Moral Economy behind the
Dikes
Class Relations along the
Frisian and German North Sea Coast during the Early Modern Age*
Otto S. Knottnerus
From: Regional Implantation of the Labour Movement in Britain and the
Netherlands. Paper presented at the Seventh British-Dutch Conference on Labour History,
Groningen 1990 (= Tijdschrift voor Sociale Geschiedenis 18, Nr. 2, July 1992),
pp. 333-352.
Coastal Society: an Introduction
Rural conservatism has been a
problem to social historians for many years. Ever since Charles Tilly wrote his
Vendée most historians are aware that
unruly peasants normally lack the revolutionary spirit they would have liked
them to possess. Rural conservatism ‑ or rather traditionalism ‑
has been held to be responsible for several interruptions in the process of
modernization. Its advocates could
be blamed for delaying the establishment of the labour movement in many
regions. Adherence to popular traditions may even have tended to serve the
cause of conservatism.
|
Ferdinand Tönnies (1855-1936) |
Historians and sociologists have
normally taken these rural traditions for granted.[1] Following the trail set
out by Ferdinand Tönnies they saw modern history as the breaking-up of traditional
society under the pressure of intrusive market forces and outright state
intervention. Likewise, labour historians depicted the implantation of the
working-class movement as a breaking away from traditional patterns of
authority and deference. Class-struggle made an end to many centuries of
ignorance and enforced stability.
Here, a different view will be
presented. Traditions and traditionalist ideologies should not be considered as
the preface, but rather as the product of modern society. They represented
purposeful and appropriate reactions to the increasing social mobility, taking
place in a world where chances were still believed to be limited. The heyday of
tradition, namely the 17th and 18th century, coincided
with the birth pains of the modern world economy. Inherent in the delivery were
profound social tensions which often led to violent outbursts. Tradition did
not prevent these outbursts. They rather made them part of a public debate in
which ancient privileges, common laws and eternal standards set the tone.
Indeed, modernization had to make great strides, before people learned that
enduring change was not only possible but also something to be pursued.
This point may need some
clarification. Early modern man could not conceive of change as an ongoing
process of growth and improvement. Rather, he saw one man’s gain as another
man’s loss. The stakes being limited, the losers could only explain their fate
by claiming that the other players got around the rules. Even in the few cases
where there were no loosers (e.g. Holland and Britain), growth was to be
sufficiently exceptional as to allow Providence to be the best explanation for
increasing prosperity. ‘Change’, as Edward Thompson characterized 18th-century
British society, ‘has not yet reached that point at which it is assumed that
the horizons of each successive generation will be different’.[2]
In fact, the idea of progress did
not gain a foothold anywhere before the turn of the 18th century.
Only by then had large-scale industrialization and urbanization started to
create societies in North-Western Europe which were ‘to live by and rely on
sustained and perpetual growth, on an expected and continuous improvement’.[3] Moreover, as the idea
spread from the highest circles downward, it met with considerable resistance.
Potential victims clung to their memory of the past as they tried to combat the
unfortunate consequences of modernization. A whole range of traditions, real or
assumed, was brought into action against what seemed to be the outcome of
forced plans and false projections.
In this respect, some traditions
were more tenacious than others. Their varying capacities to absorbe social
change may have been decisive in keeping a more dynamic world-view at bay. Of
course, in the long run progress could not be halted, nor could its fruits be
denied. By delaying the
advance of liberalism, however, some forms of traditionalism prepared the
ground for conservative world-views which were better able to cope with change.[4] As we will see, the labour
movement’s failure to gain a foothold in certain regions may well be the result
of such early attempts to resist change.
|
Typical Eiderstedt farm or ‘Haubarg’, built after |
We will examine, then, one of the
rural strongholds of early modern capitalism: the North Sea coastal marshes. As
it happens, this region was the model which Tönnies had in mind when he
described a harmonious
rural community (Gemeinschaft), ruled
by tradition. Here actual modernization and presumed traditionalism got wrapped
up in unique way. We will start with some general remarks about early modern
traditionalism. Then, the social, economical and political conditions in the
coastal marshes will be outlined in more detail. This will enable us to
reinterprete many reports about local traditions and social tensions during the
17th, 18th and 19th centuries. It is our claim
that early modernization created a traditionalist ethos, which aimed at
counteracting the unwanted consequences of modernity. The labour movement, in
contrast, tried to break away from traditionalism. It could only do so,
however, when liberalism had loosened the bonds of tradition already. Whereever
liberalism was defeated at an early stage, socialism too, had little chance of
success.
