How can we be batavé ? This is the question posed by Annie Jourdan in her latest book devoted to the Revolution of the same name that upset the Netherlands at the turn of XVIIIe And XIXe centuries, to which the author endeavors to make all her originality against the backdrop of comparison with her two great sisters of the time, the American Revolution and the French Revolution.
Flated to the rank of import article, the Batavian revolution suffered and still suffers, according to the historian Annie Jourdan, a professor associated with the University of Amsterdam, of a lack of recognition. It is believed, in the stereotypical image of the current, moderate and consensual Netherlands, when it can be radical and stigmatizing. Too often regarded by the prism of summary concepts borrowed from the French Revolution and conveniently superimposed on Dutch realities, the Batavian revolution was thus deprived of its own existence and its internal logics. Renationalizing this revolution and returning to him her letters from Aboriginal, that’s what Annie Jourdan is tackling in this thick book (450 pages of text), solidly built and nicely illustrated.
Dutch story, Atlantic history
It is undoubtedly a political history book that we are dealing here, and perhaps even with a history of political philosophy, which the ambivalence of the title testifies well. Annie Jourdan is indeed much less interested in the Batavian Republic regime, which in 1795 succeeded in the United Provinces before becoming in 1806 an ephemeral kingdom of Holland, than the revolutionary political dynamics which was both its engine and its product. But a revolution is difficult to enclose in the strict chronological boundaries of a regime, and the author does not hesitate to frequently free herself from the body of the text. Upstream, to find the genealogy of the revolutionary movement, in particular by surveying the decade of 1780, that of the “patriots”, and more generally the whole of the Age of Enlightenment (which constitutes the particular object of the first two chapters), as well as in Downstream, and this to follow the gaze some debates still in progress under the reign of King Louis from 1806 to 1810.
Taking its source in Western and Dutch history of XVIIIe Century, the Dutch revolutionary movement drew its own path through successive political regimes and competing foreign influences, appropriating in its own way the main debates which then agitated political philosophy: natural rights and human rights, constitutional balance, legal codification, education of citizens, etc. So many questions that provide Annie Jourdan Matter to thematic chapters which she builds by abundantly using parliamentary debates, press articles and all kinds. All this to uncover “ The Batavian political imagination and its apprehension of republicanism, representative democracy and society that goes hand in hand, with counterpoint the American and French revolutions (P. 103).
And it is an understatement to say that to speak here of counterpoint as the demonstration of the author is full of references crossed to these two other revolutions. Permanently putting Dutch history back in perspective with that of Western societies of that time, the author reveals the shared characters and national dissonances, confronting the reader, on each page or almost, with the difficult debate that has surrounded for fifty years the question of the existence of a “ Atlantic Revolution Who would associate in the same movement all the revolutions that broke out at that time on both sides of the ocean. Ce-who, Annie Jourdan returns at the same time on a file to which she had already attacked in a book published a few years ago (The Revolution, a French exception ?Flammarion, 2004), but this time to write a page which, to be specifically Dutch, however never loses sight of the other revolutions of the turn of XVIIIe And XIXe centuries.
Naturally questioning the dissemination of practices, ideas or models, the author responds with caution by advancing that “ Dutch revolutionaries do not intend to borrow “(P. 121),” It is therefore very difficult to talk about transfers here. Rather dialogues doubled with comparisons that make this or that mechanism or such or such development is accepted, modified or rejected, but also distorted (P. 194). These complex inspirations, which push Annie Jourdan to underline the Batavian political originality, especially on the religious field, are far from being one-sided, according to a text published in Amsterdam in 1784-1786 which launched the following exhortation to the Dutch “patriots” attentive to the American revolution: “ Let us follow the example of the United States which, for their part, followed the traces of our ancestors (Cité p. 59). That the thing is quite inaccurate matters less to the bottom than the process of self -construction across the other.
