Mass as a Political Entity? The Emergence of ‘the Masses’ as a Political Actor in the Nineteenth-Century Netherlands

Abstract

By the end of the nineteenth century, ordinary people had become an essential feature of a new legitimizing strategy: instead of the quality of political representatives, it was the quantity of the represented that legitimized power. This contribution takes a conceptual history approach to analyse the slowly changing perception of political participation in the period before elections became the dominant instrument of democratic representation. It studies the changing meaning of the term ‘the masses’ in the nineteenth-century Netherlands. The first part of the article explains the transformation of the way ordinary people and their practices of participation were represented in political discourses in Dutch newspapers. Particular attention will be given to the difference between the domestic and foreign context. The Dutch often discussed the manifestation of protest in foreign politics as a negative development. When occurring in the Netherlands, crowds were treated with more tolerance and were used to demonstrating the legitimacy of the existing political order. The second part focuses on uses of the term ‘mass’ in the non-human world. ‘Mass’ described quantity for neutral objects, but also appeared in the context of movement, unpredictability and harm in the natural world. Thirdly, the paper closely analyses ‘the masses’ in reference to human crowds, which were often depicted as unreliable and violent. The fourth part moves to analysing a so far understudied aspect of ‘the masses’ as an orderly and disciplined entity in the reporting about the Franco-Prussian War. Finally, I focus on ‘the masses’ as a reliable political actor in the Netherlands. The conclusion shows that the image of ‘the masses’ was not only negative, but also contained a positive dimension.

In the nineteenth century, Europe experienced a transformation of society and politics that would lead to the creation of modern democracy. Ordinary people increasingly became active participants in national political institutions, evidenced by developments ranging from the emergence of the first political parties to the extension of universal suffrage rights. However, the Netherlands took a slightly different path. Compared to many of its European neighbours, the number of voters was surprisingly low; electoral reform came late because it was not at the top of the political agenda. When electoral reform did finally arrive in 1887, only a quarter of Dutch men older than 23 qualified for suffrage. ¹ As a result, political participation happened elsewhere, in the informal context of Dutch civil society. From the 1840s, a rich associational landscape started to emerge in the small country on the North Sea. National associations were beginning to organize mass petitions. Supporters called for action on social issues ranging widely across matters such as primary education, alcohol prohibition, slavery abolition, and stamp tax elimination. ²

Public discourses and political vocabulary followed this strange division between the institutionalized form of politics and politicized civil society in the Netherlands. The term ‘democratie’ was largely absent in debates. ³ Politics was seen as an administrative affair that did not need radical intervention or terminology. Civil society was active, but demonstrated little interest in politics. ⁴ Representatives were to remain distant from the electorate; they were certainly not to engage in the mobilization of voters, let alone disfranchised people. Only in the second half of the nineteenth century did this political climate start to change. ⁵ Neo-Calvinists and Socialists were the first to break the convention of sober political debates. The protestant minister Abraham Kuyper, leader of the first modern Dutch party, established the term ‘kleine luyden’ (small people) as a group so sizeable that it should be involved in determining the future of the nation. ⁶ Male universal suffrage was only introduced in 1917, after a two-decade-long campaign by the Social Democrats. ⁷ Women followed two years later. ⁸ These public discussions about the form of the political system were accompanied by a shift in the meaning of the political vocabulary when the Dutch tried to make sense of the changing circumstances of their society. ⁹

This study explores how this transformation of politics played out in the changing use of ‘the masses’ in public discourses about political participation in the Netherlands. Recently, conceptual history has attracted the attention of many political historians. ¹⁰ The theoretical underpinnings of such approaches stem from multiple historiographical traditions, including the British Cambridge School and the German tradition of Begriffsgeschichte. ¹¹ The causal direction of the relationship between historical reality and language is difficult to detect. In any case, one should take care not to assume that the vocabulary employed by contemporaries is a straightforward reflection of reality. From what we know about linguistic processes, it seems reasonable to argue that language shapes, or at least limits, the course of social innovation. Yet scholars have convincingly argued likewise that a reductionist understanding of language as the primary factor of social change conceals the complex interaction between the two. ¹² One could thus say that language is neither exclusively a dependent nor an independent variable in history.

What does this mean for the practice of historical research? Nineteenth-century political language is treated here not as a theoretical construct but rather as an empirical entity that was part of, and shaped, social change. Contemporaries did not completely think ‘outside the box’ of their previous knowledge and experience. On the contrary, it rather seems that they instinctively understood that new meaning only gained significance when it was integrated with a pre-existing cadre of words. ¹³ The act of speaking, or, more accurately – if we consider the nature of most historical sources – of writing, was essentially a way to think about new political routines, establish their legitimacy in the eyes of others and spread them to larger parts of the population.