Students often misunderstood these
traditional notions as they copied Tönnies’ opposition of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft. Of course, the implied
dichotomy between the traditional countryside and the modern urban society has
had its uses. It has been fundamental in many studies concerning rural
modernization.[5] But in their own right,
tradition and modernity can be rather vague and ever misleading concepts.
The Content of Tradition
Early modern society was marked by
the ubiquity of traditions. All over Europe local communities had developed
their own customs and world-views, governing the equitable distribution of
scarce resources among their members, while at the same time excluding others.[6] It might even be argued
that the more commercialized the region was, the more elaborate the pattern of
apparently egalitarian rules, redistributive practices and symbolical
boundaries which one should expect. Rich and poor needed one another. The rich
required helping hands in times of labour scarcity, they wanted fighting fists
to ensure that foreign workers did not hang around after the harvest, and,
moreover, they constantly looking out for popular support in factional
struggles. The poor, on the other hand, expected from their rich fellow
citizens not only charitable gifts in cases of disablement and times of famine,
but a just share in all heavenly blessings. Communication between rich and poor
was highly ritualized, guided by elaborate rules of conduct which were thought
to be very ancient, and indispensable. Thompson has called such traditions ‘the
moral economy of the poor’, pointing out that they might account for the fact
that in 18th-century England the poor were ‘not altogether the
losers’.[7] Reference to invariable
norms and values, publicly shared by all community-members, helped the nascent
working class to mitigate the destructive influence which market forces began
to exert on community life.
In a perceptive criticism of
Thompson, Craig Calhoun has argued that it was the strength of these communal
traditions, rather than class struggle, which largely accounted for what he has
called the ‘reactionary radicalism’ of the early labour movement.[8] There is some thruth in
that, but the fact remains that throughout the centuries agricultural
communities as a rule have absorbed many changes without giving way to less
traditional ways of thinking. Many findings rather suggest that communal
world-views even grew in strength. Their foundations had been laid in the
formation of parishes and commons, by christianisation, by land-reclamation and
dike-building, and not by those ancient Germanic tribal bonds which earlier
generations of historians had so eagerly presupposed. They found their main
extention in an era when the modern state forbade arbitrary use of violence,
and created a common political framework which treated local privileges as part
of a larger juridical and moral order. Their most striking outgrowths occured
at moments when literacy was already universal, and geographical mobility was
becoming more common. Traditions formed the static front of a rapidly changing
social fabric. ‘This, then, is a conservative culture in its forms’, but,
Thompson insisted, ‘the content of
this culture cannot so easily be described as conservative’.[9]
Coastal Society: an Introduction
|
|
Any student taking a deeper look at
the history of the polderlands along the southern shores of the North Sea will
be struck by the contrasting evidence of tradition and progress. This narrow
belt of fertile marshland, stretching down from the Jutland heaths to the urban
zones at the mouth of the Rhine and Meuse Rivers, extending upstream to the
cities of Hamburg and Bremen, and enclosing the poverty-striken moors and bogs
of the Westfalian and Lower Saxon hinterlands, has been the focus of much
commercial activity for centuries.[10] Here extensive
agricultural exports started as early as the 13th century, and
reached a climax during the Thirty Years War.[11] Danish oxen were
fattened for the Hamburg, Cologne and Amsterdam markets, grains were shipped to
Amsterdam, France and Spain, dairy-products sent up the Elbe, Weser and Ems
Rivers.[12] The large Frisian,
Hanoverian and Holstein horses had a military reputation all over Europe.
Though family-farms were the pattern, the local economy could not dispense with
wage-labour. Unstable weather and critical soil conditions frequently
restricted work to brief periods of the year, thereby causing seasonal labour
shortages which were more serious than elsewhere. Each summer thousands of
small peasants from inland areas marched to the coast where they served in the
corn and hayharvest, earning the money which they took home in order to pay
their rents and feudal dues.[13] More important yet were
the numerous indigenous crofters and villagers. Their help was indispensable,
for they mastered the special techniques of ditching, reaping and diking which
the heavy clay-soils required.[14] But their numbers tended
to shrink, as indigenous population growth came to a standstill during the
general crisis of the 17th century, after the population had reached
the relatively high level of 75 to 125 heads per square mile. The endemic
malaria fevers which probably killed every fourth or fifth resident, delayed
marriages on account of the economic depression, and increasingly restrictive
sexual practices, all contributed to this fall in population.[15] Demands for wage labour,
moreover, tended to swell, as most of the small family-farms gave way to larger
ones because of falling agricultural prices and growing indebtedness due to
wars, floods and cattle plagues.[16]
By the middle of the 18th
century agricultural capitalism was beginning to make a decisive break-through.
