Dans l’historiographie recente, la guerre de 1870-1871 a souvent ete consideree comme une etape c... more Dans l’historiographie recente, la guerre de 1870-1871 a souvent ete consideree comme une etape cle sur le chemin vers la guerre totale du XXe siecle. Bien que cet article ne tranche pas le debat, il remet en question les modeles d’explication binaires axes autour de la « haine hereditaire ». En basant son argumentation sur le grand nombre de prisonniers de guerre (420 000 Francais et 8 000 Allemands), l’auteur met en avant les convergences transnationales dans les discours sur le devoir et l’honneur patriotique. Grâce a la tradition europeenne du « droit d’usages cosmopolites », les officiers pouvaient s’engager a ne pas fuir et obtenaient en echange, la liberte de circuler pendant leur captivite. Un usage abusif constituait une menace, non seulement pour l’honneur du soldat, mais aussi pour la reputation de son souverain et de sa nation. Cependant, la pression sur les officiers francais augmente lorsque le manque de commandants de troupes suite aux defaites de l’automne se concretise. L’echappee des trois celebres generaux, Auguste Ducrot, Eugene Barral et Albert Cambriels, revele de maniere remarquable, comment un dilemme moral a pu ouvrir un dialogue transnational, rapprochant des ennemis qui partagent les memes valeurs.
Since Bodin, scholars have been debating whether sovereignty is indivisible or rather decentred, ... more Since Bodin, scholars have been debating whether sovereignty is indivisible or rather decentred, multiple, and shared. This article adds to practice-oriented conceptualizations of sovereignty, which acknowledge the existence of jurisdictional pluralism in nineteenth-century state-building. Borrowing from imperial history, it contrasts the nominal supremacy of the Prussian crown – as embodied by the monarchical principle – with the residual sovereign rights of potentates that had lost their lands in Germany's successive wars of unification. The possession of ‘bare sovereignty’ allowed such mediatized princes and exiled rulers to maintain a presence in the lives of their former subjects. They did so by exercising privileges and functions of royalty which left vague in whose name was being governed. The Hohenzollerns for their part struggled (and to a certain extent proved unwilling) to assert exclusive dominion because right of conquest-based justifications had no firm standing in...
In summer 1866 the Austro-Prussian struggle for supremacy in Germany erupted into open conflict. ... more In summer 1866 the Austro-Prussian struggle for supremacy in Germany erupted into open conflict. King Georg V of Hanover sided with other governments loyal to the German Confederation against Prussia, but after initially defeating Prussian forces at Langensalza, he was forced to capitulate. Two days after the battle, on June 29, 1866, the widow of the Hanoverian general Sir Georg Julius von Hartmann told her daughter in no uncertain terms how she felt about the Prussian government and its allies. In her opinion they were nothing more than “robber states” that cloaked their disregard for the Ten Commandments in sanctimonious public displays of piety. “These Protestant Jesuits,” she continued, “offend me more than the Catholic ones. You know that I am German with all my heart and love my Germany, but I cannot consider them genuine Germans anymore because they only want to make Germany Prussian.”
Thomas Hardy, arguably the foremost English novelist of the early twentieth century, often drew o... more Thomas Hardy, arguably the foremost English novelist of the early twentieth century, often drew on the past for inspiration. He spent long hours in the British Museum researching accounts of the Napoleonic Wars, so as to lend an air of authenticity to the historical backdrop of his writings. Although Hardy's trademark descriptions of life in the fictitious county of Wessex are quintessentially English, they also reflect a fascination with the real-life German recruits who had left their fatherland to fight Napoleon under British colours. in contrast to a plethora of earlier Jacobite, Whig and Radical pamphleteers, he did not see the stationing of foreign mercenaries on British soil as an oppressive threat to the liberties of the English people, but rather imagined the King's German Legion (1803-16) as a benign, albeit exotic, experiment in transnational bonding. A novella in which he first developed this idea, The Melancholy Hussar of the German Legion (1890), tells the story of a young woman who falls unhappily in love with a glamorous corporal of the eponymous unit, an 'ideal being … with none of the appurtenances of an ordinary house dweller'. 1 The tale of the two lovers struck a chord with newspaper publishers, who considered it commercial enough to be advertised as a 'brilliant story of the last century'. 2 The Melancholy Hussar betrayed subtle traces of the transnational cultural contact that the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1792-1815) had left behind in the British imagination. The apparent longevity of this memory and Hardy's contextualisation of his story in a literary discourse of melancholic loss interlock with historians' claims about the singular historical significance of the war experience. 3 For Reinhart Koselleck, the Revolutionary period heralded a decline of
The article examines the commemoration of Waterloo (1815) since the Second World War by placing t... more The article examines the commemoration of Waterloo (1815) since the Second World War by placing the battle's polyvalent image in the context of European integration. To this end it traces the cultural significance of Waterloo in regional, national, transnational and international perspective to elucidate the longevity of the event as a lieu de mémoire, and then argues that even now the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars remain in some respects an unmastered past because of uncertainty in European public memory about how to commemorate these conflicts.
The article examines the commemoration of Waterloo (1815) since the Second World War by placing t... more The article examines the commemoration of Waterloo (1815) since the Second World War by placing the battle's polyvalent image in the context of European integration. To this end it traces the cultural significance of Waterloo in regional, national, transnational and international perspective to elucidate the longevity of the event as a lieu de mémoire, and then argues that even now the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars remain in some respects an unmastered past because of uncertainty in European public memory about how to commemorate these conflicts.