Most studies of conceptual change focus on the emergence of new vocabulary in social circles that had a direct connection to politics, either through their office or through their scholarly interest. In other words, all too often conceptual history has functioned as a branch of intellectual history: it focuses on the language of the political elite and the conscious engagement with conceptual change. The Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe represents the most obvious example of research examining the political language of the educated higher classes. ¹⁴ Similar approaches showing an interest in the role of language and its interaction with the history of political thought can be found in intellectual history. ¹⁵ Of course, there is nothing wrong with such approaches. In fact, philosophical, legal, academic, economic, and political writings have provided valuable insights into the changing meaning of abstract concepts. Analyses of these texts have shown us the rhetorical ability and careful thinking that went into adjusting the meaning of political terms. The downside of focusing on these abstract discussions is that they tell us little about the way political language changed in the ordinary linguistic practices of public discourses. ¹⁶ We know relatively little about whether, how, and when conceptual change was available to most people – whom we can only assume adopted new political vocabulary. This is unsatisfactory since those groups who were distant from politics became important players in the transformation of nineteenth-century politics. Early social movements and political parties emerged from those social milieus that had gained access to education and higher living standards, but did not belong to the traditional political elite. ¹⁷ Recent interventions in analysing political change show the promise of a broader approach. ¹⁸ Hence, paying close attention to political languages outside of the walls of ministries, parliament, and universities is a key piece in the puzzle of understanding political participation in the nineteenth century. Broadening the conceptual lens gives us information about why some people thought it legitimate to demand political influence.

Newspapers occupied a central position in the establishment and circulation of new political vocabulary. Journalists were multipliers of conceptual change; they could establish, repeat, and disseminate new vocabulary. Of course, studying newspapers does not provide us with direct information about the reception of articles by readers. Nevertheless, we know that newspapers gained dramatic importance during the nineteenth century. By the late nineteenth century, the so-called new journalism had transformed mass media and society. ¹⁹ The age of mass media had actually started earlier in Europe, and the Netherlands was no exception to this process. ²⁰ By 1820 only 25 per cent of Dutch men were illiterate, and by 1880 almost all men had some basic writing and reading skills. ²¹ Many became avid newspaper readers. Starting around 1829, political discussions became more prevalent in newspapers. ²² The 1869 abolition of the stamp tax, together with other factors such as economic growth, urbanization, population growth, and technical developments in printing, spurred a revival of the press. ²³ In the emerging pillarized society, many newspapers had a Liberal, Catholic, Orthodox Protestant, and Socialist character, yet there were also relatively politically neutral and commercially oriented newspapers. ²⁴

We should not imagine conceptual change through newspapers as a unidirectional process where information is disseminated from newspapers to the public. Rather, journalists established a mutually dependent relationship with their readers. Initially, distribution numbers did not drive this relationship. Journalists were considered opinion-makers who were believed to sell their services to the highest bidding political agent – a rumour that was not completely unfounded. ²⁵ Politicized opinion pieces mainly remained on the front page of the paper. These political commentaries have already been analysed with a conceptual history framework. ²⁶ The general news sections tended to have less of an opinionated character. In particular, reports about foreign events were copied from foreign newspapers. ²⁷ To survive the growing competition in the news market, editors quickly understood that they had to seriously consider the public's taste. Hence, we can assume that journalists were aware of and actively catered to the thematic interests and linguistic preferences of their audiences for both political and economic motives.

The focus of this study is on the changing use of the term ‘the masses’ in the nineteenth century. A hitherto understudied concept, ‘the masses’ had a multidimensional meaning and underwent a remarkable transformation in the European context. From the historiography, we know that by the first half of the twentieth century, the term carried a negative connotation that referred to the unruly side of mass politics. In the eyes of most contemporaries, the masses were rebellious, emotional, and dangerous – they needed to be disciplined. Later developments partially confirmed these suspicions. In Britain, the word simultaneously gained a positive and negative connotation of the people and the mob throughout the nineteenth century. ²⁸ The masses were the focal point of democratic, communist but also fascist movements, for instance, in Germany and Austria. ²⁹ Mass nationalism became an increasingly important political factor, further contributing to a new understanding of mass politics. ³⁰ The concept was so influential that it shaped the emerging field of sociology for famous authors such as Gustave Le Bon, the scholarly father of crowd psychology. ³¹

This study analyses the history of the concept of the masses in the Netherlands before its rise as a fin-de-siècle catchword. Initially describing inanimate entities, including large territory or purchasable goods as well as natural phenomena, ‘mass’ came to connote more frequently the existence of numerous individuals who displayed similar behaviour. By the end of the nineteenth century, the masses were increasingly seen as an agent of politics in Europe: ordinary people were thought to embody the common will and became legitimate agents in the political sphere. Yet, in the Netherlands, the masses took on a largely ambiguous and multifaceted meaning, which is documented in historiography for the post-war period. ³² Indeed, historian Ido de Haan has argued that the concept and practice combined ‘individualism and collectivism, stupidity and creativity, passivity and unruliness’. ³³ For the nineteenth century, a nuanced account of the concept of the masses is still missing. Like in other European languages, the Dutch ‘massa’ (mass) changed its primary meaning throughout the century. However, the distinction between the singular depiction of ‘mass’ and its plural form ‘the masses’ is less clearly pronounced in Dutch than in English. In Dutch ‘massa’ was used both as a signifier in front of a noun, as in ‘massa's steen’ (masses of stone) for instance, or in its own right, as in ‘de massa’ (the mass). The latter was used in the singular ‘massa’ and plural ‘massas’, both like the English ‘masses’ in the sense of many people.

