: it operated both as a Constituante and as a regular legislative assembly, attending to the day to day business of politics. In both of these capacities, it could be said to ‘represent’ the people. But what, according to the revolutionary parliamentarians, did this exactly mean? To some radical republican members of the National Assembly, it was quite clear that they had or should have very little independence from the electorate. Coert Lambertus van Beyma, for instance, who loved to quote the works of Rousseau to his fellow representatives, repeatedly explained that although representation, unknown to the glorious ancients, had become a necessity in the large states of the modern world, it was nonetheless undeniably ‘a diminution of original liberty.’ It was therefore absolutely necessary that the citizens exercised the greatest possible influence over those they had elected to represent them. Representatives were to be viewed as the administrators of the people, not as its curators or wardens.81 Jacob Hahn, another avid reader of Rousseau, completely agreed with this evaluation of the proper role of representatives and even went so far as to – unsuccessfully - propose the abolition of the word itself.82 On the other side of the spectrum of opinion, there were those who embraced a theory of representation reminiscent of the work of Sieyes: they maintained that, although the people should of course elect its representatives, these should thereafter largely be allowed to operate in independence.83 This was the difference between a direct democracy and the modern notion of representative democracy. As Jacob van Manen put it in February of 1797: ‘In a Representative Democracy the Legislative Power is what the People is in a direct Democracy’.84 These opposed views of the meaning of the concept of representation reflected an underlying difference of opinion regarding the nature of republican government. Those stressing the need for a permanent role of the people in politics regarded political participation as a goal in itself, were convinced that true republican liberty consisted in self-government of the people, and therefore insisted that this ideal should be approached as much as possible under the system of representation which they admitted had become a necessity in modern times. The adherents of the independence theory of representation, on the other hand, tended not to regard self-government as a moral and political goal in itself, but as a means better to protect the civil liberty of the citizen. This point of view was perhaps best summed up by Schimmelpenninck, that incarnation of republican moderation, when he observed in 1799, well after the sharpest debates had

80 [Bernardus Bosch], Over de constitutie, constitutioneele magten en regeringsvorm. Toepasselyk op, en voor ons vaderland (Amsterdam 1795). The quotations are on 103 and 109. 81 Dagverhaal, IV, 76 and VIII, 277. 82 Dagverhaal, IV, 651. The Dutch reception of Rousseau is discussed in Walter Gobbers, Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Holland. Een onderzoek naar de invloed van de mens en het werk (ca. 1760 – ca. 1810) (Gent 1963). 83 For Sieyes’ concept of representation see Keith Michael Baker, ‘Representation redefined’, in: Keith Michael Baker, Inventing the French Revolution. Essays on French Political Culture in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge 1990) 224-251 and William H. Sewell, Jr. A Rhetoric of Bourgeois Revolution. The Abbé Sieyes and What is the Third Estate (Durham and London 1994). There is no thorough study of Sieyes’ impact in the Netherlands, but see Rutjes, Door gelijkheid gegrepen, 80 en Oddens, Pioniers in schaduwbeeld, passim. 84 Ibidem, 932. subsided, ‘that civil liberty is the true liberty, the ultimate goal of society, and that the greatest value of political liberty lies in its protection of civil liberty’.85 Many representatives in parliament hovered somewhere between these two alternative visions of republican government. Others gradually moved from one view to the other. Schimmelpenninck, to give but a single example, started his career with a classical republican defense of participatory politics, but, after many years of observing the revolutionary political scene, in the end concluded that what mattered most was the ‘quiet, peaceful enjoyment of an ordered society’ where ‘individual liberty and domestic security’ prevailed.86 Unsurprisingly, the sharpest confrontations between the different conceptions of representation and republican government took place at those moments when key decisions on the future constitutional order had to be made. One such moment came during the summer of 1797, when the Dutch were about to vote for the first time on a constitutional proposal. Endless debates in the National Assembly had resulted in an outrageously long and extremely complex constitutional document, containing no fewer than 918 articles.87 Radical republicans in parliament had for many months opposed some of the main features of this proposed constitution. Since they had lost that battle, they now decided to appeal to the voters and published a pamphlet that has become known as the ‘Manifesto of the Twelve Apostles’.88 In sharp contrast to the indecent length of the constitutional proposal, the twelve parliamentarians - claiming to be ‘true Republicans’, ‘lovers of the Fatherland ’ and ‘supporters of a well-ordered Liberty’- presented the public with a short and succinct list of objections, all intended to demonstrate that adoption of the proposal would spell the end of true republican government. As was to be expected, given the development of political debate over the nature of republican government during the previous two years, their main point was that the proposal unnecessarily and disastrously curtailed the active involvement of the citizen in politics. By severely limiting the role of the primary assemblies in the electoral process and thus destroying the tie between voter and representative, the twelve parliamentarians claimed, the proposed constitution was cutting the heart out of the republican system. Instead of introducing popular self-government through representation, it would subjugate the people by imposing ‘an aristocratic yoke, upholstered in soft velvet’.89 Everything else also clearly pointed in that direction. Playing on old republican fears, the Manifesto pointed out that the constitutional proposal gave a monstrous amount of uncontrolled power, ‘far exceeding that of the previous Stadholders’, to the executive and thus made it impossible ‘to protect the abused citizen against the violence of the Executive Power’.90 Indeed, nowhere in the proposal was the nation assured of any effective control over ‘those who are vested with power.’91 To make things even worse, the proposed constitution also made constitutional

