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Citizen radicalism and democracy in the Dutch Republic

The Patriot movement of the 1780s

MAARTEN PRAK Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht

It is some twenty-five years now since R. R. Palmer's Age of Democratic Revolution was published) This two-volume book traces the history of a political watershed in the Western world: the growth of modern democracy in Europe and America during the decades prior to 1800. Palmer's account centers upon the two major events of the period, the American and French Revolutions. He did not however, overlook the sideshows. One of these, the Dutch Patriot movement of the 1780s, even seemed to him to be of more than ephemeral importance. In fact, he was of the opinion that, "of the various revolutionary agitations in Europe before the French upheaval, the Dutch Patriot movement had been the strongest. ''2 About its democratic and revolutionary character, Palmer had no doubts whatsoever. Not only did the actions of the Patriots during the 1780s resemble those of democratic movements elsewhere, but the spontaneous rise of the Dutch people in the wake of the invasion of the French army in 1794-95, struck him as "a continua- tion, with differences, of the Patriot movement of the 1780s, in which an attempted revolution had been stopped [in 1787] by a combination of British diplomacy and the Prussian army. ''3

Over the years Palmer's argument has been criticized, revised, and amended by numerous historians, the Dutch not excepted? For one thing, Dutch historians have always hesitated to designate the Patriot movement as revolutionary. Nevertheless, the crucial point of the Palmer argument is still very much on the historical agenda: Most historians of this period see many new elements in Patriot politics that they tend to consider as groping for democracy, inventing new forms of political expression and action in the processP It has been recognized that the Patriots referred to the past extensively, but this is nothing unusual for revolutionaries of the early modern period: a new age was dawning, cloaked in seemingly traditional arguments. 6 If the Patriots

Theory and Society 20: 73-102, 1991. �9 1991 KluwerAcademic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

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had their way in 1787, they would have pushed through the kind of reforms that were actually implemented only after the arrival of the French "liberators" The Batavian Republic, that introduced the unified state and a national parliament with elected representatives, was not so much pushed upon an unwilling national community, but was rather the product of a genuine indigenous process that was just temporarily driven underground in the restoration period of 1787-1795. 7

Some contemporary observers, however, did not subscribe to this point of view. During the restoration period a number of them rejected the former projects for political renewal as being too modest. One of these was a Dutch living in exile in France, who published a pamphlet in Dunkirk in 1793, favoring the abolition of "all the privileges of the towns, societies, guilds.. . , all noble, feudal and seigneurial rights," the introduction of a unified state, with a national parliament bound to a mandate by the inhabitants that had to be renewed regularly through (indirect) elections. 8 As a description of the outlines of the liberal democratic form of government this pamphlet seems to pass the test quite well. It was not, however, what the Patriots of the 1780s had in mind, as I show here. But what then did the Patriots want; how can we explain their politics; and why should we bother about them in the first place?

To begin with the last part of the question, it is obvious that the even- tuality of a Dutch "scoop" in European democratic politics would be an interesting phenomenon in itself. The Dutch Republic was one of the true wonders of the age. Economically the country had dominated Europe through most of the seventeenth century. And even though by the end of the eighteenth century these glories were much more a thing of the past than a living reality, the per capita Gross National Product, or the overall level of urbanization, was still higher in the Netherlands than anywhere else in Europe, Great Britain included. 9

The political structure of the Dutch Republic too had many admirers. Within the country itself the protection of civil liberties and of the mercantile interest, as well as the non-aggressive foreign policies were counted among the main virtues of the native constitution. 1~ Foreigners were in awe of the efficient way the Dutch state handled its funds and managed, in spite of its small population and notwithstanding its pre- sumed love of peace, to become a first-rank power during the seventeenth century. 11

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In all, the Dutch seemed to be firmly ahead on the road toward mod- ernity. So why should they not have been among the very first nations to introduce the democratic system as well, or at least produce a significant political movement clamoring for the introduction of that system? A short look over the borders of Dutch territory suggests that the actual historical process did not conform so well to models of balanced development.

From both the economic and the political point of view the Dutch Republic belonged, in early modern time, to a broad belt covering the middle of the European continent. This belt was characterized by a high level of urbanization and a low level of political integration) 2 It ran from the Italian peninsula, through Switzerland and the western part of Germany to the coasts of the Baltic and the North Sea. All the cities that had for some time dominated the mercantile economy of early modem Europe were located within this zone: Venice, Antwerp, Genoa, and AmsterdamJ 3 In contrast with the more agrarian econo- mies, dominated by a single city that was both the economic and political center (Paris, London, Madrid, Berlin), the urban belt was riven by competing centers that all claimed, and in fact more often than not also had, a large degree of political autonomy. This was the part of Europe where absolutism, if it was present at all, was most superficial; and, one might add with the history of the present century in mind, that goes for democracy as well. Both Germany and Italy were only unified at a rela- tively late stage in the process of European state-making (1871). Their democratic systems were unstable from the beginning and at least one historian, Mack Walker, has tried to explain this lack of stability, in the case of Germany, from the fact that the country's unification had been preceded by a very long struggle between centralizing bureaucrats and urban communities trying to preserve their local autonomy. 14 Both his contention that these struggles cut to the very heart of the urban social structures, and the fact that major elements of the democratic system were for the first time succesfully introduced outside the central belt (England, France) should for the moment suffice as a defense of this paper's subject.

At the same time this suggests that the organization of the political system prior to the introduction of liberal democracy may be of prime importance to the problem at hand. I take that up in the first section that follows. However, Old Regime states on the European continent did not reform themselves into modern democracies, but were pressed into it by revolutionary movements, such as (perhaps) the Dutch

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Patriots. As the central-belt model refers to a close link between socioeconomic and political structures, it seems worthwhile to deter- mine whether this region produced a specific type of collective action. In my opinion it actually did, and with some pre-1780 examples I will try to prove the point. In the second section I focus on the Patriot movement in a single Dutch town, 's-Hertogenbosch (Bois-le-Duc), once more looking for finks between socioeconomic and political structures. After that, it remains to be seen in the third section to what extent this town was typical for the Dutch Patriot movement in general, and how that movement did or did not fit into the preceding pattern of collective action; and then finally to reflect back upon Palmer's contention that the Dutch Patriot movement was a democratic one.

The Dutch state and its discontents

The Dutch Republic can be thought of as the ideal-typical representative of the city-belt states. Outwardly the Republic might present itself as a single entity, but domestically the political system was all bits and pieces, held together almost as much by the exigencies of international rivalry, as by its own institutions. ~5 As William Temple, English am- bassador in the Netherlands and author of a book that tried to explain this remarkable country to his compatriots, warned his readers: "It can- not properly be stiled a Commonwealth, but is rather a Confederacy of Seven Soveraign Provinces united together for their common and mutual defence, without any dependance one upon the other. ''16 The central government did not have sovereign powers, there were no central funds or central bureaucracy of any importance. The stadholder, who was the single most powerful officeholder in the country, was formally a servant of each provincial Estate, even though his actual powers went far beyond thatJ 7 And centrifugal tendencies did not stop at the level of the sovereign provinces. According to Temple: "to dis- cover the nature of their Government from the first springs and motions, it must be taken yet into smaller pieces, by which it will appear, that each of these Provinces is likewise composed of many little States or Cities, which have several marks of Soveraign Power within themselves, and are not subject to the Soveraignty of their Province. ''18 Or, in the words of a modem historian: "To a certain extent it is indeed possible to consider Holland [the most important province] as a con- federation of eighteen urban republics." 19

The infringement of the local privileges by the Habsburg government

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in the sixteenth century had been among the major causes of the Dutch Revolt, that resulted in the foundation of the Republic as a separate country. The Union of Utrecht, settled upon by the Dutch provinces in 1579, and the closest the Republic ever came to a constitutional document, stated most emphatically in its first clause, that "every province and the particular cities, members and inhabitants thereof, shall not in any way prejudice, hinder or damage the others in their special and particular privileges, freedoms, exemptions, rights, statutes, commend- able and handed down costumes, usages, and all of their other rights "'2~

What all of this came down to was, that in the Dutch Republic, political power tended to rise upward from the local level of the political system, instead of the other way around. Was it therefore democratic? In a sense one might answer that question in the affirmative, as is nicely revealed in the language used by all Dutch city magistrates. They used to call themselves "governments," but they did not rule over any "subjects?' Instead, official documents designated the populace as burgers en ingezetenen, "burghers and inhabitants "'21 According to the pre- dominant doctrine among the urban ruling elites they were "repre- senting" the people and their urban councils were open to all (formal) citizens. 22

In practice however, Dutch towns were aristocratically governed. The citizenry had nothing to say whatsoever in the recruitment of its magistrates. Only in the eastern provinces, notably Gelderland and Overijssel, did rudimentary forms of election remain. Their results were hardly different from the workings of the outright cooptive system used in other parts of the country? 3 For the inhabitants, little else was left than the "decent respect" and "obedience" they owed, according to the States-General in 1599, to "the lawful governments of the partaking provinces as well as their particular magistrates. ''z4

In this respect the Republic differed, not only from the neighboring German territories, but from the southern Netherlands as well. From the thirteenth through the fifteenth centuries, especially Flanders and Brabant had known upheavals comparable to the German Zunfi-revolutions, resulting in some sort of representation of the guilds in city governments. 25 In the north, separated from the south during the Revolt, guild representation was unknown, probably because it was the much less developed part of the Netherlands at the time of the guild- revolutions. However, in such an economically and socially advanced society, as was the Dutch Republic, it is to be reckoned unlikely that the

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burghers and inhabitants would for two centuries remain as quiet and obedient as their governors would have liked them to be.