To study this transformation of the meaning of ‘the masses’, the article relies on the Delpher digitized newspaper archives of the Royal Library (Koninklijke Bibliotheek). The applicability of digital newspaper databases for historical research continues to be debated to some extent. Historians have welcomed the digitization of archives with enthusiasm, but the quality of the scanned sources and the quantity of the material both remain a challenge. ³⁴ At the time of investigation, the Dutch term ‘mass’ was found in the nineteenth-century collection more than 240,000 times – the proverbial needle in a haystack. Identifying which instances – in this case, a substantial number of needles – refer to the political participation of ordinary people cannot be done through close reading alone. To cover this amount of information in which the reading might require more than a historian's professional lifetime, I made a selection of occurrences of ‘massa’ through a combination of distant and close reading. Throughout this process, I paid attention to maintaining a broad selection of newspapers to trace general public discourses rather than regional ones, or those of a specific political orientation in a single newspaper. As a starting point, I focused on the two years when the masses were most often mentioned in the first and second half of the nineteenth century to develop a first sense for ‘massa’ in nineteenth-century Dutch. ³⁵ From this sample, I excluded articles in the business context that used ‘massa’ to report on business news, often displayed in tables and short announcements, with terms such as ‘veiling’ (auction) and ‘hectares’ (hectare). ³⁶ Other occurrences of the term concerning nature, science, society, and politics that facilitated a broad semantic analysis were deliberately kept in the general corpus. I then established four aspects of ‘mass’ that I searched for with key terms and domain knowledge in the corpus. I paid particular attention to events that were discussed across different newspapers but have not been extensively described in the historiography yet.

As a result, this study focuses on four aspects of the politicization of the term ‘massa’ to answer the research question of how Dutch newspapers employed the term ‘massa’ in the nineteenth century. Throughout these four aspects, we will see that the masses were portrayed as spontaneous and uncontrollable and increasingly also as disciplined and reliable. Firstly, this contribution discusses the non-human applications of ‘massa’ that were particularly prevalent in the first half of the nineteenth century. Natural events and catastrophes particularly caught the attention of contemporaries. Nature's unreliability was reflected in the political meaning of the term in later decades. Secondly, it engages with descriptions of the manifestations of ‘massa’ abroad. Foreign events functioned as a laboratory through which the applicability of mass politics for the Netherlands could be tested and evaluated, with the masses often appearing as an uncontrollable phenomenon. Thirdly, the contribution investigates the Franco-Prussian War, showing large manifestations of the masses and the extension of political participation: temporarily with the Paris Commune (1871), and more permanently with universal male suffrage in a unified Germany – reports that highlighted both the unreliable and disciplined side of masses. This leads to the final dimension: domestic ‘masses’ in the local and national context. While foreign events were the traditional focus of the press, local and national events gained increasing relevance in the nineteenth century. ³⁷ The ‘masses’ at home could be uncontrollable, but more often they appeared as a positive and reliable force, maintaining existing social and political structures.

Goods, Volcanoes, and Caterpillars: Dangerous Masses in the Non-Human World

The most prevalent use of the word ‘massa’ in Dutch newspapers was to announce the availability of purchasable commodities in auctions and shops. Perhaps the pragmatic attitude of the Dutch towards trade supported this emotionally neutral application of the term in the semantic field of business transactions. Throughout the nineteenth century, newspapers informed their readers that land and goods could be acquired in bulk by interested buyers. In this linguistic context, ‘mass’ referred to an unspecified quantity of the subsequent noun and indicated tradable items of considerable size. For instance, the notary Roeloffs announced in the Algemeen Handelsblad that he would auction ‘a house, with large barn, garden and approximately 1 Bunder 80 Roeden of arable land […] in 3 Parcels and thereafter in mass’. ³⁸ The reference to ‘massa’ signals the aim to sell the property as a whole. Thus, ‘massa’ could indicate both the aggregate and the individual components that comprised it.