85 Schimmelpenninck, Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninck, I, 205. 86 Ibidem, 51. On Schimmelpennincks early political thought see S.R.E. Klein, ‘Republikanisme en patriottisme. Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninck en de klassieke wortels van het republikeinse denken (1784-1785)’, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 106 (1993) 179-207. 87 Ontwerp van constitutie voor het Bataafsche volk, door de nationale vergadering ter goed- of afkeuring aan het zelve volk voorgedragen (The Hague 1797). The constitution was rejected by an overwhelming majority of the voters: 108.761 against 27.955. L. de Gou, ed. Het ontwerp van constitutie van 1797. De behandeling van het plan van constitutie in de nationale vergadering. Met een facsimile uitgave van het ontwerp van constitutie (3 vols. The Hague 1983-1985)I, xl-xliv and II, 580. 88 Beoordeling van het ontwerp van constitutie voor het Bataefsche volk, door de nationale vergadering ter goed of afkeuring aen hetzelve volk voorgedragen, door eenige burgers, zijnde repraesentanten van het volk van Nederland (Leiden 1797). 89 Ibidem, 2-4. 90 Ibidem, 5 and 7-8. 91 Ibidem, 10-11. revision, absolutely indispensable to reorganize matters ‘on a more Republican basis’, practically impossible.92 In a passage that revealed how strongly these parliamentarians desired to combine the modern system of representation with the ancient notion of republican participation, the Manifesto finally thus summed up the disastrous consequences of the proposed constitution: ‘As long as it does not participate in politics, the nation will not be brought to great deeds. The minds will always remain in that black pit where dependence on the will of others has thrown them. The hearts will not feel the noble glow of patriotism for something they do not participate in. The citizens will once again be strangers in their own Fatherland; there will be no public spirit; every member of society will remain the same old beast of burden (…) the Batavians will not become Greeks or Romans, whose disinterested virtue and self-sacrifice for the common good of the Fatherland after so many centuries still shine brightly in our eyes’.93 Some six months later, with discussions over a second constitutional proposal firmly deadlocked and speculation about a coup d’état already rife, the radical republican parliamentarians once again emphatically made it clear what exactly it was that they wanted. Forty-three of them put their signature under a short publication entitled ‘To the Batavian nation’94 Presenting themselves as ‘Republicans who love liberty’, they demanded the introduction of an ‘unadulterated popular government by representation’, which would leave room for neither anarchy, nor aristocracy and oppression.95 This implied, above all, that the people should have a ‘constant influence on its administrators’. Not only should the citizens elect their representatives, but they should also subsequently keep a close eye on them. Should the representatives display undesirable behavior, the primary assemblies – the true seat of the will of the people - should be allowed to intervene, if necessary even without authorization from the legislative assembly.96 Needless to say, this group of parliamentarians also insisted that the executive power be kept firmly under control.97 Shortly after the appearance of this programmatic publication, in January of 1798, the radical republicans seized power by forcibly removing a substantial number of their political opponents from the National Assembly. Things thereafter moved very quickly. Only a few months later, in April of 1798, a new constitutional proposal was submitted to the popular vote and adopted with an enormous majority.98 The first Dutch constitution was a fact. Given its long pre-history, it inevitably was a somewhat hybrid document. It contained elements from the previous and rejected Dutch constitutional proposal and also clearly showed the influence of the various French revolutionary constitutions. In giving a much larger role to the primary assemblies than the previous constitutional proposal had done, in defining the electorate very broadly, in curtailing the power of the executive, and in establishing a clear procedure for constitutional revision by the people, however, it nonetheless represented a major victory for the radical vision of republican liberty.99 To ascribe this to the influence of Rousseau, as has been done in the past, is less than convincing, because much too simple. Most radical Dutch republicans