The more so, because the Dutch state contained a citizenry in arms. Each town had its own companies of burgher militia. 26 These were originally formed to serve the town's lord in feudal warfare, but the professional armies had made their military functions all but redun- dant. Their main task was to quell civil disturbances, assist in case of calamities such as fires, and, most important, to police the town during the night (in daytime small detachments of paid guards were on duty). To perform their tasks, the schutters, as they were called, had to maintain their own firearms and were regularly trained. They had their own training grounds, with adjacent building, where drinks could be had, and meetings held. Their importance to the urban communities is born out by the numerous paintings from the seventeenth century depicting militia companies. It is worthy to note that one of these, Rembrandt's so-called Nightwatch, is perhaps the most famous picture in Dutch art history. The militia companies would in fact turn out to be the main vehicle for burgher protest movements. 27

Before the emergence of the Patriot movement in the 1780s, the Republic experienced three periods of major upheaval, in 1672, 1702- 03, and 1748. 28 All three were directly linked to crises in the func- tioning of the Dutch state and its political leadership. 29 In 1672 and again in 1747 the country was invaded by the French. These invasions brought to an end the so-called stadholderless periods, that had begun in 1650 and 1702 respectively. Central leadership was deemed necessary to repel the enemy forces. The death of one of the stadholders who had thus come to power, William 1II - he also became King of England in 1689, but left no children as natural successors to his positions in either England or the Netherlands - also sparked off large-scale disturbances. 3o

An example of the middle-class demands in the upheavals of 1748 can be drawn from Amsterdam and Haarlem. In Amsterdam the burghers presented, after much discussion, a program that asked, among other things, that guild regulations be revived and officers of the burgher militia should no longer be chosen by the magistrate but rather by the burghers themselves. Pieter Geyl, who studied these, what he liked to call, "revolutionary days" in Holland's self-proclaimed capital, stressed that the free choice of militia officers was the main point of the burgher

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movement and added that, if it be conceded, the burghers would be in possession of a permanent opposition platform. 31

In nearby Haarlem, burgher petitions called for a redressing of the in- equalities in the tax system, the sale of local offices, the protection of the local economy against infringements by "foreigners" (i.e., people from outside the town, or the province of Holland), the upkeep of the guilds and, once more, free election of militia officers. Furthermore, the Haarlem citizenry wanted the privileges and rights of the town and its corporations, including of the militia, to be published. 32 These demands were also voiced by the inhabitants of Gouda and Leyden? 3 They were hardly new demands.

During the 1672 upheavals, the Haarlem militia had already asked for a printing of the city's vital constitutional documents. The militia of Leyden had pressed the town council's forty members to resign and subsequently nominated eighty new candidates, from which the stadholder was to pick a new council. In the same year, the burghers of Ley- den too, demanded that they should be able to choose the officers of their militia without outside interference. A pamphlet then circulating in Amsterdam not only wanted a full restoration of the privileges of both guilds and militia, but stated that the militias were constitutionally entitled to nominate candidates for the position of magistrateP 4 And in the so-called plooierijen of 1702-03 the privileges were again of central concern to the riotous burghers. A petition of the citizens of Vollenhove of April 1703, for example, requested from the magistrate a full account of the financial management of the town, along with protection of the guild trades and a say in the election of the magistrate? 5

The intensity of these upheavals should not be thought of lightly. In 1748 the burgher movements in both Haarlem and Leyden were finally quelled by the army, after political solutions turned out to include too few concessions and were thus unacceptable to the citizens. Before its suppression a burgher committee in Leyden, elected through the militia companies, had been actual masters of the town for a number of weeks. 36 Neither were they unsophisticated rebellions. The 1672 crisis was commented upon in broadsheets that were published in what almost came to a paper avalanche. Many of these tried to underpin the action in the streets with some kind of theoretical justification. One of them, anonymously published as The right Foundation of the Newly established Ancient Law of Holland, or the lawful Freedom of the

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Burghers, went back to the founding days of society itself, to recount the story of fundamental political rights. According to its author, who placed himself squarely in the tradition of popular sovereignty, the people had chosen themselves rulers to avoid civil strife. Thus it was, that "in all the towns of our dear Fatherland the councils and Burgo- masters have been chosen from the burghers,. . , to maintain the Burghers of the Towns in their Freedoms and Privileges and Religions." The burghers kept up their part of the deal, by loyally paying the taxes. This was always a crucial argument, because the taxes constituted a vital bond between community and private citizens. The latter were enjoying absolute property tights. From that property they were volun- tarily handing over a part for the common cause. But it was still their property, and for that reason they had a right to control the urban accounts, if not the magistrate's business in genera ls In 1672, however, according to our pamphleteer, the elites had mismanaged the war. What's more, they bred a regime based on corruption that trampled upon the rights of the burghers. 38

The same author took care to make it clear that the demands he sup- ported were those of the urban middle class, of the burghers. The lower orders - "that scum of the masses, that has no other goals than distur- bance, violation and change in all honest governments, to make room for its own ugly intentions, to plunder and rob, to murder and burn" - were to be without political tights. Other broadsheets too, stressed the fact that these disturbances were not the work of "the common rabble and tiff-raft, but of the most principal and highly regarded Burghers . . . , who together are the body of sovereignty in this government, a basically Popular one, the sovereignty being represented by their respective magistrates." 39

These burgher movements hardly succeeded in achieving their political aims. The aims were there however and the citizens' actions, both in form and content, made sense. The burghers made use of what they obviously considered to be a coherent political program, as well as of the institutions available to them, notably the local militias. That they rose to face the local aristocracies should, however, not let us overlook the fact that both they and the urban elites operated within a common political universe. The magistrates might resent the burgher demands for control over their performance, but they too shared the burgher view that the privileges of the towns were to be considered sacred, that centralizing bureaucracies constituted a serious danger, and that the

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interests of their home towns were often more important than those of the country in general. 4~

The same attitudes and, even more interesting, the same kind of citizen movements were to be found across the eastern border of the Dutch Republic, in German towns, the large as well as the small. 41 The typical catalogue of the demands voiced by German citizen movements of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries included such items as public accounts of local administration, and, more in general, citizen influence on the magistrate. In early eighteenth-century Frankfurt the citizens struggled continuously with the local magistrate for more than twenty- five years on these issues. The citizens claimed that, "as the authorities are there for the citizens, and not the other way around, this means that no despotic power should be sought against the citizens, but justice shall be accorded to them as laid down in their privileges, freedoms and rights, and the common property will have to be administered in such manner that everywhere love and loyalty, justice and peace may meet "'42 German citizen movements too, were wary of democracy, and instead sought to strengthen the corporate structures of politics, limit political rights to those included in corporate societies and to limit these rights themselves to overseeing some of the major tasks of local government. 43 According to the German historian Heinz Schilling it would be outright misleading to call these movements "democratic," and instead he proposes the term "genossenschaftlicher Aufstandsbewe- gungen" i.e., corporative protest movements. 44 That would, so far, fit the Dutch situation equally well.

