Subaltern Political Subjectivities and Practices in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries 1032268166, 9781032268163

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
List of figures
Notes on the contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Subaltern political subjectivities
Contested concepts
Between loyalty and resistance
Structure of the book
Bibliography
Part I: Subaltern political participation in an autocratic context
Chapter 1: Voice of the people: The politics of petitioning in modern Latin American history
Traditions and Innovations
Citizenship and subaltern political culture
Clients and patrons
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Chapter 2: Letters to the Caudillo: Petitions in miserable times, 1936–1945
A time of misery
Pleading to a dictator
Caught in a war
The hour of the woman
The uses of innocence
God’s voices
Cult of the leader
The everlasting pain
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Chapter 3: Finding subjectivities in Fascist Italy: “Mothers of the Fallen” between symbolic and experienced political participation
Organizing grief: the National Association of Mothers and Widows of the Fallen
The AMVC in the context of first-wave Italian Feminism
“Flipping the script:” war mothers and widows between symbol and action
At the margins: poor and rural mothers and widows between symbol and survival
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Part II: Subaltern political communication in the context of (proto-)democratic representation
Chapter 4: The municipal assembly as a scene of local democracy and subaltern political experiences in Finland, 1865–1917
The politically marginalized as subalterns in the Finnish countryside
Popular responses to the introduction of municipal assemblies
Introduction of municipal councils stirring debates on local democracy
Women’s subalternity in municipal arenas
Conclusion: mobilization of “side-people” into the scene of “trotter people”
Notes
Bibliography
Chapter 5: At the crossroads of local and national representation: Peasant petitions to the Diet of Finland in the 1860s and 1870s
Finland as a grand duchy with an emerging national representation
Finnish-speaking peasants as subalterns
Petitions in the Diet of Finland
Peasant petitions to the diet of 1863–64
Peasant petitions to the diet of 1877–78
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Chapter 6: Outsiders?: “Democratic patronage” and the subalterns in France, c.1875–c.1935
“Hidden franchise” and social norms: subalterns, brokers, and patrons
Deference, reciprocity, and distrust: contrasting subaltern political cultures
“Dear Comrade:” subalterns, socialism, and party patronage in the France of the 1930s
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Chapter 7: “Reading the newspaper made me believe that…”: Sources and uses of political knowledge in the liminal space between subaltern and elite politics. Paris, 1894–1920
Sources of political knowledge
Processes of (de)politicization
Political knowledge as a narrative strategy
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Chapter 8: How to bridge the gap?: The issue of popular political engagement in the Netherlands, c.1945–1965
De Nederlandse Kiezer : research on Dutch voters in the 1950s
The Partij van de Arbeid in the 1950s: passing on the torch of Social Democracy
Anne Vondeling’s politics of responsiveness
“Vondeling’s mailbox”
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Part III: Spiritualization of politics in embodied subaltern narratives
Chapter 9: From subaltern experience to political tradition: Telling and knowing revolutionary martyrs in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, 1848–1860
What was a political martyr in the nineteenth-century Mezzogiorno ?
From subaltern memory to written knowledge: local martyrdom as an emerging tradition in the 1840s
Local elites, the people, and the memory of martyrs in 1848
Community re-appropriations of martyr memory: the case of the arbëreshë
Martyrologies and “political statistics:” the role of Neapolitan exiles in Piedmont-Sardinia
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Secondary Literature
Chapter 10: Nonsense and the senses: French sources of knowledge in colonial Algeria, 1846–1871
Toward a colonial history of sense(s) and sense-making
Rumor patrol and politics of proximity
Formal and informal consultations, meetings, and assemblies
Songs and the meddahs performing them
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Primary Sources (supplementary to the Arab bureaus’ reports in the ANOM GGA’s I, J, and K-series)
Secondary Literature
Chapter 11: Subaltern caste concepts of the “political,” Bengal, 1900–1930
Defining selves, constituting publics
The politics of protest
The twentieth century as signaling a new dawn
Self-sacrifice as political self-assertion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Subaltern Political Subjectivities and Practices in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Approaching subalternity from a broad Gramscian angle, this edited collection contributes to the understanding of popular politics in parliamentary, autocratic, and colonial contexts. The book explores individual stories and micro-­histories of complaints, requests, rumors, and other mediated and unmediated interactions between political institutions and the subjects they claimed to govern or represent. It challenges the approaches of institutionally oriented political historiography and its attention to the top-­down construction of political representation, citizenship, and power and powerlessness. The book discusses more subtle forms of agency and the spaces these pertained to, which could indicate contestation or resistance taking place within a framework of loyalty toward the existing political institutions. This research does not only bridge the divide between political and apolitical frames of reference, but it also provides a new perspective on the dichotomy between loyalty and resistance by acknowledging the nuances of these seemingly opposing stances. With case studies from Europe, North Africa, South America, and India, the chapters cover political communication in proto-­democratic, democratic, imperial, and authoritarian contexts. This volume is crucial reading for undergraduates, postgraduates, and scholars in history and social sciences who are interested in political culture and the mechanisms of negotiating local, national, or imperial identities. Karen Lauwers is an Academy of Finland postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki. She has a broad interest in parliamentary culture, colonial history, intersectional identities, and narratives of inclusion and exclusion. She is the author of Ordinary Citizens and the French Third Republic (2022). Sami Suodenjoki is a senior researcher working in the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in the History of Experiences at Tampere University. He specializes in popular politics and the interaction between citizens and the state in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Marnix Beyen is a full professor and a member of Power in History – Center for Political History at the University of Antwerp. His research deals primarily with the historical, scientific, and literary representation of nations, and the history of parliamentary culture in Western Europe.

Routledge Studies in Modern History

How the Church Under Pius XII Addressed Decolonization The Issue of Algerian Independence Marialuisa Lucia Sergio Overseas Economic Relations and Statehood in Europe, 1860s–1970s Shaping the World, Making the Nation Gerold Krozewski Khoesan and Imperial Citizenship in Nineteenth Century South Africa Jared McDonald Antisemitism Before the Holocaust Re-Evaluating Antisemitic Exceptionalism in Germany and the United States, 1880–1945 Richard E. Frankel Labour in the Suburbs Political Change in Croydon During the Twentieth Century Michael Tichelar Globalizing the Soybean Fat, Feed, and Sometimes Food, c. 1900–1950 Ines Prodöhl Italy and Libya From Colonialism to a Special Relationship (1911–2021) Edited by Luciano Monzali and Paolo Soave Subaltern Political Subjectivities and Practices in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Between Loyalty and Resistance Edited by Karen Lauwers, Sami Suodenjoki, and Marnix Beyen For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Research-in-Modern-History/book-series/MODHIST

Subaltern Political Subjectivities and Practices in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Between Loyalty and Resistance Edited by Karen Lauwers, Sami Suodenjoki, and Marnix Beyen

First published 2023 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 selection and editorial matter, Karen Lauwers, Sami Suodenjoki, and Marnix Beyen; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Karen Lauwers, Sami Suodenjoki, and Marnix Beyen to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Lauwers, Karen, editor. | Suodenjoki, Sami, editor. | Beyen, Marnix, editor. Title: Subaltern political subjectivities and practices in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries : between loyalty and resistance / edited by Karen Lauwers, Sami Suodenjoki, and Marnix Beyen. Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2023. | Series: Routledge studies in modern history | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022060313 (print) | LCCN 2022060314 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032268163 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032268255 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003290087 (ebook) Classification: LCC JF799 .S83 2023 (print) | LCC JF799 (ebook) | DDC 323/.04209034--dc23/eng/20230307 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022060313 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022060314 ISBN: 978-1-032-26816-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-26825-5 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-29008-7 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003290087 Typeset in Times New Roman by SPi Technologies India Pvt Ltd (Straive)

Contents

List of figures Notes on the contributors Acknowledgements Introduction: Subaltern political subjectivities

vii viii xi 1

MARNIX BEYEN, KAREN LAUWERS, AND SAMI SUODENJOKI

PART I

Subaltern political participation in an autocratic context

11

1 Voice of the people: The politics of petitioning in modern Latin American history

13

EDUARDO ELENA

2 Letters to the Caudillo: Petitions in miserable times, 1936–1945

30

ANTONIO CAZORLA-SÁNCHEZ

3 Finding subjectivities in Fascist Italy: “Mothers of the Fallen” between symbolic and experienced political participation

45

ANNE WINGENTER

PART II

Subaltern political communication in the context of (proto-)democratic representation

67

4 The municipal assembly as a scene of local democracy and subaltern political experiences in Finland, 1865–1917

69

SAMI SUODENJOKI

vi Contents

5 At the crossroads of local and national representation: Peasant petitions to the Diet of Finland in the 1860s and 1870s

91

ONNI PEKONEN AND MATTI LA MELA

6 Outsiders? “Democratic patronage” and the subalterns in France, c.1875–c.1935

112

FRÉDÉRIC MONIER

7 “Reading the newspaper made me believe that…”: Sources and uses of political knowledge in the liminal space between subaltern and elite politics. Paris, 1894–1920 130 MARNIX BEYEN

8 How to bridge the gap? The issue of popular political engagement in the Netherlands, c.1945–1965

144

HARM KAAL

PART III

Spiritualization of politics in embodied subaltern narratives

169

9 From subaltern experience to political tradition: Telling and knowing revolutionary martyrs in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, 1848–1860

171

PIERRE-MARIE DELPU

10 Nonsense and the senses: French sources of knowledge in colonial Algeria, 1846–1871

192

KAREN LAUWERS

11 Subaltern caste concepts of the “political,” Bengal, 1900–1930

217

NEHA CHATTERJI

Index

230

Figures

4.1 A municipal assembly in the Swedish-speaking municipality of Närpes, 1914. Photo: Gösta Carlsson, Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland 83 8.1 A combination of general election posters and commercial ads on an Amsterdam wall, a week before the 1952 general elections, 17 June 1952. Photo: Harry Pot, National Archives/Anefo 152 8.2 In 1966, Finance Minister Vondeling, third from the left, participated in his party’s canvassing tour for the provincial elections. Photo: Jan Voets, National Archives/Anefo 156 8.3 One of the letters Vondeling received during his 1963 brievenbus campaign. National Archives, The Hague, Collectie 346, A. Vondeling, 2.21.183.89, inv.nr. 123 160 10.1 (Part of) M. Prax (cartographer) and P. Delamare (engraver), Carte des routes Commerciales de l’Algérie au Pays des Noirs, French Ministry of the Navy, 1851, public domain via BnF/Gallica 190 10.2 Zoomed-in version of Figure 10.1 (from BnF/Gallica), indicating the areas addressed in Chapter 10 191

Contributors

Marnix Beyen is a Full Professor at the University of Antwerp, and a member of Power in History – Center for Political History at the same university. His research deals primarily with the historical, scientific, and literary representation of nations, and the history of parliamentary culture in Western Europe during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He has published in international journals like European History Quarterly, BMGN – the Low Countries Historical Review, Memory Studies, and the Journal of Modern European History. He has experience in supervising interdisciplinary research projects combining political and cultural history with linguistics, political science, communication science and architectural history. Antonio Cazorla-Sánchez is Professor of Modern European History at Trent University, Canada. He is the author of nine books and dozens of chapters in books and refereed articles. His forthcoming book (in Spanish) is The Spanish civil War in 100 objects (Barcelona, 2021). He is also currently preparing an online museum of the Spanish Civil War. His current research project is a post-­colonial analysis of Europe’s twentieth-­century museums of political and social violence. He was the recipient of the 2020 Trent University Distinguished Research Award, given every three years to a professor in the field of the Humanities. Neha Chatterji is an Assistant Professor of History in the Manipal Center for Humanities at Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Karnataka, India. She received her PhD from the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, in 2018, for her dissertation “Sacred Calling, Worldly Bargain: Caste, Self-­cultivation and Mobilization in Late Colonial Bengal.” Her recent publications include “Caste Protest in Lower Bengal: One Hundred Years of Dalit Dissent and its Solitude,” in Caste in Bengal: Histories of Hierarchy, Exclusion and Resistance (Permanent Black in association with Ashoka University, 2022).

Contributors  ix Pierre-­Marie Delpu is an FRS-­FNRS research fellow at Université Libre de Bruxelles. He holds a PhD in Modern History and specializes in Southern European nineteenth-­ century revolutions. His current research deals with political martyrdom in the long nineteenth century. He is the author of L’affaire Poerio. La fabrique d’un martyr révolutionnaire européen 1850–1860 (CNRS Éditions, 2021) and is about to publish Les nouveaux martyrs (XVIII-­XXe siècles) (Passés Composés, 2023). He is the coordinator of the research programme AMAPOL “Aspects du MArtyre POLitique (Europe méridionale 1800-­ 1939),” hosted by the Casa de Velázquez in Madrid. Eduardo Elena is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Miami, USA. He specializes in nineteenth-­and twentieth-­century Latin American history, with a particular interest in the societies of the Rio de la Plata region. He is the author of Dignifying Argentina: Peronism, Citizenship, and Mass Consumption (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011) and co-­editor of Rethinking Race in Modern Argentina (Cambridge University Press, 2016). He is currently at work on a book titled Emergent El Dorado: Western Expansionism and the Conquest of Growth in Steam-­Age Argentina. Harm Kaal is Associate Professor of Political History at Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands, and project leader of “The Voice of the People: Popular Expectations of Democracy in Postwar Europe,” a research project funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation (www. thevoice-­of-­thepeople.org). Matti La Mela is specialized in the political and digital history of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He is currently visiting researcher at Uppsala University and postdoctoral researcher at University of Helsinki. La Mela has a PhD (2016) in History and Civilization from the European University Institute, Italy. La Mela has focused on themes such as history of property rights, history of innovation, conceptual and transnational history, and digital history methods. La Mela works with digitised parliamentary documents and is a member of the Academy of Finland project “Semantic Parliament: Linked Open Data Service for Studying Political Culture.” Karen Lauwers is a postdoctoral researcher affiliated with the University of Helsinki’s Department of Cultures since September 2019, and funded by the Academy of Finland since September 2022. For the past three years, she has been working on the French-­Algerian axis of Josephine Hoegaerts’ ERC-­ project CALLIOPE (“Vocal Articulations of Parliamentary Identity and Empire”). Trained as a historian of Political Culture & National Identities in the Low Countries (MA, Leiden University) and modern French political history (PhD, University of Antwerp), she has a broad interest in Western European parliamentary culture and colonial

x Contributors history, intersectional identities, narratives of inclusion and exclusion, and thus of (incomplete) democracy, representation, and citizenship in the 19th and 20th centuries. Her first monograph (Ordinary Citizens and the French Third Republic) has been published with Palgrave Macmillan. Frédéric Monier has been Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Avignon since 2008 and a researcher at Centre Norbert Elias. From 2018 until 2020 he was an associate researcher at the Mediterranean laboratory of sociology. His research interests focus on (late) modern and contemporary politics and society, the history of patronage and corruption in Europe. He is head and collaborator of various research projects on the history of corruption. He recently edited, with J.I. Engels, History of transparency in politics and society (2020), and, with O. Dard, L’argent immoral et les profiteurs de guerre à l’époque contemporaine (2020). Onni Pekonen works as a specialist on democracy and participation at the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra. He holds a PhD in Political Science and has previously worked at the University of Jyväskylä, Leiden University, and the Ministry of Finance, Finland. Pekonen has specialized in parliamentary politics and published, for example, on conceptual history, publicity and procedures of parliaments. Sami Suodenjoki is a senior researcher and Adjunct Professor (docent) in social history at Tampere University, Finland. He works in the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in the History of Experiences HEX. Suodenjoki’s research interests include popular politics, nationalism, and the interaction between citizens and the state in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He is co-­editor of the seminal anthology Lived Nation as the History of Experiences and Emotions in Finland, 1800–2000 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021). Anne Wingenter is an Assistant Professor of History at Loyola University, Chicago’s John Felice Rome Center. Her research interests include gender and women’s history, fascist movements, ordinary writing, and the politics of history/memory. Her most recent publications include “Benito Mussolini in Italian High School Textbooks,” in Globalisation and Historiography of National Leaders: Symbolic Representations in School Textbooks (Springer, 2017); “From Soldier’s Guides to Student Handbooks: Rome as Classroom during the Early Cold War,” in A Tale of Two Cities: Florence and Rome from the Grand Tour to Study Abroad (Edisai, 2017); and “Politics of Grief: War Widows and Mothers in Interwar Italy,” Veuves, veufs et veuvages en Europe à l’époque contemporaine (forthcoming). She is currently working on a project that looks at the city of Rome in the transition between “Hot” and Cold War.

Acknowledgements

This volume has been inspired by the international conference “Subaltern Political Knowledges,” which was organized by Karen Lauwers and Marnix Beyen in 2017 with the financial support of the University of Antwerp’s History Department, which then employed both, and the Flemish Research Council (FWO). The event was made possible thanks to the cooperation of the Antwerp City Archives (FelixArchief), which provided the venue. The editors are sincerely grateful towards these partners and funding bodies. The editors also thank the ERC project CALLIOPE (StG no. 757291, funding Karen Lauwers from 2019 to 2022) as well as the Academy of Finland and the Centre of Excellence in the History of Experiences HEX (funding Sami Suodenjoki since 2018) for supporting the editorial work.

Introduction Subaltern political subjectivities Marnix Beyen, Karen Lauwers, and Sami Suodenjoki

By approaching the analytical category of subalternity from a broad Gramscian angle, this volume contributes to our understanding of popular politics in parliamentary, autocratic, as well as colonial contexts. The themes and scope of this book challenge the approaches put forward by institutionally oriented political historiography and its attention to the top-down construction of political representation, citizenship, and power(lessness). At the same time, the themes of this book are also different from histories of the masses, which focus on mass party politics, mass protest, or class-consciousness. Instead, this volume explores a multitude of individual stories and micro-histories of complaints, requests, rumors, and other mediated and unmediated interactions between political institutions and the subjects they claimed to govern or represent. The focus on formal and informal negotiations between those in power and those who lacked concrete entitlements to such power complements the existing histories of violence from either side, viz., violent oppression from autocratic and colonial authorities and violent protest from below. The book chapters all shed light on more subtle forms of agency and the spaces these pertained to, which could indicate contestation or resistance taking place within a framework of loyalty toward the existing political institutions. Consequently, this book does not only bridge the divide between political and apolitical frames of reference, but also challenges the dichotomy between loyalty and resistance, by acknowledging the sliding scale of nuances between these seemingly opposing stances. Precisely this approach situates the chapters between top-down institutional history and history from below, as it explores negotiations of notions related to (national, regional, local, or colonial) identities. By adopting this interactive lens, the present collection of analyses can shed a different light on the legitimization attempts of regimes and their supposed (dis)continuities.

Contested concepts This volume results from the international conference entitled Subaltern Political Knowledges, 19th–20th centuries, organized by the University of DOI: 10.4324/9781003290087-1

2  Marnix Beyen et al. Antwerp in October 2017. During the conference, we tried to reveal what “subalterns” actually knew about organized politics, how they acted upon this knowledge, and whether it turned them into political agents. However, as it became clear during the conference, the words subaltern, political, and knowledge are all open to interpretation and even contestation. Before engaging in our exploration of this field, therefore, it is crucial to elucidate their meaning. First of all, this book is about politics. But what makes things “political?” We neither understand this term in its most narrow nor in its broadest sense, but at an intermediate level. This means that we do not limit ourselves to people’s attitudes toward the state’s institutions, but focus on the ways in which they engaged with power and hierarchy at a level beyond that of their daily lives, that is, within the broader society to which they belonged. Potentially more controversial is our use of the notion of subalternity. Although historiography of subalterns is usually linked to the study of the voice of the colonized, Antonio Gramsci’s original interpretation of the concept encompasses all groups of people who did not have any public platform to voice their opinions, nor any entitlements to power or leverage in society (Green 2002, 2). Thus, it could equally apply to people whose citizenship was acknowledged but incomplete, as they were denied the right to vote. By extension, and more controversially, even voters could be seen as subaltern, because the mere act of voting did not give them a say in the debates about their own rights and duties. Subalternity was, after all, not necessarily exterior or completely opposite to hegemony. Therefore, this volume suggests using the word “subaltern” in the sense of Peter D. Thomas’s reading of Gramsci (2018, 871–79), and more specifically along the lines of his definition of the “citizen-subaltern” who was/is not necessarily characterized by a complete absence of “expressive capacity.” This also implies that we are incorporating Gayatri Spivak’s (1988, 284–85) understanding of the in-betweenness of buffer-groups – between the (in her case colonial) subaltern and the dominant elite – into our broader notion of subalternity. Indeed, being subaltern was and is not a passive, paralyzing state, but a dynamic that can be placed on a sliding scale, showing different “degrees of emergence” from it (Thomas 2018, 873). This raises questions about a possible end to subalternity. Once people gave proof of certain forms of political knowledge and agency, or leveraged their loyalty to the state in order to make claims to full citizenship, can we still call them subaltern, or did they, at a certain point, emerge from their subordinate position? Where did the political interpretations and expectations of these “ordinary” agents or actors come from? And how did they act upon their views and knowledge in their interactions with (members of) political institutions? In which form or format did subalterns’ “hidden transcripts” catch the attention of political authorities, and how did they subsequently manage to influence the “public transcript” (Scott 1990, 138)? How did their different frames of reference (religious, educational, colonial, etc.)

Introduction  3 shape the political practices of the time? Through a wide range of geographically diverse investigations of concrete political contacts between different groups of subalterns and the state, or other institutions of power, this volume wants to contextualize the dynamic interpretations of subalternity, and encourage a dialogue about colonial and non-colonial definitions of the notion. The third concept included in the conference title has disappeared altogether from the titleof the present volume. Indeed, the notion of knowledge(s) turned out not to suffice as an umbrella to cover the wide variety of interconnected topics dealt with by the participants. Rather than limiting themselves to the cognitive aspects of people’s engagement with politics, they also, or even primarily, highlighted its emotional, imaginative, and performative aspects. Studying these phenomena in their interrelatedness sheds a fuller light on what politics meant for people’s lives. For that reason, we brought them together under the notion of “political subjectivities and practices.” Locating the importance of knowledge within this broader set of human capacities and activities does remain, however, one of the main objectives of the book, since all contributions identify certain carriers and agents of knowledge. Some chapters highlight these carriers through which subalterns not just passively obtained political awareness, but also actively searched for a political context in which to place their experiences and shape their self-awareness. Others dissect the vehicles of knowledge used by subalterns or intermediate levels (between subjects and dominant elites) for spreading news among themselves, or for transferring their own frameworks (religious, educational, class- or casterelated, institutional, etc.) into the dominant political one. Inevitably, (re) interpretations concerning the validity and legitimacy of the origins, content, form, and trajectory of these knowledges took place at both ends of the sliding scale, from the subordinate subjects to the ruling authorities. The carriers of news and knowledge, subject to (re)interpretation and (de) legitimization, could be vocalized (via meetings, rumors, poems, myths, etc., which constitute the focus of Part III) or written (in the press and via correspondence, which are central to Parts I and II).

Between loyalty and resistance An obvious surplus value of this broad and dynamic approach is that the subaltern attitudes toward politics do not remain limited to either indifference or (mass) rebellion to state policies. Instead, these attitudes could also be expressed in the form of more accepted, institutionally conforming communication, such as petitioning, by which virtually voiceless (or voteless) individuals introduced themselves into the political sphere. The practice of either resisting to or assimilating into the political framework that determined their subordinate position was not black-and-white. Resistance and loyalty to a regime did not always occur as opposite practices, but

4  Marnix Beyen et al. were, on the contrary, often coexisting dynamics. By making use of political communication channels provided by the state, subalterns abided by the rules and subscribed to the top-down-created roles and identities. At the same time, this participation allowed for subtle forms of protest from within, as it enabled subaltern actors to transfer elements from other frames of reference to the political framework they contributed to. During these negotiation processes, they exchanged political knowledge and interpretations of “right” and “wrong” ways of political participation. In other words, their interactions added a bottom-up dynamic of political education and knowledge transmission to the roles imposed on them from above. Sources of knowledge and patterns of knowledge-gathering that might seem apolitical at first, in fact interacted with political-institutional (democratic, parliamentary, autocratic, or colonial) contexts. Similarly, practices and patterns of power and communication dating from before the advent of modern politics (such as patronage relations) were carried into the political sphere, sometimes to the extent of becoming institutionalized. This volume tries to find answers to the question of whether and to which degree the articulation of these variegated political subjectivities was determined by the institutional context in which they occurred. More specifically, it wants to test the “success” of the modern political frameworks that political elites throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries imposed on their populations, in the West and in other parts of the world. The different chapters investigate the characteristics of concrete interactions between subalterns and (members of) political institutions, but at the same time, they also shed a clearer light on “ordinary” people’s self-identification and their perceptions of citizenship, including coping mechanisms with subalternity. As has become clear from the previous paragraphs, this volume stands at the intersection of many burgeoning fields of scholarship such as subaltern studies, the study of everyday nationalism, or the history of experiences, emotions, and senses, not to mention the tradition of history from below. The need for this volume is also underlined by the growing attention to the history of colonialism in many parts of the global north where this history has hitherto been sidelined. When considering the obvious link between colonial history and subaltern studies, there is a reason to believe that the term subaltern will find new contexts of use, as political, social, and cultural historians find new angles from which to approach former empires and diverse regions in which complex power dynamics and crosscultural transfer took place. One aim of this volume is to provoke thoughts about how the concept of subalternity fits certain historical contexts and what the limits and pitfalls are of using it outside of postcolonial theory. This volume continues the work done in two previous Routledge anthologies, which refer to subalterns and the history from below in their titles. Both are anchored in the tradition of “history from below,” constituted in

Introduction  5 Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, and in the field of sbaltern studies that developed in the following decades. The first of these anthologies, Subalterns and Social Protest: History from Below in the Middle East and North Africa, edited by Stephanie Cronin (2008), was a pioneering work in its challenging of the elitist character of the historical scholarship on the region, and in turning the attention to the experience of diverse subaltern groups in the Middle East and North Africa. The contributions to the anthology turned their attention to strategies of protest and resistance employed by major social groups, on the one hand, and strategies of survival adopted by marginal groups, on the other. In the introduction to the anthology, Cronin (2008, 3) makes the important point that the history of the excluded should avoid romanticization of the subaltern, and explore not only how subalterns have resisted and protested, but also how they have negotiated and colluded with those in power, sometimes even acting as agents of repression. The anthology covers a longer time span than this volume as it contains contributions with a focus ranging from the early modern period to the beginning of the twenty-first century. Groups under examination include emancipated female slaves, migrant workers, shanty town dwellers, the rural poor, Roma people, jobless leftist activists, migrant workers, and insurrectionary Palestinians. The scope of these groups reveals how widely the concept of subalterns can be applied in historiography. A second, and more recent, anthology with a close link to our volume is Ancient History from Below: Subaltern Experiences and Actions in Context. In the introduction to this anthology, Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira and Cyril Courrier (2022, 3) point out that in studying the strategies, agencies and solidarities of subaltern groups, we can also show their margins of freedom, their capacities of resistance and the potential for social change that persist in spite of the many forms of domination and oppression. They also address the source problem, which is always to be taken into account when studying the voiceless people of the past, and which is especially pressing in the study of the ancient period. In the present volume, too, the scarcity of sources that would directly elucidate subaltern experiences is an issue for most contributors. Both of the aforementioned anthologies state as their explicit aim to trace the “experiences” of subalterns, and the interest in lived experiences is also observable in many contributions to this volume. This is nothing new, since ordinary people’s experiences were a topic of interest already for the so-called new social history that emerged in the 1960s, which is well illustrated by E. P. Thompson’s (1963, 9–11) statement that class is not a structure but an experience that happens in social relations. Nonetheless, the history of experience has appeared as a burgeoning field of scholarship

6  Marnix Beyen et al. in recent years, bridging and bringing together approaches and theories from the new social history, the German tradition of Erfahrungsgeschichte, and more recent advances in the history of emotions and the senses (e.g., Boddice & Smith 2020; Plamper 2021; Kivimäki, Suodenjoki & Vahtikari 2021; Eiranen et al. 2022). Scholarship in this field approaches experience not as located within an individual mind but as a strongly cultural and social phenomenon, connected to societal structures, institutions, power relations, and language. Moreover, this new interest in the history of experience(s) examines them as processes, which are always situated and embodied, and which blend into memories, as they are shaped by individuals’ earlier experiences and memories. This volume offers a variety of cases pointing out how experiences (of physical suffering, discrimination, exclusion, or inclusion) have shaped subaltern political practices and subjectivities, and how political bodies and structures, in turn, have nourished the experience of subalternity. The history of experience builds on partly similar premises to the idea of “new history from below,” which has been advocated most notably by historians Tim Hitchcock (2004) and Martyn Lyons (2013). They argue that while the history-from-below tradition, which emerged in the 1960s, focused on marginalized groups and highlighted their agency, it relied more on sources about ordinary people than on sources from them. By contrast, the new history from below seeks to re-evaluate individual experience and to search for the personal voices of ordinary people. In doing so, it regards ordinary people as active agents in their own history rather than passive consumers of official ideologies. In practice, a key feature of new history from below has been the interest in the writings of subordinate or marginalized people, such as workers, women, prisoners, and immigrants, and how these people have used writing as a way to perform resistance and gain power (O’Hagan 2020, 15–16). One of the modes of political communication used by subaltern people in many historical contexts is “writing upwards,” which, as introduced by Martyn Lyons (2015), denotes both individual letters to authorities and collective petitions. This practice has received considerable scholarly attention in recent years, for example, in the dedicated Journal of Epistolary Studies (Lyons 2020) and special issues centering on petitioning as part of various political cultures in the Western world and Asia (Miller 2019; De & Travers 2019). Furthermore, important efforts have been made at the crossroads of colonial history and history of petitioning, to bring the imperial context of the practice to our attention. These provide compelling results on petitioners from Samoa to the League of Nations (Pedersen 2012), and first insights into petitions from British India to the House of Commons (Huzzey & Miller 2020, 2021), and people of color in the US, with anti-slavery petitions to the US Senate (Griffin & Sager 2020) as well as Native-American petitions to Congress (Blackhawk et al. 2021). Our volume aims to broaden this field by including research into other controversial manifestations of

Introduction  7 the practice, such as letter-writing to dictators, which combined expressions of loyalty with subtle forms of resistance. Indeed, different contributors to this volume investigate written appeals to authorities, including petitions to the representative power(s) of democratic states and similar practices in authoritarian contexts. However, this book does not consider letter-writing as the main and only form of subtle protest from below or within. Oral and bodily forms of political communication and resistance (through meetings, rumors, and songs) are taken into consideration as well. The types of resistance on which the different chapters focus were not just expressed through violent insurgencies. Rather than writing histories of violence or history of social movements, this edited volume places loyalty and resistance on a sliding scale. Similarly, the contributions concentrate on various groups of subalterns, who can be situated in different places on the sliding scale from oppressed subalternity to hegemony. The tendency to interpret resistance in such a multifaceted way is becoming increasingly popular in imperial and colonial historiography, and more concretely in the attempt to transcend the binary between colonial violence and anti-colonial insurgency. The latter notion is problematic in and of itself, as is the idea of “revolt,” because both are construed by and within the colonizers’ narrative. Thus, they need to be deconstructed to lay bare variegated forms of subaltern resistance. The most relevant publication in this context is the recent volume on Resistance and Colonialism. Insurgent Peoples in World History, edited by Nuno Domingos, Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo, and Ricardo Roque for Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019). Within the context of imperial histories of specific Western nations, the concept of protest gets a nuanced interpretation too. The 2021 conference of the Society for the Study of French History, focusing on Power, Protest and Resistance, invited participants to interpret the theme “in the broadest possible terms, taking into account social, cultural, imperial, political, economic, military, gendered and other dimensions.” In addition, the interdisciplinary Resistance Studies Network (launched in 2006) and its Journal of Resistance Studies (publishing since 2014) are bringing together research on insurgencies as well as everyday struggles for peace, justice, and rights.

Structure of the book It is our goal to build further upon this tendency to investigate diverse forms of contestation outside large social movements, by going one step further and analyzing subtle forms of resistance in their dynamics with expressions of loyalty toward the regime in place. Therefore, the case-studies offered in the following parts will be organized according to the different political contexts which determined the subalterns’ position and shaped their possibilities of informal and formal political interactions. Contributions to

8  Marnix Beyen et al. Part I of this book shed new light on subaltern agency within an institutionalized framework of loyalty toward dictatorial, autocratic regimes - in the first place with its autocratic ruler himself - which has remained under the radar so far. How can the subalterns’ concrete interactions be understood in the context of loyalty and/or resistance? Part II shifts the focus to political interactions between citizens and (members of) representative institutions in Western and Northern Europe. It shows how “ordinary” citizens made use of supposed “democratic” platforms to negotiate – and hence, resist – preconceived images of their own place in society. These negotiations help reveal these subaltern agents’ situated and embodied experiences and sources of knowledge, which, together with the transfer of political practices, contributed to the formation of their political subjectivities. Focusing on them improves our understanding of citizen-subalterns’ conceptions of representation in a (proto-) democratic context. Although some forms of political communication were part of formal, institutionalized interactions (e.g., petitions), other communication channels under examination were rather informal. Thus, they highlight the diversity of political participation by “ordinary” citizens in Western societies and the various ways in which they tried to overcome their subaltern position. In Part III, the concept of “subjectivity” transcends the political/apolitical binary and serves as a tool for investigating how religious, spiritual, caste, class, or clan elements were imported into politics in colonial and pre-democratic contexts. Hence, the contributions in this part of the book bring more alternative forms of political communication to the fore, perceived, at times, as apolitical. More specifically, the three chapters analyze embodied, voiced, and/or symbolical practices outside parliamentary institutions. Central to the two colonial contexts and the one non-colonial context are subaltern spiritual frameworks in their interaction(s) with the dominant political sphere, and the legitimizations, within the latter, for appropriating or discarding such spiritual elements. In sum, this book teases out a geographically diverse array of (re)imaginings of power and power struggles, and the ways in which they were crystallized in (written and vocal) interactions between (colonial, governing, representative, autocratic) authorities and their (at first sight seemingly voiceless) subaltern subjects. Politics has always been and will always be a part of the everyday lives of most people. It is worthwhile for historians to study it as such.

Bibliography Blackhawk, Maggie, Daniel Carpenter, Tobias Resch, and Benjamin Schneer. 2021. “Congressional Representation by Petition: Assessing the Voices of the Voteless in a Comprehensive New Database, 1789–1949.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 46 (3): 817–49. https://doi.org/10.1111/lsq.12305.

Introduction  9 Boddice, Rob, and Mark Smith. 2020. Emotion, Sense, Experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/9781108884952. Cronin, Stephanie. 2008. Introduction. In Subalterns and Social Protest. History from Below in the Middle East and North Africa, edited by Stephanie Cronin, 1–22. London: Routledge. de Oliveira, Julio Cesar Magalhães, and Cyril Courrier. 2022. Ancient history from below. An introduction. In Ancient History from Below: Subaltern Experiences and Actions in Context, edited by Julio Cesar Magalhães de Oliveira and Cyril Courrier, 1–31. Routledge: Abingdon. De, Rohit, and Robert Travers, eds. 2019. “Petitioning and Political Culture in South Asia.” special issue, Modern Asian Studies 53 (1): 1–20. Eiranen, Reetta, Mari Hatavara, Ville Kivimäki, Maria Mäkelä, and Raisa Maria Toivo. 2022. “Narrative and Experience: Interdisciplinary Methodologies between History and Narratology.” Scandinavian Journal of History 47 (1): 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/03468755.2021.2019107. Green, Marcus. 2002. “Gramsci Cannot Speak: Presentations and Interpretations of Gramsci’s Concept of the Subaltern.” Rethinking Marxism 14 (3): 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/089356902101242242. Griffin, John D., and Grace Sager. 2020. “Democratic Representation of all ‘the People’: Antislavery Petitions in the U.S. Senate.” Studies in American Political Development 34 (2): 269–91. Hitchcock, Tim. 2004. “A New History from Below.” History Workshop Journal 57 (1): 294–98. https://doi.org/10.1093/hwj/57.1.294. Huzzey, Richard, and Henry Miller. 2020. “Petitions, Parliament and Political Culture: Petitioning the House of Commons, 1780–1918.” Past & Present 248 (1): 123–64. https://doi.org/10.1093/pastj/gtz061. Huzzey, Richard, and Henry Miller. 2021. “Colonial Petitions, Colonial Petitioners, and the Imperial Parliament, ca. 1780–1918.” Journal of British Studies (First View): 1–29. https://doi.org/10.1017/jbr.2021.185. Kivimäki, Ville, Sami Suodenjoki, and Tanja Vahtikari. 2021. Lived Nation: Histories of Experience and Emotion in Understanding Nationalism. In Lived Nation as the History of Experiences and Emotions in Finland, 1800–2000, edited by Ville Kivimäki, Sami Suodenjoki, and Tanja Vahtikari, 1–28. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69882-9_1. Lyons, Martyn. 2013. “A New History from Below? The Writing Practices of European Peasants, c. 1850–c. 1920.” In White Field, Black Seeds: Nordic Literacy Practices in the Long Nineteenth Century, edited by Anna Kuismin and Matthew Driscoll, 14–29. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society. https://doi. org/10.21435/sflit.7. Lyons, Martyn. 2015. “Writing Upwards: How the Weak Wrote to the Powerful.” Journal of Social History 49 (2): 317–30. https://doi.org/10.1093/jsh/shv038. Lyons, Martyn. 2020. “Writing Upwards. Letters to Robert Menzies, Australian Prime Minister, 1949–1966.” Journal of Epistolary Studies 2 (1): 34–51. https:// doi.org/10.51734/jes.v2i1.27. Miller, Henry, ed. 2019. “The Transformation of Petitioning, 1780–1914.” special issue, Social Science History 43 (3). https://doi.org/10.1017/ssh.2019.24. O’Hagan, Lauren Alex. 2020. “Introduction: Ordinary Writing and Rebellion.” In Rebellious Writing: Contesting Marginalisation in Edwardian Britain, edited by Lauren Alex O’Hagan, 1–26. New York: Peter Lang.

10  Marnix Beyen et al. Pedersen, Susan. 2012. “Samoa on the World Stage: Petitions and Peoples before the Mandates Commission of the League of Nations.” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 40 (2): 231–261. https://doi.org/10.1080/03086534. 2012.697612. Plamper. Jan. 2021. “Sounds of February, Smells of October: The Russian Revolution as Sensory Experience.” The American Historical Review 126 (1): 140–65. https:// doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhaa575. Scott, James C. 1990. Domination and the Arts of Resistance. Hidden Transcripts. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1988. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, edited by Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, 271–313. Urbana (Illinois): University of Illinois Press. Thomas, Peter D. 2018. “Refiguring the Subaltern.” Political Theory, Sage Journals, OnlineFirst 46 (6): 861–84. https://doi.org/10.1177/0090591718762720. Thompson, E. P. 1963. The Making of the English Working Class. New York: Pantheon.

Part I

Subaltern political participation in an autocratic context

1 Voice of the people The politics of petitioning in modern Latin American history Eduardo Elena

“We cannot but be happy and proud of this magnificent example of pure democracy that you have granted us.” So reads a 1952 petition sent to a government agency from the Sociedad de Fomento Villa Spinola, a neighborhood association in the suburbs of Buenos Aires.1 At first glance, this  written communication conforms perfectly to republican ideals of civic life. Independent, citizen-run groups of this sort were common in ­twentieth-century Argentina. They lobbied public authorities for paved roads, sewers, and other improvements in the built environment, while also bringing together neighbors to work on projects. In operation since the 1920s, the Villa Spinola association succeeded in founding a library for local residents and reached out frequently to officials with requests for aid. Take a closer look at its petition, however, and the picture becomes more complicated. This expression of “pure democracy” was directed to none other than Juan Perón, and the Villa Spinola petition was part of a massive letter writing campaign orchestrated by the national government, ostensibly to gain input for its Second Five-Year Plan. Although Perón was an elected president and led a movement supported by around two-thirds of the population, his regime displayed autocratic tendencies in its regulation of the media, treatment of opponents, and efforts to inculcate an official doctrine. In this case, petitioning by ordinary citizens at the grassroots went hand-in-glove with midcentury modes of centralized state planning and mass politics. Researchers seeking to understand Latin America have often had their bearings scrambled by these sorts of examples. As the celebrated musician Tom Jobim was fond of saying, “Brazil is not for beginners,” and the same holds true for its neighbors like Argentina. The region has been a site of intense political experimentation, having witnessed some of the world’s most remarkable struggles for emancipation and some of its most brutal tyrannies. Its republics have been characterized by uneven forms of citizenship that diverge notably from their own constitutional ideals. Without denying these complexities, one must resist the temptation to dismiss this history as something exotically dysfunctional. Rather than being guided by  expectations of how politics should work, we would be better off DOI: 10.4324/9781003290087-3

14  Eduardo Elena investigating practices like petitioning more deeply, for they can reveal much about the scope of political participation in modern times – and not only in Latin America. Indeed, researchers in fields as varied as North Atlantic and South Asian history have begun to give petitioning its proper due, supplying new empirical research on letter writing and offering helpful taxonomies and theorizations (Miller 2019; De & Travers 2019). Latin Americanists, too, are showing a growing interest in the politics of petitioning. Of course, historians have traditionally used petitions as documentary evidence to great effect; but they usually mine these sources for their discursive content, rather than examine the practice as part of a broader political repertoire. Until recently, most political specialists working on the modern period (roughly, 1800–present) have devoted far more attention to other key topics, such as the design and implementation of policies, partisan jockeying for control of the state, and the role of civil society. Citizenship is typically considered from the vantage of electoral contests, a tendency that reflects the deep roots of republicanism in much of Latin America. By the same token, the suspension of voting during periods of authoritarian rule in the region has given electoral politics added significance. Yet over the past generation, scholars have taken greater interest in forms of civic participation beyond elections and constitution making, while others have paid closer attention to political worldviews of subaltern actors and their tactics of engagement with the state. This chapter considers what the history of petitioning has to offer to the study of political life in modern Latin America. The goal is to provide nonspecialists with an entry point into this emerging research area. Given the impossibility of covering the entirety of the region’s history in this limited space, the chapter is grounded in an analysis of petitioning practices in Argentina during the First Peronism (1943–55). In previous work on the subject, I used the tools of Latin America’s “new political history” to guide my investigations, while also seeking to push its boundaries by paying closer attention to citizen letter writing. For the purposes of this chapter, “petitioning” is defined broadly as any individual or group effort to communicate in writing with political authorities to express opinions, suggest policy measures, or request assistance. As the Villa Spinola letter suggests, these modes of written communication proved highly adaptable to shifting circumstances. The largely working-class individuals who petitioned the Peronist regime formed part of a long tradition of subalterns “writing upward” in Latin America. Characterized by their great social diversity, these sectors have shared nonetheless common experiences of material deprivation, exploitation, and political exclusion; and for these reasons, among others, they have regularly sought the assistance of resource holders in government and expressed their grievances through written missives. In the case of the Peronist letters, the paper trail left behind provides fresh insights into how ordinary citizens reached out to state officials and reworked ideals of democratic participation and state planning to address

Voice of the people  15 quotidian concerns. These engagements exemplify the possibilities of the mid-twentieth-century moment, a heyday for new nationalisms and mobilizational mass politics not only in Latin America but across much of the globe – ranging from the noxious authoritarianisms and social democratic experiments of the West to an array of decolonization movements in the Global South. The political practices of Peronist Argentina can be fruitfully compared to these other cases, just as its modes of petitioning can be placed within a regional history of how subalterns communicated with those in power.

Traditions and Innovations That said, the neighbors of the Buenos Aires suburb who penned this petition took part in an undoubtedly unusual event. On December 3, 1951, President Juan Perón announced on national radio that he would entertain planning suggestions, and the public responded enthusiastically to this call. Approximately 42,000 pieces of correspondence (signed in many cases by multiple persons) were mailed to the Ministry of Technical Affairs in the next five months. Participants in the “Perón Wants to Know What the People Want” campaign represented a cross-section of society: residents of the Buenos Aires metropolis and small towns, farmhands and housewives, unionized workers and white-collar employees, individuals as well as neighborhood, labor, and party organizations. These types of popular sectors were also involved in numerous other forms of petitioning during the Peronist years. Ordinary citizens contacted leaders at the local level and various bureaucracies with requests for aid, complaints, and other concerns. In addition, hundreds of thousands of men and women wrote directly to Eva “Evita” Duarte de Perón each year with pleas for succor. Although the regime’s authorities encouraged these forms of communication, many petitioners acted spontaneously and in such great numbers that officials struggled to cope with the volume of correspondence. Letters from self-declared opponents were rare, but even diehard supporters voiced critiques of everyday life (Elena 2005, 81–108 and 2011, 187–220; Acha 2004, 199–230). Peronist Argentina was not an outlier, as across Latin American history one finds evidence of working people and other subaltern sectors adopting similar tactics. Explaining this pattern of written communication with state authorities requires us to appreciate both the petitioning tradition’s roots and how its practitioners adapted it over time to changing conditions. Its use stretches back to the early days of European colonialism in the region. By the mid-1500s, subjects of the Spanish and Portuguese Crowns in the Americas were already presenting petitions to colonial officials, with some documents winding their way across the seas to august bodies like the Council of the Indies. The scope of these activities widened over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with the spread of Iberian empires into

16  Eduardo Elena new territories, fractious contests over material resources and markers of status, and the proliferation of colonial institutions. As legal scholars like Víctor Tau Anzoátegui have shown, the boundaries between executive, legislative, and judicial powers exercised by colonial rulers were less rigid compared to present-day polities in Latin America, as were the divisions among civil, military, and religious forms of authority. Accordingly, petitioning was often tied to what we would consider lawsuits and other legal maneuvers involving plaintiffs and their trained representatives who submitted documents – called by various names like auto, memorial, demanda, or pedido – to address some injustice or demand assistance and recognition of some form (Premo 2017, 35). Given the judicial quality of these entreaties, much of this activity would not fall under the working definitions of petitioning used in this volume. Yet, these colonial routines helped to establish traditions of subaltern communication with the politically powerful, and the voluminous records left behind in archives offer a testament to their importance. Generations of colonial Latin American historians have analyzed these sources, but recent works have managed to shed new light on the political significance of colonial petitioning. In the Spanish Empire, royal decrees often lifted language from petitions presented by colonists in the Americas, including those who self-identified as Indian, mestizo, and mulatto. The “petitioning and response system” that emerged allowed these actors to shape the agenda of imperial rule, notwithstanding the modes of racial domination at the core of Iberian colonialism (Masters 2018, 377–406). At the more micro-level, indigenous villagers addressed themselves to Spanish authorities in order to protect their autonomy and defend their lands from outside predations. Local scribes in places like Oaxaca, Mexico thus served as crucial intermediaries between rural communities and the larger colonial legal system, which at times provoked friction within villages (Guardino 2005, 40–90). New research has pointed to a surge in civil litigation in the eighteenth century by individuals from these “lower orders,” including enslaved people of African descent and women. Unlettered claimants demanded greater freedoms, challenged their social superiors, and deployed a nascent language of rights, which has led historians to see this as evidence of the Enlightenment’s unfolding in Latin American societies (Premo 2017, 1–25). Despite their longevity, these colonial systems fell apart in most of the region during the 1810s and 1820s in what became over time violent struggles for national independence. As new republics sprouted across Latin America (with Brazil and Cuba among the most notable exceptions, at least until the century’s end), so, too, did new structures of governance and social understandings of constitutional rights. Earlier practices like petitioning adapted to the shifting political winds. Legal action remained essential, especially for enslaved and recently emancipated men and women seeking to secure their freedom and access to material resources

Voice of the people  17 (Scott 2001, 181–216). But these and other subaltern sectors also directed written entreaties to elected officials in Congress and the executive branch. In the Peruvian Andes, for example, indigenous villagers continued to use written communications as a means of fighting local injustices; rather than appealing to the wisdom of the king, the petitioners now embraced the language of republican citizenship and pressed their claims to liberty in ways that showed a savvy understanding of the new authorities in charge (Thurner 1997, 54–136). Other types of communities deployed similar tactics to cope with a range of nineteenth-century problems. For instance, the governor of Buenos Aires province in Argentina received a petition in October 1882 from the town of Pilar, signed by approximately 300 local men, requesting that a state-owned railway extend a branch to their area. The neighbors were aware that the provincial government had recently obtained a ten-million-peso loan in Europe for railway works. They made the usual arguments for why their bustling town and its surrounding countryside merited attention – noting, somewhat pointedly, that previous entreaties had been ignored and that the provincial government had erected no public buildings or provided other signs of “material action.”2 The dawn of the twentieth century ushered in additional political changes in Latin America. Urbanization swelled the size of cities, thus bringing more people into closer proximity with the seats of political power. Growth, in turn, exacerbated unmet basic needs that spurred local residents to engage with state gatekeepers who controlled the provisioning of infrastructure. Groups of neighbors like those in Villa Spinola emerged across the region’s budding metropolises. In Argentina and other countries, democratizing reforms opened up what had been restrictive republics characterized by limited popular participation in electoral politics. Politicians who now needed to court the public for votes also presented themselves as more willing to entertain grievances from ordinary citizens. Beginning in the 1920s, a new generation of nationalist leaders – some of whom were subsequently labeled “populists” by their critics – rose to prominence through promises to forge more equitable and inclusive societies. Their mass political style rested on creating a supposedly direct connection with the “people,” including through modern media like the radio, with participation in huge rallies and other mobilizations, and through older modes of communications like letter writing. Although most of these leaders saw their ambitions thwarted, some nationalists like Lázaro Cardenas of Mexico (1934–40) enjoyed the support of rural and urban dwellers across vast territories. The Peronist movement was among the most powerful and long-lasting of these midcentury nationalist coalitions. As with other Latin American “populists,” Perón cultivated the notion that ordinary citizens had an active role to play in public life and could communicate with authorities to identify problems in need of solutions. The grubby struggles of everyday

18  Eduardo Elena life were elevated into issues that, in theory if not always in practice, became politically significant. Petitioning became integrated into political expressions that combined elements associated with mass mobilization elsewhere in the world, such as a reliance on modern media to disseminate copious amounts of propaganda. Officials borrowed elements from commercial culture, too: not only were top leaders portrayed in a similar manner as celebrities (Evita was, after all, a former radio star), but the 1952 petitioning campaign bore similarities with write-in contests organized by radio stations in this era. In turn, increasing literacy rates made letter writing an accessible tool for those seeking redress. There was, undoubtedly, an authoritarian impulse that accompanied this push for greater popular participation. Rights of the regime’s opponents were repeatedly infringed, but members of the movement’s working-class base were also expected to conform to their role as unwavering loyalists and productive workers, who would leave the important decisions to supreme leaders. With the heating up of the Cold War, midcentury nationalists gave way to movements seeking more revolutionary forms of change or, more often than not, to counter-revolutionary forces seeking to defend the status quo through repressive means. By the 1970s, military dictatorships were ascendant across much of Latin America, and as a result, republican modes of participation like voting were closed off. Petitioning became a potentially dangerous activity but by no means vanished entirely. Some critics repurposed old traditions to express new forms of dissent, as in the petitions presented abroad by exile groups to draw attention to human rights abuses. The shift toward democratic rule in 1980s Argentina and neighboring societies was accompanied by a resurgence of civic activism. Citizens put pen to paper to establish direct contact with elected leaders like President Raúl Alfonsín and to press for greater reforms (Adair 2019, 88–106). In more recent times, petitioning has moved online in Latin American countries, with governments at all levels creating websites and other means to channel the demands of a frustrated citizenry. Throughout all these transitions, the popular sectors continued to use written forms of communication to draw attention to everyday struggles – an undercurrent of political life in Latin America that has frequently gone unnoticed or simply been taken for granted.

Citizenship and subaltern political culture Even when situated in this wider historical context, documents like the Villa Spinola petition pose a number of interpretive challenges. When I first stumbled across the “Perón Wants to Know” letters in Argentina’s National Archives, they were part of a collection that had just been opened to historians. I was immediately fascinated, but unsure exactly what to do with them. My first impulse was to read them from the vantage of one of the most vibrant subfields in Latin American political history at the time: the

Voice of the people  19 history of citizenship. Scholarly works in this genre began by re-­evaluating old assumptions about elections in Latin America, rather than by dismissing them outright as instruments of hegemony or something of interest to elites alone. Historians like Antonio Annino on Mexico and Richard Graham on Brazil revealed surprisingly high levels of popular participation in early nineteenth-century elections, while also documenting the mechanisms used to progressively restrict electoral systems over the course of the century. Argentinean historians were at the cutting edge of these trends. Research on citizenship in Argentina was initially driven by a desire to locate where democratic practices were “nested” in society. Working along these lines, scholars investigated elections, civil society, and neighborhood-level politics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, hoping to uncover past experiences and inspirations that could inform democratic reform in their present. Among the most influential studies were those by Hilda Sabato. Her book, The Many and the Few, addresses Buenos Aires city during the 1850s and 1860s when there was near universal suffrage for male citizens and yet only a tiny fraction – often just 3 percent – of the electorate actually voted. Rather than interpret these figures as a sign of a deficient population or of hopelessly corrupt “creole politics,” Sabato’s study exposed a wider array of modes for political participation available in the public sphere, ones which were open to male citizens as well as immigrants. Popular participation ranged from violent mobilizations on election day by urban crowds, who sought to influence results without voting, to peaceful street demonstrations led by associations. This was a male public sphere, to be sure, but women participated in some civic rituals. Along similar lines, a wave of studies of civil society in the 1920s and 1930s explored alternative forms of political engagement that existed outside electoral competition and were based in organizations such as neighborhood improvement associations, Socialist libraries, immigrant aid societies, and recreational clubs (Gutiérrez & Romero 1995, 9–194; de Privitellio 2003, 105–48. See also Bryce & Sheinin 2017, 1–17). The literature on citizenship shaped my analysis of Peronist petitioning, but at the same time, my findings called into question the conventional wisdom about citizenship in Argentina (Elena 2011, 1–17). This field was rooted in assumptions about the citizen as a liberal-republican subject, who existed independent from state control and cultivated habits associated with free speech, dissent, tolerance, and pluralism. By focusing almost exclusively on eras prior to Peronism, the literature on citizenship implied that the roots of Argentinean democracy lay elsewhere. Peronist-era petitions, however, complicate these views. These documents show that citizenship practices associated with popular civil society were flexible enough to adapt to changing political climates. Thus, what might seem from the outside like a state-orchestrated legitimating exercise was perceived as democratic by many petitioners – in part, because it drew on existing modes of

20  Eduardo Elena engagement with state, while promising greater access and inclusion. The “Perón Wants to Know” petitions indicate that popular participation was based on a partial intersection of worldviews, one informed by statist visions of national development through planning and by conceptions of neighborhood-level progress and material improvement among the movement’s social base. One can argue as to whether the types of participation under Peronist rule were actually democratic. My point here, however, is a different one. Documents like the “Perón Wants to Know” petitions help us unlearn assumptions about political life. They reveal alternative understandings of democracy – including those of workers living in neighborhoods without basic public services – that might otherwise be obscured by dominant academic ideas about how citizenship should ideally function. Coming to terms with why a movement like Peronism resonated so powerfully among a majority of Argentineans requires taking more seriously the ways that supporters imagined the terms of participation and came to see certain political practices like petitioning as an expression of “true democracy.” These documents do not, of course, allow us to peer into the hearts of their authors. The letter writers’ demands were shaped by the structures of communication with state authorities, and petitioners fell into discursive roles common to the genre of petitioning: the dutiful worker, the meek supplicant, and the suffering mother, among others. The opinions expressed are largely sympathetic to the leadership; those with overtly anti-Peronist views apparently chose not to take part or hid their real views. In short, petitioners employed various strategies to gain the attention and favorable resolution of their demands. For all these caveats, petitions like the “Perón Wants to Know” correspondence are valuable to historians – not least because they are among the few documents created by working-class individuals and popular organizations that survive from this era. In particular, these sources advance another major field of recent inquiry in Latin American history: the study of subaltern political culture. To appreciate the nature of this contribution, it is necessary to provide some context on Latin Americanist approaches to the subject. Over the past generation, historians of nineteenth-century Latin America have led the way in devising new methods to study political culture. They were inspired by global intellectual trends (such as the influence of the new cultural history in Europe and South Asian subaltern studies), but also by a desire to contest traditional national histories that stressed the lack of political awareness among popular groups – views that were strong in countries with large indigenous peasantries. The consensus was widespread: for historians on the Right, peasants were either unwilling or culturally unprepared for national politics; for those on the Left, they were marginalized by poverty and excluded by elites. These populations were often deemed culturally and racially “deficient” as well. A new wave of studies challenged these assumptions by uncovering evidence of how

Voice of the people  21 peasants and other subaltern groups appropriated dominant nineteenthcentury ideologies such as liberalism, nationalism, and republicanism. Florencia Mallon’s book Peasant and Nation (1995) was instrumental in establishing this line of inquiry. Comparing four regional cases (two in Mexico and two in Peru), this study argues that peasant communities developed their own understandings of nationalism, which were based on elite discourses as well as locally-grounded conceptions of belonging and patriotic identity. Mallon’s book is devoted largely to exploring why these nationalist sentiments were stronger in some regions than in others and how peasant groups formed ideas of the nation. Military service, especially in international wars, was a key factor. This study has been criticized for its idealization of peasant agency and its tendency to draw conclusions about subaltern worldviews from limited sources. Yet, Peasant and Nation inspired an outpouring of works over the last two decades examining similar questions and other subaltern groups across the region (Thurner 1997; Salvatore 2003; Boyer 2003; Sanders 2004; Guardino 2005). Moving from the nineteenth century into the twentieth, sources like the “Perón Wants to Know” petitions lend themselves to a similar analysis. Letter writers invoked constitutional rights that echoed the popular republicanism of earlier eras. But their petitions also reflected a broader range of influences distinctive to their time and place: for instance, the claims made by letter writers borrowed elements from ideas of justice associated with modern Leftist movements and Catholic doctrine as well as melodramatic discourses in common with commercial films and mass advertising. Moreover, ordinary men and women became adept at “speaking Peronist” – that is, using the new language of Peronist politics to make sense of their own lives and to explain the problems around them (Elena 2011 206–14; Kotkin 1995, 198–237). Those that spoke Peronism did so in ways that ran the gamut from self-conscious pragmatism to the enthusiastic embrace of a propagandistic worldview. Here, too, as in the case of nineteenth-century peasant villages, one must avoid reducing petitioning to narrow instrumentalism: subalterns wanted things like communal lands, paved roads, and government social assistance so they asked for them. In the Peronist case, millions of Argentineans experienced material needs or had thoughts about state planning and yet chose not to participate in this campaign. The petitioners were a diverse group, but they shared an inclination to connect personal troubles with matters of state policy. In political science terms, they were “macro-micro linkers”: they envisioned their quotidian concerns as subjects worthy of consideration and action by the national government and its supreme authorities (Powers 2001, 1–13 and 110–41). This leap of political imagination is by no means a given, especially for residents of impoverished communities. Again, mass media and state propagandists influenced significantly subaltern knowledge of politics. But to make sense of these petitions, we must situate them within a broader subaltern impulse to collaborate in the

22  Eduardo Elena making of a Peronist Argentina. Teasing out how letter writers imagined Peronist cooperation requires tightening the focus on the discursive tactics and modes of self-representation in the petitions. It is apparent, for instance, that many petitioners imagined the very practice of letter writing as a means of establishing or deepening their own personal relationships to the Peronist movement’s authorities, particularly Juan and Eva Perón. For these petitioners at least, their political culture centered more on an understanding of collaboration and loyalty than on abstract, supposedly universal rights enshrined in constitutional laws. As one might expect, expressions of devotion to “My Leader” and “My General” abound in the “Perón Wants to Know” letters. And yet the very same petitioners were not above making pointed critiques of government inaction, lambasting corruption, or offering direct recommendations on what the nation’s supreme commander needed to do for the good of the nation and Peronist movement. In grappling with subaltern conceptions of their own relationship to authority, recent historical works on nineteenth-century Argentinean history and the phenomenon of caudillismo offer some useful approaches. A word of caution, however: there is a long tradition of comparing Perón and his followers to the nineteenth-century strongmen called caudillos and their popular supporters – a tradition associated with anti-Peronist critics, including the military regime that overthrew Perón. To take but one example, military rulers after 1955 passed a decree banning the mere mention of the word “Perón” in the press, insisting that he be called the “second tyrant” – an allusion to the infamous nineteenth-century caudillo and supposed first tyrant, Juan Manuel de Rosas. Rather than equating the caudillo heyday with the Peronist era, my point here is that historians of both periods face similar interpretive problems, including understanding how subalterns imagined their bonds with political leaders. New works on caudillismo reject earlier notions of charismatic leadership in favor of more detailed analysis of the institutions, rituals, and symbols that bolstered the legitimacy of caudillos. Few petitions have survived from this era; instead, historians have assembled other types of documents produced by educated elites as well as popular songs, material culture, and even works of fiction. Authors such as Ricardo Salvatore, Ariel de la Fuente, Noemí Goldman, Gabriel Di Meglio, and Raúl Fradkin, among others, have made the study of rural subalterns (including gauchos) and urban plebeian sectors one of the most dynamic subfields in Argentinean history. They have shown that devotion to a leader was frequently part of a broader federalist identity, and that enthusiasm did not preclude criticism, pragmatic strategies to derive material benefits from resource-holders, and given certain conditions, violent defection from the cause. There are fundamental differences between these nineteenth-century political forms and those of the Peronist mid-twentieth-century moment – for starters, the key role played by the press, film, and radio. Yet the latest

Voice of the people  23 literature on caudillismo offers a reminder that political culture was not simply a set of ideas or discourses, but also a tapestry of loyalties, mediating institutions, material aspirations, and practices like petitioning. Understanding political culture requires more than simply placing the word “popular” in front of a concept like liberalism or republicanism. It means paying close attention to subaltern expectations, enthusiasms, and demands as well as alternative ways of conceptualizing the bond between leader and led.

Clients and patrons Petitioning can shed new light on another central concept in the interpretive toolkit of Latin American politics: clientelism. For decades, researchers have used this term to study the subset of political relationships that involve an exchange of favors or material benefits in return for political support. A classic example of this quid-pro-quo transaction is the politician who secures votes from a poor constituent by providing him or her with access to public employment, social services, or gifts. Social scientists have produced innovative work on the subject: in the case of Argentina, sociologist Javier Auyero has conducted field work in shantytowns to offer a bottom-up perspective on exchanges between local-level Peronist politicians and the poor. Despite this renewed interest in these relationships, the concept of clientelism has fallen out of favor among historians. Attacking clientelism has become a way of establishing the sophistication of one’s approach – a move not unlike that of Marxist historians who distinguished their work from vulgar Marxism. Scholars critical of “vulgar clientelism” reject its transactional character: they stress, instead, the importance of a shared political culture and partisan bonds rather than the exchange of favors or manipulation. Some of the best work along these lines has come from Brazilian historians focused on the politics of the urban poor. Brodwyn Fischer’s A Poverty of Rights (2008) and Bryan McCann’s Hard Times in the Marvelous City (2014) are excellent English-language examples. They expose the complexity of relationships between the politically powerful and the residents of favelas (favelados) and popular neighborhoods in ways that go beyond transactional clientelism. In Fischer’s case, the emphasis is placed on the design of Brazilian property and labor law that excludes favelados. Legal systems turn favelados practically into foreign immigrants in their own land and, hence, make them reliant on cultivating ties with politicians and state resource holders. Only through these relations can they ensure their survival and improve material conditions in their communities. By contrast, McCann profiles a moment in the 1980s, during the transition to democracy, when poor residents of Rio formed political alliances with Leftist politicians like Lionel Brizola to break free from these dependent relations. Old habits died hard, however. Their persistence blunted the

24  Eduardo Elena promise of democratization, while the rise of the illicit drug business established domineering new forms of patron-client relations. These works on Brazil, like studies of clientelism elsewhere, rely on oral history and a wide range of sources to shed light on what James Holston has dubbed the “insurgent citizenship” of popular classes (Holston 2008, 3–35). Petitions are particularly important sources for those of us who work on eras when oral history is not an option. They illuminate the micro-level political strategies of subalterns who seek to communicate with authorities and, in so doing, provide us with a record of everyday experiences of deprivation and often frustrating engagements with resource holders that would otherwise be impossible to see. In addition to revealing conceptions of partisan identity and modes of self-representation, documents like the “Perón Wants to Know” letters provide valuable insights into the texture of clientelism in practice, including how subalterns understood state and party networks and struggled with the travails of obtaining assistance. Rather than subservient mendicants at the feet of the powerful, subaltern sectors were tenacious petitioners, who in some cases refused to take no for an answer. At the same time, the petitions locate the ultimate limits of subaltern tactics, for letter writers often failed in their aims. State leaders rebuffed petitioner demands for various reasons, and they distributed resources to others through impersonal bureaucratic means and to individuals within their own personal networks of patronage. Understanding moments when clientelism failed or when renewed engagement from subalterns was required is a crucial, if overlooked, aspect of petitioning practices. Consider a letter from another sociedad de fomento in greater Buenos Aires that recounted the group’s long struggle to have a public plaza built for its community. Members claimed they had sent 27 petitions to various levels of government between 1928 and 1950 but found that “all this was a useless, begging pilgrimage.”3 In 1949 its members met with Domingo Mercante, the well-connected governor of their province, who referred their case favorably to Eva Perón. The project was, in turn, considered by the federal Ministry of Transportation, which eventually rejected the request. Rather than give up after these setbacks, this organization participated in Perón’s call for planning suggestions, hoping to enlist his personal assistance in overcoming these obstacles. Perhaps not all petitioners were this dogged, but such examples point to the determination with which some advocates pursued their causes and the ways that petitioning complemented efforts to cultivate personal relations with the powerful. It suggests as well that for popular-sector Argentineans, the era of Peronist planning represented but one phase in a much longer struggle for community improvement. The Perón government could ill-afford to ignore subaltern demands. At the very least all participants received stock replies confirming receipt of their petitions. This epistolary campaign was somewhat unusual as far as petitioning is concerned, since the goal of the event was to provide an

Voice of the people  25 opportunity for the public to make broad recommendations (even if there is scant evidence that these suggestions actually shaped policy). However, as we have seen, many petitioners expressed less interest in policy than in concrete projects for their localities and forms of personal relief. Accordingly, these missives can be read alongside other types of petitions from this era that had similar goals in mind, including requests mailed to the government asking for employment, and the famed letters sent by Argentineans directly to Evita (Elena 2011, 142–53; Guy 2016, 1–40). In these petitions, individuals typically presented themselves not as rightbearing citizens but as workers and as Peronists. Women adopted the roles of dutiful mothers and wives, and men often identified themselves as soldiers of the cause. Government functionaries did not just take petitioners’ words at face value: the paper trail shows how officials checked to make sure they were loyal Peronists and truly in need before administering largesse. By the same token, petitioners pressed their claims and expressed their sense of entitlement to relief and attention from authorities. Complaints about delays with paperwork and inept or corrupt local officials were common. One woman, unhappy with a subsidy she had received for her disabled daughter, appealed to Evita and her assistants for more, invoking the regime’s own propaganda slogans and asserting that her case was “one of true social justice.”4 The Evita letters conform more to the classic model of clientelism than the “Perón Wants to Know” correspondence: impoverished individuals supplicating themselves before resource holders. But they contain many of the same strategies and modes of self-representation associated with Peronist conceptions of citizenship and political culture. Written requests thus allow insights not only into the agency of ordinary people, but also into the ways individuals envisioned themselves working in concert with political authorities. They illustrate that even in acts of supplication, subalterns displayed persistence in contacting resource holders and developed the skills and knowledge to sway state and party authorities to their side. Thanks to these petitions, the study of clientelism is enhanced by a better appreciation for how individuals attracted officials’ notice, framed personal needs to maximize sympathy, called on personal connections, displayed partisan loyalties and affiliations, and pressured for additional improvements.