92 Ibidem, 13-14. 93 Ibidem, 9-10. 94 Rogge, Geschiedenis der staatsregeling, 473-480, also printed in L. de Gou, De Staatsregeling van 1798. Bronnen voor de totstandkoming (2 vols. The Hague 1988-1990) I, 574-577. 95 Rogge, Geschiedenis der staatsregeling, 474 and 477. 96 Ibidem, 477-478. 97 Ibidem, 479. 98 For the story of the hectic first half of the year 1798 see Oddens, Pioniers in schaduwbeeld, 319-362. 99 The text of the constitution of 1798 may be found in Joost Rosendaal, ed. Staatsregeling voor het Bataafsche volk 1798. De eerste grondwet van Nederland (Nijmegen 2005). did not accept Rousseau’s rejection of the principle of representation.100 The explanation lies elsewhere. It must, as we have seen, be sought in the creative ways in which many Dutch republicans tried to combine ancient and modern liberty. Creating Virtuous Republicans The debates on federalism versus unity and on the proper interpretation of the concept of representation both powerfully suggest that the early years of the Batavian revolution did not witness the sudden birth of modern liberal democracy. Instead, they demonstrate the extent to which the Batavian revolutionaries were still indebted to older republican traditions and concepts and the ways in which they tried to incorporate these into their new constitutional order. That such was indeed the case becomes even clearer when we turn our attention from these important institutional themes to the fundamental contemporary debates on the preconditions for the existence of a free republic. It is in these debates that the Batavians’ continued indebtedness to the classical and early modern concept of republican virtue is fully revealed. Indeed, perhaps the single most important question the Batavian revolutionaries wrestled with during the early years of their revolution was how to create and maintain the virtue they deemed indispensable for the survival of their republican experiment. To understand why this question became so crucially important, it is necessary to take two factors into account. The first of these is the eighteenth-century revival and refinement of the ultimately classical notion that republican liberty rests on the willingness of all citizens to sacrifice their personal interest to the common good. It had, of course, been Montesquieu who had given this ancient piece of political wisdom a new lease of life in his De l’Esprit des Lois of 1748, by emphatically stating that ‘la vertu’ was the principle of republican government.101 The Dutch wholeheartedly agreed and endlessly cited him on this point.102 It was a self- evident truth to them that, as Bernardus Bosch put it in 1792, ‘liberty and virtue are most intimately related: they provide each other with strength and the fall of the one will invariably bring about the fall of the other’.103 The problem was – and this brings us to the second factor – that the eighteenth-century Dutch had also convinced themselves that republican virtue had almost completely disappeared from their country. During the second half of the century, they had gradually reached the conclusion that the moral state of the nation was extremely bleak. The ultimate expression of this widespread conviction was penned by IJsbrand van Hamelsveld in 1791. In The Morals and Manners of the Dutch Nation at the End of the Eighteenth Century, he tried to demonstrate that luxury and corruption had brought the Republic to the brink of disaster. Van Hamelsveld was convinced that the virtues which had made the seventeenth-century Dutch into a great and free republican nation were now almost extinct and that self-interest had superseded the republican esprit publique of former days. The prospects for the survival of liberty were almost nil: ‘People corrupted by luxury and obsessed with their self-interest are

100 Klaus F. Bauer, Der franzözische Einfluss auf die Batavische und die Helvetische Verfassung des Jahres 1798. Ein Beitrag zur französischen Verfassungsgeschichte (s.l. 1962) 38. 101 Roger Caillois, ed. Montesquieu. Oeuvres complètes (2 vols. Paris 1976-1979)II, 250-261 (De l’Esprit des Lois, Book III). 102 On the Dutch reception of Montesquieu before the Batavian revolution see Velema, Republicans, 93-114. For post-1795 references to Montesquieu on the necessity of virtue in republics see e.g. De nieuwe spectator met de bril, number 22 (July 11, 1795) 172; De Democraten, number 20 (October 27, 1796) 158; De constitutioneele vlieg, number 13 (July 31, 1798) 113-114. 103 [Bernardus Bosch], De leerzame praat-al (3 vols. Amsterdam, 1791-1793) II, 233. unable to maintain noble liberty, while they have lost their own worth’.104 In this atmosphere of near desperation about the republican moeurs of the nation, even the most traditional tenets of Dutch republicanism began to be questioned. Thus it was during these last decades of the eighteenth century that, apparently for the very first time, doubts arose about the compatibility of commerce and republican liberty. Whereas in the early 1770s Montesquieu’s Dutch translator Dirk Hoola van Nooten had still contemptuously rejected the notion that ‘commerce corrupts pure moeurs’, many leading commentators now began to acknowledge that there might be more than a kernel of truth to this observation.105 Samuel Wiselius, one of the more prominent late eighteenth-century Dutch republican theorists, in 1793 observed ‘that a people which seeks its highest good in earning money, that a country whose only pillar of support is commerce, must become more bestial by the day and will in the end only be fit to patiently endure the harshest yoke of slavery’.106 A few years later Willem Ockerse, who was to become one of the architects of the constitution of 1798, deplored the pernicious influence of commerce on the national character of the Dutch. It was a great misfortune, he remarked, that nature had seen to it that the Dutch could not make a living from ‘quiet and virtuous agriculture’, but were instead forced to engage in ‘chaotic and crafty commerce’. The resulting spirit of commerce had greatly increased the pursuit of self-interest among the Dutch, had made them indifferent to all things ‘in which they have no direct interest’ and had in the end completely corrupted them. Indeed, it could not be doubted that the spirit of commerce was to be held responsible for the fact that the Dutch were now ‘addicted to monetary gain, without resilience, uninterested in the common good, devoid of patriotic fervor, without courage, without unity, the prey of their enemies, the laughing stock of their allies, and on the brink of their ruin.’107 Yet although the Batavian revolutionaries made an effort to redress the economic balance between commerce and agriculture, they realized and accepted that very little could be done against the predominantly commercial nature of Dutch society.108 They therefore concentrated on finding ways in which the self-interest inevitably generated by commerce could be tamed and republican virtue could be revived within modern commercial society. The first of these, of course, was the introduction of political liberty itself. During the Patriot era it had already frequently been pointed that the introduction of true republican liberty was the main road to the restoration of national virtue. As the authors of Constitutional Restoration observed in 1784: ‘The larger the number of those participating in government, either as representatives or as represented, the more each citizen will identify with the general interest and the greater therefore will Patriotism, the soul of Republican Government, become’.109 Such was also, as we have seen, the view of most Batavian revolutionaries. Schimmelpenninck expected the