‘Mass’ was also used to describe the quantity of material in other circumstances. Articles on natural events demonstrate that ‘massa’ in a material context often carried negative connotations, particularly in relation to unpredictability. Volcanic eruptions, for example, were a popular subject of reporting in Dutch newspapers. In 1843, the Dutch public followed the volcanic activities of Vesuvius in Naples. To report the extent of lava, the word ‘massa’ seemed appropriate to Dutch journalists. The Groninger Courant reported that ‘[t]he mass of the lava in the plain is already very important and covers the ground to a reasonable height’. ³⁹ In 1846, another volcanic event captured Dutch readers’ attention. In Iceland, the eruption of Mount Hekla prompted the Leydse Courant to report on this ‘frightening’ natural spectacle of fire and flames caused by the erupting ‘masses of stone, brimstone, and ore’. ⁴⁰

The reports about volcanic outbreaks point to an emotional connotation of quantity. In the descriptions of natural events, mass was related to the situational context of volatility that was beyond human control. At first sight, the account of the Icelandic Hekla outbreak might read like a sober report, helping the reader to imagine the magnitude of the natural event: ‘[t]he outflowing lava has already formed several mountains, and the volcano has hurled masses of rock, brimstone, and ore a mile and a half’. ⁴¹ Yet, we also need to consider that the emotional context of this description was one of fear. Instinctively, the reader would have known that keeping a distance from the mass is the most sensible behaviour to avoid physical harm. In fact, it was the very feature of quantity that made natural objects unforeseeable and, hence, ultimately dangerous. While a single piece from the volcanic emission might cause limited harm, the sheer scope of the outbreak made this natural event particularly dangerous. In short, it was the sheer volume of material that increased the unpredictability of the volcanic mass and made it more destructive to the surrounding area.

An important factor that contributed to the danger associated with ‘massa’ was its movement. When mass was situated in a fixed condition, it typically seemed to be less capable of causing damage. Threats emerged when many objects were set in motion. This semantic relationship arose concerning volcanic eruptions but was also present in other types of natural events. For instance, regarding heavy snowfall in San Giovanni di Fiore in Calabria, the Middelburgsche Courant reported that ‘such a great mass of snow’ had come down that ‘three countrymen’ and their mules had ‘found their grave in the snow’. ⁴² The dangers of mass in motion were also embodied in the case of a fire in the town of Haarlem. As the Opregte Haarlemsche Courant reported, flames ‘increasing in strength from a large mass of peat’ threatened to destroy a factory building. ⁴³ Water was another natural phenomenon that appeared in the semantic context of destruction by referring to mass in movement. The public presentation of a submarine cannon in the United States created a movement in the sea that was so strong, it swallowed an entire ship: ‘it disappeared in the great mass of foam and water’. ⁴⁴ Regardless of the specific context, in these articles about natural events, mass was often mentioned in relation to unforeseeable and, consequently, destructive movement that could not be controlled.

When the term ‘massa’ was applied to living beings, the notion of unpredictability was similarly accompanied by associations of irrationality and lack of forethought, particularly when large numbers moved together. Objects like volcanic lava did not possess consciousness and, therefore, were not subject to judgements about the prudence of their actions. Sentient entities, however, were another matter – their actions could be judged within a more rigid evaluative framework. Here, rational behaviour was equated with self-preservation, and behaviour that endangered survival could provoke a condescending tone in reporting. In 1843, insects were a concern for Dutch farmers who feared the destruction of an entire harvest. Fortunately, by mid-season, reasons for hope emerged. As the Overijsselsche Courant explained, storks had feasted on swarms of caterpillars, saving the fields of the North Eastern region. It was the caterpillars moving en masse that were discussed with a critical undertone. In their attempt to cross local waterways and reach crops on the opposite bank, the caterpillars had made themselves vulnerable to predators. To describe this self-harming behaviour, the article employed the word ‘massa’: ‘[t]hese animals sometimes dare to cross the ditches in masses, but are unable to defend themselves in the water, most of them perish in it’. ⁴⁵ In their search for new feeding grounds, the caterpillars had followed the herd and lost their lives. As scholars would later argue about human crowds at the end of the century, mass movements not only threatened bystanders but also inflicted harm on those who joined the collective. ⁴⁶ Joining the masses was thus presented as a dangerous exercise because of its uncontrollable and erratic nature.

‘Dumb’ but Dangerous: Masses Abroad

These connotations of danger in quantity, movement, and irrationality of the masses were reflected in the use of mass for collective human behaviour. The most obvious examples in this regard are moments of revolution. In 1848, newspapers reported on the turbulent events in Europe. In this context, a close reading of political speeches and writings reveals an optimistic account of the masses. For instance, the Opregte Haarlemsche Courant directly quoted the letter of Hippolyte Carnot, French minister for education and worship services, who argued that a ‘good farmer’ was a better political representative of the agricultural population than ‘a rich and literate citizen’. ⁴⁷ Contrary to the former, the latter was not only ‘alien to the outdoors’ but also ‘blinded by interests which differ from those of the mass of farmers’. ⁴⁸ In this quote, the masses have a positive connotation; they are a large group that deserves proper political representation – a theme that dominated the political discussions in France. ⁴⁹ These direct references to the language of revolutionaries positively depicted the masses, but the masses could also be seen as a positive phenomenon in other circumstances. In non-revolutionary Britain, the model of peaceful political transformation for contemporary commentators, the masses could play a negative and insurgent role. When reporting about a Chartist meeting that turned into a crowd moving through London with sticks and stones, Dutch newspapers like the Arnhemsche Courant emphasized that the ‘rioters’ found ‘little sympathy’ with the ‘mass of the people’. ⁵⁰ Such descriptions were often copied, perhaps even from British papers, and appeared in several Dutch newspapers. In this case, the Leydse Courant used a similar phrase to refer to the same event. ⁵¹