By then large-scale arable farms, ranging from 50 to 150 acres, had started to
dominate the coastal scene. Each was employing 3 to 6 working-class families.[17] More hands were required
to manage increasing outputs. Shortage of labour permitted the workers to
negotiate higher wages, better meals and more costly perquisites. Several
generations passed before the resumed population growth had been able to catch
up with growing employment opportunities.[18]
The Napoleontic era brought another
major shift in class relations. Rising grain prices forced the workers to
change their diets from porridge and purchased bread to home-grown potatoes.
This, in turn, eroded many bonds of patronage which linked the workers to the
farmers’ home-economy: increasing dependence on their own crops turned the
scale away from wages and perquisites. Moreover, as grain-exports enriched the
farmers, most workers were not able to keep up with their master’s rising
economic, cultural and educational standards, which drew them away from the
traditional popular culture. ‘The small community had been broken up’, the
Dutch sociologist E.W. Hofstee concluded in a famous study on one of the
coastal regions: ‘At the end of the 18th century farmers and
farm-workers were united. By the end of the 19th century we find two
classes standing entirely apart, differing in manners of living and ways of
thinking, in religious views and moralities, in leasure and enjoyment, in
short, in everything in which two classes can be different’.[19]
For many centuries community-life had
been characterized by the ubiquity of traditions, centering around customary
forms of self-government, and branching out to almost every detail of social
life. The coastal fringe had a long history of political privileges. Regional
identity was ‘closely bound with the idea of liberty’, referring back to some
ancient Frisian or yeomanry freedom which distinguished the coastal
home-counties from the supposedly feudalized hinterlands.[20] During the Middle Ages
about fifty or so more or less independent peasant republics under the rule of
numerous local abbots, chiefs and podesta’s formed a rural counterpart of the
free Hanseatic cities.[21] Many of them were
Frisian. Colonists from Holland settled down in the peat-bogs along the Elbe
and Weser Rivers. The rich fields were veined with waterways that gave free
access to maritime commerce. The autonomous draining organisations provided the
impetus for the development of strong military defence systems. Moreover, the waterlogged
terrain prevented surprises during the rainy season, and made foreign military operations very
difficult at any time. Not until the 15th and 16th
century, and then only at great costs, were the territorial princes able to
incorporate these affluent lands within their own meagre domains. They offered
the ruling landowning and yeomen families extensive privileges in return for
lump sum tax-payments. Up to the 19th century many forms of
estate-like representation, and a massive local autonomy in common law and
civil jurisdiction made the coastal provinces look like an oasis of civil
liberties in a world of authoritarian rule.[22] The inhabitants were, together with the English ‘the most free of any
people in Europe’, the British radical Thomas Hodgskin wrote in 1820 from the
shores of the Elbe: ‘The proprietors ... resemble very much in their hearty
manners English farmers. In Hadeln, however, they are the principal people,
while an English farmer is often of little importance. ... I have seen no place
on the Continent ... that equals the Land Hadeln in the apparent happiness and
prosperity of its people’.[23]
The Dutch provinces of Groningen and
Friesland were somewhat of an exception to this scheme. Here the oligarchy of
newly created landowning aristocracy and urban patricians who seized power
during the 16th-century rebellion, had effectively succeeded in
reducing the peasantry to tenants, and thereby monopolized provincial
government. Also the Count of Oldenburg, as well as some local noblemen down
the Elbe, began restricting the liberties of the peasants. In all cases the
sequestration of extensive ecclesiastical properties during the reformation had
turned the scale against the peasants. But here, too, more localized communal
traditions remained widely in force. The wealthiest of the Groningen farmers
began to make a gradual re-entry in public offices and regional parliaments
from the middle of the 18th century, as leases were declared fixed
and hereditary. Other farmers followed suit. They claimed to enjoy ‘more
liberty than anywhere in the world’, because the landlords could not seize
their riches anymore.[24] The Frisian and
Oldenburg farmers made their re-appearance in public life during the 19th
century.