In France, outside the city-belt, such movements were conspicuously absent, at least after the middle of the seventeenth century. 4s When we look at how French absolutist government had penetrated local corporate structures, an explanation seems to suggest itself. By the eighteenth century, corporatism in France had been turned into one more instrument to fill the royal c o f f e r s . 46 Privileges were high-handedly abolished by the crown, then revived again, in exchange for a contribution to the treasury. Local offices were filled by creatures of the king's administration. As a result, "privilege, the apparent barrier to monar- chial encroachment, became instead a vehicle instrumental in its development. ''47 In those circumstances the middle class could hardly be expected to take political refuge in an ancient constitution that the central government had managed to turn against them.

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Corporatism and the Patriot movement in 's-Hertogenbosch

From what has been said so far, it is obvious that a study of Dutch urban collective action, including that of the late eighteenth century, must be firmly rooted in a local context. For this reason I start my analysis of the Patriot movement in one of its numerous home towns.

If one would try to spot the archetypal "average" Dutch town, a venture with only a very remote chance of success anyway, 's-Hertogenbosch would be a most unlikely candidate. This is not so much because of its economic or social structure, but rather because of its place within the political system. Socially, with some 12,000 inhabitants in the later eighteenth century, it figured somewhere in the middle range of the Dutch urban populations. Economically, Den Bosch, as it was usually called, served as market town for the surrounding hinterland known as the Meierij van 's-Hertogenbosch. 4s The town was also an important point of transit for goods being shipped from the Holland ports to the inland regions of the Southern Netherlands, notably Liege and its neighboring districts.

What made the town exceptional, though, lay in its constitutional position. It was not really a northern town in the first place. Den Bosch had always belonged to the province of Brabant, of which it was, together with Brussels, Louvain and Antwerp, one of the so-called capital towns. The largest part of Brabant had never been incorporated into the Republic. Den Bosch itself was only captured in 1629, together with the rest of the northern part of Brabant. Henceforth the region became an important defense zone, mainly against the French, with Den Bosch as its major stronghold. The town was extensively fortified and fully garrisoned. Together with the smaller Brabant towns that belonged to the Republic, 's-Hertogenbosch tried very hard, but unsuc- cesfully, to gain membership of the Union, as the eighth province. 49 The whole region was governed directly by the States-General and was therefore commonly known as Staats-Brabant. In other words, 's-Her- togenbosch, together with the other Brabant towns, was not represented in any sovereign provincial Estate, and was thus deprived of the full constitutional powers enjoyed by other Dutch towns. This was to be a source of much political grief.

Nevertheless, Den Bosch had managed to surrender in 1629 on terms that were not wholly unfavorable. Most important, the victorious Republic had promised to respect the town's privileges and constitu-

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tional framework. As a result, corporate structures and their influence on social and political life within the town were not very much unlike those in the other, "regular" cities of the Republic.

An overview of these structures can be found in the fire ordinance of 1703, that remained in force during the rest of the century? ~ Fires were still considered to be a major threat to the community in general. Even in the later eighteenth century the town's treasury rewarded everyone who made repairs in stone to the walls of their house. Of course there was no professional fire-watch, and instead all public corporations, as well as some private firms, were to provide both tools and manpower for this task.

In all, 35 public corporations are mentioned in the ordinance. Of these, 11 were social institutions either for relief to the poor, the aged or the orphans. Also included were the four militia companies. However, the largest category were the guilds, numbering 21, ranging from the bakers to the surgeons, and from the silver-smiths to the fishmongers.

Most guilds were associations of independent masters that could look back upon a distinguished history. The pedlars' guild, organizing the merchants, had been founded in 1493, perhaps even earlier. Other guilds were of much more recent origin, as for example the old clothes sellers, who dealed in second-hand goods, and became independent from the pedlars only in 1750. The fact that new guilds were created even in the eighteenth century should make us realize that they were then far from moribund. Going through the requests put before the magistrate in the later decades of the century, one definitely gets the same impression?l

Some guilds were closely supervised by members of the town council, serving as deans. In general though, it was the council's policy to let the guild masters handle their own business, as long as the interests of the town or the general public were not involved. Nonetheless, the guilds had to refer to the local government quite often. This was a result, among other reasons, of their statutes being very detailed. Even small changes had to be authorized by the council. As a result, of all council committees, the one that advised on the privileges and the guilds was considered to have the heaviest and most difficult task by far. 52

From a modern point of view, it may seem curious that one and the same committee advised on both constitutional matters and policies

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involving the business community, but within the corporative world of Den Bosch it made perfect sense. When in 1774 a master bricklayer's widow asked temporary exemption from one clause in the statute of her late husband's guild, it was refused by the city council on the grounds "that the guild statutes are to be considered as privileges and therefore have to be sacredly preserved. ''53

The guilds themselves would, of course, generally concur with this view, as their collective monopoly in a specific trade was at stake. However, behind their, perhaps narrow-minded, economic interest loomed a quite specific idea of their place in society, as was shown by a request filed by the pedlars guild in 1775. After an extended reading of the guild's venerable privileges, it was stated that "all these good orders and arrangements have been made, to provide the inhabitants with sound products, and have enabled the resident merchants to trade on equal terms, so as to acquire a decent living for their families, and be able to pay the country's and the town's taxes. T M The "decent living" is crucial here, because it was in exactly this respect that the guild masters stood out from the multitude. The "burgher occupations," i.e. the guild trades, were reserved for citizens only. 5s Notice also the direct link that is established between their economic welfare and the ability to support the community, both local and national.

In former times, membership of a guild had provided political influence as well. As 's-Hertogenbosch was a "southern" town, the guilds had managed to fight their way into the local government in the four- teenth century. 56 Until 1629 the city council was divided into three parts, one of them made up by the guild deans. After the inclusion in the Republic the guilds were excluded from political power, and in 1656 they had also lost the right to review the town's accounts. 57

To consolidate their occupation of this strategic town - the war was to go on for another two decades - the States-General also suppressed the citizen militia in 's-Hertogenbosch in 1629. But in 1642 its revival was accorded by the stadholder and the States-General. The Den Bosch militia was organized in four companies, each two hundred man strong.

As in the Holland towns, membership was compulsory for adult males. They had to be able to pay for their own equipment however, as well as the regular contributions. 58 This financial bar did not exclude all wage- earners, but it very much reduced their participation in the militia.

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Among the hundred men whose names and occupations are included in a listing of the Jonge Schuts company in 1743, just eleven can be identified as non-independents. Four were servants, the other seven worked in the guild trades. The rest of the company was recruited from such middle-class occupations as merchants and shopkeepers (ten), surgeons, chemists, lawyers and schoolmasters (eight), and, over- whelmingly so, from among the guild masters. 59

The militia of 's-Hertogenbosch was to play a crucial part in the town's political life during the years 1785-87, when the Patriots all over the country were clamoring for reform. It stood, moreover, at the cradle of the citizen movement in Den Bosch.

One major item of the Patriot program was the revival of the Republic's military powers. The state of the armed forces, both navy and army, and the ways to improve them, had already been the subject of pro- longed debates during the 1770s. The disasters of the Fourth Anglo- Dutch War made it even more relevant. 6~ The pamphlet To the People of the Netherlands (1781), that made Patriotism into a national cause, paid much attention to army reform. According to its author, the citizens themselves were the best defenders of their fatherland. To supple- ment the professional army, that had turned into an instrument of repression in the hands of the stadholder, a citizen army, as originally intended by the Union of Utrecht, had to come into being. 61 All over the country citizens began to train themselves in the handling of weaponry, either in separate Free Corps, or in so-called exercise societies within the local militias.