104 Van Hamelsveld, De zedelijke toestand der Nederlandsche natie, 404. On Van Hamelsveld see Van Sas, Metamorfose van Nederland, 255-263. 105 Caillois, ed. Montsquieu. Oeuvres complètes, II, 585 (De l’Esprit des Lois, Book XX, Chapter 2). On Hoola van Nooten see Velema, Republicans, 93-114. The tension between virtue and commerce in early modern republican thought is discussed in Pocock, Virtue, Commerce, and History. For earlier Dutch commercial republicanism see Arthur Weststeijn, Commercial Republicanism in the Dutch Golden Age. The Political Thought of Johan & Pieter de la Court (Leiden and Boston 2012). 106 Samuel Iperuszoon Wiselius, De staatkundige verlichting der Nederlanderen, in een wijsgeerig-historisch tafereel geschetst (Second printing. Brussels, 1828) 337. 107 W.A. Ockerse, Ontwerp tot eene algemeene characterkunde (3 vols. Utrecht 1788-1797)III, 136-140. On Ockerse see Johanna Stouten, Willem Anthonie Ockerse (1760-1826). Leven en werk (Amsterdam and Maarssen 1982). 108 On the rehabilitation of agriculture during the Batavian revolution see Rutjes, Door gelijkheid gegrepen, 139- 145. 109 Grondwettige herstelling, I, 443. introduction of free political institutions to restore a widespread sense of ‘republican pride’ and more radical republicans even hoped for a full-blown revival of the ‘disinterested virtue and self-sacrifice for the common good of the Fatherland’ that had been such a defining characteristic of the ancient Greek and Roman republicans.110 Given the existence of different views on the nature of republican government, there were also different scenarios for the political restoration of virtue. Republicans who embraced an independence theory of representation tended to emphasize the need for virtue in the representatives and to regard the electoral process primarily as a way to select a virtuous elite. Once in place, this new political elite would, by its example, in turn inspire virtue in the larger population. This scenario gave rise to an extensive literature on the qualities desirable in the new members of parliament. G.C.C. Vatebender, for instance, in 1795 devoted his farewell address as rector of the Latin school in Gouda to this topic. The qualities of a representative of the people, he insisted, should far exceed those of the average citizen and should come as close as possible to human perfection. Over and above the qualities that every good citizen should possess, a representative of the people should also be a shining example of virtue, a deeply learned man and a truly noble and elevated soul. Only through such rare characteristics would he be able to equal the heroic defense of liberty and country that the Roman senate had shown at its best moments and would he, in his hour of death, be able to say to the Fatherland: ‘I have lived only for you’.111 To those republicans who emphasized the permanent participation of the people in politics such views of course smacked of the much dreaded ‘elective aristocracy’. In their scenario, the restoration of virtue could not be achieved through the exemplary role of an elite of representatives, but only through the political activities of the citizens themselves. They therefore stressed the immense importance of grass-root politics, either in the many popular political societies that had sprung up after 1795 or in the primary assemblies. Pieter Vreede even went so far as to propose a synthesis of these two forms. In the National Assembly, he advocated the institution of ‘Constitutional Popular Societies’ in which the people would meet on a weekly or monthly basis to discuss public affairs. Such gatherings would be ‘Schools, where the true interests of the Country are taught, where the minds are enlightened and the hearts awakened. They would be the repositories of Liberty’.112 Although they were somewhat more cautious than Vreede and carefully eschewed any suggestion that they were advocating an imperium in imperio, the editors of the influential De Democraten fully agreed with his idea that national virtue could only be politically revived at the grass- root level and that both popular societies and primary assemblies needed to play a crucial role in this process.113 It soon became painfully apparent, however, that neither scenario for the political restoration of virtue immediately delivered the desired results. Instead of harmoniously cooperating in a virtuous manner, the new members of parliament disagreed on almost all major points and in the eyes of many threatened the very survival of the new republic with their factious behavior.114 The Batavian citizens did not seem to be doing much better. In 1797, De Republikein unfavorably compared their virtue with that of the ancient Romans and deeply deplored the continued unwillingness of the Batavians to sacrifice their