Still, by the 1870s at the latest, ‘the masses’ also maintained a sinister and threatening connotation. When an observer reported from the public execution of the French murderer Jean-Baptiste Troppmann, he described an uncomfortable atmosphere that was, among other things, caused by the mass character of the event: ‘[t]he hustle and bustle, the feeling in the twilight, through which one only perceived a wavy, unrecognizable mass, that funfair in front of the threatening scaffold […] [m]ade the painful, oppressive impression on the messenger’. ⁵² In this example, the masses did not execute brutality themselves, albeit the event of an execution created a context of violence for the manifestation of human masses in public arenas.

This sentiment was also present in descriptions of the masses as a political actor. As in the natural events of the early nineteenth century, the combination of quantity, movement, and unpredictability posed a threat to the safety of political institutions. In Bavaria, the Catholic newspaper De Tijd reported that the masses were involved in causing a political crisis in which ‘the struggle between the masses of the people’ against liberalism ‘gradually became deadly dangerous’ and ‘has now led to the crisis in which Bavaria finds itself’. ⁵³ Such concerns were shared among different political orientations. ‘The masses’ in relation to people seemed an unreliable entity, as the Liberal Algemeen Handeslblad commented regarding the Catholic Patriot Party in Germany. Politicians had to learn that it was ‘easier to stir the masses, especially the dumb masses, than to form a well-disciplined party’. ⁵⁴

It was this stupidity of the masses, not unlike the caterpillars, that was often quoted as a reason for political elites to intervene. The spontaneous and dangerous aspect of the masses needed regulation and intervention in the lives of ordinary citizens as part of a larger civilizing mission. The Provinciale Drentsche en Asser Courant reported in 1870 that the French cabinet had made ‘tracing all possible means of improving the moral, intellectual, and material condition of the masses of the people’ an essential goal. ⁵⁵ In Nice, Italian patriots provoked their French counterparts by demanding reunification with Italy during the National Assembly elections. Tensions ran high: ‘[g]reat was the general unrest, it grew greater with every hour’. ⁵⁶ The conflict escalated between the Italians, ‘armed with sabres and pistols’, and ‘the masses’ who ‘responded by throwing stones’. ⁵⁷ Even when the masses were not drawn by their instincts into dangerous actions, many newspaper articles still conveyed the notion that crowds could easily be deceived. For instance, a report about the ‘masses of the rural population’ in France, described as peaceful, began with the observation that it was fortunate they had not been manipulated by ‘[s]ome hotheads’. ⁵⁸

Articles about the behaviour of crowds reflected Dutch newspapers’ scepticism regarding the involvement of crowds in politics: when the people acted collectively, they were perceived as posing a danger to both themselves and their surroundings. When it came to developments abroad, the negative consequences of broadening political participation were particularly emphasized. Later theorized in the social-science scholarship of the early twentieth century, the growing assumption about mass behaviour in the nineteenth century was that the masses were a threat to individual rationality. ⁵⁹ The sheer quantity of the crowd made its behaviour so powerful that it was unstoppable once momentum had been established. A report about the US census in the Staatscourant described how the masses of people were ‘so big’ that they almost brought down the administrative building in Washington. ⁶⁰ Reports about the temperance movement in Britain exemplifies this perception. The Algemeen Handelsblad described alcohol consumption as a ‘national vice’. These reports carried implicit calls for action to address social problems that directly arose from conceptualizing ‘the masses’ as a distinct phenomenon. The underlying hope was that a ‘healing influence’ could be exercised on ‘the masses’. ⁶¹

Organized and Efficient? A Positive Account of the Masses

The previous sections have shown how references to crowd manifestation have portrayed the ‘massa’ as uncontrollable and irrational. But how did perceptions shift when masses participated in organized, peaceful political processes? Recent research shows that in the 1840s, the concept of ‘foreign’ became more important in Dutch newspapers, becoming increasingly associated with uncertainty in the 1860s. ⁶² In 1870 and 1871, references to the masses peaked, a trend closely related to events abroad. In the year of the Paris Commune, negative references to the masses were a common feature in reports about France. The continent had also experienced one of the century's most destructive military conflicts with the Franco-Prussian War. ⁶³

Beyond these upheavals, Europe had also experienced the rise of new political movements, and the emergence of political parties put the organization of the masses on the public agenda of many European nations. ⁶⁴ In the aftermath of the war, German unification brought with it universal male suffrage for the new state. While in France the masses had spontaneously grabbed political power, the Prussian elite – the victors – engineered the circumstances for an orderly integration of the masses into politics. The German nation-state was born in January 1871. Unified Germany implemented suffrage for its male citizens in the national parliament, the Reichstag, and German citizens turned out in large numbers in elections. ⁶⁵ Even though Imperial Germany could hardly be considered a liberal state like Britain, these events did not go unnoticed in the Netherlands. Only 26.5 per cent of Dutch men were allowed to vote in national elections until 1889. ⁶⁶ Did German universal suffrage allow for a different perception of the masses in the Netherlands?