Coastal privileges, of course, only
applied to the property-owning members of the community. But many notions of
coastal liberty undoubtedly trickled down to other strata. At the bottom of the
social hierarchy these freedoms were probably defended even more rigorously
than at the top. In an East-Frisian joke the boy, whose father is about to
deliver a well-meant blow, cries out: ‘No, father, no, our country is a land of
justice, not force!’[25] Foreign travellers,
indeed, were astonished by the self-assurance of the East-Frisian servants and
farm-workers, and their insistence on inherited rights and privileges. As early
as 1736 the government reckoned with a boycott of farmers who complied to a
newly declared ban on the workers’ habit of smoking in the barns.[26]. A fellow-countryman in
1820 denounced the stubborn resistance against any kind of reform as ‘hardly
believable, and only to be explained by the fact that these people consider any
innovation an interference with their ancient rights and liberties’.[27] In the other districts
the situation was not too dissimilar.
The coastal population felt greatly
superior to the upland dwellers. They were afflicted with a sort of
self-conceit, often resulting in xenophobic reactions against outsiders. In
another joke the boy who wants to see the world is scolded by his father:
‘Shame on you! Here you are in the marshes, the rest of the world is but
heath!’ The migrant workers from the interior were despised throughout. They
were called names, denounced as stinking, stupid and dumb, or even beaten up.
Upland well-to-do freeholders were mocked by the local farm-workers as well as
the farmers, who looked down on them ‘as the Southern hill-billy or redneck is
looked upon by the planters’.[28] Even poor people from
the North-Frisian marshes preferred to beg rather than participate in home
industries as their poor neighbours of the heathlands did. They often refrained
from saving, because they could rely on traditional alms givings and liberal
poor relief to get them through the winter.[29]
Communal traditions and local
patriotism, then, penetrated all the aspects of village life. ‘Folkways, mores
and customary law ... rule the village community and the surrounding district.
They represent the valid common will to which the people there, masters and
servants alike, conform in their daily rounds and common tasks, because, in
their belief, they are bound to do so. For their fathers did so before them,
and everybody does so. And it seems to them the right thing, because it has
always been that way’.[30] So Ferdinand Tönnies
wrote in the 1880s, implicitly referring to his youth in the coastal district
of Eiderstedt.
Obviously, for Tönnies communal
traditions and agricultural capitalism were quite compatible. A recent
biographer bluntly stated that ‘the self-contained autarchic household which Tönnies
posits as the core of Gemeinschaft
still prevailed’.[31] This is to mistake
ideology for fact. Even for Tönnies the reality of community-life was not at
all idyllic.
Contested Communities
|
Farm-workers on strike, Oldambt, Groningen 1929 (from J. Hilgenga, 40 jaren
Nederlandse Landarbeidersbond, 1940) |
Social historians and rural
sociologists have often confused communal ideologies with the communities to
which they referred. Agricultural ‘communities’ were not always as harmonious
and egalitarian as many of Tönnies’ American disciples would have had us
believe.[32] But neither does this
imply that communal strivings and egalitarian views were entirely lacking.
Pronounced social distinctions between farmers and cottars could be perfectly
compatible with an outspoken egalitarian ethos, as the history of coastal
marshes shows. The acknowledged German folklorist Karl S. Kramer, who recently
published about this
region, has seriously underestimated this aspect when he criticized older
views.[33]
Class conflict in the early modern
age had its own logic. Neither communal ideologies, nor social discord, could
be taken at their face value. Both mainly served as a vehicle by which any
group in society could try to find support for its own claims without switching
to open confrontation. Local authorities in the coastal districts frequently
gave in to public demands. Breaking-up the consensus was considered dangerous,
as it opened the way to state interference. Consequently, the threat of
violence proved to be more effective than violence itself.[34] those accused of
offending against communal rules had to climb down if they did not want to
bring the military onto the scene.
This complicated situation provided
the members of the nascent working class with specific opportunities.
Increasingly, the local economy became integrated in international markets and
state policies. The farmers grew richer, but the autonomy on which their wealth
was based also became more fragile. This made them more responsive to popular
claims. At the same time, these claims were stated more vigorously as popular
sentiments became bound up with supraregional ideologies of church, state and -
as far as Germany is concerned - the Empire. Indeed, the defence of local
rights and privileges may have become more influential as the issue lost its
strictly parochial character.