In 's-Hertogenbosch exercising seems to have started during the spring of 1785. 62 In the autumn 29 men in the Jonge Schuts company had joined the exercise society. 63 By the end of the next spring the idea had obviously caught on, although the majority of the militiamen seem to have remained passive. For that reason, the exercising members of the four militia companies asked to be allowed to carry out their training together as one group, instead of separately. The request did not men- tion any specific goal, beside the wish to improve the quality of the militia. It was stated, however, that the exercises had been taken up with even more vigor, when the members got wind of the efforts of the council, "as fathers and friends to the burghers, to restore ... the almost for- gotten but never lost or alienated privileges of this town and its inhabitants "'64

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In the meantime there was action on other fronts as well. In December 1785 a request was submitted to the States-General by 202 merchants of Den Bosch, complaining of harassment by the town's garrison. 65 Within a month a second request was filed, this time to the local government, by 98 "born citizens" of ,s-Hertogenbosch. 66 The signatories asked the council's attention for "the natural preference and privileged claim" of the citizens on public offices. Reference was made to various privileges, dating from as early as 1329, to support this demand. Such claims had been made by citizens all over the Republic for over a century now. What made this one slightly unusual was the fact that it wanted to reserve such rights for born citizens only. Although the so-called bought citizens, who had been born elsewhere and paid the fees to become a full citizen, had been treated as equal to the natives, the town's constitutional documents made it perfectly clear that they could "never attain that zenith of identity" with Den Bosch, as the born citizen had "according to the prevalent distinction of his birth and the original attachment to this town." In other words, this request was corporafist in the extreme. In November 1786 the claim of the natives was repeated in another formal request. 67

A month later, just before Christmas, the Patriots of Den Bosch con- sfituted a separate organization, the Vaderlandsche SocFdteit (Patriot Society). Its membership rose to over two hundred in the next months and included more than half of all signatories to the two citizens' requests. 68 Like such societies in other towns, the Patriot Society of Den Bosch was supposedly a reading and debating club. 69 Nobody though, who picked up a paper from the society's reading table could fail to notice the nature of the members' interests. The main Patriot periodicals, like the Politieke Kruyer and the Post van den Neder Rhifn, were prominently displayed. And the bookshelves contained such items as the privileges of 's-Hertogenbosch, the Verklaring der Unie van Utrecht (Explanation of the Union of Utrecht, 1775-77) by Pieter

Paulus, as well as the major Patriot programs, the Constitutional Resto- ration (1784-86) and the Leyden Draft of 1785. 70

Compared to a number of other Dutch cities, Patriot activities in Den Bosch were very modest. In all, some three to four hundred people were involved. In Deventer, in the province of Overijssel, requests had been filed with over 1,400 signatures, comprising two thirds of the male population of that town. 71 In Utrecht, more than twelve hundred people had formally accepted the local burgher committee as their representatives in 1785. 72 Nevertheless, even the authorities in Den

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Bosch were obviously impressed by the Patriot activities, as was shown by the events of spring and summer 1787.

On March 8, 1787 the stadholder was going to celebrate his 39th birth- day. To honor the occasion the militia in Den Bosch would march to the town hall, and be on guard there for some hours. Two days earlier, however, a message from The Hague arrived, ordering the local government to obtain permission for this watch from the army commander. He refused. Obviously, the national authorities were fearing riots, as the Patriot opposition was getting stronger every day now all over the country. The city council accepted the decision, but at the same time declared that it would "persist to maintain the rights of the town and the militia companies" and would file a formal protest to this e n d . 73

The Patriot Society had three hundred copies of its own protest printed. These were sent out to Armed Corps, Burgher and Patriot Societies in all parts of the country, asking them to use their influence with their own magistrates, to maintain the rights of Den Bosch and its mil i t i a . TM

The militia itself drew up a 54-page statement of its rights and h i s t o r y . 75

The ancient constitution was by now definitely on the local political agenda. The citizenry had been alerted to what was considered to be a major infringement on local autonomy. The council, although it had deferred to the commander's wishes, was pledged to a firm stand on this subject for the future. In May the exercising militiamen were once more taking up their training, after the regular winter stop. On the 16th a new request was submitted by 139 men, of whom almost two-thirds were members of the Patriot Society as wel l . 76 In previous years they had used the militia premisses, but they now wanted the Parade - a huge square in the center of town - as their training ground. The Pa- rade was, however, used by the military for the same purpose. The local government had asked the Council of State at The Hague for permission. The request, on the other hand, maintained that there could be no doubt about "the full right and ownership by the town, and so by the joint citizens, of the Parade." A compromise was agreed upon: the magistrate would provide a suitable training ground elsewhere in town, and pay for its rent and lay-out as well . 77

In June the magistrate got an opportunity to redeem itself. The High Sheriff of the town and district of 's-Hertogenbosch had died. As the office brought major powers, appointments to it were made by the central government at the Hague. According to the Brabant privileges the sheriff had to be a native. This provision had been neglected for a long

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time. But now the Den Bosch council immediately demanded that they new man would be of Brabant stock. This kind of action was very much to the liking of the Patriot citizens. The Patriot Society organized a petition in support of the council, that was handed in on July 18. The 134 signatories pledged themselves to support "all such efforts. . , to constitutionally repair the violations of the country's dearly won privileges and those stipulated at the surrender [in 1629] of this capital town, a mutual interest of both burgher and magistrate. ''78

It turned out to be the last significant action of the Patriots in Den Bosch. The members of the Patriot Society held meetings throughout the summer, but only to welcome new men to their club. The exercising militiamen kept on training in their recently-won grounds. In other parts of the country the Patriot revolution was by now in full swing. But the counter-revolution was amassing its forces as well. In May the province of Utrecht had witnessed a pitched battle between the loyalist army and the revolutionaries, where the latter had managed to win the day. But in September 26,000 Prussian troops, sent by the stadholder's brother-in-law, crossed the Dutch border and in less than a month overcame all Patriot resistance. 79 The citizens of Den Bosch did not even think of putting up a fight. Having lived under the shadow of a military garrison for a century and a half, they were perfectly realistic about their chances. 8~ On September 21, the directors of the Patriot Society decided to remove the sign on the door, as well as the club's papers? 1 Already in August the States-General had made exercising outside the regular militia companies illegal in Brabant. The Den Bosch magistrate, that had permitted and even promoted the exercises by pro- viding the grounds for it, this time refused to obey. 82 And then the garrison ran amok. On two subsequent nights, November 8 and 9, troops pillaged the town. Two inhabitants were killed, 250 houses (out of a total of 4,000) were plundered, and the windows were smashed of another 618. The refusal of many citizens to wear the badges of the triumphant Orangist party was said to have been a major cause of this devastation on a scale unknown to any Dutch town during peacetime. 83 To pacify the military, all exercising militiamen were disarmed. 84

The Patriot movement and democracy

Although the demands put forward by the Patriots of Den Bosch were consistent with the corporate tradition of popular opposition in the Dutch Republic, we have to consider the possibility that they were

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nevertheless untypical for the Patriot movement in general. Much of the literature on the subject stresses the fact that during the 1780s the Patriot opposition developed new ideas about the political system, ideas that went beyond a restoration of an ancient constitution, and instead pointed forward to the democratic revolution of the 1790s. The province of Brabant however, subjected as it was to the direct rule of the States-General, had never been allowed the political rights that were common to the other provinces of the Republic. Insisting on traditional political rights, as the Patriots of 's-Hertogenbosch did, might be a reflection of the particular situation of the Brabant cities, of the fact that they were, in politics, in a sense one phase behind the rest of the country.

In trying to find out what exactly was characteristic for the Patriot movement in general, we have to be aware of the fact that Den Bosch was at least typical in this respect, that everywhere else local circumstances were equally important to the development of the movement, as So let us content ourselves for the moment with some examples - two towns and one single document - that, according to modern historians, bring out the democratic character of Patriotism very clearly.

At the end of 1785 a pamphlet was published by the united representatives of the Free Corps in the province of Holland. The 68-page booklet has gone down in history as the Leyden Draft. 86 Its authors have been identified as Wybo Fijnje and Pieter Vreede, who were both to be leading figures in the radical phase of the Batavian Republic that gave the country its first unitary constitution in 1798. Simon Schama is thus led to consider the Leyden Draft as "the early ancestor of the democratic constitution" He also underlines its novelty and revolutionary content by drawing attention to the fact that it "marked a decisive shift, not uncommon in revolutionary declarations, away from historical justifi- cations of liberty towards the more confident affirmation of self- evident natural rights. ''87 In this regard it is of particular relevance that the document repeated the demand of an earlier manifesto for "people's government by representation: 'as If we want to observe Dutch Patriotism in its advanced stage of reformulating political goals, the Leyden Draft may serve our purpose very well indeed. And if Schama is right, then the Patriots of Den Bosch were no doubt out of tune with the times.

