Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Timeline of the Sister Republics (1794-1806)
- The political culture of the Sister Republics
- ‘The political passions of other nations’: National choices and the European order in the writings of Germaine de Staël
- 1 The transformation of republicanism
- The transformation of republicanism in the Sister Republics
- ‘Republic’ and ‘democracy’ in Dutch late eighteenth-century revolutionary discourse
- New wine in old wineskins: Republicanism in the Helvetic Republic
- 2 Political concepts and languages
- Revolutionary concepts and languages in the Sister Republics of the late 1790s
- Useful citizens. Citizenship and democracy in the Batavian Republic, 1795-1801
- From rights to citizenship to the Helvetian indigénat: Political integration of citizens under the Helvetic Republic
- The battle over ‘democracy’ in Italian political thought during the revolutionary triennio, 1796-1799
- 3 The invention of democratic parliamentary practices
- Parliamentary practices in the Sister Republics in the light of the French experience
- Making the most of national time: Accountability, transparency, and term limits in the first Dutch Parliament (1796-1797)
- The invention of democratic parliamentary practices in the Helvetic Republic: Some remarks
- The Neapolitan republican experiment of 1799: Legislation, balance of power, and the workings of democracy between theory and practice
- 4 Press, politics, and public opinion
- Censorship and press liberty in the Sister Republics: Some reflections
- 1798: A turning point?: Censorship in the Batavian Republic
- Censorship and public opinion: Press and politics in the Helvetic Republic (1798-1803)
- Liberty of press and censorship in the first Cisalpine Republic
- 5 The Sister Republics and France
- Small nation, big sisters
- The national dimension in the Batavian Revolution: Political discussions, institutions, and constitutions
- The constitutional debate in the Helvetic Republic in 1800-1801: Between French influence and national self-government
- An unwelcome Sister Republic: Re-reading political relations between the Cisalpine Republic and the French Directory
- Bibliography
- List of contributors
- Notes
- Index
Parliamentary practices in the Sister Republics in the light of the French experience
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2020
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Timeline of the Sister Republics (1794-1806)
- The political culture of the Sister Republics
- ‘The political passions of other nations’: National choices and the European order in the writings of Germaine de Staël
- 1 The transformation of republicanism
- The transformation of republicanism in the Sister Republics
- ‘Republic’ and ‘democracy’ in Dutch late eighteenth-century revolutionary discourse
- New wine in old wineskins: Republicanism in the Helvetic Republic
- 2 Political concepts and languages
- Revolutionary concepts and languages in the Sister Republics of the late 1790s
- Useful citizens. Citizenship and democracy in the Batavian Republic, 1795-1801
- From rights to citizenship to the Helvetian indigénat: Political integration of citizens under the Helvetic Republic
- The battle over ‘democracy’ in Italian political thought during the revolutionary triennio, 1796-1799
- 3 The invention of democratic parliamentary practices
- Parliamentary practices in the Sister Republics in the light of the French experience
- Making the most of national time: Accountability, transparency, and term limits in the first Dutch Parliament (1796-1797)
- The invention of democratic parliamentary practices in the Helvetic Republic: Some remarks
- The Neapolitan republican experiment of 1799: Legislation, balance of power, and the workings of democracy between theory and practice
- 4 Press, politics, and public opinion
- Censorship and press liberty in the Sister Republics: Some reflections
- 1798: A turning point?: Censorship in the Batavian Republic
- Censorship and public opinion: Press and politics in the Helvetic Republic (1798-1803)
- Liberty of press and censorship in the first Cisalpine Republic
- 5 The Sister Republics and France
- Small nation, big sisters
- The national dimension in the Batavian Revolution: Political discussions, institutions, and constitutions
- The constitutional debate in the Helvetic Republic in 1800-1801: Between French influence and national self-government
- An unwelcome Sister Republic: Re-reading political relations between the Cisalpine Republic and the French Directory
- Bibliography
- List of contributors
- Notes
- Index
Summary
Historians have in recent years become increasingly involved in bringing together the experience of Europeans, and indeed people all over the world, during the Age of Revolution (1750-1850). To be sure, Robert Palmer and Jacques Godechot introduced an Atlantic dimension to the map in the 1960s. However, the reception of their work was somewhat mixed and the French Revolution, like contemporary events elsewhere, was subsequently studied from an internal point of view for the most part. Yet this was to ignore its transnational dimension, which is now attracting renewed interest and forms the subject of the essays collected in this volume. Above all, the expansion of la Grande Nation after 1795 had a direct impact on neighbouring territories, integrating some areas of the Low Countries, the Rhineland, and Alpine territory into the French Republic while proclaiming Sister Republics elsewhere. However, revolutionary expansionism was by no means a one-way process, especially at the outset, when the affiliated peoples along the eastern border of France, from the North Sea to the Mediterranean, were allowed significant latitude in the regimes they created. There was, as a result, considerable interaction between the experiments conducted in these Sister Republics and developments in the metropole, which offer the potential for a fascinating study in transnationalism.
The three chapters in this section focus on a particular aspect of this phenomenon, namely that of constitution-making in the Dutch, Swiss, and Neapolitan Republics, together with the parliamentary practices that accompanied it. There were, of course, substantial differences between these three, diverse locations, above all in so far as the Neapolitans were still in the process of discussing a document when their short-lived republic was curtailed in 1799 and the old monarchy restored. In the Dutch and Swiss Republics, by contrast, constitutions were elaborated, although in both cases the French were to impose their own versions later. Nonetheless, in all three instances, constitutional cultures emerged which, though they were influenced by developments in France, would also carry an indigenous character. Conversely, the experiments in the Sister Republics, which often bore a more authoritarian stamp than the French Constitution of the Year III (1795), fed into the subsequent Constitution of the Year VIII (1799) on which the Napoleonic Consulate was based.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Political Culture of the Sister Republics, 1794–1806France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Italy, pp. 109 - 114Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2015