Our sources suggest that coastal
communities were full of unresolved social tensions. Local community leaders,
looking for popular support, could not easily overrule the interests of their
propertyless clientele. Measures against servants and farm-workers, who would
not accept work during the harvest because they considered the wages offered
too low, can be traced back to the beginning of the 17th century.
Apparently, they were not very successful for after the middle of the century,
as inflation ended and daily wages were fixed at a customary level, complaints
about servant pay claims lingered on. This sometimes even lead to the official
settlement of maximum wages and a ban on outward travelling in summer.[35] Material on these
small-scale struggles is scarce because governmental officials as a rule
restricted themselves to the surveillance of public order, but it is clair that
casual labour, e.g. harvesting, ditching and threshing, involved a lot of
bargaining and free competition.
It is obvious, however, that the
workers’ chances of success also depended on the availability of alternative
employment outside the influence of local community leaders. Seasonal migration
to the pastoral areas in the western marshes, employment with the large
peat-digging companies in Groningen, Friesland and Holland, taking service in
the cities, signing on Dutch whaling-boats or coasters, or ‑ not
uncommon during the first years of the 17th century ‑
signing up for in military campaigns could help here. More important still, was
the work on large-scale dike repairs and embankments, organized by
commercially-minded entrepreneurs who offered hundreds of rural workers
temporary jobs. Here as well as in the peat-bogs, strikes were very common.[36] This enabled the workers
to develop an elaborate repertoire of rituals, adopted from military customs
and local diking traditions, by which they could pull together whenever they
felt their earnings were insufficient to support a decent standard of living.
Their experiences as navvies, in turn, had repercussions on labour traditions
at home. The introduction of rape-seed, for instance, induced new harvesting
festivities, which integrated the navvies’ rituals with local customs.
The range of such local traditions
was almost inexhaustible. They applied to work-performance, working-times,
paces and wages. They prescribed the food that could be eaten on week-days and
special treats that should be served at feasts, as well as dictating
table-manners. They specified the supernatural sanctions which would take on
those who worked on holy days. They enshrined the right to visit fairs, to have
special leisure hours, and sometimes, the servants’ privilege to keep open
house for friends and visitors. Even the farmer’s sons and daughters were not
allowed to withdraw from everyday games, competitions and pleasures. Their
involvement did not only legitimize the servants’ behaviour, it also committed
them for years.
Sometimes the farm-workers took part in the litigation about details of work-performance,
as happened in the Land of Kehdingen on the Elbe. On other occasions they were
known to have thrown their meals out of the window when they were served on the
wrong day of the week. Unemployed youngsters and poor people established the
right to go about the village during winter time, singing quasi-religious songs
which paid homage to those who undertook their charitable duties, but also
contained were hidden threats to misers. Martinmas, Christmas and Carnival
givings often sufficed for one or two months. It might have been due to
tradition that agricultural innovations as threshing wagons, Brabant ploughs
and winnowing-machines did not always spread from one district to the other.
These local traditions did not aim
at improving living conditions. They simply tried to maintain the existing
standards. But traditions were malleable. Actual changes could always be
considered as an extension of older traditions. An accusation of breaking an
allegedly ancient custom was, once openly made, perfectly capable of clearing
the ground for new claims. As soon as the accusation had won enough public
support, its denial could be presented as an assault on tradition. Popular
sanctions could inflict serious injury. These could include gossip campaigns,
which could harm a person’s name and solvency, but also legitimize physical
molestation, arson and other forms of maltreatment. A boycott of farmers
unwilling to give way, or infamous accusations directed at workers who accepted
lower standards of pay, were probably the most common forms of open labour
struggle. More, still, were claims and counterclaims contested beforehand, as
farmers had to prove their moral authority by playing their assigned role in
the village ritual. During rape-seed threshing, for instance, the farmer was
violently tossed in a cloth. He could only free himself by offering a banquet
to his workers. Alternatively, the reapers kindly threatened his wife that they
would cut down the winter-stock of kale in the garden if they were not offered a
feast. Here the farmers came to see very clearly what it would mean if they
could not look their poor neighbours, with whom they grew up, in the eyes.
Given these tensions, the older
folklore studies have often arrived at false conclusions about coastal communities.