The answer was complex, as shown by the varied Dutch responses. The election in Germany did receive some attention in Dutch newspapers as an event of mass politics, but the sober reporting did not focus on the behaviour of the masses during the election. Newspapers reported on the position of parties and candidates rather than on the actual event of the election. A notable exception was the Catholic Maasbode, which criticized German National Liberals for their ‘modern views’ whose ‘consequences […] could long be hidden from the large masses, because the reforms, the introduction of new concepts, already demanded their attention’. ⁶⁷ An article about the Radical Democrat Johan Jacoby mentioned universal male suffrage in Germany in a condescending tone. De Locomotief, published in Semarang, Central Java, in today's Indonesia, commented that the ‘masses of basic voters [grondkiezer, A. H.]’ could not be expected to support Jacoby readily: ‘many are against him’. ⁶⁸ Yet characterizing the extended electorate as indifferent – ‘they stand in the field’ – and suggesting that perhaps others were already deceased – ‘many sleep the eternal sleep’ – revealed a critical perspective on extending voting rights. ⁶⁹

While German elections received little attention as mass events, the Franco-Prussian War became a daily topic in Dutch newspapers, providing far more opportunities to observe and describe mass behaviour. The war coverage shaped how the term ‘massa’ was used in descriptions of human behaviour, presenting both negative and positive connotations. On the one hand, the Franco-Prussian War revealed the uncontrollable and helpless side of the masses. The siege of Paris served as evidence that the masses could be rendered powerless by an efficient army. As Het Nieuws van den Dag wrote, the French ‘National Guard having come in masses to resist the invasions’ had no chance; the expectations were that ‘regrettable events’ were to unfold. ⁷⁰ Against the well-organized military forces, the crowd in the popular sense was powerless: ‘[i]t is clear then that the levée en massa [mass conscription, A. H.] cannot do anything against well-organized armies’. ⁷¹ The effects on the inhabitants of Paris provided another example of the masses losing all positive connotations: the ‘suffering of the big mass’, and their ‘hunger’ displayed the crowd as the helpless recipients of social conditions without having any agency to alleviate their misery. ⁷²

The perception of destructive masses intensified as newspapers documented several developments. In the chaos of the war, the dangerous side of the crowd in its most unorganized manifestation was depicted: the mob could take over entire neighbourhoods and threaten the property and livelihood of the inhabitants. An illustrative example for the Dutch public was the experience of the Dutch painter Martinus Kuytenbrouwer whose house in Paris was looted and destroyed. ⁷³ His fellow countryman, Hein Burgers, was more fortunate as his friends had defended his house, ‘also against the masses’. ⁷⁴ After the war, the political developments further contributed to this perception of the inglorious role of the masses. The Paris Commune reminded the Dutch public that the crowds were still an ominous political actor. They could easily be manipulated by political demagogues: ‘the masses of revolutionaries, as always happens in revolutions, will let themselves be carried away by the extreme party’. ⁷⁵

Yet an unexpected challenge to these overwhelmingly negative perceptions emerged from an unlikely source in these years: the Prussian army itself. In 1871, newspapers used the term ‘massa’ to describe the movement of the armed forces with phrases such as ‘masses of infantry’, the ‘enemy advanced in masses’, and ‘reserved forces’ (‘landweer’). ⁷⁶ These reports provided a new quality for describing foreign events: they often represented the masses as an orderly and controlled entity that was capable of striking efficiently. The army was not a regular crowd; negative associations of unruly and irrational behaviour did not apply to the well-organized Prussians or even the French army. Writing about the military divisions that ‘represented the masses of the people’, the Provinciale Overijsselsche en Zwolsche Courant praised the manifestation of ‘courage and persistence’. ⁷⁷ The heroic oath of patriotic soldiers in Colmar to bring back the flag to the women of the town, resulted in an ‘indescribable enthusiasm among the masses’. ⁷⁸

These references to different types of foreign events revealed a fundamental paradox: the ‘masses’ appeared both disciplined and spontaneous, efficient and dangerous. In part, events abroad served as a testing ground for making sense of mass politics. Since these events did not directly impact daily life at home, mass politics could be safely explored from a distance. This perhaps explains why Dutch newspapers felt more inclined to emphasize the more dramatic negative manifestations, such as the destructive masses that attacked Dutch-owned property in Paris.