The Leyden Draft contains a careful analysis of all that is, according to its authors, wrong with the present government of the Republic, as well

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as a program to rectify those shortcomings. This program is summar- ized in twenty points at the end of the pamphlet, and when taken out of context these might suggest a remarkable break with the past. The first of the twenty articles, for example, states firmly that "Liberty is an in- alienable right, adhering to all burghers of the Netherlands commonwealth. No power on earth, much less any derived (demanded or representative) power, can challenge or obstruct them to enjoy this liberty, when they do desire" (p. 62); strong stuff, for sure. To evaluate the meaning of a paragraph such as this, however, it is necessary to have a precise understanding of the meaning of such ambiguous terms as "liberty" and "aliburghers" words that came naturally to any defender of the Old Regime constitution, as well as to the revolutionaries of those days. 89

The authors of the Draft were in fact staunch defenders of that constitution. According to the first chapter, the Republic's constitution might seem complicated at first sight, but in fact it served its main purposes quite well: protection and enhancement of shipping, commerce, and manufacturing, as well as the maintenance of the Union and the respective forms of government. When looked at from this angle, the constitution could not be denied "a certain degree of soundness, of perfectness, yes even clarity" (p. 9). Three elements made for that enviable situation. In the first place, the Dutch Republican constitution was firmly founded upon the sovereignty of the people; second, each part of the general society had its own government, and could look after its own interests; third, because the constituencies were small, they provided the best guarantee for maintaining liberty (p. 9-11).

Unfortunately, this fine constitution had been corrupted in two ways. First, the granting of powers to the stadholders had undermined self- government at the local level. Secondly, and perhaps even more important, the local governors, that is to say, the patrician families, had become much too independent from the people to whom they owed their mandate. The only way of restoring the representative character of the regime was to make the magistrates directly dependent upon the people's approval, by giving the latter a say in the election of their governors. This was the truly new element the Patriot authors of the Leyden Draft wanted to introduce into Holland's political system. It is therefore of the greatest importance to establish very clearly two elements of their proposal: who were to be the electors, and in what relation they would stand to their chosen delegates.

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The authors of the Draft claimed alternately to speak for the "people," and for the "citizens," i.e., "burghers;' without much consistency in the use of either word. The two were obviously considered synonymous. Besides, in a passage often quoted, they stated as their aim the estab- lishment of "the best possible of all systems of government, a representative democracy" (p. 46). All of this seems to suggest that they spoke in the name of all inhabitants of their particular province, and had in mind a truly "modern" form of democracy. However, there is in the booklet much that could be used to refute such an interpretation. The sentence on "representative democracy," for example, comes from a paragraph dedicated to the question of who will be permitted to sign requests in the future. Stern social limitations are proposed: Signatories will have to be of a certain minimum age and affluence, notice will be taken of their place of birth and the number of years of their formal burgher rights, as well as of whether they have served in the local citizen militia. It is also stated, that this "representative democracy" will be nothing less than a "Constitutional Restoration" (p. 46). The Restora- tion will put political power in the Republic firmly into the hands of "all true Burghers, that is to say those, who by their property and occupation have a substantial and direct interest in the maintenance of the Constitution, the preservation of public order, and in the promotion of general prosperity" (p. 49). These burghers are contrasted with "the dregs of the population, a furious mob, that has nothing to lose by the disturbances of the state, and may be readily bought by anyone who gives them drink or money" (ibid.). Thus - and here the Draft refers to the upheavals we have discussed previously - the Restoration, while looking democratic at first sight, will in fact abolish all "Democratic disorders" that have time and again shaken the country (p. 48). In another paragraph it is suggested that urban councillors will be chosen by the militiamen only, instead of all burghers (p. 54).

After this, one is no longer surprised to learn that councillors will be appointed for life, and the deliberations of the councils free from burgher interference: the magistrates being chosen as "the best and most competent to govern the common business, it would be a violation of all order, a breach of all unanimity, an introducing of a complete Democracy, that is a state of confusion and whimsicality, if one wanted to permanently obstruct them in their dealing with the business that one has entrusted to them" (p. 42). Nor to find on the Draft's program such well-worn items as the preference of natives over strangers for the lesser local offices, and the free choice of militia officers (p. 65, 67).

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Program such as the Leyden Draft were put together in many a Dutch town in the middle of the 1780s. In eastern Deventer, where the Patriots had a huge following and as a result the council had been won over to their cause, this program was even translated into a new local constitution by a council-committee, in cooperation with the Burgher committee. This Burgher committee, the first one to arise in the Netherlands in the 1780s, had voiced the by now familiar complaints: the magistrates were selected through cooptation and for that reason were not truly representatives of the burghers; citizens should have access to the town's financial records; and so on. For that reason one can say that, as in the Leyden Draft, "the Committee wished to rein- force the corporate identity of the city i t s e l f . ' '9~ The draft-constitution that was published in Deventer in the summer of 1786 reflected this in, for example, the clause on the franchise. No property qualification was required, but only those who held formal burgher-status would have the right to participate in municipal elections. 91

Nevertheless, the proposal for a new, "revolutionary" Deventer constitution caused an interesting dispute within the Patriot ranks. The local guilds, up to that point the backbone of the local movement, were unwilling to support the draft, mainly because it was prepared to grant burgher-status to Roman Catholics, who had been excluded so far. Their fear of being flooded with newly promoted citizens in the end caused the Deventer guild masters to change sides altogether and go over to the stadholder's party. 92

Although it is not, for reasons of available space, possible to dwell on this point too long, it should be noted that such rifts were not new to the corporatist world. Their origin can be traced to the fact that corporatism had both a judicial, or institutional, reference, and a social one. In Den Bosch, for example, two militia companies had a long dispute in 1768 about the question of whether only legal citizens could be recruited, or that the "most notable inhabitants" would all be included (and of course the lower classes excluded). 93 For the same reason an anonymous author from the province of Holland could, in 1786, dis- qualify burgher committees, guilds, or militias as electoral colleges, but at the same time limit the franchise to such people as the born citizens who paid a certain minimum in local taxes, guild members, and active participants in the militias, that had, by the way, to be rid of lower-class membership. 94 Significantly, the Deventer Patriots that were left after the defection of the guilds were known as particulieren, private persons who were not organized in the guilds and therefore presumably hostile

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to their economic privileges. 95 Nevertheless, the particulieren too sup- ported a program that was still essentially corporatist.

A similar draft-constitution had been presented by the Patriots of Utrecht already in the spring of 1784. In fact, the Utrecht movement was considered by contemporary observers as the Patriot vanguard par excellence: "the cause of Utrecht is as the pivot, on which the whole Nation casts its eye," as one of them commented. 96 Both the radicalism of the local leadership and the reforms proposed by them earned the town its reputation.

The two major elements in the draft constitution were the franchise and the formalized status of the burgher committee. The draft constitution did not touch the town-council's right to appoint its own members, nor the fact that they would be appointed for life. The appointments would have to be made, however, from a nomination presented by citizen electors. These electors in turn were to be chosen, it has been suggested, by all male inhabitants, excluding only paupers on public relief. 97 In fact, the draft constitution states that to the election meetings, organized by the militia companies, "nobody will be admitted than those who have enjoyed the [formal] Burgherrights for four years. ''9s

These same people could also vote for the burgher committee, that would stand as a permanent watchdog over the election proceedings, and more in general keep the local government from infringements of "the Privileges ... of the citizens and the respective guild laws" Four members of the committee were to be present each year at the review of the town's accounts and they would have the right to advise on the introduction of new taxes. 99 Although such claims were very radical indeed within the context of actual political practice, we only have to remember the Leyden burgher committee of 1748, or the right of the guild deans of Den Bosch to review that town's accounts up to the middle of the seventeenth century, to see that even in Utrecht we are still within the world of corporatism.

Conclusion

In this article I have investigated one of the supposed founder-members of R.R. Palmer's 'Ykge of Democratic Revolution;' the Dutch Patriot movement of the 1780s. My purpose was to show that this movement, even though the Patriots made extensive use of such stan-

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dard items of the democratic vocabulary as "popular sovereignty" and "representation," did not envisage a political system that might be rea- sonably fitted into the revolution that Palmer had in mind.

Instead, the Patriots stood within a long tradition of urban middle-class opposition politics. They held on firmly to both form and content of that tradition. What was new about them was the intensity and thoroughness with which they worked toward their goal of remedying the, as they saw it, corruption of the political system. We might even speculate that they had carried this particular tradition of urban corporatist republicanism to its logical extremes; that is to say, to a point where an even more radical step would be necessary to overcome the resistance of the established powers. They might, for example, have considered to take "popular sovereignty" at its face value, and overcome their distaste of democracy, so as to include the lower classes into their movement. That step, however, would have taken them outside the tradition that provided them with a specific brand of political liberty. Before the intervention of Prussian troops in the fall of 1787 they were not prepared to make such a momentous decision. For this would have implied a dropping of much that was essential to the corporatist ideology, which had been the prime motivation for their actions in the first place.