Like many sociologists, they took existing rituals as the expression of an
harmonious village culture, which was about to disappear. Their conclusions
were misleading, as Karl S. Kramer rightly stated. Traditions around the last
sheaf, for instance, probably had as much to do with recent claims to the
farmer’s riches as with supposedly ancient fertility rites. Going down the road
with lanterns, while indoors fires had just been lighted, must have evoked the
threat of arson. Bonfires in spring may have symbolized the destruction of the
farmer’s winter regime as much as they acted out the burning of King Winter
himself. Community rituals and ideologies, however, were ambiguous throughout,
because they at once presupposed the consensus which they meant to reinstate at
the same time. Even violence itself took on ritual forms, for it aimed at
restoring peace.[37]
Why did so many scolars mistake this
self-imagined conservatism for the kind of reality which only prevails in
closed communities? Surely Tönnies is not the only one responsible. In fact,
his most famous study Gemeinschaft und
Gesellschaft (1887) is not concerned with peasant communities and
industrial society at all - the way Durkheim deals with the problem - but with
the impact of individualist thinking on an hitherto traditional world.[38] Consequently, his
descriptions of community life must be read as a keen analysis of community thinking too. Moreover, Tönnies did not
want to idealize the vanishing community life. He knew that change was inevitable.
Stemming from an old family of liberal marshland farmers who scorned the
passivity of the upland peasants as well as the traditional go-slow policy of
their own workers, he was not at all sympathetic to an unqualified
traditionalism at all. Folkways and mores, he insisted, were only debated
because they had started to change already.[39]
Nevertheless, Tönnies took an
ambiguous stand toward modern society.[40] Like his 19th-century
liberal predecessors, he felt that progress was the result of purposive human
action. Tenacity of traditions could only lead to indolence and oppression. But
at the same time he was haunted by the idea that the sum of individual actions
did not lead to the intended results. As a sympathizer with the labour
movement, for instance, he deplored the breaking-up of the arrangements which
had protected working people against impoverishment. His analysis, therefore,
concentrated on the rise of the ideology of individualism as much as on the
actual increase of individual opportunities, in order to find the ultimate
cause of the falling apart of community life. This strategy gave him a precise
insight into liberal ideology, aptly. But it did not lead to an adequate
understanding of traditional communities. As Tönnies set out to expose liberal
thought, he took communal world-views for granted. By concentrating on
purposeful action, he neglected the dynamics of those social configurations
where purpose was still disguised as tradition.[41]
Religious Transformations
|
|
This does not mean that we can dispense
with the role of ideologies altogether. This will become obvious, as we finally
shift our attention from traditional culture to religion and politics. It can
hardly be accidental that the most pronounced examples of popular
self-consciousness come from German sources. This may have had something to do
with the fact that the German and Danish Enlightenment created far more
abundant literary sources, but of greater importance were the earlier virulent
campaings of Dutch Calvinist preachers and laymen against popular culture.
Traditions which had survived in Lutheran districts during the 17th
and 18th century, here gradually made way for a new Puritanical
rigidity that had persisted since that time. On the German coast the Lutheran
reformation had carried the day since the middle of the 16th
century. As a state religion, it stood at the base of every local community.
The village church encompassed all community members, the holy mass suggested
their ritual unification with the body of Christ. Lutheranism was the perfect
community religion, for it sharply distinguished the sanctified village
community from mistrusted outsiders. Moreover, local by-laws often completed
this religious communalism, as they made the settlement of any newcomers
conditional on the consent of other residents.
How different, then, were
developments in the Dutch Republic and in the bordering East-Frisian districts?
Here Calvinism, linked with the cause of civil rebellion against the Spanish
crown, had to fight a fierce battle before it could gain recognition as the
official religion.[42] Convinced Calvinists
were a minority group for a long time, having to reckon with the fact that in
Groningen and Friesland alone, at least a third of the country-dwellers were
either Catholics or Mennonites - Menno came from Friesland - , the rest of the
population consisting largely of neutralists and liberals. The sheer fact of
religious diversity made it difficult to sanctify community life.[43]
Calvinist ministers and laymen, therefore, set out to purify their own
religious communities as much as they tried to influence state policies. Taking
the Holy Communion while sitting around a table, they revived the fraternal
rites of medieval guilds, demanding from the participants an unspotted
reputation. At the same time they were ill-disposed to many rituals of public
life, as were the Mennonites before them. Whereever this uncompromising
vanguard of elected Calvinists - it could have served Lenin as an example -
monopolized state-power, it immediately set about reorganizing public life
according to its own standards. Local fairs and festivals were often banned,
dancing made illegal, most forms of conspicuous consumption criticized as
wasteful.