110 See above, note 45 and 93. On the importance of ancient republican politics during the Batavian revolution see Wyger R.E. Velema, Omstreden Oudheid. De Nederlandse achttiende eeuw en de klassieke politiek (Amsterdam 2010). 111 G.C.C. Vatebender, Redevoering over het caracter, de kundigheden en vereischte zielsgesteldheid van eenen waardigen vertegenwoordiger des volks, etc. (Gouda 1796). 112 Dagverhaal, VI, 117. 113 De Democraten, number 7 (August 4, 1796) and number 13 (September 8, 1796). 114 While most Batavian revolutionaries, following the mainstream of early modern republican thought, regarded political party and faction as almost indistinguishable and intrinsically evil phenomena, it is nonetheless clear in hindsight that the Batavian revolution saw the formation of rudimentary political parties. For a thorough discussion of this topic see Oddens, Pioniers in schaduwbeeld, 195-236. self-interest for the common good, even now that they were free.115 A year later an anonymous pamphleteer went to the heart of the matter. It was unrealistic, he pointed out, to suppose that political liberty in and by itself would lead to the restoration of virtue. ‘Political and moral enlightenment should proceed together’, he observed, ‘since the one without the other is extremely dangerous and leads to glaring injustice and the most monstrous excesses’.116 Many Batavian republicans acknowledged the truth of this observation and had indeed done so all along. Having discussed the moral decline of the nation for decades, they were deeply aware that, crucially important as it was, the institutional establishment of political liberty by itself was insufficient to revive republican virtue. To create the virtuous republicans needed for the survival of their republican experiment, they had therefore, from the very start of the Batavian revolution, also embarked on a massive program of civic education. This Batavian program of civic education drew its inspiration from a variety of sources. It was deeply indebted to the example of the ancient Greek and Roman republics, it looked with admiration at the cultural initiatives of the new French republic, and it shared the general Enlightenment confidence in the ability of education to improve mankind.117 Batavian civic education was intended to instill in all Dutch citizens the conviction that the maintenance of republican liberty was the highest societal goal, since ‘without such a general conviction, without the passion and zeal it inspires in the people, every republican Constitution, no matter how perfect, will in time fall prey to vices that can never be eradicated by the laws alone’.118 There were a great many ways to inculcate this fundamental truth in the citizenry. It could be done through civic festivals, through the formation of citizen militias, and finally and most importantly through educational reform that would result in the widespread dissemination of the basic principles of republicanism. The need for the institution of civic festivals had already been felt by many Dutch reformers even before the Batavian revolution broke out.119 One of the reasons for the dismal state of Dutch morals and manners, Van Hamelsveld wrote in 1791, was the absence of such public festivals as ‘the wisdom of the Ancients established in all countries with a Republican form of government’. This lack of civic celebrations had, he was certain, significantly contributed to the almost total disappearance of a sense of common purpose from the country.120 The Batavian revolutionaries agreed and regarded civic festivals as one of the most direct and accessible ways to spread the republican message. Without spectacular public festivals that appealed above all to the senses, De Republikein wrote in 1796, ‘the permanence of republican convictions is chimerical’.121 Willem Ockerse was of the same opinion and returned to the theme of the necessity of civic festivals over and over again. In his fascinating study of Dutch national character, the third and last volume of which was published in 1797, he deeply regretted the fact that the country had no tradition of ‘republican civic festivals’ and added that it was to hoped ‘for the virtue and the character of the people’

115 De Republikein, III, number 157, 369-371. 116 Tafreel van de zeden, opvoeding, geleerdheid, smaak, en verlichting, in het voormalig gewest van Holland, aan het einde der agttiende eeuw. Eene Bijdrage tot de Hervorming, van Opvoeding en Schoolwezen, in de Bataafsche Republiek. Door een cosmopoliet (Amsterdam 1798) 113. 117 The most comprehensive treatment of Batavian civic education so far is Jourdan, La Révolution Batave entre la France et l’Amérique, 267-434. 118 De Republikein, I, number 8, 67. 119 A pioneering work on this topic is Frans Grijzenhout, Feesten voor het Vaderland. Patriotse en Bataafse feesten 1780-1806 (Zwolle 1989). The classic study for France is, of course, M. Ozouf, La fète révolutionnaire 1789-1799 (Paris 1976). 120 Van Hamelsveld, De zedelijke toestand der Nederlandsche natie, 336-337. 121 De Republikein, I, number 8, 72. that the new constitution would remedy this situation. 122 It did. In the constitution of 1798 it was determined that ‘there will be National Festivals to commemorate the Batavian Revolution and other noteworthy events on a yearly basis, and also to increase fraternity among the citizens and to bind them to the Constitution, the Laws, the Fatherland and Liberty.’123 It was obvious to most Batavian republicans, however, that the sensory introduction to the blessings of republican virtue provided by civic festivals was far from sufficient. To create a veritable sense of virtuous independence in all citizens, they deemed it necessary to resort to an old republican nostrum: citizen armament. That the armed and therefore independent citizen was to be considered of vital importance to the survival of free republics was a truth that had already been endlessly repeated by the Patriot reformers of the 1780s. Joan Derk van der Capellen tot den Pol, their leading spokesmen and the author of the famous pamphlet To the People of the Netherlands of 1781, had insisted that ‘liberty and an unarmed nation are contradictions’ and had been the great inspirer of the Patriot citizen militias.124 After 1795, the Batavian republicans took up this Patriot heritage and in the end saw to it that the constitution of 1798 stipulated that every Batavian citizen was obliged to carry arms.125 They were highly aware of the