Conclusion In broad strokes, this chapter has identified some of the ways recent research on Peronist petitions engages with the scholarship on citizenship, subaltern political culture, and clientelism in the field of Latin American history. My argument is that petitioning is part of a broader political repertoire of subaltern engagements with state authorities, party institutions, and civil associations. By way of conclusion, however, consider a brief

26  Eduardo Elena thought experiment with the following question: What would happen if academics centered their political investigations on petitioning instead of more well-studied practices like electoral contests? To be clear, I am by no means suggesting that elections are not vital. Voting rights are hard-won achievements for Latin American democracies. But a focus on petitioning might contribute to a keener understanding of subaltern political life in Latin America in at least two ways. First, this approach might temper the sometimes excessive tendency of historians to emphasize resistance when studying popular politics. One cannot deny the importance of acts of resistance large and small for indigenous villagers, enslaved persons, and residents of working-class suburbs and shantytowns. But the stress on friction and rebellion has often obscured other ways that these social sectors engage politically with authorities, including attempts to establish lines of communication and to seek solutions to their problems. Latin American subalterns do not always assert their legal rights: they frequently employ more subtle techniques to gain the sympathy, cooperation, and patronage of the politically powerful that act as gatekeepers over needed resources. We should not dismiss these acts simply as evidence of hegemony or as age-old customs of subservience. As the “Perón Wants to Know” petitions illustrate, there is a skill in asserting an entitlement to notice, and this skill does not always conform to the model of the rights-bearing citizen of the republic. In my book, I use the phrase the “counterpolitics of voice” to highlight the ways ordinary petitioners used the Perón regime’s own ideas to make claims based on loyalty, common purpose, and justice (Elena 2011, 187–220). Rather than heading for the exits through outright resistance, subaltern politics in Latin America has frequently been a game of voice and loyalty – for better or, more often than not, for worse (Hirschman 1970). One of the main reasons for these tactics is, of course, necessity. The material vulnerability of most social sectors makes it risky to attempt a frontal attack on the powerful, especially when working within flawed political institutions offers a more familiar set of options in the immediate term. This observation leads me to a second advantage of orienting the study of Latin American politics around petitioning: it forces us to keep the material struggles of subaltern populations at the front and center of our historical investigations. In contemporary Latin America, subaltern politics are also about the freedom from police repression, from racist and sexist discrimination, and from cultural marginalization, among other issues. There is no denying, however, that the types of problems that motivated petitioners in Peronist Argentina – lack of sewers and paved roads, high living costs, inadequate medical care, and more – remain central concerns. These material struggles are hard to ignore in the documents, and the injustices faced daily by petitioners seeking to survive emerge poignantly in their letters. Petitions can thus serve as a corrective to the tendency of academics to see politics through the lens of their own social

Voice of the people  27 position: that is, from the vantage of the highly educated and professional middle classes. In Latin American history, one potential benefit of a reorientation toward the material struggles of the poor might be an appreciation for the underlying political continuities in a region so often imagined as chaotically unstable. There is no question that countries like Argentina have experienced great turbulence throughout their histories. By shifting the focus away from national contests and toward the practices of humble petitioners, we gain a historical view that showcases long-term political struggles for improvement. These grassroots campaigns were punctuated with occasional victories, but more often than not, they led to renewed rounds of petitioning that sought redress to unmet human needs and collective aspirations for progress. This history is still very much alive in Latin America, and written entreaties from ordinary citizens continue to flood into the offices (and email inboxes) of public authorities every day.

Notes 1 Letter from the Sociedad de Fomento “Villa Spinola”, no date but almost certainly early 1952. doc. 8664, legajo 12. Ministerio de Asuntos Técnicos Collection (MAT), Archivo General de la Nación (AGN), Argentina. 2 Letter from the neighbors of Pilar to Rocha, October 29, 1882. Legajo 185. Fondo Dardo Rocha, AGN. 3 Letter from the Asociación Fomento de Caseros, 27 de diciembre de 1951, doc. 9886, legajo 62, AGN-MAT. 4 Letter from Elena L. to Eva Perón, April 1951, legajo 579, AGN-MAT.

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28  Eduardo Elena de Privitellio, Luciano. 2003. Vecinos y ciudadanos: política y sociedad en la Buenos Aires de entreguerras. Buenos Aires: Siglo Veintiuno. De, Rohit, and Robert Travers, eds. 2019. “Petitioning and Political Cultures in South Asia.” Special issue, Modern Asian Studies 53 (1): 1–20. Di Meglio, Gabriel. 2006. ¡Viva el bajo pueblo! La plebe urbana de Buenos Aires y la política entre la Revolución de Mayo y el rosismo. Buenos Aires: Prometeo. Di Meglio, Gabriel, and Raúl Fradkin, eds. 2013. Hacer política: la participación popular en el siglo XIX rioplatense. Buenos Aires: Prometeo. Elena, Eduardo. 2005. “What the People Want: State Planning and Political Participation in Peronist Argentina, 1946–1955.” Journal of Latin American Studies 37 (1): 81–108. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022216X04008569. Elena, Eduardo. 2011. Dignifying Argentina: Peronism, Citizenship, and Mass Consumption. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Elena, Eduardo. 2014. “New Directions in the History of Peronism.” Estudios Interdisciplinarios de América Latina y El Caribe 25 (1): 17–40. Fischer, Brodwyn. 2008. A Poverty of Rights: Citizenship and Inequality in Twentieth-Century Rio. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Goldman, Noemi, and Ricardo Salvatore, eds. 1998. Caudillismos rioplatenses. Buenos Aires: Eudeba. Graham, Richard. 1990. Patronage and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Brazil. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Guardino, Peter. 2005. The Time of Liberty: Popular Political Culture in Oaxaca, 1750–1850. Durham: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822 386568. Gutiérrez, Leandro H., and Luis Alberto Romero. 1995. Sectores populares: cultura y política. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana. Guy, Donna J. 2016. Creating Charismatic Bonds in Argentina: Letters to Juan and Eva Perón. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Hirschman, Albert O. 1970. Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms. Organizations, and States. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Holston, James. 2008. Insurgent Citizenship: Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kotkin, Stephen. 1995. Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as Civilization. Berkeley: University of California Press. Mallon, Florencia E. 1995. Peasant and Nation: The Making of Postcolonial Mexico and Peru. Berkeley: University of California Press. Masters, Adrian. 2018. “A Thousand Invisible Architects: Vassals, the Petition and Response System, and the Creation of Spanish Imperial Caste Legislation.” Hispanic American Historical Review 98 (3): 377–406. https://doi.org/10.1215/ 00182168-6933534. McCann, Bryan. 2014. Hard Times in the Marvelous City: From Dictatorship to Democracy in the Favelas of Rio de Janeiro. Durham: Duke University Press. Miller, Henry, ed. 2019. The Transformation of Petitioning. Special issue, Social Science History 43 (3): 409–429. Powers, Nancy R. 2001. Grassroots Expectations of Democracy and Economy: Argentina in Comparative Perspective. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Premo, Bianca. 2017. The Enlightenment on Trial: Ordinary Litigants and Colonialism in the Spanish Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi. org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190638726.001.0001.

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2 Letters to the Caudillo Petitions in miserable times, 1936–1945 Antonio Cazorla-Sánchez

A time of misery Spain emerged from the Civil War (1936–1939) morally and economically bankrupt (Richards 1998). The long dictatorship that followed (1939–1975) only made matters worse – at least until the early 1960s when the economy took off again. Normalcy in political terms was a different matter. Instead of seeking to cure the country’s deep wounds, General Francisco Franco, the self-proclaimed Caudillo, used political and social divisions to cement his power. The dictatorship never loosened its grip on society and, instead of inspiring hope for a better future, the regime continuously played on the fear of the population to maintain its iron grip on the country by threatening that another war could erupt in Spain. In this way, the past civil war continued to cast a constantly threatening, seemingly immobile, shadow over people’s lives. Why and how did this happen? The reasons for Spain’s postwar miseries are many but boil down to one basic cause: the way the carnage that started in July 1936 evolved. The failure of that month’s military rising divided the country into two zones. On one hand, the moderate Republicans officially controlled most of the country (albeit, in reality, the country was run mostly by revolutionary committees). The different rebel generals, among whom Francisco Franco would eventually emerge as leader, ran the other part of Spain. During the summer and fall of 1936, atrocities were common on both sides. Behind the lines, Republicans killed some 50,000 pro-Franco supporters, while the rebels assassinated some 100,000 pro-Republicans. After the war, the dictatorship executed at least another 30,000 people. To those casualties, we have to add the more than 200,000 soldiers who died in combat, and the still mostly unaccounted for civilians who perished because of bombardments, displacement, lack of food, shelter, or medicine, and so forth. Finally, one must account for the close to 450,000 Spaniards who were forced into exile never to return (Preston 2012). The country that emerged from the conflict was deeply traumatized. In spite of this, the Caudillo not only continued to persecute militant Republicans but also kept terrorizing the whole ­pro-Republican population while at the same time making sure DOI: 10.4324/9781003290087-4

Letters to the Caudillo  31 that his supporters, and the more or less neutral sectors of society, never forgot the past (or rather the regime’s Manichean version of it). In addition, Spaniards were led to fear that questioning the regime would lead to another civil war. This was as devious as clever a policy since another war was a possibility that the absolute majority of the population rejected. As a result, the society of post-civil war Spain lived in fear of itself and of the future, and was in the hands of a ruthless man: Franco (Cazorla-Sánchez 2009). The moral corruption of the country and the cynical manipulation by the regime of political options were compounded by the atrocious socioeconomic situation and the deep social cleavages created by the regime’s policies. Franco’s guns imposed an economic counter-revolution that, in the countryside, implied the return of at least six million hectares of land, which had been seized by pro-Republican peasants, to their previous owners. In the process, tens of thousands of Republican rural militants were murdered. At the same time, Franco’s laws forced wage reductions for agrarian workers to roughly one-third of their pre-war purchasing power. (They would not return to the prewar level until 1962.) Because of this, working class families, and particularly landless peasants, went hungry; a situation made worse because the rationing of foodstuffs was ill conceived and riddled with corruption. Copying Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, Franco imposed a calamitous policy of economic autarky that depressed trade and clogged the economy with bottlenecks, ultimately resulting in a further decline in the Spanish economy in the 1940s. The slide was not reversed until 1952. At the same time, black-marketing was rife, putting the price of food beyond poor people’s means. The human balance of this situation was not only terrible; it was unique in a European country theoretically at peace. Between 1939 and 1945 perhaps 200,000 Spaniards perished in a quiet famine that neither the state-controlled media nor the rest of the world – which was at that time concerned with the ravages of the Second World War – reported. In those circumstances, most Spaniards mainly thought about and worked for feeding their families, resulting in dwindling ranks of die-hard Republicans who still dreamed of overthrowing Franco (Cazorla-Sánchez 2002, 391–411; Idem 2005, 503–20). The harrowing political situation and material misery of the postwar years described above were reflected in and conditioned the petitions that Spaniards sent to the almighty dictator – who, for many, represented the providential savior of the country. Those petitions also reflected two crucial differences between post-civil war Spain and most of post-world war Europe. The first difference is that the legitimacy of the Spanish government did not rest on people’s consent but on the military victory achieved by Franco’s armies. (After the end of the Second World War, a new source of legitimacy would be added: Franco as the guarantor of peace among Spaniards). The second difference, intrinsically linked to the first one, is that in Spain there was no social contract between the state and the people. This means that the regime was not accountable for the welfare of the population

32  Antonio Cazorla-Sánchez (at least for the majority of it) and that any benefit obtained from the government would be considered a favor or gift and not the natural product of the rights that people had as citizens. These two factors impregnated the approaches ordinary Spaniards made to the dictator: Franco was considered to have arbitrary power to ultimately decide on everything, even if this meant overriding his own laws. Consequently, the dictator could concede anything or take it away.

Pleading to a dictator There is abundant literature on writing to dictators (see for example: Eberle 2002; Duggan 2013; Khlevniuk 2015). Most studies coincide in the view that those missives were based on the same two premises. The writers hoped (whether they believed it, is another matter) that first, the dictator was as good a ruler as propaganda made him appear, and second, that by knowing the truth of the injustices and abuses committed by his own local officials, he would impose a fair solution. “If Stalin knew,” “if Hitler knew” how corrupt, inept, or unfair his minions were (Kershaw 1987; Passerini 1991; Figes 2007; Cazorla-Sánchez 2013)! There is a clear implication in this position by the writers based on a crude reality: that they were not citizens, but subjects and they knew very well that they were at the ruler’s mercy. It is very difficult to know what each specific writer truly believed; the intentions however are clearer. What we do know is the atmosphere, what has been called “popular opinion” in which those missives were written, and that studies on popular opinion (Peukert 1987; Colarizzi 2000; Lipmann, Gudkov & Bakradze 2013) show that dictators, for a combination of reasons, managed to have wide support among the population, far wider than the support for their regimes. In any case, with the strategy of putting their fate in the hands of the dictator, writers both recognized and sought to take advantage of their subaltern position. This strategy left room for the dictator to intervene and, if that was the case, to appear occasionally as the magnanimous, well-meaning ruler that he was supposed to be. When people wrote to Franco, their letters were shaped not only by socio-political realities but also by the regime’s ideological and moral parameters. In the case of the Franco dictatorship’s victims, their petitions constantly resorted to Catholic notions of charity and forgiveness, and to a submission to Franco’s power, as well as his supposed great moral and political qualities. It was part of a set of strategies not very different from the ones described by James C. Scott (1985) in his famous book on the “weapons of the weak.” For their part, the regime’s supporters used the same language, although they notably often also included references to militaristic and fascist ideas. Until his death, Franco ruled from the Pardo Palace, outside Madrid, yet, officially at least, his office was located at the old Royal Palace, located within the city. It is in the latter’s archive where hundreds of thousands of

Letters to the Caudillo  33 letters to the dictator are stored. However, not all letters are directed to him. Many, impossible to quantify at this point, were sent to his wife, Carmen Polo, who had her own office (known as the Lady’s Office) that dealt with charity. This office, like the political role of the dictator’s wife, has yet to be studied. In any case, we know that normally only adult women sent letters to the Lady. The couple’s single child, their daughter Carmencita (born in 1926), also received numerous letters which were sent especially by children. Later on in this chapter, we will see why women and children wrote to both the dictator’s spouse and daughter, and what the function of the language was in which those letters were couched. What were the main topics of the letters? I have revised a large sample of over 5,000 petitions, ranging mostly from 1936 to 1945 (Cazorla-Sánchez 2014). They demonstrate the main concerns of the time, that is, the legacies of the Civil War, especially the relationship between justice and repression, and the terrible material circumstances of the period. Within these two main topics we can make many sub-classifications that reflect people’s more concrete concerns and circumstances, their gender or social profiles, and their intentions. However, a similar logic runs through all of them: an attempt to manipulate power, more precisely Franco’s, to obtain a pardon, an exception, a privilege, or a reward, all in the name of justice. This justice is understood as the natural outcome of the Caudillo’s finally knowing the real situation of the petitioner. At the same time, justice is understood as a product of natural laws that cannot be completely regulated by positive laws. In other words, the decisions requested from Franco would represent a transcendent form of justice rooted in both Catholic concepts of charity and in the natural goodness of the ruler. If the Caudillo knows the truth, the petitioners state more or less clearly (whether or not they believed it), then he will act wisely and redress all the wrongs. In this way, the official propaganda’s claims that Franco was all-good, wise, and courageous are invoked for the benefit of the petitioner who tells the almighty ruler: if you are what you say you are, now that you know the facts, then impart true justice. In summary, by using the regime’s own rhetoric, those who have no, or little power tried to manipulate absolute power.

Caught in a war The first set of letters I found in the archives was sent to Franco shortly after he became supreme leader of the rebels in late September 1936. Many of the early letters deal mainly with people offering to volunteer for his armies, as well as serving soldiers asking for a little favor. In the first case, people wrote to Franco not only from many parts of nationalist Spain but also from Latin American countries (mostly Argentina and Cuba), and even as far away as the Philippines. These would-be volunteers were mostly members of local Spanish migrant communities, albeit some foreigners also showed interest. Their warring ardor was not always purely selfless.

34  Antonio Cazorla-Sánchez Often their pleas were ambiguous. For example, a woman, María del Pilar B. y M. (I have eliminated the family names for all the people cited in this chapter) wrote from Germany in late October 1936, offering her services to be “reemployed” back in Spain by the national telephone company, no doubt a good and safe job in those times. Furthermore, she claimed she needed to go back to Spain because the German weather was seriously undermining her health. In the meantime, she offered her services as a translator (she claimed to speak German and French), as well as to take care of the sick, or “whatever I am ordered.” This lady did not quite explain what she was doing in Germany – “I am a refugee here because of the current circumstances,” she said. One can only speculate that, by requesting a good job, she was possibly trying to escape a bad personal situation.1 The dictator also got letters from soldiers requesting to be discharged. Jesús C. L., a barely literate Galician, wrote to him in April 1938 to say that he had lost an eye in combat. To reinforce his case, he explained that he was needed at home because his father was dead, and he was the oldest of a family of 11 siblings who “went hungry and naked.” He was in hospital and complained that the food was bad, his face wound preventing him from chewing properly. He was a courageous soldier, who was about to be promoted to corporal and anticipated soon being promoted to sergeant. Now he was useless to Spain. In spite of this, the Army decided he could continue serving in an auxiliary corp. Furthermore, a colonel-doctor at the hospital claimed that he complained too much: food was “normal,” and that the patient “exaggerated” his symptoms. It seems fair to suspect that Jesús did not get what he hoped for. His case was not unique. Other hospitalized soldiers wrote to Franco describing both the dire circumstances at home and bad treatment at the hands of officers.2 There are also many letters from soldiers requesting leave from the front.3 All the missives follow a similar pattern: they start with declaring “subordination” and “respect” to the Caudillo; followed by an exposition of war merits and circumstances; and finally, the petition. Couched in the language of duty and suffering, mixing Christian and military values, the letters make a constant display of the blind acceptance of Franco’s power and magnanimity while showing to the dictator that there are things such as hunger and injustice in his New Spain.

The hour of the woman Another major group of letters during the wartime period and the immediate post-war period are those connected to the repression of Franco’s enemies and, in particular, of army officers and policemen who had remained loyal to the Republic. Here the role of women was crucial. Many, if not a majority, of the letters asking for clemency came from women, I have found. They requested the dictator’s pardon for behavior by men that are always presented as the product of military loyalty misled by ignorance of

Letters to the Caudillo  35 where that loyalty should have lain in July 1936. Put differently, the female relatives of officers and policemen who stayed loyal to the legal Republican Government – who were often the first victims of their former colleagues – tried to save the prisoners’ lives by explaining that the whole situation was just an unfortunate misunderstanding. According to the writers, the accused did not react well in the confusing first moments of the rebellion because they thought, mistakenly, that their duty was not to rebel. In doing so, the Republican officers’ relatives appeal to values shared between officers of both sides: obedience, loyalty, and love of the fatherland. This served as a moral link between the perpetrators and their victims. As often happens when women are the petitioners, these letters also contain religious references, in part because women in Franco’s Spain were expected to be devout Catholics. This is the case in a letter written by three wives of riot police (Guardia de Asalto) who had been trapped behind rebel lines in Zaragoza at the beginning of the war. We know nothing about this particular unit, but most Guardias remained loyal to the Republic (not surprising since the riot police was created by the Republican government). It was possible that at least those identified as pro-Republican were executed for this and certainly dismissed from their jobs and imprisoned. However, those wives wrote to the “Savior of Spain” in October claiming that their husbands “had always voted for right wing parties.” They had no money to feed their children, and they asked the Caudillo if their husbands’ salaries could be paid to them instead. In the meantime, they prayed to the Virgen del Pilar (Zaragoza’s and Spain’s Saint Patroness) for “our triumph,” meaning Franco’s. They ended their letter saying goodbye to “our defender.”4 Taking care of the family, making a display of piety, and showing their defenselessness as women – key gender values embraced and enforced by the new regime – became the moral argument of the writers to appeal to Franco’s mercy. María del Carmen T. used a similar strategy. In December 1936, she appealed to Franco to save her husband’s life. He was an infantry lieutenant who did not join the rebellion in Melilla (a garrison town located in North Africa, the geographical site of the start of the Civil War): “because he lacked information, he told his colleagues that the military code states that we must always remain loyal to the Government.” Her husband was now a prisoner in Ceuta (another garrison town in North Africa) and she was sure he was going to be freed soon and allowed to join his comrades in combat to defend “the fatherland’s honor.” María del Carmen ended her missive asking God to preserve Franco’s “talent who had led you to your current position and which will save Spain. Both my little children and I, your admirer, pray to the Lord of Mercy” for your wellbeing.5 What she did not know was that her husband had been already executed. His body is yet to be found. Lastly, another strategy for women was to take responsibility for their husbands’ situation. Modesta B. wrote to Franco in early 1939 explaining that her husband, a veteran civil guard, had been expelled from the force

36  Antonio Cazorla-Sánchez after the capture of Badajoz in the summer of 1936. The irony is that her husband was at the time, she claimed, a prisoner of the Republicans in the city. Modesta argued that perhaps the reason behind her husband’s dismissal was that she had directed two theatrical plays for young socialists in May 1936. She requested to be punished instead of her husband, and her family because now “her husband was unable to make a living and her children had no bread.”6 As hinted at by the previous three letters, the situations of many victims of Francoist repression was often a matter of chance. While many people had firm political ideas and frequently acted according to them, others got caught up in situations where they had to take quick decisions. Sometimes, people chose the wrong option for their own safety and/or professional standing. Approximately 40 percent of the Army remained loyal to the Government in July 1936, as did the majority of the police. As a result, families became divided, especially if they had several members in the Army or the police, and siblings ended up fighting on different sides, or being victimized by different factions. At the same time, families often acted together to protect the members who ended up on the losing side. Enrique A. requested in April 1939 Franco’s pardon for his son, a former policeman in the colony of Equatorial Guinea, claiming that he ended up fighting for the Republic as a captain only because he planned to switch sides but, in the end, could not. He explained that his other son had died fighting in the Legion (an army crack unit that Franco contributed to create in 1920 to fight in the Moroccan war) and that he himself was a retired army doctor. He claimed that the whole family always voted for right-wing parties and had been persecuted by the Republic during the war.7 It is hard to know how effective such strategies were, but we know that Franco himself ordered his judicial assistant, Lorenzo Martínez Fuset, to attend to a petition from an old army friend who had asked him to commute the death sentence imposed on his brother Luis, a Republican officer. The petition was made in April 1939 and the “magnanimity of our Caudillo” was exercised the following April.8 In a context of executions, revenge, and cruelty, women often appealed to both the dictator and his wife, putting themselves at their mercy as suffering beings who only wanted to get their loved ones home to start a new, quiet life. Emiliana A. wrote to the dictator in July 1937 from a village in Valladolid province explaining that her eldest son had been executed the year before “without taking into consideration if he was guilty or not and he was married and a month later his wife gave birth.” Her second son had also been killed in combat fighting for Franco. This is why “[I] am asking for your compassion to free my husband so he can maintain our house because he has done nothing” and “because Spain needs all her children.” And, she added, “please, take compassion on this mother who already has lost two children.” She ended the letter apologizing for her orthography “because I am almost blind and I barely know how to write.” In September,

Letters to the Caudillo  37 Emiliana insisted again and gave a new argument in favor of her husband’s freedom: “the only accusation against us is that we are a leftist family. But if we have been good leftists, we can be good rightists too.”9 Amalia P. wrote to Franco’s wife Carmen in June 1940 from Málaga, pleading with her “in the name of what you love most in the world which must be God, your husband and daughter.” Amalia’s husband was in prison for being a member of a Masonic lodge. She claimed her husband had renounced such ideas and embraced Catholicism again. She explained: my husband was a model son, sibling, spouse, and good father, this is why I ask you to take pity on us for the love of God and the Holy Virgin. God forgave my husband, and the motto of our Caudillo is pardon, and I ask precisely that, since the Church forgave him, your husband’s duty is to follow suit… I ask your pardon for asking you this, but would Your Excellency not do the same if She were in my position?10 With those words, Amalia was using both the Church’s and the regime’s language of pardon to advance her case; at the same time, she was using her condition as devout Catholic and spouse to create a common link to the dictator’s wife, whose public image presented precisely those two characteristics. Similar arguments are seen in other petitions by women to the Lady, as their fathers, siblings, children and, particularly, husbands awaited execution or faced long sentences in the very harsh years of repression that followed the end of the war. These women’s letters offered a glimmer of hope for the more than quarter of a million people crowding Franco’s prisons. The role of women was not limited to asking for mercy for Franco’s enemies. During the war, and immediately after, pro-Franco women wrote to the dictator requesting leave for soldiers, pensions when their menfolk fell in combat, and even juridical and financial support for problems not directly related to the conflict. In those missives, there is a repeated use of the image of the poor, weak suffering mother/spouse whose model was the Virgin Mary. At other times, women’s requests were less about sacrifice than conflictive gender relations in wartime. Specifically, I have found many letters by women who depict themselves as seduced by soldiers under false promises of marriage (a crime that existed in the 1889 Spanish Civil Code that the Francoists had restored) and asked the dictator to restore their honor by forcing the soldiers to marry them, as it should be in a Catholic state. In June 1938, Dolores G., “an unfortunate Spaniard” asked “the Savior of Spain” if the man she was going to describe “deserved to be called a true Spaniard.” Aviation sergeant Leonidas H. and she had had “relations” and “just after enjoying me told my parents he wanted to marry me.” He later renounced her and did not even respond to the letters sent by the local parish priest. Dolores asked the Caudillo if in order “to mock a woman is it necessary also to mock her parents and God?” In this case we

38  Antonio Cazorla-Sánchez know the answer to her plea. She was advised by Franco’s secretary to go to the courts because she had a well-documented and robust case.11 A different case, because the law was against this particular woman, was presented by Almina A., from Ceuta, when she asked Franco in February 1938 to be granted a pension because her “spiritual husband” (a way of saying to the prudish Franco that they lived together without being married), a second lieutenant, had died in combat, a victim of “those hyenas, those heartless men” the Republicans. Almina was both “honest and the daughter of honest parents”; unfortunately, her lover was a married man who had, according to Almina, requested a divorce from his long-estranged wife shortly before the start of the war.12 In this instance, it is more than dubious that Almina got anything since the new regime had abolished divorce. Isabel C. had a better case. In May 1937 she explained she was married to the soldier Miguel C., with whom she had “four children recognized and baptized at San Nestor parish.” Unfortunately, when he came back to La Coruña from the front, he beat her up so badly that he broke six of her ribs and she lost an eye and suffered several head injuries. He then moved in with another woman and asked the city hall to withdraw Isabel’s payments as wife of a soldier. Isabel asked the Caudillo for “­protection.” Her petition to receive financial help was granted. Later, Isabel wrote again to denounce her estranged husband, now working at the local arms factory, as “disloyal to the Nationalist ideology, and more of a supporter of Communism.” She insisted that her husband should be sent to the front “for his own good and that of the fatherland.”13

The uses of innocence Another group of letters were written by children, either directly to Franco or using the supposed empathy of his young daughter, Carmencita. What could be more innocent and touching than children writing to the Savior of Spain via his own beloved child? In June 1938, Maria Luisa A., aged six, asked Franco on the day of her first communion, “all dressed in white on my knees next to my grandmother,” to pardon her uncle Samuel – who had been condemned to six years in prison – because he was the provider for “my grandparents, very old and sick.”14 Chelito C. wrote to Carmencita in August 1938, as a member of the Falange Youth like you, to appeal to your generous heart that you ask your good daddy, our invincible Caudillo, for the readmission into the Civil Guard of my poor brother Guillermo […] my own father is fighting at the front and my mother is sick, and I have another sister, and all three cry a lot because of our beloved brother. She ended the missive by requesting to “Ask the same to your good mommy. The Holy Virgin of El Carmen will repay her.”15 Another girl called

Letters to the Caudillo  39 Carmencita, aged 12, wrote to the dictator’s daughter in July 1940, asking “forgiveness for writing to you, a young lady of such high standing, so far away of my social connections, and not having the pleasure of knowing you personally” but “I cry the whole time, like my mother” because her father was in Valencia’s Model Prison awaiting execution. She requested her fellow Carmencita to “intercede with your almighty daddy to have my father’s sins commuted, so peace will come to our house.” She trusted “that your father will deny you nothing, the same way my own father never negated me anything when I asked him good and noble things.”16 Sometimes, children used their letters as a way of asking compensation for Franco’s own actions. Miguel L. wrote to the Caudillo in November 1939 from a village in the province of Málaga. He was fifteen and the oldest of five siblings. They and their mother were starving because their father, a Republican Guardia de Asalto, had been “shot by Your Excellency’s tribunals.” His father was, he claimed, a man who hated anarchy and the actions committed by the “reds,” but after the fall of Málaga (February 1937), “court martial trials as Your Excellency knows, were in a hurry” and his father was executed without having his case examined. Now Miguel had heard that “Your Excellency takes care of such extreme situations, this is why I write to you asking for protection.”17 It is hard to imagine what Miguel really thought, but once again the regime’s propaganda and Franco’s public image were used by one of his victims to try and obtain a goal; in this case to survive the post-war famine that was particularly atrocious in southern Spain.

God’s voices Another group of letters was sent by clerics. In a self-proclaimed Catholic state, the role of the clergy was crucial. The Church suffered enormously in the Republican zone, where nearly 7,000 members of the clergy, almost all of them male, were assassinated. The Church was not just a passive victim of the times: it supported, almost unanimously, the July 1936 rebellion and later the Franco regime (Callahan 2000). In legal terms, the opinions of the Church mattered a lot, and they could make the difference between life and death for the dictatorship’s prisoners. As an institution, the Church refrained from condemning the regime’s executions. However, at an individual level, many of its members tried to help people whom they knew, or whose relatives were considered sound Catholics. There are two clearly differentiated types of letters sent by members of the clergy to Franco. One is the letters sent by nuns. None of these letters deals with, or even mentions, repression. They are mostly missives of good will and blessing to the Caudillo and his family, which often arrived with a little religious gift, and ended up asking Franco for an economic or legal favor. The letters from clergymen and, in particular bishops, constitute a different group. They deal directly with the regime’s repression, and they

40  Antonio Cazorla-Sánchez came either from the clergymen themselves or, indirectly, in letters sent by relatives, named as referees who would vouch for the condemned man’s good character. As an example of this first subgroup, in July 1944, the bishop of Vitoria asked Franco to commute the death sentence of six men from his diocese. However, his message was not all that clear because he declared “I know nothing about the crimes they might have committed but their [relatives] ask me continuously to intercede and I cannot deny them this as father of everybody, and especially of the unhappy ones.” On the other hand, this same bishop, and one of his colleagues from Toledo, supported a letter sent in August 1944 by Concepción B., imploring Franco’s wife to have her husband’s death sentence commuted. It made a difference. A note in the file shows that Concepción’s husband got his sentence reduced to “only” thirty years.18 Because a number of pardons were issued around this time, if he survived the terrible prison conditions of those years, Concepción’s husband probably served only a few years more. In the same way, in April 1945, José María R. also managed to get a pardon from the death sentence that had been given to his brother, thanks to a letter of support from the Bishop of Oviedo.19

Cult of the leader Franco also received numerous letters that reflected the growing cult of the Caudillo. Such a cult was the product of an extensive campaign launched by Franco and his supporters at the beginning of the war to transform the reluctant rebel of July 1936 into the supposedly true inspiration of both the military uprising and the New State. Official propaganda soon erased the inconvenient fact that the original leader of the revolt, General José Sanjurjo, had died in an aviation accident at the start of the Civil War when he was proceeding to take command of the troops. The cult of the Caudillo was reflected in the letters that began to arrive in the fall of 1936 when his leadership of the rebel camp became apparent. José D., a Galician like Franco, wrote from Jerez de la Frontera in November 1936 proclaiming the Caudillo, a descendant of the “Celts that [gave] so many leaders” to the fatherland.20 Soldier Benito B., convalescent in a hospital, wrote in February 1937 how happy he was to receive a photograph of the Caudillo, which he would take with him to “war again” and to “my village, and when I marry and create a home, it will be there too.”21 On October 4, 1937, Saint Francis Day, the teacher Joaquín F. and four of his pupils sent a loving missive to the leader on the occasion of his name day, thanking him for “redeeming the Spanish people.”22 The Catholic association Heads of Household of Ciudad Rodrigo sent, in October 1938, an enthusiastic letter of support for the new Law of Secondary Education (which enforced Catholic education at a moment when Republican teachers were being demoted, dismissed, or even shot).23 In July 1938, the president of the University of Zaragoza congratulated the Caudillo because his

Letters to the Caudillo  41 “armies continue fighting and overwhelming the enemies of the civilized word.” The same individual sent a telegram the following February saluting the Caudillo for “his future battles for peace and the prosperity of the fatherland.”24 On April 3, 1939, two days after Victory Day, the board of Soria Savings and Loan Bank “enthusiastically congratulated the providential Caudillo Generalissimo Franco” for his success.25 A few days later, Eufenia A. sent a long poem (she was far from unique in doing this) to her hero, which started with the lines “Defeated are/the treasonous Marxists/ by our brave armies/and God’s power.”26 The same month, María B. also insisted that God stood behind Franco: “Long live the Generalissimo Franco who has brought back to Spain a God that rewards good people and punishes the bad ones; Long live the Divine Providence.”27 This association between the new regime’s leader and God’s designs was everywhere in those years, particularly in Catholic circles, from the messages sent from Pope Pius XII to the sermons of many parish priests who received Franco’s victory in the war with immense satisfaction. Franco also got numerous letters from foreign fascist admirers, particularly youngsters from Germany and Italy who often asked him to send signed photographs.

The everlasting pain The celebrations of victory and the cult of the Caudillo could not hide the misery enveloping Spain, nor how it worsened in the following years. Many people wanted to believe that Franco did not know about the poverty, corruption, and abuses committed by his administration. This was a myth. Not only was Franco regularly informed of the country’s situation in the confidential bulletins sent to him weekly by the police and the Falange, but, in addition, the letters that he received gave a surprisingly accurate picture of the grim social reality. In March 1938, a group of twelve women from Almaraz de Duero, in the Castilian heartland province of Zamora, wrote that they had not received the family allowances they deserved as wives of soldiers and added that “if Your Excellency does not hear us [and fix this situation] we must leave our children to die of hunger,” thus letting Franco know about the difficulties that were faced by ordinary people.28 To fight for Franco was not a guarantee of being taken care of. Amandina P. wrote from Santa Marta de Ortigueira, in the province of Coruña, in July 1940. She was the widow of a soldier with three children, but ever since the death of her husband, she had ceased to receive their family allowance. This was because her husband’s death was caused by illness and not military action. As a result, the family now survived only thanks to “begging and public charity.” She ended her letter asking: “How could it be possible for our General to allow the widow and the children of a Soldier of Spain to die of hunger?”29 We do not know if Amandina got what she asked for. What we do know is that none of the surviving Republican soldiers received anything from the regime.

42  Antonio Cazorla-Sánchez Sometimes the letters denouncing injustices or corruption hid other interests. In May 1939, Franco received an anonymous missive detailing how “four Jewish merchants” (in reality they were not Jewish, this was an anti-Semitic slur) ran the black market in the town of Porriño, near Vigo, and were getting rich “with the blood of our soldiers.” When Franco’s aid ordered an investigation, the local authorities explained that there was indeed corruption among some merchants, who had been fined. However, the authorities also claimed to know the person who had sent the anonymous letter and that everything seemingly boiled down to “political infighting” among the local elite.30 Complaints such as these stemmed from the fact that, during and after the war, big black-marketeers and smugglers were generally safe from police persecution (unless they had run foul of the regime). On the other hand, smaller fry generally very humble, had no such protection. Lola F. wrote to Franco in February 1939, stating that she had two brothers fighting “in Your Excellency’s Army” and her parents were invalids, yet the police had taken away her black-market contraband at the local fair. Lola asked Franco “to talk to the local police (carabineros) and you will save this unfortunate woman who promises never to sin again.”31 Eluterio S. denounced in March 1943, “with tears” in his eyes, how the black market was rampant, prices out of control, big companies did well at the expense of laborers, and how the good jobs went to “Communists.” “Dear Caudillo”, he said, “the good people love you” but you “ignore” what is happening.32

Conclusion Letters to the dictator offer us a vision from below during a dark period in Europe’s history. As publications on letters sent to Hitler, Mussolini, or Stalin show, dictators were expected to be as good as the propaganda said they were. This logic meant that people sent letters in which they attempted to manipulate power to their own advantage. Their subaltern position in society was expressed in a subaltern language employed to exploit the meager resources that people who ended on one or the other side of the Spanish Civil War had at their disposal. Those letters were often weapons of the weak – women, children, political prisoners, drafted soldiers – and their effectiveness was not only very limited, but could also be useful to the regime since, if they had an effect or coincided with a fortuitous act of grace, they “proved” both how people trusted Franco and how benevolent the ruler was. At the same time, those letters offer a deep and wide glimpse of the political, moral, and material misery existing in society. In the case of wartime and post-war Spain, this misery was immense. It was a time of cruelty, injustice, and hunger, in which people hurt each other or tried to defend their lives and interests as best as they could. In this situation, humble and weak people, and particularly women, played a crucial role, using the official

Letters to the Caudillo  43 social and gender values of the time to improve their personal or, more often, their families’ fortunes. It is tempting now to recoil in horror or indignation from what we read in the missives. But in a Europe that seems to have trivialized its fascist past – in which far right populist forces have remarkable electoral success proposing xenophobia and illiberal policies – these letters remind us of the difference between being a citizen and a subject, as well as the meaning of our democracies and the moral, social, and political values that sustain them.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

Archivo de Palacio (AP), box 42. AP, box 26 and 37. AP, box 1 and 3. AP, box 2. AP, box 9. AP, box 29. AP, box 4. AP, box 1. AP, box 3. AP, box 228. AP, box 64. AP, box 2. AP, box 21. AP, box 1. AP, box 31. AP, box 228. AP, box 161. AP, box 3084. AP, box 435. AP, box 44. AP, box 168. AP, box 59. AP, box 9. AP, box 26. AP, box 26. AP, box 3. AP, box 24. AP, box 9. AP, box 228. AP, box 1. AP, box 55. AP, box 368.

Bibliography Callahan, William. 2000. The Catholic Church in Spain, 1875–1998. Washington: Catholic University of America Press. Cazorla-Sánchez, Antonio. 2002. “Surviving Franco’s Peace: Spanish Popular Opinion during World War II.” European History Quarterly 32 (3): 391–411.

44  Antonio Cazorla-Sánchez Cazorla-Sánchez, Antonio. 2005. “Beyond They Shall Not Pass: How the Experience of Violence Re-Shaped Political Values in Early Franco Spain.” Journal of Contemporary History 40 (3): 503–20. Cazorla-Sánchez, Antonio. 2009. Fear and Progress: Ordinary Lives in Franco’s Spain (1936–1975). Oxford: Blackwell-Wiley. Cazorla-Sánchez, Antonio. 2013. Franco: The Biography of the Myth. New York: Routledge. Cazorla-Sánchez, Antonio, ed. 2014. Las cartas a Franco de los españoles de a pié. Barcelona: RBA. Colarizzi, Simona. 2000. L’opinione degli italiani sotto il regime: 1929–1943. Bari: Laterza. Duggan, Christopher. 2013. Fascist Voices. An Intimate History of Mussolini’s Italy. Oxford: University Press. Eberle, Henrik ed. 2002. Letters to Hitler. Cambridge: Polity. Figes, Orlando. 2007. The Whisperers. Private life in Stalin’s Russia. New York: Metropolitan Books. Kershaw, Ian. 1987. The “Hitler Myth”. Image and Reality in Nazi Germany. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Khlevniuk, Oleg. 2015. “Letters to Stalin.” Cahiers du monde russe 56 (2–3): 327–44. Online since November 17, 2019. http://journals.openedition.org/monderusse/ 8185. Lipman, Maria, Lev Gudkov, and Lasha Bakradze. 2013. The Stalin Puzzle: Deciphering Post-Soviet Public Opinion, edited by Thomas de Waal. Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Passerini, Luisa. 1991. Mussolini immaginario: storia de una biografia, 1915–1939. Bari: Laterza. Peukert, Detlev. 1987. Conformity, Opposition and Racism in Everyday Life. New Haven: Yale University Press. Preston, Paul. 2012. The Spanish Holocaust. Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth Century Spain. New York: Norton. Richards, Michael. 1998. A Time of Silence: Civil War and the Culture of Repression in Franco’s Spain, 1936–1945. New York: Cambridge University Press. Scott, James C. 1985. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Heaven: Yale University Press.

3 Finding subjectivities in Fascist Italy “Mothers of the Fallen” between symbolic and experienced political participation Anne Wingenter Questions of subalternity and political awareness have long been central to the study of Italian Fascism and the nature of its engagement with the Italian people. Indeed, even during the regime itself, Mussolini insisted that his dictatorship, with its rejection of liberal models of political participation, was not some reactionary return to a tyrannical past, but rather should be considered an “authoritarian democracy” that expressed the “conscience and the will of the mass” (Mussolini and Gentile 2000). In lieu of liberal institutions, Fascist leadership exerted an enormous amount of time and energy constructing elaborate rituals that mobilized Italian bodies, and at least as much effort in their use of media and propaganda claiming those bodies as evidence of sincere and unanimous support for the regime and its projects. The fate of such claims after the fall of the regime has taken a convoluted path. The first decades after the Second World War saw a deep reluctance to look closely at Fascism itself and little direct exploration of how “ordinary Italians” had understood and engaged with the regime. Responsibility for the regime tended to be narrowly associated with Mussolini himself and with a few higher-ranking Fascist officials. Fascist claims of widespread consent were widely dismissed or simply ignored, and the mass-mobilizing events that had been so emblematic of the regime, when mentioned at all, were looked at as the instruments of what Alan Cassel (1968, 1) called the “gigantic confidence trick perpetrated on the Italian nation by Benito Mussolini.” There was instead greater scholarly (and political) interest in charting the origins and extent of the anti-Fascist resistance that had been active in Italy during the final two years of the Second World War. Broadly speaking, the Resistenza, a movement which had involved a significant, but nonetheless minority part of the population, served as the foundational myth of the new Italian Republic and was extrapolated to serve as a kind of “default” sentiment of the masses during the regime. The view that emerged was of a victimized populace, largely devoid of political knowledge but possessing a kind of instinctive resistance or at least reluctance. The masses in Italy, such characterizations DOI: 10.4324/9781003290087-5

46  Anne Wingenter suggested, were either fooled or forced into following their Duce, but they endured to eventually resist when and where they could. Political awareness by definition meant anti-Fascism. In the 1970s, this “anti-Fascist paradigm” came under serious challenge from the work of Renzo De Felice, who argued that Mussolini’s dictatorship had, for a time, enjoyed widespread consensus and could be understood as an expression of the aspirations of at least a part of the middle classes (De Felice 1974; De Felice & Ledeen 1977). Though contested at the time, this view came nonetheless to dominate research on the regime (Corner 2002). Perhaps even more significant was De Felice’s call for evaluating Italian Fascism “on its own terms” which paved the way for a cultural turn in the study of the dictatorship. Scholars began to consider seriously Fascist policies and institutions as well as the ritual and ceremony previously dismissed as “smoke and mirrors” (Gentile 1996; Berezin 1997; Falasca-Zamponi 2000). The result was a much clearer picture of how the regime sought to manufacture consent, but the actual recipients of such programs and propaganda – the so-called “consenters” – largely remained out of focus. As Paul Corner (2017, 436) has written, the cultural turn, in combination with the assertion of consent, gave us “essentially a top-down vision of the operations of power in which the people are subject to domination and do not rebel.” Recent scholarship has increasingly returned focus to the recipients rather than the architects of Fascist rule and in doing so has begun to reject the consent/resistance dichotomy as insufficiently nuanced for understanding subaltern actors under dictatorship (Corner 2012; Duggan 2013; Bernhard 2014; Pergher 2015). First of all, this research asserts that many top-down arguments in favor of “consent” have not adequately considered the role of violence. As Giulia Albanese and Roberta Pergher (2012b, 3) put it, “whatever consent existed can be understood only against the backdrop of coercion. Even apparent endorsement of the regime was often as much a sign of constrained choices as of real enthusiasm.” The performance and vocalizing of support may in some cases simply indicate an awareness that “to remain silent was to risk punishment” (Ebner 2011, 245). Second, there is a growing insistence on recognizing that despite the totalitarian aspirations of the regime to create “new men,” individuals under Fascism operated within a whole matrix of influences, practices, and local realities. Unless we are discussing children (and even here the picture is far from simple), they certainly had formative experiences and ways of engaging with power that predated dictatorship. Thus, R. J. B. Bosworth (2006, 7) has argued, Italians, with power or without, from the top of society to the bottom, behaved in ways that may have been tinctured by Fascism, but at the same time were deeply colored by other factors …. [Their histories are] full of loyalties and perceptions that were not merely Fascist.

Finding subjectivities in Fascist Italy  47 Locating those other loyalties and perceptions and restoring them to their proper place in the lives of subaltern actors is no small task when dealing with a regime that so utterly saturated the available media of the day and left behind an archival record overwhelmingly dominated by Fascist selffashioning. One of the major difficulties of trying to understand how ordinary Italians experienced Fascism is the fundamental disconnect between an official mythology based on the ringing universals of totalitarian pretensions on the one hand and the economic, social, and cultural diversity of the audience on the other. And yet any hope of finding political subjectivities in Fascist Italy rests precisely in charting the shifting dimensions of this very gap. To that end, this chapter looks at a particular category of women, those who had lost sons or husbands in the First World War. Because such women were constitutive elements as well as recipients of the regime’s propaganda they provide a unique perspective from which to consider the political communication of the regime and the ways that communication was consumed, understood, and sometimes repurposed by subaltern actors. It should be pointed out that all women in early twentieth-century Italy were, in the most basic sense, subaltern. They lacked political rights – that is, they could not vote or hold office – and all married women were subject to the legal and economic authority of their husbands. Working class women, both urban and rural, were restricted from holding certain kinds of jobs, were paid less than men, and it was generally expected that their wages be handed over to father or husband as a contribution to the family economy. That said, some women of the middle and upper classes had begun around the turn of the twentieth century to organize in pursuit of political recognition, and many more such women were involved in civic and charitable organizations, laying claim to a space in the public sphere (Willson 2010).

Organizing grief: the National Association of Mothers and Widows of the Fallen The idealized “war mother” no less than the better-known “fallen soldier” was a fundamental building-block in the symbolic universe of Italian Fascism. From the very beginning of their movement in 1919, Fascists participated in a protracted, often violent, struggle to define the meaning of the Great War that had just ended (Isola 1990). They presented themselves as a “trench-ocracy” and claimed to represent the 600,000 Italian dead whose sacrifice Fascism would make whole (Gentile 1996; Zunino 1985). Once in power they exerted their control over the media and cultural institutions to assert and reassert this official n ­ arrative. But while the dead could be – and were – regularly evoked, they could not be put on display; for that the regime needed their bereaved widows and especially their mothers. Throughout the regime such women performed

48  Anne Wingenter key roles in Fascist rituals, and provided a recurring motif in Fascist posters, ­photographs, film, and literature. Images of their bodies were managed, ­displayed, nationalized to exemplify silent, sacrificing womanhood. The mother who silently and stoically dispatched her sons to die for their country became the ideal model of feminine behavior, just as the fallen soldier represented the ultimate obedience asked of the “New Man” of Fascism (Wingenter 2003). But the use of living people as symbols was significantly more complicated than speaking for the dead. The actual war mothers and widows mobilized in Fascist ceremonies came from specific social conditions. They were adults when Mussolini came to power and not only had their own, very traumatic experiences of war and loss, but had also come of age during a period when some women were beginning to demand expanded rights. Moreover, unlike the dead, bereaved women could speak and act for themselves; indeed, before the ascendency of Fascism, some of them had founded an association in order to do just that. The National Association of Mothers and Widows of the Fallen (AMVC)1 was founded by a group of war mothers and widows in Milan in 1917 as a support group and commemoration society. Over the next five years it expanded rapidly to establish chapters throughout the country (sometimes absorbing similar local charities that had been founded more or less contemporaneously) and reaching some 300,000 associates by 1924.2 At the beginning, the group was woman-controlled and operated in cooperation with both the Church and the state. In addition to identifying and providing charity to mothers, widows, and orphans in need, members published their own newspaper, involved themselves in numerous commemoration projects, collaborated with veterans’ and orphans’ associations and served as an advocacy group for the rights of bereaved women. Initially, the group’s most practical efforts centered on establishing offices throughout the country to seek adequate pensions, jobs, and/or education for widows and mothers. These offices were staffed primarily by volunteers, usually young women, who worked to identify those eligible for pensions, educate them as to their rights to assistance, and in some cases, provide them with financial support until the government disbursements were secured.3 We might consider the leadership of the group, drawn from the middle and upper classes, an associational elite, women who attempted to parlay their social influence into concrete benefits and greater visibility of their importance to the state. They acted as intermediaries for the poorest mothers and widows, but were also advocating for themselves. After the March on Rome, the Fascist government acted with surprising speed to limit the AMVC’s autonomy, with particular focus on controlling its commemorative activities. Charitable concerns and behind-the scenes advocacy were left somewhat freer, though approval still had to be sought from a central committee that included no women as members.4 By the end of 1925, in the name of “coordinating” all patriotic associations to ensure

Finding subjectivities in Fascist Italy  49 a “proper” understanding and commemoration of the fallen, the AMVC was absorbed under the umbrella of a regime-controlled organization, now officially called the National Association of the Families of the Fallen (ANFC).5 Nonetheless, the women now subject to outside directives had an understanding of themselves, which included early and autonomous activity as well as their assigned role under Fascism, and there was considerable overlap between the two. Recognizing this can help us “flip the script;” rather than asking how these women fit or were made to fit into the Fascist cultural agenda, we can instead question how they tried to fit Fascism into their own programs and identities. Perhaps the most significant feature revealed by an examination of AMVC documents from the interwar period is that members at every level assumed a connection between duties and rights. These were women who believed in serving their nation, who were willing, as their official motto asserted, to make sacrifices “for a Greater and more Christian Italy.” But they also believed that they, having shown themselves worthy citizens of Italy, were entitled to political and economic recognition for their service. The early leadership considered it part of their “sacred mission,” to “reaffirm the economic and moral rights [of war mothers and widows] before the state.”6 All of the AMVC’s efforts on behalf of mothers and widows rested on the notion that such women had performed a service for the state the equivalent or greater than that of disabled veterans. Therefore, the executives argued for the entrance of qualified mothers and widows into public service7 and protested the disparity in the pensions received by mothers and widows as opposed to veterans. They lobbied for war mothers or widows to be appointed to seats on commissions regarding pensions, provisions for war orphans, and community commemoration efforts.8 They set up job training programs and ran an ultimately unsuccessful campaign to grant war widows and orphans the same right to privileged access to jobs and places at the university that was accorded returning veterans.9 The formulation and articulation of such demands of course began before the rise of Fascism, and considered within the context of the dictatorship, a continued linkage of duties and rights appears confused at best, and perhaps even delusional. However, AMVC members did not have the historian’s advantage of hindsight. Like any historical actor, they made their decisions and based their aspirations on a combination of ingrained attitudes formed over the long term, and expediency relative to their perceptions of extremely short-term conditions. In the case of the AMVC, both factors worked to create the appearance of a connection between rights and duties.

The AMVC in the context of first-wave Italian Feminism First one must consider the AMVC’s place within the context of Italian women’s organization. Both the association’s early connections with the

50  Anne Wingenter Catholic Church and its focus on assisting mothers, widows and their children situate it within the landscape of so-called “maternalist” feminism. A more conservative doctrine compared with those of other feminist organizations of the period, maternalist feminism’s focus on social problems allowed for the more widespread adoption of its ideals by traditional bourgeois volunteer associations. It also allowed for the reconciliation of traditional notions of motherhood and female sacrifice with more modern emancipationist goals. In Italy in particular, the early years of the twentieth century saw a flowering of maternalist feminism as volunteerism expanded to fill the gaps in the Liberal government’s social policies and as many of the proponents of more radical egalitarian models of feminism grew disenchanted with abstract notions of equality (De Grazia 1992, 23–25; Willson 2010, 24–42). Rather than subscribe to a genderless model of citizenship, groups espousing maternalist feminism emphasized motherhood as a woman’s major contribution to society and service to the poor as a continuation of maternal duties. Often influenced by Catholic traditionalism, they focused on protecting families; nonetheless, their goals specifically included the nation’s recognition of a role for women that extended into the public sphere. In this, such organizations drew on the notion of ‘Republican motherhood,’ a justification for female citizenship that dated to the Enlightenment, and one that resonated in a Catholic country with a long tradition of Marian devotion. At least since the Risorgimento, mothers of important figures had been credited with fostering and inspiring the deeds of their sons; schoolchildren learned about Mazzini’s mother’s fervent patriotism before they studied her son’s words. In keeping with this discourse, the maternalist feminists insisted that women as mothers or potential mothers were inherently suited for civic roles especially as concerned matters of education and public morals. Moreover, because of their reproductive potential, women had the right to education as well as a living wage. (Bortolotti 1963) Such notions are clearly evident in the AMVC’s insistence that because of their role as “educators of the new Italy,” their right to pensions and jobs was a “question of individual, family, and national morality.”10 The immediate events surrounding the formation of the AMVC also contributed to its members’ sense of civic inclusion. The AMVC had its beginnings in the context of the gender pressures associated with the First World War. The association’s founding motivation was primarily patriotic, but throughout the war years, the same language that the liberal government had used to encourage women’s patriotism promised them fuller rights of citizenship: “all your rights will finally be recognized after the terrible trial so worthily borne,” promised a 1918 pamphlet.11 In the immediate aftermath of the war, with parliament fully expected to pass a women’s suffrage bill, many bourgeois feminists considered it the imminent reward for their wartime support. From the more specific viewpoint of the

Finding subjectivities in Fascist Italy  51 AMVC, the government’s interest in issues such as mothers’ and widows’ pensions and orphans’ rights, as well as the willingness of high-ranking officials to meet and correspond with the association’s representatives, and even in some cases to serve as advisors or “supporting members,” likewise indicated the country’s readiness to reward women for their service to the Patria. The AMVC’s early leaders expressed a clear sense of their newly recognized importance to the nation. After the armistice, they repeatedly stressed that the war had revealed them as worthy citizens and that this worthiness merited greater participation in public life. The following excerpt from an article in the AMVC’s newspaper illustrates how the war simultaneously lent the weight of proof to the long-held claims of maternalist feminists and the force of urgency to their demands: The mothers and widows and their families have the right and the duty to cooperate in the intellectual, religious, and moral, social, and civil formation of the nation. They have the right to participate in the economic progress and the greater glory of our Patria: It is an apostolic mission that they can and must undertake. It is the social and national valorization of their sacrifice of husbands and sons.12 Thus, in asserting the right to participate in public life, AMVC leaders were espousing their general beliefs about women’s social rights and obligations as well as laying claim to the position specifically promised to women by so much of the wartime rhetoric. During the war, the government had appealed to all women as “true citizens” assigning them “missions of solemn importance.” The most lionized heroines of all were mothers and widows of fallen soldiers. Little wonder, then, that when the war ended many women were convinced that the recognition of their rights was imminent. War-time rhetoric was fresh in their minds; indeed, they continued to hear it as the post-war struggle to shape the victory unfolded. The limited gains in women’s legal status codified in the Sacchi laws of 1919 provided evidence, many women believed, that expanded rights were forthcoming, as did the Lower House’s overwhelmingly positive vote on a female suffrage bill in 1920 – even though the government fell before the bill could reach the Senate (Willson 2010, 57–60). Throughout the ventennio, despite the Fascist government’s methodical attacks on women’s civil rights (as well as everyone else’s), many women never lost this sense of entitlement. Long after any hint of recompense disappeared from official discourse, women continued to associate rights and duties and to act as if the two were inextricably bound. War-era and Catholic discourse seem to have created a context in which the notion of some kind of reward for sacrifice was implicit. The advent of Fascism did not initially seem to threaten this conviction; the seizure of power may even paradoxically have encouraged women’s civic aspirations – especially

52  Anne Wingenter those of women who could point to patriotic behavior during the First World War. Fascist ideologues, particularly during the immediate post-war period, drew heavily on, indeed made central, the same language of sacrifice and “patriotic mission” as had earlier politicians, and backed it with action. The Fascist government, in its first two years alone, enacted more than forty decrees and laws for the “Re-evaluation of the War and the Victory” and even more after its transformation to authoritarian regime. Certainly, Mussolini and other party officials focused mainly on combatants, both veterans as members of the so-called “trench-ocracy,” and the aforementioned fallen soldiers, rather than on the home front (Gentile 1996). But even this was nothing new; wartime and post-war appeals and assurances to women had always operated within a larger context dominated by soldiers and veterans. In fact, it was the very linkage of women’s patriotism with the fate of Italy’s fighting men that had driven the entire discourse. The Fascists’ frequent display of war mothers and widows underlined this connection. Year after year, official celebrations placed bereaved women alongside disabled veterans. The same was true of local ceremonies inaugurating war monuments or cemeteries. Furthermore, mothers and widows had the right to wear any medals of honor won by their deceased children or spouses (a right the AMVC had lobbied to obtain); indeed, the Fascists not infrequently made a public show of bestowing said medals on bereaved women, a practice that they extended to mothers and widows of Fascist “martyrs” and took up again in 1935 with the start of the ItaloEthiopian war. Given that AMVC leadership had sought from the earliest post-war days to equate the position of bereaved women with that of disabled veterans, it is not surprising that many women at first saw the Fascists’ valorization of the war as an implicit guarantee that their rights would at last be recognized. Even rank and file members had a sense that the government owed them something. “Insist on [higher] pensions,” wrote one widow to an AMVC representative in 1923, just before the latter was to meet with Fascist officials in Turin, “make them consider the years of military service that we have offered” (emphasis added).13 Members of the AMVC were especially vulnerable to making such assumptions, because they – or at least symbolic war mothers and widows like them – were specifically included in Fascist rhetoric. As mentioned above, the regime initially used the AMVC in the context of establishing a controlling myth of the Great War and of Fascism’s so-called “redemptive” role in the immediate post-war period. Their co-option of the war mother was an attempt to gain control of a widely revered symbol in the context of bitter disagreement over the meaning of the First World War. But for members of the AMVC, it seems that the attention itself was construed as an improvement in their situation. The association had struggled since before the war’s end to publicize the plight of bereaved women, and to gain the ear of influential politicians and notables. They saw their

Finding subjectivities in Fascist Italy  53 commemoration efforts not only as a form of “moral, social, civil, and national propaganda” but also as a way to maintain a focus on the material needs of mothers and widows.14 Articles in their newsletter, starting with a November 1922 report about the March on Rome, vowed that the “Mothers and Widows of Italy’s Fallen [would] always be at the side of those who – in respect for the supreme ideal – work, fight, suffer and fall for the glory of the Patria,” but also pointed out that the new government had promised that the organization would receive “full support for its initiatives.”15 Sections carefully documented any correspondence between the AMVC and Fascist officials; and AMVC archives are full of articles clipped from local papers that noted the presence or even passing mention of war mothers and widows at Fascist events. Section reports from all over the country regularly noted among their “accomplishments” not only women enrolled or assisted, pensions assured, plaques dedicated, and bodies repatriated but also included veritable laundry lists of local and national notables that AMVC chapters had managed to interest in their cause.16 This tendency to associate public mention and the apparent interest of important figures with concrete benefits might look like civic inexperience or political naivety. However, given the importance of “connections” in the Italian political landscape, the association of potential patronage with political accomplishment was not necessarily far off the mark. Expectations initially remained high due to the Fascists’ apparent solicitude for mothers and widows and the regime’s aggrandizement of patriotism, a discourse which many women read as a continuation and escalation of the war-era promises that former governments had made. In this light, even as the regime’s early assertion of control over the “patriotic associations” was cause for alarm for some in the AMVC leadership, others chose to interpret it as recognition of the “vital role” played by the bereaved and as a path to greater consideration for their needs.17 Explicitly political expectations grew when it appeared that Mussolini’s government was prepared to enact concrete measures recognizing women’s political rights. The ill-fated campaign for women’s suffrage is the first and perhaps best example of how women’s assessments of their place in society operated in a different framework from that of the Fascist regime – but one with enough apparent points of commonality to delude many women into believing that they and the regime operated with similar aims. Because of the general belief that the vote was forthcoming, Mussolini’s initial very vocal support of women’s suffrage met with absolute credulity. Even as he backpedaled from his more radical 1919–20 programs that promised a measure of social equality for women, Mussolini kept women’s hopes for the vote alive through direct interaction with suffragists. He presided, for example, over the opening of the IX Congress of the International Alliance for Women’s Suffrage in Rome where he promised to grant the vote to “several categories of women” – including war mothers and widows (De Grazia 1992, 36). Although the AMVC had no official stance on the vote,

54  Anne Wingenter some prominent members were also actively involved in female suffrage organizations, and the group held symbolic value for the campaign.18 For women seeking the vote the vast numbers of bereaved mothers and widows constituted the most poignant proof that women had earned the right. Suffragists reminded politicians regularly of women’s contribution during the war, citing it as evidence of the influence they could have on questions dealing with matters of “physical and moral health” and “national education.” In making their case, suffragists argued that it was just such influence that women had exerted to encourage husbands and sons to fight for the Patria. Their most dramatic “contribution,” of course, had been the lives of their loved ones.19 The notion that women had shown themselves worthy of national participation was widespread, and the bereaved mother held up by supporters of female suffrage as a symbol of this worthiness.20 Limited categories of women, including war mothers and widows, were admitted to administrative elections in May of 1925. As a result, the Fascist government and especially Mussolini enjoyed a measure of gratitude and support from women who believed that their demands had finally been met. Letters poured in, assuring the Duce that “The female Fascists of all Italy and the Mothers and Widows of our glorious Fallen… will be deserving of their new duties.”21 Roughly a year later, on September 2, 1926, Mussolini abolished administrative elections altogether. It is difficult to assess just how women reacted to the elimination of local elections. The extension of suffrage had included relatively few women to begin with. Victoria De Grazia has suggested that for feminists it was particularly embittering and put an abrupt end to their political aspirations. These women continued to seek some role in the corporate state, but did so, De Grazia asserts, out of resignation and with the knowledge that their efforts would go unrewarded. Certainly, those women who had been devoted to the cause of suffrage and convinced of Mussolini’s good faith must have been deeply disillusioned by this defeat snatched from the jaws of victory. And yet, there were others who consoled themselves that Fascism had at least “implicitly recognized” women’s right to the vote. Still others, particularly Catholic women’s groups and maternalist feminists appear to have come out of the suffrage campaign encouraged more than disillusioned. They seem not to have doubted the value of their influence but rather were determined that if in the Fascist state the vote would not be a meaningful way to exert that influence on behalf of families, mothers and children, they would find others (De Grazia 1992, 37–40). Such seems to have been the attitude of some prominent AMVC members. The year that war mothers and widows became one of the limited categories of women to be admitted to the vote was the same year that Mussolini’s government “coordinated” all patriotic associations effectively ending women’s control of the organization they had founded and increasingly subjecting AMVC members to roles in ceremonies designed and interpreted by others. Despite the trepidation this change caused there

Finding subjectivities in Fascist Italy  55 were members, perhaps initially encouraged by the jubilation that met the passage of the female suffrage bill, who persisted in believing that the inclusion of the AMVC in an umbrella organization constituted exactly the type of recognition and support that they had long sought from the Italian government.22

“Flipping the script:” war mothers and widows between symbol and action To the outside observer, the “Mothers and Widows of the Fallen” appeared regularly in parades, rallies, and other Fascist ceremonies. The regime’s directives told them when to show up, where to stand, and then explained to the public the meaning(s) of their presence. Nonetheless, it would be wrong to dismiss this cooperation as merely perfunctory on the part of the participants. Involvement in Fascist events brought individual women into the (Fascist version of the) public sphere and conveyed a modicum of celebrity upon them. Though they generally stood in the background or on the sidelines, their image was reproduced in newspaper photographs or, more exciting still, in the ubiquitous newsreels that captured Fascist events. Even if their names were only rarely mentioned in speeches and the press, they knew who they were, and so did local spectators. Whatever the official exposition of their symbolic attributes, organized bereaved women experienced these ceremonies as one aspect of an array of activities geared toward improving their status and that of women like them. Moreover, in filling the regime’s propaganda needs, the AMVC stayed in the public and official eye. It is this visibility, this sense of having a public place and a civic importance, that members had from the beginning emphasized in the AMVC’s own accounts of their activities. Even as the participation of war mothers and widows became more and more prescribed and Fascist ideologues wrote proud, stoic sacrifice onto their ritualized silence, women persisted in seeing their public presence as important in and of itself. The government was paying attention to them; the nation knew who they were and what they had sacrificed.23 It seems many members remained convinced the government’s recognition of them was part of a process that would result in concrete benefits for them. The most obvious of these benefits was, of course, the pension. In the context of the extreme poverty of much of the peninsula, even the small sums allotted to widows or mothers of common soldiers might be crucial in staving off starvation or at least allow women to make some contribution to the family economy. For the dependents of officers, allowances were higher (though still low) and particularly important as the regime began to bar middle class women from various forms of employment. AMVC leaders learned quickly to adopt the language of Fascists in their bids to secure and/or increase pensions and to include reference wherever possible to their socially-prominent advocates.