Other religious groups, of course,
tried to obstruct this Puritan offensive. Most formal power remained with
liberal-minded aristocrats and patricians, who did not hide their distaste for
religious orthodoxy. But, when confronted with the threat of religious strife
they too had to indulge the campaign against traditiongewijzigd, and fall back on a strong and neutral
state bureaucracy from where they could better resist Calvinist claims. On the
one hand, therefore, religious pluriformity provided for a secular state, on the other it created the
forces which aimed at reorganizing the society
along Puritan lines.
At the break of the 18th
century in many rural parts of the Dutch Republic and East-Friesland orthodox
Calvinism had incorporated all Protestants except the declining Mennonite
sects. Only in the cities and the urbanized parts of Holland and Friesland on
both sides of the Zuider Zee did a more secular culture continue to flourish. What prevailed was a rich,
but sober style of living and an industrious rural society, which tended to
strip community life more and more down to its essentials, and presented
excessive popular claims as a rebellion against God’s will. But Calvinist
thinking, designated by Tönnies, Weber, Troeltsch and many others as a source
of modern individualist world-views, had its own ambiguities too.[44]
Whereever the state was dominated by
liberal-minded landowning elites, popular claims followed the lines of
Calvinist rigidity. From the pietist movement sprang a new community spirit,
centering around local groups of inspired men and women who insisted that any
chance to be saved depended on the effort to purify one’s life. This religious
revivalism, directed against the liberal clergy, soon became intertwined with
monarchist attempts to curtail the liberal aristocracy and strengthen the
stadholders’ power. The image of God, not as a distant Protector of creation,
but as a being capable of arbitrary interference with human affairs, was
metaphorically mirrored in the image of the righteous but unpredictable ruler.
As one needed no mediators between God and man, so the privileged niches
between subject and state had to be done away with too. God’s chosen community,
be it the village or the congregation, must restore itself by disposing of
false prophets and malicious profiteers.
What concerns us here are not any
essentials of 18th-century Dutch political theory or theology, but
the utopian view of a restored community, a new convenant as theologians might
call it, which allowed the people to participate in community life on a more
equal base than before. Of course, it was very unusual for a common villager to
take part in the Lord’s supper. He often would not have the proper dress to
begin with. The farmers’ position as leaders of the community was uncontested.
They took the lead in religious as well as political affairs. But the
theoretical possibility that a commoner might attend must have opened up quite
new perspectives. Any poor villager could gain respectability by leading a
decent and God-fearing life. His poverty was no shame and his devotion gave him
the right to ask for support from his rich neighbours.
Thus, the traditional village life
faded away and a new and rather untraditional kind of community life
flourished. This lasted as long as the confrontations with the liberal elite
continued. The farmers’ sober appearance and their strict conduct, intended to
challenge the worldly-minded oligarchy, probably served as a model for the
lower classes.[45] Religion disciplined the
poor, but it also gave them new opportunities. In many ways these patriarchally
structured communities resembled Tönnies’ ideal more than anything that went
before. Traditional village culture had faded away in many parts of Friesland,
Groningen and East-Friesland, yet without leading to the class-hatred which raged
later on.
As 19th-century liberals,
including Tönnies, looked backwards, they did not grasp this point. Their
writings on rural welfare and local politics reflected a kind of ignorance and
intolerance towards 18th-century community ideals, which has been
echoed by most historical writing since. In the Netherlands, as well as in the
German states, the farmers gave up many local privileges as soon as they had
acquired the right to participate in state affairs instead. They dissociated
themselves from the impoverished working-class population and got more and more
upset by the fact that many crofters and artisans harked back to the theocratic
spirit of the previous century. Neither religion nor community life meant as
much to them, as they had done to their grandfathers. When the remaining
Calvinist leaders in Friesland, Groningen and the neighbouring German districts
leaders organized their followers, they were met by most farmers with outright
hostility. During the 19th century thousands of ‘small people’ - as
they used to call themselves - left the Dutch Reformed Church for independent
congregations.[46]
There were, however, several
exceptions. In those districts where 18th-century community-life had
been very intense, as in the eastern polderlands of Groningen (Oldambt), or the
Frisian polder-areas (Het Bildt) and peat-districts (De Wouden), the union
between farmers and farm-workers held out somewhat longer. Religious secession
did not take place, and the workers followed their masters halfway to political
and religious liberalism before switching over to more radical views. Another
exception were those villages where communal strife had been totally lacking.