many obstacles that would make the full implementation of this ideal extremely difficult. The easy victory of the Prussian professional army over the Patriot citizen militias in 1787 had sown widespread doubt about the efficacy of citizen armies. The Dutch, moreover, had systematically been weakened and corrupted by luxury, were traditionally more interested in commercial than in military matters, and were – contrary to the French – of such phlegmatic character that it was extremely hard to get them to enthuse about anything at all. They did not, in short, make very promising military material.126 Yet most Batavian republicans remained adamant that citizen armament was indispensable for the survival of republican liberty. Following Van der Capellen, who had in turn largely derived his views on this matter from Andrew Fletcher, the Batavians insisted that the introduction of mercenary armies in Europe since the late middle ages had gradually undermined liberty and that, even though professional standing armies had become a necessity in modern times, it was most unwise to completely rely on them.127 This firm conviction was expressed at all levels of sophistication, from popular pamphlets to learned treatises. In a 1796 conversation about the state of the country, citizen Piet – introduced as a ‘warm Patriot’ – is heard to remark that ‘if we do not get Citizen armament, Liberty will collapse, because the Military will soon become the boss, and will then give us a great Lord for our master’.128 Exactly the same view was expressed in 1796 by Cornelis Zillesen: ‘A free Republic should not seek its strength in paid

122 W.A. Ockerse, Ontwerp tot eene algemeene characterkunde, III, 262. This point was also developed at great length in De Democraten, number 45 (March 16, 1797) and number 50 (April 20, 1797). 123 Rosendaal, ed. Staatsregeling voor het Bataafsche volk 1798, 69 (‘Burgerlijke en staatkundige grondregels’, article lxiv). 124 W.H. de Beaufort, ed. Brieven van en aan Joan Derk van der Capellen tot den Poll (Utrecht 1879) 629. On the Patriot ideal of citizen armament see H.L. Zwitzer, ‘De militaire dimensie van de patriottenbeweging’ in: F.Grijzenhout, W.W. Mijnhardt and N.C.F. van Sas, ed. Voor Vaderland en Vrijheid. De revolutie van de patriotten (Amsterdam 1987) 27-51 and Klein, Patriots Republikanisme, 167-194. 125 Batavian thought on the armed citizen is a somewhat underexplored topic, but see Floris Vletter, ‘De Bataafse Burgermacht als bolwerk der vrijheid. De politieke en militaire betekenis van een burgerschapsideaal’, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 122 (2009) 492-507. For the relevant constitutional articles see Rosendaal, ed. Staatsregeling voor het Bataafsche volk 1798, 66 (‘Burgerlijke en staatkundige grondregels’, article xliv-xlvi). 126 De Republikein, II, number 85, 265-268; De Democraten, number 71 (September 21, 1797) 237-244. 127 De vriend des volks, number 23, 193-200. 128 Avond-praatje of zamenspraak tusschen eenige burgers over de een en onverdeelbaarheid van de Bataavsche republiek, Zo wel van alle Schulden, als Regeringe, etc. (4 parts. s.l. [1796-1797])I, 4 and II, 23. Soldiers, for that is too dangerous for Liberty’.129 Essential as it was in protecting republican liberty against the wicked schemes of potential oppressors, citizen armament had an equally important role to play in the character formation of republican citizens and therefore in the Batavian project of civic education. In an issue devoted to ‘the creation of Republicans and the subsequent maintenance of their noble character’, De Republikein observed that citizen armament constituted ‘the main bond between the Free Citizen, the State, and liberty’.130 The editors of De Democraten fully agreed and insisted that citizen armament was perhaps the best ways to make citizens aware of their republican dignity: ‘Look at your Compatriots, consult your own feelings, Batavians! and ask when it was that you have most deeply felt your Republican worth? We know that everything will tell you that it was when you were bearing arms’.131 For most Batavian republicans, in short, it was entirely clear that citizen armament was ‘a first necessity in a Republic.’132 Yet in the end neither festivals nor arms could compete in importance with education itself in the Batavian quest to create lasting republican virtue. From the middle of the eighteenth century, the analysis of Dutch moral decline had frequently gone hand in hand with the call for moral education. Both the example of the ancient republics and the educational philosophy of the Enlightenment had convinced many Dutchmen that virtue was something that could be learned and taught.133 During the 1780s, the combination of deep pessimism about the existing manners and morals of the nation and high hopes about the efficacy of educational remedies had led to the founding of the Society for the Common Good, a remarkable citizen initiative to improve Dutch education that soon drew members from all over the country.134 It was only after the fall of the Dutch old regime in 1795, however, that the ambitious educational plans developed by the Society for the Common Good started to be implemented and were given a more explicitly political content than they had previously had.135 To the Batavian revolutionaries, it was unsurprising that all efforts at educational reform had dismally failed under the oppressive institutions of the old regime. In a speech on the reform of public education held in 1795, Abraham Vereul explained that such reform was impossible in ‘a land of Slavery’, where virtue was ridiculed, money was considered the true measure of greatness, and knowledge was deemed politically dangerous. Now that political slavery had finally come to an end, however, ‘the splendid building of our liberty’ could be erected on a firm foundation of ‘virtue, morals and true enlightenment’.136 Vereul’s theme of the intimate bond between education, virtue and republican liberty was echoed in countless publications during the early years of the Batavian revolution. Only educated citizens, De Republikein insisted, were in a position to understand the blessings of republican government and to

