Committees and deputations in the assemblies of the Dutch republic, 1660–1668. 1

SUMMARY

In this article Henryk Olszewski reviews the main developments of the parliamentary constitution in Poland-Lithuania from the later middle ages to the abortive reform period after 1760. It is argued that at least until the end of the Jagellinian dynasty in 1572, a healthy and viable constitutional tradition had developed, combining an effective kingship with a vigorous gentry democracy. It goes on to argue that the subsequent degeneration of this political system, symbolised by the adoption of the liberum veto in 1652 was not an inevitability but the result of contingency.     

Petitions and ‘legitimate’ engagement with power in absolutist Denmark 1660–1800

ABSTRACT

Petitioning was universal across early modern Europe, but worked differently within distinct polities. Denmark-Norway became, after 1660, an absolute hereditary dual monarchy, with no further meetings of the Estates, and no other formal representative structures. The crown, however, did fully acknowledge the right to petition, confirming the mechanism and the legal basis for doing so in the full law code of 1683, Danske Lov. Petitions from all levels of society were processed in the central bureaucracy, and those processed through the Chancellery (Danske Kancelli) can be analysed systematically. However, a number of petitions were handled separately in the Exchequer (Rentekammer) or through the legal system. This article discusses the different types of petitions to the Danish crown, and analyses some examples that illustrate not merely the complicated negotiation of power within an absolute monarchy, but also the kind of language and cultural conventions necessary for the system to work.     

State formation in seventeenth-century Ireland: the Restoration financial settlement, 1660–62

The Irish Restoration financial settlement formed an integral part of the deal that was struck between Irish Protestants and the restored Charles II in the early 1660s. Driven by a desire to retain lands acquired in the 1650s, the Protestant-dominated Irish government crafted a set of financial bills that granted the Crown a perpetual and hereditary revenue in Ireland in return for security of tenure. Based on innovative Cromwellian reforms, the royal government retained many elements of Cromwellian fiscal policy, which transformed the Irish economy into a net contributor to the English Treasury by the 1680s. The customs and excise acts also laid the basis for the emergence of an embryonic state bureaucracy that emerged in Ireland during Charles II's reign. This article examines both the rationale behind the Irish Protestant interest's policies in the early 1660s and the political negotiating that saw them secure favourable land legislation at the expense of those Catholics who had served the monarchy in the 1640s and 1650s.     

Electoral reform and the political modernization of England, 1832–1841

SUMMARY

Philip Salmon re-examines the place of the Reform Act of 1832 in English parliamentary history as a supposed turning point which averted revolution. Recent scholarship has shown that already before 1832 English radical traditions favoured popular constitutional reform over republicanism, and that changes to the electoral system were in practice not extensive after 1832. The analysis of pollbooks reveals, however, that the incidence of party-based voting was higher after the reform. The author explains how changes in the electoral laws, including those for local elections in the Municipal Corporations Act of 1835, altered the nature of electioneering. The new, more bureaucratic electoral laws on voter registration and qualification, on the manner of taking the poll, and on permitted election costs, all placed a premium on party organization for both local and national elections. The legal complexities led to the formation of local party associations to tackle them, as especially the registration of party supporters as voters required constant vigilance between elections. The adversarial system of registration was a key element in the rise of party-based voting in the 1830s. Confrontational electoral practices politicized the electorate for local as well as national contests, and so contributed to the advance of more persistent party allegiances at both levels. This constitutional realignment underpinned the growth of a more modern English representative democracy.     

Regime Consolidation and Female Status in a Fledgling Theocracy: Khomeini's Vilayet-e-Fiqh, 1979–89

The Iranian Revolution, through Khomeini's consolidation measures, quickly morphed into an ‘Islamic Revolution’. Khomeini's regime abrogated popular legislation such as the Family Protection Laws of 1967 and 1975, which protected the rights of females, as the clerics sought to institute Shariah (Islamic) laws in an ‘Islamic Republic’. The historical record reveals that the precipitous legal transformation from secular to Shariah law under Ayatollah Khomeini's personal tutelage placed females in a dangerous predicament. Regressive gender policies, however, served to mobilize females to push back against the new social paradigm which had emerged under the rubric of Velayat-e-Fiqh. This article examines this misogynistic trajectory during Khomeini's rule and how it served to galvanize many Iranian women to ‘gender activism’.     