Corporatism was deeply rooted in the Dutch society of the Old Regime. Economically, it provided major sections of the middle class with some sort of protection against the vicissitudes of conjunctural fluctuations and other uncertainties besetting the small but independent merchant or craftsman. Socially, it made these people into a community, in which they had some sort of social status. Politically, it gave the whole of the middle class a claim on the authorities, while at the same time keeping the lower classes at bay.

Corporatism was not unique to the Dutch Republic. We have seen that German towns knew a similar middle-class ideology and similar political movements. French towns too had their privileges and their guilds. Nevertheless, they did not produce anything like the kind of political protest that was voiced by the Dutch and German middle classes. Against the idea of a single "democratic revolution" I have pitted the differentiated model of European state-formation, and tried to link an investigation of a particular form of collective action to that model. The pattern of a politically vital urban middle class in Germany and the Netherlands on the one hand, and its absence in France - and Britain,

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for that matter - on the other, in fact seems to coincide very well with the model of a commercial versus agrarian (or feudal) zone.

These conclusions may lead us to some further speculations, both on the theoretical level, as well as in regard to this particular piece of Dutch history.

When we look forward, toward the Batavian Republic that was founded in the wake of the French invasion of 1794-95, the ensuing struggles between moderates and radicals about political reforms - deemed necessary by all parties - do not so much present themselves as a clash between conservatives and revolutionaries, but as one between two different strands of reform. The moderates kept to the tradi- tions of localism and corporatism, and strove for a return to the roots of the old republican constitution. The radicals on the other hand, had come to the conclusion that the problems of the Dutch state were of a magnitude that could only be overcome by wiping the slate clean and starting all over again, this time along the lines that had been suggested by the French example. The fact that many Dutch radicals had lived in exile in France in the years after 1787, where they had first-hand expe- rience of a revolution in a completely different setting from the one at home, may perhaps in large part account for their specific brand of politics. At the same time, they can serve as prime examples of the revolutionaries-as-statemakers that Theda Skocpol has drawn attention to . 1~176

This leads us to the second point. This investigation has, once more, suggested the importance of state formations in the analysis of political processes. The Dutch state had come into being in its specific form because this form served the interests of both the indigenous ruling class, that resented interference by centralizing bureaucracies, and the commercial community, that resented interference by anyone? ~ For the local oligarchs it was of prime importance that the state's power should derive from theirs, instead of the other way. The merchants wanted the state to provide them with protection against foreign aggression and nothing more. 1~ Against this coalition any centralizing institution would have to muster an equally formidable coalition of its own. The attempt was hardly ever made.

The state, being the way it was, refuted some ideologies and institutions, while supporting and legitimating others. Of course, the latter were generally concomitant with the larger make-up of the state. They

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did, however, leave room for maneuver as both ideologies and institutions tended to be two-sided: The stress on self-government by the local patricians, for example, might be taken up by other parts of the populace as well, and turned against patrician dominance. In the same vein, the militias that should preserve public order, might turn into vehicles for rebellion. Thus, the state could not prevent opposition, but it dictated the forms it would take - the demands put forward, the means of popular mobilization. Even though the Dutch state, in terms of organization, did not seem equal to these tasks at all, it held sway over both its supporters and its discontents, t~

Acknowledgments

The research for this article has been made possible by a fellowship of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Marjolein 't Hart helped me find my way in the literature on states and statemaking, and that made all the difference. She also read a first draft of the manuscript, as did Niek van Sas, who made valuable comments. The editors of Theory and Society showed me how to distill a coherent argument out of a far too bulky manuscript. Stephen Bushell greatly improved my English.

Notes

1. R.R. Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution, vol. i, The Challenge (Princeton NA.: Princeton University Press, 1959), yol. ii, The Struggle (1964).

2. Ibid., ii, 57. 3. Ibid., i, 324-340, and ii, 180 (quotation). 4. See, as far as the Dutch are concerned, N. C. F. van Sas, "De Nederlandse revolu-

tie van de achttiende eeuw," in Bijdragen en Mededelingen betreffende de Geschie- denis der Nederlanden (henceforth: BMGN) 100 (1985) 637-639; E. O. G. Haitsma Mulier, "De geschiedschrijving over de Patriottentijd en de Bataafse Tijd," in W. W. Mijnhardt, editor, Kantelend geschiedbeeld. Nederlandse historio- grafie sinds 1945 (Utrecht/Antwerpen: Spectrum, 1983), 217ft.; Simon Schama, Patriots and Liberators. Revolution in the Netherlands, 1780-1813 (New York: Knopf, 1977), Introduction.

5. The commemoration of the abortive Patriot revolution of 1787 has resulted in a veritable flood of new research results, among which the most important seem to be collected in: H. Bots, W. W. Mijnhardt, editors, De Droom van de Revolutie. Nieuwe benaderingen van her Patriottisme (Amsterdam: De Bataafsche Leeuw, 1988); Th. S. M. van der Zee, J. G. M. M. Rosendaal, P. G. B. Thissen, editors, 1787: De Nederlandse Revolutie? (Amsterdam: De Bataafsche Leeuw, 1988). Reviews of the most recent literature in A. H. Huussen, Jr., "1787. De Neder-

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landse revolutie," in BMGN 104 (1989), 684-690; H. Reitsma," 'Altoos gedenk- waardig.' De herdenkingsliteratuur naar aanleiding van tweehonderd jaar Neder- landse Revolutie," Theoretische Geschiedenis 16 (1989) 255-275. See also Wayne Ph. te Brake's Regents and Rebels. The Revolutionary World of an Eigh- teenth-Century Dutch City (Cambridge, Mass./Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), the most important recent contribution to the subject.

6. Schama, Patriots and Liberators, 54. 7. Ibid., 14, 138-143,180-181,192. 8. Quoted in Cornelius Rogge, Geschiedenis der staatsregeling voor het Bataafsche

volk, (Amsterdam, 1799), 5-7; significantly, this pamphlet is referred to by Rogge, in his history of the unifying constitution of 1798, as an early example of this constitution's leading idea.

9. J.L. van Zanden, "Economische groei in Nederland in de negentiende eeuw. Enkele nieuwe resultaten," in Economisch- en Sociaal-Historiseh Jaarboek 50 (1987) 68; H. P. H. Nusteling, "Periods and caesurae in the demographic history of the Netherlands, 1600-1900," in Economic and Social History in the Nether- lands, 1 (1989) 91.

10. E.H. Kossmann, In Praise of the Dutch Republic: some seventeenth-century attitudes, Inaugural lecture University College London 13 May 1963; reprinted in his Politieke theorie en geschiedenis. Verspreide opstellen en voordrachten (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 1987).

11. Marjolein 't Hart, "In Quest for Funds. Warfare and State Formation in the Netherlands, 1620-1650," Ph.D. thesis University of Leiden (Netherlands) 1989, is the major study of Dutch state finances; see also J. M. F. Fritschy, De patriotten en de finanei~n van de Bataafse Republiek. Hollands krediet en de smalle marges voor een nieuw beleid (1795-1801) ('s-Gravenhage: Stichting Hollandse Histo- rische Reeks, 1988) and J. Aalbers, "Holland's Financial Problems (1713-1733) and the Wars against Louis XIV," in A. C. Duke, C. A. Tamse, editors, Britain and the Netherlands, vol. vi: War and Society (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1977), 79-93. Dutch influence in this respect was most marked in England: see John Brewer, The Sinews of Power. War, money and the English state, 1688-1783 (Lon- don: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 133.

12. Stein Rokkan, "Dimensions of State Formation and Nation-Building: A Possible Paradigm for Research on Variations within Europe," in Charles Tilly, editor, The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), 576-577; Wire Blockmans, "Princes conqu6rants et bourgeois eal- eulateurs. Le poids des r6seaux urbains dans la formation des ~tats," in Neithard Bulst, J.-Ph. Genet, editors, La ville, la bourgeoisie et la gen~se de l'~tat moderne (XIIe-XVIIIe sidcles) (Paris: Editions du CNRS, 1988), 167-181; Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, A D 990-1990 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990).

13. Jan de Vries, European Urbanization 1500-1800 (London: Methuen, 1984), 159- 161, following Fernand Braudel. De Vries, by the way, shows that this urban belt is still very much in place in the present day: 170-171.

14. Mack Walker, German Home Towns. Community, State and General Estate 1648- 1871 (Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press, 1971), 424-431.

