Journal of Modern European History

This article proposes a reassessment of the Spanish Restoration through a study of its connections with, and departures from, European post-war strategies. Dominating accounts focus on two intertwined narratives: the definitive displacement of Spain from the category of great power, and the political involution of King Ferdinand VII's reactionary monarchy. These aspects were highlighted by numerous contemporaries and have been considered by most historians, yet they would benefit from a reappraisal that is comparative and considers transnational entanglements. This article addresses whether the character of the Spanish Restoration differed from the processes that were experimented in other parts of Europe and, if so, what the consequences of its particular situation were both for Spain and the international order.

This article proposes a comparative perspective on the role of constitutions in European political cultures from 1814 to c.1835. Through its analysis of constitutions first as a means to legitimising post-revolutionary monarchies, and secondly as a means to integrating the divided societies in France, Great Britain as well as the German states, this article suggests two major results: 1) Constitutions were a central instrument that was imagined by post-revolutionary European societies in order to open up an «evolutionary» path to political progress and thereby finally «end» or «prevent» further revolutionary changes. 2) The major challenges to constitutional integration were posed by the emergence of competing political groups that often demanded a strengthening of certain parts of the constitutions or their further reform. The problems, which were faced by almost all political actors regarding the acceptance of these new imperatives of party politics and the different constitutional «solutions» that they had developed to meet these challenges, provide explanations for the different constitutional paths that were taken by Great Britain, the German states and France during the early 1830s. In Great Britain, a common constitutionalist language enabled a precarious understanding amongst the competing groups, whereas anti-pluralist constitutional conceptions led to constitutional instability in France and even damaged the very idea of constitutional integration in Germany thus benefitting a «unification first»-approach in the German states.

The article examines the post-revolutionary rearrangement in Europe by focusing on the separation of Finland from Sweden. In 1809, the eastern part of the Swedish kingdom became a grand duchy within the autocratically ruled Russian empire. Both Finland and Sweden experienced the constitutional moment which characterised the post-revolutionary and post-Napoleonic Europe, but in very different ways. The Swedish Diet enacted a new written constitution while the Finnish Diet gave its oath to the new emperor, who promised to maintain the laws, privileges and rights of the country. Alexander I might have used the word «constitution» in his speech to the Finnish Estates, but the political status of the grand duchy remained unclear, and it was only in 1863 that the Finnish Diet was called to convene again. In the context of imperial dependency and a lack of established forums for public debate, the article analyses how the issue of political representation was made public in Finland during the first decade of Russian rule. The analysis is based on the ways in which the official newspaper described the new political situation of Finland and reported on political circumstances and parliamentary life in other countries. It is argued that the publication of news from abroad can be seen as an important way of keeping the issue of political representation alive in Finland. It was also a channel for the reception of political concepts. The study discusses the Finnish case in relation to political circumstances in Sweden. The comparative angle draws attention to complex features of the formation of a new polity and a reformation of an old.

This article discusses the consequences of Napoleon's downfall for the world's first modern post-slavery state, Haiti. It focuses on the interplay between the French colonial office's diplomatic missions that were lobbied by dispossessed planters to recover the lost colony and the Haitian propaganda to guarantee national independence. These relations ultimately contributed to a shift in French colonial politics towards Haiti, from military conquest and re-enslavement to financial indemnification. Taking the rhetoric of pacification beyond Europe, French diplomacy presented racial hierarchies as an extension of the 1814 compromise between old and new elites in metropolitan France. The Haitian side, however, insisted on the sharp contradiction between the supposed reconciliation in France and a quasi-restoration of the Ancien Régime colonial. Drawing on Haitian, French and British source material, this article analyses how Haitian propaganda attacked the precarious political legitimacy of Restoration France from an extra-European viewpoint to exert pressure on European colonial politics. Relying on Haiti as a model for slave emancipation, British abolitionists significantly contributed to excluding the option of the Ancien Régime colonial. The debate on Haiti's future forced Louis XVIII's government to ponder the political risks of colonial restoration. In the outcome, financial indemnification became France's primary condition for recognising Haitian independence in 1825.

In 1793, the French republic saw the guillotining of two royal heads. In 1934, Winston Churchill spoke of the «holocaust of crowns» within his lifetime. Today, the British Queen presides over the Commonwealth, which comprises mostly republics. At the same time, there have been calls a return of the kings to republics with respect to Africa. How is this astonishing self-assertion of the institutional monarchy to be explained, and why has the antagonism between the monarchy and the republic disappeared? This will be discussed in a paper through a global perspective. Churchill was convinced: «No institution pays such dividends as the monarchy. » What dividends were earned, and for whom? What has the global presence of European states meant for the institution of the monarchy in Europe, in imperial spaces, and in decolonisation? In order to be able to analyse this issue, our study questions the legitimacy which had been both accorded to and claimed by the institution monarchy. Does monarchical legitimacy differ in Europe, Asia and Africa? Why did monarchies survived while other states and empires were created and then destroyed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries? The study places three areas in the center of our consideration: the role of the monarchy as the emotional center of the nation and the empire; monarchy as a polycentric rule; and lastly, monarchy as the institutionalisation of permanence in change. Finally, the study will discuss how a comparative assessment and review of the performances by the monarchy and the republic might look.