Father Figures and Faction Leaders. Identification Strategies and Monarchical Imagery among Ordinary Citizens of the Northern and Southern Low Countries (c. 1780-1820)

Author(s)

  • Jane Judge Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
  • Joris Oddens Leiden University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18352/bmgn-lchr.10588

Keywords:

Identity, Continuity, Nationhood From Below, Pauper Letters, William I of the Netherlands

Abstract

After his ascension to the throne in 1813, William Frederick was quickly accepted as a father-monarch who united the various factions previously vying for power in the Dutch Republic. When in 1815 the Sovereign Principality of the Netherlands merged with the former Austrian Netherlands to form the United Kingdom, the new Southern subjects were far less inclined to accept William I as father of the nation. So goes the prevailing interpretation in the historiography, based as it is on politically and culturally elite sources. In this article, we investigate how ordinary folk imagined the new monarch. We examine the identification strategies and monarchical imagery they employed in writing pauper letters, comparing the restoration monarchy with the various regimes that came before it. Ultimately, we conclude that, despite the officially sanctioned imagery, in both North and South, perceptions of the new monarch represented a less distinct rupture with the past than has been thought.

 

This article is part of the special issue 'Political Change and Civic Continuities in the Age of Revolutions'.

 

Vaderfiguren en factieleiders. Identificatiestrategieën en monarchale beeldspraak onder gewone burgers van de noordelijke en zuidelijke Lage Landen (ca. 1780-1820)

Na zijn aantreden in 1813 werd Willem Frederik al snel gezien als een vadermonarch met het vermogen alle facties die voorheen in de Republiek hadden bestaan te verbinden. Toen in 1815 het Soeverein Vorstendom der Nederlanden met de voormalige Oostenrijkse Nederlanden werd samengevoegd tot het Verenigd Koninkrijk, waren de nieuwe zuidelijke onderdanen veel minder geneigd om Willem I  te beschouwen als vader van de natie. Dit is het dominante beeld in de geschiedschrijving, dat gebaseerd is op representaties van politieke en culturele elites. In dit artikel gaan we na hoe gewone mensen tegen de nieuwe monarch aankeken. We onderzoeken de identificatiestrategieën en monarchale beeldspraak waarvan zij zich in armenbrieven bedienden en vergelijken daarbij de restauratiemonarchie met verschillende regimes die eraan voorafgingen. We concluderen dat, de officiële beeldvorming daargelaten, de percepties van de nieuwe Oranjevorst zowel in het noorden als het zuiden een minder scherpe breuk behelzen dan tot nu toe werd gedacht.

 

Dit artikel maakt deel uit van het themanummer 'Political Change and Civic Continuities in the Age of Revolutions'.

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Author Biographies

  • Jane Judge, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
    Jane Judge (1985) is currently working as an events coordinator at Leuven MindGate. Until the end of 2017 she was a postdoctoral research fellow at the KU Leuven history department. In 2015 she received her PhD in history from the University of Edinburgh; she wrote her doctoral thesis on the history of the United States of Belgium and its place in the wider age of revolutions. Recent publications: The United States of Belgium: The Story of the First Belgian Revolution (Leuven, autumn 2018); ‘An Age in Microcosm: the United States of Belgium’, in: Ben Marsh and Mike Rapport (eds.), Understanding and Teaching the Age of Revolutions (Madison 2017); ‘The Scottish-American Enlightenment’, in: Julia Straub (ed.), Handbook of Transatlantic North American Studies (Berlin/New York 2016) 545–561; ‘Qu’allons-nous devenir? Belgian National Identity in the Age of Revolution’, in: Lotte Jensen (ed.), The Roots of Nationalism. National Identity Formation in Early Modern Europe, 1600–1815 (Amsterdam 2016) 291–307. Email: jane.judge@kuleuven.be.
  • Joris Oddens, Leiden University
    Joris Oddens (1981) is a postdoctoral researcher at the Leiden University Institute for History. He has published widely on the political and cultural history of the Dutch age of revolution. Over the past few years he has mostly been concerned with the theory and practice of petitioning in the Netherlands around 1800. Recent publications: ‘De Nederlandse revolutie in dorp en stad. Lokale geschiedschrijving over de patriots-Bataafse tijd, 1875 tot heden’, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 130:4 (2017) 565–591; ‘The Greatest Right of Them All: The Debate on the Right to Petition in the Netherlands from the Dutch Republic to the Kingdom (c. 1750–1830)’, European History Quarterly 47:4 (2017) 634–656; (with Ivo Nieuwenhuis), ‘Using Satire in Historical Research: Comments on the Practice of Petitioning from the Dutch Age of Revolution (c. 1780–1800)’, Eighteenth-Century Studies51:2 (2017) 219–233. Email: j.oddens@hum.leidenuniv.nl.

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Published

2018-09-20

How to Cite

Judge, J., & Oddens, J. (2018). Father Figures and Faction Leaders. Identification Strategies and Monarchical Imagery among Ordinary Citizens of the Northern and Southern Low Countries (c. 1780-1820). BMGN - Low Countries Historical Review, 133(3), 72-97. https://doi.org/10.18352/bmgn-lchr.10588