15. J. Aalbers, "Holland's Financial Problems," 92-93; and more extensively in his De Republiek en de vrede van Europa, vol. i: Achtergronden en algemene tendenties (Groningen: Wolters Noordhoff, 1980), chap. iii.

16. William Temple, Observations upon the United Provinces of the Netherlands, ed. by sir George Clark (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972 [orig. 1673]), 52.

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17. On finances and bureaucracy, see 't Hart, "In Quest for Funds," 70-71,151-152; on the stadholders, H. H. Rowen, The Princes of Orange. The Stadholders in the Dutch Republic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988) and Maarten Prak, "Republiek en vorst. De stadhouders en het staatsvormingsproces in de Noordelijke Nederlanden, 16e-18e eeuw," in Arnsterdams Sociologisch Tifd- schrift, 16 (1989) 28-52.

18. Temple, Observations, 52. 19. Aalbers, De Republiek, 67; see also Marjolein 't Hart, "Cities and Statemaking in

the Dutch Republic, 1580-1680," Theory and Society, 18 ( 1989). 20. S. Groenveld, H. L. Ph. Leeuwenberg, "Die orginale unie metten acten daernaer

gevolcht," in De Unie van Utrecht. Wording en werking van een verbond en een ver- bondsacte Geschiedenis in Veelvoud vol. 6 (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1979), 30.

21. For the relevance of this distinction: Chr. Friedrichs, "Citizens or Subjects? Urban Conflict in Early Modem Germany" in M. Usher Chrisman, O. Gr/indler, editors, Social Groups and Religious Ideas in the Sixteenth Century (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Western Michigan University, 1978), 46-58; Peter Blickle, Deutsche Untertanen. Ein Widerspruch (M/inchen: C. H. Beck, 1981).

22. W. R. E. Velema, "God, deugd en de oude constitutie. Politieke talen in de eerste helft van de achttiende eeuw," BMGN 102 (1987) 481-482.

23. Jos Gabri~ls, "Patrizier und Regenten: st~dtische Eliten in den n6rdlichen Nieder- landen 1500-1850," in Heinz Schilling, Herman Diederiks, editors, Biirgerliche Eliten in den Niederlanden und in Nordwestdeutschland. Studien zur Sozialge- schichte des europiiischen Biirgertums in Mittelalter und in der Neuzeit St/idtefor- schung, vol. A-23 (K61n/Wien: B6hlau Verlag, 1985), 47.

24. A. Th. van Deursen, "Tussen eenheid en zelfstandigheid. De toepassing van de Unie als fundamentele wet," Groenveld, Leeuwenberg, editors, Unie van Utrecht, 138.

25. R. van Uytven, "Plutokratie in de 'oude demokratie~n der Nederlanden. Cijfers en beschouwingen omtrent de korporatieve organisatie en de sociale struktuur der gemeenten in de late middeleeuwen," Koninklijke Zuidnederlandse Maatschappij voor Taal- en Letterkunde en Geschiedenis. Handelingen 16 (1962) 373-409.

26. Introductions to the schutterijen: M. Carasso-Kok, "Der stede scut. De schutterijen in de Hollandse steden tot her einde der zestiende eeuw" and P. Knevel, "De kracht en de zenuwen van de Republiek. De schutterijen in Holland, 1580- 1650," both in M. Carasso-Kok, J. Levy-van Halm, editors, Schutters in Holland, kracht en zenuwen van de stad (Zwolle/Haarlem: Waanders, 1988).

27. See also P. Knevel, "Onrust onder schutters. De politieke invloed van de Holland- se schutterijen in de eerste helft van de zeventiende eeuw," Holland, regionaal- historisch tijdschrifi 20 (1988) 158-174.

28. For a more extended treatment of the subject of the rest of this section see my "Civil disturbances and urban middle class in the Dutch Republic" in Tijdschrifl voor sociale geschiedenis 15 (1989) 165 - 173.

29. The relation between foreign policy or military disasters and internal rebellions is stressed by Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis o f France, Russia and China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 50-51.

30. On 1672, see: D. J. Roorda, Partif en factie. De oproeren van 1672 in de steden van Holland en Zeeland, een krachtmeting tussen partijen en facties (Groningen: Wol- ters-Noordhoff, 1961); on 1702ff, A. H. Wertheirn-Gijse Weenink, Democrati-

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sche bewegingen in Gelderland, 1672-1795 (Amsterdam: Van Gennep, 1973); W.F. Wertheim, A.H. Wertheim-Gijse Weenink, Burgers in verzet. Onrust in Sticht en Oversticht (1703-1706) (Amsterdam: Van Gennep, 1976); M. van der Bijl, Idee en interest. Voorgeschiedenis, verloop en achtergronden van de politieke twisten in Zeeland en vooral in Middelburg tussen 1702 en 1715 (Groningen: Wol- ters-Noordhoff, 1981), 39-63, 238-250, 258-265; on 1748, P. Geyl, Revolutie- dagen te Amsterdam (Augustus-September 1748). Prins Willem IV en de Doelisten- beweging (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1936); J. A. F. de Jongste, Onrust aan her Spaarne. Haarlem in de ]aren 1747-1751 (s.l.: De Bataafsche Leeuw, 1984).

31. Geyl, Revolutiedagen, 19, 46-50, 64. 32. De Jongste, Onrust, 217-233. 33. J. J. de Jong, Met goed fatsoen. De elite in een Hollandse stad: Gouda 1700-1780

(Amsterdam/Dieren: De Bataafsche Leeuw, 1985), 71; M. Prak, Gezeten burgers. De elite in een Hollandse stad: Leiden 1700-1780 (Amsterdam/Dieren: De Bataaf- sche Leeuw, 1985), 94.

34. Roorda, Partij enfactie, 46,168-169, 171-173,183-186, and chap. iv in general.

35. Wertheim, Wertheim-Gijse Weenink, Burgers in verzet, 65-66. 36. De Jongste, Onrust, 321-323; M. Prak, "Burgers in beweging. Een politieke inter-

pretatie van de Leidse onlusten van 1748," in J. Aalbers et al., Rondom 1748, (forthcoming).

37. Cf. Heinz Schilfing, "Gab es im sp~iten Mittelalter und zu Beginn der Neuzeit in Deutschland einen st~idtischen 'Republikanismus'? Zur politischen Kultur des alt- europ~iischen Stadtbiirgertums" in Helmut G. Koenigsberger, editor, Republiken und Republikanismus im Europa der Friihen Neuzeit (Miinchen: Oldenbourg Ver- lag, 1988), 105-106.

38. P. Geyl, Democratische tendenties in 1672, Mededelingen der Koninklijke Akade- mie van Wetenschappen, afd. Letterkunde, nieuwe reeks 13/11 (Amsterdam, 1950), 318-325; reprinted in P. Geyl, Pennestrijd over staat en historic (Gronin- gen: Wolters-Noordhoff, 1971).

39. Ibid., 20-21, 26. 40 For this latter point: Jonathan I. Israel, "The Holland towns and the Dutch-

Spanish conflict, 1621-1648," BMGN 94 (1979) 41-69, and Aalbers, De Repu- bliek, chap iii.

41. On the sociopolitical cultures of these towns, see Walker, German Home Towns, and Schilling "StSdtischen 'Republikanismus.'"

42. Reinhard Hildebrandt, "Rat contra Biirgerschaft. Die Verfassungskonflikte in den Reichsst~idten des 17. und 18. Jahrhundert," in Zeitschrifi fiir Stadtgeschichte, Stadtsoziologie und Denkmalpflege 1 (1974) 234, and quotation on 236; on the Frankfurt struggle also Gerald L. Soliday, A Community in Conflict. Frankfurt Society in the 17th and Early 18th Centuries (Hanover N.H.: University Press of New Hampshire, 1974). A catalogue of this type of urban conflict in Germany is included in Chr. Friedrichs, "German Town Revolts and the Seventeenth Century Crisis," in Renaissance and Modern Studies 26 (1982) 27-51.

43. Schilling, "StSdtischen 'Republikanismus,' " 108-121. 44. Heinz Schilling, "Aufstandbewegungen in der Stadtbiirgerlichen Gesellschaft des

Alten Reichs. Die Vorgeschichte des Miinsteraner T~iuferreiches, 1525-1534," in Hans-Ulrich Wehler, editor, Der deutsche Bauernkrieg, 1524-1526 (Geschichte und Gesellschaft, Sonderheft 1), (G6ttingen, 1975), 233.