56  Anne Wingenter In successive drafts of a 1924 letter to the Commission for the Reform of Pensions for Mothers and Widows of the Fallen, for example, AMVC President Laura Acquaderni carefully modified her request for cost-ofliving adjustments by adding extra references to “our glorious fallen heroes.” She likewise made more prominent a reference to the bereaved as “those spiritually disabled by the war,” and changed “multitudes of women who sacrificed their loved ones for the greatness of the Patria” to include “while seeking nothing in return.” Acquaderni closed the letter with an unsubtle reminder that the AMVC had powerful patrons, one of whom served on the commission itself: The association… entrusts its 500,000 organized and assisted to the honorable commission and especially to the Hero of Pola,24 who will interpret the voice of the Mothers and Widows of the Fallen of Italy.25 This last statement when read with the knowledge that Fascists in 1924 were soon to nullify bereaved women’s voices in their own association, might seem painfully feeble and even ironic. As they were being gradually shut out of the commissions and committees that determined their material welfare and planned their ritual activities, organized war mothers and widows were reduced to facing their voicelessness by “entrusting” their well-being to the designated officials and their words to an “interpreter.” However, if viewed instead in the context of years of Liberal neglect of women’s and social issues, and from the perspective of the AMVC, who were taking pains of their own to gain whatever concessions they could from the new government, an alternative explanation presents itself: The very existence of a body designated to oversee pension reform was encouraging. Gaining the ear of the government through the intervention of men with social and political clout was a way, no matter how indirect, of making their needs known. After all, outside of the spotlight, the same women continued to volunteer in the same local offices that assisted the families of fallen soldiers, even if those offices were ultimately now subject to the control of the regime-led ANFC. They carried out their work by appealing to local notables and officials (which now meant Fascist appointees and a new bureaucratic hierarchy) and saw their efforts to reach and assist the bereaved expand under the new conditions. The number of sections of the ANFC increased from 600 in 192626 to 2,987 in 1934.27 Thus, when Fascist officials claimed to speak for or even “explain” the standard silence of the mothers and widows in state ceremonies, perhaps some of those women focused not on the symbolic values that such speeches assigned them but instead on the notion that party luminaries had become their spokespersons. Such ideas remained a near constant subtext in communication originating with the association. This is hardly surprising at the beginning of the ventennio when expectations were high and political and gender norms apparently in flux. What is more unexpected is that even well into the

Finding subjectivities in Fascist Italy  57 regime, long after the promised political and economic changes of the war era failed to materialize, war mothers and widows continued to consider themselves important to public life.28 Thus encouraged, individual women dropped names and utilized the Fascist idiom of self-sacrifice, often claiming to want nothing even in the process of asking for something. Mussolini received pension requests on the black-bordered stationery of deep mourning throughout his reign. One example came from a woman identifying herself as the “widow of a fallen soldier and mother of a fallen Fascist.” She asked for a pensione privilegiata, which meant a higher than usual payment, to help this widowed mother whose only reason for living is, through tears and sacrifice, to raise sons who follow in the luminous footprints of their brother, an example of resplendent heroism, and of their father who maintained for his whole life only two ideals: – patria and duty.29 Other women requested jobs or university positions for themselves or their children, licenses for family enterprises, tax-relief for family farms, and reduced-price or free train tickets. Some requests went directly to Mussolini. On occasion women chose an indirect approach, appealing to local notables, whom they perhaps had met, or at least learned of, at local commemoration events, to intercede on their behalf with the proper authorities. I have examined more than 100 direct and relayed requests from self-identified war mothers and widows in the archive of the Segretario Particolare del Duce, though due to the fact that such letters are most often mixed in with thousands of others in files marked “Sentiments for the Duce” the extent of the practice is difficult to estimate. Those letters examined suggest that mothers and widows found in official rhetoric an argument that they deserved special consideration. Women frequently cited specific speeches or used stock phrases from the Fascist lexicon, repeating their targeted benefactors’ own words to make a case. They introduced their requests by repeating the oft-emphasized assertion that Mussolini and the Fascists ruled because they had “valorized the sacrifices made by our Fallen;” they reminded their letters’ recipients of the “Roman” behavior of the bereaved, or made their requests in the name of “that maternal love which extends to the larger family that is the nation.”30 For one particular kind of request, it was the regime’s actual laws that appeared to codify the value they placed on the families of the fallen. The notorious anti-Semitic legislation passed in 1938 included the possibility of partial exemption for relatives of fallen soldiers. Some 9,000 applications were submitted on those grounds, of which 2,486 were granted (Sarfatti 2006, 137). Not all of the applications were filed by mothers and widows, but those women who petitioned for exempt status for themselves or for relatives could, like one Milanese mother writing in 1939, evoke the

58  Anne Wingenter familiar Fascist rhetoric to describe how their husbands or sons had “immolated” themselves for the “glory of the patria” and assure the government that they remained “true and loyal” Italians (and therefore deserving of concessions) in memory of those sacrifices.31 While many women sought favors of an economic or practical nature, some utilized the language of sacrifice in an attempt to increase prestige or seek opportunity for self-expression. Here too, a combination of patriotic rhetoric and personal appeal applied. Section presidents prevailed upon their social connections to seek audiences with political dignitaries or ask for their intervention in the kind of small-scale events that the local chapters of the ANFC were still allowed to organize. Or they submitted poems for publication, musical compositions for performance at official ceremonies, and designs for monuments or commemorative plaques, medals, and posters.32 In one remarkable instance just after Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935, Louise Saint-Bannet Varlunga, the French-born widow of an Italian killed in the First World War, requested that she be employed as a kind of diplomat and sent to France in order to halt the sanctions against Italy then being debated by the League of Nations: Duce, you have entrusted to the Mothers and Widows of the Fallen the important work of vigilance over our domestic economy; permit me to go abroad (to France) as a representative of the Mothers and Widows of the Fallen… to make known the absolute will of our common dead, to urge respect for their memory and to reawaken sacred bonds of solidarity. Permit me, o Duce, to enkindle in the hearts of Mothers and Widows of other countries, the sacred fire that burns in ours…. Women can make a real contribution to humanity when they understand the irremediable error that sanctions would be.33 Her letter provides insight into how some of the women whom the regime’s rhetoric held up as ideals and “explained” for the public in turn mixed their assigned ideal qualities into their own explanations of self. It serves, in other words, as a glimpse of how one woman fit the events and discourse of the Ventennio into her own narrative, rather than simply passively constituting an element of Fascist mythology. She evoked the same notions of public service through female solidarity that had long underlain “maternalist feminism” and, perhaps assuming the regime’s implicit acceptance of those notions, sought a larger role than that allotted to her. Ironically, given the centrality of Fascist propaganda’s insistence on silent sacrifice, she clearly believed that her status as war widow gave her the authority to speak for the nation. Moreover, she meant to accomplish her mission by interpreting the will of the war dead; a sacred ability that the Fascists had insisted for years was their exclusive, mandate-granting task. Finally, there was the added element of the personal; Varlunga considered herself to be

Finding subjectivities in Fascist Italy  59 both French and Italian and as such, both especially stung by Frenchimposed sanctions and uniquely able to bridge national differences. Her request stemmed not from a simple identification with Fascist ideal types but from a belief in what she as an individual could do. “As a Frenchwoman I admire you; as an Italian I love you; as a war widow I beg you to consent to my only desire: to be useful to you and to be useful to the Nation.”34 Varlunga’s positive response to the rallying of the bereaved, her admiration and love for the Duce, should not, therefore, be read as passive “consent” for Fascism. Rather, her plan that she would seek to open a dialogue with France through the mothers and widows of the fallen was in marked contrast to Mussolini’s belligerent anti-French orations during and after the Italo-Ethiopian war. In proposing to “reawaken” among the French the “sacred bonds of solidarity,” and to invoke respect for “our common dead,” she reminded the Duce of the same. In short, she and women like her maintained a patriotic vision shaped by more than just a wholesale acceptance of Fascist dicta.

At the margins: poor and rural mothers and widows between symbol and survival The vast majority of women who lost husbands and sons in the First World War belonged not to the urban upper classes from which the AMVC active membership drew its ranks but instead to the rural poor. What can we know about those women who were not among the association’s leaders? What of those mothers and widows too poor to be officially enrolled in the AMVC – those who were the targets rather than the purveyors of assistance? Memoranda about them or letters written on their behalf by organized women must be treated with caution. The campaigns of the AMVC can only tell us what educated, active women believed and wanted to teach about the rights of war mothers and widows – not necessarily what their poorer counterparts in the “sad sisterhood” experienced. Nonetheless, examination of letters and telegrams sent to Mussolini again suggests that at least some such women gained a sense of entitlement based on their status as war mothers and widows. Evidence is admittedly scattered and fragmentary; many Italians wrote seeking favors from the regime – Mussolini received an estimated 1500 missives a week by the 1930s according to Mazzatosta and Volpi (1980, 19), and letters from bereaved women have to be meticulously culled from the hundreds of thousands present in the archives. Nonetheless, the correspondence identified suggests that when such women contacted their government, they appear to have expected not so much civic rights as more pragmatic favors and privileges. Again, the explanation lies in a combination of immediacy and ingrained attitudes developed over the long term. In the case of rural Italy, women seem to have made sense of their interactions with the regime through the model of an age-old patronage system and through traditional notions of maternal power.

60  Anne Wingenter The influence of patron-client models of dealing with political and economic activities is easily visible in war widows’ and mothers’ interactions with the state – at every economic level. Traditional patronage networks of course played a large role in the early years of the AMVC; during the First World War and through the early 1920s, many small-town branches were established through the efforts of parish priests or local noblewomen.35 Initially the more active of these sections energetically sought clients in order to fulfill the AMVC missions of “national education” and “charity for the families of the fallen.”36 Over time, poor women began to approach the AMVC (or after 1925 the ANFC) seeking their intervention with Fascist officials. Association members and volunteers would then direct the applicant to the right government agency, contact the appropriate official on the women’s behalf, or seek the involvement of a more influential patron. It is difficult to know how poor women thus assisted experienced the interaction. From a practical standpoint, the AMVC and ANFC served to expand the patronage networks available at the local level, and to provide a link to entitlements rather than charity. To what extent poor women recognized this distinction or realized that their access to pensions and privileges stemmed from the Fascist government probably depends on how closely local sections of the association were affiliated with the church or with specific prominent families. What is clear is that in time, perhaps influenced by their interaction with more organized women as well as by official propaganda, war mothers and widows began to act as patrons themselves, based purely on what they and others perceived to be their influential status. Mussolini, on his many visits throughout Italy, was frequently met by large numbers of women dressed in mourning. These women requested not only pensions for themselves but also licenses, school admission, permission to relocate, and release from incarceration and job training for relatives and friends. Others sought simple cash handouts to get through difficult times. Year after year, official celebrations became occasions to seek similar boons from attending dignitaries. It is possible that some women seeking favors took courage to do so from a particular kind of maternal power. Of course, the effects and even the presence of such notions are very difficult to establish. Almost certainly there were important regional differences in attitudes. The limited research into peasant kinship networks, however, suggests that maternity in peasant families increased women’s status and gave them leverage in the family decision-making process. This leverage was rarely overt; mothers achieved it largely through the quiet management of husbands and male children (Zanolla 1980, 429–50; Kertzer 1984; Willson 2010, 9). Studies of the popular practice of Catholicism in Italy have also suggested that Marian devotion drew on similar notions of maternal power (Carroll 1996). The idea that mothers wielded behind-the-scenes influence may have intersected with the Fascists’ valorization of the war mother, not to mention the overall

Finding subjectivities in Fascist Italy  61 nationalization of maternity in the “battle for births,” in ways that conveyed to peasant women the sense of a maternal relationship toward the nation at large. However, rather than see this as a position of passive sacrifice, as Fascist ceremonies cast them, they attempted to exercise the same sort of informal power they would have employed in their homes if their sons had lived. It is perhaps such an attitude that explains the actions of women like Emilia Tinazzi, the self-described “mother of a fallen hero,” who traveled to Rome serenely expecting Mussolini to meet with her.37 The plethora of petitions directed to Mussolini’s wife Rachele, who throughout the ventennio largely stayed out of the public eye, may also constitute attempts to seek maternal influence. Particularly after Bruno Mussolini was killed in an air accident in 1941, Rachele received numerous appeals sent by “sorrowful mother to sorrowful mother.”38 Likewise, the abundant requests for signed photographs of Mussolini and his family as well as the thousands of family photographs sent to the Duce indicate an intimate attitude towards him that was surely fostered by a reading of Fascist rhetoric in line with traditional notions of motherhood. Of course, from a practical standpoint, despite women’s sustained good faith, most of the rights and/or privileges that they expected never materialized. Granted suffrage, women lost the entire electoral process. Pensions remained pitifully low. Emilia Tinazzi did not get an audience with Mussolini, and Louise Varlunga was not sent to France to resolve the diplomatic crisis of 1935–36. Officials routinely filed petitions for exemption from the anti-Semitic laws under “no definite response.” Mothers and widows asked for many more pension increases, licenses, and jobs than they were granted. Even simple requests for photos met with only haphazard indulgence. But, if it is true that women did not get what they wanted from Mussolini’s government, it is true as well that Mussolini did not, in the end, get what he wanted from Italy’s war mothers and widows. For some, the regime’s rhetoric may have resonated as intended while for others the politicization of previously private behaviors seems to have actually expanded their ambitions and perceptions of the political process. What is certain in the end, however, is that the model woman, the prolific mother who wordlessly dispatched her many sons to die for Duce and country, remained just a model. When the Ethiopian war gave way to the Italian involvement in the Spanish Civil War, and this in turn gave way to the Second World War, there were mothers all over Italy who sought to protect their sons the best they could, seeking leave or even exemption from military service. Remarkably, some even called upon the intervention of the mothers of the fallen to help. Once such letter that gives testimony to this is a brief missive from “a group of mothers from Venice” passed along via the ANFC to Mussolini on October 3, 1941. “Excellency,” they wrote, “we beseech a bit of rest for the classes of 1910, 11, and 12, who have been called up since 1935.”39

62  Anne Wingenter

Conclusion Had Mussolini’s government not taken such an early, keen, and continuous interest in the AMVC, its history would surely have belonged to an entirely different sort of study. The association’s formation and efforts to focus the government’s attention on the survivors of fallen soldiers would perhaps have merited a chapter in a survey of the development of Italian welfare organizations, or its ties to the Catholic Church might have been explored in a monograph about church–state–private charity relations. The group’s activities might have been treated in either a general history of mourning practices or a more specific study of the commemoration of the First World War. And, of course, historians of women could have examined the AMVC in the context of women’s social and political activity at the dawn of the “short” twentieth century. Fascism, however, did intervene in the operations of the AMVC and did so with a concerted effort that lasted as long as the regime itself. As a result, that intervention and the official record that it left behind overshadows any study of the association making it difficult to see the actual women behind the symbols that the regime sought to turn them into. And yet, those other aspects of the AMVC’s formation and history, precisely those which might have under different circumstances placed the group within other kinds of narratives, must be kept in mind if we want to understand the political knowledges and practices that war mothers and widows brought to their experiences of Fascism. It is a reminder that only by stepping outside of the internal logic of Fascist myth-making can we begin to locate the more personal, less consciously articulated, narratives – those constructed by Italians living under Fascism, and mediating Fascist ideology on a continuing basis.

Notes 1 The information in this chapter is drawn from both regime propaganda that referenced or was directed at bereaved women and at archival traces of the association – a record which unfortunately, is decentralized and patchyy. A small, private archive at one of the rest homes set up by the AMVC, the Casa di riposo Madonnina del Grappa, includes early charters, correspondence, minutes of meetings both local and national, section reports, and issues of a bi-monthly newspaper that the group published between 1918 and 1926. The collections are heavily weighted towards sections and activities in the north of Italy. At the Central State Archives in Rome and the Central Archive in Milan are documents concerning some of the association’s public activities as well as correspondence sent to Mussolini by association members. In addition to these are letters to Mussolini and other officials from self-identified war mothers, widows, and orphans in both national archives, but there is no specific category allotted to such letters, so they are usually filed with tens of thousands of others by year received. The more than 100 that I have consulted were found by searching among letters filed in the “sentiments for the Duce” category prioritizing dates likely to have involved First World War commemoration or other ceremonies

Finding subjectivities in Fascist Italy  63 involving the presence of war mothers and widows. I have also looked at more than 300 letters collected by the regime from families of men killed in the Ethiopian war of 1935–36. We know from their own accounts and from requests or reports that on occasion were passed on to Rome that the AMVC, while it existed autonomously, frequently interacted with local authorities; thus, more work in regional archives would also likely yield a more complete picture of their full activity and of the degree of continuity once the Fascists were in power. 2 ‘Il Congresso delle Madri e Vedove dei Caduti in Guerra,’ Corriere d’Italia, December 18, 1923, p. 2. It is somewhat unclear whether the number counted total women assisted or only active members. 3 Archivio Madonnina del Grappa, collezione Madri e Vedove dei Caduti (hereafter AMG. MAVE.) f 17–18. also ‘Programma e Attività’ AMG. MAVE. f24 and ‘R. Decreto 19 febbraio 1920,’ AMG. MAVE. CA. 1.001 coll 1.A.05 11–19. 4 For numerous examples of the process of gaining official approval see Archivio Centrale dello Stato. Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri (hereafter ACS. PCM.). 1927 2.4.1 2033 and 1928–30 b. 1342 f 14–4 and also Archivio Centrale dello Stato. Segretaria Particolare del Duce, Carta Ordinaria. (hereafter ACS. SPDCO.) b734, f211.495; f 211.496; f211.831; f211.844, also 536.815. 5 ‘Comitato ‘Riconoscenza Nazionale” AMG. MAVE. f16. Despite the official change, media coverage and official propaganda most often referred to the group as the “Mothers of the Fallen” throughout the entire interwar period. 6 ‘Propaganda e Propagandiste della nostra Associazione e del Segretariato,’ Ricordando. (January–February, 1921): 3. AMG. MAVE. 7 ‘Memoriale per la Sottocommissione Collocamento Ministero Assistenza Militare e Pensione Guerra,’ 1920. AMG. MAVE. 51. 8 Letter from the AMVC to Giovanni Giurati, President of the Commission for Pension Reform, March 7, 1923. AMG. MAVE. 203. Archivio Centrale di Milano. Gabinetto Prefettura di Milano. (A.C.M. G.P.M.) Serie I: f. 56. 9 “Memoriale per la Sottosegretariato di Stato per L’Assistenza Militare e Pensioni di Guerra,” March 20, 1923. AMG. MAVE. F219. 10 Ibid. This language is also prevalent in the regular descriptions of the association’s activities found in their newspaper Ricordando. 11 Cesarina Lupati, Donna Italiana. (La sezione dei Mandamenti di Gallarate e Somma Lombardo dell’Associazione Nazionale fra Mutilati e Invalidi di Guerra, Alla Gloria dei Caduti Gallarate: Tipografia Lazzati Carlo, May 1918), 5. AMG. MAVE 152. 12 Luisa Gerosa, “Pensieri a svolgersi,” Ricordando. (January–February 1921). 4. AMG. MAVE 32. 13 Letter to Father Enrico Mauri from Lucia Fasolini, February 2, 1923. AMG. MAVE. 179. 14 Programma e Attività AMG. MAVE. f24. 15 “L’opera della Associazione durante le storiche giornate di ottobre,” Ricordando. November 15, 1922.1. AMG. MAVE. 16 See also the collected articles in AMG. MAVE. 47–55, 65–78. 17 Seduta del Consiglio Centrale del 27 marzo 1923. AMG. MAVE 232.3_6. See also the letter of March 31, 1923 from Father Mauri to Contessa Acquaderna, AMG. MAVE 234. 18 AMG. MAVE. 135, 156. 19 Letter to Mussolini from Contessa Daisy di Robilant, President of the Roman committee of the Federation for Female Suffrage “Voto alle donne” ACS. SPDCO. b739 f211.870. 20 Letter to Mussolini from Carla Lovelli Celesia ACS. SPDCO. b739 f211.870. 21 Letter from Olga Mezzomo Zannini and Elisa Majer Rizzioli of the ispettorato fasci Femminili, SPDCO b739 f211.875.

64  Anne Wingenter 22 ‘Ordine del giorno,’ Prot. N. 3388, Bologna Nov 27, 1923. AMG. MAVE. 374. 23 Ibid. See also the exchange of letters between Laura Acquaderni, Luisa Gerosa and Enrico Mauri (1924–25) AMG. MAVE. 213, 216, 219, 225. 24 The “Hero of Pola” seems to be a reference to Raffaele Paolucci, a war hero and parliamentary deputy for the “nationalist bloc” in 1924. He served on the pension commission and was also a “supporting member” of the AMVC. 25 AMG. MAVE. 17. 26 “Associazione Nazionale Madri, Vedove e Famiglie dei Caduti e dispersi in guerra,” L’Almanacco della donna italiana 7 (Firenze: Bemporad, 1926), 320–22. 27 “Associazione Nazionale Famiglie dei Caduti” L'almanacco della donna italiana 14 (Firenze: Bemporad, 1934), 343. 28 This was especially true during the Italo-Ethiopian war when the government stepped up both appeals to women in general and the display of war mothers and widows in particular. (Berezin, 121–127, Falsaca Zamponi, 171–182.) See the letters and requests from the period in ACS. SPDCO b. 2082. 29 Archivio Centrale dello Stato (ACS.) Presidenza Consiglio dei Ministri (PCM.) 1927 b. 985 f. 1-1-8-5 n. 2333. 30 ACS. SPDCO. b734, f211.495–518. For the adoption of the Fascist idiom by favor-seeking letter writers see Mazzatosta and Volpi, 1980, 1–33 and Wingenter, 2007, 155–72. 31 Request from G.L. for permission for her family to maintain ownership of property in Rome. ACS. PCM. 1939 b. 734. 32 Various such requests can be found in ACS. PCM., 1934–36 5/2. f6621. 33 Letter of November 14, 1935 from Louise Saint-Bannet Vedova Varlunga to Mussolini ACM GPM serie I:13173. 34 Ibid. 35 AMG. MAVE 14, 15, 17. 36 ‘Programma e Attività’ AMG. MAVE. f24. 37 ACS. SPDCO. b739 f211.831. 38 ACS. SPDCO. b. 854 f. 500.025/3-5 1941. See also Mazzatosta and Volpi, 18–33. 39 ACS. SPDCO b 822 f. 500.013.

Bibliography Albanese, Giulia, and Roberta Pergher. 2012a. In the Society of Fascists: Acclamation, Acquiescence, and Agency in Mussolini’s Italy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Albanese, Giulia, and Roberta Pergher. 2012b. “Introduction. Historians, Fascism, and Italian Society: Mapping the Limits of Consent.” In In the Society of Fascists: Acclamation, Acquiescence, and Agency in Mussolini’s Italy, edited by Roberta Pergher, and Giulia Albanese, 1–28. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Berezin, Mabel. 1997. Making the Fascist Self: The Political Culture of Interwar Italy. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. Bernhard, Patrick. 2014. “Renarrating Italian Fascism: New Directions in the Historiography of a European Dictatorship.” Contemporary European History 23 (1): 151–63. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0960777313000556. Bortolotti, Franca Pieroni. 1963. Alle Origini del Movimento Femminile in Italia, 1848–1892. Turin: Einaudi. Carroll, Michael P. 1996. Veiled Threats: The Logic of Popular Catholicism in Italy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Cassels, Alan. 1968. Fascist Italy. Northbrook, Ill.: AHM.

Finding subjectivities in Fascist Italy  65 Corner, Paul. 2002. “Italian Fascism: Whatever Happened to Dictatorship?” The Journal of Modern History 74 (2): 325–51. Corner, Paul. 2012. The Fascist Party and Popular Opinion in Mussolini’s Italy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/97801987 30699.001.0001. Corner, Paul. 2017. “Dictatorship Revisited: Consensus, Coercion, and Strategies of Survival.” Modern Italy 22 (4): 435–44. https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2017.39. De Felice, Renzo. 1974. Mussolini il Duce, Gli Anni del Consenso, 1929–1936. Torino: G. Einaudi. De Felice, Renzo, and Michael Arthur Ledeen. 1977. Fascism: An Informal Introduction to its Theory and Practice. An Interview with Michael A. Ledeen. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books. De Grazia, Victoria. 1992. How Fascism Ruled Women: Italy, 1922–1945. Berkeley: University of California Press. Duggan, Christopher. 2013. Fascist Voices: An Intimate History of Mussolini’s Italy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ebner, Michael R. 2011. Ordinary Violence in Mussolini’s Italy. New York: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511778728. Falasca-Zamponi, Simonetta. 2000. Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini’s Italy. Berkeley: University of California Press. Gentile, Emilio. 1996. The Sacralization of Politics in Fascist Italy. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Isola, Gianni. 1990. Guerra al regno della guerra!: storia della Lega proletaria mutilati invalidi reduci orfani e vedove di guerra: (1918–1924). Firenze: Le lettere. Mussolini, Benito, and Giovanni Gentile. 2000. “Foundations and Doctrine of Fascism (1932).” In A Primer of Italian Fascism, edited by Jeffrey T. Schnapp, 46–71. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Passerini, Luisa. 1979. “Work Ideology and Consensus under Italian Fascism.” History Workshop Journal 8 (1): 82–108. https://doi.org/10.1093/hwj/8.1.82. Pergher, Roberta. 2015. “The Ethics of Consent – Regime and People in the Historiographies of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.” Contemporary European History 24 (2): 309–15. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0960777315000119. Sarfatti, Michele. 2006. The Jews in Mussolini’s Italy: from Equality to Persecution. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Scott, James C. 1990. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven: Yale University Press. Willson, Perry R. 2010. Women in Twentieth-Century Italy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Wingenter, Anne. 2003. “Le Veterane Del Dolore: Mothers and Widows of the ‘Fallen’ in Fascist Italy.” PhD Thesis. Loyola University Chicago, 2003. Wingenter, Anne. 2007. “Voices of Sacrifice: Letters to Mussolini and Ordinary Writing under Fascism.” In Ordinary Writings, Personal Narratives: Writing Practices in 19th and Early 20th-Century Europe, edited by Martyn Lyons. Bern: Peter Lang.

Part II

Subaltern political communication in the context of (proto-)democratic representation

4 The municipal assembly as a scene of local democracy and subaltern political experiences in Finland, 1865–1917 Sami Suodenjoki Let us enter a municipal assembly. Even from farther off you can feel that one is taking place here. Horses are standing next to a fence, rugs on their legs, hay scattered all over. Old men are standing along the walls with their pipes and worn-out caps. […] Step in and encounter the stale, sweaty heat in the hall […]. Encourage yourself and push yourself into the meeting room. Screw up your eyes to find the chairman through the smoke. On the benches and along the walls, fat and skinny-legged local decision makers are smiling self-assertively and enjoying the sweet warmth […]. Each one has a responsible, self-important face. Here they are, the men who carry the burden and the swelter, understand their difficult position.1 This satirical depiction was published in a Finnish regional newspaper in 1907 as part of an article about the current state of local government in the countryside. By caricaturing the smoky atmosphere and the shabby but self-important attendants of a municipal assembly, the author sought to underline the outdatedness of the meeting as an institution of local selfgovernment. In doing so, the author tapped into ongoing debates over the need to democratize and rationalize the system of municipal administration that had been outlined four decades earlier by the municipal reform act of 1865.2 This act had solidified the idea of local self-government in the Grand Duchy of Finland and thereby contributed to Finland’s privileged status in the Russian Empire. While Tsar Alexander II’s government reforms had also boosted local self-government elsewhere in the empire at the same time, Finland diverged from the core of Russia in that local selfgoverning bodies developed into a true counterforce to the state bureaucracy. A cornerstone in this development was the introduction of municipal assemblies in over four hundred rural municipalities, whose inhabitants formed 87 percent of Finland’s population in 1900.3 The municipal assembly was an organ of participatory democracy that convened several times a year. The assemblies were open to all local inhabitants who paid municipal taxes, but these people only formed a minority DOI: 10.4324/9781003290087-7

70  Sami Suodenjoki of the local adult population. Those who were considered subordinate to their master or who did not reach the income limit for taxation were formally excluded, as they were not eligible to vote in the assemblies. In addition, even the eligible participants were not equal, as their votes were weighed according to their assessable income. This concentrated local power in the hands of wealthy landowners. However, this system of limited census suffrage did not totally shut out people in the lower echelons of society from local decision-making. In fact, lower-class people’s ability to exert influence on municipal assemblies eventually became a reason for the persistence of these assemblies despite growing public criticism against them. It is to these developments that this chapter now turns. In this chapter, I trace subaltern people’s political agency and their experiences of local democracy in municipal assemblies in Finland between 1865 and 1917.4 I treat the municipal assembly as a “scene of experience,” where a significant segment of people was familiarized with democratic political practices such as voting and elections. The municipal assemblies were also events that, in interaction with the contemporaneous print media, generated emotions related to mistreatment, oligarchy, corruption, and social discrimination. These emotions and experiences were different among people from different social strata and from different parts of the municipality. I focus on the experiences of landless men and women, whose formal influence in local politics was non-existent or minuscule and who can therefore be regarded as subalterns. The notion of “scene of experience” serves in the chapter to highlight the situational and spatial character of local government and of subaltern political practices. It coheres with Peter Burke’s (2005, 44–49) idea of “occasionalism,” which encourages historians to look closer at occasions and situations and the ways in which interactions, roles, and audiences shape them. The notion of scene of experience also links up with the ideas of historian Benno Gammerl (2012) concerning the connectedness of emotions and spatial constellations. Gammerl’s concept of “emotional spaces,” like Mark Seymour’s (2020) term “emotional arenas,” underlines that emotions always take shape in a spatial setting within networks involving bodies and artefacts. It also draws attention to the factors that permeate actors from outside, like the emotions of other participants in the same place, the material properties, or the atmosphere of a meeting (Pernau 2017, 14). The notion of scenes of experience works similarly, emphasizing the dynamics of participants and the material and spatial aspects of the event, but not requiring an explicit focus on emotions. In addition, it directs the attention to the temporal layers of experiences and to the sociocultural preconditions that shape contexts of possibilities for social agency and experience in the scene (Harjula & Kokko 2022). Archival sources on the operation of local self-government in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Finland are plenty, but few of these sources shed light on how people outside the circle of local notables

The municipal assembly as a scene  71 experienced local government and democracy. To circumvent this evidence problem, I turn to contemporary Finnish newspapers, and especially to the readers’ letters published in them. These letters appeared by the thousand every year, and many of them discussed local politics. The writers of readers’ letters represented the whole spectrum of rural society, from landowners, priests, tradesmen, and teachers to tenant farmers, craftspeople, servants, and itinerant workers. Lower-class people most likely formed a minority among the writers, but historian Heikki Kokko (2021) has observed that letters by lower-class writers had appeared in the hundreds already in the 1850s and 1860s. As for later decades, most reader correspondents to newspapers appear to have been middle-class people (Sorvali 2019), but the share of lower-class authors likely grew alongside the contemporaneous spread of literacy. Working-class contributors were particularly numerous in socialist newspapers, the circulation of which grew rapidly at the beginning of the twentieth century (Suodenjoki 2010, 128–31). Using Finnish digitized newspapers as a data set, I have collected a sample of 147 readers’ letters that cover local government in a single municipality or more generally in the Finnish countryside.5 These letters do not provide unmediated access to the experiences of ordinary readers, since the published readers’ letters were selected and often also heavily edited by news organizations, which had their own ideas about valuable contributions to the debate (Wahl-Jorgensen 2019, viii; Sorvali 2020). Nonetheless, I consider readers’ letters as the best available instrument to piece together popular conceptions of the municipal assembly as a scene of democracy and local self-government. This is because their authors were usually first-person witnesses to what had happened in municipal assemblies, and they depicted the dynamics of these assemblies often far more graphically than the laconic minutes of those meetings. Readers’ letters covering local politics are also far more numerous and geographically more extensive than the preserved ego-documents of rural people, which might also shed some light on subaltern views of local government. This said, further case studies on this topic deploying other source materials would be highly valuable.

The politically marginalized as subalterns in the Finnish countryside The concept of subaltern social groups, proposed by Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci, can be applied to the context of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Finland in various ways. Gramsci himself used the concept loosely and equivocally, identifying subaltern groups with peasants, slaves, religious minorities, different races, women, and the proletariat (Green 2011, 69). One perspective to subalternity in the context of Finland opens through the linguistic division between the Finnish-speaking majority and the Swedish-speaking minority. Until the late nineteenth century, the Finnish-speaking people represented subalterns in the sense that they

72  Sami Suodenjoki lacked opportunities to use their mother tongue in official circumstances; Swedish was the language of the administration, education, and the cultural and economic elite in Finland (see Pekonen and La Mela in this book). This situation changed gradually in the late nineteenth century as the burgeoning Finnish national movement reinforced the position of the Finnish language in public and cultural spheres. Nevertheless, the tension between the Swedish-speaking elites and the Finnish-speaking people continued into the twentieth century and manifested itself also in the municipal assemblies in many regions. Besides the language relations, subalternity in local politics concerned ethnic minorities. In recent decades, researchers have devoted attention especially to the colonization of the Sámi people and the discrimination against the Roma in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Finland (e.g., Lehtola 2015; Tervonen 2012). Some of this research has touched upon the role of municipal bodies in ethnic discrimination, but Lehtola (2012) has also highlighted Sámi people’s strong involvement in municipal government in northernmost Finnish Lapland. However, as my sources do not address the inclusion or exclusion of Sámi or Roma people in and from municipal politics, this perspective on subalternity requires further study. In this chapter, I define subalternity most of all in terms of political citizenship. In other words, I associate the term subaltern with people who lacked the right to vote in a municipal assembly or whose formal influence on the assembly’s decisions was marginal. From the municipal act of 1865 to the next major reform in 1917, the right to vote was confined to taxpayers and the number of their votes depended on their tax rate. This system of limited census suffrage allowed wealthy landowners to have enormous influence on local politics, even if the maximum vote number of one voter was initially restricted to one-sixth and later, after 1898, to one-fifteenth of the total votes of the constituency. To take just one example, landed farmers could have as many as 80 votes, whereas tenant farmers had four, male workers two, and unmarried female workers one vote.6 In addition to private persons, companies were also eligible to vote, and they often did so actively to advance their local interests.7 This stood in stark contrast to the number of local inhabitants who did not have a municipal vote at all. Besides itinerants with no taxable property or income, those excluded from voting included married women,8 adult children living with the head of the household, and servants and farmhands, who were considered subjugated to their master (Soikkanen 1966, 243, 436–38). While it is virtually impossible to provide precise figures on the share of the disenfranchised people, they formed a great majority of the adult population in all municipalities. In addition to associating subalternity with a lack of voting rights, it is possible to extend the idea of subaltern groups also to taxpaying itinerant workers, cottagers, craftspeople, and tenant farmers. While these groups had the right to participate in municipal decision-making, they formed the

The municipal assembly as a scene  73 lowest census classes and thereby had minimal influence on affairs that required voting. The same is true even for many independent smallholders. However, I consider landownership a dividing line between subalterns and those in power since it was a formal criterion for national suffrage. This was because only landowners had the right to vote in the indirect election of peasant representatives to the Diet of Finland (Alapuro 2006, 44). In other words, even the right to participate in the municipal assemblies did not grant full political citizenship to tenant farmers and rural workers, because they could not vote in the election of the Peasant Estate. One can even claim that the reconvention of the Diet of Finland in 1863, which is discussed by Pekonen and La Mela in this volume, essentially served to crystallize the divide between the landowning and the landless population also on the municipal scene.

Popular responses to the introduction of municipal assemblies The culture of local self-government had developed in Finland during the long period of Swedish rule, which ended with the annexation of Finland to Russia in 1809. The traditional arena of local decision-making was the parish meeting (see Viitaniemi 2016, 63–67), which retained its form and functions also during the first 50 years of Russian rule in Finland. The parish meetings addressed both religious and secular issues, and they were chaired by the local minister. This was changed by the local government reform of 1865, which separated secular local government from religious governance and introduced new municipal bodies in Finland. The reform was modeled after a preceding reform in Sweden but it was also linked with Alexander II’s contemporaneous zemstvo reform that led to the creation of zemstvos as new organs of local self-government in many parts of the Russian Empire (see Zakharova 1994; for Sweden, see Østerud 1978, 224– 25; Mellquist 1974). However, the Russian zemstvos were typically under the firm control of the local nobility and operated more as extensions of central government than the municipal bodies in Finland, especially after the counter-reform of local government in Russia in the early 1880s. In Finland, the long tradition of local self-government and the lack of a history of serfdom (except in some parts of Eastern Finland) provided the development of local democracy a far more favorable context when compared to the core of Russia. The new local bodies introduced by the municipal government act of 1865 included the municipal board and the municipal assembly. While the former prepared and executed decisions, the latter convened taxpaying inhabitants to decide on important issues such as elementary schools, health care, and poor relief. The assembly also elected the members to the municipal board, taxation board, and other auxiliary boards. Moreover, it named the local electors of peasant representatives to the diet, thereby having an indirect influence on national politics.

74  Sami Suodenjoki The act of 1865 allowed the parishes a transition period to introduce the new municipal government, and it took several years for most of them to adopt the new system. One reason for this was the devastating famine of 1865–69, which killed around ten percent of the population of Finland and paralyzed local self-government in many regions (Voutilainen 2016, 175). During the transition period, the pros and cons of the new system of local government featured as a topic in readers’ letters to newspapers. Most writers welcomed the new system, hoping that it would improve the effectiveness of local decision-making. Some also noted with pleasure that the reform limited clerical influence on local politics; instead of the local minister, it was now often a local landowner who chaired the municipal assembly.9 However, many writers to newspapers also underlined that the introduction of the new municipal bodies often met considerable grassroots-level opposition. The opponents included not only local elites, who sought to guard their dominant position, but in many regions also farmers and landless people. For both these groups, a key reason for opposing the new municipal government appears to have been the fear that the operation of the new bodies would raise municipal taxes. As one writer put it, the Finnish peasantry had for centuries suffered from oppressive taxation by the government and the elites, which is why they now used their newly acquired freedom to oppose all taxation.10 Lower-class people were also concerned about the equality of municipal taxation, as one editorial observed. This editorial compared tax rates in municipalities that had adopted the new government and argued that some of these municipalities had started to tax tenant farmers and workers too harshly in comparison with landowners. This served as a reason for poor people in other municipalities to oppose the new municipal government.11 Besides financial burdens, the reader-contributors paid attention to defects in the operation of municipal assemblies. The assemblies were often blamed for being chaotic, as their chairmen failed to keep the shouting crowd in order. Moreover, the atmosphere of the assemblies too often turned quarrelsome because of bad planning and because the chairmen of the municipal board and the assembly failed to work towards a common goal.12 The criticism concerning the quarrelsomeness and noisiness of municipal assemblies continued in readers’ letters until the early twentieth century, which testifies to the wide scale of these problems. Especially during the early years of the new municipal government, the language of municipal assemblies featured as an important issue in readers’ letters. In many municipalities with a Finnish-speaking majority, Swedish continued to be used besides Finnish in the assemblies. Moreover, the assembly minutes were sometimes written only in Swedish. This irritated reader-contributors, who had often adopted Finnish nationalist ideas. A case in point is a writer from Somero, who expressed his satisfaction when the minutes of the municipality finally began to be written in

The municipal assembly as a scene  75 Finnish in 1886. According to the writer, this change had been part of a local revolution, during which “gentlemen” had been replaced by “peasant men” – that is, landowning farmers – on the municipal board.13 While the readers’ letters of the late-nineteenth century typically viewed the transfer of local power from the nobility and clergy to the landowning peasantry as a key element of municipal government reform, they did not yet conceptualize this process as democratization. The word kansanvalta, the Finnish equivalent for democracy, was not used at all in these letters, even though it was gradually entering the vocabulary of Finnish nationalists and the Finnish-language press during this period (Hyvärinen 2003, 72–73, 83–85).14 Nevertheless, some writers did tackle questions of inequality and democracy quite explicitly as they criticized the voting qualifications or the dominance of wealthy landowners in the municipal assembly.15 For example, Karl Snäll of Eura, who submitted a letter to a newspaper in 1869, took a strong stand on the socio-economic bias in local decision-making. According to Snäll, local landowners had decided in a municipal assembly that the “side-people” (sivu-väki) – that is, tenant farmers, craftspeople, and landless workers – should also pay for the expenses of the local poor relief. Snäll considered this decision unjust in the current circumstances of famine and poverty, arguing that it was impossible for “a poor man to maintain another poor man.” He also wondered if the landowners wanted to place all the side-people in a poorhouse.16 Especially interesting in Snäll’s letter is his use of the term “side-people” as a metonym for people who did not own land and who therefore stood on the side or on the margins of the municipal assembly. This term appears to have been a contemporaneous Finnish equivalent for subaltern people. Karl Snäll’s letter and his distinction between the landowners and the “side-people” were soon criticized by another local reader-correspondent, who used the pseudonym “Enthusiast of communal affairs.” This author described himself as a landowner, but he underlined that even many landowners in Eura suffered from deep poverty and could be called “side-­ citizens” (sivu-kansalaiset). To explain this, the author highlighted a personal experience of exclusion in a municipal assembly. According to him, he had once been denied a voice – that is, the right to vote – in the assembly without anyone giving reasons for this procedure. Apparently, he had even been pushed outside the meeting scene and “cornered under the dark birches and firs.” The author regretted his ignorance and hoped that the newspaper editor, if no-one else, would inform him about the voting qualifications in municipal assemblies. This hope remained ungratified, since the editor only responded to him by joking that “they seem to have confined the voice only to the trotter people (sorkkaväki), as they did not give it to You.”17 The editor’s term “trotter people” was probably a nickname for wealthy farmers who owned pigs or sheep, but it also served as a playful opposite of “side-people” or “side-citizens.”

76  Sami Suodenjoki Most of the reader-contributors who covered municipal self-government between the 1860s and 1890s were likely landowners or upper-class people, although confirming this is difficult as many writers used a pseudonym and did not describe their social position. One of the few writers who with certainty represented the landless “side-people” was Johan Hänninen, the son of a tenant farmer from Rautalampi, Eastern Finland. According to Kokko (2016, 311–12), Hänninen had been to a farming school and had acquired the skill of writing in his youth. Owing to these skills, Hänninen was elected as a deputy member of the newly elected municipal board of Rautalampi in 1867 despite not having the right to vote in the municipal assembly. In the following years, he also contributed actively to newspapers and commented on municipal affairs. Hänninen believed that the transition to the new municipal government had activated far more local inhabitants to engage with local affairs than had been the case previously during the parish meetings. However, he criticized municipal assemblies for being disorganized. The attendants did not speak one at a time in alternating turns but shouted and chattered inchoately like “thoughtless fools.”18 According to Hänninen, the municipal assembly of Rautalampi had tried to improve order by threatening to fine those participants who refused to fall silent when ordered to do so. However, Hänninen saw this solution as insufficient, as it did not affect the spatial order in the meeting room. He believed that the order could be improved simply by providing benches for eligible participants, whereby each person who wished to speak would stand up and ask permission to speak from the chairman.19 Hänninen’s underlying argument was that local inhabitants needed edification to be able to behave and make smart decisions in municipal assemblies. Based on readers’ letters, it was not highly unusual to see voteless “sidepeople” in or around municipal assemblies. Occasionally, they could even appear in numbers, as is indicated by a letter from Nummi published in 1873. According to its anonymous author, the municipal assembly of Nummi was usually able to decide on all affairs peaceably and without voting. However, the decisions on one position of trust – concerning the supervision of a local distillery – always mobilized a great number of inhabitants. At the time of those decisions, the meeting place is filled with those eligible to vote and those who are not, familiar and unfamiliar, healthy and lame, who, after deciding on this affair of so great importance to them, are ready to step out of the meeting room, leaving all the other far more important affairs of the municipal assembly to be decided by only a few members of the municipality.20 The author from Nummi viewed the mobilization caused by this specific issue as harmful, because it not only created disorder but also forced the municipal assembly to take a vote. For him, as for many contemporaries,

The municipal assembly as a scene  77 voting contradicted the ideal of unanimity and was therefore something that municipal assemblies should avoid. The ideal of unanimous decisions dated back to previous centuries, during which the parish meetings needed to be unanimous to decide on new tax burdens. In practice, this “unanimity” did not necessarily mean that all participants agreed on the issue at stake. What counted was the opinion of the local elite, who then framed the decision as unanimous in the minutes (Viitaniemi 2016, 85). When a municipal assembly took a vote, those who lost the vote often questioned the lawfulness of the assembly’s decision. Sometimes they also sought to revoke the decision by petitioning the state authorities. In doing so, they tapped into a traditional form of popular politics that had a long history in Europe and other parts of the world and which was transformed into an instrument of mass politics during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (Miller 2019). In Finland, petitioning had long been an established means for peasants to voice their grievances against local authorities (Karonen et al. 2021, 306–9), and the new municipal bodies did not avoid becoming the targets of such grievances. The complaints concerning the alleged wrongdoings of municipal bodies were addressed especially to provincial governors, and the complainants included not only landowners but also tenant farmers and landless workers. Based on newspaper reports, many of the complaints were successful, as they led to the governor’s intervention, particularly during the first years of the municipal government.21 The frequency of these interventions, in turn, implies that municipal bodies quite often made decisions based on inadequate knowledge of the legislation – and most likely many illegal decisions were enforced without anyone noticing their illegality.22 Nevertheless, petitioning the state authorities functioned as a safeguard for local democracy, and this instrument was accessible also to subalterns. The municipal act of 1865 and its amendment of 1898 confined the vote to taxpayers on a graded scale. This system of limited census suffrage required the use of voting lists, which indicated who had the right to vote and with how many votes. However, the statutes did not include instructions on how the vote was to be cast. This led to varying local practices – different methods of voting could be used even in the same municipal assembly. Some assemblies occasionally employed a one man, one vote system and a vote by voice or by show of hands instead of using a voting list.23 This simplified the counting of votes and saved time, but at least one correspondent associated the system of one man, one vote also with greater equality.24 In principle, the municipal assembly represented direct democracy, as it allowed all the eligible attendants to personally participate in decisions. In practice, the system also had elements of representation, because local inhabitants could use their voice indirectly by authorizing a proxy. For example, it appears to have been common that the inhabitants of the same village named a representative from among them to attend the municipal

78  Sami Suodenjoki assembly and to guard village interests there with the help of proxies. This practice stemmed from the period of Swedish rule, during which the government had even passed regulations on village government (Soikkanen 1966, 63–67). The village representation mattered, for example, when the municipal assembly was to decide on positions of trust. In many municipalities, the assembly assigned a fixed number of positions for each village or otherwise acknowledged village interests when distributing the positions. This was not questioned by reader-correspondents, many of whom vehemently pursued village interests themselves. People from different regions and from different social strata had unequal opportunities to attend municipal assemblies. These opportunities depended partly on when and where the assemblies were held. In Tammela, for example, the decision by the municipal assembly to convene on Saturday morning instead of the afternoon dissatisfied the workers of the industrial village of Forssa. The workers were unhappy because the change made it impossible for them to travel to the assembly after their workday. Some workers apparently suspected that the schedule change was a deliberate attempt to weaken the influence of the Forssa villagers on municipal affairs. Interestingly, a reader-correspondent of a conservative nationalist newspaper Lounais-Häme admitted that this was indeed the case. According to him, the inhabitants of Forssa only had themselves to blame for the change as they had long behaved arrogantly towards the farmers of other villages in the municipal assemblies. The correspondent believed that the tension between the industrial village and the agricultural population had been a defining feature of local self-government since the start of the Forssa cotton mill in 1857.25 Especially in the early years of the municipal government, the municipal assemblies could take place in a local church after a divine service or at the parsonage. This indicated that secular and religious local government continued to be intertwined despite their legislative separation. Other common venues for the assemblies were schools, clubhouses, or the main rooms of manors or farmhouses (Soikkanen 1966, 237). The meeting place undoubtedly influenced the social composition of the attendants. For example, if the assembly was held in a local landowner’s manor, a cottager living as a tenant of the host may have thought twice before stepping into the meeting room among the landowners, not to mention presenting contesting views there. The need to convene on more “neutral” ground was also recognized by many local power holders. As a result, most municipalities opted to construct a municipal hall during the period under examination. These halls made it easy for municipal bodies to convene, and they often functioned also as a venue for the meetings of various civic associations. At the same time, the building of municipal halls standardized the spatial setting of the municipal assembly and added to its prestige. Sometimes municipal assemblies were held outdoors, especially in summertime and when the attendants were numerous. In principle, outdoor

The municipal assembly as a scene  79 meetings made it easier for the “side-people” to join the crowd and follow the events. It could also be easier to cool heated feelings outside than inside. An extreme example is a brawl that broke out among the hundreds of attendants to a municipal assembly in Urjala in 1903. The assembly had convened to decide on whether the municipality should conform to organizing a draft to the Russian army, and this hot issue had mobilized numerous voteless rural workers to the assembly. Some of these workers also participated in thrashing dissenting landowners. To end the brawl and to sort the attendants for a vote, the chair of the assembly eventually ordered the crowd outside to the yard of the municipal hall. The events were later dealt with in court, because a group of landowners sued the chair for a procedural fault and some of the workers for disturbance and assault (Suodenjoki 2010, 193–96). Being linked with high politics and the formation of organized political parties on a local level, the brawl served as proof to some locals that the municipal assembly poorly suited the needs of modern mass politics.

Introduction of municipal councils stirring debates on local democracy The problems of the municipal assembly system, recognized in readers’ letters already in the early years of the new municipal government, became increasingly evident as the nineteenth century closed. Municipalities were consigned with new tasks in schooling, poor relief, health care, road building, grain supply, and the maintenance of law and order. These tasks required ever more expert knowledge and they were increasingly difficult to handle for local inhabitants, most of whom attended municipal assemblies irregularly. Therefore, politicians and press commentators began to speak in favor of the establishment of municipal councils that would take on some of the duties of the municipal assembly. The election of municipal councilors for a fixed term had been enabled already by the municipal act of 1865, but only a few municipalities had tried this. To encourage municipalities to voluntarily introduce the new body, the diet facilitated the establishment of municipal councils in the amended municipal act of 1898 (Soikkanen 1966, 435–39). Following this, around one-third (150) of all rural municipalities chose to establish a municipal council, most of them after 1906. However, the municipal assemblies and limited census suffrage remained cornerstones of local decision-making up until the municipal law reform of 1917, which finally ended the municipal assembly institution, made municipal councils obligatory, and extended municipal suffrage (Suodenjoki 2019). The establishment of municipal councils provoked mixed responses among reader-contributors to newspapers after 1898. Some writers considered the new institution a necessity, claiming that the municipal assemblies were too unorganized to handle the increasingly complex tasks.26 For them,

80  Sami Suodenjoki the municipal assembly represented a venue of disorderly shouting, where loudmouths dominated discussions and muzzled rational arguments with phrases like “you are lying” or “keep your mouth shut!” In their view, municipalities should opt to rationalize decision-making and spare taxpayers’ money by establishing a municipal council.27 Some writers claimed that the introduction of the municipal council would improve regional equality, because the councilors would be elected from every corner of the municipality, whereas municipal assemblies mostly gathered attendants from the vicinity of the meeting place.28 Other authors emphasized that the municipal council would better ensure the representation of different socio-economic groups. In their opinion, a key problem with municipal assemblies was that they represented the interests of wealthy landowners and shut out people of modest means.29 One contributor also stressed that the municipal councilors were formally equal to each other as they voted following a “one man, one vote” principle. For this reason, the municipal council would intrinsically be more democratic than the municipal assembly.30 Not all rural correspondents were convinced of the superiority of the municipal council system. Some feared that the introduction of the council would raise municipal expenses, whereas others emphasized the harmful influence of the councils on local democracy. According to the latter line of thought, the introduction of the council would transfer power to an even smaller number of people than was the case in the municipal assembly. Moreover, the meetings of the council would be closed to ordinary local inhabitants, leaving them without any arena to voice their opinions. This would nourish people’s disregard for municipal affairs.31 Participatory democracy had become deeply embedded in the popular idea of local selfgovernment over the course of decades and centuries, and many local inhabitants were reluctant to switch their right of direct participation to a representative system of local government. The newspaper debate on the need for municipal councils became louder especially after the General Strike of 1905 and the ensuing suffrage reform of 1906. As a result of this reform, the Grand Duchy of Finland was a pioneer in Europe by introducing universal and equal suffrage for both men and women in parliamentary elections (Alapuro 2006). However, the suffrage reform did not apply to municipal elections, even though this had been a common demand in mass meetings. Therefore, when the first unicameral parliament started its work in 1907, it was expected to rapidly reform the municipal legislation in Finland. Practically all political parties supported the extension of municipal suffrage, and despite heavy disagreements on the details, the parliament passed a new municipal act in 1908. However, this act was never confirmed by the Russian tsar, whose interest in integrating Finland more closely into the empire conflicted with the Finnish attempts to promote self-government. It was only after

The municipal assembly as a scene  81 the tsar abdicated in 1917 that the new municipal legislation was finally enacted in Finland. Meanwhile, the burgeoning socialist press took the local government reform onto its agenda. Beginning in 1906, many local labor activists provided socialist newspapers with readers’ letters that proposed solutions for the problems of local government. Their key solution was to extend universal and equal suffrage to municipal elections, but they also expressed support for the old municipal assembly institution and mistrust of municipal councils. According to socialist contributors, the municipal assembly was fundamentally an undemocratic institution due to limited census suffrage, but the establishment of municipal councils without a preceding suffrage reform would only weaken workers’ influence on local affairs.32 This stance set the socialist commentators against the bourgeois ones, who spoke for the municipal councils as a means to rationalize local government. Hence, the introduction of municipal councils became an issue of class politics in the press. The most important explanation for the Finnish socialists’ willingness to stand up for the municipal assembly perhaps lies in their experience of the mass mobilization in 1905–6. When the workers had mobilized in municipal arenas during and after the General Strike, they had often succeeded in influencing the decisions of municipal assemblies. Even though landowners still held hegemony in the assemblies in terms of vote numbers, the mass appearance of franchised and non-enfranchised workers in those assemblies had pushed the powerholders to make concessions (Alapuro 1994, 139–41). As a result, power relations were profoundly shaken in many rural municipalities. A crucial part of this rupture was that more and more people who lacked the right to vote began to appear in municipal assemblies. Despite formally lacking a voice in decision-making, they could indirectly affect the decisions with their presence. Noting this, socialist activists came to consider the municipal assembly to be a more de facto than a de jure democratic institution. However, while the municipal assembly was clearly susceptible to mass pressure, the municipal council as a closed representative organ was less so. This was a reason for labor activists to oppose the introduction of the councils, at least before the realization of universal and equal municipal suffrage. The socialists’ suspicions of municipal councils were further fed by the bourgeoisie, who adopted an increasingly positive stance toward the municipal council institution after the General Strike. In a political climate increasingly marked by a left-right divide, the socialists interpreted the upper-class eagerness to establish municipal councils as a plot to curb the growing socialist influence in local politics.33 However, due to census suffrage, the socialists alone were often too weak to overturn municipal council plans, despite mobilizing their supporters at decisive municipal assemblies. Where they succeeded, it was often because they found allies

82  Sami Suodenjoki among the bourgeois camp, for example, among conservative landowners who feared taxes.34 Irrespective of local party configurations, the municipal assemblies that decided on the establishment of the municipal council were often preceded by intense agitation, and they gathered far more participants than was usual. An illustrative case was the geographically large and sparsely populated municipality of Kemijärvi, Northern Finland, where more than a hundred people, defying snow and frost, convened to vote on the municipal council in January 1914. The opponents of the council, some of whom voted by proxy, were better mobilized and won the one-third of the votes required to reject the council plan. This was a shock to the plan’s proponents, who soon responded by complaining to the governor, arguing that the assembly’s vote had been crucially affected by fallacious agitation. Disappointingly for the complainants, the governor confirmed the assembly’s decision as valid.35 This was a blow against the lumber companies, who were actively involved in local politics and who backed the establishment of the municipal council. The voting list of the Kemijärvi assembly also reveals that the proponents had, on average, 25 votes per capita, whereas the less wealthy but more numerous opponents had only 15. However, both parties consisted mainly of landowners, and nothing implies that the assembly involved disenfranchised people or socialist mobilization.36 In this respect, Kemijärvi was different from many other rural municipalities, where organized labor had a powerful presence in municipal assemblies in the 1910s. Class divisions manifested themselves in municipal assemblies not only in the vote numbers and party affiliations of the participants, but also in their habitus. This is illustrated in Figure 4.1 depicting a municipal assembly in Närpes, where the Swedish People’s Party dominated local politics.37 The photograph was taken in a municipal hall, but the setting is clearly staged, as the participants are placed cheek by jowl, facing the camera. The staged nature of the photograph is underlined also by the wearing of hats inside. The hats and other garments reveal a great deal about the social composition of the assembly. One of the sitting men appears to be a gentleman owing to his bowler hat, scarf, and umbrella, whereas the men on the right wear hats that imply they are civil servants. The fur caps on the left might serve as identifiers of farmers. One can also speculate that the flat-capped men in the back row were workers or craftsmen, because this kind of cloth cap had become commonly associated with the proletariat in Finland, as in many parts of Europe, by the 1910s (see Hobsbawm 1983, 287). Overall, the photograph shows that the municipal assembly was a setting where clothing was characteristically used to show one’s class, wealth, and senior status. It also implies that the placing of the participants in the room may have varied according to their social standing. These issues could be further elucidated by analyzing photographs of municipal assemblies from across Finland, especially if the pictures include

The municipal assembly as a scene  83

Figure 4.1 A municipal assembly in the Swedish-speaking municipality of Närpes, 1914. The chairman, elementary school teacher J. E. Norrholm, sits on a platform. Photo: Gösta Carlsson, Svenska litteratursällskapet i Finland.

information on the identities of the depicted people. However, it appears that strikingly few photos of municipal assemblies have been preserved.

Women’s subalternity in municipal arenas While only a small segment of rural women had the municipal vote, the documents of municipal assemblies imply that women’s involvement in them was not totally unusual. For example, the voters who decided on the establishment of the municipal council in Kemijärvi in 1914 included as many as five women.38 However, not all of them were necessarily present in the assembly, since enfranchised widows and unmarried women may have opted to influence the decisions indirectly by proxy, as had happened already during the parish meetings (cf. Karlsson Sjögren 2009, 73). On the other hand, some women may have even been expected to occasionally participate in municipal assemblies because of their formal position – poorhouse directresses and female members of the poor relief or school boards are cases in point. In addition, the assemblies could also involve the wives and other female family members of legitimate participants as hostesses and waitresses.39 Against this backdrop, contemporary newspapers paid strikingly little attention to female agency in municipal assemblies. The reader’s letters under examination totally neglect gender in their discussions on local democracy

84  Sami Suodenjoki and self-government, which is indicative of the priorities of the supposedly all-male writers of these texts. However, one chain of events did momentarily raise women’s participation in local self-government as an issue of public interest. This chain started when the municipal assembly of Loimaa elected a female representative to the municipal council in 1915. This new councilor was elementary school teacher Miina Penttilä, who was active in many civic associations and had already held smaller municipal posts (Suodenjoki 2019, 139; Laakso 1994). Some writers to newspapers responded enthusiastically to Penttilä’s election to the council, praising it as a sign of progress and naming Loimaa as a pioneer of women’s suffrage.40 However, the socialist press either stayed silent about or sneered at Penttilä’s election. A few socialist papers wrote about the rise of “petticoat rule,” mocked Penttilä for being a heroine of “emancipated bourgeois women,” and hoped “for their sake that she would at least be a pretty girl.”41 These comments indicate irritation at Penttilä’s middle-class background and political affiliation; socialist commentators would likely have reacted differently if the first female municipal councilor in Finland had been a socialist. Nevertheless, their responses also imply a larger trend in socialist politics, that is, their inclination to fight primarily for men’s, not women’s, municipal suffrage. Hence, the case accords with historian Geoff Eley’s (2002, 23) claim about the European Left being fundamentally indolent in promoting women’s rights, always viewing their cause as secondary to that of male workers. Not long after the news about Penttilä’s election, the story received a new twist in Loimaa. Some locals noticed that electing female representatives to the municipal council was against the prevailing legislation, after which they threatened to complain to the governor about Penttilä’s election. This forced the next municipal assembly to replace Penttilä with a male councilor, even if the decision required a vote and some participants filed their dissenting opinion in the minutes (Laakso 1994, 318–19). The assembly had a quarrelsome atmosphere, and it was attended also by socialist workers, but their stance towards Penttilä’s replacement is unclear. If Penttilä herself was present, she certainly experienced a unique scene where local men across the political divide fervently debated for and against her removal from the council. Some newspaper writings viewed Penttilä’s removal as a counterstrike of anti-progressive countrymen or as a glaring example of the need to reform municipal legislation.42 Yet, her case did not turn the question of women’s municipal suffrage into something more than a thin current in the debates on municipal democracy. It took two more years until the municipal law reform of 1917 finally granted women the universal right to vote and stand for election in municipal elections. The marginality of women in local politics continued even thereafter, since the number of female members in municipal councils remained minuscule in the 1920s.43 Moreover, female voter turnout in municipal elections remained considerably lower than that

The municipal assembly as a scene  85 of male turnout (Kunnallisvaalit vuosina 1918–1922 1924, 24). This meant that subalternity in local politics continued to be a strongly gendered phenomenon in independent Finland, which prided itself as a pioneer of female suffrage.

Conclusion: mobilization of “side-people” into the scene of “trotter people” The municipal assembly was a scene of participatory democracy, which had its roots in the early modern period, but which was reshaped by the municipal reform act of 1865 to better mirror local power relations. As a result of the act, secular local government was separated from religious government in the Finnish countryside, and local power was increasingly handed to independent farmers, who formed the core group of taxpayers. At the same time, the introduction of municipal assemblies kept landless people on the margins of local politics and thereby consolidated rural class divisions. From the beginning, these assemblies were accused of being oligarchic and disorderly bodies dominated by obstreperous loudmouths. Nevertheless, the municipal assembly institution proved adaptive to changes in local social relations and democratic ideals, and this adaptability explains why the institution persevered up until 1917–18. Even the lowest strata of society found ways to influence local politics through municipal assemblies so that eventually, it was the socialist labor movement that most tenaciously entrenched its support for the institution. This chapter has approached municipal assemblies as scenes of experiences, illustrating how these assemblies had considerable local and temporal differences in attendance, power dynamics, and spatial settings. In the beginning, the assemblies often took place in provisional venues, until gradually municipalities started building municipal halls, which served to standardize the material and spatial context of the assemblies. However, variable factors – such as weather and economic fluctuations – continued to affect the atmosphere of the assemblies and even the preconditions for subaltern people’s participation in them. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the organization of modern political parties came to characterize municipal assemblies, but the party configurations varied in different municipalities. While the socialist movement echoed subaltern voices powerfully in some regions, one rightist or centrist party or village interests continued to dominate the municipal arenas in others. The municipal assemblies were significant venues for the formation of the municipality into an “imagined community” among the local population. While only a small minority of local inhabitants attended these assemblies, the attendants mediated the idea of the municipality as an object of belonging also to a wider community. They did so, for example, by transmitting information on the decisions and events of the assembly in their word-of-mouth networks or through readers’ letters to newspapers.

86  Sami Suodenjoki These exchanges also involved subaltern people, who were thereby invited to give meanings to municipal self-government and assess the decisions made by municipal bodies. Nonetheless, the limited census suffrage effectively curbed the voices of workers, servants, and married women in the assemblies themselves, depriving them of full membership of the municipality. This affected their experiences of democracy and may have stunted the development of their sense of belonging to the self-governing regional entity in which they lived. This lack of “municipal consciousness,” in turn, may have been a reason why socialists sometimes struggled to mobilize their supporters in municipal assemblies after 1906, despite having great local success in parliamentary elections. The availability of sources always sets limits on tracing the political subjectivities and practices of subaltern people of the past. What can sources produced by the authorities and elites reveal of lower-class people’s experiences and agency? This problem is also evident in this chapter because the readers’ letters to newspapers used as a primary source rarely provide direct access to subaltern voices. Most of them shed light on the operation of local self-government from the vantage point of landowners, educated professionals, and, in the case of socialist newspapers, from the perspective of local labor activists, whose views may have reflected the party line rather than the sentiments of local workers. Nevertheless, these writings do contain revealing remarks and expressions like “side-people” and “trotter people,” which were used to describe subalterns and wealthy landowners. The letters also inform us about the ways in which opinions and emotions were articulated in the assemblies. They show that shouting and the denigration of opponents were common practices, and that the most vociferous individuals often came from the ranks of wealthy farmers – at least in the late nineteenth century. However, the material also implies that the auditory environment of municipal assemblies changed in many localities after 1905. Influenced by the rise of organized labor, more and more “side people” – men and women not entitled to vote – made themselves visible and audible and pushed power holders into making concessions.

Notes 1 Turun Sanomat, November 21, 1907, 1–2. 2 A corresponding municipal reform act concerning urban communes was passed in 1873. 3 In 1900, a total of 2,370,960 people lived in rural municipalities and 341,602 in urban communes. Annuaire Statistique de Finlande 1910, 7. 4 This study has been supported by the Alfred Kordelin foundation and the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in the History of Experiences, HEX. 5 These writings are found with the search term “mundem1865” among the clippings of the digital collections of the National Library of Finland, https://digi. kansalliskirjasto.fi/clippings?set_language=en. 6 Sanomia Turusta, March 11, 1870, 2.