Yet the coverage was more nuanced than purely negative, indicating a more complex picture that is often overlooked. While the Paris Commune reinforced fears of revolutionary mobs that could be easily manipulated by demagogues, the numerous accounts of the Prussian army exemplified how masses could act efficiently and with discipline under proper organization. Notably absent from this discourse was the introduction of universal male suffrage in Germany, which received only passing mention and scarcely affected Dutch perceptions of mass politics. This paradox – that masses were both uncontrollable and yet disciplined – remained a theme throughout the nineteenth century in reports on foreign politics.

For King and Country? The Masses in the Netherlands

In contrast to these foreign events, when mass behaviour appeared in concrete descriptions of events in the Netherlands, the masses often functioned as a peaceful and orderly display of popular support for the existing social and political order. In this role, the masses appeared as a political actor that could be trusted. Indeed, growing evidence points to the agency of ordinary people who appropriated national repertoires in the social interactions of cities like Amsterdam and Ghent. ⁷⁹ Yet, the discourses around ‘the masses’ had a complicated relationship with the emergence of nationalism. Terms like ‘natie’ and ‘volk’ were connected to ‘the masses’, but among the three ‘the masses’ had the weakest association with the nation as a whole. While ‘volk’ could be explicitly labelled as ‘Nederlandsche volk’, the term ‘massa’ was not suitable for such a specification. ⁸⁰ However, this did not mean that the masses could not be mobilized under a hopeful banner for national purposes. When acting in accordance with the national interest, upholding public order and participating in national repertoires, ‘the masses’ appeared surprisingly often as a positive actor.

This positive portrayal is evident in discussions about manifestations of the political will of ordinary people. In debates about military expenses, for instance, patriotism was invoked to demonstrate that the masses at home posed no danger: ‘[w]hat matters most is a strong patriotism, which is not increased by the many millions spent for war – but by the broad application of the constitutional principle that everyone must defend his homeland’. ⁸¹ Indeed, the Algemeen Dagblaad hoped that this analysis ‘will penetrate more and more to the masses’ to ensure that the people ‘will resist strongly’ in the face of unnecessary rises in the military budget. ⁸²

This positive portrayal of the domestic masses stood in sharp contrast to the largely negative foreign coverage. Notably, concerns about the unreliability of the masses as a political actor were typically presented through reports about developments abroad. In the Dutch context, while the perception that the masses were problematic dominated discussion about suffrage extension, these concerns remained largely speculative. As one article remarked: ‘[i]n any legislation we consider this [census-based suffrage] wise and prudent, much better than the introduction of a law, which the masses imagine as ideals of perfection’. ⁸³ In this case, the dangerous side of mass action had been prevented, but positive assumptions about the masses’ morality were naïve and better avoided.

In most instances, however, the masses in the Netherlands lost their unruly and dangerous characteristics. Newspapers using ‘massa’ to describe collective action portrayed a friendly, supportive atmosphere that welcomed political incumbents. During the inauguration of the mayor of the town of Tegelen, the term ‘mass’ conveyed the scale of support for the community leader's legitimacy. The mayor chose to walk ‘surrounded by the mass of friends and notabilities’ to ‘make a victorious entry into the congregation’. ⁸⁴ The joyous atmosphere and celebratory mood stood in stark contrast to the dangerous connotations of rebellious and protesting masses abroad.

As political actors in the Netherlands, the masses appeared as respectful subjects who paid tribute to the existing political order and respected the fatherland and monarchy. Even when disagreeing with the existing circumstances, mass sentiments were expressed through humble gestures. Dutch workers openly criticized the existing order, but they did so deferentially:

they hope that in the wishes of the Dutch workers the King sees the petition of a great part of the nation, of the masses, of the workers of the Netherlands who are independent today; and that people and King take measures that may serve to maintain the Netherlands as a venerable kingdom. ⁸⁵

Domestic coverage consistently portrayed the masses as orderly and friendly. For instance, during a ‘volksfeest’ (people festival) to celebrate the winners of ice skating contests: a ‘big mass of humans’ in Wolvega, an ‘entire human mass’ in Akkrum, and a ‘mass of spectators’ in Haarlingen and Sloten were involved in joyous and friendly celebrations. ⁸⁶ Exceptions to these patterns were rare and only occurred in moments of disaster. In 1871, a fire in Rotterdam demonstrated the potentially problematic role of the uncontrollable movement of the masses. The authorities had managed to extinguish the flames, ‘notwithstanding the immense mass of people who moved in the periphery of the fire’. ⁸⁷ Most of the time, the masses appeared as orderly bodies that did not pose any harm. In Breda, a similar event also involved the masses but did not lead to a mass panic: ‘masses of people were soon on their feet and hastened to the outside’. ⁸⁸ The masses could also contribute to a thriving society – they appeared as a kind, supportive, and generous collective. As the Arnhemsche Courant wrote, the nation was sceptical about politics and the arts, but always willing to donate to social causes: ‘ask for money for a benevolent purpose, soon the masses will join’. ⁸⁹ On such occasions, the hope was ‘that a mass of persons will contribute much to this charitable cause’. ⁹⁰