100

45. See Charles Tilly, The Contentious French. Four Centuries of Popular Struggle (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1986).

46. Cf. Gail Bossenga, "City and State: An Urban Perspective on the Origins of the French Revolution," in Keith Michael Baker, editor, The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture, vol. i, The Political Culture of the Old Regime (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1987), 115-140.

47. Ibid., 118. 48. H. F. J. M. van den Eerenbeemt, 's-Hertogenbosch in de Bataafse en Franse tijd,

1794-1814. Bijdrage tot de kennis van de soeiaal-economische structuur (Nijme- gen: Centrale Drukkerij, 1960) chap. i.

49. M. P. Christ, De Brabantsche Saeeke. Het vergeefse streven naar een gewestelijke status voor Staats-Brabant 1585-1675 (Tilburg: Stichting Zuidelijk Historisch Contact, 1984).

50. Rijksarchiefin Noord-Brabant, Colleetie Martini 123M. 51. This section is primarily based on two series of volumes in the Gemeente Archief

's-Hertogenbosch (GAH), Oud stadsarchief (OSA), that have been systematically worked over for the years 1770-1794: the resolutions of the town's council (A 143-167, resoluties [i.e. resolutions]), and the documents connected to them, including requests put to the council and committee advice on these (A 297-321, brieven en rapporten [i.e., letters and reports]). As I am preparing a book, due to appear in 1992, that will include these materials, I have refrained from extensive annotation here. On the medieval guilds: N. H. L. van den Heuvel, De ambachts- gilden van 's-Hertogenbosch voor 1629 (Utrecht, 1946).

52. GAH, OSA, A 477, commissie tot de stadsprivilegien, 5 Sept. 1776. 53. GAH, OSA, A 147, 7 Dec. 1774, fol. 538vso-541vso. 54. GAH, OSA, A148, 25 Oct. 1775, fol. 385ro-392vso. 55. Rijksarehief in Noord-Brabant, Collectie Martini 62, Collectanea Van Heurn, fol.

122.ii. 56. B. C. M. Jacobs, Justitie en politic in 's-Hertogenbosch voor 1629 (Brabantse

Rechtshistorische Reeks 1 (Assen/Maastricht: Van Gorcum, 1986) chap. iv. 57. Rijksarehief in Noord-Brabant, Collectie Martini 63, Collectanea Van Heurn, fol.

479vso. 58. Members who could no longer afford to pay the contribution were discharged:

GAH, archief Bossche sehuttersgilden 28, notulen officieren Jonge Schuts, e.g. fols. 156, 176, 189, 190, 208, 268.

59. GAH, archief Bossche sehuttersgilden, lijst van schutters behorende tot een der rotten van de Jonge Schuts, 1743.

60. See J. S. Bartstra jr., Vlootherstel en legeraugmentatie, 1770-1780 (Assen: Van Goreum & Comp., 1952).

61. Joan Derk van der Capellen, Aan het Volk van Nederland. Het patriottisch program uit 1781, ed. by H. L. Zwitzer (Amsterdam: De Bataafsche Leeuw, 1987) 13, 35-37, 72-74, 85-86.

62. GAH, OSA, A 159, 10 May 1786, fol. 246vso-250vso. 63. GAH, archief Bossche schuttersgilden 28, 250-258, 264. 64. GAH, OSA, A 159, 10 May 1786, fol. 246vso-250vso. 65. A. R. M. Momrners, Brabant van generaliteitsland tot gewest. Bestuursinrichting en

gezagsuitoefening in en over de landen en steden van Staats-Brabant en Bataafs Bra- bant, 1629-1796 (Utrecht/Nijmegen: Dekker & Van de Vegt, 1953) vol. 1, 37.

66. GAH, OSA, A 159, 4 Jan. 1786, fol. 4-7. 67. GAH, OSA, A 313, 22 Nov. 1786.

101

68. Members of the Society in: Algemeen Rijksarchief Den Haag (ARA), archief Sta- ten Generaal (SG), 12656.

69. Ibid., 12655, statutes; on the Patriot societies in general: Schama, Patriots and Liberators, 170-173.

70. Ibid., 12653, notulen, on 2, 22, and 29 Jan. 1787. 71. Te Brake, Regents and Rebels, 69. 72. Van Sas, "Politiek als leerproces: het patriottisme in Utrecht," Jaarboek Oud-

Utrecht (1987) 39. 73. GAH, OSA, A 160, 6 & 7 March 1787, fol. 89vso-96vso. 74. ARA, SG 12653, notulen, 8 & 15 March 1787. 75. GAH, Bossche schuttersgilden 66a. 76. GAH, OSA, A 160, 16 May 1787, fol. 193ro-198vso. 77. Ibid., 18 May & 4 July 1787, fol. 200vso-203vso, 256ro. 78. ARA, SG 12653, 21 June 1787; GAH, OSA, A 314, 18 July 1787. 79. Schama, Patriots and Liberators, 109-110, 129-131. 80. In May the exercising militiamen had already declared that, although they were

prepared to defend the privileges, if need be with loss of their lives, there was no point in fighting the professional army: GAH, OSA, A 160, fol. 193ro-198vso.

81. ARA, SG 12654, Sept. 21, 1787. 82. GAH, OSA, A 160, Aug. 18 & Sept. 15, 1787, fol. 332vso-338vso, 360ro-

362vso. 83. C. Free, De Verschrikkelyke plundering te's Bosch (Den Bosch: Boekhandel Adr.

Heinen, 1987). 84. GAH, OSA, A 160, Nov. 9, 1787, fol. 447; also GAH, Bossche schuttersgilden

28, notulen Jonge Schuts, Dec. 2, 1787. 85. W. Ph. te Brake, "Burgers and boeren in the Dutch patriot revolution," Van der

Zee et al., editors, 1787, 92-93; Tom Nieuwenhuis, Keeshonden en Prinsmannen. Durgerdam, Ransdorp en Holisloot, 1780-1813 (Amsterdam: Historisch Semi- narium van de Universiteit van Amsterdam, 1986), 184-185.

86. Its full title reads Ontwerp, orn de Republiek door eene heilzaame vereeniging van regent en burger van binnen gelukkig en van buiten gedugt te maaken (Leyden, 1785). Quotes from the Draft will henceforth be annotated in brackets in the text.

87. Schama, Patriots and Liberators, 95. 88. Ibid. and Leyden Draft, 46. 89. The relevance of the constitutional argument for the development of Patriot ideas

is the subject of I. L. Leeb, The ideological origins of the Batavian Revolution. His- tory and politics in the Dutch Republic 1747-1800 (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973). According to Leeb, the constitution and history provided both the conser- vative Orangists and their Patriot opponents with their main arguments right up to the suppression of the Patriots by force of (Prussian) arms in 1787.

90. Te Brake, Regents andRebels, 94. 91. Ibid., 136n9; in spite of the fact that the general introduction to the draft-constitu-

tion was "strikingly similar, in fact, to the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776" (97), as was pointed out by R. R. Palmer himself (110n24).

92. Ibid., 100-105. 93. GAH, archief Bossche schuttersgilden, 66a. 94. N. C. F. van Sas, "Tweedragt overal: het patriottisme en de uitvinding van de

moderne politiek," in Bots, Mijnhardt, editors, De Droom, 24. 95. Te Brake, Regents and Rebels, 118.

102

96. Quoted in Van Sas, "Politiek als leerproces," 9. 97. Van Sas, "Tweedragt overal," 21-22. 98. Concept-Reglement op de Regeerings Bestelling van de Provintie Utrecht (Utrecht,

1784), chap. iii, art. x.1 (29). 99. Ibid., chap. iv, art. xii (29: quotation), xv and xvi; the Leyden Draft introduced a

similar burgher committee with exactly the same tasks: Ontwerp, art. x (65-66). 100. Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions, 164-171. 101. Blockmans, "Princes conqu6rants," 176-177, 181. 102. Cf. Charles Tilly, "War Making and State Making as Organized Crime," in Peter

B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschemayer, Theda Skocpol, editors, Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 169-191.

103. Cf. Pierre Birnbaum, "States, ideologies and collective action in Western Europe," in International Social Sciences Journal 32 (1980) 671-686; Ira Katznelson, "Working-Class Formation and the State: Nineteenth-Century England in Ameri- can Perspective," Evans et al., editors, Bringing the State Back In, 257-284.

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