The municipal assembly as a scene  87 7 For an example from Kemi, see Pohjolan Sanomat, November 5, 1915, 4. 8 Widows and unmarried adult women who managed their own property and paid municipal taxes were enfranchised in local elections. 9 Aamulehti, March 16, 1886, 2; Pohjan-Tähti, September 19, 1866, 1–2. 10 Sanomia Turusta, March 11, 1870, 2. 11 Pohjan-Tähti, September 19, 1866, 1–2. 12 Karjalatar, January 10, 1879, 1–2. 13 Sanomia Turusta, February 3, 1887, 1. 14 The word kansanvalta appeared in the Finnish-language press occasionally from 1874 onwards but it was not until the 1890s that this word became established in the media. This can be traced with the KORP tool of the Language Bank of Finland by confining the search to digitized newspapers and periodicals, https://korp.csc.fi. 15 Kaiku, October 22, 1881, 2. 16 Sanomia Turusta, January 29, 1869, 2. 17 Sanomia Turusta, March 12, 1869, 2. 18 Tapio, January 4, 1868, 2. 19 Tapio, April 4, 1868, 1–2. 20 Sanomia Turusta, February 7, 1873, 2. 21 Tapio, May 15, 1869, 2; Ilmarinen, January 28, 1870, 1–2; Suomalainen Wirallinen Lehti, February 27, 1869, 2. 22 For ignorance of the illegality of a decision by a municipal assembly, see Tampereen Sanomat, July 20, 1867, 3. 23 Tampereen Sanomat, January 4, 1870, 2–3. 24 Karjala, February 11, 1908, 2. 25 Lounais-Häme, October 30, 1908, 1–2. 26 Suomalainen, December 10, 1906, 1–2; Folket, November 12, 1904, 1. 27 Suomalainen, June 3, 1907, 3; Västra Finland, August 22, 1907, 2; Ilkka, February 18, 1908, 3. 28 Kaleva, October 26, 1900, 1–2; Karjala, February 6, 1908, 2. 29 Lounais-Häme, January 3, 1908, 3–4; Salmetar, November 2, 1911, 1–2. 30 Kaleva, October 26, 1900, 1–2. 31 Itä-Häme, February 27, 1906, 4. 32 Kansan Tahto, January 28, 1908, 2; Sorretun Voima, September 25, 1908, 4; Raivaaja, April 19, 1909, 3. 33 Savon Työmies, April 4, 1907, 2; Hämeen Voima, January 23, 1908, 3; Sorretun Voima, September 25, 1908, 4. 34 Kansan Tahto, September 30, 1912, 2. 35 The Governor’s decision on the petition of Matti Kostamo et al., June 10, 1914, Eb:1174, Petitions 1914, Archive of the Administrative Department of the County Government of Oulu, National Archive of Finland (NAF). 36 A copy of the minutes of the municipal assembly of Kemijärvi, January 31, 1914, Eb:1174, Petitions 1914, Archive of the Administrative Department of the County Government of Oulu, NAF. 37 For municipal government in Närpes, see Nordlund 1931, 311–35. 38 A copy of the minutes of the municipal assembly of Kemijärvi, Eb:1174, Petitions 1914, Archive of the Administrative Department of the County Government of Oulu, NAF. 39 For the presence of women in municipal arenas, see the images in Soikkanen 1966, 308, 381, 402, 463, 493, 816. 40 Turun Sanomat, September 18, 1915, 4; Työkansa, September 17, 1915, 5. 41 Sosialidemokraatti, September 14, 1915, 2; Vapaus, September 16, 1915, 3. 42 Keski-Suomi, September 23, 1915, 3; Ilkka, September 25, 1915, 3.

88  Sami Suodenjoki 43 In 61 rural municipalities located in Swedish-speaking regions, the share of female members in municipal councils was only 0.8 percent (8 out of 981) in 1929. Kommunalkalender 1929, 7–131.

Bibliography Alapuro, Risto. 1994. Suomen synty paikallisena ilmiönä 1890–1933. Helsinki: Tammi. Alapuro, Risto. 2006. “The Construction of the Voter in Finland, 1860–1907.” History and Feminist Theory 10 (1): 41–64. Annuaire Statistique de Finlande. Huitième année 1910. Helsinki: Bureau Central de Statistique de Finlande. Burke, Peter. 2005. “Performing History: The Importance of Occasions.” Rethinking History 9 (1): 35–52. Digital collections of the National Library of Finland. https://digi.kansalliskirjasto.fi/. Eley, Geoff. 2002. Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 1850– 2000. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gammerl, Benno. 2012. “Emotional Styles – Concepts and Challenges.” Rethinking History 16 (2): 161–75. Green, Marcus E. 2011. “Rethinking the Subaltern and the Question of Censorship in Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks.” Postcolonial Studies 14 (4): 387–404. Harjula, Minna, and Heikki Kokko. 2022. “The Scene of Experience.” In Digital Handbook of the History of Experience. https://doi.org/10.58077/SSXN-4N37. Hobsbawm, Eric. 1983. “Mass-Producing Traditions: Europe, 1870–1914.” In The Invention of Tradition, edited by Eric Hobsbawm, and Terence Ranger, 263–307. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hyvärinen, Matti. 2003. “Valta.” In Käsitteet liikkeessä. Suomen poliittisen kulttuurin käsitehistoria, edited by Matti Hyvärinen et al., 63–116. Tampere: Vastapaino. Karlsson, Sjögren Åsa. 2009. “Voting Women before Women’s Suffrage in Sweden 1720–1870.” In Suffrage, Gender and Citizenship: International Perspectives on Parliamentary Reforms, edited by Irma Sulkunen, Seija-Leena Nevala-Nurmi, and Pirjo Markkola, 56–82. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars. Karonen, Petri, Pirita Frigren, Sami Suodenjoki, and Pertti Haapala. 2021. “Alamaiset, kansalaiset ja valtiovalta – Vuorovaikutus ja poliittinen kulttuuri 1809–1918”. In Suomalaisen yhteiskunnan historia 1400–2000. Osa 1. Rakenteet ja instituutiot, edited by Petri Karonen, Nils-Erik Villstrand, and Pertti Haapala, 301–38. Tampere: Vastapaino. Kokko, Heikki. 2016. Kuviteltu minuus. Ihmiskäsityksen murros suomenkielisen kansanosan kulttuurissa 1800-luvun puolivälissä. Tampere: Tampere University Press. Kokko, Heikki. 2021. “From Local to Translocal Experience: The Nationwide Culture of Letters to the Press in Mid-1800s Finland.” Media History. https:// doi.org/10.1080/13688804.2021.1961575. Kommunalkalender 1929. Helsingfors: Landskommunernas centralbyrå. KORP concordance search tool of the Language Bank of Finland. https://korp. csc.fi. Kunnallisvaalit vuosina 1918–1922. 1924. Helsinki: Tilastollinen päätoimisto.

The municipal assembly as a scene  89 Laakso, Veikko. 1994. Suur-Loimaan historia II. Loimaa: Loimaan kaupunki. Lehtola, Veli-Pekka. 2012. Saamelaiset suomalaiset: kohtaamisia 1896–1953. Helsinki: SKS. Lehtola, Veli-Pekka. 2015. “Sámi Histories, Colonialism, and Finland.” Arctic Anthropology 52 (2): 22–36. Mellquist, Einar D. 1974. Rösträtt efter förtjänst? Riksdagsdebatten om den kommunala rösträtten i Sverige 1862–1900. Stockholm: Stadshistoriska institutet. Miller, Henry. 2019. “Introduction: The Transformation of Petitioning in the Long Nineteenth Century (1780–1914).” Special issue The Transformation of Petitioning. Social Science History 43 (3): 409–29. Nordlund, K. I. 1931. Blad ur Närpes historia. Andra delen. Närpes: Närpes kommun. Østerud, Øyvind. 1978. Agrarian Structure and Peasant Politics in Scandinavia: A Comparative Study of Rural Response to Economic Change. Oslo: Universitets forlaget. Pernau, Margrit. 2017. “Feeling Communities: Introduction.” The Indian Economic and Social History Review 54 (1): 1–20. Petitions 1914. Archive of the Administrative Department of the County Government of Oulu [Oulun lääninhallitus – Lääninkanslia]. Oulu: National Archive of Finland (NAF). Piilonen, Juhani. 1982. Vallankumous kunnallishallinnossa. Helsinki: Valtion painatuskeskus. Seymour, Mark. 2020. Emotional Arenas: Life, Love, and Death in 1870s Italy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Soikkanen, Hannu. 1966. Kunnallinen itsehallinto kansanvallan perusta. Maalaiskuntien itsehallinnon historia. Helsinki: Maalaiskuntien liitto. Sorvali, Satu. 2019. “Onko syytä suuttua? Ärtymyksen ilmaisu 1890-luvun yleisönosastoissa.” Ennen ja nyt: Historian tietosanomat 19 (2). https://journal.fi/ ennenjanyt/article/view/108928. Sorvali, Satu. 2020. “‘Pyydän nöyrimmästi sijaa seuraavalle’ – Yleisönosaston synty, vakiintuminen ja merkitys autonomian ajan Suomen lehdistössä.” Historiallinen Aikakauskirja 118 (3): 324–39. Suodenjoki, Sami. 2010. Kuriton suutari ja kiistämisen rajat. Työväenliikkeen läpimurto hämäläisessä maalaisyhteisössä 1899–1909. Helsinki: SKS. https://urn. fi/urn:nbn:fi:sks-dor-000591 Suodenjoki, Sami. 2019. “Kohti edustuksellista harvainvaltaa? Kunnanvaltuustojen perustaminen työväestön huolenaiheena 1890–1917.” In Työväestö ja demokratia, edited by Ilkka Kärrylä, Pete Pesonen, and Anna Rajavuori, 119–48. Helsinki: Työväen historian ja perinteen tutkimuksen seura. https://doi.org/ 10.55286/vv.121748. Tervonen, Miika. 2012. “The Nation and Its Outsiders: The ‘Gypsy Question’ and Peasant Nationalism in Finland, c. 1863–1900.” In Nationhood from Below: Europe in the Long Nineteenth Century, edited by Marnix Beyen, and Maarten Van Ginderachter, 139–61. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan. Viitaniemi, Ella. 2016. Yksimielisyydestä yhteiseen sopimiseen. Paikallisyhteisön poliittinen kulttuuri ja Kokemäen kivikirkon rakennusprosessi 1730–1786. Tampere: Tampere University Press. Voutilainen, Miikka. 2016. Poverty, Inequality, and the Finnish 1860s Famine. Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä.

90  Sami Suodenjoki Wahl-Jorgensen, Karin. 2019. “Foreword.” In Letters to the Editor: Comparative and Historical Perspectives, edited by Allison Cavanagh, and John Steel, 5–10. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Zakharova, Larissa. 1994. “Autocracy and the Reforms of 1861–1874 in Russia: Choosing Paths of Development.” In Russia’s Great Reforms, 1855–1881, edited by Ben Eklof, John Bushnell, and Larissa Zakharova, 19–39. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

5 At the crossroads of local and national representation Peasant petitions to the Diet of Finland in the 1860s and 1870s Onni Pekonen and Matti La Mela The chapter examines petitions as a tool for peasant political participation in the Grand Duchy of Finland, part of the Russian Empire, in the 1860s and 1870s. It explores how and for what kind of purposes Finnish peasants and local peasant meetings used petitions to the Diet of the Estates. We analyze petitions and discussions of them to understand the changing peasant views on national representation. How did the peasant practices and conceptualizations of petitions change during the period, and why? Finland became a grand duchy of the Russian Empire as a result of the Napoleonic Wars in 1809. Until then, Finland had been part of the Kingdom of Sweden for over 500 years. Tsar Alexander I summoned the four Finnish estates – the Nobility, the Clergy, the Burghers, and the Peasants, to the Diet of Porvoo in 1809 – but the meeting was followed by a more than 50-year hiatus in the national representative politics of the grand duchy. As a result of the shifts in international politics and unrest within the Empire, Alexander II changed Russia’s policy on Finland and reconvened the estates in 1863. When the Diet of the Estates assembled, none of the estate members or electors had experience of national representative politics. In the early 1860s, the lack of knowledge of the practices of national representation became a topic of dispute and astonishment, not least in the remote provinces of a vast country with a scattered population. This was also a language issue: Swedish was the language of national politics and public debate, and the grand duchy’s Finnish-speaking majority in the countryside lacked the vocabulary to discuss the quickly evolving political landscape. The Diet of Finland was the last European representative assembly in which landowning peasants were included as the fourth estate. The chapter examines how local meetings, electors, and representatives of the Peasant Estate in the 1860s and 1870s aimed to resolve the challenges of the new situation, gained knowledge of, and conceptualized the practices of political representation, and made their voices heard in national politics. What benefits came from lessons learned in emerging associations and other meetings? To what extent did the petition work involve a broad variety of the rural population, for instance women and non-landowning groups? DOI: 10.4324/9781003290087-8

92  Onni Pekonen and Matti La Mela Petitions are approached in this chapter as prisms through which to analyze the aspirations and demands that the petitioners directed to the authorities (Voss 2001). Moreover, the chapter follows recent scholarship, which has aimed at conceptualizing and historicizing the petitions by viewing them as “shifting practices or mechanisms” (Miller 2019). In general, the nineteenth century saw the development of mass and public petitioning, which supplemented the earlier practices of individual and often private petitioning. The early modern “petition and response” model had allowed individuals and social groups to seek help from their rulers, but also enabled the central state powers to connect to the peripheries and compensate for missing information. This was also the case for meetings of estates and other regional assemblies. The mass petitioning, in contrast, shifted the focus of petitioning to public and general matters, and was associated to the idea of public opinion and the people as the sovereign (Miller 2019; Zaret 2019; Loft 2019; Bowie and Munck 2018). The chapter analyzes petitions, original petition documents, and local newspaper reports about local election meetings concerning the diets of 1863–64 and 1877–78. These serve as a lens to study the evolution of peasant petition practices and the peasants’ understanding of national representative politics. The two diets have been selected to contrast the novel experience of the early 1860s with the more established and regulated institutional setting of the late 1870s. During the period, the idea of national representation and its institutional and rhetorical breakthrough had begun to shape the practices of estate representation. The chapter notes a shift in the practices of petitioning: even though petitions conveyed local demands, they became increasingly framed as being part of the broader national political agenda. The electoral districts began to cooperate in formulating joint petitions and in incorporating multiple petitions before presenting them at the diet. This offered the petitions better possibilities for success in the new quasi-constitutional and political setting, where the principle of national representation was prioritized over narrower local and estate interests.

Finland as a grand duchy with an emerging national representation In January 1863, rising Finnish nationalist G. Z. Forsman declared that Finland was awakening from a “state night” – from the deep sleep of over 50 years, which had governed Finnish political life since the last and thus far the only meeting of the Finnish national representative assembly. According to Forsman, after a long night wasted on sleeping, it was again time for joint work for the Finnish nation.1 The opening of the diet on September 18, 1863 was celebrated with enthusiasm in the Grand Duchy. However, the new situation also caused uncertainty. Alexander II’s decision to convene the diet invigorated public discussion and disputes about the principles, rules, and practices of national representative politics (Pekonen 2014, 15–23). The newspapers emphasized

At the crossroads  93 that due to the long hiatus between the diets, no one had personal experience or a clear idea of how the diet elections or proceedings were to be organized.2 The Finns seemed to be outsiders when it came to the practices of national representation. At the Diet of Porvoo in 1809, Alexander I had promised to uphold the constitutional laws, rights, and privileges of Finland. As a result, the “Finnish constitution” became an ambiguous subject and a question of varying dispute, especially between the Finnish and Russian elites. In the nineteenth century, Finnish politicians and scholars began to highlight the events of Porvoo as a state treaty – as a founding moment of Finnish autonomy within the Russian Empire – and viewed the Swedish Gustavian constitutions as the Finnish constitutions, despite the fact that the Emperor never officially validated them. Until Finland’s independence in 1917, Finland had a de facto constitution: it seemed to exist and remain in force as long as it was respected and not challenged by the Finns or the Russians (Engman 2017, 37–8). Finland’s status as a grand duchy of the Russian Empire set the limits for parliamentary and electoral reform in nineteenth- and early twentiethcentury Finland. The Diet of Finland had limited powers. Based on the Gustavian constitutions, the task of the diet was formally limited to examining and approving or rejecting the proposals of the Emperor. The ambitious reform plans of the 1860s and the following decades were turned down by the Emperor and sometimes considered “too sensitive” or “risky” by the Finns to be presented. In the early 1860s, the Finnish people had to rely on old, inadequate, and contradictory Swedish laws when organizing the diet’s work. The situation encouraged Finnish actors to undertake political innovation and study a variety of foreign – especially more recent Swedish – examples. These were applied in the Diet Act of 1869, the first Finnish “constitutional law,” which set the rules for the elections and proceedings of the Diet of Finland (Pekonen 2014, 2017a, 2017b, 2019). After the diet of 1863–4, the Diet of the Estates met regularly, mostly in intervals of first five and then three years, until the Parliamentary Reform of 1906, which transformed Europe’s last four-estate representation directly into a unicameral parliament, elected by universal male and female suffrage. Despite its limited formal powers, the diet became the center of Finnish public political life, and it created representation for the Finnish people and the nation in relation to the emperor.

Finnish-speaking peasants as subalterns In the Finnish diet, the landowning peasants assembled as the fourth estate. This principle followed the representative tradition of the Swedish era but was unique in late nineteenth-century Europe. The representatives of the Peasant Estate were elected by national judicial districts, one from

94  Onni Pekonen and Matti La Mela each, and consisted of 47 representatives in 1863. Notably, the suffrage of the estate concerned only landowners of taxed farmland (Jutikkala 1974), which left most countryside dwellers without formal means to participate in institutionalized diet politics. The Nobility’s representation was based on family origin, the Clergy’s on official rank, and the Burghers’ on occupation and tax-paying capacity. In the present article, we examine the representatives and electors of the Peasant Estate as subalterns. Although all of Finland faced a new situation in 1863, the peasants’ role can be viewed as subaltern because of their language, education, experience, and their treatment by the political elite. While most of the peasants in Finland spoke only Finnish, Swedish was the language of government, politics, and public debate in Finland during the “state night” and the first regular diets. All members of the political and administrative elite could speak Swedish. While Swedish had been continuously used in the Swedish riksdag, Finnish had not been spoken in any diet or parliament after 1809. The discussions of the Peasants’ Estate were mainly conducted in Finnish, but Finnish was not spoken in the Clergy’s Estate before 1882 and in the Burghers’ Estate only from 1885. The first Finnish speech was held in the Nobility’s Estate as late as 1894. By the time of the Parliamentary Reform of 1906, Finnish had become the main language of the parliament. According to the 1865 census, 74 percent of the country’s parishes were Finnish-language, and 85 percent of the population was classified as Finnish-speaking (Suomen väestö 1865). In the mid-nineteenth century, a nationalist, so-called Fennoman elite began to systematically develop the Finnish language by adopting and translating European political and scholarly vocabulary (Hyvärinen et al. 2003). The aim of the Fennomans was to raise the Finnish language to the position of a national language and a defining characteristic of Finland’s national culture. The Fennoman movement found their opponents in the Swedish-speaking ascendant bourgeoisie and aristocracy, who, according to the Fennomans, held on to their old privileges and obstructed reforms crucial to the development of the people’s Finnish-speaking majority, who mostly lived in the countryside. The European events of 1848, but properly only the activation of political life in the early 1860s, systematized and expanded the coining of Finnish political and parliamentary vocabulary (Pekonen 2014, 2021). In the diets of the 1860s, the representatives and the electors of the Peasant Estate were troubled by the lack of vocabulary and linguistic means to address and discuss political matters of national scale, especially compared to the level of accuracy and theoretical depth of the other three Swedish-speaking estates. This was not only a matter of education. Before the elections of 1863, the peasants had hardly any Finnish-language literature on national representative politics or diets. They sought to overcome this deficiency with the help of scanty and general newspaper articles (Hytönen 1923, 328–29).

At the crossroads  95 The national newspapers and handwritten local newspapers were a way for the self-educated peasant literati to develop their literacy skills and even promote literacy among the locals (Stark 2014; Salmi-Niklander 2013). Estate representatives wrote reports about diet work in newspapers and thus informed and educated people in rural areas. Thanks to the expanding newspaper press, the Finnish vocabulary of representative politics began to reach more areas and classes of the country’s population. Newspapers proliferated toward the end of the nineteenth century in terms of number, frequency of issues, and the areas and social groups they reached. The major newspapers’ circulation spread from Helsinki to the provinces, and an increasing number of smaller newspapers were founded across the country. The expansion of the Finnish-language press was especially notable. In 1860–89, the number of Finnish-language newspapers increased from 9 to 29 and that of Swedish-language newspapers from 8 to 23. The Finnish papers caught up with the Swedish in frequency: In 1860, Finnish newspapers published 1.1 issues per week, in 1889, 3.0, and in 1898, 3.3, while the respective numbers for the Swedish papers were 2.5, 3.9, and 3.5. Finnish-language newspapers accounted for 75 percent of the total circulation in 1900 (Marjanen et al. 2019; Landgren 1988, 280–88; Leino-Kaukiainen 1988, 443–61). The Peasant Estate, both the elected and the represented, lacked education and knowledge of national representative politics compared to the three “higher estates.” In addition to the lack of Finnish-language literature, opportunities for formal schooling were rudimentary, and in general, literacy skills were weak among common people in the countryside; in 1880, only 13 percent of Finns older than 10 years could write (Stark 2014). For example, the most prominent figure of the Estate, August Mäkipeska, who was the speaker in the diets of 1863–64 and 1867, had received an education outside the home only in the confirmation school and reading meetings (lukukinkerit), which were organized by the church and focused on the Bible and catechism. Religious literature left a distinctive mark on the rhetoric and speeches of the Peasant Estate. Compulsory schooling in elementary school (kansakoulu, volksschule) became more popular only after the Elementary School Act of 1866 (kansakouluasetus), and it was of no help to the representatives of the 1860s (Hytönen 1923, 328–29). According to an unverified diet story, Tsar Alexander II observed Mäkipeska at the dinner of the opening of the diet in 1863 and asked Mäkipeska what he marveled at the most at the occasion. Mäkipeska’s answer was “my own attendance” (Hytönen 1923, 328). In the early 1860s, peasant representatives and electors largely lacked experience of public activities. They were not accustomed to meetings, associations, or boards, which later became common and important educational institutions for the politically active. However, the long tradition of parish meetings and jury membership of the judicial districts offered educational opportunities for active peasants to become acquainted with

96  Onni Pekonen and Matti La Mela the law and social questions. On the juries, peasants also learned argumentative and deliberative skills (Hytönen 1923, 328–29; Kuismin 2019). The struggle with everyday life and the need to focus on meeting basic daily needs was a common hindrance to time-consuming political activity and education, not least during the Finnish famine of 1866–68. The lack of experience was reported in newspaper descriptions of peasant electoral meetings. For example, when the electoral meeting elected peasant poet Antti Puhakka to the diet in the Karelian parish of Liperi in 1863, Puhakka was described as having become anxious and depressed by the heavy responsibility and duty – of which he had no prior experience. Puhakka was especially troubled by his position as a mediator and moderator of the electors’ conflicting interests.3 Puhakka was elected to the diet four times, and became known for his poetic style of oratory. In the national arena of representative politics, peasants faced elite contempt and were at times scorned in the press. Even the nationalist Fennoman elite, who romanticized the Finnish-speaking peasantry and held them as the cornerstone of Finnish national identity, had a mixed attitude toward the peasants. The Fennomans were concerned about the political and social backwardness of the country and the Finnish people’s low level of education. The elite distrusted the common people and were reluctant to give them much leverage in national politics. Most of the questions in the diets were decided by a majority of three estates, while matters of constitution, economy, and privileges needed to be approved by all four. Typically, the Fennoman elite needed the Peasants to work with the Clergy Estate against the Liberal and pro-Swedish Estates of the Burghers and the Nobility. The Peasant Estate was at times left alone in the minority and deemed conservative, because it opposed reforms – for example, on the construction of railways – due to economic concerns. The Fennoman political program was greatly shaped by the Hegelian philosopher and Finnish statesman J. V. Snellman. The Fennomans emphasized that the common people needed to be educated before being given political responsibility. National spirit and the understanding of the best interests of the fatherland had to be rooted in the peasantry in order to make the nation strong and sturdy (e.g., Forsman 1866, 243–44). Yrjö Koskinen (the Fennicized penname of G. Z. Forsman) argued that in the small Finland, “education and enlightenment is not a matter of benefit or amusement, but a precondition for life” (Koskinen 1868, 272). The education of the Finnish-speaking majority and the raising of skilled individuals to important political and administrative positions were considered central in making Finnish a language of administration, politics, and culture. European democratic ideals entered the Finnish public debate increasingly towards the end of the nineteenth century. The Diet Act of 1869 manifested the principle of the representation of the people by stating that the estates convened to the diet represent the people of Finland. Political

At the crossroads  97 actors increasingly argued that representative government and state affairs should be based – in theory, at least – on “public opinion” or “the will of the majority of the people.” As a result, the elite supported moderate suffrage reforms and sought ways in which representative institutions could restrain immature expressions of public opinion, for example by procedural means in parliament (Pekonen 2017b, 2019). The Fennoman party leaders used different rhetoric when speaking to different audiences. References to the people and their will were aimed at the political debates of the elite in the capital, Helsinki, while the rhetoric aimed at the countryside emphasized the requirement to educate the people and raise the national spirit (Liikanen 2003, 287). The main goal of the Fennoman elite was to get the most educated and capable candidates elected to the Peasant Estate. Political leaders in the major cities targeted the people with informative press campaigns on representative politics. National and local newspapers published instructive articles, which defined ideal diet representatives and explained how to elect them from the candidates. The articles emphasized that the main virtues of a diet representative were the ability to rise above private and estate interests and always seek the best for the fatherland and the country as a whole.4 This idea of national representation was manifested in the ban of the imperative mandate in the Diet Act of 1869. Paragraph 7 of the Diet Act stated that “In his duty, a member is not bound by any other orders than the Constitutions.” According to the first paragraph of the Diet Act, “The Estates of the Grand Duchy of Finland, which, convened to the Diet, represent the people of Finland, are the Nobility, the Clergy, the Burghers, and the Peasants” (for a more detailed history of this ban, see Pekonen 2014, 115–44). The Fennomans considered the Peasant Estate to represent many of the positive qualities of the countryside dwellers, and, more generally, to foster the virtues of the Finnish national character. Newspaper reports described how the peasants had the ability to focus calmly on the matter, while leaving the bad habit of excessive talk and debate to the higher estates. This kind of idealization of practicality, work, and consensus, and their opposition to theory, mere talk, and useless dispute, were typical also of the selfunderstanding of the Peasant Estate and present in its discourse.5 The subaltern position was also part of peasant identity and self-understanding. Peasants built their identity in contrast to the elite. While literary and linguistic skills and education were seen as an asset for a representative, electors and local newspapers detested and warned about electing representatives that were too close to the elite (herrat) or had adopted “gentlemanly characteristics.”6 Becoming a representative of the diet was an instrument of social climbing, even though it was not a well-paid position. When highlighting the conflicts between the style and interests of the common people and the elite, peasants called the diet herrainpäivät, which

98  Onni Pekonen and Matti La Mela was an old translation of the Swedish herredagar and meant “days of the masters/lords” (Pekonen 2021). The peasants held onto their dialects and characteristic ways of speaking in the diet, which included remnants and linguistic references of the more traditional vocabulary of estate and delegate model of representation compared to the trustee model that was more dominant in the discussions of other estates. A liberal discourse that stressed diet members as trustees of the country and the nation, whose actions and decisions were based on moral responsibility vis-à-vis the Finnish fatherland as a whole, was common to the Nobility, Clergy, and Burghers from the first diets of the 1860s onward (for examples, see Pekonen 2014, 120–21). In the Peasant Estate, in contrast, in the diet of 1863–64, for example, Pehr Edvard Östring invoked the decisions of his electors’ meeting to defend his proposals. According to Östring, his electors had unanimously ordered him to propose petitions for regular diets with the right to introduce motions, ministerial responsibility, and so on (Peasants 1863–64, I, 66–67). The vocabulary of the delegate model continued to be used throughout the following decades in the Peasant Estate. For example, the publication of the estates’ minutes was defended by arguing that the electors had the right to know how their representatives had pleaded their case (ajaa asiaa) (Peasants 1882, II, 1141). The members of the Peasants’ Estate sought to preserve their peasant identity by such means as recording the local dialects in the official minutes of the estate (Pekonen 2014, 219–20). The peasant poet J. Koljonen from the Karelian parish of Kiihtelysvaara addressed the mixed feelings of the peasant at the new dawn of national representative politics in 1863. In his poem “On the Coming of the Diet,” published in the small Kuopio-based newspaper Tapio, Koljonen described how the people awaited the diet with great anticipation and excitement, ready to follow in the path of their ancestors, under the guidance of the Grand Duke – that is, the Emperor. While the people as a whole would consider questions in the diet, the peasants would still have to stand alone and carry the heavy responsibility of the countryside with the constant fear of their rich masters trying to empty their pockets. According to the poem, the peasant was full of love toward the Grand Duke, but humble in his lack of skill and intellect.7 On the Coming of the Diet8 My mouth does not Want to sing in vain, My heart is happy, And my nature roars. Our Grand Duke Repairs our conditions So that our life, Will not stray from its path.

At the crossroads  99 The path that the ancestors Have built during their time, Which, now, can the people, With one accord, consider. Worry splits and breaks, The Estate of the peasant, Which alone Has much to pay and accomplish. Roads and rides (hollit) one has to upkeep, Payments for the land, Yet, much do the salary masters Take from our pockets. The promises of our Duke They are fairly grand, They are firmer, Than strong walls. Joy to our chest, Brings the new era, Which our dearest Duke grants us. As the chains of the mother tongue He cut off, A respectable memory of himself, In Finland he drew. My chest is full of love For our Duke, But my ability is weak, Nothing to shine.

Petitions in the Diet of Finland In 1871, Fennoman leader Yrjö Koskinen cited Mirabeau’s speech in the 1789 French Constituent Assembly, and referred to a mimetic conception of national representation in the Fennomans’ mouthpiece Uusi Suometar: Like a map portrays mountains, dales, lakes and rivers, forests and plains, towns and villages, the representative assembly should present a miniature picture of all parts of the people as a unified whole.9 This conception, which became central in the organization of the unicameral parliament in 1906 (Pekonen 2019), was a mere distant ideal in the context of the limited estate representation of the diet. The smallest and

100  Onni Pekonen and Matti La Mela unknown mountains, dales, lakes, and rivers of the countryside could only be represented in principle, through the representation of their masters. In these circumstances, what was the role of petitions in depicting the needs and wishes of the countryside? What was the significance of petitions for peasants and their understanding of national politics? In the context of the Diet of Finland, petitions were complaints, wishes, or requests that the representatives or their electors asked the Diet of the Estates to communicate to the Emperor. Importantly, petitions were a means to introduce matters to the public debate and to the diet that were not among the law proposals given by the Emperor and prepared by the Senate of Finland. Petitions gained a notable role as the estates did not have the right to introduce motions before 1886. Petitions were considered the only constitutional tool for the Finnish people to address the Emperor. In practice, petitions were also a means for the estates and the diet to influence the preparation of laws in the Senate, which functioned both as the cabinet and the supreme court of the Grand Duchy and consisted largely of nobility. The diet petitions were part of the broader context of petitioning in nineteenth-century Finland, where petitions had been addressed to the Senate and the regional authorities on economic, political, or legal matters already before the diet convened (e.g., Paloheimo 2012). Although petitions addressed the Emperor, the Senate had to write a statement about them. In many cases, the importance of petitions was further underlined by the fact that they resulted in proposals given by the Emperor to the next diet. Petitions passed by the diet were rarely turned down at the highest level, and even the ones that the Senate did not second were delivered to the Emperor in the form of wishes and concerns of the people (Lilius 1974, 264; Tuominen 1981, 644–45). In the first diets in the 1860s, petitioning practices were unclear. The right to petition was assumed to exist, although its constitutional status was unclear (Lilius 1974, 245; Pekonen 2014, 150). In the eighteenth century Swedish Riksdag of the Estates tradition, the petitions consisted of supplications, which were a broad category of requests made by almost anyone to the ruler or to the Riksdag, and the actual Riksdag petitions (gravamina), which were compiled by the electors but taken to the Riksdag by a representative. These latter petitions were organized and processed into petitions of a general nature and those with a particular focus (Almbjär 2016, esp. 191–203). In the early Finnish diets, some of these practices were continued. The representatives presented the petitions in the diet, and as we will see, there were petitions by the electorate, but also by other local groups and individuals. In the diet of 1863–64, the distinction between general and particular petitions was discussed. In the Peasant Estate, however, no clear difference was drawn – all petitions, if approved at the first plenary reading of the estate, were sent to the estate’s own Petition Committee (Lilius 1974, 259–61).

At the crossroads  101 In the Diet Act of 1869, the petition process was refined. Following the Diet Act’s notion of the representation of the people, petitions on private matters touching only one estate began to lose their ground. Particular petitions and especially their mass production were commented on in public, and the liberal circles, especially, argued that petitions of a general nature were better in line with the notion of popular sovereignty. In addition to the estates’ private petitions, petitions were now more often being transformed into petitions of all four estates. From the 1870s, petitions of a general nature submitted to an estate were either rejected at the estate’s first plenary reading or sent to the estates’ common committees, where representatives of all the estates were present to discuss the petition. The committee report was then sent to all four estates for plenary reading (Lilius 1974, 234, 264). According to the Diet Act, the representatives were to present their petitions first to the speaker of the Estate, to give a written version of it to the estate’s secretary, and not to include more than one matter in one petition (Diet Act §52; Lilius 1974, 259–66). It is notable that in the 1860s and 1870s, about one-fifth of the petitions led to a general request that the diet passed and communicated to the Emperor through the Senate. Most of the diet petitions were made in the Peasant Estate (Tuominen 1981, 642–44; Lilius 1974, 260–61). In the estate, the petitions were usually letters that had been prepared locally during the electoral process and handed to the elected representative at the electoral meeting. The letter was then taken by the representative to the diet. Following the enthusiasm for the first diet in 1863, the importance of petitions was highlighted to the extent that a number of local peasants from around the electoral (judicial) districts accompanied elected representatives to Helsinki. In addition to electoral meetings, representatives organized local meetings to discuss agenda items, both government proposals and petitions, before the diet sessions.10 Especially for the Fennomans, petitions were seen as an important way to make known the needs and material deficiencies of the countryside and manifest them in public discussion through the parliamentary process. The Fennoman newspapers wrote how peasants and their petitions helped to bring “local wisdom” (paikkakunnallinen äly), “local needs” (paikalliset tarpeet), and “understanding of the local conditions” (paikallisten olojen ymmärrys/tuntemus), and to reveal “the real conditions of the country” (maan todelliset olot) to the diet. In contrast to the “state wisdom,” great abilities, and intellect of the higher estates, the peasants were able to “inform what kind of laws the country and the people wish for and tolerate” (Koskinen 1867). Ideally, thus, the landowning peasant representatives were mediators and conveyors of the messages of rural areas and local communities; they learned to transform the concerns of the people into a politically or procedurally applicable form. What happened in

102  Onni Pekonen and Matti La Mela reality? To what extent are we able to find evidence of representatives of the Peasant Estate mediating the voice of the lowest rural groups?

Peasant petitions to the diet of 1863–64 In the diet of 1863–64, the vast majority of the representatives of the Peasant Estate were landowning peasants who lacked a formal education. Only one of the representatives, Pehr Östring from Raseborg, who was the secretary of the Agricultural Society of the Nyland Region, had a notable education in the Estate (Hytönen 1923, 39). Moreover, the institutions of municipal self-government, where the peasants would develop their administrative skills and literacy, were established only after the first diet in 1865 (Kuismin 2019; Suodenjoki in this volume). This lack of experience and social status is emblematic of how petitions and their role were understood in the diet. The representatives acted largely in the name of the local rural community. The practices of petitioning, from their formal side to the actual content and scope of the petitions, varied greatly. Petitioning appeared not as a way to address national politics, but rather as another way of presenting local and regional concerns to the diet and finally to the Emperor.11 In this diet, the members of the Peasant Estate presented 95 petitions. This figure includes petitions that were actually discussed and voted on within the Estate. The procedural practices concerning petitions had not yet been established, and there were some presentations of general concerns or wishes without clear policy proposals that could be interpreted as petitions.12 The petitions appear as a rather important way of introducing matters to the discussion, as the majority – 64 percent – of the members actually presented a petition. Most of the petitioners submitted one or two petitions, however, there were two members who presented 14 and 12 petitions respectively to the estate. These were landowner Matti Holma from central Österbotten judicial district of Western Finland and landowner Esaias Tykki from the Ranta district in the Karelia region of Southeastern Finland. The petition letters prepared at the electoral meetings did not always focus on one matter only but listed several matters, which were sometimes discussed separately in the estate. In the figure of 95 petitions, we have separated the independent matters listed in the petition letters as separate petitions. These petition letters, which included several independent matters, highlight petitions as a means of channeling the concerns raised by the electorate. In this process, the representative acted as a messenger. For example, in his petition, representative Holma presented 14 different proposals ranging from the permission for slash and burn cultivation in the municipalities of Alajärvi and Kuortane to the question of a merchant flag for the Grand Duchy of Finland. The petition letter itself was an excerpt of the election meeting minutes, which listed matters that “Holma had

At the crossroads  103 been requested to petition in the Diet” (Peasants 1863–64, I, 149). In the discussion that followed Holma’s petition, fellow representative Klami greeted with pleasure this abundance of petitions, which was a sign of progress (Peasants 1863–64, I, 149). How much did the petitions regard local matters then? We have divided the petitions into those addressing the whole country and those with a focus on local or regional matters. Local or regional matters form a considerable amount of the petitions presented in 1863–64: we have categorized 31 of the petitions as local and 64 as national. This division is not always clear and unambiguous, but most of the local petitions were about improvements to economic or social conditions in a certain area or about the burden of some duties that the local groups faced. The petitions could regard almost private matters, such as the tax burden of farms in the parish of Kivennapa, or a more general improvement, such as establishing an infirmary in a municipality or town. It is interesting that at this point, the local petitions were not always voted down as too local or narrow: almost all of them (26) were approved by the estate to be further processed and sent to the Peasants’ Petition Committee. In the estate’s reading, the representatives framed locally oriented petition matters as important regional or broader – even national – questions. For example, concerning the river improvements of Lake Pielinen in Eastern Finland, representative Klami noted how the question concerned the whole nation: “like any good or bad that has struck a body part affects the whole body, the benefits that are given to some area of the country will benefit the whole country” (Peasants 1863–64, I, 223). Similarly, the petition for having a doctor, pharmacist, and veterinarian in the municipality of Kivijärvi turned in the estate into a discussion about the need to have better medical care in the countryside (Peasants 1863–64, I, 180–181). Moreover, many of the local petitions became accepted in the first plenary reading and sent to the Petition Committee because they appeared as part of longer petitions compiled at local meetings. These lists were accepted as complete and could include proposals concerning both local and national matters, and the task of studying and compiling the petition proposals from these petition letters was left to the Petition Committee. The few rejected local petitions were seen as too detailed or private, concerning administrative matters, or discriminating against other areas. For example, representative Kiuru from the Karelian parish of Käkisalmi brought forward the case of the tenant farmers (lampuoti, leaseholder of a farm) of the region, who were under a debt burden due to military contributions to their landowner. There was already an administrative decision by the Senate on the payments, and the petition letter asked the Emperor to exempt these tenants from the payments.13 In the estate’s reading, Kiuru’s petition was rejected, because “it only regarded a debt case between the mentioned landowner and his tenants, and was of such specific nature that the estates should not intervene” (Peasants 1863–64, I, 228).

104  Onni Pekonen and Matti La Mela The localness of the petitions can be studied also by looking at who stood concretely behind the petitions. In the case of representative Nyrönen, the petition letter he presented to the estate was an excerpt of the minutes of his judicial district’s electoral meeting. It “included matters of appeal [valitus-asioita] that the representative was supposed to present to the Peasant Estate” (Peasants 1863–64, I, 72). Moreover, when we look at the Registers of the Petition Committee of the Estate, where the work process was recorded, the “petitioner” listed is not always the representative himself. For most petitions, the committee gives the electors of the electoral district as the petitioner, who then petition “through” their representative. We find also other communities of the countryside that were listed as petitioners: inhabitants of the civil parish (pitäjä), parish (kappeli), or judicial district (kihlakunta).14 Thus, the interests represented through the petitions reached beyond or were more local than the judicial district, which was the official representative unit. There are only a handful of original petitions found in the Archives of the Parliament. These letters also include different kinds of annexes: people’s letters concerning their tax burden or documents of the local administration supporting changes in the level of taxation. The petition by representative Katina was written in Finnish and concerned the tax burden in the parish of Vehmaa in Southwest Finland. Moreover, Katina presented the estate with a letter from local landowners – also in Finnish. The letter had been compiled by the local chaplain as the signatories did not have the skills to produce such an official text. From their signatures, we see that only one of the four landowners was actually able to write his name – the others simply drew their mark.15 Besides the landowners, we find also rural subaltern groups among the signatories in one of the original petitions conserved. Representative Pohjalainen presented a petition signed by day-workers and lodgers written in Finnish. These include even one woman, Maja Lovisa Lindqvist. Again, this letter had been compiled not by the signatories, nor by the representative, but by a local officer with writing skills. Moreover, in another example, we find that lower rural groups appear as active subjects behind the petition. Representative Kiuru explains in his petition letter how he had been requested by local leaseholders to ask the estate to join the petition. It is important to note that the task of writing was not an easy task for all representatives either. Kiuru wrote his petition in Finnish with difficulty. In another petition by representative Tiainen, there are no punctuation marks, the handwriting is not by someone trained, and the matter is expressed with difficulties.16 Petitioning the diet was a notable effort for some peasant representatives in the early 1860s, and it could involve the broader rural community. Notably, the petitions involving subaltern rural groups concerned matters that indirectly also benefited the landowner himself, and it is possible that the landowners had compelled the tenants to participate in these petitions.

At the crossroads  105 It seems unlikely that the landowners would have taken to the diet any petitions by the subaltern groups that would have been disadvantageous to them. Furthermore, the peasant representatives had a challenging task in acting as representatives in the Finnish language with their experience and during that time, when the political culture was mainly Swedish. In this sense, the elected Peasant Estate acted from a subaltern position in the diet. Fifteen years later, the situation was very different, when the peasant representatives had gained experience and established their status in national representative politics.

Peasant petitions to the diet of 1877–78 In the diet of 1877–78, the Peasant Estate included many representatives (circa 40 percent) who had already been elected to a diet previously. This was the fourth time the diet had convened since 1863. It took place in a formalized and regulated context: the Diet Act of 1869 had been implemented, setting the rules and procedures for the estates’ elections and proceedings, and national politics and the public discussion had been organized more clearly around the two main political factions – the liberal Swedish and Fennoman Finnish – and the newspapers supporting them (e.g., La Mela 2016). The experience gained by the representatives and the formalization of the diet procedure affected the petitions. Importantly, the Diet Act of 1869 had not given the estates the right to introduce motions, and petitions had therefore developed into the main tool of initiative. In contrast to 1863, representatives addressed questions related to national politics in their petitions, and subaltern rural groups did not have an explicit role in the documents. This did not, however, mean that local concerns were set aside; they were framed according to the national political agenda. In 1877–78, there were a handful fewer petitions presented in the Peasant Estate than fifteen years earlier. However, almost all representatives, 50 out of 60, contributed to these 91 petitions. The number of petitions was more evenly distributed, as most representatives submitted one to three petitions, and the two most active petitioners presented six petitions to the estate. One reason for these figures was that the representatives had started to author petitions together. Twelve petitions were presented together with two or more representatives, giving them more weight in the estate’s deliberations. Many of these common petitions concerned one region or an area of the country, which meant that those united behind the petition were representatives of the judicial districts of the region. For example, a petition by five representatives of the northern districts of the country requested funding for clearing out swampland in northern Finland. Their petition was, however, rejected in the estate’s reading because it was deemed an administrative matter not belonging to the powers of the diet (Peasants 1877–78, I, 171–73).

106  Onni Pekonen and Matti La Mela The petitions had taken a more formal and structured written form. They addressed the estate and often its speaker, and described in a concise manner the actual matter to be petitioned. The petitions regarded only one matter and were mainly signed and submitted to the estate by the representative himself. There were a few cases where the representative explicitly presented someone else’s case. Representative Idänpää-Heikkilä from Janakkala district in the Häme region read a petition letter from W. Granlund about the regulations on transporting wood by waterways (Peasants 1877–78, I, 77–78), and Representative Kylmälä of Heinola district presented an excerpt of the minutes of a municipal assembly regarding the work period of annual laborers. The attendants of the meeting had been asked “whether there would be some advice to be given on behalf of the community” to the representative of the district (Peasants 1877–78, I, 109). The themes of the petitions indicate a slight shift from local to nationwide topics: 64 petitions addressed questions concerning the whole country, while 27 petitions regarded local- or regional-level matters. More importantly, in contrast to the diet of 1863–64, the estate seems to have taken a tougher stand against local petitions. Almost half (12) of them were rejected at the estate’s plenary reading, whereas only about one-fourth (17) of the national-level petitions were rejected in the reading. Similar to fifteen years earlier, the local petitions were rejected because they concerned administrative matters, were seen as too detailed, or concerned problems that could also be found in other regions. Representative Junttila petitioned about the unjust tax conditions in the municipality of Muonionniska in Northern Finland and referred to the poor local economic conditions. In the reading, representative Heikkilä proposed a rejection, because “the amount of petitions would become innumerable if one would make them about such hardships, which were found all over the country in almost every village” (Peasants 1877–78, I, 93). Other representatives proposed that the locals should pursue their case not in the diet, but through administrative or legal measures. For the petitions in the diet of 1877–78, we are not able to discern how directly the locals could contribute to them. There is, at least, evidence about the many ways the locals could have become involved and thus been aware of public matters. As noted above, there are some examples where the representative presented somebody else’s case in the diet. In addition, we find examples where the representatives at least claimed to represent their local community or electors. For example, representative Hannuksela signed his petitions on behalf of the municipal meeting, which meant the taxpaying and landowning groups (Peasants 1877–78, I, 108–09). Some representatives referred to discussions at a previous associative meeting or a newspaper article, or else noted that the matter they addressed was widely known in the municipality. At the same time, the representatives seem to relate much more to the top strata of the countryside. This could suggest that the regularization

At the crossroads  107 and strengthening of national politics that had begun with the convening diet of 1863 had enforced these ties in the estate. There is one example of mobilizing the inhabitants of the region to support a petition. Representative Valkola presented a letter of mandate that had been signed by two thousand people from 35 localities in the region of Oulu. Valkola himself stated how these signatories included “citizens from all the estate classes,” thus, alluding to the top social groups (Peasants 1877–78, I, 253–54). Valkola’s petition regarded the establishment of a Finnish-language gymnasium in the town of Oulu, a theme debated at the time in national public discussion and adopted in the political agenda of the Fennoman party. In fact, many of the local petitions that were accepted in the estate’s reading and forwarded to the committees dealt with themes currently discussed in national politics. Moreover, some petitions with a national scope were motivated by examples from a locality. For instance, Representative Hannuksela petitioned about the availability of district doctors in the country and used the situation in his own region of Ostrobothnia to demonstrate the need (Peasants 1877–78, I, 134–35). For the truly local issues approved in the reading, the representatives pointed to the particular needs or the specific role of the area inside the country. In his petition, Representative Junttila asked for the establishment of a post office in the municipality of Kittilä in northern Finland, and highlighted how the great distances in the region harmed the transport of “letters, money, and news literature.” In the reading, Junttila’s fellow Representative Kumpulainen confirmed the challenges of the distances, and defended the petition due to the better communications that had recently developed between Lapland and the rest of Finland (Peasants 1877–78, I, 96–97). It thus appears that the representatives had learned to overcome the tensions between local and national politics by framing their local concerns as part of the national political agenda. This was done directly in the petition texts, or by emphasizing the specific conditions of the area in relation to the nation as a whole in the estate’s reading.

Conclusion At the outset of national representation in the Grand Duchy of Finland, petitions were a common way for the peasant representatives to channel local concerns but also to express national-level matters to the diet, the ruler, and the emerging public sphere. Our study shows how between the first diet in 1863–64 and the fourth diet in 1877–78, the role and style of petitions changed. The strong local emphasis in the early peasant petitions shifted toward formalized petitioning tied to institutionalized national politics. In this process, the subaltern voices, which were heard in a few of the early petitions, were not visible in the later official forms of diet petitioning. In the 1860s and 1870s, at this crossroads of local and national representation in which the Diet Act played a crucial role, the local institutional forms of representation were being developed (see Suodenjoki in this volume) and

108  Onni Pekonen and Matti La Mela were separated from the diet, which was the arena of the national project. The distinction between “diet matters,” which had potential for success in the joint deliberation and decision-making of the estates, and concerns that should be raised in other political arenas had become clearer. In 1863–64, the petitions included a wide range of local concerns. To some extent, the communities, broadly speaking, stood behind the petitions: the petition letters were mere copies of the minutes of the local meetings or prepared by locals about their difficult case. Moreover, the representatives often acted in the name of their community, and in the documents of the estates, the various local communities were listed as the main “petitioners.” Notably, some petitions presented in 1863 involved explicitly people from the lower rural groups, such as tenant farmers and the rural labor force, including one female signatory among these rural laborers. The process of compiling the petitions in Finnish was challenging for the inexperienced representatives or the groups they represented, but there was local knowledge about writing legal texts and complaints to the state administration and legal instances. In 1877–78, petitioning was a more formalized practice than fifteen years earlier; regulations about petitioning had been given in the Diet Act of 1869 and the petitioning process had been commented on in public. In contrast to 1863–64, the petitions more often concerned national-level matters, and those concerning local issues were framed according to the national political agenda. We lack the original petitions for this period, however; it appears that the formalization left the lower social groups out of the official petitioning process. The subaltern rural groups could have participated in the local election meetings, but this cannot be assessed with our sources and remains an area for further research. It appears, therefore, that the Peasant Estate was enforcing its status, which happened also in the emerging municipal government, where the landowners took the leading role due to voting rights being proportional to taxes paid. Moreover, in its main paragraphs, the Diet Act of 1869 highlighted national representation, which was pushing aside ideas of narrower estate and local representation. Interestingly, despite the existing system of estate representation, the practices of estate representation were becoming “unconstitutional,” or at least heavily unpopular and obsolete, during the period of the parliamentarization of Finnish political life from the 1860s onwards (see Pekonen 2014). The early petitions of the 1860s had a strong local emphasis, where local rural actors from the lower social strata could appear as participants in the petitioning process. In the following decade, the petitions remained popular among the representatives, but had become an institutionalized part of national representative politics and the agendas of the political groups. In broader terms, we therefore detect a shift from premodern, individual petitioning toward a more public notion of petitioning. The leading rural groups had learned to overcome the dualism of national and local representation, making their concerns heard by framing them as national questions.

At the crossroads  109

Notes 1 Forsman, Georg Zacharias, “Uusi wuosi 1863,” Helsingin Uutiset, January 2, 1863, 3. Newspapers from the National Library’s digital collection, http://digi. kansalliskirjasto.fi. Forsman’s “state night” was a word play. According to Forsman, the “state night” (valtioyö) was in between two “state days,” valtiopäivä in Finnish, which was a loose translation of the names of foreign representative assemblies, such as landtdag, riksdag, and landtag. The term valtiopäivä(t) was coined during the European revolutions of 1848 and then used also for the Diet of Porvoo. 2 “Waltiopäiwän tulo,” Suometar, January 2, 1863, 1. 3 “Kirje weli Eerolle,” Tapio, October 3, 1863, 3. 4 For examples of newspaper articles, see “Suomen Eduskunta eli Waltiosäädyt,” Helsingin Uutiset, April 16, 1863, 2–4; “Waltiopäiwä-miesten waaleista,” Helsingin Uutiset, July 16, 1863, 1–2; “Waltiopäiwämiehen kunnollisuus,” Suometar, July 17, 1863, 1–2; “Erinomaisen ankaroita sanoja valtiopäiväin tarkoituksesta,” Sanomia Turusta, October 9, 1863, 9–10. 5 For example, see: “Resebref om Finland. V. Landtdagen,” Helsingfors Dagblad, July, 17 1872, 1; “Några dagar i Finland,” Finlands Allmänna Tidning, April 19, 1872, 2–3. For examples of the idealization in the estate’s self-understanding, see the opening speeches of the diet sessions by the Speakers of the Peasant Estate in the estate’s minutes. 6 E.g., “Sana waltiopäiwämiesten walitsemisesta Janakkalassa ja yleiseen,” Hämäläinen, October 2, 1863, 2. 7 J. Koljonen, “Waltio-päiväin tulosta,” Tapio, September 5, 1863, 2. 8 Shortened from the original and translated by the authors of this chapter. 9 “Helsingistä,” Uusi Suometar, December 20, 1871, 1. 10 “Kuopiosta,” Tapio, September 12, 1863, 1. 11 Stimulated by the discussion in the newspapers concerning the convening diet and its role, the electors of the Peasant Estate petitioned also about having regular diet meetings, the right to introduce motions, and the question of ministerial responsibility. Peasants 1863–64, I, 66–67. 12 Tuominen gives a figure of 78 petitions for the diet of 1863–64. Tuominen 1981, 644. 13 “Petitioner och därtill hörande handlingar,” Folder 19. Petitions 1863–64. The Archives of the Peasant Estate. Archives of the Parliament of Finland, Helsinki. 14 “Päiväkirja Pyyntö-esityksiä” (2a), Folder 19. Petitions 1863–64. The Archives of the Peasant Estate. Archives of the Parliament of Finland, Helsinki. 15 “Petitioner och därtill hörande handlingar,” Folder 19. Petitions 1863–64. The Archives of the Peasant Estate. Archives of the Parliament of Finland, Helsinki. 16 “Petitioner och därtill hörande handlingar,” Folder 19. Petitions 1863–64. The Archives of the Peasant Estate. Archives of the Parliament of Finland, Helsinki.

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110  Onni Pekonen and Matti La Mela Diet Act 1869. Hans Kejserliga Majestäts Nådiga Landtdagsordning för Storfurstendömet Finland, 15(3) April 1869. Helsingfors: J. C. Frenckell. Engman, Max. 2017. Språkfrågan. Finlandssvenskhetens uppkomst 1812–1922. Helsingfors: Svenska litteratursällskapet. Forsman, J. 1866. “Kuukauskirje.” Kirjallinen Kuukauslehti 1 (10): 243–46. Hytönen, Viljo. 1923. Talonpoikaissäädyn historia Suomen valtiopäivillä 1809–1906, 1. Helsinki: Tietosanakirja-osakeyhtiö. Hyvärinen, Matti, Jussi Kurunmäki, Kari Palonen, Tuija Pulkkinen, and Henrik Stenius, eds. 2003. Käsitteet liikkeessä: Suomen poliittisen kulttuurin käsitehistoria. Tampere: Vastapaino. Jutikkala, Eino. 1974. “Säätyedustuslaitoksen kokoonpano, työmuodot ja valtuudet.” In Suomen kansanedustuslaitoksen historia IV, edited by Olavi Salervo, 7–145. Helsinki: Eduskunnan historiakomitea. Koskinen, Y. 1867. “Ehdotetusta uudesta Waltiopaiwäjärjestyksestä.” Kirjallinen Kuukauslehti 2 (2): 60–64. Koskinen, Y. 1868. “Yhteiskunnallisia mietteitä.” Kirjallinen Kuukauslehti 3 (11): 269–73. Kuismin, Anna. 2019. “Ideal Types and Odd Men Out: Legal Literacy and Social Mobility in Nineteenth-Century Finland.” In Legal Literacy in Premodern European Societies, edited by Mia Korpiola, 119–44. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. La Mela, Matti. 2016. “The Politics of Property in a European periphery: The ownership of books, berries, and patents in the Grand Duchy of Finland 1850–1910.” PhD diss., European University Institute, Florence. http://doi.org/10.2870/604750. Landgren, Lars-Folke. 1988. “Kieli ja aate – politisoituva sanomalehdistö 1860– 1889.” In Sanomalehdistön vaiheet vuoteen 1905. Suomen lehdistön historia 1, edited by Päiviö Tommila, 267–420. Kuopio: Kustannuskiila. Leino-Kaukiainen, Pirkko. 1988. “Kasvava sanomalehdistö sensuurin kahleissa 1890–1905.” In Sanomalehdistön vaiheet vuoteen 1905. Suomen lehdistön historia 1, edited by Päiviö Tommila, 421–632. Kuopio: Kustannuskiila. Liikanen, Ilkka. 2003. “Kansa.” In Käsitteet liikkeessä: Suomen poliittisen kulttuurin käsitehistoria, edited by Matti Hyvärinen, Jussi Kurunmäki, Kari Palonen, Tuija Pulkkinen, and Henrik Stenius, 257–307. Tampere: Vastapaino. Lilius, Patrik. 1974. “Säätyvaltiopäivien työmuodot.” In Suomen kansanedustuslaitoksen historia IV, edited by Olavi Salervo, 149–341. Helsinki: Eduskunnan historiakomitea. Loft, Philip. 2019. “Petitioning and Petitioners to the Westminster Parliament, 1660–1788.” Parliamentary History 38 (3): 342–61. https://doi.org/10.1111/17500206.12449. Marjanen, J., V. Vaara, A. Kanner, H. Roivainen, E. Mäkelä, L. Lahti, and M. Tolonen. 2019. “A National Public Sphere? Analyzing the Language, Location, and From of Newspapers in Finland, 1771–1917.” Journal of European Periodical Studies 4 (1), 55–78. https://doi.org/10.21825/jeps.v4i1.10483. Miller, Henry. 2019.“Introduction: The Transformation of Petitioning in the Long Nineteenth Century (1780–1914).” Social Science History 43 (3): 409–29. https:// doi.org/10.1017/ssh.2019.24. Paloheimo, Maare. 2012. “Business Life in Pursuit of Economic and Political Advantages in Early-Nineteenth-Century Finland.” PhD diss., University of Jyväskylä. http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-951-39-4992-1.

At the crossroads  111 Peasants 1863–64, 1877–78. 1882. The Minutes of the Peasant Estate in the Diets of Finland. Pekonen, Onni. 2014. “Debating ‘the ABCs of Parliamentary Life’: The Learning of Parliamentary Rules and Practices in the Late Nineteenth-century Finnish Diet and the Early Eduskunta.” PhD diss., University of Jyväskylä. http://urn.fi/ URN:ISBN:978-951-39-5843-5. Pekonen, Onni. 2017a. “Parliamentarizing the Estate Diet. The Debate on Plenum Plenorum in late 19th-century Finland.” Scandinavian Journal of History 42 (3): 245–272. https://doi.org/10.1080/03468755.2017.1315168. Pekonen, Onni. 2017b. “The Political Transfer of Parliamentary Concepts and Practices in the European Periphery: The Case of Obstruction in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Finland.” Parliaments, Estates and Representation 37 (3): 281–300. https://doi.org/10.1080/02606755.2017.1326558. Pekonen, Onni. 2019. “Rejecting the Upper Chamber: National Unity, Democrati­ sation and Imperial Rule in the Grand Duchy of Finland, 1860–1906.” In Reforming Senates: Upper Legislative Houses in North Atlantic Small Powers 1800–present, edited by Nikolaj Bijleveld, Colin Grittner, David E. Smith, and Wybren Verstegen, 116–32. London: Routledge. Pekonen, Onni. 2021. “The (Re)Naming of the Finnish Representative Assembly 1809–1919: State-building, Representation and Sovereignty.” Redescriptions: Political Thought, Conceptual History and Feminist Theory 24 (2): 129–49. http:// doi.org/10.33134/rds.348. Salmi-Niklander, Kirsti. 2013. “Monologic, Dialogic, Collective. Modes of Writing in Finnish Hand-Written Newspapers.” In White Field, Black Seeds: Nordic Literacy Practices in the Long Nineteenth-Century, edited by Anna Kuismin, and M. J. Driscoll, 76–88. Helsinki: SKS. Stark, Laura. 2014. “The Rise of Finnish-Language Popular Literacy Viewed through Correspondence to Newspapers 1856–70.” In Vernacular Literacies – Past, Present and Future, edited by Ann-Catrine Edlund, Lars-Erik Edlund, and Susanne Haugen, 261–77. Umeå: Umeå University. http://www.diva-portal.org/ smash/get/diva2:736804/FULLTEXT02.pdf. Suomen väestö joulukuun 31 p:nä 1865. 1870. Population in Finland on 31 December 1865. Helsinki: Tilastollinen toimisto. http://www.doria.fi/handle/10024/67349 Tuominen, Uuno. 1981. “Valtiopäivätyön satoa.” In Suomen kansanedustuslaitoksen historia II, edited by Uuno Tuominen, and Lolo Krusius-Ahrenberg, 461–646. Helsinki: Eduskunnan historiakomitea. Voss, Lex Heerma van. 2001. “Introduction.” International Review of Social History 46, S9, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1017/S002085900100030X. Zaret, David. 2019. “Petition-and-Response and Liminal Petitioning in Comparative/Historical Perspective.” Social Science History 43 (3): 431–51. https://doi.org/10.1017/ssh.2019.16.

6 Outsiders? “Democratic patronage” and the ­subalterns in France, c.1875–c.1935 Frédéric Monier

When tackling a topic such as patronage politics, it is tempting to label these practices as archaic. Patronage, clientelism, and even nepotism: in the context of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe, these notions would indicate unlawful systems. They encompass static instead of dynamic social relations, enabling the powerful and mighty to dispossess and subjugate citizens-as-subalterns. Patronage, linked to favors and grace, and opposing meritocracy and equal rights, can be seen as a pre-political device. This common interpretation of patron-client relations, which tends to depict the ordinary client as dominated, or as subaltern, because of their gender, social, or cultural conditions (Ligori 2016), still somewhat prevails to this day. The patronage systems rediscovered by social scientists in southern, Mediterranean, and rural societies during the 1970s (Davis 1977; Gellner & Waterbury 1977), appear nearly unchanged in these European countries until the 1930s, or even later. Subalterns, in this rather classical framework, seemed to oscillate between two extremes. On the one hand, for instance in the Spanish countryside during the 1930s, the political behavior of the majority would still appear to be ruled by pre-political schemes and considerations of dependence and loyalty (Rodriguez Prada, 2013). On the other hand, the same subalterns could participate in mass rebellions and transform themselves into political and even revolutionary agents, as they actually did during the Spanish Civil War. Opposing these rather classical interpretations, other research has highlighted the surprising ways in which both subaltern clients and the powerful used patronage relations as agents of modernization. When doing so, they transformed and merged inherited social and cultural patterns into new ones. The whole process eventually enabled clients to become politically aware. Hence, “democratic patronage” was created, as Maurice Agulhon (1979, 481) has suggested in an essay on 1848 and the French Second Republic in southern rural areas. This concept implies the emergence of a rather paradoxical intermediary state, between pre-political communities (in which elites dominated subalterns through a rigid social hierarchy), and democratic politicized societies (in which subalterns became political agents and full citizens, thanks to the rule of law and DOI: 10.4324/9781003290087-9

Outsiders?  113 Weberian-style bureaucracies). More recent studies, especially by social scientist Jean-Louis Briquet (1997) in France, have demonstrated that things were not what they seemed to be, not even in rather isolated local societies such as Corsica, with its bad reputation of client-based politics and clannist belongings that would give subalterns no real choice of whom to support. Even there, patronage provided a way to introduce and alter modernization, i.e., national (French) state-building, bureaucratization, and politicization, and helped forge social consent. Recent historiography of patronage, following this alternative perspective, developed especially in France (Briquet & Sawicki 1998), Italy (Musella 1994; Nicolo 2001), and Spain (Moreno Luzon 1998, 2007; Rubi i Casals 2012, 2019) since the 1990s. This research tradition proposes another analytic framework, positing that patronage adapted itself to modernization, and could even be a peculiar path leading to it. Even if subalterns did not benefit from their patron-client relations, such networks could not prevent them from acquiring their own knowledge of the political system, and thus becoming politically aware. This newer interpretation, opposite to the previous narratives, needs to be exposed, explained, and discussed. Therefore, the aim of this contribution is to shed light on the unofficial ways in which “ordinary” citizens actually participated in political life in liberal and parliamentary contexts. More concretely, the chapter hereby focuses on the instances when subalterns were addressing a political patron, frequently an elected representative, to further their own interests. A thorough examination of political knowledge of subalterns through written documents (such as private petitions), which they produced or received when making personal claims, has proven to be quite a difficult task, even in the southern European countries where research has paid a great deal of attention to these questions. In fact, historiography has long examined this kind of source, following the hypothesis of a tendency shift in practice: from the Ancien Régime requests to mass petitions, defined as modes of political expression and vectors of democratic mobilization. Recent research critically discusses this view, while it still mainly concentrates on collective petitions (Miller 2019, 409–29), even if a few essays also pay attention to “humble appeals” of individuals (Huzzey & Miller 2020). The present chapter adopts a different approach, by scrutinizing private and individual letters. It mainly concentrates on one case study: the Third Republic, established in France in 1875 and destroyed at the beginning of the Second World War. Additionally, it sheds a comparative light on its southern neighbors, the first case being united Italy in the liberal age, from the 1860s up to the introduction of universal male suffrage in 1912 and the First World War. Secondly, the analysis also draws attention to Spain from the 1870s and the strengthening of the political system of the Bourbon Restoration, up to 1923, the dictatorship, and the creation of the Second Republic in 1931. Because this comparative approach highlights the

114  Frédéric Monier differences between the three countries, it helps to further our understanding of some French specificities. As for Germany, historiography of patronage has been renewed by very recent research, but extensive studies are still missing (Köhler 2018). Despite some similarities between those countries (cf. the parliamentary political system of the time), and some general trends (which affected most European societies at the turn of the twentieth century), each case has to be considered different. The study of patronage in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Europe commonly disregards subalterns or subordinate citizens, such as women and male workers, whom we could consider “borderline citizens” (Gleadle 2009). We know very little about them, including when they actually built relationships with a political patron. Most of our knowledge concerns Third Republican France. This is paradoxical, because Italian and Spanish historiographies have kept a close eye on those “letters to the powerful” since the 1990s (Zadra & Fait 1991). This gap in existing scholarship can largely be attributed to the characteristics of the sources, especially private petitions and informal correspondence between subaltern clients and their patrons, generally depicted as their protectors (Marin 2000). Furthermore, subalterns were outsiders, because of the cultural capacity required to successfully take part in the practice of petitioning – a certain degree of literacy – and of a prevailing social norm, which compelled them to ask middle-class notables to act as their mediators or favorbrokers towards political patrons. From the 1990s, historiography of patronage has considered the existence of a transformative process, from old-style, top-down patronage (when the powerful still dominated subaltern clients in the late nineteenth century), to a more politicized society (in which mass organizations such as political parties would build up horizontal networks between militants and leaders). In this perspective, the First World War should be considered the matrix of a global crisis, because of its destructive social and political effects. However, this general trend should not obscure or make us underestimate the differences between the various types and styles of patronage that existed during the same period, even within the same countries and societies. More concretely, it is important to differentiate between industrial paternalism, rural or small-town-style patronage, and party-clientelism. In addition, the role(s) of subalterns (subordinate citizens) differed too, as their political awareness, and cultural skills and competences varied according to different contexts and settings. Patron-client relations could oscillate between deference, reciprocity, or even distrust; thus, they illustrate the co-existence of various political cultures, even if general trends stand out. This chapter discusses and deconstructs the linear historical pattern according to which the general crisis of old-style patronage around 1900 would have given birth, after the First World War, to party-clientelism. The latter notion implies that organizations dedicated to mass politics accelerated

Outsiders?  115 the politicization of “ordinary” citizen-subalterns. The present chapter adopts a chronological approach to highlight the limitations and the drawbacks of this linear analysis, and to suggest that boundaries between patronage relations and democratic politics were often blurred.