Conclusion

Political participation has been studied in numerous historical cases and with various methodological approaches. This contribution takes an unusual approach by asking how Dutch newspapers employed the term ‘massa’ in the nineteenth century. Yet, studying this conceptual change in practical language is difficult. Often, historians focus on those people who actively and consciously engage in developing and reflecting on new political vocabulary. While newspaper editors maintained contact with ministers, parliamentarians, and scholars, their reporting covered a wide array of different events that did not necessarily have a direct connection to politics. Nevertheless, in this mundane reporting of the news, we can find a daily language of ‘the masses’ that reflected the discourses of ordinary readers of the time. The news opened a door into those historically important processes of adopting new meaning in intuitive ways without long, theoretical reflection. Explicit discursive motivations are often absent from such transformations of language. Contemporaries instinctively used terms to give meaning and connotations to phenomena that seemed novel in their eyes.

In many European languages, the concept of the masses played a central role in the discussions about broadening political participation. In the Netherlands, ‘massa’ was used primarily to describe purchasable commodities in a neutral tone in the announcement pages of newspapers. In this context, the term refers to the quantity of physical material. Beyond this neutral usage, four additional images of the masses carried a more pronounced emotional connotation than simply signalling quantity. The first application of ‘massa’ was for the description of natural events. In this semantic context, mass acquired the additional quality of movement that made the mass unpredictable, and consequently, dangerous. Masses of volcano debris, heavy snowfall, spreading fire, and seawater left a trail of destruction behind them that could, and did, cost human lives. When the term ‘the masses’ was applied to living beings in nature like caterpillars, the combination of quantity, movement, and unpredictability turned out to be disastrous, not only for the surroundings but also for everything that was part of the mass itself.

When applied to humans, the term ‘massa’ maintained its self-destructive connotation. In the second image, Dutch newspaper reports about the masses in France, Italy, the US, Britain, and Germany described out-of-control situations where quantity was synonymous with more victims who could not escape a catastrophe. In the worst case, when the disaster was human-made and the masses acted as an agent, they could be out for blood and were often involved in violent clashes with the authorities. These descriptions were particularly prevalent for situations that took place outside of the Netherlands. Instead of stimulating democratization processes in a direct and gradual manner, as so often described in an older historiography, the masses abroad served as a deterrent regarding the dangers of giving ordinary people the sense that they had political power.

There were, however, many positive portrayals of mass behaviour. In the third image, the masses could take an organized and efficient form, whose orderly behaviour was openly admired in the press. In the early 1870s, it was not the introduction of universal suffrage in Imperial Germany that newspapers related to the concept of the masses. Rather, it was the Prussian army that impressed the Dutch press and was praised for its structured progress. Ironically in the context of war, there is nothing more dangerous than a unit of soldiers. However, Dutch newspapers did not see this ‘massa’ as a danger. Perhaps it was the discipline among soldiers and their willingness to follow orders that made the military masses appear in a different light. The element of chance, so present in the chaotic mass events in other circumstances, did not fit the supposed precision of the Prussian army. Importantly, the military masses did not participate in politics. Prussian soldiers were excluded from the newly introduced suffrage. Nevertheless, there was an image of the well-organized crowd that appeared to be acceptable, even desirable, in the eyes of the Dutch press – an image of disciplined masses that would be eagerly embraced by the leaders of future mass parties.

Finally, the fourth image focused on the masses within the borders of the Netherlands. In the domestic context, the masses were associated with an orderly and civilized nation. The masses acted as a supporting force for the social and political order. In this way, the masses were not inevitably revolutionary actors. Their cheerful depiction of loyalty to king and country legitimized existing hierarchies of power. In later periods, this positive connotation became more prevalent as mass politics and culture became normalized as the status quo. ⁹¹ Yet, considerable distrust against mass mobilization persisted within the political life of European nation-states. ⁹²

These various images reveal how mass participation in political institutions could be told as a story that was simultaneously negative and increasingly positive. While these images were more complex than a simple binary, we can distinguish two dominant themes. On the one hand, critics referred to the suggestible nature of the masses, which could burst out into ruthless behaviour that could harm anybody in its proximity. On the other hand, the masses were enthusiastically embraced for their authenticity in representing the true character of the nation. This positive image, in particular, was more prevalent in discourses than one might expect from the negative discussions about the masses in later periods. This study does not intend to establish a direct connection between the language of the masses and the changing practices of political participation. Deriving immediate causal conclusions is difficult and not the purpose of studying these ordinary languages of politics. However, what these various images indicate is that the masses played a much more complicated role in the vocabulary of Dutch newspapers than a simple synonym for the mob. This ambiguity of sentiments about the masses informed perceptions about the broadening of political participation among many contemporaries. Ultimately, the flexibility of the images of the masses also contributed to the dissemination of the norm that quantity mattered, and more people should participate in political institutions.