There many farm-workers also followed the farmers towards liberalism.
Again, it is important to stress the
differences between Dutch and German developments. During the 18th
century pietism had gained foothold in many Lutheran districts too, partly
spreading from Denmark southward, partly eastward from the Calvinist districts
in East-Friesland. The links between political and religious grievances were
obvious here too, as conservative protest movements against enlightened church
policies show.[47] German liberalism,
subsequently, took a stand against village traditionalism as much as its Dutch
counterpart did. As early as the end of the 18th century the first
signs of modern individualism began to appear. When, say, some East-Frisian
servants asked for better working conditions, their masters accused them of
breaking an ancient ‘tacit pact’, fixing their rights and duties.[48] The Eiderstedt farmers,
inspired by ‘the system of freedom and equality’, were reported to behave more
and more like aristocrats, while the same time giving way to ‘harshness against
the common man’.[49]
However, where Dutch Calvinist pietism
had substituted a newly developed tradition for traditional village mores,
Lutheran pietism developed largely on the base of traditional community life,
not against it. Northern German liberalism, subsequently, was never met with
any substantive religiously inspired counter-movement. It could do away with
traditionalism rather easily. Either the farm-workers tried to commit the
farmers to traditional values, or they acted in open rebellion, as the 1848
events demonstrate. Gradually, they shifted towards liberalism, ultimately to
socialism.[50] The farmers, on the
other hand, relapsed into conservatism again.
If we consider the subsequent rise
of the labour movement, differences between Dutch and German coastal areas are
even more striking. When German farm-workers started to unite at the turn of
the 19th century, they all found their way into social-democracy,
even in those parts of East-Friesland where Calvinism had dominated for long.
In contrast, the Dutch labour movement only had a chance in those villages
where religious secession had not yet taken place. Often a majority had already
joined the revivalist congregations and showed no interest in trade union
activities whatsoever. These religious organisations, increasingly linked up
with national conservative parties, took an outright stand against socialism
and liberalism.[51]
In certain ways, then, we see in
many parts of the Netherlands a religious type of ‘reactionary radicalism’,
quite comparable to Calhoun’s characterization of the early labour movement in
Britain. As a response, the socialist labour movement in the other districts
often took an outright anti-religious stand, something which was quite
exceptional in Germany.
More interesting, still, is the fact
that anarchism, and subsequently communism, took the lead in some of the 18th-century
strongholds of Dutch Calvinism, such as the eastern parts of Groningen and the
Frisian peat-districts. In neighbouring East-Friesland the Calvinist
farm-workers also took a more radical stand than their colleagues in Lutheran
villages. Dutch anarchism, moreover, had many similarities with 18th-century
pietism. It too depended on charismatic leadership, and displayed a similar
quietism towards organizational matters. When sudden revolutionary change
failed to appear, its supporters also concentrated on self-perfectionment.
Indeed, one is tempted to the conclusion that these radical ideologies owe more
to the egalitarian spirit of Calvinist sects, than to traditional village solidarities
or to modern state-orientated political principles.[52]
The Burdens of Traditionalism
In conclusions: it has long been
recognized that the quasi-harmonious peasant society which was the legacy of 19th-century
sociology, probably never existed. One should not be tempted, however, to drop
the subject altogether. Communal traditions, however difficult to detect, were
always present during the early modern age. Our research suggested that
economic change and social tension in the North Sea coastal marshes led to a
marked increase in traditional notions. We also suggest that some of these
traditions were quite effective in slowing down change and reducing social
tension. Nineteenth-century developments made most of them seen out of date.
Increasing opportunities created a new commitment to change, apparent in
liberal and socialist thinking. Nevertheless, some ideologies, seemingly
hostile to communal traditions,
were perfectly capable of carrying intense community spirit well into the
social complexity of our industrial age. Calvinism was one of these. Whereever
Calvinism had effectively challenged liberalism, labour did not have much
chance.
For centuries many parts of
pre-industrial Europe had been integrated in extensive commercial and cultural
networks. Peasants were transformed into farmers, crofters started working as
regular farm-hands, and their relationship took on more dynamic forms. Yet,
these men and women tended to present themselves as members of closed corporate
communities. We must try to see beyond their self-imagined conservatism. Edward
Thompson has characterized social relations in 18th-century Britain
as ‘class struggle without class’. Indeed: early modern thinking can be
typified as progress without any knowledge of progress, as social change
without social consciousness. Labour historians should take more account of
this.