“Hidden franchise” and social norms: subalterns, brokers, and patrons Although different in each of the aforementioned European societies, the historical studies of patronage and clientelism have one thing in common: they have not paid much attention (or any at all) to subalterns. This is not due to a contemptuous attitude from many historians, but can be explained by the characteristics of the sources needed for this kind of research. Private petitions, as evidence of existing influence networks (Musella 1994), do not offer many examples of a subaltern directly addressing a political patron. One of these rather rare examples, in the French context, is that of Siffrein Augier, a potter in southeastern France, in a small town, Carpentras (Monier 2016). In 1887, he addressed a letter to his republican député (parliamentary representative) Alfred Michel to get a better job at a railway company. The latter was a left-wing republican or radical, and mayor of Carpentras from 1887 to 1891. He was elected député in 1885, re-elected in 1889, and he died in 1891 (Portalez 2018). The young potter assured the representative that he was politically trustworthy, or in other words, that he and his parents were Michel’s voters. The family vote also included two of his brothers-in-law, who had cast their ballot especially in the last elections. The clientelist dimension of the exchange is obvious: Augier, aged 28, requested a job recommendation and offered his family’s political support in return, as a reward. He explained it in a highly pragmatic way, which is very rare in such nineteenth-century letters. Usually, some short set of phrases and expressions implied between the lines that the député or the village mayor could expect a political reward. Such standard phrases were: “being a good republican,” “fulfilling my duty as elector,” and so on. His letter (translated below) is relatively exceptional from a social point of view too – because Augier was a laborer – as well as from a political viewpoint. Dear Sir, Knowing the concern that you have for your concitoyens [fellow citizens] in general, and for republicans in particular, allow me to call upon your utmost benevolence to ask a service of you for which I would be most grateful. I am Augier Siffrein, a potter from Carpentras, avenue de Pernes. I am 28 years old and have been married for a short while. I have been exempted from military service as I am the eldest son of a father in his seventies. Because I have never been convicted, I am in full possession of my civil and political rights. During the last

116  Frédéric Monier legislative elections, my parents as well as those of my wife were pleased to vote for you, as were my brothers-in-law whom we sent to vote from Nyons, where they work. I have come to the purpose of my letter. The pottery industry has lost, and is losing its importance in Carpentras every day. The availability of work has significantly diminished and thus the working potter is reduced to only a very small wage. Wishing to acquire a better position for myself to provide for my family and to ensure that I have a pension for when I grow old, having come to an agreement with my parents, I would like to enter the workforce of the railway company. That is why I urgently ask you, Sir, to vouchsafe the procedure that I must follow as well as the person to whom I should address my request. May this letter serve as proof of my education. Please accept, Sir, my thanks with the expression of my highest esteem.1 Why is this kind of letter so rare in these abundant correspondence files? The first reason is the cultural capacity to write and to express oneself, or, in other words, to draw the patron’s attention to oneself and get a favorable response. Siffrein Augier was quite aware of his own knowledge and literacy, as he highlighted at the end of his letter. The second reason comes to the fore in upper-middle-class control over socially subaltern clients. Literacy seemed to go hand in hand with political knowledge and commitment. In the case of France, many studies have demonstrated that illiteracy declined from the beginning of the nineteenth century, with a strong decrease from the beginning of the 1880s. The percentage of people unable to sign their own wedding certificate was 20.52 percent between 1863 and 1882 for men, and 32.07 percent for women. The average illiteracy level decreased to 6.4 percent for men between 1883 and 1902, and to 10.7 percent for women (Pélissier & Rébaudo 2004). In this social and cultural context, a young potter like Augier, from a small town, could write a private petition to his député, apparently all by himself. The education reforms led by republican leader Jules Ferry in the early 1880s established and accelerated this general trend. Nonetheless, a “hidden franchise” (Gaxie 1978) or “cultural census” existed in French society, alongside and despite the official universal male suffrage. In other words, a cultural gap (between the literate and illiterate) created political segregation and made it impossible for the culturally subaltern to be recognized as fully politically aware citizens. Yet, the situation was very different from the Italian, not to mention the Spanish one. Manuel Marin (2006), who has investigated the correspondence of Pablo Turull (an entrepreneur and political leader, cacique in Catalunya), stated that there were very few letters from “the little people,” much fewer than from important people, electors, notables, and individuals belonging to local elites. Illiteracy and financial cost explained this situation, that is, the cost of paper and the service rendered by a public writer.

Outsiders?  117 According to Spanish historians, illiteracy rates in the late nineteenth century were especially high, up to almost 70 percent of the overall population, which was largely in line with the economic situation of the 65 percent of the active population being employed in the primary sector. In the 1930s, illiteracy in Spain was still much higher than in France or in Italy: Mercedes Vilanova Ribas and Xavier Moreno Julià (1992) state that it concerned 32 percent of the whole population. Thus, caciquismo, the rule of caciques, thrived on illiteracy. Italian historians have published some studies on this topic as well. One of them, Daniela Adorni, has investigated private petitions and letters sent from Sicily to the two prime ministers of Sicilian origin who ruled Italy between 1887 and 1898: Francesco Crispi and Antonio di Rudini. Adorni explains that most petitioners and letter-writers belonged to the (low and average) middle class. However, in many cases, she observes a rhetorical style that only “professionals of the pen” could use. This difference between intellectual and material letter-writers can be explained by an insufficient degree of literacy and lacking cultural competences. According to Luigi Musella (1994), the average illiteracy rates for people aged over fifteen were the following in 1871: 30 percent (Florence), 13 percent (Milano), 41 percent (Rome), 58 percent (Naples), 28 percent (Genoa), 56 percent (Palermo), and 33 percent (Venice). Illiteracy, both in Spain and in Italy, was a key argument held by conservative leaders and parties to oppose the introduction of universal male suffrage. Census was the legal norm in Italy, asserted once more in 1891, which caused electors to represent only 9.4 percent of the overall population. In 1894, this electoral law was restricted even further, as explains Rafael Zurrita (2001, 168), by excluding those without a school diploma who nonetheless knew how to read and write and could demonstrate it before a judge. Consequently, the percentage of voters declined again, from 9.4 to 6.7 percent of the total population. This context explains the need for intermediaries, among whom several types existed, including public writers (Lyons 2014) and what French people called solliciteurs in the mid-nineteenth century (Agnès 2012). Also widespread was the control that “local notables,” brokers belonging to the middle classes, and political friends of a député or patron exerted on subaltern citizens seeking protection or help. For instance, in Carpentras in 1888, Georges David, fruit merchant and almond expediter, and a political friend of the aforementioned radical Alfred Michel recommended a poor disabled old lady from his neighborhood, “called Jeanne Maurique spouse Sarrasin.” Patronage implied the existence of brokers who were socially and culturally distant from the more modest or poor people whom we may consider subalterns (the dominated and thus subordinate clients). In the case of Jeanne Maurique (the elderly mother of a young, widowed daughter who had two small children), député Alfred Michel could not expect any political compensation in return for his help, because women

118  Frédéric Monier did not have the right to vote. However, his cultural legitimacy as a political patron also depended on his charitable deeds that strengthened his own reputation and that of his friend and broker, merchant David. Michel’s private papers include a register of demands from 1889 to 1891, containing 883 requests, presented in alphabetic order. Under the letter C, there are 86 private individual petitions, 38 (i.e., 44 percent) which were preceded by a manuscript mention “Rec.,” meaning that the letter was written by a broker who advocated the private claim of a third party. The strong role of brokers in patronage relations was not specific to the French Third Republic at the end of the nineteenth century; quite the contrary. In Spain, even in the case of industrial cities surrounding Barcelona, the poorest relied on notable intermediaries to address a patron (Rubi i Casals 2006). The protection of subalterns, recommended by a notable, increased the good reputation and prestige of the cacique, when no political counterpart could be asked. This hierarchical informal circuit between patron, broker, and client can be considered the social norm in that era, even in the case of a literate subaltern. In a letter written in March 1879, widow Francisca Roqueta, recommended by a local notable, thanked cacique Pablo Turull for his protection: she wished to “express her eternal gratitude, and remain at your disposal, ready to satisfy all that you will have the kindness to ask” (Marin 2006). This social and cultural pattern changed, especially in France, as the years went by. In her analysis of the private correspondence of French député Laurent Bonnevay, during the interwar period in a district close to Lyon, Gaëlle Charcosset (2003) demonstrates that intermediaries were involved in 26.2 percent of the total amount of private petitions and claims. The brokers could generally be the ones writing the letters, although, at times, they were only writing a few words (an apostille, following the French term) to introduce somebody else’s request. In a study of another influential French representative, Édouard Daladier, who was member of the government several times in the 1920s and 1930s, it appeared that in his constituency between 1924 and 1940, 20 percent of the private petitions had been recommended by a third party. The broker could be an elected member of a municipal council or an alderman, but sometimes also a family member of the supplicant or client in question (Monier 2007). In her study of the changing practices of private petitioning in the Meuse district in Lorraine, from the 1880s to the 1980s, Julie Bour (2018) notices a general trend: the decline of intermediaries. She explains that, in these northeastern areas of France, before the First World War, there seem to have been no private petitions that were sent directly to a political patron. In each case, there was a broker: people did not directly address a “powerful person” at the end of the nineteenth century. It appears to be quite different in the 1960s, as the case of Louis Jacquinot demonstrates. Jacquinot, elected député for the Lorraine from 1932 to 1973, and a minister in the 1950s and 1960s, left his papers to the archives. They include a huge

Outsiders?  119 quantity of private requests, complaints, and personal claims: approximately 17,000 between 1965 and 1974. Only in 21 percent of the cases, had another person recommended a private petition, thus acting as a broker, most of the time for a member of the family. If we focus on both phenomena – cultural problems of illiteracy among the subaltern groups on the one hand, and a strong presence of intermediaries between subalterns and political patrons on the other – we might conclude that subaltern citizens were not regular nor active clients in the political patronage systems existing at the end of the nineteenth century. This was even the case in France, where the core clientele could nonetheless be characterized as middle class. This preliminary conclusion corroborates the results of other studies on the socio-political systems existing in late-nineteenth century France, Italy, and Spain. A closer investigation of private petitions sheds light on the difficulties for subalterns to acquire cultural competences and political knowledge. This is one aspect of the “uncompleted democratization” coined by Teresa Arbat Carnero (2001) in the Spanish case, for which she highlighted the role of political elites in the process. At this point, it seems that patronage had only partly and slightly changed since the early modern period and Ancien Régime societies. According to Sharon Kettering (1988), the “historical development of political clientelism” was characterized by a ternary or triadic structure of mediation between a client, a broker, and a patron, that shows unequal exchanges and informal domination by patrons. It does so, she added, in very different societies, such as seventeenth-century France and England, or the late nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire.

Deference, reciprocity, and distrust: contrasting subaltern political cultures Despite these long-term inherited features, some political and cultural changes appeared nonetheless at the end of the nineteenth century. In the Spanish case, as studied by Gemma Rubi (2011), these changes, fueled by mass politics, involved a “modernization from below,” and a “conversion” of the caciquismo and old-style patronage politics. This transformation went hand in hand with cultural changes: the new style caciquismo, as pointed out by Juan Pro Ruiz (2004, 634), was oriented towards “reciprocity” and tended to replace the older value systems based on deference. This can be explained by the increase in political participation and the strengthening of political awareness within larger social groups. A changing vocabulary in the private letters between caciques and subordinates stands out as evidence: some reverential words, such as “master” (to identify the patron) or “creature,” (to identify their own subaltern position) became scarce, and a vocabulary marked by friendship appeared instead. We can observe such a general evolution in the three southern European countries, although in very diverse ways. Moreover, somehow, antagonistic

120  Frédéric Monier patronage systems still co-existed in the same period. To illustrate this point, the remainder of this chapter will discuss three examples, two of which can be situated in industrial settings before the First World War, whereas the third one took place in rural southern France in the interwar period. Some studies have focused on industrial paternalism around 1900 (Noiriel 1988), and, in a few cases, they have documented the cultural expressions and political knowledge of industrial workers. Michel Offerlé (2007) has investigated part of the Schneider industries’ archives in France, and discovered a group of 994 letters, nearly all sent in January 1902 to Eugène Schneider. He was the owner of the Schneider industries, among which a factory located in Le Creusot was one of the biggest in France at the time. Eugène Schneider II (1868–1942) was heir of an industrial dynasty founded by his grandfather, Eugène Schneider I. Eugène Schneider II was also elected député in the constituency of Le Creusot in 1898. He faced long strikes in 1899–1900, and fought against trade unions, using a huge lock-out system against strikers, and stimulating the creation of a devoted pro-entrepreneur trade union. This patronal (and paternalistic) trade union was called a syndicat jaune by the left-wing commentators, and especially socialists, who pilloried him in their newspapers. Nonetheless, these 994 letters asked or begged the patron to present himself as a candidate for the next elections in 1902. According to Offerlé (2007), workers employed in Schneider’s factory in Le Creusot wrote the vast majority of these letters. However, Offerlé found no documentary evidence to suggest that these letters would have changed Eugène Schneider’s mind about whether or not to present himself as a candidate again. Despite this lack of documentation, it seems reasonable to assume that the letters were not spontaneous. The hierarchy of the factory, as it appears, incited workers to take action. Engineers, overseers, or supervisors probably asked their laborers to write such letters. What kind of pressure or transactions can be said to lay behind these writings? They can testify to the relationship some workers had with their patron, and also to the culture of loyalty existing within part of this social group in 1902. Mister Schneider I acknowledge your candidacy to support the interest of the worker Desvignes Claude Other letters are more developed and structured. Louis Geffroy wrote three pages, trying to convince the patron that he should put himself forward as a legislative candidate again: Indeed, Sir, there is no one more qualified than you to occupy this position of député; what we need are men like you; upright and honest, who know how to manage business, so as to run those of France.

Outsiders?  121 All writers knew that Eugène Schneider was a député. According to Offerlé, many letters included terms such as: to represent, representative, leader, or chief. Some workers recognized Schneider as their patron: Attached we have become, we are and steadfastly will be under your magnanimous patronage (L. Lesavre, electrician) I shall fulfil my duty as a citizen as I always stand for my patron. (François Gudin, artillery) These expressions of personal fidelity did not contradict the letter-writers’ ideological choices and references. Let us consider, for instance, all the descriptions of and allusions to political enemies, which one can find in the letters concerning the leftists: ceux de la sociale, the adepts of la démagogie socialiste, those who were in favor of the strikes and did not recognize Schneider as their representative. In a nutshell, even these 994 letters, sent to a patron who was head of the factories and at the same time a representative in the legislative assembly (Chambre des Députés), illustrate the existence of a complex culture of deference, which was not contradictory to ideological choices. Patronage relations still prevailed in these letters, but they did not exclude the use of political expressions or knowledge in 1902. Was this specific to the French case? The political expressions of ordinary industrial workers were exceptional in France, and scarce elsewhere, at least before the First World War. Augusta Molinari (1997, 587) has looked into private petitions and claims from industrial workers to their patron, the Perrone brothers, who owned the Ansaldo factories, located in different places, but mostly in Genoa. She studied approximately 1,000 letters written between 1904 and the beginning of the 1920s, and stated that these letters to the patron were quite rare before the First World War. A written individual petition, she added, was a rather “extreme” practice for the workers. However, it tended to become much more common afterwards. The bulk of the letters was written at the end of the First World War and in its aftermath: 60 in 1917, 102 in 1918, 200 in 1919, 234 in 1920, and 256 in 1921. These writings were personal, and their authors’ expression of their patron-client-relation was no longer an exception. As Molinari shows, many of these letters testified to working-class resistance against a modernization process that the patron wanted to achieve. These examples of industrial patronage stand out in contrast to some examples of rural patronage politics in the Provence, southeastern France, after the First World War. The major part of the constituency of an important political patron in France, Édouard Daladier, included rural areas in the interwar period (Monier 2007). In one village, Beaumes de Venise, people sent 60 private petitions over the course of 15 years (1924–39). The majority of these petitions sought help and reparations for damage caused by the Great War,

122  Frédéric Monier such as financial aid for disabled veterans, for war widows, or for families who took care of war orphans. The authors of the letters were 47 people, among whom were three women and three foreigners. The majority could not be considered subaltern, but nor could they be characterized as middle-class. Only ten letters include a political justification or reference, even in an allusive tone. One letter, written by a 46-year-old farmer, Clément Blauvac, testified to an inherited culture, marked by political deference: “one of your faithful and devoted electors is asking a service.”2 Other letters expressed different political attitudes. A hardly literate carpenter, Louis Mouletin addressed Minister Édouard Daladier calling him “my dear friend” in February 1926. He closed his petition with the following phrase: “your friend who sends you a cordial handshake.” He was the only one to allude to a political meeting where he had met other “radical députés” (but failed to see Daladier himself). Among the 41 petitioners, ten had been elected or had put themselves forward as candidates for the local municipal council. However, only two out of ten supported Daladier’s political party: the rest of them – eight out of ten – should be considered political adversaries of Daladier’s party in the village. This was a rather unusual village indeed: its first mayor, after 1919, was a communist. Was there by any chance a connection between the social ruptures caused by the First World War, the scarce political expressions in those letters, and the few electoral compensations Daladier could expect? Could communism be compatible with private claims sent to an influential republican député?

“Dear Comrade:” subalterns, socialism, and party patronage in the France of the 1930s Research published since the 1990s has highlighted the existence of a transformative process that resulted in political patronage from below, especially after the First World War. A closer look at different settings and situations suggests that this process was not linear. Private petitions could testify to the existence of loyalty to the patron (cf. Eugène Schneider’s correspondence), or on the contrary, to workers’ resistance against the patron’s plans (cf. the petitions to the Perrone brothers). The personal requests sent by ordinary citizens could fuel the informal economy of favors and votes, but this was not always the case, not even in a small village. In this perspective, one last case should be considered: that of Léon Blum, one of the most popular socialist leaders in France between the 1920s and 1950, the year in which he died. He led the first socialist cabinet in France, as prime minister in 1936–37, at the forefront of a left-wing coalition: the French Popular Front. The Nazis seized his correspondence and his private papers in 1940 as part of the huge archive looting that took place in all the countries they occupied in Europe (Coeuré 2013; Shapovalova 2019). In 1945, the Soviet army took possession of the stolen

Outsiders?  123 archives, and kept them, secretly, until the collapse of the USSR in 1991. Consequently, only quite recently, historians have discovered these Blum papers, among which there is a vast number of private petitions and appeals that people had sent to him (Berstein 2006; Monier 2016). From 1929 to 1940, Blum was a député for a constituency in southern France, in the small city of Narbonne. Many requests came from middleclass people looking for a position, a better job, financial help from an administration, an honorific distinction, fiscal comfort, a shortened service in the army, or – as far as civil servants were concerned – a promotion. Some of these letters were written by the workers themselves, belonging to subaltern groups. A case in point is farmer François Velasco, who sent his request for help in January 1940, at the beginning of the war, to get his drafted son a military allowance that the army did not pay.3 His language was highly politicized: Velasco presented himself as a socialist militant, party member in his village, and trade unionist. He suspected the administration had purposely deprived his son of the aforementioned military allowance, because of his father’s (the letter-writer’s) political commitment and engagement in the trade union. Velasco explained that he had no luck and that he earned nothing but his wage. Without any overt characteristics of a culture of deference, he opened his letter with “my dear Blum.” He ended with a rather friendly, emotional, and respectful expression: “please receive my dear President my most sincere and warm socialist greetings.” Léon Blum answered with a short letter, typed by his secretary. It started with: “dear comrade Velasco;” thus, the socialist leader did not create any cultural distance between himself and the militant letter-writer. Instead, he implied political equality between both of them, following the rules and norms created by their political party, even though Velasco, as a farmer, militant, and trade unionist, depended and relied upon the influential political leader whom he respected and supported. The latter example is reminiscent of the notion of “organization patronage,” as described by Jens Ivo Engels and Volker Köhler (2019), in their reference to Wolfgang Sofsky and Rainer Paris’ work (1994). This type of patronage did not only include male workers as political actors, but also other subalterns. In Blum’s correspondence, indeed, women were present as political agents too. We should not forget that women in France had no suffrage rights until 1945, and that the socialist party was in favor of their right to vote. Blum was the first French Prime Minister to include three women as Deputy Secretaries of State (sous-secrétaires de l’Etat, as the French called them at the time). Blum’s support for women’s emancipation, suffrage, and more, was well-known among the population (Tarrago 2019), which might explain why many women wrote to him directly, and, when doing so, identified themselves as his supporters. Blum was not the only French politician to receive female support through letters in 1936, and the case of conservative Catholic Louis Marin

124  Frédéric Monier seems to reveal a broader phenomenon (Lauwers 2022). However, Blum received particularly many expressions of political admiration from women, the practice reaching its peak after the socialists’ electoral success in May and June. Solange Leuzy, female employee of PTT (post offices): humble admirer of Mister Léon Blum and of the party he has always defended so valiantly, requests him to accept her warm congratulations for the greatest success he obtained, with the expression of her most respectful feelings.4 Mrs. Yvonne Viaud, shorthand-typist living in Sorgues, near Avignon, wrote: Sir, in these […] circumstances, a humble citizen wishes to express her ardent admiration and her total confidence in your government.5 Some women who addressed Léon Blum personally described themselves as politically aware, or as militants. For instance, in a letter sent from Paris, on May 5, 1936, “the female staff of a bourgeois house,” as they depicted themselves, “extend their enthusiastic congratulations for the huge electoral success.” They signed off as “two fervent socialists and one communist.”6 Recent research on collective and public petitions from suffragists has stressed the importance of petitioning as a “formative practice” for American women before they gained the right to vote (Carpenter et al. 2018). When dealing with the case of French women from the 1930s, and considering their private letters, this could be an inspiring view. Besides expressing their emotions and political support in a personalized way when addressing their leader, some of these women acted as occasional brokers. They used Blum’s influence to fulfill the requests of some petitioners, and to further the general interests of the socialist party. The first and most active broker was Blum’s second wife, Thérèse Pereyra, who married him after the death of his first wife, in 1931, (and who died in 1938 herself). Pereyra received many private petitions, some of which were written by women. She was a socialist militant, and many fellow comrades called her citoyenne Léon Blum, or even citoyenne Thérèse Léon Blum, phrasings that cannot be translated properly in English, without losing their tenor. Other female militants addressed Léon Blum directly, and intervened on behalf of ordinary people, who could be foreigners in trouble, and whom we can hardly speak of as clients. This happened more frequently in the late 1930s, when France became (though temporarily and with harsh restrictions) a safe haven for people persecuted in their own country, even when xenophobia reached its peak in French society. In June 1939, Suzanne Deixonne, a teacher in an upper primary school in Aurillac, wrote to Léon Blum, calling him “dear comrade.”7 She wished that he could help a young

Outsiders?  125 Spanish colleague, Bernardo Clariana, a 26-year-old republican, who had had to flee Spain. After a few weeks in a French concentration camp near the border, he managed to reach Narbonne, but was without a job. The documents do not indicate whether this Spanish republican was a socialist, a member of the fellow socialist party (PSOE) belonging to the same international organization as the French SFIO. What we do know, is that Clariana was a poet, and that Deixonne, in her recommendation to Léon Blum, presented him as her friend (Le Bigot 1997, 49). Blum replied to Deixonne, calling her “dear comrade” too, and told her that he would write to the French administration and to the local socialist militants, his “friends of Narbonne,” so that they could help her “unfortunate friend,” Clariana. Blum’s correspondence files contain many other examples of these leftwing networks helping foreigners and political refugees on the eve of June 1940 and the collapse of republican France. A few recent studies have looked into the requests and petitions written by some of these political exiles, whom we could characterize as subalterns as well (Adamez Castro 2016).

Conclusion Although socially subaltern citizens represented the vast majority of the politically dominated “clients,” we do not know that much about their engagement in political patronage networks. This is probably the reason why patronage is often considered a mere pre-political pattern, in which personal loyalty and social domination prevented any type of ideological commitment or political awareness. In other words, because of the scarcity of source material produced by the subalterns themselves, it is difficult to gain insights into their personal expressions, political views, and self-engineering. The reasons why these private petitions, personal letters, and individual requests are so rare are both cultural and social. First, literacy (even poor and obtained outside school) was a major requirement for engaging in written patron-client relations. Though quite high in France in the late nineteenth century, literacy was, at times, not sufficient to break the “cultural franchise” or unofficial census (despite the official abolition of census voting) that legitimized political segregation. The second reason was social: recommendation by a notable, a member of a municipal council, was a prevailing norm around 1900. Social habits generally prevented addressing a patron or a powerful man directly themselves. Recent historiography contains examples of this in France, and most of all in Italy and different parts of Spain, where illiteracy was widespread. Still, “cultural franchise” and prevailing social norms do not imply that blind loyalty to the patron was self-evident. Even in the case of Eugène Schneider II, after the huge strikes in 1899–1900, many workers who addressed him gave proof of political knowledge. Sending a private request

126  Frédéric Monier to the patron was no longer an exception, or an answer to pressure. This changing attitude could, at least in a peculiar French village in the interwar period, include the strategic use of private claims, partly disconnected from electoral support. Thus, even though the informal economy of favors and votes would silently decline, ordinary people still addressed elected representatives to advocate for their claims and interests. The genesis of new party relationships, or organizational patronage as recent research puts it, is a general trend in European societies from 1900 onwards. The case study of Léon Blum’s correspondence is quite specific in this regard. It provides proof of a democratic and militant culture at a time when other party-oriented systems were highly different. The fascist party in Italy used clientele in a hierarchical and authoritarian culture and system. Benito Mussolini received a huge number of requests, a great deal of which were sent by women (Canal 1991; Wingenter in this volume). However, French and Italian leaders’ passive correspondence files are hard to compare, for obvious ideological and cultural reasons. A remarkable characteristic of Blum’s correspondence is the co-occurrence of two different phenomena, the first one being the invention of a new kind of personal mediated relationship between a political leader and party militants. A vocabulary of deference made way for expressions of friendship and mutual admiration. Secondly, the political equality of the correspondents as comrades enabled alleged subordinate citizens, such as women, to obtain an informal political role, and to act, at times, as brokers themselves. Was this, then, still a patronage system? The importance of political organization, in the form of the French socialist party (SFIO) in this case, does not mean that the individual leader had disappeared. Rather, on the contrary; political support for him was expected, even from women. These considerations invite us to break with the current conception of democracy and democratization, or, in Pierre Rosanvallon’s (2006, 30) words, with the “linear and traditional histories of democracy.” A closer look at subaltern clients and their political knowledge shows that the “informal social power” and the official politics, the old and the new, the deferent and the defiant could merge together in practice. This story does not evoke “the progressive realization of an ideal-type, the slow exit from a regime of enslavement, which would find its climax in an accomplished democracy.” Instead, it reveals tensions, conflicting forms of politicization or de-politicization, and transformative patterns of relations, which could strengthen social domination on the one hand and silently prepare for emancipation on the other.

Notes 1 S. Augier from Carpentras, Alfred Michel archive, Bibliothèque Inguimbertine, September 5, 1889. 2 C. Blauvac from Beaumes de Venise, Archives départementales de Vaucluse, 1924, 32J 31.

Outsiders?  127

3 F. Velasco, Blum Archives, Sciences po Paris, 1940, inventory 1, file 253. 4 S. Leuzy, Blum Archives, Sciences Po Paris, 1936, inventory 1, file 46. 5 Y. Viaud, idem, 1936, inventory 1, file 88. 6 Coll., idem, 1936, inventory 1, file 244. 7 S. Deixonne, idem, 1939, inventory 1, file 88.

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7 “Reading the newspaper made me believe that…” Sources and uses of political knowledge in the liminal space between subaltern and elite politics. Paris, 1894–1920* Marnix Beyen The limits of subalternity are a hotly debated topic. Do subalterns cease to be subaltern as soon as they “speak” – or, to be more precise, as soon as they raise their voice in the domain of democratic politics? Further paraphrasing Gayatri Spivak’s (1988) famous catchphrase, we could even ask whether the subaltern can read and write. Isn’t the sphere of subalternity dominated by spoken words, images, and embodied practices? Doesn’t one enter the world of the élites when starting to read and write? And isn’t this all the more so when one addresses the world of politics? It is at least tempting to associate subalternity with a realm of “prepolitical” ideas and practices dominated by awe for traditional powers. Acquiring not only the capacity for, but also the habit of reading would then open up the field of knowledge about the political institutions and ideologies. This, in turn, would serve as a vehicle for people to let their voices be heard – and hence to be represented. Acquiring literacy, according to this view, would lead unavoidably to politicization. Needless to say, this view on politicization is far too linear and teleological. Instead of trying to locate the precise boundaries between “pre-­ political” subalterns and “politicized” élites, I believe that we should imagine a broad “liminal space” where political élites and subalterns meet, and where they mutually influence one another in many different ways. “Subalterns,” in such an interpretation that comes close to the original Gramscian one, are not exiled to the margins of society, but can play a role in it from a non-hegemonic position (Liguori 2016). The extent and the features of that liminal space are highly dependent on the nature of the political institutions in a given society. Ideally speaking, in a truly democratic society, this intermediary terrain should encompass the entire body politic: all politicians should be constantly informed by the citizenry they represent, and all citizens should be well-informed and politically active. In reality, political representation is a messy affair, deeply characterized by

* The quotation in the title is taken from a letter written by A. Joly Pottiez to Marcel Sembat, February 10, 1913. Paris, Archives Nationales (AN), Papers Marcel Sembat, 637 AP/31.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003290087-10

“Reading the newspaper made me believe that…”  131 inequalities not only of knowledge and power, but also of the physical distance separating citizens from their political representatives. Within this field, processes of growing knowledge and enhancing political awareness may have taken place, as has been suggested by Maurice Agulhon when he coined the term “democratic patronage” (see Monier in this volume). We should not assume, however, that they did so in linear and generalized ways (Beyen 2014; Beyen 2016; Lauwers 2022). If we want to know whether, where, when, and how processes of politicization took place, we should explore precisely this chaotic space of encounter between politicians and citizens. We should investigate whether the latter indeed became better informed, and as a result acted in more political ways. This is, however, not an easy task. Contacts between ordinary citizens and politicians often occurred in informal and semi-private ways: they encountered one another during consultations, on the telephone or simply somewhere on the streets. What they told one another has most often been irrevocably lost. Nearly the only traces that can be found, are letters – and even they are very incomplete. Many politicians did not keep the thousands of citizens’ letters they received in the course of their career, and for archivists they were not a priority either. In spite of these shortcomings, the letters do offer an immensely rich overview over the multifarious ways in which citizens approached the politicians. In this contribution, I focus less on the reasons why they did so than on the political knowledge they revealed in their letters and the sources on which this knowledge was based. Did they refer to newspapers, to writings by the politician himself, to official publications – or rather to hearsay? Subsequently, I will try to draw a group portrait of the people who betrayed some form of political knowledge, whether or not they mentioned their sources. Where can they be situated in terms of class, gender, educational level, profession, and geographical distance from the député? In order to assess to which degree political knowledge was associated with political awareness, I will also investigate whether references to written sources of knowledge appeared primarily in letters pleading for politicized causes – that is, causes surpassing the individual needs of the letter-writer. After having drawn this general picture, I will break down my results chronologically, in order to empirically test the often speculatively formulated (or rejected) politicization thesis. Only in the last part of this brief contribution, will I move from the quantitative overview of a broad set of letters to the discursive and narrative analysis of a very limited sample of them. In order to make this research empirically sound, I opted for a limited scope, focusing on the letters received by one single politician. Doing so, I followed the example of many scholars who studied the relations of politicians with “ordinary citizens” (see, for example, Monier 2007; Chamouard 1988; Lauwers 2017; Bosch 2021; Lauwers 2021). More precisely, I researched a sample of 1606 letters written between 1894 and 1920 to one

132  Marnix Beyen député, socialist Marcel Sembat, and preserved in the Archives Nationales in Paris. During this entire period, Sembat represented the popular quartier des Grandes Carrières in the 18th arrondissement of Paris (Lefebvre 1995). Obviously, the results from this limited sample cannot be extrapolated to a larger context. The French capital was characterized by a very high degree of literacy, it housed the nation’s central political institutions, and the mobilization by political organizations was particularly strong. One might expect to find in such a context a very high degree of political knowledge and awareness among ordinary citizens. The sheer fact that Sembat was re-elected many times in this neighborhood could in itself be interpreted as a symptom thereof. He did not originate from the neighborhood himself, and his popularity could therefore not be accounted for by his “natural” prestige. Instead, this lawyer from Bonnières-sur-Seine (to the northwest of Paris) was one of the main intellectuals of the French Unified Socialist Party (the Section Française de l’Internationale Ouvrière, SFIO, created in 1905). A crucial part of his socialist ideology, though, was precisely his deliberate choice of “politics of proximity.” In many of his texts, he stressed that politicians should feel the pulse of the people they represented, and that the voters themselves were unavoidably also “political men” (e.g., Sembat 1910). Moreover, during his political career Sembat gained fame at a national level, first as one of the most vocal députés, and during the First World War briefly also as the Minister of Public Works. It can be expected that a politician of his type was approached relatively often by citizens with an outspoken political knowledge and awareness, and that the amount of politically inspired letters increased throughout his career.

Sources of political knowledge The corpus of letters examined here is highly unevenly distributed over the years of Sembat’s career. This partly reflects the relative amounts of letters that have been preserved in the archives, but partly also the choices I made in the course of my research. The last years of the war are clearly overrepresented (with 334 letters for 1917 and 219 for 1918) and also for the year 1902, I investigated a relatively high number of letters (125). With regard to all the other years of Sembat’s career, I subjected between 10 and 70 letters to a closer look. The selection of these writings was largely random, but I always made sure to spread my sample over the entire year. The letters could range from tiny scraps of paper to epistolary tours de force of several pages. The sample is anything but exhaustive, but it is sufficiently broad to detect tendencies. In order to do so, I created a large Accessdatabase containing multiple data with regard not only to the background of the letter-writers, but also to the context, the content and the material and discursive features of the letters. Of the 1606 letters, 102 (or 6.14%) contained explicit references to written sources of political knowledge. In 90 of those cases, this was a reference

“Reading the newspaper made me believe that…”  133 to an often unspecified journal, or to “the newspapers” in general. Thirteen times the Parliamentary Proceedings were involved, and one letter contained a reference to both the Parliamentary Proceedings and a newspaper. Not explicitly mentioning written sources does not necessarily mean, of course, that no such sources had been read by the letter-writer. Moreover, 156 of the letters (9.7%) referred to parliamentary discussions. We can assume that most of them, too, were informed by either newspapers or parliamentary proceedings, even if only twenty of them mentioned this explicitly. The same is undoubtedly true for the 191 (11.9%) letters in which explicit references were made to laws or decrees and for the 155 (9.7%) letters containing mentions of national government and/or party politics (of which respectively 23 and 27 explicitly referred to written sources). Taking into account the overlaps between different categories, we can thus isolate a group of 431 letters (or 26.8%) written by someone bearing witness to some sort of political-institutional knowledge. Henceforth, I will call these the “knowledgeable letters.”1 In this sample, I did not include the 39 letters that contained the name of a minister, but which did not fit into any of the categories hitherto mentioned (and which, hence, did not contain any reference to a written source). We can assume that in most of these cases, the minister was mentioned as an addressee of a request rather than as an actor of political life. Of those 431 letters, 14 (or 3.2%) were written by women. Hence, the proportion of letters written by women among the knowledgeable letters was markedly lower than within the entire corpus of letters (123 out of 1606, or 7.4%). To put it differently: only 11.4% of the letters written by women testified to a certain political knowledge, as opposed to 28.1% of those written by men. If we limit ourselves to those who can be recognized as readers of newspapers, the difference becomes even more striking: 1.6% of the letters written by women versus 5.9% of those written by men. Since women did not have the vote in the period under study, it can hardly surprise that they were less keen on informing themselves about institutional politics. Trying to get a sharper picture of the group of knowledgeable letterwriters, we can also relate them to their place of residence. By this, I do not mean the place from where the letter was sent, but the official addresses of the letter-writers. Of the 1606 letters in the entire corpus, 321 (20%) do not contain any data with regard to this address. Of the remaining 1285 letters, 708 (55.1%) were written by people who at least implicitly mentioned that they lived in Sembat’s constituency – and hence were potential voters. We can safely assume that among the letters that cannot be geographically localized, the proportion of writers from the Grandes Carrières was much higher than the proportion of writers from outside it. Indeed, proximity with the député rendered it superfluous to actually mention one’s address. Within the group of letters written by those who presented themselves as inhabitants of Sembat’s constituency, 134 (18.9%) can be classified as

134  Marnix Beyen knowledgeable. Of the 577 letters written from outside the constituency, this percentage was as high as 34.5%, with an absolute number of 199. This means that of the knowledgeable letters, 31.1% (134) were written with certainty by inhabitants of Sembat’s constituency, 46.2% by people from outside. Among the non-knowledgeable letters, these proportions were more or less reversed: 48.9% versus 32.2%. These figures suggest that people from outside the constituency were more inclined to testify to knowledge than those who lived in the proximity of the député. Did this also mean that they made more use of written sources of knowledge? This assumption certainly is not implausible: one can assume that the knowledge of people in the neighborhood was more often based upon hearsay than upon written sources. Moreover, as we will see later, the kind of questions they asked the député necessitated less political knowledge. The socio-professional portrait is even harder to draw, since only 222 of 431 “knowledgeable” letters contain data about the profession of the letter-writer. When they do, the information is most often imprecise and therefore hard to interpret. Keeping this in mind, I could nonetheless discern a clear prevalence (139, or 62.6%) of what can broadly be defined as white-collar workers: employees in the public and private sectors, schoolteachers, artists, intellectuals, and liberal professionals. The other 83 (or 37.4%) were either blue-collar workers (54), self-employed (11), military men (16), or unemployed (2). If we limit ourselves to the 102 letters whose authors explicitly referred to written sources, these proportions are nearly the same: 61.4% white-collar workers, 26.3% blue-collar workers, 5.3% military men, 5.3% self-employed, 1.8% unemployed. Among the 1175 “not-knowledgeable” letters, the preponderance of the white-collar workers is less conspicuous: they make up for 268, or 47.1%, of the 569 letters in which the author’s profession can be detected. Within the remaining group of 301, the relatively high number of unemployed letter-writers (37 or 6.5%) is particularly striking. The proportion of blue-collar workers is only slightly higher than among the “knowledgeable” letter-writers: 25.8% (147 of 569) versus 24.3% (54 of 222). In late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Paris, therefore, political knowledge seems not to have been the monopoly of the highly schooled classes. Was it engendered, then, in the associational life which, precisely in this period, flourished so much in the French capital? The letters whose authors explicitly mentioned that they wrote on behalf of a non-­commercial organization, accounted indeed for 20.6% (89) of the knowledgeable letters, as against only 14.4% (169) of the non-knowledgeable ones. If we extend the criterion to all those who simply mentioned their membership of such an organization, the difference becomes slightly lessconspicuous : 24.6% (106) of the “knowledgeable” letters, compared to 19.9% of the non-knowledgeable letters. Interestingly, a nearly identical proportion of letters was written in the non-knowledgeable and the knowledgeable group by people presenting themselves as members of the Socialist Party (14.4%

“Reading the newspaper made me believe that…”  135 versus 15.8%). Party membership, in other words, did not seem to be a clear predictor of political knowledge. However, among the members of the Socialist Party, a strikingly high proportion of letter-writers mentioned the sources of their knowledge: 22, or 32.4%. The Socialist Party may not have been able to transform all its members into well-informed participants in political life, but it seems to have turned many of them into newspapers readers. In sum, explicit traces of political knowledge were most likely to be found in letters written by male white-collar workers living outside of Sembat’s constituency and explicitly committed to a non-commercial organization. In order to know whether the knowledgeability of the letter-writers was also connected with politicized behavior toward their député, I systematically investigated the objectives expressed by the letter-writers. Did they try to obtain an individual goal, a goal for the collective to which they belonged, for the “common good,” or for a combination of these entities? The logic behind this division is that the most politicized forms of political behavior are the least inspired by individual interests. Uncontestably, individual goals appeared in most of the letters (1004 out of 1606, or 62.5%), followed at a distance by collective goals (474, or 29.5%) and by the common or national good (158, or 9.8%). Within the group of knowledgeable letters, these proportions were remarkably different: individual goals appeared in 51.5% of the letters, collective goals in 50.1%, the common good in 20%. Particularly striking is the fact that the common good is expressed more than twice as frequently in knowledgeable letters than in the entire set of letters. This is also true if we single out the letters that only envisioned the common good. This was the case in 10.2% of the knowledgeable letters, in 5.2% of the entire set of letters. When we isolate the letters in which the authors exclusively aimed at an individual goal, the knowledgeable letters (29.5%) stood equally in stark contrast with the entire set of letters (52.5%). Independently from their actual goal, letter-writers could express values in their letters which surpassed their individual interest, and therefore had a political potential. These values could be implicitly articulated as a way to legitimize one’s right to write a letter to his or her député. By comparing his or her own deplorable situation with that of a neighbor who was treated more favorably, for example, the letter-writer could implicitly appeal to the values of justice or equity, even without using these words. But higher values could as well be proclaimed in a more or less solemn and explicit manner. When taking all these references to higher values together, they turn out to appear only slightly more often among the knowledgeable than among the non-knowledgeable letters (42.5% as opposed to 38.9%). Political knowledge, so it seems, was no pre-condition for holding political values. It is even a legitimate hypothesis that references to political knowledge could, in certain cases, make references to higher values superfluous. Wasn’t the law a more convincing argument than abstract values?

136  Marnix Beyen

Processes of (de)politicization The picture that emerges from my analysis so far has been a static one. If we want to understand, though, if and how political knowledge was related to processes of politicization, we should start by mapping the chronological developments within our set of 431 knowledgeable letters. This endeavor, though, is heavily complicated by some methodological difficulties. First of all, not all letters can be dated with precision. Of the 431 knowledgeable letters, 404 can be situated at least with high probability in a specific year. Secondly, the letters of my corpus are unevenly distributed over the 27 years under scrutiny in this article. This partly reflects the fluctuations in the actual popularity of Sembat as a député. He only started to receive masses of letters after his first re-election in 1898, and the numbers would keep on increasing until the end of the First World War. After the introduction of the system of (partial) proportional representation in 1919, on the contrary, the number of letters received by Sembat sharply decreased. The system was precisely intended to diminish the importance of personal relationships between the constituents and the député, and hence to stimulate disinterested political behavior by both the politicians and the citizens. It is possible that this electoral change accounted for the decreased number of letters received by Sembat, even if his waning political activity (partially due to illness) was probably equally important. Moreover, his activities as a Minister of Public Works during the First World War had made him subject to harsh critiques, which probably decreased his popularity, even in his own constituency. The variability of Sembat’s popularity is only one cause, though, of the uneven distribution of the letters over the years. Another one is more related to the (more or less deliberate) choices I made during my research. As a consequence of these factors, many investigated years yielded an insufficient number of letters to allow for quantification. I decided to take only the ten years into account for which I dispose of more than 50 letters: 1899 (57), 1902 (123), 1903 (54), 1904 (132), 1905 (76), 1906 (52), 1907 (69), 1913 (80), 1917 (352) and 1918 (223). When looking at the proportion of knowledgeable letters for these years, no linear development emerges. Still, it appears that until 1906, the figures ranged between 10 and 20% (with a peak of 22.2% in 1903), whereas from 1907 onwards they remain consistently above 25% (with a peak of 46.3% in 1913). The question whether there is an effective caesura between 1906 and 1907, and how it could be explained, is difficult to answer. The relatively sudden increase in knowledgeability of the letters, on the other hand, can hardly be denied. Partly, this development seems to have gone hand in hand with a changing socio-professional and demographic composition of the group of ­letter-writers. The data are very incomplete and hard to interpret, but if we compare 1902 (a year with only 11.4% of knowledgeable letters) with 1913, some striking elements emerge. Most notable is the changing proportion

“Reading the newspaper made me believe that…”  137 between white-collar and blue-collar workers among the letters of whose writer the profession can be detected. In 1902, they represented respectively 56.3% and 15.6%, in 1913 this had changed to respectively 75% and 15.9%. Much more obvious was the development with regard to the home address of the letter-writers. In 1902, 55.3% of the letters could be assigned to inhabitants of Sembat’s constituency, 31.7% to people from outside. Nine years later, these numbers had changed to respectively 22.5% and 63.8%. The average writer of the letters to Sembat, in other words, came ever closer to the average writer of the knowledgeable letters, namely a white-collar male worker from outside the constituency. The fact that Sembat gradually received more letters from precisely this group probably reflected his transformation into a politician of national fame, who was addressed by people from across the entire country (or even from abroad) on the basis of his reputation. The increasing knowledgeability of the letters should, in other words, not in the first place be interpreted as a proof of the rise of political knowledge in Sembat’s neighborhood. Moreover, this increase in knowledgeability did not necessarily entail a more political stance. Insofar as the small numbers allow for generalizations, the opposite even seems to be true. During the earlier years, individual goals were mentioned in a maximum of half of the knowledgeable letters – and most often, they reached a figure far below 50%. In the last three relevant years of my corpus, on the contrary, the authors revealed their individual goals in more than 60% of the letters. In 1913, these individual objectives were still outnumbered by the collective goals (reaching 87.2%), but during the war years 1917 and 1918, individual goals were by far the most frequently mentioned ones. Before the First World War political knowledge had been most often referred to in order to reach collective objectives. During the war, apparently, it was increasingly used in order to safeguard one’s own precarious interests. This interpretation can be further refined by discriminating between these last two years of the war. Whereas in 1917, national goals appeared only in 7 out of 92 letters (7.6%), they did so in 17 out of 84 letters (or 20.2%) in 1918. In ten of these letters, national goals were even the only ones that were mentioned (as opposed to six in 1917). Possibly, the (approaching) armistice encouraged an increasing number of citizens to turn away from the hardships of war, and redirect their attention to a better future for their community.

Political knowledge as a narrative strategy This last observation should make us aware that references to (sources of) political knowledge do not in themselves imply that the letter-writers behaved in politicized ways. Indeed, they could equally serve as narrative tools in order to further the personal interests of the letter-writers. However, this instrumental use of sources of political knowledge does not

138  Marnix Beyen exclude a sincere ideological commitment on the part of the letter-writer. The very first letter in the corpus of knowledgeable letters immediately illustrates this combined function of political knowledge in the letters to the député. The letter dates from December 4, 1895, and was written by Désiré Hurel, who called himself “a fellow citizen of Sembat.”2 By this, he meant an inhabitant of Bonnières, the village in the North West of Paris where Sembat lived. Hurel, in other words, was not a potential voter of Sembat, but he believed he could count on the latter’s local loyalty nonetheless. On top of that, however, he believed he also earned Sembat’s support because they shared the same republican values. His family, so he asserted, “had always fought on the first row of the advanced republicans for the independence of the Fatherland and for the achievement of the progressive ideas.” Hurel’s letter, in other words, was a highly politicized one. Nonetheless, its goal was squarely personal: Hurel, who wrote from the barracks in Neufchâteau, wanted to be suspended from his military service. In order to underscore the legitimacy of his question, he referred to a law that had been promulgated “in this year 1895,” according to which a man who had been drafted for the military service while his older brother was still in the army, should only spend one year in the barracks.3 He even added a second legal argument: since his older brother had not profited from the decree ordaining that the eldest son of a widow would be liberated from the military service, why couldn’t he profit from it? Moving from the abstract rules to the very concrete casuistry, he unfolded the case of another family from Bonnières, where the military service of the second son of a widow had been reduced to one year thanks to the support of “the sugar manufacturer of La Villette,” who was also the député of Mantes (the constituency to which Bonnières belonged).4 This made Hurel return to the realm of law and republican values with which he had started his letter: “why, then, 2 weights and 3 measures in the French law. The beautiful republican device: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, therefore, is nothing but a lie, a lure.” Here, he added another aspect of political knowledge, namely that of the current government: Since the Minister Bourgeois [i.e. Léon Bourgeois, who at that moment was France’s prime minister] is rather inclined toward the reforms, toward the equality of all before the law, I hope, monsieur le député, that you will make all the necessary steps in order to obtain from the minister either my liberation or at the very least the departure of the sugar manufacturer’s protégé for his full three years.5 As so often in these instances, we don’t know whether Hurel was able to mobilize Sembat for his case, nor whether his military service was indeed abridged. His letter, however, contained most of the ingredients that would recur in hundreds of letters to Sembat: references to the law, to political

“Reading the newspaper made me believe that…”  139 institutions, and to ideological values were combined with emotional appeals (often taking the form of rhetorical questions) to Sembat’s loyalty and sense of justice, along with concrete illustrations of existing injustices. The comparison with a fellow-député also introduced an implicit element of competition: if Sembat wanted to do as well as his more conservative colleague, he had to be able to fulfil Hurel’s wishes. In this narrative constellation, political knowledge served as only one tool to strengthen the letter-writer’s claim. These claims could be purely personal, but they could equally address parliamentary politics. In these cases, the letter-writers often posited themselves as providers of the information and the arguments the député needed in order to prepare his law proposals (Beyen 2020). This was already the case in the very first letter in the sample containing a reference to a newspaper. It was written on November 22, 1898, by Francis Pinel, an inhabitant of Sembat’s constituency, on a paper with a pre-printed heading of the Independent Socialist Committee of the Tailor Workers of the Seine. By addressing Sembat as “Citizen,” the writer identified from the very start as a political ally. “I just read in the newspaper l’Aurore” [a progressive republican newspaper founded one year before], so the letter started, “that about a hundred socialist and radical députés have signed a bill with regard to field workers, on the topic of the 28 and 13 days.” Meant by this was a proposal to exempt this group during harvest periods from the short periods of military instruction that were compulsory for young men after having accomplished their military service. Pinel continued: “Don’t you believe that the clothing workers are also worthy of interest. They too have two good and two bad seasons, and it turns out that those workers are always recruited during the period of their good season.” He stressed that he wrote “in the name of the Committee,” that had circulated a petition on this topic, and he requested Sembat to present this petition in parliament, “being a representative at the Chamber of an arrondissement that is particularly inhabited by tailors.” Unlike Hurel, Pinel did not mention any personal objective, but exclusively defended the interests of the group to which he belonged.6 Especially during the First World War, this same set of elements – in different proportions and constellations – would return time and again in letters written by soldiers writing from the frontline or from the barracks to Sembat. Those often referred to specific laws (most notably the Loi Dalbiez of 1915, that aimed at sending all the young and healthy young men to the frontline instead of the older classes and the wounded soldiers) and to concrete cases in order to plea for intergenerational justice, and hence for the liberation of themselves and their class. From the home front, women wrote similar letters in order to improve the military situation of their husbands. An example in this respect is the letter written on September 10, 1917, by Madame Desjardins to Sembat. Desjardins was a baker’s wife in Sembat’s constituency whose husband had recently been moved from the barracks to a regiment of Zouaves near the frontline. In a letter full of

140  Marnix Beyen grammatical errors, Desjardins presented herself as “a shopkeeper from your neighborhood” and pretended merely to ask a question to her député: “I would like to know whether it is really legal to send to the frontline bakers belonging to the Infantry.” After which she compared her husband’s case with that of other bakers of his military class who had been on leave for two years, and appealed to the higher value of justice: “I believe it would be just that those belonging to this class who had never profited from any favor would be taken into account.” Only in the last sentence of the letter did Desjardins reveal a certain form of political-institutional knowledge, which she used to give specific advice to Sembat: “I believe that you could, Monsieur le Député, acquire a permission in the same vein as the one that is granted to the farmers, which would allow me to take some rest.” 7 Interestingly, the letter-writer only relates herself to her request at the very end of the letter, whereas until then she had focused on the collective rights of her husband’s military class. Desjardins’ recourse to political knowledge and values was much less precise and extensive than Hurel’s and Pinel’s two decades before. She neither mentioned sources of knowledge, nor political actors, parliamentary debates, or republican values. But in a very similar way, she referred to collective goals to strengthen her own case and that of her husband. Of course, this did not mean that she was not sincerely attached to justice as a higher value. The confrontation with the injustice of war undoubtedly made her, like so many other French citizens, more sensitive to political values and their legal applications. The selection of letters in the last paragraphs has been largely random, and should not lead to false conclusions. The fact that the older letters strike us as more knowledgeable and politicized does not mean that processes of depoliticization or a decrease of political knowledge took place, but it should warn us against linear and teleological interpretations of politicization. And if I selected a letter written by a woman to illustrate how a relatively low level of political knowledge could be used to strengthen a personal claim, this does not mean that female letter-writers could not testify to higher levels of political knowledge and awareness (see for example Beyen 2012). Within the small sample of 16 knowledgeable letters written by women, markers of politicization do frequently appear. In the sample of female knowledgeable letters, higher values are even mentioned meaningfully more often than in the entire set of knowledgeable letters (68.5% versus 42.5%). Three of the female knowledgeable letters (18.8%) claimed to aspire a goal at the level of the common good – in two of these cases (12.5%) even exclusively at this level. These numbers were very similar to those at the level of the entire set of knowledgeable letters (respectively 20% and 10.2%). However, the proportion of letters written with a personal goal was remarkably higher within the group of female knowledgeable letters than in the entire set of knowledgeable letters (68.8% versus 51.5%) and this difference is more or less the same if we isolate those

“Reading the newspaper made me believe that…”  141 letters exclusively aiming at individual goals (37.5% versus 29.5%). On average, the female knowledgeable letters therefore seem to have displayed a somewhat different narrative and discursive structure than their male counterparts: they contained more emotional appeals to higher values in order to reach explicitly personal goals, whereas in the male letters these personal goals were more often combined with, or concealed behind, references to collective or national objectives.

Conclusion Did the political knowledge of French subalterns (in the broad sense of the word) increase during the period that witnessed the breakthrough of mass democracy, and did this knowledge inspire them to approach their député more politically? Needless to say, the study of one Parisian constituency cannot possibly provide the answer to that question. In a more or less random set of letters written to the député of that constituency, references to (or sources of) political knowledge started to become more visible during the first decade of the twentieth century. Arguably, however, this development betrayed a changing composition of the group of letter-writers rather than an increase of knowledge within the group. Moreover, the increasing numbers of references to political knowledge did not go hand in hand with a more widespread commitment to the common good or to political values. Especially during the First World War, the increasing political knowledge was above all instrumentally used in order to serve individual interests. When moving from the quantitative survey of the entire set of letters to the discursive and narrative analysis of individual letters, one is therefore less struck by change than by continuity. Through the entire period, indeed, many of these letters were ingenious mixtures in which aspects of autobiographical writing, political diatribe and ordinary gossip were combined in order to reach specific goals for the letter-writers and/or the community to which they belonged. Political knowledge played an increasing role within this interdiscursive genre, but its function seems to have remained largely the same. In the dominant male variety of the genre, it fulfilled this function often ostensibly and in conjunction with references to political objectives at the collective or the national level. When the letters were written by women, the references to political knowledge were often less extensive, and served more directly the personal interests of the letter-writer or her kin. Being bereft of the suffrage, the female writers unsurprisingly entertained a different relationship with institutional politics than the men.

Notes 1 All the quantifications are made at the level of the letters, not at that of the letter-writers. The number of letters written by the same authors has not been taken into account;

142  Marnix Beyen 2 Désiré Hurel to Marcel Sembat, December, 4, 1895, AN, Papers Marcel Sembat, 637 AP/139. 3 At stake was a revision of article 21 of the recruitment law of 1889, promulgated on July 24, 1895, in the Bulletin Officiel. See: Bulletin des lois de la République française, 12e série, 2ème semestre 1895. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 2558. 4 Hurel referred to Paul Lebaudy (https://www2.assemblee-nationale.fr/­sycomore/ fiche/(num_dept)/7638). 5 Francis Pinel to Marcel Sembat Sembat, November 22, 1898, AN, Papers Marcel Sembat, 637 AP/140. 6 Francis Pinel to Marcel Sembat Sembat, November 22, 1898, AN, Papers Marcel Sembat, 637 AP/140. 7 Madame Desjardins to Marcel Sembat, September, 10, 1917, AN, Papers Marcel Sembat, 637 AP/139.

Bibliography Beyen, Marnix. 2012. “De politieke kracht van het dienstbetoon: interacties tussen burgers en volksvertegenwoordigers in Parijs, 1893–1914.” Stadsgeschiedenis 7 (1): 74–85. Beyen, Marnix. 2014. “Clientelism and Politicization. Direct Interactions Between Deputies and ‘Ordinary Citizens’ in France, ca. 1880- ca. 1940.” TEMP. Tidsskrift for Historie 4 (8): 17–32. Beyen, Marnix. 2016. “Deserters, Draft Evaders and Deputies. Or How Parliamentary History Can Contribute to Subaltern History and Vice Versa.” Journal of Belgian History 46 (1): 40–61. Beyen, Marnix. 2020. “Informing the Politician. Politics in Parisian Citizens’ Letters to their Députés, ca.1900–ca. 1914.” Journal of Modern European History 18 (3): 249–54. Bosch, Felix. 2021. “De nabijheidspolitiek van Harm Smeenge, 1886-1935. Lokale vertegenwoordiging in de Nederlandse nationale politiek.” Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 134 (4): 603–25. Chamouard, Aude. 1988. “Le député socialiste, agent de mobilisation nationale et de paix sociale: l’exemple de Jean Loquin dans la Nièvre.” In Les socialistes dans l’Europe en guerre. Réseaux, parcours, expériences, 1914–1918, edited by Romain Ducoulombier, 177–91. Paris, L’Harmattan. Lauwers, Karen. 2017. “‘J’ai l’honneur d’attirer votre attention à mon sujet’. Image et action d’Henri-Constant Groussau (député du Nord, 1902–1936) au prisme de sa correspondance passive.” Revue du Nord 99 (420): 379–412. Lauwers, Karen. 2021. “Negotiating French Social Citizenship in Early TwentiethCentury Letters to a Representative for the Rhône Department.” Redescriptions. Political Thought, Conceptual History and Feminist Theory 24 (1): 42–59. Lauwers, Karen. 2022. Ordinary Citizens and the Third French Republic. Negotiations between People and Parliament, c.1900-c. 1930. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Lefebvre, Denis. 1995. Marcel Sembat. Socialiste et Franc-maçon. Paris: Bruno Leprince. Liguori, Guido. 2016. “Le concept de subalterne chez Gramsci.” Mélanges de l’École française de Rome – Italie et Méditerranée modernes et contemporaines 12 (2): 1–13.

“Reading the newspaper made me believe that…”  143 Monier, Frédéric. 2007. La politique des plaintes. Clientélisme et demandes sociales dans le Vaucluse d’Édouard Daladier (1890–1940). Paris: La Boutique de l’Histoire. Sembat, Marcel. 1910. Leur bilan. Quatre ans de Pouvoir Clemenceau-Briand. Paris: Librairie du Parti Socialiste (S.F.I.O). Spivak, G. C. 1988. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, edited by Cary Nelson, and Lawrence Grossberg, 271–313. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.

8 How to bridge the gap? The issue of popular political engagement in the Netherlands, c.1945–1965 Harm Kaal

Dutch early postwar political culture was marked by discipline and restraint (Schuyt & Taverne 2000, 304–6, 387). This was in line with the political elite’s desire to peacefully restore the order of parliamentary democracy and reflected its fear of political passions and their impact on the masses. Memories of the political extremism of the 1930s were still fresh. It did not take long, however, before the same elite started to worry about the flipside of discipline and restraint: politicians operating at too great a distance from the people they serve, which in turn can lead to indifference and ignorance on the part of citizens. In the end, such dynamics could undermine the system of parliamentary democracy itself. This chapter discusses how Dutch politicians in the 1950s and early 1960s tried to get citizens involved in politics, why they tried to do so and how citizens responded to this. By answering these questions, the chapter aims to improve our understanding of how political representation worked in early postwar Dutch political culture and how it changed in nature in the years before the onset of the tumultuous ‘sixties’. After the liberation of the Netherlands, in May 1945, most of the prewar political parties returned to the scene. In May the following year, the Catholic party KVP (Katholieke Volkspartij/Catholic People’s Party) won the first postwar general elections. Together with the other two confessional parties, the predominantly orthodox-Protestant ARP (Antirevolutionaire Partij/ Antirevolutionary Party) and the mainly Dutch Reformed CHU (ChristelijkHistorische Unie/Christian-Historical Union) they held a majority of the seats in parliament. The second biggest party in parliament was the PvdA (Partij van de Arbeid/Labour Party): a new party on paper, but in essence the continuation of the prewar SDAP (Sociaal-Democratische Arbeiderspartij/ Social-Democratic Workers’ Party). The new party also included former members of a progressive-liberal party and people who had operated on the left wing of the confessional parties. All of these parties, with the exception only of the CHU, can be labelled as “mass parties”: they were more or less centralized institutions with local branches all over the country and tens of thousands of contribution-paying members. These members participated in DOI: 10.4324/9781003290087-11

How to bridge the gap?  145 an associational life that was marked by local meetings and regional or nationwide mass gatherings. Bernard Manin’s typology of party democracy perfectly maps onto early postwar Dutch politics: a system of representative government in which political parties act as a channel that connects citizens with the power of the state and with the people that represent them in parliament (Te Velde 2004, 114). All MPs were members of a political party and were elected because their names had been put on the list of candidates by one of those parties; the Netherlands had adopted an electoral system of nationwide proportional representation in 1918. The representative claim of these parties was based on their establishment as the political and organizational expression of social communities that were united around a shared class or religious-based identity. Citizens and the people they had elected to represent them thus shared the same social background and set of community-based values and ideas (Manin 1997, 195). Manin (1997, 206) has explained why this system of representative government, which emerged in the late-nineteenth century across the Western world, was presented as an advance of democracy: parties, which had emerged from the grassroots, claimed to open up politics and the system of representation to the “common man,” who could after all, going through the party ranks, become a representative himself (or herself, after women were enfranchised, in the Netherlands in 1919). In the end, however, parties turned out to be elitist institutions and therefore repeatedly faced criticism for not (or no longer) being in sync with their voter base. As we will see, also in the Netherlands, such criticism increased in the 1950s and forced parties to rethink their relationship with the citizens they claimed and aimed to represent. Another feature of the relationship between party and citizens in the era of party democracy that was increasingly problematized in the 1950s concerned the substance of the allegiance between party and voters. As Manin has argued, in the era of party democracy, voters were hardly preoccupied with party platforms. One’s support for a political party resulted from a sense of duty. By casting their ballot, citizens were expressing and reaffirming their membership of the socio-political community to which they belonged and of which the party was the political manifestation. Manin’s conclusion that voters “had no detailed idea of the measures proposed” by the party also holds true in the Netherlands, as surveys conducted in the 1950s and 1960s have shown (Manin 1997, 210; Kaal 2018c, 188). In his recent book on postwar democracy, Martin Conway paints a similar picture of early postwar political culture, which he characterizes as an “aloof culture of government” and a “formal democracy” in which “the people themselves were largely absent” (Conway 2020, 12). In this constellation, party leaders were the real power brokers. As the figureheads of large interest groups, these leaders operated in a state of continuous

146  Harm Kaal behind-the-scenes negotiations. It hardly resulted in captivating political theater. Half a century earlier, the foundational years of the mass parties had been marked by the oratorical performances of charismatic political leaders, in the Netherlands people like the Social Democrat Pieter Jelles Troelstra and the orthodox-Protestant Abraham Kuyper, and a sense of community that was displayed through mass meetings and demonstrations. In the 1950s, these parties had turned into technocratic, inwardlooking organizations with a rather “passive membership” (Conway 2020, 69). Conway argues that citizens accepted their position on the sidelines in return for “a government that provided more than it took” (Conway 2020, 222). Postwar governments delivered by building up the welfare state. Moreover, for political parties in the Netherlands the passivity on the part of the electorate did not pose a problem as long as a sense of duty ensured that the votes came in as always. The – admittedly still very modest – fluctuations in support shown by the election results in the 1950s and early 1960s, however, increasingly became an object of concern. With parties still sticking to their usual phraseology in party platforms that were not rooted in popular understandings of politics, it is hardly surprising that both political parties and the press reported a growing gap between politicians and the people and expressed concern about what they saw as a lack of popular political engagement (Kaal 2018a, 222). In an effort to turn the tide, Dutch political parties adopted a pedagogic gaze, particularly towards young people and women, in an attempt to stimulate their engagement and political awareness. In the case of the Social Democratic party PvdA, the party this chapter will focus on, such concerns were less related to a loss of support (until the 1963 general elections the PvdA never lost more than two seats) than to the party’s inability to increase its support among confessional working-class voters. After the Second World War, the PvdA had set its sights on realizing a ‘breakthrough’ in Dutch politics by luring progressive voters (and MPs) away from the left flanks of the confessional parties. With religion rather than class as its main rallying point, these parties recruited voters from across all social groups, benefiting from deeply engrained (and often also Church-supported) religious notions of duty and belonging that cemented the ties between these voters and the confessional parties. The PvdA did its best to break through these ties by presenting religion as a personal, rather than a political concern, but the election results showed that the confessional parties managed to keep the ranks relatively closed up until the early 1960s (Mellink 2011). The Social Democrats’ breakthrough attempt pushed the rise of voter research. The PvdA was mainly interested in two things: to what extent was the party successful in its attempts to get support from confessional voters, and did the party succeed in branching out to the growing cohort of middle-class voters as well? Much of this research was carried out by a

How to bridge the gap?  147 Social Democratic think tank that counted a couple of prominent social scientists among its members. On the part of the Catholic party, electoral research was on the rise, too. The KVP was mainly interested in the level of political “orthodoxy”: the number of votes cast for the KVP in a particular region set off against the number of registered and enfranchised Catholics in that region. The goal of course was to come as close as possible to 100 percent, but research showed that, although a large majority of Catholics supported the KVP, a perfect score was hard to achieve (De Jong & Kaal 2017). The insights of voter research also turned the relationship between politicians and ordinary citizens, as well as the latter’s political engagement, into topics of major public concern. This chapter aims to analyze how the Dutch Social Democrats dealt with this concern. How political parties like the PvdA, and other actors in the public sphere as well, discussed and tried to tackle the issue of citizens’ political engagement reveals much about their perceptions of democracy and the system of political representation. Moreover, the party’s attempts to identify popular perceptions and expectations of politics and to bridge the gap that separated politicians from the people they aimed to represent provides us as historians with a unique opportunity to study the interaction between party politics and everyday life. The chapter opens with a discussion of the first major investigation into the political perceptions of Dutch voters in the mid-1950s and goes on to explore how the PvdA tried to intensify its interaction with the electorate, paying particular attention to the initiatives launched by party leader Anne Vondeling (1916–79). A focus on the Social Democrats is not only warranted because of their key position in Dutch politics, but also because both the party and Vondeling have left sources that allow us to also approach the issue of popular engagement from the perspective of citizens themselves: the letters citizens wrote to Vondeling in his capacity as party leader and minister of finance in the early 1960s.1

De Nederlandse Kiezer: research on Dutch voters in the 1950s In 1956, a state committee published the results of the first big study on popular perceptions of politics, democracy, and representation carried out in the Netherlands: De Nederlandse Kiezer (The Dutch Voter) (Staatscommissie 1956).2 The study was based on a survey conducted by Dutch polling agency NIPO and was part of a broader investigation into the postwar political system. This investigation had been triggered by continuing discussions in and outside parliament about the electoral system. Ever since the abolishment of district voting in 1918 and its replacement by a system of nationwide proportional representation, discussions had popped up about the need to restore a key feature of district voting: an

148  Harm Kaal (admittedly often romanticized) close, personal connection between the representative and the people s/he represented. These debates have in fact carried on until today without any significant impact on the electoral system (yet).3 In 1954 no less than 222 NIPO agents interviewed people across the country at home, “in the intimate environment of the living room,” which resulted in 1908 respondents: a representative sample, according to NIPO, in terms of gender, age, income, and region. The survey was far from anonymous, because names and addresses of respondents were taken down on the survey form. “Practically every Dutchman agrees to this,” NIPO claimed, but one might wonder to what extent this practice of writing down names might have also prompted citizens to provide socially acceptable answers to the questions presented to them (Staatscommissie 1956, 35). The report nonetheless gives us insight into people’s appreciation of politics and various forms of political communication and in contemporary perceptions of the system of political representation. De Nederlandse Kiezer shows that most people placed, and wanted to keep, politics at a distance. People’s connection with politics was strongly imbued by a sense of duty and party and less by a sincere interest in actual political debates or the persons that represented them. Completely in line with Conway and Manin’s characterization of postwar representative government as a party democracy, Dutch voters saw casting their ballot as an expression of their support for a political “program, a direction, a principle and not a person.” Only 3 out of 10 voters saw it as important to know the person they voted for personally; “the person [i.e. the MP] represents solely the party” (De persoon vertegenwoordigt enkel de partij), the report observed. The fact that this was taken down without any reservation speaks volumes about the degree to which, for contemporaries, the dominance of party was selfevident. It is all the more striking since the Dutch constitution in fact did not (and still does not) mention political parties as a factor in political representation and stresses the independence of MPs, who are supposed to act “without any form of consultation and back-channeling” (zonder last en ruggespraak) (Staatscommissie 1956, 15). Subsequent research in the 1960s on citizens’ perceptions of political efficacy – as in, how to have “an impact upon the political process” – corroborates Conway’s observation that instead of taking to the streets, Western European citizens preferred the established practices of representation and party politics (Conway 2020, 236). Dutch citizens favored more “passive” and private modes of involvement in politics over active participation, and preferred the use of the established representative institutions of party and trade union to bring their concerns to the table. In the mid-1960s, casting your ballot was still rated as the most effective intervention, joining a street demonstration was at the bottom of the list (Hoogerwerf 1967, 298–99). Two-thirds even saw voting as the only way for citizens to have an impact on how the country was governed (Daudt & Stapel 1965/1966, 65).