‘Royal supremacy restored?’ Scottish parliamentary independence in the Restoration era, 1660–88

SUMMARY

The constitutional settlement instituted by the Scottish Parliament in 1661–63 has traditionally been seen as a victory for the crown and a disaster for the parliamentary estates, since all of the hard-won constitutional gains introduced during the Covenanting era were largely swept away in favour of a complete reassertion of the king's prerogative powers. Nevertheless, despite the initial flourishing of royalist enthusiasm that marked the early Restoration period, in only a matter of years Scotland's political elites were once more engaged in battle with an authoritarian monarch and his increasingly dictatorial ministers of state. By as early as the mid-1660s, armed rebellion had erupted in the localities, religious non-conformity threatened to fragment the church, and rumbles of dissent within the parliamentary chamber itself were becoming more difficult to ignore. Can it be concluded, therefore, that it would prove impossible to imagine away the momentous events of the Covenanters' radical experiment in government, and that some of those constitutional and ideological principles survived into the Restoration era, effectively sowing the seeds of what would become the Revolution of 1689–90?     

Crown and Cortes in Castile, 1590–1665

Summary

Preparations for the Estates General of 1789 constituted one of the last acts of the anclen régime in France. The accompanying elections have received relatively little attention, yet they bequeathed much more to the electoral practices and political mentalités of the Revolution than most historians have realised. Though separate orders were preserved at the final meeting of the Estates General, with disastrous consequences for the monarchy, custom was breached by the uniform fashion and broad franchise with which deputies were elected. When the National Assembly was created the orders were dissolved, but much of this semi‐traditional electoral system survived. Assemblies of voters, an indirect, two‐tier process of election and exhaustive balloting were all retained from the past. A pronounced aversion to declared candidatures and electoral canvassing remained equally entrenched. Moreover, radicals drew upon the old‐régime heritage, rather than upon Rousseau, in their use of mandates, oral voting and the pursuit of unanimity at the polls. The revolutionary experiment with elections ultimately faltered in face of apathy and cynicism among voters. This article concludes by suggesting how the electoral legacy of the anden regime inhibited the emergence of a ‘modern political culture’, which is currently hailed as the major achievement of the French Revolution.     

Petitioning,addressing and the historical imagination: the case of Great Yarmouth,England 1658–1784

ABSTRACT

This article examines the role of loyal addresses, petition-like texts that emerged during the Cromwellian Protectorate in England, as repositories of public memory. It contends that loyal addresses were a particularly mnemonic form of political communication: not only did addresses themselves incorporate historical narratives but their reproduction in contemporary newsbooks facilitated their later collection in compendia and histories of addressing. These volumes in turn gave an overall ‘sense’ or character to public opinion nationally and allowed its shifts to be charted over time. The article uses the case study of an address to Richard Cromwell issued in 1658 from the corporation of Great Yarmouth to demonstrate how this text was redeployed to wage a political campaign against leading magistrates in the town in the 1670s. The address gained renewed political significance in the late eighteenth century, as the interplay of local political and historical interests made its depiction of the influence of religious factions in the borough once again relevant. This local memory in turn fed upon a wider national use of the Cromwellian addresses as an example of political faithlessness and duplicity. Combined, these local and national discussions demonstrated the importance of addresses in defining public opinion and political identity over time.     

The municipal level of decision‐making in holland (1660–1668)

Summary

The city councils were the main source of the political power of the urban deputies of the States of Holland. Therefore, this article, which forms part one of a study of the city councils, intends to examine the membership requirements in terms of religion, wealth and legal education. Through a selection of case studies from the councils of Amsterdam and Rotterdam, it seeks to explore the impact of patronage, kinship ties and factional rivalries. Within the councils the two most important groups of officeholders were the burgomasters and the pensionaries. The present and former burgomasters were the local power‐brokers. The pensionaries served as the main links between the councils and the provincial assembly in The Hague, while at the same time enhancing the professional quality of the local and provincial government.     

Political theology,orthodoxy and parliamentary sermons in Sweden, 1789–1866

This article investigates the concept of political theology by analysing parliamentary sermons in Sweden in the period 1789–1866. The bishops who delivered the sermons and their political contribution have received little scholarly attention, which this study is intended to remedy. Parliamentary sermons were printed and disseminated throughout the country as epitomes of the state's official ideology, which makes them important documentary evidence of past concerns. The study examines two key areas of thought evident in the sermons: the importance to the state of religious unity; and the monarch as a religious symbol. It was believed that the faith of the people and an organic relationship between church and state would provide society with a certain stability, and this view was reinforced – first by Romantic philosophy and later by confessional theology – in response to marked social challenges. Generally speaking, the state was not thought able to survive without help from the church, even as religious and political reform was underway. At start of the period in question, meanwhile, Sweden's monarchs were seen as imparting the faith to their subjects in finest Old Testament fashion; however, in the first decades of the nineteenth century this view weakened, as the foundation for a stable society was instead sought in the cooperation of king, people and God. After the 1840s, direct references to the monarchy were rare in the parliamentary sermons – from that point the king had a largely symbolic religious role in instilling the faith in his subjects and promoting the unity of the Church of Sweden.