Dans l’historiographie recente, la guerre de 1870-1871 a souvent ete consideree comme une etape c... more Dans l’historiographie recente, la guerre de 1870-1871 a souvent ete consideree comme une etape cle sur le chemin vers la guerre totale du XXe siecle. Bien que cet article ne tranche pas le debat, il remet en question les modeles d’explication binaires axes autour de la « haine hereditaire ». En basant son argumentation sur le grand nombre de prisonniers de guerre (420 000 Francais et 8 000 Allemands), l’auteur met en avant les convergences transnationales dans les discours sur le devoir et l’honneur patriotique. Grâce a la tradition europeenne du « droit d’usages cosmopolites », les officiers pouvaient s’engager a ne pas fuir et obtenaient en echange, la liberte de circuler pendant leur captivite. Un usage abusif constituait une menace, non seulement pour l’honneur du soldat, mais aussi pour la reputation de son souverain et de sa nation. Cependant, la pression sur les officiers francais augmente lorsque le manque de commandants de troupes suite aux defaites de l’automne se concretise. L’echappee des trois celebres generaux, Auguste Ducrot, Eugene Barral et Albert Cambriels, revele de maniere remarquable, comment un dilemme moral a pu ouvrir un dialogue transnational, rapprochant des ennemis qui partagent les memes valeurs.
Since Bodin, scholars have been debating whether sovereignty is indivisible or rather decentred, ... more Since Bodin, scholars have been debating whether sovereignty is indivisible or rather decentred, multiple, and shared. This article adds to practice-oriented conceptualizations of sovereignty, which acknowledge the existence of jurisdictional pluralism in nineteenth-century state-building. Borrowing from imperial history, it contrasts the nominal supremacy of the Prussian crown – as embodied by the monarchical principle – with the residual sovereign rights of potentates that had lost their lands in Germany's successive wars of unification. The possession of ‘bare sovereignty’ allowed such mediatized princes and exiled rulers to maintain a presence in the lives of their former subjects. They did so by exercising privileges and functions of royalty which left vague in whose name was being governed. The Hohenzollerns for their part struggled (and to a certain extent proved unwilling) to assert exclusive dominion because right of conquest-based justifications had no firm standing in...
In summer 1866 the Austro-Prussian struggle for supremacy in Germany erupted into open conflict. ... more In summer 1866 the Austro-Prussian struggle for supremacy in Germany erupted into open conflict. King Georg V of Hanover sided with other governments loyal to the German Confederation against Prussia, but after initially defeating Prussian forces at Langensalza, he was forced to capitulate. Two days after the battle, on June 29, 1866, the widow of the Hanoverian general Sir Georg Julius von Hartmann told her daughter in no uncertain terms how she felt about the Prussian government and its allies. In her opinion they were nothing more than “robber states” that cloaked their disregard for the Ten Commandments in sanctimonious public displays of piety. “These Protestant Jesuits,” she continued, “offend me more than the Catholic ones. You know that I am German with all my heart and love my Germany, but I cannot consider them genuine Germans anymore because they only want to make Germany Prussian.”
Thomas Hardy, arguably the foremost English novelist of the early twentieth century, often drew o... more Thomas Hardy, arguably the foremost English novelist of the early twentieth century, often drew on the past for inspiration. He spent long hours in the British Museum researching accounts of the Napoleonic Wars, so as to lend an air of authenticity to the historical backdrop of his writings. Although Hardy's trademark descriptions of life in the fictitious county of Wessex are quintessentially English, they also reflect a fascination with the real-life German recruits who had left their fatherland to fight Napoleon under British colours. in contrast to a plethora of earlier Jacobite, Whig and Radical pamphleteers, he did not see the stationing of foreign mercenaries on British soil as an oppressive threat to the liberties of the English people, but rather imagined the King's German Legion (1803-16) as a benign, albeit exotic, experiment in transnational bonding. A novella in which he first developed this idea, The Melancholy Hussar of the German Legion (1890), tells the story of a young woman who falls unhappily in love with a glamorous corporal of the eponymous unit, an 'ideal being … with none of the appurtenances of an ordinary house dweller'. 1 The tale of the two lovers struck a chord with newspaper publishers, who considered it commercial enough to be advertised as a 'brilliant story of the last century'. 2 The Melancholy Hussar betrayed subtle traces of the transnational cultural contact that the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1792-1815) had left behind in the British imagination. The apparent longevity of this memory and Hardy's contextualisation of his story in a literary discourse of melancholic loss interlock with historians' claims about the singular historical significance of the war experience. 3 For Reinhart Koselleck, the Revolutionary period heralded a decline of
The article examines the commemoration of Waterloo (1815) since the Second World War by placing t... more The article examines the commemoration of Waterloo (1815) since the Second World War by placing the battle's polyvalent image in the context of European integration. To this end it traces the cultural significance of Waterloo in regional, national, transnational and international perspective to elucidate the longevity of the event as a lieu de mémoire, and then argues that even now the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars remain in some respects an unmastered past because of uncertainty in European public memory about how to commemorate these conflicts.
The article examines the commemoration of Waterloo (1815) since the Second World War by placing t... more The article examines the commemoration of Waterloo (1815) since the Second World War by placing the battle's polyvalent image in the context of European integration. To this end it traces the cultural significance of Waterloo in regional, national, transnational and international perspective to elucidate the longevity of the event as a lieu de mémoire, and then argues that even now the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars remain in some respects an unmastered past because of uncertainty in European public memory about how to commemorate these conflicts.
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