How to bridge the gap?  149 A strong sense of duty was evidenced by the fact that some 80 percent of the respondents indicated that they would go to the poll even if they were no longer legally obliged to do so – in the Netherlands compulsory voting was eventually abolished in 1970. They saw it as their “moral” or “civic” duty to cast their ballots (Staatscommissie 1956, 30). This sense of duty in combination with a principle-based notion of political representation resulted in a rather “passive” political and electoral culture. In a sense, this was something the state and its political elites cherished: from 1945 onwards, in Western Europe states had tried to channel popular passions through the promotion of disciplined, orderly forms of political engagement in order to prevent the disorderly clashes on the streets that had marked interwar political culture (Conway 2020, 118). Respondents indicated that they were not looking for intensive interaction with the people that aimed to represent them. Personal contact between citizens and politicians was rare and hardly ever initiated by voters themselves: very few people, only 4 percent, ever got in touch with an MP, in person or by mail. Moreover, a majority of 55 percent of the respondents rated door-to-door canvassing – one of the most interactive forms of political campaigning – as too intrusive, “foreign” even, and as something that was leaning too much towards “advertising.” People associated it with door-to-door salesmen who smooth-talked their customers (i.e., voters) with empty promises. Still, 30 percent appreciated it as a form of personal contact that allowed both voters and candidates to be better informed about each other’s positions (Staatscommissie 1956, 16). Election meetings were unpopular, too: only 20 percent of the respondents attended such meetings, a majority of which were party members (70 percent), male and middle-aged or above. Moreover, 60 percent indicated that they browsed through the election folders they received, which is a low number when one sets it off against the amount of paperwork that was distributed across the country (and the time invested in doing so) (Staatscommissie 1956, 28). The report concluded that only half of the respondents were interested in (parliamentary) politics; elections captivated more people, at least to some extent: roughly 70 percent. Women and voters “without clear political convictions” were those with the least interest in politics. Interest was higher among people in higher income and age groups (Staatscommissie 1956, 25). A survey that political scientists of three Dutch universities carried out in an Amsterdam suburb in 1956 confirmed these results (Van der Land et al. 1964, 21).4 A critical reading of such research reveals that much of it was biased towards party politics. Voters without a “clear political conviction,” that is, without a clear set of ideological beliefs that more or less matched with those propagated by one of the political parties, might not have been uninterested in politics per se. It could very well be the case that they had a hard time connecting with, and feeling represented by, a political sphere that was dominated by identity-based party politics. The NIPO-report, nonetheless,

150  Harm Kaal suggested that the way forward, that is towards a higher degree of engagement in politics among voters, was through these political parties. Active voters were those who were a member of one of the parties, regularly visited election meetings and cast their ballot at every election. NIPO concluded that voters who belonged to this category possessed more knowledge of politics and were more aware of their “responsibility” towards it, for instance by engaging in the political parties’ internal (s)election of candidates for office (Staatscommissie 1956, 31–32). Moreover, the report suggested that parties could do more to increase the number of “organized voters:” voters with a party membership, which was now at the level of 30 percent of the electorate (Staatscommissie 1956, 29). After all, the more organized voters were, the more engagement toward (party!) politics they tended to show.

The Partij van de Arbeid in the 1950s: passing on the torch of Social Democracy Achieving an increase in the number of party members was indeed one of the key goals of the Social Democrats in the 1950s. The party’s strategies to increase popular political engagement and recruit new members were inspired by the results of its own internal research into voter preferences and political engagement: Verkiezingen in Nederland. De ontwikkeling en verspreiding van politieke voorkeuren en hun betekenis voor de PvdA (Elections in the Netherlands. The development and distribution of political preferences and their meaning for the PvdA), published in 1951. Research had been carried out by the party’s think tank, the Wiardi Beckman Stichting (WBS), which was headed by a political science professor at the University of Amsterdam. A crucial difference between the conclusions of the WBS and the NIPO reports was the emphasis the WBS put on personal interaction. The Social Democratic think tank doubted the significance of mass meetings and written propaganda – the pillars of interwar campaigning – for reaching voters and gaining their support (and indeed the NIPO survey would later corroborate this). Instead, the report claimed that the PvdA should focus more on door-to-door canvassing and personal conversations with voters (WBS 1951; Barents 1952). Throughout the 1950s the headquarters of the PvdA indeed kept stressing the importance of canvassing and urged local branches to set up units to carry out house-to-house visits. In this respect, the PvdA was not bothered by the NIPO survey showing that only a minority of voters appreciated these forms of political communication. In 1956, the PvdA distributed a guidebook among its local branches to instruct party activists how to recruit new members. “Propagandists” were advised to go door-todoor in couples: one, more “experienced” canvasser and another one who went along to learn the ropes. They were instructed to be patient and polite and to listen to the thoughts and ideas of the “customer” (klant in Dutch;

How to bridge the gap?  151 the Social Democrats saw no need to avoid connotations of “selling” politics) and they were reassured that complicated topics such as “European cooperation” hardly ever popped up in these conversations.5 The PvdA was not the only party that tried to intensify its personal interaction with the electorate in these years. In fact, across Western Europe the 1950s witnessed a transition towards more “private methods of electioneering,” as Martin Conway calls the shift away from mass meetings to campaigns in which the “individual voter” is at the center of attention. To a certain degree, this constituted a return to campaign traditions from around the turn of the century (Conway 2002: 73): door-to-door visits had been the staple of election campaigns under the district voting system. Local parties had meticulously kept stock of individual voting preferences, using publicly available voter lists and address books which mentioned the profession of citizens (Dobber & De Jong 2020). In the 1950s the PvdA picked up these private methods both in election and membership campaigns, using the abundance of subscription data provided by affiliated organizations like the newspaper Het Vrije Volk, the trade union organization NVV, and the socialist broadcaster VARA to reach their target audience.6 Such data in combination with the information that was provided by the local party branches enabled the PvdA to approach specific groups of voters like young people, the elderly, farmers, civil servants, railway employees, soldiers, Protestants and Catholics.7 Around 1950 the Partij van de Arbeid had a stable membership base of approximately 100,000 citizens, roughly 2 percent of the electorate and second only to the KVP: throughout the 1950s between 5 and 7 percent of the electorate was a member of the Catholic party (Voerman 1995, 194, 198). The Social Democrats had a pretty robust party organization with branches all over the country, which were organized in regional federations that reported to the national headquarters. The success of its rather labor-intensive election campaigns, so party headquarters argued, depended on the party’s ability to mobilize its members to join in the campaign: organizing local meetings, distributing brochures, and knocking on doors. Therefore, in the early 1950s, the party developed a plan to give local party life an impulse: the so-called “Torch Bearers’ Campaign” (Fakkeldragersactie). Relatively quickly, some 2,000 torch bearers’ groups were established: local clubs of active party members who organized a range of social activities in order to stimulate a sense of community and belonging among local Social Democrats, such as small-scale “living room” meetings in which a couple of torch bearers discussed political issues with a group of less active party members and potential new recruits. The PvdA attributed its success in the 1952 national elections in large part to the Torch Bearers initiative, but it is likely that the popularity of the Social Democratic prime minister, Willem Drees, also had a significant impact (see Figure 8.1); for the first time, the PvdA received more votes than its main competitor, the KVP. Local torch bearers’ groups had managed to mobilize some 15,000 volunteers to help in

152  Harm Kaal

Figure 8.1 A combination of general election posters and commercial ads on an Amsterdam wall, a week before the 1952 general elections, 17 June, 1952. Photo: Harry Pot, National Archives/Anefo. CC0 license, http:// proxy.handle.net/10648/a8fb9cf2-d0b4-102d-bcf8-003048976d84

the election campaign, from putting out posters to distributing brochures and pamphlets door-to-door.8 Also in terms of membership numbers the campaign had achieved its goal: numbers rose from slightly more than 100,000 in 1950 to eventually 147,000 (an all-time high) in 1958 (Voerman 1995, 194).9 All in all, within the PvdA, in the 1950s the idea took shape that political indifference and disengagement could be best countered by opening up channels of communication between politicians and the people. To a certain extent these initiatives were imbued with paternalism and pedagogy: the intention was to teach citizens how to engage with politics and their representatives in a proper way, by becoming a member of a political party, reading its manifesto, and through participation in the internal selection of potential representatives, among others (Schuyt & Taverne 2000, 384; De Jong 2020). These initiatives were, nonetheless, also sincere attempts to open up to the electorate and to acknowledge voters’ trials and tribulations. A fine example is the Ideeënbus der democratie (Democracy’s suggestion box), launched by the PvdA in 1957 in an attempt to explore the ideas and concerns of Dutch citizens, but the Social Democrats also hoped that

How to bridge the gap?  153 the suggestion box – which was in fact a survey with questions about democracy – would trigger people to reflect more on politics and democracy and their attitude toward it (Kaal 2018c, 187). The PvdA stressed that the initiative was meant to inspire a “conversation” between politicians and the people.10 It shows that responsiveness was turning into a key aspect of political representation. In the early 1960s this became ever more apparent when a new generation of party activists stepped to the fore, many of whom had a background in the social sciences (Kaal 2018d, 50). Their impact on the PvdA is particularly evident in the increasing use the party started to make of (more or less scientific) voter research, research that would increase awareness among the Social Democrats about the discrepancy between the party’s platforms and the issues on the minds of voters. The younger generation’s relationship towards politics was one of the party’s main concerns. This was prompted by the prospect of a lowering of the voting age from 23 to 21 (which would take effect in 1965) as well as by concerns about the high degree of political ignorance and indifference among members of this generation.11 The latter had been one of the disturbing conclusions of a survey carried out by the progressive weekly Vrij Nederland in 1959, the results of which were published in De Nieuwe Volwassene (The New Adult), a study by an Amsterdam PhD student in sociology: Joop Goudsblom. His conclusions were confirmed by a series of surveys among young voters, which the Dutch research institute NSS carried out on behalf of the PvdA in the early 1960s. These surveys also showed that there was a widening gap between the issues and concerns on the minds of voters when they cast their ballots and the platforms presented to them by the political parties. From all this, the Social Democrats first of all drew the conclusion that they needed to study “public opinion” more closely and regularly (Van Praag 1990, 29). Second, they concluded that they should focus more on political education, preferably with the help of the progressive broadcast organization VARA and affiliated newspapers like Het Vrije Volk.12 Radio and television were indeed used in the 1960s to make citizens, particularly the recently enfranchised ones, more familiar with contemporary political issues and the political system (De Jong 2020, 131–35). A belief in the power of political education not only characterized the Social Democrats’ response to what they saw as a lack of political engagement, it was evident among Dutch elites more in general. Political scientist Andries Hoogerwerf, in a journal pointedly titled Volksopvoeding (Education of the People), represented an approach common among Dutch politicians, journalists and scholars, of offering education as the way towards a more vibrant political culture. In an article published in 1964, Hoogerwerf criticized parties for their misguided attempts to draw the attention of voters by distributing hats, pens, and balloons with the party logo, which he compared to “shooting with bow and arrow in an era of intercontinental missiles” (Hoogerwerf 1964, 71). Instead, political parties,

154  Harm Kaal but also the press and schools, should train and stimulate citizens “to make an independent, conscious political choice” (in Dutch: “ertoe te brengen zelfstandig een weloverwogen politieke keus te doen”). Such choices should be based on profound knowledge of the different positions of parties on a range of political issues and on citizens’ knowledge of the political system and current political affairs (Hoogerwerf 1964, 77–78). This approach was at once educational and emancipatory because it also treated voters as independent individuals who were to cast their ballots based on their own decisions and not as the result of elite-controlled discourses of class and religion that bound citizens to a particular political community. The mismatch between such discourses and citizens’ perceptions of politics and political representation indeed became increasingly evident throughout the 1960s.

Anne Vondeling’s politics of responsiveness One of the key advocates of an approach to political representation that went beyond the boundaries of “party democracy” was social democratic politician Anne Vondeling. By zooming in on his ideas about political representation, popular political engagement and political communication, we can gain a better understanding of the transition in the culture of representative politics in the Netherlands throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Vondeling is best known for the key role he played in bringing about the professionalization of the PvdA in the 1960s: he recruited people from academia – particularly the social sciences – and promoted the use of surveys and polls to investigate public perceptions of politics. Moreover, Vondeling was an early adopter of television and was also rated as someone who came across well on TV. In the early 1960s he successfully pushed the party board to hire the help of market researchers, PR- and communication experts and people from the world of advertising to assist the party with its election campaign (Van Praag 1990, 28). Vondeling first entered parliament in 1946, briefly held the post of minister of agriculture in 1958, led the party in parliament between 1962 and 1965, which was followed by a short, unsuccessful stint as minister of finance, after which he returned as an MP, but lost his position as party leader. Opinion polls consistently showed him to be one of the best-known politicians of the 1960s (Daudt & Stapel 1965/1966, 63). In 1972 he became Speaker of parliament. He tragically died in a car accident in 1979, soon after his election to the European Parliament.13 Vondeling’s approach to political representation had a clear pedagogic undertone. Although this was not uncommon among Dutch politicians, Vondeling clearly stood out: colleagues and journalists often compared his demeanor to that of a schoolmaster and on closer inspection his posture and approach indeed come across as rather paternalistic and pedantic (Te Velde 2002, 200; Vondeling 1968, 21; Duijsenberg 1963). Yet, from the

How to bridge the gap?  155 start of his career as an MP Vondeling also displayed an approach to political representation that went beyond the boundaries of “party democracy”: he presented himself as an approachable representative of the people, particularly of the citizens in his region of origin, Friesland, a province in the north of the Netherlands. In an interview in a left-leaning regional newspaper, published in January 1953, Vondeling invited voters to get in touch: “an MP is accessible to anyone, anytime.” People might assume that MPs are inaccessible for “the common man,” but, Vondeling claimed, “nothing is further from the truth”: “my door is open for anyone.” Vondeling had organized these surgeries – a term used by British MPs for their meetings with local constituents – in hotels and pubs since 1952. The newspaper stressed that it was not a disguised form of political propaganda, but an example of a politician “listening honestly” to hear citizens out and provide a helping hand.14 As party leader, Vondeling continued his efforts to “diminish the distance” between politicians and the people and to visibly place himself “at the service of the people” (in Dutch: ik ben uw vertegenwoordiger. Wat is er van uw dienst?) (Vondeling 1968, 22–23; Van Praag 1990, 32). For their personal and responsive approach to political representation Vondeling and fellow party members drew inspiration from foreign examples: the Dutch Social Democrats kept a close eye on the campaigns of their sister parties in Britain and West Germany.15 In the 1966 provincial elections, Vondeling himself set the example by going door-to-door in a couple of Dutch cities making sure that the illustrated press covered his efforts to “close the distance” between citizens and politicians (see Figure 8.2). Such visits, Vondeling claimed, made him aware of the sometimes dire circumstances in which people lived, but were also meant to show citizens that politicians were “normal” and fallible people.16 Moreover, Vondeling made his fellow social democratic MPs follow his example of catering to the needs of citizens in a specific part of the country by assigning them a region of the Netherlands, preferably one with which the MP had a direct personal connection. Vondeling also organized regular working visits for MPs to farms, factories, and offices and kept promoting door-to-door canvassing as the cornerstone of election campaigns and membership recruitment efforts of the PvdA. In 1964, in a televized party broadcast, Vondeling announced a new recruitment campaign which eventually would bring in some 6,000 new party members.17 Some of these attempts to close the gap between politicians and the people met with criticism from Vondeling’s colleagues. His most controversial initiative was launched in 1965 in his capacity as finance minister in a center-left coalition government. Faced with some severe financial setbacks and the high costs of an ambitious government program, which seemed to make an unpopular tax increase inevitable, Vondeling asked citizens to send in suggestions for possible spending cuts. He made his call in a partypolitical broadcast of the PvdA, explaining the financial relationship

156  Harm Kaal

Figure 8.2 In 1966, Finance Minister Vondeling, third from the left, participated in his party’s canvassing tour for the provincial elections. Here he is shown discussing politics in the living room of a Dutch family. Photo: Jan Voets, National Archives/Anefo. CC0 license, http://proxy.handle. net/10648/aae1c2f8-d0b4-102d-bcf8-003048976d84

between tax-paying citizens and the state, in his typical pedagogical manner, as one between an association and its subscription-paying members: sometimes the subscription fees had to be raised to cover rising costs. The following weeks Vondeling would receive no less than 1,200 letters (Kaal 2018c, 190).18 Some responded with humour and posted a letter in which they kindly cancelled their membership “of the association of tax payers,” “because I do not agree with the announced raise of the membership fees.”19 Others presented the resignation of Vondeling or a lowering of the salaries of Cabinet members as the best way to cut the budget.20 Journalists and some of Vondeling’s colleagues argued that his initiative posed a threat to the position of parliament and displayed an unwarranted lack of trust in his own civil servants. In the end, they argued, it was the responsibility of MPs and not citizens to critically assess government policy and present alternatives (Kaal 2018c, 190). The initiatives of Vondeling were part of a broader trend among Western European political parties to conduct more interactive election campaigns in response to growing concerns in the early 1960s about the existence of a

How to bridge the gap?  157 gap “between the existing structures of democratic representation and the needs of the contemporary age” (Conway 2020, 263). Continuing complaints about a technocratic and oligarchic political culture led to discussions about the need to modernize political culture and the political system itself. The system, however, largely remained the same; the “sheer complexity of the mechanisms of modern government,” Conway argues, prevented any “substantial” change. Toward the end of the 1960s this lack of change resulted in the emergence of a more radical, fundamental criticism against the system of parliamentary democracy (Conway 2020, 268). The repertoire of representative politics put forward by Vondeling and others did, however, represent a shift in the culture of political representation from the early 1960s onwards. So far, I have discussed these changes in the Netherlands primarily from the perspective of the political elites. The next section zooms in on an initiative launched by Vondeling in 1963 that provides us with insights into how the interaction between politicians and the people materialized in practice, and how citizens experienced and used the channels of communication with their representatives.

“Vondeling’s mailbox” In line with earlier attempts to present himself as an accessible politician, in the run-up to the 1963 general elections Vondeling asked voters to send him a letter and ask any question they might have about the political issues of the day. The letters and Vondeling’s responses were printed in the socialist daily Het Vrije Volk in a series called “Vondelings brievenbus” (“Vondeling’s mailbox”). The newspaper initially announced that the series would run for four weeks up until election day.21 The idea behind the mailbox was to present elections as a moment for citizens to seriously consider the issues at hand and gather information about the position of political parties towards these issues, rather than to cast their ballot as a routine, mechanical, or deferential act. Moreover, in line with the discourse of duty and education that characterized many of the discussions about postwar democracy, the newspaper reminded citizens that by “being informed” as well as informing one’s representatives about issues of interest to them, they were contributing to the functioning of democracy.22 To give readers an idea about the topics they could address, the newspaper published some examples that all more or less went in the direction of a critical assessment of the sitting government, in which the PvdA did not participate: the party was in opposition.23 The newspaper and Vondeling, however, soon found out that citizens had other issues on their minds. The series opened on April 18, 1963, with a letter on a topic with which Vondeling was very familiar: the lack of interest in politics among young people. The letter was sent in by J. van den Doel, who worked at a publishing house affiliated with the social democratic movement. In 1966, Van den Doel would emerge as one of the leading figures of a progressive movement

158  Harm Kaal within the Social Democratic party that challenged the position of Vondeling and other leading exponents of what would then be labelled as the “old generation” (Van Praag 1990, 41). For now, however, Vondeling was still in charge. In his response to Van den Doel’s letter he radiated optimism: young people were concerned about political issues, Vondeling argued, but their interest tended to go out to issues that the political establishment had not (yet) embraced.24 The initiative was a great success: after two weeks one of the journalists reported to Vondeling that enough letters had come in to continue the item for months, which in the end the newspaper decided to do.25 Vondeling answered letters in Het Vrije Volk up until July, months after the elections that had brought the Social Democrats a rather dramatic loss of five seats (which of course triggered a whole bunch of new readers’ questions). When the series ended in the summer of 1963, readers were encouraged to keep sending in letters, but to address them to the secretariat of the Social Democratic MPs.26 In an editorial the success of the mailbox was presented as proof that citizens were in want of some form of “direct contact” with their representatives – a form of interaction that had disappeared with the abolishment of district voting in 1918.27 Vondeling claimed that these conversations with voters had given him “the feeling of being a representative of the people.”28 What meaning can we ascribe to such correspondence? Marnix Beyen has argued that by sending letters to politicians, citizens potentially contributed to the politicization of issues: politicians could use people’s stories and concerns as rhetorically powerful ammunition in parliamentary debates (Beyen 2014, 30). Moreover, these letters present us with a unique insight into the connections ordinary citizens made between their personal lives and the sphere of representative government (Kaal & Van de Griend 2019, 133). By responding to Vondeling’s call, by putting pen to paper, citizens placed themselves in a position in which they could bring their political opinions to the table. Most of the letter writers ignored the newspaper’s request to send in short questions and instead used the opportunity to bring their analysis of current affairs to the attention of a prominent politician. Some of them went into detail about their track record within the social democratic movement in what often seems to have been an attempt to put themselves in a position from which they could justifiably voice concerns or criticism or ask for a personal favor, while others simply cut to the chase and offered their explanations behind the Social Democrats’ 1963 electoral defeat.29 It goes without saying that one cannot claim that such letters are representative of public opinion, and establishing who belongs to the category of “ordinary” citizens also poses a challenge. Moreover, in the case at hand, we have to take into account that, in the end, Vondeling and the newspaper held control over this communicative practice. They, after all, selected the letters they wanted to print and answer publicly. This does not mean that we

How to bridge the gap?  159 should doubt the sincerity of Vondeling c.s.: the amount of effort Vondeling put into answering the questions, including questions and answers that did not make it into print, is testimony to the fact that he placed great value on his interaction with voters. One citizen, for instance, after having received a response to one of his questions in the newspaper, also received, by mail, Vondeling’s reply to all the ten questions he had sent in.30 Roughly 180 of the original letters the newspaper received are stored in Anne Vondeling’s archive. If we rely on Vondeling’s own assessment of the total number of letters he got, this constitutes approximately three-fourths of the entire corpus.31 These letters allow us to at least catch a glimpse of how citizens used this channel of communication and articulated their relationship towards one of their representatives. Given the close ties between Het Vrije Volk and the PvdA, one can assume that most of the correspondents at least sympathized with the Social Democrats. In approximately one out of every five letters, writers explicitly presented themselves as members of the PvdA. Most writers lived in the urban areas in the west of the Netherlands where the newspaper had its widest circulation. Men far outnumbered women. The topics people addressed were quite diverse and ranged from complaints about the power of Jesuits in the Netherlands to questions about the lack of influence young people had within the PvdA, and from the cost of bus fares to unsolicited advice on how to prevent another loss at the next general elections. After the elections of May 15, most letters discussed the party’s devastating defeat and the fact that the party was again condemned to opposition. The stuff Vondeling picked out to discuss in the newspaper obviously largely concerned what the Social Democrats saw as the overriding concerns of the campaign: the role confessional parties played in Dutch politics (according to the PvdA they obscured the “real” divide between progressivism and conservatism), housing and rents, and the possible introduction of commercial television (which the PvdA opposed), among other topics. Moreover, Vondeling used his podium to attack the sitting government and to respond to criticism he had received from his political opponents.32 Also, the campaign itself popped up in the series, with citizens wondering why the PvdA had not selected a single “leader” but entered the elections with multiple figureheads. After the elections had ended in a disappointing loss for the PvdA, a “worker” (Arbeider) who had attended “school for only six-and-half years” advised Vondeling to seek some constructive criticism (opbouwende kritiek) by sending out a survey with a single question: “Did you vote for us, if not, why?” (Heeft U bij de Verkiezingen op ons gestemd, zo niet wat is dan de rede, wilt U deze omschrij­ ven, see Figure 8.3).33 In the newspaper, Vondeling also responded to criticism from citizens that his party’s campaign had been “too calm.” Several letter writers, mostly senior citizens, expressed feelings of nostalgia for the early twentieth century, a time marked by inspirational and charismatic party leaders

160  Harm Kaal

Figure 8.3 One of the letters Vondeling received during his 1963 brievenbus campaign. National Archives, The Hague, Collectie 346, A. Vondeling, 2.21. 183.89, inv.nr. 123.

and a vibrant and militant party culture shaped around manifestations and demonstrations. Back then, the party had been a true movement, which these citizens contrasted with the technocratic, governmental party the PvdA had become.34 Some saw the absence of “ordinary” citizens and the dominance of “intellectuals” among the party’s MPs as the main reason

How to bridge the gap?  161 behind the lack of “militancy” [strijdbaarheid] and “emotion” among social democratic politicians.35 In the newspaper, Vondeling admitted that a more emotional, rather than rational approach might have made things different.36 Also, internally, Vondeling was criticized for what his fellow party members saw as an aloof and intellectual approach to politics, described by young party activist Wim Duisenberg (minister of finance in the 1970s) as “the meticulousness of a professor” (Duijsenberg 1963).37 Another young party activist, Ed van Thijn (mayor of Amsterdam in the 1980s) concluded that the PvdA had been unable to translate its platform into issues that aroused emotions and offered voters a clear choice (Van Thijn 1963, 488). Here the critical letters of citizens clearly tied in with broader concerns within the party about its approach of the electorate. In roughly one-fourth of the letters stored in Vondeling’s archive, citizens presented their personal grievances and requests to him: the trouble they experienced in coming to a divorce settlement, the mistreatment of a relative in a mental home and their dire financial situation, to name but a few. For them, the elections and the mailbox’s purpose of improving people’s understanding of party platforms hardly played a role. It reminds us that for citizens politics often presents itself from the angle of their everyday lives and concerns. These citizens simply used the opportunity to gain direct access to a prominent politician, hoping that he could help them out. In fact, epistolary interaction has often been associated with such a context of requests and clientelism along with customary displays of loyalty and admiration (Beyen 2014; Fenske 2013). Some, indeed, in a typical clientelist fashion, brought their loyalty and support for the Social Democrats to Vondeling’s attention when they made their requests for help. The salutation of one of these letters reads: “a lamentation” (een jammerkreet). The writer elaborately discussed his contributions to canvassing for the Social Democrats in his local neighborhood often “after a tiring day at work” (na een zware werkdag) and then went on to ask Vondeling to help him get a raise on his pension.38 Vondeling responded to these letters as well, albeit not in the newspaper. On occasions, citizens received a letter in response from Vondeling in which he asked for more details (often in relation to their personal situation), or letters were forwarded to people within the party, across the country, who were asked to look into the situation or to help Vondeling to provide an answer to the matter at hand.39 It shows how keen Vondeling was to convey to citizens that he was an approachable and responsive MP and underlines that for him, this initiative was more than a mere campaign stunt. By the end of April Het Vrije Volk reported to its readers that the mailbox was overflowing, often with longer letters that covered a wide array of issues. The newspaper therefore encouraged people to send in short, tothe-point questions that were related to current affairs.40 Citizens, however, kept addressing more personal matters in the letters they sent to Vondeling. Nevertheless, it was not difficult per se to render some of the personal

162  Harm Kaal grievances into larger issues that Vondeling could address in the newspaper. This was particularly the case with complaints and questions about pension settlements and disability benefits. Pensions were connected to wage development, but to cover the rising costs of pension payments, social insurance contributions had recently been raised. In their letters, several citizens explained how this affected their personal situation and expressed their dissatisfaction about the party’s support for this settlement in parliament. Some wrote letters in which they renounced their support for the Social Democrats at the next elections: only if Vondeling was willing to shove the party’s “capitalistic” chairman (Ko Suurhoff) aside, could the party again count on his support, one of them wrote (zodra u dat kapitalistje aan de dijk zet (…) stemmen wij weer op de PvdA).41 It was clearly an issue Vondeling could not ignore and he tackled it in an episode of his “mailbox” that occupied half a page of Het Vrije Volk just days before the election. He mentioned the names (and addresses) of no less than 26 citizens who had brought this topic to his attention, but one might doubt if they were satisfied with Vondeling’s rather technical exposé, in which he tried to explain the somewhat complex set-up of the pension settlements. His answer clearly contrasted with the sometimes very intimate and emotional letters he had received on the topic. The pension case is an example of the fact that politicians and citizens could discuss the same topic and still end up talking past each other. Yet, Vondeling’s eagerness to help citizens out and his other attempts throughout his political career to connect with voters show that, often by interacting with voters directly, he was doing his best to bridge the gap between politicians and the people. In doing so, Vondeling, however, often fell back on his natural frame of reference. For him, politics presented itself from the perspective of party, parliamentary debates, and policy issues. With his rather professorial style, Vondeling was keen on explaining sometimes complex issues to the public and the party’s position on them. His mailbox initiative was premised on the idea that politics presented – or for that matter, should present – itself from these angles to citizens as well. The letters show that this was not necessarily the case and that many citizens did not fit Vondeling’s ideal type of political engagement. For them, their everyday concerns mattered most.

Conclusion Taking the PvdA and specifically one of its leading politicians as a case study, this chapter has explored how ideas and concerns about the relationship between ordinary citizens and their representatives shaped Dutch political culture up until the early 1960s. In this period, the debate about political representation was to a significant extent informed by scientific research into people’s appreciation and understanding of politics and political representation. Applying new methods, theories and techniques,

How to bridge the gap?  163 political scientists and pollsters tried to open the black box of popular political opinion, investigating the ideas, perceptions and expectations ordinary citizens held with regard to the political system and their own role within it. The set-up of much of this research and the interpretation of the results show that scientists and politicians hardly ever questioned “party democracy” as a mode of political representation. The search for solutions to the low levels of political engagement indicated by polls, surveys, and politicians’ own experiences, took place within the framework of party democracy itself. Subsequently, this chapter has zoomed in on the attempts by the PvdA and Vondeling in particular, to get ordinary citizens more involved in (party) politics. Apart from concerns that a low degree of political engagement could undermine the system of parliamentary democracy, the Social Democrats saw increased levels of political awareness and participation as a necessary condition to break through the established patterns of party allegiance that were based on religion and deference. An analysis of these attempts has revealed the pedagogic, educational gaze through which politicians perceived and approached the electorate. Parties were very keen to display responsiveness, but within the controlled framework of party democracy; a framework in which popular engagement should preferably take the shape of an active party membership and a constructive exchange of opinions and ideas in relation to party platforms and manifestos. The divide between this frame of reference and that of ordinary citizens was evidenced by Vondeling’s mailbox. The letters he received show that popular perceptions of politics were profoundly dictated by people’s everyday lives and concerns and less by ideology, party platforms, and electoral turf battles. From the early 1960s onwards, concerns among the political establishment that it was losing its grip on the electorate intensified, fueled by unexpected election results. In 1963 the anti-establishment, populist agenda of the Boerenpartij (Farmers’ Party), led by the unconventional and charismatic farmer Hendrik Koekoek, gained traction, which resulted in three seats at the general elections that year. Four years later the party more than doubled its seats in parliament and Democraten’66 (D66), another new party of progressive intellectuals, made a stunning entrance as well, winning seven seats. The PvdA and KVP, still the two biggest parties in parliament, suffered heavy losses. Political scientists at that time argued that the Netherlands was witnessing a fundamental transformation of politics: it was no longer a distinct field or subsystem of society that was in and of itself of “minimum interest” to “ordinary citizens.” Instead, politics was becoming a part of social life itself and, as a consequence, ordinary citizens were also now giving shape to “the political.”42 Strikingly, many of the citizens that were actively involved in this transformation were to be found among groups that polls and surveys had earlier identified as politically indifferent, ignorant, and inefficacious: young people and women. Under the banner of “the personal is political” they called the status quo

164  Harm Kaal into question, pushed party platforms in new directions and promoted more personal and direct forms of political representation that shaped political culture from the late 1960s onwards (De Rooy 2014, 253–57). Ironically, the man who had tirelessly tried to increase political engagement found himself sidelined amid this political turmoil. His policies as finance minister had made Vondeling unpopular among his fellow party members. In 1966 Joop den Uyl succeeded him as party leader. Another point of irony is the fact that much of the missionary zeal Vondeling displayed in the 1950s and early 1960s, was now taken up by the new generation. Political education was at the heart of a movement towards a “democratization” of society, implemented through school programs and TV broadcasts that were meant to improve citizens’ knowledge of the political system and their sense of political efficacy – which, surveys showed, continued to be very low. Like Vondeling and others had done before, the new generation of party leaders, as well as activists and journalists, projected their own fascination for a still heavily party- and ideologycentered mode of politics onto the public, again turning a blind eye towards more everyday, popular approaches of the political (De Jong 2020). More research, and particularly a better appreciation of popular culture thus seems to be needed to improve our understanding of how ordinary citizens experienced and perceived the political beyond the framework of party politics in these decades.

Notes 1 Many thanks go out to Vincent van de Griend, who has collected the letters Vondeling received in 1963 and 1965 as part of a research traineeship at Radboud University. 2 The report has an English-language summary. 3 Things might change soon though, if parliament follows up on the recommendations made by yet another state committee. An English summary of these recommendations, which have been made public in July 2019, is available here: https://www.staatscommissieparlementairstelsel.nl/binaries/staatscommissieparlementair-stelsel/documenten/rapporten/samenvattingen/072019/18/downloadthe-english-translation-of-the-final-report-of-the-state-commission/Integrale+ vertaling.pdf [accessed August 11, 2020]. 4 Results showed that 59 percent had ‘no interest at all’ in politics, 31 percent were moderately interested. Interest was higher among people in higher income groups and among people between 35 and 65 years, among male respondents, and among members of the orthodox-Protestant church. 5 “Tien geboden voor een huisbezoeker.” International Institute of Social History (IISH), PvdA Archive, inv.nr. 601 (1956). 6 “Werken voor twee. Actie-boek Kamerverkiezingen 1956.” IISH, PvdA Archive, inv.nr. 2089. 7 D. Spierenburg, “Rapport verkiezingsactie.” IISH, PvdA Archive, inv.nr. 2090 (April, 1959). 8 “Jaarverslag 1952.Verslag van het partijbestuur van de Partij van de Arbeid over de periode van 1 October 1950 – 30 September 1952,” 125–26, http:// dnpprepo.ub.rug.nl/794/ [accessed September 4, 2020].

How to bridge the gap?  165 9 From 1965 onwards these numbers would go in steady decline – some fluctuations set aside – to the level of slightly less than 100,000 in 1970. 10 “Wat leeft er onder het Nederlandse volk.” Het Vrije Volk, Oct 15, 1957. 11 In the Netherlands citizens were enfranchised after their 23rd birthday from 1946 onwards. The voting age was lowered to 21 in 1965 and to 18 in 1972. 12 “Resultaat van het kiezersonderzoek onder jongere kiezers.” IISH, PvdA Archive, inv.nr. 1366 (November 1962); “Nota heronderzoek jonge kiezers 1963.” IISH, PvdA Archive, inv.nr. 1366. 13 For an overview of his career, see: https://www.parlement.com/id/vg09llc 57er4/a_anne_vondeling [accessed August 12, 2020] and for his own reflections on his career: Anne Vondeling, Nasmaak en voorproef. Een handvol ervaringen en ideeën. Amsterdam: Arbeiderspers, 1968. 14 “Veel mensen, veel problemen op spreekuur van Kamerlid.” Friese Koerier, January 16, 1953. 15 Ed van Thijn, “Let’s go. . . ’Verslag van een bezoek aan de Labour Party.” IISH, Joop den Uyl Archive, inv.nr. 636; Ed van Thijn, “Die SPD sucht das Gespräch.” IISH, PvdA, inv.nr. 1366 (April 1964); “Suggesties naar aanleiding van verkiezingscampagnes in Engeland en de V.S.” IISH, PvdA Archive, inv.nr. 1367 (January 1965). 16 Aad van der Mijn, “Vondeling op de koffie.” Het Parool, March 23, 1966. 17 “Aantal actieve burgers moet groter worden.” Het Vrije Volk, April 15, 1964; “PvdA wil de afstand tussen kiezers en gekozenen gaan verkleinen.” Het Vrije Volk, April 10, 1964. 18 “Vondeling staat open voor bezuinigingstips.” Het Vrije Volk, October 19, 1965. 19 J. R. to Vondeling, Oct. 26, 1965; J. H. to Vondeling, d.d. 12 June 1965; D. B. to Vondeling, 19 October 1965. Dutch National Archives (NA), Anne Vondeling Archive, inv.nr. 157. 20 C. J. S. to Vondeling, October 18, 1965; E. v. R. to Vondeling, October 20, 1965. NA, Vondeling Archive, inv.nr. 157. 21 “Vondelings brievenbus.” Het Vrije Volk, April 10, 1963. 22 Editorial, Het Vrije Volk, July 9, 1963. 23 “Vondelings brievenbus.” Het Vrije Volk, April 11, 1963. 24 “Vondelings brievenbus.” Het Vrije Volk, April 18, 1963. 25 S. I. to Vondeling, 24 April 1963. NA, Vondeling Archive, inv.nr. 123. 26 Ibid. 27 Editorial, Het Vrije Volk, July 9, 1963. 28 “Afscheid van Vondelings brievenbus.” Het Vrije Volk, July 9, 1963. 29 e.g., V. d. L . to Vondeling, April 14, 1963. NA, Vondeling Archive, inv.nr. 123; IJs. V. to Vondeling, undated. 30 Vondeling to H. J. K. d.d July 29, 1963. NA, Vondeling, inv.nr. 123. 31 Vondeling to M. S., July 18, 1963, in which Vondeling claims to have received “some 250 letters.” NA, Vondeling Archive, inv.nr. 123. 32 These issues were tackled in Het Vrije Volk on April 19, April 23, May 6. 33 N. W. to Vondeling, June 26, 1963. NA, Vondeling Archive, inv.nr. 123. 34 J. R. to Vondeling, April 13, 1963; A. de V. to Vondeling, July 6, 1963; H. R. (Amsterdam) to Vondeling, undated; C. W. to Vondeling, May 22, 1963; F. A. to Vondeling, July 7, 1963. 35 G. v. d. L. to Vondeling, April 11, 1963; H. K. to Vondeling, May 9, 1963. 36 Het Vrije Volk, May 25, 1963. 37 At the time Vondeling was a professor by special appointment at the University of Groningen. 38 e.g., P. P. to Vondeling, undated. NA, Vondeling Archive, inv.nr. 123. 39 e.g., Vondeling to H. R., June 12, 1963; Vondeling to N. B., June 12, 1963.

166  Harm Kaal 40 “Stroom van vragen.” Het Vrije Volk, April 30, 1963. 41 G. J. S. to Vondeling, May 12, 1963. 42 Back cover, Acta Politica 1 (1965/1966).

Bibliography Barents, J. 1952. “De verkiezingsoverwinning en de partij.” Socialisme & Democratie 9: 419–22. Beyen, Marnix. 2014. “Clientelism and Politicization. Direct Interactions between Deputies and “Ordinary Citizens” in France, ca. 1890- ca. 1940.” Temp 4 (8): 17–32. Conway, Martin. 2002. “Democracy in Postwar Western Europe: The Triumph of a Political Model.” European History Quarterly 32 (1): 59–84. https://doi.org/ 10.1177/0269142002032001562. Conway, Martin. 2020. Western Europe’s Democratic Age, 1945–1968. Princeton: Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780691204604. Daudt, H., and J. Stapel. 1965/1966. “Parlement, politiek en kiezer. Verslag van een opinie-onderzoek.” Acta Politica 1: 46–76. De Jong, Wim. 2020. Civic Education and Contested Democracy. Towards a Pedagogic State in the Netherlands post 1945. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56298-4. De Jong, Wim, and Harm Kaal. 2017. “Mapping the Demos: The Scientisation of the Political, Electoral Research and Dutch Political Parties, c. 1900–1980.” Contemporary European History 26 (1): 111–38. https://doi.org/10.1017/S09607 77316000515. De Rooy, Piet. 2014. Ons stipje op de waereldkaart. De politieke cultuur van modern Nederland. Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek. Dobber, Tom, and Ron de Jong. 2020. “Oude wijn in nieuwe zakken? Microtargeting van kiezers vroeger en nu.” Tijdschrift Voor Communicatiewetenschap 48 (2): 98–111. Duijsenberg, W. F. 1963. “Bezinning op de socialistische aderlating.” Socialisme & Democratie: 601–04. Fenske, Michaela. 2013. Demokratie erschreiben. Bürgerbriefe und Petitionen als Medien politischer Kultur 1950–1974. Frankfurt am Main: Campus. Hoetink, Carla. 2018. Macht der gewoonte. Regels en rituelen in de Tweede Kamer na 1945. Nijmegen: Vantilt. Hoogerwerf, Andries. 1964. “Politieke partij, politieke voorlichting en politieke opvoeding.” Volksopvoeding 13 (2): 65–79. Hoogerwerf, Andries. 1967. “De Nederlandse staatsburger: toeschouwer of medespeler?” Sociologische Gids 14 (5): 293–314. Kaal, Harm. 2018a. “A Friendly Match: Sport and Political Culture in the Netherlands between the 1950s and the 1970s.” In Building Bridges. Scholars, History and Historical Demography. A Festschrift in Honor of Professor Theo Engelen, edited by Paul Puschmann, and Tim Riswick, 216–36. Nijmegen: Valkhof Pers. Kaal, Harm. 2018b. “Popular Politicians: The Interaction between Politics and Popular Culture in the Netherlands, 1950s–1980s.” Cultural and Social History 15 (4): 595–616. https://doi.org/10.1080/14780038.2018.1492787.

How to bridge the gap?  167 Kaal, Harm. 2018c. “The Voice of the People. Communicative Practices of Popular Political Engagement in the Netherlands, 1950s–1960s.” Archiv Für Sozialgeschichte 58: 183–200. Kaal, Harm. 2018d. “Work in Progress. Class and Voter Interaction in Election Campaigns of Dutch Social Democrats, c. 1945 to the 1970s.” Österreichische Zeitschrift Für Geschichtswissenschaften, 29 (1): 41–60. Kaal, Harm, and Vincent van de Griend. 2019. “Postwar Popular Politics: Integrating the Voice of the People in Postwar Political History.” In New Perspectives on Power and Political Representation from Ancient History to the Present Day. Repertoires of Representation, edited by Harm Kaal, & Daniëlle Slootjes, 124–43. Leiden & Boston: Brill. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004291966_009. Manin, Bernard. 1997. The Principles of Representative Government. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511659935. Schuyt, C. J. M., and Ed Taverne, eds. 2000. 1950. Welvaart in zwart-wit. Den Haag: Sdu Uitgevers. Staatscommissie van advies inzake het kiesstelsel en wettelijke regeling der politieke partijen. 1956. De Nederlandse kiezer. Een onderzoek naar zijn gedragingen en opvattingen. Den Haag: Staatsdrukkerij. Te Velde, Henk. 2002. Stijlen van leiderschap. Persoon en politiek van Thorbecke tot Den Uyl. Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek. Te Velde, Henk. 2004. “Het wij-gevoel van een morele gemeenschap: een politiekculturele benadering van partijgeschiedenis.” Jaarboek DNPP: 106–23. Van der Land, L., C. E. van der Maesen, and P. R. Baehr. 1964. “Voting in the Netherlands. A Panel-Study in an Amsterdam Suburb.” In Special Sessions on Progress in Electoral Research, Sixth World Congress International Political Science Association. Geneva. Van Praag Jr., Philip. 1990. Strategie en illusie. Elf jaar intern debat in de PvdA (1966-1977). Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis. Van, Thijn, Ed. 1963. “De Kamerverkiezingen van 1963.” Socialisme & Democratie: 485–509. Voerman, G. 1995. “De ledentallen van politieke partijen, 1945-1995.” Jaarboek DNPP: 192–206. Vondeling, A. 1968. Nasmaak en voorproef. Een handvol ervaringen en ideeën. Amsterdam: Uitgeverij De Arbeiderspers. Wiardi Beckman Stichting. 1951. Verkiezingen in Nederland. De ontwikkeling en verspreiding van politieke voorkeuren en hun betekenis voor de Partij van de Arbeid. Amsterdam.

Part III

Spiritualization of politics in embodied subaltern narratives

9 From subaltern experience to political tradition Telling and knowing revolutionary martyrs in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, 1848–1860 Pierre-Marie Delpu In the nineteenth century, political martyrdom was quite central in the political life of the Italian peninsula’s states and societies (Cavicchioli 2022). In all these states, and especially at the time of the 1848 uprising, supporters of the revolution organized many simultaneous ceremonies honoring political victims. In the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, where a multifaceted opposition movement emerged in reaction to King Ferdinand II’s authoritarian and repressive rule, a specific tradition of revolutionary martyrdom appeared in the wake of the consistent crushing of the successive insurrections taking place between 1799 and 1860. Relying on a lay and secularized version of stirring religious images, it constituted one of the main channels of the opposition’s political pedagogy. Described as a southern tradition by liberal chroniclers like the Neapolitan journalist Giuseppe Lazzaro in 1867, this changing notion of martyrdom first included national politicians executed at the end of the 1799 revolution when King Ferdinand IV returned to power after a few months of a republican regime, and progressively extended, in the mid-nineteenth century, to ordinary citizens increasingly involved in politics and turned into martyrs by local ceremonies (Lazzaro 1867, 140–41). Political martyrs indeed constituted an essential tool of politicization and were key in winning southern populations over to the revolutionary cause. Halfway between emotional reaction and conscious appropriation of local political figures (Riall 2010; Conti 2017, 59–85), this evolution raises questions about the status of political martyrs in the social and mental order of southern supporters of the revolution. The experiences of individual and collective suffering, initially constructed from subaltern memories, underwent a trend of progressive written formalization which made them the basis of a specific political tradition designed to mobilize the masses. Such a process is, at the same time, the result of ordinary ways to celebrate political actors reputed to be exceptional and the determinant of new mobilizations aimed at perpetuating the memory of martyrs.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003290087-13

172  Pierre-Marie Delpu The aim of this article is to tease out how a local political tradition in the middle of the nineteenth century developed around the celebration of revolutionary martyrs, from the 1848 revolutions, which had a strong impact on the kingdom’s societies, to its integration to a unified Italy in 1860. There are very few popular writings in Calabria, in a context of high illiteracy, and the use of dialects was very common. Printed documentation and ordinary political objects allow us to reconstruct the circulation of the memory of martyrs. From the 1830s onwards, liberals developed an ethnographic interest in recording aspects of social life displayed by oral traditions (Petrusewicz 2005). As they showcased subaltern political experiences, these writings served as the bases for policiary and judiciary sources, produced by the central monarchical authorities. To reconstruct the cycle that allows the development of such a political tradition, I will first address the conception of martyrdom in the first decades of the nineteenth-century Southern Italian societies. I will then analyze the subaltern initiatives that carried the cults of revolutionary martyrs, before considering their recuperation by the local elites in a process of top-down politicization. The case of the Italo-Albanian minority, where political martyrdom is directly linked to the community dynamic, will receive special attention. Finally, I will show that, after the collapse of the revolution of 1848, the exiled liberals played a significant role in building a positive recollection of Southern Italian political martyrdom.

What was a political martyr in the nineteenth-century Mezzogiorno? Originating in the Catholic tradition, the “martyr” category became one of the key notions of the Southern Italian revolutionary vocabulary in the first decades of the nineteenth century. It applied to all the patriots sacrificed for the sake of their political beliefs, with no necessary reference to death. Thus, the term was used in its broadest sense and included diverse experiences ranging from physical suffering, imprisonment, exile, and despoliation to public duties performed under constraint. The way that political martyrdom was evoked as a concrete experience, strongly linked with the Southern Italian political conditions, and built on oral testimonies spread at a local scale, played a significant role in shaping subaltern political subjectivities. There was, in fact, almost no need to define its exact meaning because the reference was made obvious by the quite strong popular religiosity of the South (Buc 2015; Delpu 2017). The repression at the end of the eighteenth century, led by the Bourbon monarchy against the republican revolution of 1799, produced opposed attitudes of, on the one hand, the veneration of patriots spontaneously treated as martyrs, and on the other hand, the spontaneous destruction of their remains by supporters of royal power (Addante 2019). The literary mentions of them tended to present them as part of a collective experience. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the writings of revolution

From subaltern experience to political tradition  173 chroniclers and the speeches of liberal supporters alike tended to refer to martyrs on a collective basis and did not mention their names as they represented the fate of the southern political community as a whole. However, some of these speeches explicitly paralleled patriotic sacrifice and religious martyrdom. For the moderate deputy Giuseppe Poerio at the time of the 1820–21 revolution, Neapolitan political martyrs were following in the footsteps of the Christian martyrs of late Antiquity.1 They had humanity, virtue, and personal sacrifice in common: moral virtues that made sense in the political revolutionary order, and were used to legitimize the insurrection, the sacred nature of which they highlighted. The idea was common in early nineteenth century patriots’ lexicon, revealing the sacralization of dedication and sacrifice. Beyond the mere lexical appropriation of the term, the use of revolutionary martyrs therefore corresponded to partisan political pedagogy. Thus, the reference to political martyrs marked the secularized transfer of a uniting and stirring religious notion. In their use of notions, images, and phrases drawn from religion to mobilize the masses, southern liberal movements were part of a broader tendency, noticeable in other societies of nineteenth-century Christian Europe. Recent studies have established that, at the time, it was one of the most efficient tools for politicization, relying both on archetypes inspired by religion – saintliness, Marian devotion, sacralization of the family – and the individuals who helped spread them, including the many priests who had rallied behind the revolutionary cause (Augusteijn et al. 2013). Such a process actually took up and amplified an evolution initiated in the Middle Ages, in terms of casting political victims as religious martyrs, and employing them to further the cohesion of a territorially defined community (Billoré & Lecuppre 2019). In the case of the Mezzogiorno (Southern Italy), the cult of political martyrs was in keeping with Catholic culture as influenced by CounterReformation: the mechanisms of religious saintliness underlaid those of martyr invention and celebration. From the sixteenth century onwards, the cult of local saints including Saint Francis of Paola in Calabria and Saint Januarius in Naples gained momentum (Sallmann 1994). They represented both ethical models for believers and identities over which local communities could unite. From the end of the eighteenth century, the reinstatement of itinerant preaching and the new interest in Catholic martyrs were to influence (indirectly and by contiguity) the perception of political victims as martyrs. Their recognition was, however, informal and more akin to a moral and political archetype than to the nominative celebration of clearly identified political actors. Discourse about these political victims conversely highlighted a mass phenomenon and pointed to the deadly and repressive nature of the Bourbon monarchy. In that respect, martyrs were incarnate testimonies of the effects of a tyrannical regime on the society of the kingdom. Until 1848, written texts about martyrs were rare in the kingdom, as indeed in most Italian states. The first peninsular martyrology was

174  Pierre-Marie Delpu published by Tuscan priest Atto Vannucci in the first months of the revolution (Vannucci 1848; Mengozzi 2012), and based on a collection of edifying biographies from the French revolution, the Recueil des actes héroïques, which was published during a key moment in the shaping of modern lay sanctity. It also influenced Luigi La Vista’s collection of political martyrs’ lives. The latter was a young Neapolitan writer, whose life was cut short by his execution during the massacres of May 15, 1848. In the introduction of his manuscript – which would have been the first Neapolitan liberal martyrology – he adopted a “pantheon of heroes,” a literary trope that had been developed since the last decades of the eighteenth century (Bouvers 2012). La Vista (1848, ed. in 1863) that defined martyrs as “first-class saints” (santi di prim’ordine) destined to be admired and contemplated like religious martyrs, before sketching a pantheon of southern political victims giving pride of place to the dead of 1799. His manuscript, therefore, reflected a largely shared conception of political martyrdom, linked to morality and identity, and centered on the founding revolution of 1799. Although it was the first southern text that defined the notion, it remained unheard of until the 1862 publication of its author’s complete works, and martyrdom continued to be understood along traditional lines. It was essentially through oral transmission in the context of informal social gatherings that the memory of martyrs was preserved. If the notion generally made sense for contemporaries, there was, however, no knowledge of the specific situations that had led to martyrdom or of the individuals it had involved. There was indeed no consensus on the function of martyrdom or on the possibility for contemporaries to see it as a horizon as was the case in Counter-Reform Catholicism. In line with Vincenzo Cuoco’s first historical mention of the event (Cuoco 1800, ed. in 2004), references to the 1799 dead described them as victims of a tyrannical government. The sacrifice was then not considered by political actors as a tool to serve their movement, but was seen by contemporary observers as a sign of the political virtue of those killed. In the 1840s, the recurrence of discourses on martyrdom made it the very essence of political virtue as looked for by patriots. As recalled by the democrat Luigi Settembrini, in an 1850 chronicle (Settembrini 1850, ed. in 1969, 182), “those who had taken part in the Reggio revolution said they had been listened to because they had boasted about being freedom martyrs.” He was referring to the first riots that had taken place in Southern Calabria in 1847, and which were severely repressed by the Bourbon army. A case in point is the execution of some of the leaders of the protests, such as Domenico Romeo, whom locals considered a martyr. According to this figurehead of the 1848 revolution, martyrdom was exploited by patriots as part of their political lives. The contemporary notion thus fluctuated between an archetype shaped by individual situations learnt about at the local level, and a determining factor of political action.

From subaltern experience to political tradition  175

From subaltern memory to written knowledge: local martyrdom as an emerging tradition in the 1840s The notion of a southern revolutionary martyr changed in the 1840s. While it had been until then necessarily collective and limited to patriotic moral qualities, it became associated with chronologically and geographically defined situations in which the victims were nominally recognized. This evolution took place in a new context marked by a growing number of local uprisings as well as the more systematic use of religious themes aimed at the politicization of masses. Popularized by Turin priest Vincenzo Gioberti in 1843 and the nationally and liberally inclined new pontiff Pius IX in the wake of his 1843 coronation, the idea of building Italy around the figure of the pope circulated among southern populations, as indeed in most Italian states, in the name of religious emotional investment. The riots that took place in the Abruzzi in 1841, in the province of Cosenza (Calabria) in 1843–44, and finally in Reggio in 1847 reveal how political experiences helped turn local individuals with no political responsibilities into emblematic revolutionary figures. Such experiences explain how political martyrdom shifted toward ordinary individuals, while it had so far been mostly associated with members of the kingdom’s political elites who derived moral virtue from their aristocratic origins. The revolts of Cosenza in 1844 and Gerace in 1847 were the most significant ones, both harshly repressed by the Bourbon army and leading to the execution of their supposed organizers. It was mainly at the local level, in places around the torture site, that martyrdom was mentioned and frequently celebrated by ordinary citizens. In Cosenza, after local priests had hidden the remains of the executed patriots of 1844 in the chapel of San Francesco di Paola (on the outskirts of the commune), clandestine signs of devotion multiplied, especially under the pretext of the anniversaries of the execution, each year on March 25. They resulted almost immediately in cults, partly linked to the connections that existed between local communities and the people who had been executed. This is quite revealing of the strong social links formed at times with local public figures like Domenico Romeo, killed in the Reggio revolt on September 2, 1847. He was the brother of Giovanni Andrea Romeo, a key figure in the local opposition movement and mayor of the village of San Stefano. Local reputations also helped mobilize civilian populations around the memory of martyrs. In the case of the five young men executed in the village of Gerace in September 1847, printed documents distributed in the province testify to the indignation of local communities over the particularly harsh repression that failed to acknowledge the loyalty of the locality as well as the five victims’ only marginal involvement in the revolts against the monarchy (Cataldo 2000). One of them, Michele Bello, was considered a political agitator and had indeed merely toppled royal statues the year before his execution. The diffusion of the news of

176  Pierre-Marie Delpu the Gerace executions revealed that information circulated fast and, because of its strong emotional content, resulted in the spontaneous mobilization of contemporaries who identified with the tortured martyrs. The information thus avoided the by then modernized and efficient news channels controlled by public authorities. It was indeed through traditional channels, including the oral circulation of rumors, that information about the political victims of the revolution was spread. Such a practice had been a powerful tool of politicization, particularly among Southern Italian people, for whom it was part of the common repertoire of action during most of the nineteenth century (Caglioti 2001). Printed documents handed out in the two provinces of Calabria, referred to the 1844 martyrs of Cosenza and the 1847 ones of Gerace and Reggio collectively, which also underlines the fraternal links existing between these communities in mourning.2 These commemorative processes were in line with the effort initiated in the early 1840s by local scholars, most of whom had become liberal supporters. In communities where local, village, and valley bonds took precedence over national identity for most of the nineteenth century, members of provincial academies tried to produce knowledge about the societies they belonged to (Petrusewicz 2005). This ethnographic effort encouraged their knowledge about the local population, in their attempt to adapt the politicization strategies of the liberals to fit ordinary folk. It was thus a response to Vincenzo Cuoco (1800, ed. in 2004) who had suggested, after the crush of the 1799 uprising, that the revolution had failed because of its leaders’ inability to win the people over. While there are very few published sources about the construction of martyr memory, the local scholarly press, notably in Calabria, highlighted the scenarios presiding over the elaboration and transmission of knowledge at the level of village communities. From 1839 and 1842 respectively, the Fata Morgana in Reggio and the Calabrese in Cosenza were published thanks to the involvement of local men of letters and sciences, partly mobilized for the liberal movement. Conscious of their possible mobilizing capacity, they put into writing the memories that had been made up among subalterns, and sought to turn them into a local political tradition. They produced and spread knowledge about the local or village homeland and its inhabitants, ways of life, customs, and beliefs, and about local communities seen as threatened by the centralization forced upon the kingdom during the Napoleonic occupation (1806–15). These papers therefore gave pride of place to “village scholars” whose mode of operation and local influence they described.3 They shed light on two distinct channels of knowledge and news circulation. Against the priest’s authority, admitted by contemporaries, they formalized the recent history of the Calabrian provinces, dwelling on key episodes like the local involvement in the 1799 revolutionary movement or the 1806 French military campaign, which remained traumatic for most Calabrians (Delpu 2018).

From subaltern experience to political tradition  177 Either transcribed as part of the minutes of the local academy or of press articles later read and discussed in ordinary social situations like evening gatherings, these episodes prominently featured the Calabrian martyrs whose experience they tried to formalize. In the mid-1840s, following the first executions that had taken place in Cosenza in 1844, and in the context of the fortieth anniversary of the 1806 Calabrian campaign, stories were written about some of its deadliest episodes, such as the siege of the city of Amantea on December 3, 1806. Shedding light on the abuses of the French army and the ensuing Calabrian resistance, they described the outpouring of violence and stressed the large number of torture victims.4 In 1847, Domenico Mauro, a leading Calabrian democrat, took up and amplified the story of the siege of Amantea, calling for the glorification of its victims (Mauro 1847). However, while focusing on traumatic events, these stories did not consider the fatalities on an individual level. They were linked to the still vivid memory for a large part of the province’s inhabitants who sometimes happened to maintain friendly or village relationships with some of the victims. The deceased Calabrians served first and foremost as the embodiment of a peripheral community, harmed by the centralizing policy during Joachim Murat’s reign (1808–15) and that of the Bourbons from Naples upon their return to power in 1815. Thus, besides the Neapolitan martyrology made up of the patriotic dead of 1799, such stories too constructed a parallel and collective pantheon, based on the experience of resistance in the provinces. They paved the way for the 1844 massacres, and created a genealogy of torture victims, some of whom were linked, far more than to the 1799 patriots, to fisherman Masaniello, the main leader of the 1648 uprising in the popular harbor neighborhood of Naples (and the protagonist of Daniel Auber's opera The Mute of Portici (1828), which had provided the spark for the Belgian Revolution of 1830). In other words, memories of Masaniello had become reactivated, especially in the provinces, because he embodied resistance to the power of the monarchy seen as authoritarian. Members of the Calabrian resistance, such as illustrator Gaetano Dora, crafted representations of his torture, which were then quite widely spread in the southern provinces.5 What the superposition of martyr experiences reveals is that the construction of political pantheons, which paved the way for the Calabrian victims of the 1840s, resonated with the political experiences of the age. They did not only build an archetype of southerners resisting the excessive powers of the monarchy, in keeping with the brigand figure developed in the romantic Calabrian literature of the 1830s and best exemplified by Domenico Mauro’s 1834 Errico. They also tied in with increasingly frequent claims to local autonomy based on sovereignty over common lands (Buttiglione 2018). Described as revindica by its leaders, the movement relied on local elites who were, on the whole, wary of centralization – mayors, landowners, village priests – and was part of a local revolutionary tradition vouched for by its martyrs. As contestations grew more frequent

178  Pierre-Marie Delpu from the autumn of 1847 onwards, the diffusion of martyr memory greatly contributed to the extension of the protest movement against local populations who cared more about the defense of community rights (against what they considered a usurping monarchy) than about the promotion of liberal ideas per se. Indeed, rather than proof of true appropriation of revolutionary values by southern populations during the 1848 revolution, the tributes to martyrs were a controlled diffusion by local elites, hostile to a centralized government.

