Introduction

Introduction In the late summer of 1786, the intellectual elite in Copenhagen—the capital and undisputed centre of the dual monarchy of Denmark–Norway—was in an excited and expectant mood. A coup d’état two years earlier had put a new clique in control of King Christian vii (r. 1766–1808), the absolute but unstable and incapable ruler. Freedom of the press had been allowed to a greater extent than before, and public debate had emerged on a range of issues.1 Now, the king’s decision to appoint a government commission to propose structural ‘improvements’ in the Danish manorial economy had just been made public, bringing the promise of movement to the single most disputed issue of them all. For the reform-minded burghers and civil servants who dominated the Dano-Norwegian public sphere, this was yet another sign that the new men in power—Crown Prince Frederik (1768–1839) and his band of loyal minis- ters—were on their side. In the struggle of reformers against the seigneurial landowners, who were resisting what they perceived as encroachments on their inherited properties and privileges, the reformers felt they had the back- ing of the government. Their calls for granting liberty and property to the peasantry would finally be heeded. Such sentiments might very well also have animated the commission’s sec- retary, Norwegian-born jurist Christian Colbjørnsen (1749–1814), when, in the commission’s first meeting, he took the time to give his fellow members—sev- eral of them large landowners and members of the nobility—a lesson in history. “In antiquity, the Danish peasantry were a free people”, he declared, conjuring up an image of a past, golden age, in which the bulk of the population had been freeholders and citizens who owned equal-sized lots.2 In that era, the people had been subject to the rule of law, not to the arbitrary commands of a lord of the manor. It was only due to more recent developments, “when the power of kings was limited as a result of the predominance of the nobility”,3 that this state of affairs had been subverted and the peasantry reduced to a condition 1 For English introductions to public opinion and the Copenhagen intelligentsia in late eighteenth-century Denmark, see Henrik Horstbøll and Uffe Østergård, “Reform and Revo- lution: The French Revolution and the Case of Denmark”, Scandinavian Journal of History 15, no. 3 (1990): 155–180; Thomas Munck, “Absolute Monarchy in Later Eighteenth-Century Denmark: Centralized Reform, Public Expectations and the Copenhagen Press”, Historical Journal 41, no. 1 (1998): 201–224. 2 Den for Landboevæsenet nedsatte Commissions Forhandlinger, vol. 1 (Copenhagen, 1788), 32. 3 Den for Landboevæsenet nedsatte Commissions Forhandlinger, 1:32. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��9 | doi:�0.��63/9789004394063_00� <UN> 2 Introduction Colbjørnsen considered the equivalent of serfdom. In his eyes, this change amounted to a form of usurpation, and the insufficiency of its legal founda- tion was evident in the uneven way it had been implemented. The absolute monarchy was now in a position to reinstate the Danish peasantry’s original and rightful position. This book is a study of the political use of history in the dual monarchy of Denmark–Norway during the Enlightenment, of which Colbjørnsen’s 1786 intervention is one example. The appeal to the Danish past by the Norwegian jurist was a clever move. It was meant to pave the way for reform by lowering the bar for governmental intervention into the relationship between tenants and their landlords. Colbjørnsen sought to pre-empt charges that such action would be unlawful and despotic by revealing the precarious ground on which the seigneurial powers of the landlords rested. The book focuses on the notion used by Colbjørnsen for such purposes, the idea of an ‘ancient Nordic constitution’. This ancient constitution was thought to be characterised by an egalitarian distribution of property and broad participation in politics, something the historian Tyge Rothe (1731–95) aptly called folkefrihed, popular liberty. Often described as part of a uniquely Northern antiquity, this was seen as a shared heritage of the Danish and Norwegian, at times even the Swedish, past.4 It was often dated to the era before the coming of Christianity, but sometimes also stretched to include the period up to what we would call the High Middle Ages. It was not invented by Colbjørnsen, but had developed in Dano-Norwegian historical writing in the second half of the eighteenth century. At about the same time, it became an important part of heated public debates over agricultural reforms in both Denmark and Norway. Colbjørnsen, in fact, combined his ap- peals to history with arguments from the discourse of political economy about the benefits which would accrue from giving peasants liberty and property. By improving their wretched condition, emancipating them from their serflike condition and giving them a more secure hold over their land, they would be in a better position to help themselves. Their desire to improve their own condition would be kindled, to their benefit, as well as to the benefit of their landlords and the state.5 Reform was thus, in his eyes, both right and beneficial. The historical and economic case for reform made by Colbjørnsen occurred at what is often considered a seminal moment in Danish history. The reform commission marked the beginning of the administrative process which eventually ushered in the so-called ‘great agrarian reforms’ of the late 1780s 4 Ancient constitutionalism in eighteenth-century Sweden is a separate topic which will not be treated in this book. For research which points in the direction of a political use of history similar to what can be found in Denmark–Norway, but which does not employ the concept of ancient constitutionalism, see Peter Hallberg, Ages of Liberty: Social Upheaval, Historical Writing and the New Public Sphere in Sweden (Stockholm: Stockholm University, 2003). 5 Den for Landboevæsenet nedsatte Commissions Forhandlinger, 1:35. <UN>.

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