From Informal Empire to Small State Realism, 1905–1914
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chapter 4 From Informal Empire to Small State Realism, 1905– 1914 On 7 June 1905, the Norwegian parliament unilaterally declared the end of the union between Sweden and Norway and dismissed Oscar ii as king of Norway. The formal decision was the culmination of months of frenetic political activ- ity and polemic between leading political and public figures from both coun- tries. Norway’s prime minister, Christian Michelsen, successfully employed prominent Norwegians, such as the famous traveller and later diplomat and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Fridtjof Nansen, to prepare the ground for Norwe- gian independence. On 17 May, Norway’s national day, Nansen had declared to a large crowd in Kristiania, ‘Now all ways of retreat have been closed. Now remains only one path, the way forward, perhaps through difficulties and hard- ships, but to ourselves, to a free Norway’.1 Six days later, the Storting passed the Consular Act to set up a separate consular service for Norway. This debate about the dissolution of the union was not just carried out on in the chambers of the Swedish and Norwegian parliaments and in the national presses but also in leading international outlets such as the The Times, where Nansen laid out the legal case for Norway’s position in four articles written between March and September 1905.2 The Norwegians hoped to gain international recognition for their statehood through engagement in the European debate, where some spoke of Norway’s breakaway from Sweden as a revolution. There was a great outcry in Sweden in the immediate aftermath of Norway’s decision, not so much about the political development itself but rather about the attitude displayed by the Norwegians in the process. Most Swedes realized that the separation was inevitable, but nevertheless perceived the confronta- tional course of the Norwegians as an insult against the king and an affront against their country.3 In its initial reaction, the Swedish Riksdag declared on 1 Fridtjof Nansen, ‘Vor Selvstendighed og vor Selvbestemmelsesret’, Aftenposten, 18 May 1905. Available at http:// virksommeord.no/ tale/ 101/ (accessed 17 December 2018). 2 Fridtjof Nansen, ‘The Swedish- Norwegian Conflict’, The Times, 25 March 1905, 30 March 1905 and 4 April 1905, ‘Sweden and Norway’, 16 September 1905. Nansen had been publishing arti- cles on the matter in The Times since 1898. For the general context, see Evert Vedung, Unions- debatten 1905: en jämförelse mellan argumenteringen i Sverige och Norge (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1971). 3 Lindberg, Den svenska utrikespolitikens historia, 155– 156. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | DOI:10.1163/9789004414389_006 From Informal Empire to Small State Realism, 1905–1914 191 28 July 1905 that the union could not be dissolved unilaterally and demand- ed either new elections or a popular referendum on the issue in Norway. The Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Stockholm launched attempts to prevent the great powers Austria-Hungary, Britain, France, Germany and Russia from ac- knowledging Norway as an independent state. But the Swedish front was not as united as the parliament wanted its people at home and abroad to believe. The writing had been on the wall for some time. Nationalism had prevailed over Scandinavianist ideas, and the conflict between the two countries had been looming for fifteen years. Some important figures, among them the crown prince and soon-to- be king Gustaf V, advocated a quick and painless divorce in order to avoid great power interventions into Scandinavian affairs, in particu- lar on the part of Russia. All in all, the Swedes failed to contain the Norwegian attempt for recogni- tion. Both Germany and Russia informed Stockholm that it was regrettable that Sweden was not willing to force the survival of the union with Norway through the necessary – i.e. military – means. But the dissolution of the Scandinavian union was not important enough for either Berlin or St. Petersburg to consider stirring up political turmoil or engaging in military adventures to secure it. Tsar Nicolas ii in particular had to deal with problems of his own, as he was fighting revolutionaries for the survival of the Russian monarchy. Both Tsarist Russia and imperial Germany feared that Norway could become a republic, and there- fore sided with Britain and Austria- Hungary in recommending that the Swedes accept the Norwegian offer of enthroning a younger member of the Bernad- otte family as the new king and settling the matter once and for all. When the Swedes responded to the Norwegian offer with hesitation, the German Kaiser was among the first to accept Kristiania’s alternative candidate, Prince Carl of Denmark, who was the son in law of the British king, Edward vii. Vienna persuaded the other great powers to declare their neutrality in the conflict, but it soon became obvious that the Norwegians had successfully established informal channels nonetheless.4 The Norwegians strengthened their position considerably when final nego- tiations about the formal dissolution of the union began in the city of Karlstad on 31 August. In addition to their diplomatic success with the major powers, they had won public sympathy and secured acceptance for their favoured can- didate to the Norwegian throne. This put the Swedish government and its del- egation to Karlstad under severe pressure. As a consequence, the initial atmo- sphere of the negotiations was very intense. The Swedish delegation presented 4 Lindberg, Den svenska utrikespolitikens historia, 157– 161..