Local elites, the people, and the memory of martyrs in 1848 In the 1840s, the martyr tradition was built around a top-down politicization process initiated by local elites wary of the growing authority of the Bourbon state. It was, thus, in line with the pattern of politicization most commonly observed in southern European societies, as studied by Maurice Agulhon (1970) for French Provence at that time. More concretely, this pattern implies the “descent of politics to the masses,” initiated and encouraged by the depositaries of a local authority, or influence over a large group of until then little politicized people. Other patterns obviously exist, and more recent studies inspired by the analyses of Edward P. Thompson, on the “moral economies” specific to popular protest movements, have shown that they had coexisted with endogenous forms of politicization. For example, tax riots and revendications regarding common spaces are the most frequent (Buttiglione 2020; Dupont 2022). Although the diffusion of politics in the Mezzogiorno partly corresponded to both models, the 1848 revolution was characterized by a rather controlled diffusion of martyr memory. The first months of the revolution, which broke out in Palermo in midJanuary, 1848, were marked by the development of official celebrations, organized by the local authorities who had been instituted by the postuprising constitutional regime. Relying on images and rituals, they helped pass on the southern martyrology tradition, especially in Calabria. City authorities played a key role in that respect, staging popular communion around the figures of the martyrs. The treatment of the individuals executed in Cosenza in 1844 is indeed quite revealing. On March 25, 1848, for the fourth anniversary of their condemnation, official funerals were organized by canon Francesco Maria Scaglione and Mayor Tommaso Ortale. These were made possible by an authorities-sponsored subscription fund, and featured prominently in the newspaper of the Cosenza liberals: the Calabrese Rigenerato. This was a version of the local scholarly journal Il Calabrese, adapted for the sake of the liberal cause. The funeral practices show how cults – which had become public by then – really soared.6 The martyrs’ relics, until then kept in a chapel in a peripheral locality (as agreed on by the political and religious authorities), were exhumed and taken to the cathedral of Cosenza. As such, they became part of a procession,

From subaltern experience to political tradition  179 which attracted many people, and which was extensively reported on in the Calabrese Rigenerato. Information about the religious ceremony performed in honor of the 1844 fatalities shows that the victims were nominally recognized, as their names were inscribed on a purpose-built mausoleum, and as they were offered separate burials under the watch of the locality’s National Guard. Apart from these celebrations, which appeared as the highlight of the martyr tributes, other initiatives encouraged by local authorities did exist. They mediatized heroic images of the Calabrian martyrs, for example, in processions and plays, which were organized in several places across the three Calabrian provinces in March–April 1848, to express village communities’ solidarity with the city of Cosenza.7 Processes of remembrance as encouraged by local authorities actually tied in with individual initiatives that tried to formalize the memory of the 1844 fatalities. In 1847, Biagio Gioacchino Miraglia (1847), a physician from a prominent Cosenza family, published a collection of poems about the glory of the 1844 fatalities. As a member of several medical and literary academies, he factually revealed the conditions of the victims’ detention and their torture, taking psychological considerations into account. To him, their execution was in line with other massacres that had taken place in the province: anti-aristocratic troubles, harshly repressed in modern times, collateral victims of the counter-revolutionary mobilization, or the French military campaign of 1806. Miraglia’s articulation of the facts resulted in a rueful discourse aimed at buttressing the province’s collective mourning of its martyrs. While there is little archival evidence for the local circulation of the text, it seems to have been quite well-received, as suggested by its 1848 re-edition. The papers of the province like the Calabrese Rigenerato, as it was known after the outbreak of the 1848 revolution, reflected the memory of martyrs and the tributes that were paid to them. The bulk of the discourses helping convey martyr experiences mostly came, however, from the lower clergy, who were largely supporting the revolution they had encouraged. Sunday sermons offered opportunities to explain the meaning of martyrdom: they developed values associated to sacrifice and staged the sacredness of revolutionary martyrs, thereby reproducing a pedagogical pattern borrowed from Catholic catechesis. In a sermon first given in his parish and reproduced in the Calabrese Rigenerato, priest Luigi Greco from the village of Cerisano shed light on a martyr culture, which he encouraged his flock to perpetuate and honor.8 The sermons delivered at the time of these funerals were quite telling of the mobilizing emotions their authors wanted to kindle. A few selected sermon extracts reproduced in the press for the sake of the liberal propaganda, help grasp the strength of calls to collective fervor. The evocations of martyrs thus relied on the rhetoric of fraternity, justifying the organization of similar tributes to local martyrs or to the ones from other provinces, even other states of the Italian peninsula. In Syracuse, after the mass execution of Neapolitan civilians on May 15, 1848, Father Serafino da Siracusa

180  Pierre-Marie Delpu (1848, 13) indeed gave a eulogy published to honor the “betrayed Neapolitan brothers” whom he placed in the genealogy of the great men of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. From time to time, sermons called to avenge the martyrs by launching a crusade against the monarchy; hence, they repurposed a religious theme into a secular form, and redirected it against a Christian enemy, in the name of the perjury the latter had supposedly become guilty of by slaughtering members of its own people. Indeed, calls for mobilization in memory of martyrs centered precisely on the theme of revenge. In the summer of 1848, at the height of the southern provinces’ protest movement, the reference to martyrs justified private vengeances exacted in the name of solidarity between the subjects of the Calabrian provinces. The call to murder the king, who was considered responsible for these executions, was linked to the atonement of the murders and imprisonments of Calabrian subjects (Delpu 2020a). Members of the radical lower clergy encouraged these tyrannicide projects. Such was the case for Michele Bellizzi, a Castrovillari priest who, during his mass of June 3, 1848, to honor revolutionary fatalities, called to kill the king and use his blood as fertilizer for freedom trees.9 However, in July 1848, as it proved difficult to actually threaten the king’s physical integrity, and as the repression of the movement by his troops did not start straight away, subaltern agents willing to avenge the martyrs of their province only attacked the visual representations of the king exhibited in their living environment. Protests then took the form of iconoclastic rituals, which were particularly numerous in the provinces of Bari and Cosenza, including the public destruction of statues of the royal couple that were most often set up in town halls or public places (Calefati 2021). In Bisignano in July 1848, the toppling of the royal statues was motivated by the will to avenge a couple of Calabrian people who had supposedly been shot by the king’s soldiers.10 Around the same time in Aprigliano, priest Ferdinando Vigna presided over the destruction of royal busts exhibited on a chair in public, to avenge Calabrians shot by the Bourbon army in 1844.11 Such acts shed light on the complex repertoires of protest: they cast revenge as the necessary tool to atone the memory of martyrs, and justified the use of violence. In the summer of 1848, avenging the martyrs was one of the causes of the important armed mobilization of three Calabrian provinces’ subjects against the progress of the Bourbon army. Important to note is that the movement was also closely controlled by local elites, especially those affiliated to the radical bourgeoisie, who were at the forefront of the democratic fight in the provinces and largely orientated the protest movement. Thus, the way that the mobilization unfolded reveals how difficult it remained for ordinary people, still part of top-down politicization patterns, to fully appropriate the memory of martyrs. During the revolution of 1848 and in the decade that followed, the most numerous re-adaptations took place within dissident communities, especially the Italo-Albanians of Calabria and Puglia, who were quite heavily involved in the revolutionary movement.

From subaltern experience to political tradition  181

Community re-appropriations of martyr memory: the case of the arbëreshë Strongly established in the southern peripheries of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, the Italo-Albanian community, calling themselves arbëreshë, constituted one of the most numerous ethnic minorities of the Mezzogiorno. Present since the later centuries of the Middle Ages, it relied on a vibrant written culture, supported by local institutions such as the Collegio italogreco in the Calabrian Albanian village of San Demetrio Corone. Moreover, the community enjoyed tax exemptions, abolished by an 1819 decree of the Bourbon monarchy. This change helps explain the almost systematic mobilization of Italo-Albanians in the local revolts of the first half of the nineteenth century, aside from the consistent efforts of community scholars to define the history and characteristics of this minority. Quite in line with the first written restitutions observed from the 1820s onwards, they developed a specific culture of revolutionary martyrdom, based on the defense of their community. One of the most noteworthy examples of this ethnographic effort was the Calabrian priest Vincenzo Dorsa, a teacher in Cosenza’s secondary school and the author of the 1847 historic essay Su gli Albanesi (Dorsa 1847), in which he defined the Albanian nation as a martyr, the perpetual victim, since the fifteenth century, of abusive royal powers. Following in the footsteps of Calabrian poets like Girolamo De Rada, who had previously written about the Albanian national community, he insisted on the role and place of the independence martyr Skanderbeg, presented as the linchpin of the Albanian resistance to the Ottomans at the end of the Middle Ages. His popularity explains why it has become one of the most commonly attributed first names within the community. Also mentioned by other authors (De Rada 2003), Skanderbeg was a landmark figure of the community pantheon in which the Calabrian martyrs executed in 1844 and 1847 were partly integrated. This pantheon linked heroes from both ancient and modern Greece – the Greek Markos Botzaris killed in 1823 during the Greek independence war was also included – to the long history of the Albanian people and the tradition of resistance in the southern provinces. The Italo-Albanian martyr culture thus fueled numerous mobilizations against the centralized Bourbon power. If arbëreshë were present in all the revolts the Pugliese and Calabrian provinces took part in from 1820 onwards, their involvement reached its peak in 1848, with 825 either individual or collective condemnations for sedition in the province of Cosenza in 1849 only (Vaccaro 2014). Martyrdom constituted a strong identifier for this community, and justified alternative political projects, some of which were supported by Italo-Albanian aristocrats. For example, Domenico Mauro’s authority, as a literary man from a bourgeois San Demetrio Corone family, was supposed to replace the king’s. Through plans to shift power toward more informal players, they aimed at repairing the historic

182  Pierre-Marie Delpu destiny of the arbëreshë community, while atoning for the martyr who had suffered for it (Cingari 2001). It is also in the Italo-Albanian communities of the kingdom’s southern provinces that the memory of the 1848 martyrs had been formalized first, in keeping with earlier efforts to structure the history of the community. Their dynamic cultural institutions and links with the literary and publishing circles of the capital were key in that respect. In the spring of 1848, Calabrians from the province of Cosenza indeed published, thanks to Girolamo De Rada, L’Albanese d’Italia which aimed at preserving the memory of the community. Although only three issues were published, the periodical highlighted the traumatic episodes the community had gone through in the course of history, also mentioning the tortured Calabrian revolutionaries of 1848. In the years right after the revolution, when opposition movements were losing momentum because of the imprisonment and exile of liberals, the effort to formalize the memory of the Italo-Albanian martyrs continued. The most significant evocations were certainly those of Francesco Antonio Santori, a cleric from the province of Cosenza. In the winter of 1848, he published in Italian a narrative poem, Il prigioniero politico (Santori 1848), shedding light on the traumas the Bourbon army had inflicted on a Calabrian family at the time of the revolution. Seven years later, his collection of prayers both in Italian and Albanian (Santori 1855) came out honoring the “sanctified Christians,” that is, religious martyrs or revolutionary activists who had exhibited the same moral virtues. The formalization of the Italo-Albanian victim experiences thus confirms an ancient parallel between Christian martyrdom and political martyrdom, the first constituting the matrix of the second. The recurrence of this theme in the political and moral vocabulary of the Calabrian community was sometimes used as a means to draw the authorities’ attention to the fate of convicted political opponents. In the autumn of 1852, Giuseppe Dramis, a former conspirator, thus approached King Ferdinand II who was visiting Calabria, and begged him to give amnesty to his son Attanasio, held prisoner for political agitation at the time of the 1848 revolution. Martyrdom appeared to him as the most appropriate course of action: he offered his “own head as a way to atone” and presented himself as “the only person directly and immediately responsible for [his son] taking up arms, a victim of the example set by his own father” (Cassiano 2012). Italo-Albanian re-appropriations of Calabrian revolutionary martyrdom climaxed at the time of the regicide attempt of Agesilao Milano, a young arbëreshë soldier, on December 8, 1856. At that time, European authoritarian powers were discredited both through assassination attempts, such as the failed regicide of Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph by the Hungarian patriot Libenyi in 1853, and through the action of diplomatic congresses and extensive media campaigns against the Russian and Neapolitan regimes during the Crimean War (1854–56), insisting upon

From subaltern experience to political tradition  183 their capacity to create political martyrs. The delegitimization of royal power gave rise to a regicidal literature, such as the biography-charge published in exile by the Neapolitan memorialist Mariano D’Ayala in 1856, which circulated among Calabrian conspiratorial circles (D’Ayala 1856). Milano’s trajectory is quite revealing of the performative character of the southern martyrology tradition. While he was still studying at the ItaloGreco college of San Demetrio Corone in 1847, he had written poems celebrating the spirit of sacrifice of Markos Botzaris, whose example he intended to follow. However, these unpublished writings were mainly intended for the author’s immediate entourage. After destroying two royal statues exhibited in the village of San Benedetto Ullano in 1848, Milano refined his strategy of attack once in Naples at the beginning of the 1850s. He regularly visited the Biblioteca Nazionale, where he continued to gather information about Botzaris. As he then belonged to the close circles of Calabrian priests who had settled in the capital (many of whom were from the Italo-Albanian community), it should not surprise that he resorted to historic or religious motives to justify his attack. He relied on the examples of past martyrs, drawn from the community or not, whom he considered precursors, and shrouded his plan in heavy providential symbolism. The attack indeed took place during a military review organized on the day of the Immaculate Conception; a date chosen to suggest the expiatory strength of his initiative (Gugliotti 2016). However, the attack was quickly controlled by the king’s soldiers, and Milano was executed; hence, he soon became, in his turn, a freedom martyr, in the significant written propaganda that was spread beyond the kingdom. The agents of this propaganda circulation were southern exiles settling in the kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, then the refuge of most Italian outcasts in the wake of the 1848 revolution. It was indeed in exile, influenced by the host society’s own political dynamics and of the new diplomatic context, that the number of publications on southern martyrdom rose significantly, finding themselves halfway between factual narration and the production of knowledge with scientific claims.

Martyrologies and “political statistics:” the role of Neapolitan exiles in Piedmont-Sardinia At the beginning of the 1850s, the diffusion of martyr experiences is mostly linked to publications about the lives of the martyrs by Italian exiles highlighting the exemplary status of these patriots, and using martyr identification to add value to their own fight. Southern patriots did not widely resort to the same narratives. The first martyrologies, such as the one of Tuscan Atto Vannucci, did not include the political victims of the Bourbons of Naples. As the kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia made the reception of Italian outcasts a political necessity, they contributed to the cultural and editorial dynamism of the kingdom (Petrusewicz 1998; De Fort 2008).

184  Pierre-Marie Delpu Many of them took advantage of publishing conditions that were more liberal than in the Mezzogiorno to spread knowledge about the lives of exemplary patriots. They borrowed the model of hagiographical celebrations from religion, and transferred it into the political sphere. The narrative dedicated by the Neapolitan Francesco Carrano to his compatriot Florestano Pepe, alongside whom he had fought in Venetia in 1848, confirmed this trend, echoing the relentless mobilization against Bourbon tyranny, started at the time of the 1799 revolution. It described the permanent exposure to pain and suffering on political grounds, Pepe’s blood and injuries, his patriotic virtue, and his involvement in many decisive fights for the freedom of the homeland (Carrano 1851). Because they resonated with a conception of the Italian nation compatible with that of the Piedmontese elites, who tried to appropriate the Italian national movement from 1848 onwards, such narratives were spread by Turinese periodicals close to the Piedmontese power. Beyond the figures of martyrs themselves, such discourses focused on the ones responsible for their sacrifice, be it King Ferdinand II, who was presented as the main decision-maker, or his subordinates who had inflicted suffering on the martyrs. Carrano, for example, evoked two of the main players of the Neapolitan reaction in 1799: priest Fra Diavolo and miller Gaetano Mammone, who, as readers were reminded, used to drink human blood from the skulls of the individuals they had themselves executed. For Carrano, the claim is representative of the Neapolitan counter-revolutionaries’ cruelty, and refers to a widespread practice in Southern Italian society (Addante 2021). The role the experience of exile played in shaping martyr narratives was mostly linked to the circulation and formalization of a particular literary genre encouraging commemorations. The commemorations took the memory of southern martyrs into the lands of exile (Delpu 2020b). Martyr pantheons, which developed right after the 1848 revolution drew both on Vannucci’s martyrology, quite widely read among the Italian exiles of Turin who asked for its re-edition in 1850, and the initiative of a French Bonapartist, Lucien Bessières, who wrote a Panthéon des martyrs, translated into Italian and published in 1851 (Bessières 1851). The Panteon dei martiri per la libertà italiana (published between 1851 and 1852), was an exile adaptation of that work. It was linked to a purposely created private society, mostly made up of southern outcasts gathered around Gabriele D’Amato and Mariano D’Ayala from Naples. At the crossroads of different political orientations, the association structured an economic milieu capable of spreading and publishing knowledge about the lives of martyrs. It circulated 90 booklets published in two years that were collected in 1852 in two volumes of almost 1,000 pages aimed at the Italian public. The book benefited from the support of a publisher, Neapolitan marquis Diego Soria, who had settled in Turin in 1845, and of a private organization, the Opificio Nazionale Ligure, founded in Genoa, where the printing and circulation of copies was taken care of. Relying on the connections of southern

From subaltern experience to political tradition  185 outcasts, this organization aimed at underlining the primacy of Naples in the construction of the Italian nation. Left aside by the first editions of Vannucci’s martyrology, they were presented as making up the majority of the Italian political victims the book dealt with. They were studied, often collectively, in 40 percent of the entries, while Piedmontese (21 percent) and Tuscans (17 percent) were fewer and further between. As prejudices were becoming more frequent about the retardation of southern populations, and as the Risorgimento was progressively appropriated by the Piedmontese monarchy, the integration of the memory of southern martyrs to that of Italy made it possible, more generally, to highlight their leading role in a national community presented as fraternal. As the Piedmontese authorities became politically suspicious from 1852 onwards, written documents about the memory of southern martyrs were progressively replaced by commemorative objects compatible with the orientations of Victor Emmanuel II’s monarchy. The most significant initiatives, that is, lists of fatalities he wished to see included in collective memory, were by Mariano D’Ayala, a moderate man of letters, who had been an intendant in 1848. In March 1853, for the fifth anniversary of the Piedmontese constitution, he published a list of soldiers who had been killed during the Italo-Austrian wars of 1848, hoping that tributes would be paid to them in recognition of their sacrifice (D’Ayala 1853). By focusing on Piedmontese soldiers alone, he hoped to attract the attention of the Piedmontese authorities to the fate of the growing number of martyrs in all the Italian states where the repression had been enforced in 1848. These lists gained new momentum at the end of the 1850s due to the outbreak of the war of independence against Austria in 1859. D’Ayala presented them as a “political statistic” aimed at facilitating both the writing of martyrologies and the commemorative policies of the Piedmontese power. In the wake of an effort initiated at the beginning of the nineteenth century and amplified in the 1850s, in the Turinese elite circles who relied on it to build the new Italian state (Patriarca 1996), D’Ayala published detailed lists of Italian soldiers. He mentioned their ages, provinces of origin as well as the battles in which they had died. By compiling data about the Tuscans killed in 1859, then about the Italians who died during Garibaldi’s 1860 campaign, he did not produce true “statistics” in the technical sense of the term, but rather a set of factual data which could later be taken up (D’Ayala 1860a; 1860b). In that regard, D’Ayala’s trajectory reveals both the growing interest in the fate of popular martyrs, thanks to the production of a specific form of written knowledge, and the inclusion of southern martyrs in the wider pantheons created at the Italian level. These documents provided material for a series of martyrologies, which he started publishing from the unification of the country in 1860 onwards. In those publications, he still focused on the central place of southerners. Back in Naples after his amnesty by the king in the summer of 1860, shortly before the integration of the Mezzogiorno into the kingdom of

186  Pierre-Marie Delpu Italy, he began his martyrology with the lives of Neapolitan soldiers killed during the revolution of 1820–21 (D’Ayala 1861). Martyrdom, as he described it, was thus understood in a restrained acceptation, only including the dead military; hence, it opposed the wider usages it had by then acquired in the post-unitary Italian political vocabulary.

Conclusion From the 1840s to the Italian unification, a specific tradition of southern political martyrdom developed, taking into account quite diverse players, and progressively including ordinary individuals who were not a priori part of the traditional political game. This broadening of scope was matched by an evolution of memory media, from oral information circulated in a community context to the production of a written memory increasingly looking like political knowledge. Beyond the diversity of media and usages, the evocations of martyrdom focused on several recurring features, such as the violence inherently linked to torture and the emotional dimension implicated in the sufferings. Moreover, they confronted the number of fatalities with the moral qualities exhibited by martyrs. As such, these evocations of martyrdom transformed a subaltern experience built around informal and local memory channels into a federating political tradition, capable of structuring political opposition to the Neapolitan monarchy. This tradition constituted a community of suffering on the scale of the “Neapolitan nation,” partially integrated in the Italian one, which made an extensive use of secular forms of sanctity (Banti 2000; Riall 2010). Right after the Italian unification, the same processes, increasingly appropriated by the official memory of the new State, were used in new dissenting ways by opponents of Italy. Another popular martyrology indeed appeared at the time of the civil wars of the 1860s, linked to the fatalities registered among the legitimist supporters of the former kings of Naples.

Notes 1 Referring to the Neapolitan patriots sacrificed by the Bourbon monarchy in 1799, Poerio evoked, in a parliamentary speech, their “generous contempt for death, which once made the martyrs of Religion and which today makes them the martyrs of freedom” (Giornale Costituzionale del Regno delle Due Sicilie 52, March 1, 1821, 3). 2 For example: Archivio di Stato di Reggio Calabria, Archivio Visalli, 1, f. 11, I martiri della Calabria, Reggio, 1847. 3 Carlo M. L’Occaso, “I falsi sapienti dei piccoli paesi,” Il Calabrese, April 30, 1843, 3; Carlo Massinissa Presterà, “I letterati del Caffè,” idem, September 30, 1845, 4. 4 For example: Pasquale Frugiuele, “Scena storica. Una notte di 1806 in Amantea,” Il Calabrese 21, October 15, 1846. 5 L’insurrezione di Masaniello, lithography by Gaetano Dora, Naples, 1850. 6 Among the many documents of the local press, see Francesco Maria Scaglione, “Esequie dei martiri di Cosenza,” Il Calabrese rigenerato 4, April 2, 1848, 25–26.

From subaltern experience to political tradition  187 7 See for example: Alessandro Conflenti, “Notizie del nostro teatro”, Il Calabrese Rigenerato 2, February 29, 1848, 14–15. 8 Calabrese Rigenerato, VI, 3, March 15, 1848, p. 1. 9 Archivio di Stato di Napoli, Archivio Borbone, b. 1044, f. 35, ad nomen. 10 Archivio di Stato di Cosenza (ASCS), Processi politici, b. 32, f. 195. 11 ASCS, Processi politici, b. 88, f. 508.

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Secondary Literature Addante, Luca. 2019. “‘Roasted and Eaten’: The Neapolitan Counter-Revolution of 1799 and the Use of Jacobin Remains.” In Public Uses of Humain Remains and Relics in History, edited by Silvia Cavicchioli, and Luigi Provero, 169–87. New York: Routledge.

188  Pierre-Marie Delpu Addante, Luca. 2021. I cannibali dei Borbone. Antropofagia e politica nell’Europa moderna. Rome-Bari: Laterza. Agulhon, Maurice. 1970. La République au village. Les populations du Var de la Révolution à la Seconde République. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Augusteijn, Joost, Patrick Dassen, and Maartje Janse, eds. 2013. Political Religions beyond Totalitarianism. The Sacralization of Politics in the Age of Democracy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Billoré, Maïté, and Gilles Lecuppre, eds. 2019. Martyrs politiques (Xe–XVIe siècle). Du sacrifice à la récupération partisane. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes. Bouvers, Eveline, ed. 2012. Public Pantheons in Revolutionary Europe. Comparing Cultures of Remembrance c. 1790–1840. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Buc, Philippe. 2015. Holy War, Martyrdom, and Terror: Christianity, Violence, and the West. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Buttiglione, Antonio. 2018. “La Rivoluzione in ‘periferia.’ Movimenti popolari e borghesia rossa nel Regno delle Due Sicilie (1830–1848).” PhD dissertation, Università della Tuscia di Viterbo. Buttiglione, Antonio. 2020. “1848: Sfera pubblica, movimenti popolari e borghesia radicale nelle Calabrie in rivoluzione.” Società e Storia 167 (1): 29–61. Caglioti, Daniela Luigia. 2001. “False notizie, complotti e vociferazioni: gendarme, intendenti e paure nel Regno delle Due Sicilie nel 1848.” Società e Storia 94 (4): 725–41. Calefati, Christopher. 2021. “Gli abbiamo tagliato la testa. Repertori e attori dell’iconoclastia politica nelle Puglie del 1848–49.” Società e Storia 174 (4): 700–23. Cassiano, Domenico. 2012. “Il contributo degli albanesi di Calabria al Risorgimento.” In Rivista Calabrese di Storia del ‘900 I: 9–54. Cataldo, Vincenzo. 2000. Cospirazioni, economia e società sul distretto di Gerace e in provincia di Calabria Ultra prima dal 1847 all’Unità d’Italia. Ardore Marina: Arti Grafiche Edizioni. Cavicchioli, Silvia. 2022. I cimeli della patria. Politiche della memoria nel lungo Ottocento. Torino: Carocci. Cingari, Gaetano. 2001. Domenico Mauro. Romanticismo e democrazia nel Risorgimento. Lungro: Marco. Conti, Fulvio. 2017. Italia immaginata. Sentimenti, memorie e politica fra Otto e Novecento. Pisa: Pacini. De Fort, Ester. 2008. “Immigrazione politica e clima culturale a metà Ottocento nel Regno di Sardegna.” In Politica e cultura nel Risorgimento italiano. Genova 1857 e la Fondazione della Società Ligure di Storia Patria, edited by Luca Lo Basso, 193–223. Genoa: Società Ligure di Storia Patria. De Rada, Girolamo. 2003. “Lo Skanderbeg sfortunato: Skanderberku i pafan.” Microprovincia. Rivista di cultura 41 (1): 261–70. Delpu, Pierre-Marie. 2017. “Une religion politique. Les usages des martyrs révolutionnaires dans le Royaume des Deux-Siciles (années 1820–années 1850).” Revue d’histoire moderne & contemporaine 64 (1): 7–31. Delpu, Pierre-Marie. 2018. “Les Napolitains face aux souvenirs d’Empire (1815– 1860): reconstructions mémorielles et mobilisation politique.” In Le Royaume de Naples à l’heure française. Revisiter l’histoire du Decennio francese 1806—1815, edited by Pierre-Marie Delpu, Igor Moullier, and Mélanie Traversier, 407–22. Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses du Septentrion.

From subaltern experience to political tradition  189 Delpu, Pierre-Marie. 2020a. “Gli attentati popolari contro i Borbone di Napoli: iconoclastia e progetti di tirannicidio (1848–1856).” In Las monarquías de la Europa meridional antes el desafio de la modernidad (siglo XIX–XX), edited by Renata De Lorenzo, and Lloret Rosa Ana Gutiérrez, 189–212. Saragosse: Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza. Delpu, Pierre-Marie. 2020b. “Exporting the Cults of Martyrs to the Lands of Exile. The Communities of Banished Italians in France and Piedmont-Sardinia in the Early 1850s.” In Exile and the Circulation of Political Practices, edited by Catherine Brice, 178–94. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars. Dupont, Alexandre, and Rachel Renault, eds. 2022. “Les espaces alternatifs du politique (monde atlantique, XVIIIe–XIXe siècles).” Mélanges de la Casa de Velázquez 52 (1). https://doi.org/10.4000/mcv.15699. Gugliotti, Antonello. 2016. “O’ re morir tu devi. Parabola del mito di Agesilao Milano.” MA thesis, Università della Calabria. Mengozzi, Dino. 2012. Corpi posseduti. Martiri ed eroi dal Risorgimento a Pinocchio. Manduria: Piero Lacaita Editore. Patriarca, Silvana. 1996. Numbers and Nationhood. Writing Statistics in Nineteenth Century Italy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Petrusewicz, Marta. 1998. Come il Meridione divenne una Questione. Rappresentazioni del Sud prima e dopo il Quarantotto. Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino. Petrusewicz, Marta. 2005. “Incivilire, amare, conoscere: l’intellighentia napoletana alla scoperta del popolo.” In Natura e società. Studi in onore di Augusto Placanica, edited by Pietro Bevilacqua, and Paolo Tino, 239–51. Rome: Donzelli. Riall, Lucy J. 2010. “Martyr Cults in nineteenth-century Italy.” Journal of Modern History 82 (2): 255–87. Sallmann, Jean-Michel. 1994. Naples et ses saints à l’âge baroque (1540–1740). Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Vaccaro, Attilio. 2014. “Gli italo-albanesi nei moti risorgimentali in Calabria.” In Unità multiple. Centocinquantanni? Unità? Itali?, edited by Giovanna De Sensi Sestito, and Marta Petrusewicz, 449–95. Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003290087-14 Figure 10.1 (Part of) M. Prax (cartographer) and P. Delamare (engraver), Carte des routes Commerciales de l'Algérie au Pays des Noirs, French Ministry of the Navy, 1851, public domain via BnF/Gallica. For the complete map, including its scale and zoom options, see: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8491465k/f1, BnF/Gallica, online since November 6, 2012.

Figure 10.2 Zoomed-in version of Figure 10.1 (from BnF/Gallica), indicating the areas addressed in Chapter 10.

10 Nonsense and the senses French sources of knowledge in colonial Algeria, 1846–1871 Karen Lauwers*

In February 1853, more than three years after the end of the Zaatcha war in the eastern pre-Sahara of Algeria, a French army captain and administrator-in-chief of the area reported on the supposed return of Belkassem, second son of resistance leader Bou-Zian.1 The latter had instigated the uprising leading up to the war. As a cruel punishment for his insurgency, he had to witness the massacre of his family, before being decapitated himself. His death ended the conflict in November 1849, after which the French forces decided to abandon the devastated city (Clancy-Smith 1994, 116) situated between Biskra and Sidi-Khaled on the map (see Figure 10.2). Having impaled and displayed the severed heads of Bou-Zian, his son Al-Hassan, and his lieutenant Moussa Al-Darkaoui, the expeditionary forces collected them from the scene as trophies (Belkadi 2014, 226–27, 247). However, Belkassem’s remains were never uncovered from Zaatcha’s ruins. Between 1850 and 1853, subsequent recurring rumors among the native population of the area about him still being alive led to uncertainties and confusion among French colonial officials, who questioned their own perceptions and knowledge. Was he really dead, or had he somehow managed to survive and return for revenge? In an attempt to explain sightings of Belkassem in 1853, Muslim inhabitants of the French-colonial administrative area of Biskra (the main oasis in Algeria’s eastern pre-Sahara) brought up the story of Abdel Selem. Upon his arrival in Zaatcha after the first attack on the city in July 1849, this man had been warmly welcomed into Bou-Zian’s home. His “striking resemblance” to Belkassem was supposedly the reason for his cordial treatment as “part of the family.” Because of the injuries he had suffered during the siege, Abdel Selem was not in Bou-Zian’s home at the time of the massacre, so the narrative went. (He had gone to recover elsewhere, before heading west.) Was he perhaps the mystery man * Research funded by the CALLIOPE project (Josephine Hoegaerts’ ERC StG “Vocal Articulations of Parliamentary Identity and Empire,” no. 757291). Chapter proofread by Marlene Broemer.

Nonsense and the senses  193 who had shown up at the oasis in 1853 and pretended to be Belkassem? The French administrator of the area did not know what to think of this story (which he skeptically referred to as ce petit roman), and decided to interrogate several people who might have known the man’s identity. Whereas Bou-Zian’s sister confirmed that her nephew had indeed died, and someone even claimed to have seen his body, other so-called reliable people were certain that the man was in fact the real Belkassem.2 In his later overview of the entire year of 1853, Captain Séroka, the administrator-in-chief who had covered this confusion as it was happening, no longer mentioned his knowledge-gathering process. While recycling some phrasing from his own February report, Séroka omitted his initial doubt and attempts at determining the man’s identity. The captain mainly tried to prove that his eyes and ears could not be fooled – respectively by the man’s appearance and by the rumors it kept engendering – and that his intuition about the “fable” had been right all along.3 The importance Séroka attached to knowing whether Abdel Selem and Belkassem were the same person, and thus to finally exposing the impostor, shows his ignorance of how native Algerian resistance was performed. Colonial officers like Captain Séroka were confronted with a political culture that was in many aspects different from theirs: it was shaped by different sounds, impressions, institutions, and spaces. This challenged what Ann Laura Stoler (2009, 39) would call their “epistemic habits,” or “ways of knowing that are available and ‘easy to think.’” Because of these uncertainties on the level of knowledge and the volatile ways in which it was (re)produced among the native population, the colonial administration tried to intensify its security measures, and created massive amounts of documents in an attempt to grasp what was difficult to understand or think. Therefore, the colonial officers’ extensive records can be seen as the administrative imprints of their “epistemological and political anxiety.” Stoler (2009, 20) also observed this phenomenon in the archives of the Dutch Indies, but it is equally applicable to the French-Algerian records. As for this latter case, I posit that political anxiety was rooted in the French officers’ preconditioned senses shaping their “aesthetics of politics.” Without hereby suggesting the treatment of politics as an art form, I am using Jacques Rancière’s notion (2000, 13–14; 2011, 7), implying that politics, just like art, was the “configuration of a specific world, a specific form of experience,” structured by its own guiding principles or set of rules. This framework determined the (in)visible, (in)audible and (un)thinkable, as well as the (in)appropriate times and places for practicing and experiencing politics. Consequently, uncovering nineteenth-century French misconceptions of native Algerian expressions of resistance requires teasing out the colonial officers’ preconceived notions of sense in its double connotation, that is to say, as the meaning (sense) they attributed to subaltern visual or aural (sensory) political experiences and carriers of knowledge.

194  Karen Lauwers

Toward a colonial history of sense(s) and sense-making More specifically, the example of Belkassem raises the question of what made sense to the French colonial eye and ear, or in other words, what was considered indigenous nonsense and how it was framed by the French officers interacting with (Arab and Berber) colonial subjects in Algeria. This chapter does not focus on the extreme violence of French military strategies (already addressed by the work of Brower 2011; Sessions 2011, 162–64; Gallois 2013, chapter 5; Kitouni 2018, 83–84 and others). Nonetheless, it does shed light on how colonial administrators attempted to legitimize these strategies by means of essentialist (re)interpretations of sense and nonsense, of political and apolitical as well as visual and audible sources of knowledge and of their supposed link to specific spaces. In their introduction to Spatial Appropriations in Modern Empires, Didier Guignard and Iris Seri-Hersch (2019, 1) describe appropriation as encompassing “the many ways in which social actors consider a specific space as their own and/or make [it] theirs. The appropriated space may be physical or immaterial, public or intimate, lived or imagined.” Thus, instead of studying concrete territorial annexations, I will focus on French officers’ sensory attributions to and appropriations of Algerian spaces and the practices of the native subalterns inhabiting them. To deconstruct these colonial (re)interpretations of sense, nonsense, and the spaces to which they pertained, I am adopting Karin Bijsterveld’s approach to “sensory selectivity.” In Sonic Skills (2019, 18), she investigates “the high value attached to specific sensory modalities or their combinations […] in the production and validation of scientific and professional knowledge” in early-twentieth-century science. Even though my chapter does not address the same technological or scientific fields in which sensory skills or tools were used, it builds on the premise that French colonial administrators of the nineteenth century were convinced to make objective observations of scientific value. Therefore, I am taking Bijsterveld’s aim (2019, 15) to “attain a better understanding of the role of the senses in knowledge dynamics” and apply it to my analysis of the knowledge gathering process of French colonial officers attached to the so-called bureaux arabes during the military colonization of Algeria between 1846 and 1871. In his analysis of these officers’ Saint-Simonian background, Osama W. Abi-Mershed (2010, 14) describes the era as the culmination point of their “great inquiries” of 1846–47, followed by the “apogee of the technocratic administration and disciplinary powers” of the bureaux arabes, from 1848 to 1870. These Arab bureaus (i.e., French offices for indigenous affairs) “formalized the categories of knowledge produced by their inquiries.” Consequently, for the chosen period, the majority of sources that we have access to, is produced by this institution, or at least heavily categorized by its administrators, in their process of creating a colonial narrative towards subjugation. A valuable way in which we can still use such documents, is

Nonsense and the senses  195 “to examine the epistemology of colonial knowledge and analyze its objects,” as suggested by Abdelmajid Hannoum (2010, 10). When extrapolated to my present and earlier work (cf. Lauwers 2022), this implies investigating the conditions in which specific figures (such as the aforementioned Belkassem) were created. Here, I propose to do so through the lens of the bureau’s officers’ sensory selectivity when dealing with their sources of knowledge. The Arab bureaus governed and administered the native Muslim (Arab and Berber) tribes of their locality. As a sister institution of the French colonial army, they were accountable to the supreme commanders of their military subdivisions, who were in their turn accountable to the general of their respective division of Oran, Algiers, or Constantine. In his military diary about his encounters and experiences in what he called the desert of Algeria, Captain Corneille Trumelet (1863, 189) described how this institution was “at the same time the eye and the arm of the military commandment.” In addition, he stressed that, especially in the unknown pre-Saharan area, the bureaus’ control over spies, tribes and resources was of major importance to the expeditionary forces. Arab bureaus thus acted as an intelligence service in their political-administrative circumscription (called cercle) and its unsubdued surroundings. Gathering knowledge of the multifaceted local political culture was their first goal, followed by taking control of the information and the physical spaces in which it was circulating. Therefore, the bureaus’ consistent reports allow for an analysis of the sensory selectivity with which French colonial officers interpreted their sources of knowledge, and classified them as political or apolitical. More concretely, my chapter will shed light on the perceptions (active and former) administrators had of singing, gossiping, and debating as political or apolitical speech acts of their colonized subjects. As a result, this approach will contribute to knowledge of how these officers misinterpreted native Algerian political practices, and particularly of how they (dis)missed expressions of resistance and turned local chiefs into subalterns even when employing them on the intermediary level between “ordinary” subjects and the bureaus. Belkassem’s example shows the pertinence of comparing the bureaus’ fortnightly (1846–50) and monthly (1850–71) reports (written more or less in the moment)4 to retrospective accounts or memoirs of the institution’s (former) administrators. These were mainly written in the context of the colonizer’s so-called pacification and civilizing mission of the late 1850s and 1860s; thus, they were still contemporary to the period under scrutiny. Temporal and geographic variations in the officers’ perceptions of indigenous (a)political speech performances will be examined along the lines of three groups of sources available to them: (1) rumors; (2) meetings; and (3) songs. By studying how a colonial institution with a highly visual culture interpreted predominantly oral subaltern political practices, I explore how these inevitably one-sided records and their essentialist Arab/Berber-divide

196  Karen Lauwers (addressed in greater detail by Lorcin 1999, 79–85, and deconstructed by Hannoum 2001, 2004) can be “un-blackboxed,” to use Manuela Bauche’s (2016, 339–54) notion of reading against the grain. At the same time, this analysis will expose another imagined duality: between spirituality and politics.

Rumor patrol and politics of proximity The two main hotspots of gossip and news circulation, as identified by the Arab bureaus, were the mystical Sufi brotherhoods (turuq, being the plural of tariqa) and the marketplaces. Although weekly gatherings took place both in mosques and at markets, especially the latter space seems to have been a continuous cause for concern across all bureaus, since market days inevitably led to cross-tribal exchanges of news and rumors. Suspicions regarding turuq and their khouans (brothers) were usually centered on a very specific brotherhood and occurred rather cyclically. Surveillance of khouans and their movements was particularly heightened at moments of increased “religious manifestations,” for example, on the eve of religious festivities, processions, and pilgrimages (to a tomb or shrine of a saintly notable, or to Mecca).5 The further away the destination and thus the longer the pilgrims’ trip, the greater the bureaus’ concern, because of the increased chances of uncontrollable news circulation among different tribes or clans. The bureaus’ officers tried to control cross-tribal exchanges by only allowing pilgrimages to Mecca to those who had successfully applied for a “permission” in the form of a travel passport. Although in November 1864, the administrator-in-chief of the bureau of Dra-el-Mizan (in Kabylia, a predominantly Berber mountainous area in the centernorth) expressed his trust in the applicants’ good intentions, he did not give passport holders (with the permission to travel to Mecca) the authorization to travel around the country. Naïvely, the administrator thought that these passports were the solution to keep all pilgrims in their own tribe during their trip straight from point A to point B, although pilgrimages followed commercial routes, which would inevitably lead to cross-tribal exchange.6 Spiritual notables frequenting markets and religious places were feared by the bureaus’ officers to be dangerous carriers of rumors. The definition of a dangerous threat was not necessarily related to the truth-value of the news or rumors these figureheads were suspected to be spreading, but rather to the negative effect of their words on the “peace and quiet” that was often said to be reigning in the bureau’s cercle. In rumor history in general, it is not necessarily the degree of truth that counts, but rather the ways in which truth was imagined, conceptualized, construed, and negotiated (Besnier 1994, 1–4; White 2000, 70). In addition, many rumors have a basis in truth or have the possibility to be true. In other words, as opposed to legends or myths, rumors have at least a hint of plausibility (Vansina

Nonsense and the senses  197 1985, 6; J. A. Clancy-Smith 1994, 100; White 2000, 58). Consequently, these “hidden transcripts” had the power to invade the official “public transcript” and confuse the authorities (Scott 1990, 138). Regarding the early colonial history of Algeria, Julia Clancy-Smith (1994, 92–124) recognizes the importance of rumors in her micro-historical approach to the events leading up to the aforementioned Bou-Zian uprising. Spiritual notables (marabouts) in the eastern pre-Sahara, more than in Greater Kabylia, were suspected to be politically dangerous, given the influence of the Rahmaniyya Sufi brotherhood from across the border in the Djerid in the Beylik of Tunis since the late 1840s (cf. Nefta and Tozeur/ Touzer in Figure 10.2).7 The Rahmaniyya originated in Kabylia and was the most popular tariqa there, but the French administration of Algiers did not seem to realize, as in August 1849 they already believed in their own knowledge of and control over the “religious sects” of the region. Their strategy consisted of: (1) appointing the leaders themselves (after having consulted the khouans); (2) closing the “houses” where “secret reunions” were held; and (3) only allowing pre-approved gatherings that were accessible to French agents of the administration. To enable easier inspections and reduce the chance of outside influence, the colonial authorities brought the Rahmaniyya of Algiers physically closer to the administrative center, by assigning “the Great Mosque of rue de la Marine” to them. Furthermore, in his letter to the governor general of Algeria in August 1849, the prefect of Algiers contextualized the practices performed at these sessions (such as singing, eating, and gift-giving) solely in relation to the turuq’s religious or charitable roles. These descriptions make clear that, at least in his view, the French administration of Algiers had managed to disempower such religious institutions by robbing them of their political significance.8 Even though Paul Flatters (1858, 121–22), administrator in the Constantine region in the east, also delegitimized Sufi orders by labelling them as “sects” and comparing them to “freemasonry,” he did attribute political authority to individual marabouts. He acknowledged “a certain Suzerainty” of these figureheads, who derived their power not only from the reputation and sacred lineage of their devout, notable ancestors, but also from their consultations with their supporters. Such meetings could include an exchange, in which followers brought a gift or paid tribute to their marabout-counselor. Because these spiritual leaders advised their coreligionists in difficult cases, they often “played an important political role,” Flatters admitted. Captain Ferdinand Hugonnet (1858, 45–47), former officer of several bureaus in the northeast, first in the subdivision of Bône and later of Constantine, distinguished between real marabouts on the one hand and “violent oppressors” or “religious troublemakers” on the other. Whereas the latter group merely showed some “tricks” or “miracles,” real marabouts, as hommes de bien, earned “public trust” by giving ample visible evidence of common sense and a mode of equity, detachment, and the capability to appease or conciliate people. They guided the people’s

198  Karen Lauwers “consciousness” as “real Muslims,” Hugonnet believed, as he acknowledged their dual political-spiritual role. Similarly, in predominantly Berber areas, the French administration attached importance to interventions of these religious notables as mediators in situations that would otherwise have been likely to escalate. On several occasions, reports from the bureau of Dellys (in the center-north, in the division of Algiers) explicitly linked an intervention of a marabout to the concept of anaïa (protection, also used in the sense of truce). Often, however, French officers interpreted the situations in which these conciliators were expected to intervene as clan wars or “jealous vengeance;” thus, they misunderstood (and likely purposely downplayed) the political nature of the marabouts’ mediation.9 Several monthly accounts from Arab bureaus, especially in the late 1840s and early 1850s, even referred to marabout-warriors as “adventurers,”10 or, with a more serious undertone, as “agitators.” By depicting a self-proclaimed chief as a carrier of rumors and intrigues, the bureaus rejected these leaders’ saintly lineage claims and thus their religious authority, while simultaneously minimizing the political nature of their “adventures,” “intrigues,” or jongleries religieuses.11 In the pre-Sahara, the mention of an “impostor” as a faux chérif was especially popular. For months in 1851, this is how Captain Séroka of Biskra referred to the self-proclaimed chief of Ouargla, an oasis situated to the south of Biskra, in the Sahara. The captain’s perception of the chérif as fake must be understood in the context of the French administration’s anxiety surrounding the name “Moh[ame]d [Ben] Abdallah,” with which the resistance leader signed his call to holy war in July 1851.12 The chérif-title indicated his saintly, notable lineage (as a descendant of the prophet), whereas his chosen name had been prophesied by Muslim authorities (as the God-sent savior from infidel rule). In his-book, historian and anthropologist Ali Farid Belkadi (2014, 138–39, 169, 284) explains how Mohamed Ben Abdallah was indeed an “avatar” or nom de guerre, which several resistance leaders adopted to keep their relatives safe and create the impression of mystical invincibility. Because French records as old as 1847 and 1852 (e.g., De Martinval 1847, 3; De Castellane 1852, 130) recalled the aforementioned prophecy, it is safe to say that colonial officers of the late 1840s and early 1850s must have been aware of the possible implications of a Mohamed Ben Abdallah announcing his resistance. However, after the capitulation in 1847 of a man who called himself Mohamed Ben Abdallah and who was nicknamed BouMaza by native Algerians (referring to his mythical goat), his successors in the war, adopting the same name, were seen as impostors. After all, “the real” Mohamed Ben Abdallah Bou-Maza was known to be living in France since his capitulation. (I have addressed this confusion in greater detail in Lauwers 2022, 792–93). It took Captain Séroka until February 1852 to finally omit the adjective faux (false or fake) in his references to the chérif of Ouargla, since he could

Nonsense and the senses  199 no longer deny the man’s influence and the bureau’s lack of authority over the area that was too far removed from Biskra’s administrative center.13 It was difficult for the officers to control the (agents of) rumors in such remote unsubdued areas (see Figure 10.2). In their attempts to do so, the Arab bureaus counted on correspondence with supposedly loyal local leaders appointed as their intermediaries.14 Even though the French officers were aware that news frequently travelled par la voie arabe (“by word of mouth”) among the native population,15 they themselves heavily relied on written exchange of information. Especially letters addressing one of the two extremes of the sliding scale from loyalty to resistance captured their attention. Letters of aman from tribal chiefs (i.e., letters requesting mercy) on behalf of their supporters to the bureau, as well as written calls to holy war from a self-declared chérif to other tribes seem to have often been taken seriously by the French authorities.16 The vocalized (and at times mixed) signals between loyalty and resistance were much harder for French officers to capture and interpret. It was not an exception for them to accuse “their” (Arab and Berber) population of having impressionable curiosity, credulity, and/or vivid imaginations.17 Other reports, at the same time, testified to the officers’ reassurance that “their” tribes would not be so easily swayed by rumors introduced from outside.18 To be clear, this supposed duality did not imply a perceived decrease in imagination as time went on. Two retrospective sources could portray conflicting interpretations of indigenous reception regarding the very same information. Such was the case for two recollections of “adventurer” Bou-Baghla’s invincibility claims and their reception in the early 1850s. A biographical note from an unknown colonial author from 1865 about this late resistance leader retrospectively described the “observant and ironic character of the Kabyles,” who “mocked” Bou-Baghla’s tactless claims.19 A couple of years later, Colonel Adolphe Hanoteau (1867, 445), in contrast, commented on their “ignorance” and “inexhaustible credulity,” proven by their recurring disillusions when Bou-Baghla’s injuries contradicted his alleged invincibility. Regardless of their opposing opinions, however, neither Hanoteau, nor the French author of the biographical note seem to have understood the extent of Bou-Baghla’s claims in the aforementioned mystical resistance tradition of Mohamed Ben Abdallahs replacing each other and hence creating the impression of immortality and continuity. Equally problematic for an intelligence service such as the Arab bureaus, was how vague their reporters usually remained about where they had gathered news and rumors. Rather than mentioning the source, they instead focused on their interpretations of the nature of the information as “threatening” or “alarming,” whether it was considered true or “made-up.”20 In other words, instead of describing a rumor’s trajectory in a detailed manner, the bureaus mainly tried to anticipate and evaluate its local reception, which supposedly depended on “their” people’s “state of mind.” Thus, for

200  Karen Lauwers an ostensibly outward-looking intelligence service, the bureau arabe and its monthly accounts of “the political situation” were surprisingly inwardlooking. For example, to anticipate its subjects’ changing loyalties, the bureau of Saïda (subdivision of Mascara, division of Oran) drew on explanations of hunger and weather conditions. Bad weather, of course, could have had a very concrete influence on the dissemination of rumors, when, in combination with poor infrastructure, it hindered the merchants’ access to markets.21 Although the absence of news was better than bad news, this situation was not supposed to persist, because of the importance of trade for survival. Hunger, moreover, was a “bad advisor,” whether it was unintentional (from a failed harvest and misery) or self-inflicted (by fasting, in combination with “nocturnal assemblies” or so-called “nocturnal debauchery” during Ramadhan).22 Contrastingly, “under the influence of a moderate temperature of the cold season, the imaginations remain[ed] calm,” according to Saïda’s administrator-in-chief in May 1855. Aside from the metaphorical link between calm tempers and temperatures, there was also a tangible effect on agriculture, keeping people busy.23 Just like hunger, laziness was believed to be a bad advisor, whereas hard work (on the land) occupied the minds and kept people’s “ears closed-off from bad influences.”24 In the same vein, but in Kabylia, even the recurring “party discord” leading up to the yearly elections of djemâas – local councils-tribunals, operating in line with the unwritten customary law of the area – had the advantage of distracting the population from possibly harmful external influences.25 Overall, the bureaus of different areas shared the same continuous goal, stretching over the studied decades, regardless of the regime changes in metropolitan France, from the July Monarchy to the Second Republic (in 1848) and from the Second Republic to the Second Empire (in 1852). They consistently attempted to determine the so-called “state of mind” and subsequent susceptibility of “their” (Arab and Berber) tribes to harmful stories from outside. The rigid structure of such reports, addressing: (1) the political situation; (2) news that was circulating; (3) the general administration; and (4) salient events of all sorts, encouraged the bureau’s administrator-in-chief to hierarchize and compartmentalize subaltern experiences. In other words, this particular order and structure made French reporters of the Arab bureaus differentiate between practices of political and apolitical importance in relation to French domination in Algeria. Even though several administrators took it upon themselves to enumerate as much of the news and rumors as they had been able to gather during the month that had passed, the news section of their reports was often limited to just that: an overview without much coherence. As long as “the political situation” within the administrator’s own cercle remained “peaceful,” he did not expect the external resistance to take root there or to become more wideranging. Surprisingly, this was even the case for officers of districts in Greater Kabylia in March 1871. By then, the most well-known uprising

Nonsense and the senses  201 had already begun in Medjana (Lesser Kabylia). The next month, it broke out into a large-scale Kabyle “insurrection,” also known in colonial language as the Mokrani revolt. Nonetheless, in March, the reporter from Tizi Ouzou still called the political situation in his district “overall quite satisfactory.” Although he then realized that “the future could not be predicted” and that surveillance should therefore be “doubled,” he expected that his physical presence at the borders of the district had already calmed tempers. His ability to orally spread the news about the “end of the hostilities” (the Franco-Prussian war) and the subsequent return of the Armée d’Afrique made him believe he had managed to exert direct influence on the effectiveness of the alleged agitators’ “propaganda.” A similar ambiguous combination of rest and unrest can be found in the reports from Dra-el-Mizan, where the political situation was “very tense,” while “the greatest peace and tranquility” were “reigning” in the same month. Aside from adopting such generalized (almost standard) phraseologies that characterized many of the previous reports too, the administrator mentioned “hostile tendencies” of so-called “malicious” indigenous people. Nevertheless, he was confident in how quickly the bureau had been able to dissipate the fears concerning raid threats.26 The false confidence resonating in their reports from March 1871 can be explained by how used these bureaus in the area were to dealing with a “tense” political situation that directly followed the djemâas’ elections in January each year, without it necessarily escalating into a widely supported resistance movement. In addition, French officers from all over Algeria strongly believed in their politics of proximity, which seemed the easiest in Greater Kabylia, and started with concrete control of attendance at marketplaces popular among Kabyle merchants. During the early 1850s, the French authorities controlled the markets of the area by means of a socalled blocus kabyle. A biographical note on marabout Si El Djoudi mentioned this as a strategy of the French Captain Beauprêtre to block the dissident Beni Sedka and Zouaoua tribes “in their mountains,” with the intention of starving them and eventually forcing them into obedience. Only the passports provided by Si El Djoudi (French-appointed Algerian chief of the Djurdjura from 1852 to 1857) – and thus, submission to him and the French authorities – would save the Kabyle population from starvation, since these documents granted access to the French-controlled marketplaces. Opening commerce to them enabled the colonial authorities, from their side, to “observe the behavior” of the Kabyles leaving their mountains to attend the markets or even to frequent the bureaus with complaints about Si El Djoudi’s abuse of power.27 In sum, in their attempts to control rumors and subsequent resistance, officers of the Arab bureaus designated separate spaces to either political or religious practices, even though both spheres were in fact connected. Whereas the French administration installed measures to depoliticize turuq, they recognized the political importance of (and tightened their

202  Karen Lauwers control over) the marketplaces. In other words, the center of political gravity was supposed to lie in places French officers believed they had on a tight leash. It should therefore not surprise that the offices for indigenous affairs themselves were their imagined centers of political and juridical power.

Formal and informal consultations, meetings, and assemblies The bureau arabe was not just an umbrella-term for everyone working at this local colonial administrative institution, but it was also a physical office space, accessible to the public and located in the most populated center of each district under French military rule. Muslim subjects filed complaints at the bureau, which, as a tribunal, treated criminal offenses. In his memoirs from 1858, Captain Ferdinand Hugonnet (1858, 9 &15) explains that the purely judicial cases, such as marriage and heritage falling under Muslim law, were for the local cadhi/qadi (Muslim judge) to sort out. Serious criminal offenses in the eyes of the French law, such as war crimes, were to be treated by the French war tribunal of the bureau’s respective subdivision. Everything in between was subject to imprisonment, fines, or settlements, decided upon by the bureau’s officer-in-chief. Such cases included thefts or raids among native tribes, often seen as a nuisance, and not necessarily as a real danger to the French authority. However, when European settlers had fallen victim to such thefts, the case became a political matter, to be treated by the war tribunal.28 Describing his own experience as head of a bureau (in Bône and Constantine), and thus as its reporter and judge, Captain Hugonnet (1858, 19–21) claimed to have been available from morning to evening “for all indigenous people who presented themselves” with complaints or cases, whenever he was in the ­cercle’s capital. For this purpose, he decided not to divide his bureau into comfortable workspaces for the colonial administration’s different officials, but to leave it all as one big public room, which could accommodate une centaine de spectateurs. The early reports of the cercle of Dellys, before the incorporation of the mountainous Kabyle Djurdjura region in the center-north, testified to the habit of meeting with the local leaders at the office on a fixed weekday, in this case on Thursdays (market day in Dellys). The chiefs had to report to the head of the bureau about how they had governed their tribe during the previous week, and received orders for the upcoming one. Their centralized weekly presence was also used to solve complaints, addressed to the bureau by ordinary subjects. According to its report of March 1854, the bureau of Dellys was open every day to complaints from native inhabitants (just as Hugonnet’s offices in the Constantine region were), but treated the most important ones on Thursdays, when the local chiefs were there to further contextualize certain issues.29 The military annexation of the Djurdjura that followed in 1856–58 included previously unsubdued tribes into a similar system of weekly

Nonsense and the senses  203 accountability. Dra-el-Mizan’s report from March 1864 clearly laid out the different steps in the top-down trajectory of official orders, from the bureau to its subaltern subjects. Every Saturday, one of the djemâas’ secretaries was called to the bureau to receive “the authority’s orders,” which he had to pass on to the other secretaries at the Sunday markets of Boghni and the Ouadhias. They would communicate the prescriptions to their respective amin (president of their djemâa, like a mayor-magistrate), who, in his turn, was supposed to “disseminate the orders and the news” among his “subjects.”30 Although the Kabyle djemâa or local council system may seem more democratic than the Arab system with its French-appointed chiefs, the above example proves that the Kabyle assemblies were not all that independent either. Their amins too were incorporated into an organizational structure of accountability towards the head of the French administration. Meeting local chiefs-intermediaries on a fixed day for weekly political updates, as was the practice in the subdued parts of Kabylia, was less feasible in other regions, especially in the pre-Saharan area. To keep their finger on the pulse, all bureaus aimed for frequent travels (called tournées) of their officers throughout the cercle and its surroundings. The bureau of Biskra in the southeast served as a military base for French officers’ expeditions further to the south. Whereas none of their monthly reports give any detailed information about their meetings on these trips, memoirs and military journals from army captains attached to the bureaus reveal more of (at least their own perceptions of) their interactions with Muslim subjects and local leaders-intermediaries. Captain Hugonnet (1858, 43–48) seems to have preferred the more informal political meetings to those at the office. Whereas the Arab bureau functioned as a tribunal, the outdoor assemblies focused less on the purely juridical. “All matters of the tribe” were reviewed: complaints, harvest, markets, taxes, and tribal wars; this allowed the administrator-in-chief to identify growing tensions. At the same time, these debates were useful in determining whom the bureau could appoint as chiefs for local governance. Everyone had a chance to speak, but only five or six people from each tribe actively participated in the debate, while the others listened happily, according to Hugonnet (1858, 48). In the Arab system, the bureaus appointed caïds (high officials/leaders) among local notables, to secure native approval or at least alleviate tensions. However, this did not automatically lead to actual subaltern support from ordinary subjects, who used their access to the bureau to complain about abuse of power. The bureau’s officer-in-chief was the one who advised the army command on whether these tensions were severe enough to require the dismissal of the leader in question. Although most officers recognized how important it was that the authority of the appointed local figurehead be acknowledged by his subjects, which explains the common choice for successors from the same family, complaints from below did not always move these officers to act on them. Especially when people raised objections against

204  Karen Lauwers the so-called “punctuality” with which the local leaders “executed their orders,” the bureaus decided not to intervene, as they saw this as an indicator of the “justice and sagacity” (i.e., loyalty) with which these chiefs did their job.31 Alleged “acts of arbitrary authority” of a more remote (and thus more independent) leader against “his neighbors” or even “his own subjects,” were a greater nuisance for the French administration. A French-allied native leader who was suspected of killing another native Algerian (of which Si El Djoudi was being accused), or of destroying property of other French-allied tribes (as was an accusation against Ben Djellab), did not always cause strong moral disapproval from French officers. These officers were often more annoyed at the prospect of unrest such actions could cause. However, the French administration needed those figureheads (in the early 1850s in the aforementioned cases) to prevent more overt expressions of resistance. In the Djurdjura, French authorities exploited Si El Djoudi’s alleged greed, and in the eastern pre-Sahara, Ben Djellab and the bureau of Biskra shared a common enemy.32 In another example, the bureau of Tiaret (subdivision of Mascara, division of Oran) was aware that Sid Ah’med’s harsh treatment upset the locals, who sometimes even took their complaints directly to the General of the division. Thus, they skipped two levels: that of the cercle’s bureau and of the subdivision’s Supreme Commander. Although the subdivision’s commanders had already given Sid Ah’med multiple warnings, the caïd would not change his behavior. Captain Trumelet (1863, 172), who, in his description of his 1855-encounter with Sid Ah’med, did not go into greater detail about the nature of this behavior, thought it would be best to ask other caïds how they dealt with such a situation; more specifically, how they “plucked the hen without making it shriek.” Interestingly, Hugonnet (1858, 72–73) used this exact same phrasing when accusing native chiefs in general and religious figureheads (“sectarians of Mohammed”) in particular of having “mastered” this “difficult art.” (To be clear, this “art” was in fact an accusation of the chiefs’ financial exploitation of their subjects.) A “great dispersion of authority” was the solution, so he believed, “to bring light” into the existing “darkness and mysteries.” In the eyes of French officers, such practices seemed ingrained in native Algerian politics, which may explain why dismissing Sid Ah’med did not appear to have been on Trumelet’s mind, just as the bureau of Biskra did not consider replacing Ben Djellab before his death. Similarly, regarding the supposedly more democratic Kabyle system, the bureau of Dra-elMizan decided not to intervene after multiple complaints (e.g., in May 1865) about the partiality of verdicts pronounced by several djemâas. If these tribunals’ accounts did not show any irregularities (i.e., in their written bookkeeping), the bureau was unconcerned. However, the aforementioned dispersion of authority had become inconveniently large for the bureau’s officers, who saw themselves compelled to visit all 88 of

Nonsense and the senses  205 Dra-el-Mizan’s djemâas in one month (June 1865). During these travels, the French administration tried to gauge the public opinion on the planned reform, which aimed at merging several circumscriptions into larger ones. Furthermore, the bureau felt the need to teach multiple djemâas (which had been subject to complaints) how they should be treating cases along the lines of their customary law. Rather than posing a true political danger to the French authority, this alleged ignorance about their own politicaljuridical practices was more of a nuisance to the officers. At the same time, however, the presumed need for the bureau’s interventions boosted the legitimacy of their political power in the area, at least in their eyes.33 In contrast to their self-perception of superiority, colonial officers attributed inhuman traits to subaltern local people. Captain Trumelet (1863, 140–41), again, compared the Muslim population’s silent resignation to the obedience of their animals. He described how extremely docile the beasts of burden were, when being guided by their Arab owners, who nonetheless appeared to be merciless towards the animals’ suffering. This led him to the conclusion that “beasts without a soul” (animals) and “animals with a soul” (people) had undergone “the influence of Islam” to the same extent, which resulted in “the same resignation, the same stoicism of beasts and people.” Such interpretations were supposed to justify the French army’s violent treatment of the native Muslim population. A much earlier document, produced around 1851 by “the lieutenant-colonel, chief of the political Arab bureau” (without a signature or a reference to a specific bureau), is very revealing of this thought-process. According to said lieutenantcolonel, the Kabyles’ “nature and religious principles” gave them “a considerable power of resignation.” It was “therefore necessary to treat them at the beginning with a rigor” that would push them “beyond the point of their usual resignation.” In sum, this narrative construed violent measures as a legitimate means that would make the native population reach the full potential of their so-called “natural” compliance.34 According to Émile Carrey (1858, 281) too, who had joined the Kabyle expedition as a writerexplorer, silent endurance was “the biggest virtue of the people of the Orient.” He linked this kind of behavior to them being “more religious than us, Christians.” Muslims were “better at suffering misfortune; better than us, they know to bow for judgements they cannot understand, and when their job is done, resign to God’s will.” Once this compliance achieved, it was a matter of keeping harmful news outside the administrative cercle, and spirituality out of the political sphere. Thus, misconstrued and binary notions of religion (Christian vs. Muslim) clearly shaped French officers’ generalizations of what native Algerian political loyalty should look like. The officers’ notions of political resistance, on the contrary, were extremely compartmentalized. Their monthly reports are obvious reflections of their attempts at jettisoning religion, and especially spirituality in its multifaceted vocalized expressions, from the political realm. This becomes particularly apparent in how rarely

206  Karen Lauwers the bureaus considered Algerian singers and their poems to be potentially threatening carriers of political rumors.