A claimed radicalism
Also approaching the authentically radical realities of the Batavian Revolution (especially in matters of control of representatives), Annie Jourdan confronts himself with determination to a historiography which she considers too complacent, nourished by the prejudices of Dutch researchers anxious to reject in the shadow the violent and/or democrats aspects of that time, and French researchers eager to annex to the history of their “ Large nation »All peripheral revolutionary developments. However, for the author, there is no point in summoning the myth of “ jacobinism French to explain a revolutionary radicality which is fully understood once replaced in the trajectory of a national history much less moderate than the image of Épinal wants to transmit it. As she states forcefully, “ Batavian radicalism indeed exists (P. 428).
This idea, presents throughout the book, truly takes shape in the last chapter, devoted entirely to political life in Amsterdam during this period, and particularly to an astonishing radical activism here highlighted through the press, popular societies and the various manifestations which then enamelled the life of the city, revealing at the same time particularly interesting local balances. We will only take it here as an example, only the surprising turnaround of spring 1796. While the pressures exerted on the municipality by a popular movement animated mainly by the gunners of the National Guard fed a climate of tensions and troubles, the central government called for help by the first city of the Republic believed in turn to the French army parking in the country and solicited its intervention in order to restore order. The measure produced its effect since calm returned immediately, but in a way to a reversed front since far from provoking the submission of the popular movement to the municipality, the measure, on the contrary, aroused the sacred union of the two, associated in a common resistance with armed foreign interference within a city which lived as an autonomous political community. If they would interfere, the Bataves did not however want to see the French mingling too close to their affairs, and this is how the two coups de force of January and June 1798 must also be understood which saw the institutions of the young Republic jostled by the Bataves themselves, in the matter much more determined by national political considerations than by the influence of representatives of the French Republic.
The author finds radicalism in the school policy implemented which, far from limiting itself to ambitious speeches and elitist achievements at work according to it in France or in the United States, paid particular attention to primary school, aroused the admiration of many and imitation by some. This indisputable success of the Dutch education model, included in the right of reflections on this subject in the United States of Enlightenment, constitutes a doubt one of the main achievements, both social and national, of these politicians of the years 1796-1801 that Annie Jourdan baptized the daring name of “ Founding fathers of Dutch democracy (P. 102), to the inheritance today well -known within their own country.
It must be said, and the author does not hide it, that for radical that she may have been on certain points, the Batavian revolution was much less so on others. To take only one example, the Dutch conception of justice was far from being the most advanced of the time, retaining corporal punishment and professional magistrates. Fluctuating according to the fields, this Batavian radicalism is also used over time, and in particular from 1801, announcing an increasingly conservative regime, marginalizing the people and upgrading the old national federalism, a regime to which, a symbol among all, the former stadhouder called his faithful to rally. Consequently, the reader experiences the confused feeling of the shift of a republic which loses its revolutionary soul, which gradually turned off under the monarchy of Louis (1806-1810) before succumbing during the meeting of the country to France, ordered by Napoleon in 1810.
But from this French period, which Annie Jourdan intends to strictly limit to the time of the Dutch departments (1810-1813), we will not know much since the book only approaches it from afar without ever really integrating it into its demonstration. This is perhaps there perhaps one of the regrets that one could formulate at the end of its reading: to suspend reflection on regime changes of 1806 and 1810, when we would have liked the author to teach us as much about the post-revolution that she had taught us about the forerunner. Another regret, more formal that one, the absence of annexes: neither simplified chronology, nor map of the country, nor even index of names, so many very useful instruments which lack a reader sometimes a little lost in dates, places and actors. Instead, it will be said, this one has gained an abundant trilingual bibliography (French, English, Dutch) of more than twenty pages which will prove to be a precious work tool and sting of curiosity. This only increases the value of a work and the talent of an author who, by allowing us to access the most current Dutch research, offers us the most fine example of this function of cultural and intellectual passer which occupies Annie Jourdan so much.