129 Zillesen, Wysgeerig onderzoek, wegens Neerlands opkomst, bloei, en welvaard, 393. 130 De Republikein, I, number 8, 73. 131 De Democraten, number 71 (September 21, 1797) 238. 132 Greeven, Beredeneert constitutioneel woordenboek, 21. 133 On eighteenth-century Dutch educational thought see e.g. Joost Kloek and Wijnand Mijnhardt, 1800. Blauwdrukken voor een samenleving (The Hague 2001) 267-290 and Willeke Los, Opvoeding tot mens en burger. Pedagogiek als Cultuurkritiek in Nederland in de 18e eeuw (Hilversum 2005). 134 The Society for the Common Good is discussed in W.W. Mijnhardt, Tot Heil van ‘t Menschdom. Culturele genootschappen in Nederland, 1750-1815 (Amsterdam 1987) 259-294. 135 Simon Schama, ‘Schools and Politics in the Netherlands, 1796-1814’, The Historical Journal, 13 (1970) 589- 610; Jan Lenders, De burger en de volksschool. Culturele en mentale achtergronden van een onderwijshervorming, Nederland 1780-1850 (Nijmegen 1988); Barry J. Hake, ‘The making of Batavian citizens: social organization of constitutional enlightenment in The Netherlands, 1795-1798’, History of Education, 23 (1994) 335-353; Willeke Los, ‘Huiselijke versus publieke opvoeding: De vorming van vaderlandslievende burgers en de Revolutie in de Nederlanden’, De Achttiende Eeuw, 28 (1996) 119-130. 136 Dagbladen van het verhandelde ter vergadering van de provisionele repraesentanten van het volk van Holland, etc. (4 vols. The Hague 1795-1796)I (May 20, 1795) 7. regulate their behavior accordingly. It was therefore among the most pressing tasks of the new republican government to see to it that education was provided on a massive scale.137 De vriend des volks urged the Batavians to follow the example of the ancient Greek and Roman commonwealths, where education was rightly considered one of the highest goods and had been at the basis of all remarkable achievements.138 De Democraten maintained that education should serve to heighten the spirit of patriotism and suggested that the young be educated in such a way as ‘to make them love all Republican virtues’.139 And in an influential report on educational reform to the National Assembly, the Society for the Common Good proposed to introduce children to the rights and duties of republican citizens at the earliest possible age.140 These pleas to use education as an instrument to foster civic virtue and thereby republican liberty did not fall on deaf ears in the National Assembly, where educational reform was regarded as one of the highest priorities. Whereas Batavian republicans, as we have seen, disagreed on many other major issues, there seems to have existed a broad consensus on the necessity to create a virtuous citizenry through education. This became particularly evident in May 1797, when the National Assembly discussed and approved a report on the future of national education prepared by one of its many committees. As Vereul had already done in 1795, the report sketched a stark contrast between the cultivation of ignorance, error, and prejudice essential to the survival of oppressive regimes and the educational dissemination of ‘truth and virtue’ that was characteristic of free republics and a necessary condition for their existence. The new Batavian republic should see to it ‘that every citizen can and may share in the happiness of society and may enjoy as well as promote the noble sentiment of liberty’. To achieve this goal, intensive education was of the first importance, since it was primarily through education, and especially through moral education, that people would learn to understand ‘the true role of the free Citizen’.141 It was Joannes van Hooff who summed up the general sentiment of the members of parliament during the debates over this report when he observed that it was ‘safe to say that public education is the guarantee of Liberty’ and that it was absolutely necessary to create a predilection ‘for true Liberty and Patriotism’ in even the youngest children.142 Civic education through schooling would turn out to be one of the more lasting legacies of the Batavian revolution. It was written into the 1798 constitution that the legislative assembly was obliged to ensure that ‘National Character will change for the good and that morals and manners will improve’.143 In that same year the Batavian republic instituted what Simon Schama has called ‘the first ‘Ministry of Education’ in Europe’: the Agency of National Education.144 Even when many Dutchmen were gradually becoming disillusioned with revolutionary republicanism at the beginning of the nineteenth century, educational reform continued. Thus it was that George Cuvier and François Noël, when in 1810 they arrived to inspect the schools of the Dutch state that had recently been annexed to

137 De Republikein, I, number 8, 67-71. 138 De vriend des volks, number 25, 213-215. 139 Hake, ‘The making of Batavian citizens’, 342 and De Democraten, number 52 (May 4, 1797) 95. 140 Algemeene denkbeelden over het nationaal onderwijs, ingeleverd in den jaare 1796, van wegen de vergadering van hoofdbestuurders der Nederlandsche maatschappij: tot nut van ’t algemeen, aan de commissie uit de nationaale vergadering, representeerende het volk van Nederland; benoemd en gelast tot het ontwerpen van een plan van openbaar nationaal onderwijs (s.l. [1798], reprint of the original 1796 edition) 62. 141 Dagverhaal, V, 953-954. 142 Ibidem, 962. 143 Rosendaal, ed. Staatsregeling voor het Bataafsche volk 1798, 69 (‘Burgerlijke en staatkundige grondregels’, article lxii). 