Songs and the meddahs performing them Aside from the aforementioned outdoor assemblies during the day, captain Hugonnet (1858, 49–50) also held informal nightly gatherings with elite members of the tribes he visited in his cercle. The conversations he eavesdropped on while pretending to be asleep were very diverse in nature: “there were songs, tales, travel stories, but especially observations of neighboring tribes, of the Europeans in the towns, their ridiculousness, etc.” Sometimes, when they believed Hugonnet (1858, 51–58) was really sleeping, certain “individuals” told stories “about the neighboring Arab bureaus.” In a “hushed voice,” they gave “very pungent accounts of badly judged cases.” Not once, however, did the captain refer to these stories as gossip or rumors. Instead, he claimed to have treated these “nightly chats” as lessons, of which he took “mental” notes. In addition, these “nocturnal gatherings” with “loud conversations,” had the advantage of letting “the thieves of the mountains” know that his “little camp was on guard.” According to Hugonnet, that was also the reason why the songs were sometimes “very lively, each verse ending with pistol shots, bursts of laughter, and rhythmic handclapping,” the latter practice being very common. Music teacher at the Ecole arabe in Algiers, Francisco Salvador-Daniel (1863, 6), described “rhythmic harmony” (with handclapping or tambours of different sizes) as characteristic of Arab and Kabyle music, while accusing both of lacking melodic harmony. This explains why the French colonel Adolphe Hanoteau (1867, I–II) saw the need to discard the musical aspect of Kabyle “popular poetry,” in his attempt at decoding poems that were sung in the Djurdjura region. As a former supreme commander of Dra-el-Mizan (1859–1860) and later of Fort Napoléon (1860–1862, 1866), at the heart of Greater Kabylia, his interest in the “Berber language” spoken there was largely driven by the secrets he thought songs from the area could reveal. Anthropologist Jane E. Goodman (2002a, 169) points out that Colonel Hanoteau did not care for the poems as “situated speech events,” but rather “as tokens of a generalized Kabyle cultural universe that was merely ventriloquated by the poets.” More specifically, he (1867, I–II) expected the songs to be the key to learning the true “spirit” or “passions” of the Kabyle “masses,” which he thought were hidden “from our curiosity” (see also Goodman 2005, 100). When singing their poems, the performers let their guard down and revealed their cultural specificities and views on the French colonizer more authentically, Hanoteau (1867, XI) suspected. That is why Goodman (2002a, 160) makes a compelling case for how such Berber poetry collections were “sites where ethnographic knowledge was created.” In Hanoteau’s case, this “knowledge” (for example, about the place of women

Nonsense and the senses  207 in what he called “primitive” Kabyle society) was used to justify the socalled French civilizing mission. Whereas Goodman (2002b, 86–91 & 111) tries to read through this essentialist veil to uncover intertextualities “between Berber and European aesthetic categories,” I am more interested in how the colonel’s view on oral (political) culture links up with or differs from the perceptions voiced in the aforementioned expedition stories as well as in the bureaus’ monthly reports. In the preface to his anthology, Hanoteau (1867, V–VIII) described the pros and cons of Kabyle oral culture. First, he applauded the unparalleled memory of the performers. Growing up, they had to learn to count on their memory alone. Consequently, they obtained “better results” than “educated” (i.e., French) people did, since knowing how to write from a young age could make one’s “memory lazy.” Having put the poets to the test by asking the same poet after a year or two to sing the same song, Hanoteau had not been able to notice any flaws. Second, however, he stressed the “primitive” nature of Kabyle “oral literature” and tradition, which he judged for lacking any “historical sense.” He shamed the Kabyle population for not having a natural curiosity about their ancestors, and was disappointed in what he suspected to be resistance to, or lack of interest in preserving the recollection of past events. Among the performers, Hanoteau considered the meddahs (or bards) as a highly esteemed but harmless category. Because the format of a song did not leave room for extensive storytelling, he explained that the performers usually kept it simple and laid out the events for the audience to judge for themselves. Thus, adding a layer of “passionate interpretation” was the role of the listener, not the storyteller. Rather than being the guides of public opinion, the meddahs were its voice. Therefore, the colonel did not suspect them to be the first ones to cause trouble. Instead, he saw the performers as the “dispensers of the praise and the blame” already present in Kabyle society. Other administrators from different cercles most likely shared this opinion. Indeed, the studied reports (from Arab and Kabyle areas) usually omitted the meddahs from their discussions on the rumors that were circulating; hence, they invalidated the songs’ possible influence on popular narratives and their dissemination. The bureau of Biskra’s mention of meddah M’hammed ben l’Amar of Lichana in the report of March 1851 was an exception. Since it had come to the supreme commander’s attention that M’hammed ben l’Amar had been singing about “the latest insurrections of the Zibans” (referring to the Bou-Zian revolt of 1849), he ordered sheikh Brahim bel Basha of Lichana to hand the man in. Instead of doing so “silently and with the necessary caution,” the sheikh assembled the people from his village to inform them of the order he had received to bring the meddah to Biskra, where “the French” would “decapitate him.” He asked their opinion on what he should do. Although the “peaceful and obedient intentions” of his people made him decide to bring the poet to Biskra after

208  Karen Lauwers all, the sheikh’s “behavior” could have had “the most serious consequences for the peace” in the area, if there had been “even the slightest inclination of revolt in the Zibans.” Although fear of repercussions might have driven their response instead, Captain Séroka, the bureau’s administrator-inchief, mainly interpreted their decision as a sign of loyalty towards the bureau. He was clearly convinced that the meddah had not left that much of an impression. Despite the army command’s exceptionally political response to a meddah’s songs, the administrator’s own retrospective interpretation thus downplayed the poet’s political influence.35 Even though Hanoteau (1867, VIII–IX) acknowledged how wellrespected and involved (e.g., in the local council) such performers were in Kabylia, he, too, underestimated their political importance. Because of their position in Kabyle society, they “thought too highly” of themselves and of “their mission.” To illustrate his point, the colonel addressed the “poignant verve” with which these performers ridiculed those who did not treat them with the regard they thought they deserved. In addition to the arrogance he perceived, Hanoteau accused them of opportunism and even greed. Kabyle meddahs usually travelled during harvest season, when their audience would not mind paying them in kind. The poets especially made sure to visit wealthy families, where they expected generous hospitality in the form of a good dinner. Sometimes, “villages or even whole tribes” saved up for the yearly expense of paying tribute to the travelling performers. Therefore, this gift could even resemble a “pension,” he stated. Captain Corneille Trumelet (1863, 206–7) had a very similar impression of the Arab meddah, more specifically of Moh’ammed-ben-el-Mokhtar, who had been introduced as a guide for his regiment towards the Djebel Amour, that is, the central Atlas range, northwest of Laghouat (El-Aghouât on Figure 10.2) in 1855. The captain was convinced especially that the Arab poets from the desert were treated with great regard. Both Trumelet and Hanoteau seemed to share the opinion (about Arab and Kabyle poets respectively) that this treatment was more than what the performers deserved. When being complimented about his talent, the poet thanked Trumelet “without too much modesty, like a man who was aware of his worth.” To explain why people native to the Sahara gave meddahs so much credit, the captain claimed that “exaggerators like all the people of the Orient, speaking a language that was especially fit for poetry, the Saharans couldn’t not like the poets.” For them, a poet was an “inspired man,” some sort of a “prophet, who could read in the book of the future.” Even though the meddahs Trumelet described sang especially at the tombs of marabouts, he seemed more interested in Moh’ammed-ben-el-Mokhtar’s love songs. The captain knew how “distinguished” and “reputable” the meddah was as a “religious singer-improviser,” but considered him too eloquent to “keep his verve within the confines of sacred songs.” Trumelet relied entirely on Moh’ammed-ben-el-Mokhtar’s appearance when concluding that the poet knew to sing about glory as well as love. Respectively his “wide-open

Nonsense and the senses  209 nostrils” (glory) and “big sensual lips” (love) gave it away, the captain stated; thus, he discredited and ignored the spiritual authority of such a notable figure. Hanoteau (1867, X), from his side, made a point of not including religious songs in his anthology at all. Although he claimed he wanted to present a variety of styles and themes in his collection, he did not see the relevance of incorporating religious music, because the melodies were too tedious, and the content was “exclusively Muslim.” Therefore, he said it was “of no interest to us.” Nonetheless, like Moh’ammed-ben-el-Mokhtar from Trumelet’s case, the poets Hanoteau considered worthy of mentioning by name seem to have been religious notables. Both military men thus disconnected the presumed spiritual importance of some of the meddahs from their socio-political capital, while simultaneously downplaying this political significance. This is surprising, because “the traveling poets” undoubtedly played an important part in keeping the aforementioned belief in Mohamed Ben Abdallah the savior alive, as was acknowledged by Count Pierre de Castellane (1852, 130). Furthermore, although songs were known to be part of the turuq’s sessions, the sound of such spiritual music seemed irrelevant to the French authorities.36 The bureaus’ monthly reports mentioned their surveillance of Aïd el-Kebir and Aïd el-Fitr gatherings, but their heightened vigilance during these festivities was mainly focused on monitoring discourse rather than songs. At times of exterior conflict too, such as the civil war in Ottoman Lebanon and Syria in 1860, about which local Algerian knowledge was said to be incomplete, the bureau (in this case of Tizi Ouzou) heightened its surveillance to determine whether political assemblies and discourse about the matter were taking place. If the speeches were apolitical in their opinion, French administrators did not bother giving much attention to other vocalized practices performed at the turuq.37 The unfamiliar sound of Algerian (Arab and Berber) songs, moreover, hindered French colonizers from actually listening to them. Because Hanoteau (1867, IX–X) was a linguist and not a music expert, he only briefly touched upon the sound of the poems in his anthology. In their French translation, they also inevitably lost their original cadence. To elaborate on the acoustical aspect of the tradition, the colonel added a note (at the end of the poetry collection) by Francisco Salvador-Daniel, who had written a book in 1863 comparing Arabic music to Gregorian chants and Ancient Greek theatre. This music teacher (1863, 5; 1867, 460) made the same link in his contribution to Hanoteau’s Kabyle anthology. To be clear, however, the use of different modes for different emotions in Kabyle poetry as well as in Greek comedy and tragedy did not mean that European musicians would appreciate Kabyle music. To an untrained ear, so Salvador-Daniel explained, oriental melodies would all sound like “horrible” or even “diabolic hullaballoo.” In the same vein of their de-legitimization of Sufi brotherhoods as freemason sects, French colonial authorities

210  Karen Lauwers discredited oriental music as primitive, and its melodies as disharmonious, monotonous, and even devilish. According to Trumelet’s observations “in the desert” (1863, 173, 322), such alleged “contempt for harmony,” audible in Arabic music, was also a more generalized characteristic of (nomadic) Arab culture and society, visible in the skirmishers’ clothing, as well as in the nomads’ placement of their tents. This “naïve irregularity” was shocking to “Europeans, slaves of harmony and order.” Even in open fields, Arab roads were extremely winding for no reason, “as if traced by dreamers or blind people.” Trumelet (1863, 122, 160) explained that he later learned that “the straight line” does not exist in the Arab world. Why did their native guides not bring them directly from point A to point B in the shortest way possible? Was it to prevent the French expeditionary forces from remembering the way, or were they just incapable of walking in a straight line? Despite the captain’s suspicion, he leaned towards the latter explanation. He figured that, since the absence of “symmetry and parallelism” was all around them, nomadic people from the desert did not know any better. Thus, the so-called monotonous melodies and rhythms of their songs (making them hard to remember) were believed to be a cultural reflection of their natural surroundings (Trumelet 1863, 208, 212, 357, 360, 403). At the same time, the captain (1863, 173) reminded himself to take what his local guides said with a grain of salt, since “the tendency to exaggerate” increased exponentially from the pole to the equator, so he explained, as if it was a measurable geographic observation. This rhetoric implicitly situated the French in the most harmonious, ideal position: right in the middle of the imagined geographically determined scale that went from being completely emotionless to overly dramatic. To colonial officers, this imagined oriental sense of drama and “abundance” in speech were entertaining at best (Trumelet 1863, 151–52), and annoying at worst (Hugonnet 1858, 49). On a more serious note, however, such perceptions prevented them from listening to native Algerian experiences, and from predicting (the extent of) subaltern resistance.

Conclusion This chapter focused on French officers’ selective (sensory) interpretations of subaltern political practices and the spaces they pertained to during the military colonization of Algeria between 1846 and 1871. This approach shed light on preconditioned essentialist perspectives that were the driving force behind local governance strategies of the French army’s administrative sister institution: the bureaux arabes. More concretely, my contribution provided insights into how colonial officers of these bureaus dismissed and misinterpreted Arab and Berber political practices and expressions of resistance in Algeria. An analysis of the French officers’ treatment of their (mainly oral) sources of knowledge – instead of a focus on the mythical

Nonsense and the senses  211 divide between Arabs and Kabyles as the end product of their knowledge – helped un-blackbox such essentialist dichotomies. At the same time, it revealed another imagined divide, namely, between spiritual and political practices. In this context, un-blackboxing entailed a deconstruction of the bureaus’ officers’ ideas of loyalty and resistance, and the ways in which these views were preconditioned by their notions of politics, sense, and nonsense. In order to alleviate what Ann Laura Stoler (2009, 20) would call their “epistemological and political anxiety,” French officers not only broke the Algerian landscape down into supposedly manageable and surprisingly inward-looking administrative districts or cercles, but they also imagined separate spaces for practicing politics and religion. Only in their interpretation of loyalty (of so-called “naturally” compliant Muslims, obedient to “naturally” dominant Christians), they connected both realms. In their attempts to anticipate resistance, in contrast – when providing intelligence to the army command about Algerian politics and culture – they went out of their way to artificially disconnect (Sufi) spiritual practices from political ones. The fixed structure of the bureaus’ monthly reports encouraged compartmentalization and hierarchization of knowledge concerning subaltern experiences, from political (and thus important) to apolitical (less important) ones in relation to French dominance. Even though news circulation eventually became the reports’ second section, featuring directly after “the political situation,” the administrators seem to have lost themselves so frequently, at that point, in their quest for the truth, that they (dis)missed the spiritual context of Algerian politics. Specifically, they ridiculed the religious significance of marabouts who made claims to political power against French domination. Colonial officers referred to such self-proclaimed chiefs as “adventurers,” “impostors,” or faux chérifs hence discrediting their saintly lineage claims. In the same vein, turuq were treated as religious sects or freemasonry, while being robbed of their socio-political role, until only easily observable religious and charitable practices were believed to remain. Even though marabout-meddahs were the singers who received the most individual attention in French recollections of Arab and Kabyle poetry, colonial writers usually ignored their religious repertoire. This was not just a matter of content selection, but also of sensory selectivity, because Muslim music was considered too tedious for the French ear. In sum, in their treatment of marabouts, turuq, and their music, French colonial officers in pre-1871 Algeria attempted to distinguish between politics and religion; hence, they ignored the “interconnectivity and permeability” (Whyte 2018, 235) of these two spheres and consequently missed signs of native resistance. Moreover, the signs to which they attributed the most weight and legitimacy were not rarely visual ones (the chiefs’ appearance, their bookkeeping, letters, etc.), despite the strong oral nature of their sources of knowledge (rumors, news, songs, and meetings).

212  Karen Lauwers

Notes 1 “Rapport de février 1853, Cercle de Biskra,” Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer, Gouvernement Général de l’Algérie (ANOM GGA), file 15K 16. There are different ways to write Bou-Zian/Bû Ziyân, for instance, but I chose to adopt the French reporters’ almost phonetic transcription of names throughout this chapter. 2 Ibidem. 3 J. A. Séroka, “Historique du cercle de Biskra, 1853,” ANOM GGA, file 10H 18. 4 For the analysis of reports coming from the division of Oran, I selected the cercle of Saïda in Mascara, especially because it was the (in)famous Emir Abd’el-Kader’s area of origin and support. Regarding the division of Constantine, the main oasis of the Zibans, Biskra (in Batna) is added to the selection. For the military division of Algiers in its early years, I decided to concentrate on the reports from Dellys. This coastal area in the center-north was close to the city of Algiers, as well as to the initially unsubdued Kabyle tribes of the Djurdjura mountains, which the administrators were supposed to monitor. Areas in Greater Kabylia were only incorporated as from 1856–1857, after which Dellys became a subdivision, in 1858, comprising the cercles of Dra-el-Mizan, Tizi Ouzou, and Fort-Napoléon. Therefore, my chosen sample for the division of Algiers switches from Dellys’ reports to those from Dra-elMizan and Tizi Ouzou (from 1856 onwards). As shown by Figure 10.2, this source selection aims to provide a varied and representative geographical sample. 5 For example: “Rapport de juin 1869, Cercle de Dra-el-Mizan,” ANOM GGA, file 42I 4. 6 “Rapport de novembre 1864, Cercle de Dra-el-Mizan,” idem. Julia ClancySmith (1988, 64) points out that the oases of the Zibans (such as Biskra) were located on the pilgrimage route from Morocco to the Hijaz. 7 For example: “Rapports de mai 1850/septembre 1851, Cercle de Biskra,” ANOM GGA, file 15K 16. For more details on the political, religious, and economic interconnectivity of these areas, cf. Clancy-Smith (1988, 65–77). 8 “Lettre de F. G. Lacroix, préfet d’Alger, à V. Charon, Gouverneur Général de l’Algérie,” 18-08-1849, ANOM GGA, file 16H 2 (“Confréries. Renseignements divers”). 9 For example: “Rapports de la 1re quinzaine de juillet 1848/février 1850/mars 1855/juin 1855, Cercle de Dellys,” idem, file F80 466, 469, 474. Here and throughout the whole paper, quotation marks are used to indicate translations (from French to English) of parts of these texts. 10 For example: idem, file F80 467/9; “Rapport de juillet 1851, Cercle de Biskra,” idem, file 15K 16. 11 For example: “Rapports de juin/décembre 1851/d’octobre 1853, Cercle de Biskra,” idem. 12 “Rapports de juillet 1851 – février 1852, Cercle de Biskra,” idem. 13 Idem. N.B. Bou-Maza and Bou-Baghla were nicknames, respectively referring to “the man with the goat” and “the man with the mule.” Mouley or Moulay was not a name, but a title for religious noblemen, descendants of Mohamed (chérifs). 14 Belkassem-ou-Kassi (Sebaou, 1847–1854) in: “Rapport de la 1re quinzaine de novembre 1849, Cercle de Dellys,” idem, F80 467; Si Ali Bey (Touggourt, 1854– 1871) in: “Rapports de janvier 1867/juin 1869, Cercle de Biskra,” idem, file 15K 14, 17. 15 “Rapport de la 1re quinzaine de septembre 1847, Cercle de Saïda,” idem, file 25J 2.

Nonsense and the senses  213 16 For example: “Rapports de la 1re quinzaine d’août 1846/août 1854, Cercle de Dellys,” idem, F80 462, 473; “Rapports de la 2me quinzaine d’août 1849/juillet 1851, Cercle de Biskra,” idem, file 15K 16; “Rapport de juillet 1864, Cercle de Saïda,” idem, file 25J 3. 17 For example: “Rapport de la 2me quinzaine d’octobre 1849, Cercle de Dellys,” idem, file F80 467; “Rapport de février 1853, Cercle de Biskra,” idem, file 15K 16; “Rapports de mai/juin 1860/mars 1869, Cercle de Dra-el-Mizan,” idem, file 42I 4. 18 For example: “Rapports d’octobre 1859/de janvier 1861, Cercle de Dra-elMizan,” idem. The most harmful rumors concerned suspected weaknesses of the French authority in either the metropole or the colony. 19 “Notice sur Si Mohammed ben Abdallah, dit Bou Baghla,” Centre de Documentation Historique sur l’Algérie (CDHA), Fonds Ruyssen, 1865, file 75 ARC 01. 20 References to fake, construed, and/or alarming news (de faux bruits; les fausses nouvelles; ces nouvelles plus ou moins brodées; d’alarmantes nouvelles) can be found in: “Rapport de la 1re quinzaine d’avril 1847,” Cercle de Saïda,” ANOM GGA, file 25J 2; “Rapport de mai 1857, Cercle de Biskra,” idem, file 15K 16; “Rapport de décembre 1859, Cercle de Dra-el-Mizan,” idem, file 42I 4. For des bruits menaçants, see for example: “Rapport de mars 1870, Cercle de Biskra,” idem, file 15K 17. 21 For example: “Rapports de la 1re et 2me quinzaine de décembre 1846, Cercle de Saïda,” idem, file 25J 2; “Rapport de la 1re quinzaine de janvier 1850, Cercle de Saïda,” idem. 22 For example: “Rapports de la 2me quinzaine de novembre/2me quinzaine de décembre 1849, Cercle de Saïda,” idem; “Rapports de janvier/mai/juillet 1850, Cercle de Saïda,” idem, file 25J 3. 23 “Rapport de mai 1855, Cercle de Saïda,” idem. 24 “Rapports de juin/juillet 1852, Cercle de Saïda,” idem; “Rapport de janvier 1866, Cercle de Saïda,” idem, file 25J 4. 25 “Rapport de janvier 1865, Cercle de Dra-el-Mizan,” idem, file 42I 4. 26 “Rapport de mars 1871, Districts de Dra-el-Mizan/Tizi Ouzou,” idem, file 42I/44I 4. 27 “Notice sur Si El Djoudi ben Si Mahmed, Bach agha du Jurjura,” CDHA, Fonds Ruyssen, s.d. (c.1866), file 75 ARC 01. 28 For example: “Rapport de juin 1851, Cercle de Biskra,” ANOM GGA, file 15K 16. 29 For example: “Rapports d’août 1850/d’avril 1853/de mars 1854, Cercle de Dellys,” idem, file F80 469, 472, 473. 30 “Rapport de mars 1864, Cercle de Dra-el-Mizan,” idem, file 42I 4. 31 “Rapport d’août 1850, Cercle de Dellys,” idem, file F80 469. 32 For example: “Notice sur Si El Djoudi ben Si Mahmed, Bach agha du Jurjura,” CDHA, Fonds Ruyssen, s.d. (around 1866), file 75 ARC 01; “Rapport de mai 1851, Cercle de Biskra,” ANOM GGA, file 15K 16. 33 “Rapports de mai-juin 1865, Cercle de Dra-el-Mizan,” idem, file 42I 4. 34 “Considérations Générales sur les Kabyles par le Lieutenant Colonel Chef du Bureau Politique Arabe,” s.d. (c.1851), idem, file 10H 78 (“Etudes sur la Grande Kabylie”). 35 “Rapport de mars 1851, Cercle de Biskra,” idem, file 15K 16. 36 “Lettre de F. G. Lacroix, préfet d’Alger, à V. Charon, Gouverneur Général de l’Algérie,” 18-08-1849, idem, file 16H 2 (“Confréries. Renseignements divers”). 37 “Rapports de septembre 1853/mai 1858, Cercle de Saïda,” idem, file 25J 3; “Rapport d’août 1860, Cercle de Tizi Ouzou,” idem, file 42I 2; “Rapport de juin 1864, Cercle de Dra-el-Mizan,” idem, file 42I 4.

214  Karen Lauwers

Bibliography Primary Sources (supplementary to the Arab bureaus’ reports in the ANOM GGA’s I, J, and K-series) Carrey, Émile. 1858. Récits de la Kabylie: campagne de 1857. Paris: Michel Lévy frères. De Castellane, Pierre. 1852. Souvenirs de La Vie Militaire En Afrique. Paris: Victor Lecou. De Martinval, Eugène. 1847. Bou-Maza, scheriff des Ouled-Yonnes, prisonnier des Français. Notice biographique et intéressante. Paris: Imprimerie de E. Bautruche. Hanoteau, Adolphe. 1867. Poésies populaires de la Kabylie du Jurjura: texte kabyle et traduction. Paris: Imprimerie Impériale. Hugonnet, Ferdinand. 1858. Souvenirs d’un chef de bureau arabe. Paris: Michel Lévy frères. Flatters, Paul. 1858. Etudes géographiques et historiques sur la province de Constantine. ANOM GGA, file 10H 76: Unpublished notes. Mac Guckin (Baron de Slane), William, and Charles-Hippolyte Gabeau. 1868. Vocabulaire destiné à fixer la transcription en français des noms de personnes et de lieux usités chez les indigènes de l’Algérie, fait au Ministère de la Guerre, d’après les documents fournis par le Gouvernement Général de l’Algérie. Vol. 1. Noms de personnes. Paris: Imprimerie Impériale. Robin, Joseph Nil. 1905. Notes historiques sur la Grande Kabylie de 1838 à 1851. Alger: Typographie Adolphe Jourdan. Salvador-Daniel, Francisco. 1863. La musique arabe, ses rapports avec la musique grecque et le chant grégorien. Alger: Bastide. Salvador-Daniel, Francisco. 1867. “Notice sur la musique kabyle.” In Poésies populaires de la Kabylie du Jurjura: texte kabyle et traduction, edited by Adolphe Hanoteau, 459–71. Paris: Imprimerie Impériale. Trumelet, Corneille. 1863. Les Français dans le désert. Journal d’une expédition aux limites du Sahara algérien. Paris: Garnier frères. Véron, Louis. 1866. Nouveaux mémoires d’un bourgeois de Paris. Depuis le 10 décembre 1848 jusqu’aux élections générales de 1863. Le Second Empire. Paris/Brussels, Leipzig, and Livourne: Librairie Internationale/A. Lacroix, Verbroeckhoven et Cie.

Secondary Literature Abi-Mershed, Osama W. 2010. Apostles of Modernity. Saint-Simonians and the Civilizing Mission in Algeria. Stanford CA: Stanford University Press. Bauche, Manuela. 2016. “Doing Research with Colonial Sources. Deconstructing Categories in German East Africa’s Medical Reports.” In Sources and Methods for African History and Culture. Essays in Honour of Adam Jones, edited by Geert Castryck, Silke Strickrodt, and Katja Werthmann, 337–56. Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag. Belkadi, Ali Farid. 2014. Boubaghla. Le sultan à la mule grise. La résistance des Chorfas. Alger: Editions Thala. Besnier, Niko. 1994. “The Truth and Other Irrelevant Aspects of Nukulaelae Gossip.” Pacific Studies 17 (3): 1–37.

Nonsense and the senses  215 Bijsterveld, Karin. 2019. Sonic Skills. Listening for Knowledge in Science, Medicine and Engineering (1920s–Present). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Brower, Benjamin Claude. 2011. A Desert Named Peace: The Violence of France’s Empire in the Algerian Sahara, 1844-1902. New York: Columbia University Press. Clancy-Smith, Julia. 1988. “Saints, Mahdis, and Arms: Religion and Resistance in Nineteenth-Century North Africa.” In Islam, Politics, and Social Movements, edited by Edmund Burke III, and Ira M. Lapidus, 60–80. Berkeley/Los Angeles/ London: University of California Press. Clancy-Smith, Julia A. 1994. Rebel and Saint: Muslim Notables, Populist Protest, Colonial Encounters (Algeria and Tunisia, 1800-1904). Berkeley: University of California Press. Gallois, William. 2013. A History of Violence in the Early Algerian Colony. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Goodman, Jane E. 2002a. “The Half-Lives of Texts: Poetry, Politics, and Ethnography in Kabylia, Algeria.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 12 (2): 157–88. Goodman, Jane E. 2002b. “Writing Empire, Underwriting Nation: Discursive Histories of Kabyle Berber Oral Texts.” American Ethnologist. Journal of the American Ethnological Society 29 (1): 86–122. Goodman, Jane E. 2005. Berber Culture on the World Stage: From Village to Video. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Guignard, Didier, and Iris Seri-Hersch. 2019. “Introduction. Relocating Histories of Empires, 19th-20th Centuries.” In Spatial Appropriations in Modern Empires, 1820-1960: Beyond Dispossession, edited by Didier Guignard, and Iris SeriHersch, 1–20. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars. Hannoum, Abdelmajid. 2001. “Colonialism and Knowledge in Algeria: The Archives of the Arab Bureau.” History and Anthropology 12: 343–79. Hannoum, Abdelmajid. 2004. “‘Faut-Il Brûler L’Orientalisme?’: On French Scholarship of North Africa.” Cultural Dynamics 16 (1): 71–91. Hannoum, Abdelmajid. 2010. “Writing Algeria: On the History and Culture of Colonialism.” The Maghreb Center Journal 1: 1–19. Kitouni, Hosni. 2018. Le désordre colonial. L’Algérie à l’épreuve de la colonisation de peuplement. Histoire et perspectives méditerranéennes. Paris: L’Harmattan. Lauwers, Karen. 2022. “French Colonial Publications and their Situated Re-presentations of Native Algerian Leadership (late 1840s-1860s),” European Review of History (Special Issue) 29 (5): 778–99. Lorcin, Patricia. 1999. Imperial Identities. Stereotyping, Prejudice and Race in Colonial Algeria. London and New York: I.B. Tauris. Rancière, Jacques. 2000. Le partage du sensible. Esthétique et politique. Paris: La Fabrique-éditions. Rancière, Jacques. 2011. “The Thinking of Dissensus. Politics and Aesthetics.” In Reading Rancière. Critical Dissensus, edited by Paul Bowman, and Richard Stamp, 1–17. London/New York: Continuum. Scott, James C. 1990. Domination and the Arts of Resistance. Hidden Transcripts. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Sessions, Jennifer E. 2011. By Sword and Plow: France and the Conquest of Algeria. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Stoler, Ann Laura. 2009. Along the Archival Grain. Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense. Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press.

216  Karen Lauwers Vansina, Jan. 1985. Oral Tradition as History. Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press. White, Luise. 2000. Speaking with Vampires. Rumor and History in Colonial Africa. Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press. Whyte, Nicola. 2018. “Spatial History.” In New Directions in Social and Cultural History, edited by Sasha Handley, Rohan McWilliam, and Lucy Noakes, 233–51. London: Bloomsbury.

11 Subaltern caste concepts of the “political,” Bengal, 1900–1930 Neha Chatterji

In the early 1920s, an energetic organizer from a near-untouchable community on the southern fringes of Bengal, in eastern India, had been imploring his people to subscribe to the newborn community mouthpiece. This was the third attempt at launching and maintaining such a journal. The previous attempts had failed because of want of money and a lack of interested subscribers. In his introductory note to the new journal, this largely unknown and yet remarkable organizer-thinker, Mahendranath Karan, wrote: “This is the age of newspapers. In England, even beggars have their community papers. Newspapers play the most important role in forging solidarities by linking people distributed far and wide.”1 Commonly called Pod till the early twentieth century, the community – into which Mahendranath Karan was born – had just begun to claim what was felt to be a more sophisticated name, Paundrakshatriya. New forms of self-discovery and self-definition were in process with the advent of governmental enumerative procedures since the late nineteenth century. The Pods were the most numerous in coastal Bengal, that is, in the district of Twenty-four Parganas. The majority of the community probably consisted of peasants, for the 1931 Census alluded to the community as one of the “great cultivating castes” (Census of India 1931, 108). Indeed, that was how Mahendranath Karan described the occupation of the community. However, colonial ethnography had previously classified the community as one whose traditional occupation was “fishing and boating,” from which an upwardly mobile section, after taking to agriculture, was seeking to disclaim connections (Census of Bengal 1901, 373). Karan and his colleagues were robustly challenging this description. They felt that, since fishing was seen as a “degraded” occupation within the ritual hierarchy of purity-pollution, colonial ethnographers simply took their cue from the wily Calcutta bhadralok2 (city-based caste-elites), to box the community under the label of fishermen. They saw it as yet another instance of elite collusion and conspiracy so as to mark out the community as one of decidedly inferior status. W. W. Hunter’s Statistical Accounts described the caste as among “the lowest” and “utterly despised castes” (Hunter 1876, 56). While there were many landless peasants and sharecroppers within the community, DOI: 10.4324/9781003290087-15

218  Neha Chatterji there were smallholding peasants and even a few landlords (Risley 1891, ed. 1981, 176). The first university graduate from the caste emerged in 1900. The community was making some strides in primary education by this time. Probably there was still no doctor, professor, judge, or magistrate emerging from the caste in the first two decades of the twentieth century. But there were some schoolteachers, some attorneys, and a few lawyers – collectively, a tiny minority. Even that was not without significance. As Manindranath Mandal, another pioneer leader from the community remarked in 1926: “The humiliated castes have realized that they are not inferior… Their timidity is gone. With a new daring, they are beginning to stand up for themselves” (Mandal 1927, 12). Here was a caste-subaltern ideologue who was exhorting a range of subordinated castes to stop enacting hierarchical distinctions between themselves and come together in a broad-based solidarity to fight for their social and political rights. In this chapter, I offer a glimpse of the ideas worked out, the nature of public activities undertaken, and experiments made with organization by these little-known men, disadvantaged in terms of social location, in early twentieth-century India. These were men (and a sprinkling of women, occasionally) who saw themselves as agents of change in a colonial society undergoing momentous transformations. Well on their way to becoming modern-day political subjects of twentieth-century India, they were participating self-consciously “in a literary public sphere” (Sarkar 2002, 50) and building contacts with representatives and members of other social groups.3 Jatiya unnati, literally, “the community’s progress/uplift,” was the stated objective, as evident from the many tracts, pamphlets, and journals they published and the letters they exchanged. The communication of messages and effective participation in the expanding public sphere were identified as the keystones of jatiya unnati: as a tract-writer from this same community observed, “When every house will see the postman visiting every day, we can be sure that we have truly advanced” (Ray 1917, 76). My sources mostly consist of the published writings that were circulating through these transactions. I also study the autobiographies of some of these early ideologists from subordinated communities. Overall, these various printed materials reveal two broad directions of initiative. One was community self-improvement through painstaking efforts at founding schools, and so forth (colonial rule, at least theoretically, made career open to talent). The other was to combat perceived discrimination and injustice. Both, however, emphasized inward-directed effort. Both required, as it were, a stoic spirit of self-effacement at the level of the individual: a value that found continual accent in these projects of self-affirmation. If the founding of rural schools for boys and girls from poverty-stricken homes required these pioneer leaders to gather funds, sometimes even through door-to-door begging, the efforts at organizing broad-based revolutionary collectives similarly required the samaj-sevaks (servants of society) to be properly selfless (Mandal 1923, 25).4 Selflessness came to be seen as the

Subaltern caste concepts of the “political,” Bengal, 1900–1930  219 spiritual basis of a radical fearlessness, “the new daring” with which Manindranath Mandal, for instance, saw the humiliated castes standing up for themselves. Notwithstanding that almost spiritual emphasis on self-preparation, these caste-subaltern activists were assertive about their political value. Aware of their potential for political bargaining, they sharply pointed out that they stood at the pivot of all contemporary political questions in early twentieth-century India.5 Acutely political and still doubtful, as we will show, about “politics” and “politicking,” they seemed to nurture a deep suspicion for political self-seeking. Perhaps this explains the curious disconnect between the trenchant self-respect movement of a low-caste community described in this chapter, and the institutionalized domain of party politics in late colonial and post-colonial Bengal.

Defining selves, constituting publics The new journal that Mahendranath Karan introduced in 1923 was named Paundrakshatriya Samachar (Paundrakshatriya News). The choice of the name Paundrakshatriya was read by Herbert Hope Risley, the British ethnographer, as yet another instance of “inferior” castes insisting upon being called by supposedly more refined names, “pretentious Sanskrit derivatives” (Risley 1908, ed. 1915, 127). But to claim a name was also to persuade other putative members of the community to accept the name. It required mediation, specifically the use of print medium. Print potentially mediated between different peoples and districts to enlist their support for a common cause. Here, the cause, to begin with, was the adoption of a common name by peoples known in their regions by a host of local names such as Pod, Punro, Padmaraj, Balai, and so on. The censuses had begun since the 1870s and processes of codification and objectification were inspiring a novel kind of self-consciousness in terms of nomenclature and numbers (Cohn 1987). As Kshirodchandra Das, the co-editor of Paundrakshatriya Samachar wrote, pamphlets and newspapers allowed individuals to imagine themselves as members of a community-public that transcended the barriers of traditional practices.6 For example, ritual barriers had traditionally barred alliances between sub-castes within a caste. Here, we see a community identity getting forged by a new kind of (political) imagination. It brings to mind Benedict Anderson’s (1998) idea of an “imagined community.” Yet, while its borders were fuzzy and it involved some element of choice, it was certainly not an unbound seriality. It was bound by caste, a particularistic identity, and a particular kind of location and belonging. But a public was born. Caste publics functioned like civil society associations. These functioned at two levels: a minority engaged in the dissemination of views, and contact-building through print. These leaders also took part in face-to-face gatherings where the less literate or illiterate others, putative members of the community, took part.

220  Neha Chatterji We should not assume that these tract-writers and journal editors were comfortable counter-elites. In fact, the first initiative for a community mouthpiece and a community association had come around 1909–10 from the son of a peasant, Raicharan Sardar, from the rural district of Twenty-four Parganas, who had struggled against enormous odds to become the first university graduate within the community. He was working with a native Christian pastor, Gopal Chandra Datta, who came from an equally humble background, toward spreading education among this downtrodden community. In the course of this, Sardar and Datta had felt the need to found a caste-association and a caste-journal (Sardar 1959, ed. in 2012, 357). Raicharan Sardar, Mahendranath Karan, and their likes performed a pedagogical function with regard to the incipient caste-public. “To subscribe to the journal with an annual subscription of two rupees is the duty of all those who are able to spend that paltry amount,”7 wrote Karan, complaining that the yet-to-be-mature public did not recognize either its benefactors or its obligations. There was repeated emphasis on the need to awaken the masses to a new consciousness and also occasional self-congratulations that a public was slowly emerging into maturity. Even the blind man needed to carry a lantern to keep sighted people from falling on him. Similarly, argued the editor of Paundrakshatriya Samachar, an audible public voice was important for even a mainly-illiterate community to resist casual humiliating attacks by social superiors.8 The model of this “public” was derived from post-Enlightenment world history. The evocation of the modern West was explicit. Manindranath Mandal, whom we have mentioned before, highlighted that the servant classes of Europe and America were much better off than their counterparts in India because they were politically organized (Mandal 1923). Caste-subalterns knew by these times that the strength of numbers was invincible in a modern polity. They highlighted their numerical strength in very specific terms. They knew that for a particular standpoint to be formidable, individual voices must be aggregated and such organization or aggregation was the crux of modern representational politics (Chatterjee 2011). So as to consolidate this public, meetings were frequently held in the different districts with participation from all the other districts. Sometimes there were about thirty caste-conferences convened in thirty different venues, spread out across different districts populated by the community, in a single year. The participation in these meetings did not remain confined to the literate minority. In 1923–24, the number of participants in some meetings, reportedly, exceeded 1,000. One meeting in Amirpur in Khulna district had over 2,500 participants. In the southern districts of Medinipur and the Twenty-four Parganas, the meetings were as frequent, but the average participation was around 400. The procedures adopted in these meetings were unequivocally “modern,” with presidents being elected and resolutions being proposed, seconded, and ratified.9 These caste-subalterns

Subaltern caste concepts of the “political,” Bengal, 1900–1930  221 did not manifest any distinctive domain of politics, the beliefs, and actions of which were unfamiliar to liberal representative politics. The nature of their political knowledge manifests, to use Ranajit Guha’s words, the articulation of the mutuality of the two interacting domains of politics: the elite-metropolitan and the subaltern (Guha 2009b, 192). No more were subordinated peoples allowing themselves to be defined by others. In various ways, they were resisting being made into objects of anthropological knowledge. They were challenging most existing (elite) descriptions of their genealogies, occupations, customs, and practices. By the 1920s, we find literary elites of modern Bengal, such as Saratchandra Chattopadhyay and others, engaging in courteous letter-writing with Mahendranath Karan (Karan 1978, 34) seeking the latter’s pardon for having purportedly hurt the community’s sentiments through habitual, casual descriptions in literary creations. The latter had drawn the attention of these well-known city elites by directly challenging the content of some of their literary passages that naturalized, as it were, a lowly status for the community. The caste-public was thus articulating itself within the wider public sphere. Clearly, they had come a long way from the late nineteenth century, when Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, the redoubtable elite Bengali litterateur, in his anthropological description of a deprived peasant of the Twenty-four Parganas, made one Ramdhan Pod into the prototype and described him, albeit with sympathy, in the following words: “Son of an indigent Pod, he was naturally beyond the territory of knowledge” (Chatterjee 1892, ed. in 2003, 863). The Ramdhan Pods had not just started speaking, but were even compelling Calcutta elites to engage in a dialogue.

The politics of protest Indeed, the primary function of this rising public was not to resist the tyranny of the state but to resist the tyranny of hegemonic orders within the Indian public. The idea of a public sphere of civil social institutions guarding against the despotism of the state had come in the line of antiabsolutist thinking in the early-modern West. The emergence of a public signified that the governed subjects of a state knew themselves as the wellsprings of sovereign power (Chatterjee 2011). Caste-subalterns in India, as they sought to constitute themselves into a formidable public, shared the same concept. The basic concept that sovereign power rested among the people powered their public self-constitutions. But the colonial state was not their primary adversary. Their adversaries were the already constituted hegemonic Indian public dominated by upper castes. In fact, the colonial state theoretically guaranteed that caste-subalterns and minorities were imperial subjects with the same rights as the superior Indian castes and classes. If they knew to represent themselves, they would certainly be heard.10 The right to representation was a right to politics and this right powered the assertions of the subaltern publics. If tradition had enforced

222  Neha Chatterji discrimination in terms of capacities and entitlements, colonial rule was distinctly liberating, compared to older regimes, because the foreign rulers – enjoying a position of relative autonomy from native social classes – claimed to treat all subjects alike. Since the late nineteenth century, even among extremely poor and so-called “backward” sections, the concept had gained ground that among the subjects of the Queen, none were masters and slaves between themselves. In 1872–73, village heads of the “untouchable” Chandals of eastern Bengal had demanded from police officers, in certain districts like Faridpur, that there be an end to the practice of Chandal inmates of jails being automatically used as sweepers as it went against the government claim “to treat all castes on terms of equality” (Sarkar 2002, 47). Caste-subalterns, as they spoke and wrote in the early twentieth century, thus asserted the primacy of the present as an age that promised liberation from tutelary pasts. Their prose and poetry reverberated with invocations of “the new flute of the new age” which vindicated the ideals of samya, maitri, and svadhinata, the Bengali translation of “equality, fraternity and liberty.”11 A public life, as they saw it, was a life of thought and reflection. Politics was about assertion of adulthood and agency, about thoughtful self-definitions in place of ascribed labels. If the word “politics” was not much used by these early caste-subaltern leaders to describe the task that they saw incumbent on them, they spoke about the importance of public associational life, of social service, of standing up against subordination, and emphasized the need to examine social conventions through the prisms of reason and justice. “Who are we?,” “Where are we standing?” and “Where are we heading towards?” were questions that formed the majority of the titles of essays, letters, and poems composed by caste-subalterns. Writers from these communities, even when they received paltry institutional education, were familiar with social-Darwinist and Spencerian concepts such as “struggle for existence” and the “survival of the fittest.” And while speaking in these terms, they also reflected on why India was a subject nation and about their own place in the nation. The key to the nation’s freedom, they noted, lay in their liberation. In the competitive field of world politics, the dormant potential of the subordinated classes and castes could alone measure up to the challenge of overthrowing foreign rule. India lost her sovereignty, they argued, as she ignored the people, who are always the true repositories of a nation’s sovereignty. Writers from several of the subaltern castes of Bengal used the word ganayuga, meaning “the era of the masses,” to refer to the present times.12 The story of the Pods or Paundrakshatriyas of Bengal is particularly significant because they were subalterns among subalterns. The Namasudras (erstwhile “Chandals”) of East Bengal were the prominent caste-­subalterns, who articulated a resolute stance of alienation to mainstream nationalism during these times. Being more prominent, the Namasudras eclipsed the Pods/Paundrakshatriyas in many ways. Mahendranath Karan and his

Subaltern caste concepts of the “political,” Bengal, 1900–1930  223 colleagues were conscious of this. On the other hand, these men were deeply imbued with patriotic sentiments since 1904–5 (Karan 1978). Karan, Sardar, or Mandal articulated a political stance vis-à-vis the nation that was distinct from the Namasudra standpoint of their times: the former’s was a position between loyalty and resistance to the nation. It articulated a critique of the hierarchical nation but upheld a spirit of belonging to a possibly egalitarian nation. The colonial state was simultaneously an ally and a foe. Colonial labels were seen as impositions, which, however, could be productively played upon. One such label was that of “depressed classes,” a colonial governmental earmarking of certain castes. Thus, Manindranath Mandal transformed the label of “depressed classes” (anunnata), which they resented for being demeaning, into “humiliated classes” (abajnata). Using anunnata and abajnata somewhat interchangeably, and yet clearly preferring the latter expression, Manindranath Mandal succeeded in making this colonial classificatory category the fulcrum of a politics of protest. Hence, its potential was utilized in the imagining and propounding of an emergent “expedition of the humiliated peoples,” in which Mandal hoped to gather all castes labelled as “depressed classes” in a horizontal solidarity extending from Assam to Orissa. He named it the Bangiya Jana Sangha, Bengal People’s Association (Mandal 1923). The Sangha’s first meeting happened in 1922, with participation from many of the lowest castes within Bengal’s regional hierarchy. Only such a confederation, Mandal, Karan, Sardar, and others argued, could protect their rights. “Once the depressed communities announce their militant presence in unison across India, the nationalist bigwigs will not dare to brush aside their question or perform any tokenist farce” (Mandal 1923, 4). Rights would not derive from begging. A separate (and united) political voice as a minority was necessary. Between loyalty and resistance to the nation, these castesubalterns struck a political bargain – could the nation do without their consent? All those today raising the uproar of the “nation,” have you truly recognized the nation?… Those that you look down upon – why, they are the nation’s peasants, they are the nation’s artisans, in their hands lie her commerce, they protect the sanctity of the nation…they form the nation’s backbone…the nation will go to hell once they withdraw their service, the nation will cease to even exist. (Mandal 1923, 25) The solidarities that these caste-subalterns envisioned were not only between the Hindu “depressed classes” but also often with poor, rural Muslim neighbors, whose boys faced similar hostilities from upper-castes in the event of going to school. Many of the meetings of Paundrakshatriyas had Muslim participants. They came together especially in the district of Twenty-four Parganas to found schools jointly.13

224  Neha Chatterji

The twentieth century as signaling a new dawn Politics, they knew, was all about people. And, as Mahendranath Karan and others noted, the superior classes, in order to wrest political power from the colonial state, had to speak in terms of the people. “No wonder Gandhi and his men are crying out for us with open arms.”14 But these caste-subaltern ideologues were aware that the scramble for power among elite groups, say the British and the native elites, impacted their relations with subaltern groups in peculiar ways. Both groups would seek to co-opt the subaltern for their vested interests. The Paundrakshatriyas voiced resistance to being used as pawns in the competition for power between dominant groups. Manindranath Mandal thought that a separate political organization of the humiliated castes alone could prevent Congress politicians from playing “puppet dance” with caste-subaltern political candidates. Thus, the entry of some lower caste candidates into the legislature could not automatically bring their people’s emancipation. It could even dilute the radical strength of subordinate-caste protest. The subaltern political subject, from the time of her courtship with the modern “political,” thus harbored a kind of mixed feeling (attentiveness as well as suspicion) towards institutional politics and politicking. Caste-subalterns were aware of their political potential and political lack. They knew that they were political minors even though they were numerical majors – that is, the subaltern castes taken as a whole – and sought to play a commensurate role in the body politic of the nation. Mandal’s Bengal People’s Association essays pointed at this duality of strength and weakness. Individually, they would remain minors, the manifesto noted. The only hope lay in coming together. Identities had to be transcended in a class-like manner to constitute a “revolutionary” rather than “ethnic” subjectivity. As they did so, the “untouchable” subject spiritedly referred to the rise of the labor movement in Britain, the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, and black protest in America.15 They were much aware of these international events and, in particular, referred to Booker T. Washington, the Black American leader, who rose from slavery, as a “hero of action.”16 The years between the Swadeshi movement (1905) and the First World War saw a spate of lower-caste affirmations in Bengal and India (Sarkar 2002, 81). In fact, anti-colonial nationalist politics were going through a lull during these years. As Raicharan Sardar’s autobiography reveals, subaltern groups in India during this time vaguely sensed that, along with the rest of the world, India would gradually be moving towards representative government. Colonial rule had just begun to open up a small space for Indian political representation in legislative councils through the Morley Minto Reforms of 1909. Sardar recalled in his autobiography that it was at this point that he felt that a caste-association was indispensable to aggregate interests so as to wrest the community’s proper share in the spheres of representative politics, education, and job-opportunities.

Subaltern caste concepts of the “political,” Bengal, 1900–1930  225 World-developments also brought home a spirit of ardent internationalism to the caste-subaltern. The East is learning a good lesson from the West… Crores [tens of millions] of men and women in India, humiliated on account of birth, are stirring with self-respect. For centuries, they had bowed down to caste-superiors; today they raise their heads in refusal. (Mandal 1923, 4 & 5) The First World War further brought home a discourse of masculine prowess. It was the caste-subaltern, who went to war, not caste-elites. Karan did not go to war himself, but he romanticized the masculine courage of the warrior (Karan 1978, 3). Subaltern groups in India saw themselves – through the direct and indirect experience of the war – as the repositories of masculine strength in the otherwise “effeminate” nation. The colonial discourse of Indian effeminacy (Sinha 1995) was capitalized and turned to their own advantage by the Indian caste-subaltern.

Self-sacrifice as political self-assertion To conclude, let us note that the concept of politics had an amoral connotation, as something clutching power, till the late nineteenth century in Bengal and India. Suddenly, from the turn of the century, as Subhas Chandra Bose’s autobiography tells us, it became inconceivable to lead a moral life which was apolitical (Guha 2009a, 523). Politics became sacred. It was revolutionary, as it were. Revolutionaries have always been associated with self-sacrifice and selfless service. Indeed, this was the common strain in the sometimes-divergent political movements of the time: the national movement on the one hand and the subaltern politics of protest on the other. Both invoked the bourgeois political notion of aggregation of “interests” but, in their exhortations to the targeted constituencies, evoked the ideal of individual self-sacrifice. While caste-elites blamed subaltern caste assertions for being “interest-” driven, lacking in idealism and thus antithetical to the freedom movement, caste-subalterns envisioned their politics in a holistic manner. They justified their project of self-emancipation in terms of the collateral national-social benefits that such emancipation would accrue. What is most striking about lower caste resistance in colonial Bengal, especially with groups like the Paundrakshatriyas, is that the defiance of hierarchy and inequality had taken the form of an austere inward-directed spiritual resolve. Courage and forbearance were highlighted as political virtues par excellence. Manindranath Mandal (1923, 35) emphasized that volunteers of the proposed cross-caste confederation (Sangha) must not be moved by the desire for personal gain, factional rivalry, or self-importance.

226  Neha Chatterji “They must conquer themselves before they hope to conquer the minds of people.” The collective was the site of political action, but the onus was on the individual, self-cultivating, and self-sacrificing hero. The spiritualization of politics had the effect of relegating the steadily emerging world of electoral politics to the realm of the mundane. Even the entry into legislative council through reserved seats seemed, to Mandal or Sardar, as if motivated by narrow individual ambitions and thus potentially sapping at the subversive strength of radical caste-protest. Sardar (1959, ed. in 2012, 456) is cherished within the community for having said to the younger generation, “Diplomacy has broken your backbone.”17 Selfdenial, here, becomes the very means of sustaining the political stance of a non-compromising alterity. Selflessness becomes the ability to reject tokenistic incorporation within power hierarchies. At once clear and vague, the political agenda of these caste-subaltern revolutionaries remained strangely confounding. Leaders like Mandal and Sardar, who stirred a consciousness among the “dispossessed” (to use their own words) to rise up in unison as a separate political voice against the perpetrators of humiliation and exploitation, exchanged some 25 letters between themselves in the 1930s on the question of how not to remain in the schedule of castes earmarked by the colonial government for special protection (Sardar 1959, ed. in 2012, 374–425).18 Continuing well into the 1950s among a not-inconsiderable section of subaltern caste groups in India, this line of thought illustrates their trials of becoming; their evolving conceptualizations of the ideal political. A century has passed. For many decades now, the dilemma around special protection is gone. Ideologues from the community have unambiguously championed affirmative action by the state. But something of that early strain seems to continue. Early twenty-first century writers from the community (who are ardent advocates of the reservation policy of the ­government and who complain, in fact, of how reservation clauses are routinely flouted) lament that the youth of today, after availing of reservation, become keen only to sever ties with their community of birth. These w ­ riters locate “the real political moment” of challenge to Brahmanical ­perceptions of caste in the early twentieth-century movement (Mandal 2001, 19)!19 They cherish how the early leaders’ enormous capacity for self-­sacrifice nourished an independent spirit and sounded a powerfully autonomous voice of protest.

Notes 1 “Prastabana,” Paundrakshatriya Samarchar (henceforth, PS), February– March, 1924. 2 The three upper-castes in the regional caste hierarchy of Bengal (Brahmans, Baidyas, and Kayasthas) comprised since late medieval times the bhadra sreni or genteel classes. They were distinguished by their distance from manual labor. The term bhadralok refers largely to the same demographic group, but in the

Subaltern caste concepts of the “political,” Bengal, 1900–1930  227 nineteenth century gentility connoted entering the portals of Western education. To that extent it was an open/aspirational category. Here we use the term to refer to the urban upper-caste gentlefolk of Bengal. 3 The 1911 Census stated that the Pods were making great strides in literacy. Whereas similarly placed other communities like the Namasudras and Rajbangshis had only one in twenty who could read and write, for the Pods, the figure was one in seven (quoted in Karan 1928, ed. in 2001, 161). Yet, as Sumit Sarkar (2002, 50) reminds us, vernacular literacy (just as the figures suggest), not to speak of literacy in English, was still abysmally low. Further, such marginal presence of vernacular literacy was hardly a new phenomenon for mid-nineteenth-century government reports indicated the “presence of a fair number of non-high-caste boys and even teachers in village schools.” Sarkar argued that the really new developments were linked with the coming of print and the circulation of printed texts. 4 In his 1928 text, Paundrakshatriya Kulapradip, the author Mahendranath Karan described himself on the title-page as the “humble servant” (deen sevak) of the Paundrakshatriya people. 5 Manindranath Mandal, “Anunnata Samasya” (The Problem of the Depressed Classes), PS, September-October, 1927, 86. Mandal argued that the question of Swaraj, the question of reforms in government, and the Hindu-Muslim question were all tied to the question of the subordinated castes. 6 “Amra Kothay,” PS, February–March, 1924; “Jatir Sadhana,” PS, July-August, 1924. 7 “Prastabana,” PS, February–March, 1924. 8 Ibid. 9 This is a summary account from reports titled “Samajik Sabha Samiti” or “Samayik Prasanga” found in PS, 1924 (entire year). 10 Purna Chandra Ray (1917, ed. in 2014, 73), whom we have quoted before, wrote about the light that contact with Britain and her “rule of law” brought to caste-subalterns in India. It was a light that stimulated them to aspire high, to discover their strengths and forsake despondence and inferiority. 11 This line specifically I quote from the journal of a caste called Teli, somewhat contiguous to the Pods. The Telis were oil-pressers by traditional occupation and were ascribed a low ritual status. Teli Bandhab, year 8, vol. 1, published by Nabakrishna Saha, on behalf of Nikhil Bangiya Baishya Teli Sammilani, May–August, 1931: 11. 12 Sri Sahaji, “Purano Chithi,” Bangiya Tili Samaj Patrika, November–DecemberJanuary, 1925. The Tilis were caste-subalterns, but they were much higher in status than the other caste groups mentioned in this paper. But the word ganayuga was very common during these times. 13 Reports titled “Samajik Sabha Samiti” or “Samayik Prasanga” found in PS, 1924, the whole year, testify to this. These were reports of gatherings/congregations of the community. It is only the 1924 copy of PS that has survived as a whole. We hope the 1924 volume mirrors a relatively more general trend. 14 “Samayik Mantabya,” PS, 1924. 15 “Jatiya Sangeet,” Adhikar, May–June, 1927. Adhikar (literally, “rights”) was a journal launched by near-untouchable caste groups in a sort of united protest against caste exclusions and discriminations. 16 “Ma-er Dak,” PS, November–December, 1927. 17 These words of Sardar (found in his autobiography, Deener Atmakahini) are highlighted as “memorable message” in most issues of Samaj Darshan, the community’s journal of contemporary times, and in a host of other tracts and booklets authored by members of the community today. 18 Government of Bengal, Appointment, 1 R-2 of 1933, B, July 1935, Progs. Nos. 188–264, Abstract.

228  Neha Chatterji 19 Not just in Prabhas Chandra Mandal’s works, but we see this refrain in many current writings: for instance, Debangshu Purkait in the current Paundra journal, Samaj Darshan, in a 2012 issue (August), “Pundrajati O Tar Samajik Abanaman,” see p. 9.

Bibliography Anderson, Benedict. 1998. The Spectre of Comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia and the World. London: Verso. Census of Bengal, 1901. Report by E. A. Gait. Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1903. Census of India, 1931. Vol. 6. Report by A. E. Porter. Calcutta: Central Publication Branch, 1933. Chatterjee, Bankimchandra. (1892) 2003. Bibidha Prabandha. In Bankim Rachanabali, Sahitya Samagra, Calcutta: Basak Book Store. Chatterjee, Partha. 2011. Lineages of Political Society: Studies in Postcolonial Democracy. New Delhi: Permanent Black. Cohn, Bernard S. 1987. “The Census, Social Structure and Objectification in South Asia.” In An Anthropologist Among the Historians and Other Essays, 225–54. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Guha, Ranajit. 2009a. “Nationalism and the Trials of Becoming.” In The Small Voice of History: Collected Essays, edited by Partha Chatterjee. New Delhi: Permanent Black. Guha, Ranajit. 2009b. “On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India.” In The Small Voice of History: Collected Essays, edited by Partha Chatterjee. New Delhi: Permanent Black. Hunter, W. W. 1876. A Statistical Account of Bengal. Vol. 3. London: Trubner and Company. Karan, Kohinoorkanti. (1978). Mahendra Charit, Medinipur: Kshemananda Kutir. Karan, Mahendranath. (1928) 2001. Paundrakshatriya Kulapradip. Medinipur. Reprinted by Dhirendranath Mandal. South Twenty Four Parganas. Mandal, Manindranath. 1923. Bangiya Jana Sangha. Medinipur, Khejuri: Sri Satadalkanti Mandal. Mandal, Manindranath. 1927. Bange Digindranarayan. Medinipur and Calcutta: Sri Sannyasicharan Pramanik. Mandal, Prabhas Chandra. 2001. Paundrakshatriya Samaje Krama Prabodhan. Baruipur. Ray, Purnachandra. (1917) 2014. Arya Paundrakshatriya Samaj. Calcutta: Sathi Press. Reprinted in Sanat Kumar Naskar et al., eds., Paundra Manisha. Vol. 3. Sonarpur: Paundra Mahasangha. Risley, H. H. (1891) 1981. Tribes and Castes of Bengal. 2 vols. Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press. Risley, H. H. (1908) 1915. The People of India. Calcutta and Shimla: Thacker, Spink and Company. Sardar, Raicharan. (1959) 2012. Deener Atmakahini Ba Satya Pariksha. Reprinted in Sanat Kumar Naskar, ed., Paundra Manisha. Vol. 1. Sonarpur: Paundra Mahasangha, 237–584.

Subaltern caste concepts of the “political,” Bengal, 1900–1930  229 Sarkar, Sumit. 2002. Beyond Nationalist Frames: Relocating Post-modernism, Hindutva, History. New Delhi: Permanent Black. Sinha, Mrinalini. 1995. Colonial Masculinity: The ‘Manly Englishman’ and the ‘Effeminate Bengali’ in the Late Nineteenth Century. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Index

Page numbers in Italics indicate figures and page numbers followed by n indicate notes. Alexander I, Tsar 91, 93 Alexander II, Tsar 69, 73, 91–2, 95 Algiers, in Algeria 190–91, 195, 197–98, 206, 212n4 Aïd, Aïd el-Kebir and Aïd el-Fitr gatherings 209 Amin, president of a djemâa, in Kabylia, Algeria 203 Antirevolutionary Party (ARP), of the Netherlands 144 Arab bureaus, French offices for indigenous affairs, in Algeria 194–211 Arbëreshë, Italo-Albanian community in the southern peripheries of the Two Sicilies 181–82 Bangiya Jana Sangha see Sangha Bengal People’s Association see Sangha Berber population of Algeria 194–96, 198–209, 211, 212n4 Bhadralok, Bengali caste-elites 217, 226n2 Biskra, in Algeria 190–91, 199, 203–4, 207, 212n4 Boerenpartij see Farmers’ Party Bolshevik Revolution, in Russia 224 Bône, in Algeria 190–91, 197, 202 Bou-Baghla, Mohamed Ben Abdallah 199, 212n13 Bou-Maza, Mohamed Ben Abdallah 198, 212n13 Bou-Zian and uprising, of 1849 in Algeria 192–93, 197, 207, 212n1 Bourbons of Naples 177, 183 Brahim bel Basha 207 Bureaux arabes see Arab bureaus

Cadhi, qadi, Muslim judge 202 Caïd, Muslim official 203–4 Calabrese Rigenerato, Calabrian newspaper 178–79 Calabria, in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies 172–83 Calcutta, in West Bengal 217, 221 Carrey, Emile 205 Catholic People’s Party (KVP), of the Netherlands 144, 147, 151, 163 Chandals, Bengali caste of untouchables 222 Christian-Historical Union (CHU), of the Netherlands 144 Caste: caste-elites 217, 225; caste-subalterns 218–26, 227n10, 227n12 Chérifs, descendants of the prophet, in Algeria 198–99, 211, 212n13 Citizenship 1–2, 4, 13–4, 18–20, 25; and gender 50; insurgent 24; political 72–3; republican 17; see also voters Clientelism 23–5, 112, 114–15, 119, 161 Colonial administration in Algeria see Arab bureaus Commemorations 48–9, 53, 57–8, 62, 62n1, 176, 184–85 Constantine, in Algeria 190–91, 195, 197, 202, 212n4 Constitution: Dutch 148; of Finland 93, 97; Gustavian 93; Piedmontese 185 Cosenza-revolt, of 1844, and its aftermath in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies 178–82

Index  231 Counter-revolutionaries 18, 31, 179, 184 Crimean War 182 Dellys, in Algeria 190–91, 198, 202, 212n4 Democracy: authoritarian 45; parliamentary 144, 157, 163; participatory or direct 69, 77, 80, 85; scene of 71; understandings of 20, 126, 147 Djemâas, local councils-assemblies, in Kabylia, Algeria 200–1, 203–5 Djebel Amour, central Atlas range in Algeria 208 Djerid, in the Beylik of Tunis 197 Djurdjura mountains, in Algeria 201–2, 204, 206, 212n4 Dra-el-Mizan, in Algeria 190–91, 196, 201, 203–6, 212n4 Eid celebrations see Aïd Elections: campaigns 151–52, 154–55; of djemâas 200–1; election meetings 92, 102, 108, 149–50; general, national 73, 80, 86, 93–4, 105, 151–52, 157, 159, 163; local, municipal 54, 79–81, 84, 87n8; provincial 155–56; significance of, in Latin America 26 Elites: associational 48; caste-elites 217, 225; counter-elites 220; economic 72; political 4, 94, 119, 130, 144, 149, 157, 175; religious notables in Algeria 196–98, 203, 209; see also marabouts; chérifs Emotions 3–4, 6, 70, 86, 123–24, 139, 141, 161–62, 171, 175–76, 179, 186, 209–10; history of 6; emotional arenas and spaces 70 Farmers’ Party, of the Netherlands 163 Fascism 45–9, 51, 54, 59, 62 Fennomans 94, 96–7, 99, 101, 105, 107 Ferdinand II, King 171, 182, 184 Ferdinand IV, King 171 First World War 114, 118, 120–21, 132, 136–37, 139, 141, 224–25; casualties of 47, 58–9; commemoration of 62; and male suffrage 113; social ruptures caused by 122; women and 50, 52, 60 Flatters, Paul 197 Forsman, G. Z. 92, 96, 109n1 Franco, Francisco and Francoist Spain 30–42

French Unified Socialist Party (SFIO) 126, 132, 134–35 Funerals, funeral practices 178–79 General Strike, of 1905 in Finland 80–1 Gerace-revolt, of 1847 and its aftermath in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies 175–76 Ganayuga 222, 227n12 Gramsci, Antonio 1–2, 71, 130 Guha, Ranajit 221, 225 History of emotions see emotions History of experience 4–6; citizens’/ subalterns’ experience of politics 157, 164, 171–86, 200; rulers’ experience(s) 163, 195, 202, 210–11, 225; politics as experience 193 History of rumors see rumors and history History of the senses 4, 6, 193–96 Hitler, Adolf 32, 42 Hänninen, Johan 76 Hanoteau, Adolphe (Colonel) 199, 206–9 Hugonnet, Ferdinand (Captain) 197–98, 202–4, 206, 210 Imagined communities 85, 219 Italo-Austrian wars, of 1848 185 Jatiya unnati 218 Kabyles see Berber population of Algeria Karan, Mahendranath 217, 219–25, 227n3–4 Khouan, brother in a Sufi brotherhood 196–97; see also tariqa Kingdom of the Two Sicilies 171–186 Kolkata see Calcutta Koskinen, Yrjö see Forsman, G. Z. Labor movement 85, 224 Labour Party: of Britain 155; of the Netherlands 144, 146–47, 150–55, 157, 159–63 Laghouat, in Algeria 190–91, 208 Local self-government 69–71, 73–4, 78, 84, 86; zemstvo, in Russia 73 M’hammed ben l’Amar 207 Mäkipeska, August 95

232 Index Mandal, Manindranath 218–20, 223–26, 227n5, 228n19 marabouts, maraboutism 197–98, 201, 208, 211 Martyrdom 52, 171–86, 186n1 Mauro, Domenico 177 Meddahs, poets-singers-performers, in Algeria 206–9, 211 Mezzogiorno 172–73, 178, 184–85 Moh’ammed-ben-el-Mokhtar 208–9 Mokrani-revolt, of 1871 in Algeria 201 Murat, Joachim 177 Mussolini, Benito 45–6, 48, 52, 54, 62; letters and requests to 42, 57, 59, 61, 126; and women 53–4, 59–61 Myths and power, mythology and master narratives 3, 41, 45, 47, 52, 58, 62, 196, 198, 210 Namasudras, Bengali caste of untouchables 222–23, 227n3 Napoleonic Wars, of 1803–15 91, 176 Nationalism 15, 21, 222; history of everyday 4 Newspapers 77, 83, 95–7, 101, 105, 109n11, 120, 217, 219; and political education 153; readers of 133, 135; readers’ letters to 71, 74–6, 79, 81, 84–6; as sources of knowledge 131, 133, 139 Oran, in Algeria 190–91, 195, 200, 204, 212n4 Ouargla, in Algeria 190–91, 198 Parliament: Chambre des Députés of France 115–41; Diet of Finland 73, 91–108; House of Commons in Britain 6; in the Netherlands 144–45, 147, 154, 163; Riksdag of Sweden 94, 100, 109n1; unicameral parliament of Finland 93, 99 Paundrakshatriya Samachar, Bengali newspaper 219–20 Partij van de Arbeid (PvdA) see Labour Party of the Netherlands Paundrakshatriyas see Pods Peasants: education of 95–6; grievances and petitions of 77, 91, 101, 106–8; Peasant Estate, in Finland 91, 93–105, 108; and politics 20–1, 92, 96, 100; as subalterns 93–4 Perón, Eva (Evita) 15, 22, 24–5

Perón, Juan Domingo: Peronist Argentina 13–5, 17, 19–22, 24–6 Penttilä, Miina 84 Petitions: to colonial officials 15–6; to a dictator 13–5, 18–22, 24–6, 31–8, 57, 61; to individual politicians or patrons 114–25, 139; to a national assembly 6, 98–108; as a political practice 3, 6–8, 14, 77, 92, 113 Piedmont-Sardinia 183–85 Pods, Bengali caste 217, 221–22, 227n3, 227n11 Poets, poetry: in Calabria 181; in Colonial Algeria 206–9, 211; in Colonial Bengal 222; see also meddahs; in Finnish political oratory 96, 98 Political pedagogy 146, 152, 154, 156, 163, 171, 173, 179, 220 Political representation 1, 8, 130, 144–45, 147–49, 153–55, 157, 162–64, 221, 224; citizens’ perceptions of 154; in the Diet of Finland 91–4, 96–101, 107–8; local-level 77–8, 80, 107–8; system of proportional 136, 145, 147 Propaganda 18, 25, 32–3, 39–40, 45–7, 53, 55, 58, 60, 62n1, 63n5, 150, 155, 179, 183, 201 Public sphere 19, 47, 50, 55, 107, 147, 218, 221 Rahmaniyya, Sufi brotherhood in North Africa 197 Representation see political representation Revolutionaries 112, 218, 226; committees of 30; as martyrs 172–73, 175, 177, 182; and self-sacrifice 225 Risorgimento 50, 185 Rumors and history 1, 3, 7, 176, 192–93, 195–201, 206–7, 211, 213n18 Russian Empire 69, 73, 91, 93 Saïda, in Algeria 190–91, 200, 212n4 Salvador-Daniel, Francisco 206, 209 Sangha 223, 225 Samaj-sevaks 218 Sámi people 72 Sardar, Raicharan 220, 223–24, 226, 227n17 Scene of experience 70, 85 Scott, James C. 2, 32, 197 Second Empire, of France 192–211

Index  233 Second Republic, of France 112, 192, 194–95, 197–98, 200, 207 Second World War 31, 61, 113, 146; anti-Fascism and 45 Séroka, J. A. (Captain) 193, 198, 208 Si El Djoudi 201, 204 Sid Ah’med 204 Snellman, J. V. 96 Social-Democratic Workers’ Party (SDAP), of the Netherlands 144 Social Democrats, in West Germany 155 Socialists: in Finland 81, 84, 86; in France 120, 122–25, 139 Sovereignty, sovereign power 92, 101, 177, 221–22 Spanish Civil War 30–1, 35, 40, 42, 112; Italian involvement in 61; legacy of 33 Spirituality, in relation to politics 196–98, 205, 209, 211 Stalin, Joseph 32, 42 Suffrage: reform of 1906, in Finland 80; women’s suffrage 50, 53, 84 Suzerainty 197 Swedish People’s Party, of Finland 82 Tariqa, turuq Sufi brotherhood(s) 196–97, 201, 209, 211 Third Republic, of France 112–41

Thompson, E. P. 5, 178 Tiaret, in Algeria 190–91 Tizi Ouzou, in Algeria 190–91 Trumelet, Corneille (Captain) 195, 204–5, 208–10 Twenty-four Parganas, district of coastal Bengal 217, 220–21, 223 Untouchable(s) and near-untouchables, in the Bengali caste-system 217, 222, 224, 227n15 Vannucci, Atto 174, 183–85 Vondeling, Anne 147, 154–164 Victor Emmanuel II, King 185 Voters 2, 83, 115, 117, 132–33, 145–162 Washington, Booker T. 224 Wiardi Beckman Stichting (WBS) 150 Writing upwards 6, 14; see also petitions Zaatcha war, of 1849 in Algeria see Bou-Zian revolt Zibans, oasis in Algeria 207–8, 212n4, 212n6