144 Schama, ‘Schools and Politics in the Netherlands’, 604. France, found in existence ‘the most effective and comprehensive system of elementary education in Europe.’145 Conclusion When R.R. Palmer some fifty years ago pointed out that the Batavian revolution of 1795 offered its students ‘much in little’, he was referring primarily to the ways in which the Batavian political microcosm reflected all the key features of the international ‘Age of the Democratic Revolution’. The Batavian revolution was the perfect embodiment of a much wider democratic movement that constituted a radical break with the past and laid the foundations of political modernity all over the Western world. Since Palmer made his fertile suggestion, the historiography of eighteenth-century politics and political thought has undergone profound changes. Among the most important of these has been the recovery of the immense importance of classically derived republicanism until well into the eighteenth century. Until very recently, however, this republican revolution in historiography has had relatively little impact on the study of the European late eighteenth-century revolutions. Leading scholars of early modern republicanism such as Quentin Skinner have strongly suggested that early modern republicanism rapidly lost its relevance during the final decades of the eighteenth century and was replaced by utilitarianism or liberalism. Both from Palmer’s perspective of the sudden rise of democracy and from Skinner’s perspective of the sudden decline of early modern republicanism, therefore, the late eighteenth-century political revolutions constituted a clean break with the past. Yet it has recently been powerfully argued by scholars working on the French case that there is much to be said for abandoning this rather one-sided focus on discontinuity. Instead of treating the late eighteenth-century revolutions as sudden transitions to liberal democracy, these scholars maintain, they should be studied as attempts to bridge the gap between ancient and modern liberty, to adapt ancient and early modern republicanism to the changed circumstances of the late eighteenth-century world. It has been the purpose of the present article to suggest that, from this new historiographical perspective, the Batavian revolution of 1795 once again is able to offer ‘much in little’ to its students. The Batavian revolution took place in a country that had been a republic for centuries and where the educated elites were highly aware of both ancient and modern theories about the nature of republican government. It followed decades of debate about the moral and political decline of the nation and had been preceded by a powerful domestic reform movement, which had fundamentally redefined the meaning of the term republic: no longer referring to a mixed form of government, it had come to stand for representative democracy. The Batavian revolution moreover started well after both the American and the French revolutions and the Batavian revolutionaries were intimately familiar with these momentous events. It is impossible to doubt that the Batavian revolutionaries introduced a great many unprecedented political reforms. Not only did they create a representative democracy, but they also formulated declarations of the rights of man and of the citizen, separated church and state, replaced federalism with unity and, in 1798, adopted the first written constitution in the history of the country. Yet in doing so, it has been the main argument of this article, they remained highly aware of the classical and early modern republican tradition and tried to incorporate essential aspects of it into their new republic, thus creating a synthesis between the old and the new. That this was indeed the case has been demonstrated in the above through the analysis of three crucial topics in Batavian political debate. In the struggle

145 Ibidem, 589; Martijn van der Burg, Nederland onder Franse invloed. Cultuurtransfer en staatsvorming in de napoleontische tijd, 1799-1813 (PhD Dissertation, University of Amsterdam, 2007) 146-147. between those who wished to introduce unity and indivisibility and those who wished to retain a federal political structure, neither side adopted the modern theory expounded in the Federalist Papers that an extended republic was an improvement over a small republic. Instead, with very few exceptions both sides in the debate held on to the traditional republican view that smallness of scale was an essential precondition for successful republican government. Even a convinced unitaris such as Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninck freely admitted that Montesquieu and Rousseau had been right in linking republican government to smallness of scale: he simply argued that a unitary Dutch state would still be a small republic. A similar unwillingness to altogether abandon traditional republican wisdom in the midst of revolutionary renewal was evident in a second major Batavian political debate, that over the nature of political representation. Although it is undeniably true that some Batavian republicans adopted an independence theory of representation, a great many others refused to accept that representation equaled the end of participatory politics. They clung to the old republican notion that liberty consisted of self-government, that representation was no more than a necessary evil, and that representatives should at all times remain closely bound to the body of the citizens. It was this radical republican vision of politics that found distinct echoes in the constitution of 1798. The third and perhaps most prolonged Batavian political debate analyzed in this article concerned the preconditions for republican government. Here too it is abundantly clear that the Batavian revolutionaries still derived much of their inspiration from traditional republican argument. Their campaign of civic education through political festivals, citizen armament and schooling was entirely based on the conviction that the only way even a modern commercial republic could survive was through the virtue and patriotism of all of its citizens. Taken together, these three crucial debates demonstrate not only how difficult it was for the Batavians to come to a new consensus about the nature of government, but also why this was the case. They were engaged in a highly complex intellectual and political struggle to combine ancient and modern liberty in new and creative ways. It was not a liberal democracy they were trying to establish, but a republican democracy.