Preliminary Programme

Wed 22 March
    8:30
    10:45
    14:15
    16:30

Thu 23 March
    8:30
    10:45
    14:15
    16:30

Fri 24 March
    8:30
    10:45
    14:15
    16:30

Sat 25 March
    8:30
    10:45
    14:15
    16:30

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Wednesday 22 March 2006 10:45
L-2 FAM02 International Families II: Transnationality and the Nation-State 1700-1850
Room L
Network: Family and Demography Chair: Jon Mathieu
Organizer: Christopher H. Johnson Discussant: Christopher H. Johnson
Jacqueline Letzter : The Emigration of the Stier Family from Antwerp: Sizing Up American-style Happiness in an Age of Revolution (1794-1804)
This paper will discuss the family correspondence of Rosalie Stier Calvert (1778-1821), a Belgian woman whose experiences in America shed light on the formation of Belgian cultural identity and on early American views of European culture.In 1794 the Stiers, a wealthy family from Antwerp, fled their hometown just ahead of ... (Show more)
This paper will discuss the family correspondence of Rosalie Stier Calvert (1778-1821), a Belgian woman whose experiences in America shed light on the formation of Belgian cultural identity and on early American views of European culture.In 1794 the Stiers, a wealthy family from Antwerp, fled their hometown just ahead of the second invasion by French Revolutionary armies. Henry Stier, a descendant of Peter Paul Rubens, owned a world-famous collection of paintings by old Flemish masters. Part of the reason for the family's hasty departure from Antwerp was to avoid letting this collection fall into the hands of French Revolutionaries, who were impounding art treasures as military levy. The family later settled in Maryland, where Henry Stier built a stylish estate named Riversdale, modeled on one of his country homes near Antwerp. (The chateau still stands, in the present-day town of Riverdale.) The family returned to Antwerp in 1803, except for the youngest daughter, Rosalie, who remained in America. In 1799, Rosalie Stier had married George Calvert, a wealthy American plantation owner, and the young couple had settled at Riversdale.
From 1803 until her death in 1821, Rosalie wrote regularly to her family in Antwerp. Their correspondence (in French, interspersed with Flemish and English) is full of observations about American politics, the family's American friends and acquaintances, and their investments in America, and provides us with vivid images of the young American republic. The family discussed the relative merits of life in America compared to life in Antwerp, laying out what in their eyes constituted ideals in government, culture, and society and revealing what might be a Belgian identity, as distinct from the French and Dutch, consecutive occupiers of Belgium between 1794 and 1830.
Rosalie Stier Calvert's high social position in Washington (she and her husband were frequent guests at the Presidential mansion; they were of the diplomatic circles; and entertained lavishly at their home, Riversdale) gave her opportunities to grandly display Belgian fashion, foods, luxury goods and plants her family sent from Antwerp. Her home itself was seen as exotic, Thomas Jefferson even referring to it as "Egyptian" in appearance. Moreover, the famous Flemish painting collection, which remained in her possession once her family returned to Belgium, further contributed to the projection a specifically Belgian image, distinct from the, in Washington, more common French presence. I will explore how the tensions between Rosalie Stier Calvert's assimilation to her new country and her retention of her Belgian heritage turned her into a privileged agent for the transfer of Belgian cultural identity to the New World. This tension was fed by her close connection with her family in Belgium, who both were helping her attain a high social (and cultural) position in America, and at the same time enticing her return to Belgium with her American family.
Cultural transfers, such as those operated by the Stier family, were important both for the shaping of the new American nation's cultural cosmopolitanism and the formation and affirmation of a unique Belgian cultural heritage. My project will focus on two aspects of cultural transfers: one, their importance in the formation of national identity; and two, the contribution of women to cultural identity. With respect of the role of Rosalie Stier Calvert, I will ask the following questions: Did this international dimension determine the role she could play in the process of cultural 'nationalization'? Did this role correspond with traditional or new ways of networking open (or closed) to women? Were mobility and networking a means to escape the social constraints imposed on her as a woman? (Show less)

Arnout Mertens : Religion, State, and Nation. Belgian Pedigreed Nobles in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, 1814-1830/9
Based on the experiences of the twenty-four families that belonged to the Noble Estate of Brabant during the Old Regime, this paper sets out to revise the traditional explanations of the different attitudes of the Southern-Netherlandish nobility towards the Belgian Revolution of 1830. It states that opposing views on how ... (Show more)
Based on the experiences of the twenty-four families that belonged to the Noble Estate of Brabant during the Old Regime, this paper sets out to revise the traditional explanations of the different attitudes of the Southern-Netherlandish nobility towards the Belgian Revolution of 1830. It states that opposing views on how society should be organized, rather than socio-economic conditions, or adherence to ideals such as ‘nationalism’ or ‘legitimism’ (i.e. support for the legitimate ruler), offer a key to understanding their division into supporters and opponents of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands (1815-1830). At the same time, it does not want to completely dismiss national sentiment as an explanatory factor.
Opponents of the autocratic Protestant King adhered to the conviction that society should be founded on the Roman Church and organized according to a corporatist model (with the nobility, the Church and the city burghers as the central corporations). Consequently, state intervention should have been, in their view, limited to a minimum. In contrast, nobles supporting William I’s regime did so because they backed the existing form of government. They approved of state intervention in society and of a reduced role for the Church, and considered the nobility to be an indispensable body whose purpose it was to mediate between a strong monarch and the people.
But, even if the differing views that nobles had of government and religion are key factors in explaining their attitude, national sentiment was important in the 1830 revolution. On the one hand, it cannot be denied that a strong sense of Belgian identity existed among the revolutionary nobles. For them, nationalist feeling, the desired form of government and religious conviction were intertwined. (As I demonstrate in my thesis, belief in the existence of a Belgian cultural nation had already emerged previously, during the Little Brabant Revolution of 1787.) On the other hand, Orangist nobles had a different relationship to the Belgian nation. They approached their ‘nation’ in a more neutral-political way rather than in a cultural way, and they often considered the United Kingdom of the Netherlands as their fatherland, and its entire population as a nation.
To what extent, as one would expect, diverging marriage patterns are to be distinguished between the two groups remains to be investigated. Surprisingly, families of both groups intermarried and it occurred in both groups that families opened up its ranks to nobles of more recent origin or to non-nobles. Moreover, even nobles defining themselves as culturally Belgian developed kinship ties outside Belgium. (Show less)

Christine Philliou : Families of Empires and Nations: Transforming Ottoman Politics in Southeastern Europe One Family at a Time, 1750-1850
In this paper I explore the role of family relationships in the formation and expansion of an Ottoman elite from the mid-18 to the mid-19th century. This elite, known as Phanariots, was made up predominantly of Greek-identified, Orthodox Christians from Istanbul and the European provinces of the Empire. Their activities ... (Show more)
In this paper I explore the role of family relationships in the formation and expansion of an Ottoman elite from the mid-18 to the mid-19th century. This elite, known as Phanariots, was made up predominantly of Greek-identified, Orthodox Christians from Istanbul and the European provinces of the Empire. Their activities ranged from mercantile to political—those at the apex of Phanariot power served as the negotiator-diplomats for the Ottoman Court and ruled the Danubian Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia in the name of the Ottoman sultan. The two phases of their story in this paper are: 1) how their ranks swelled in the late 18th century along family and patronage networks, and 2) how some survived the crises of the 1820s—the Greek Revolution and the annihilation of the Ottoman imperial military—and adapted to a world where the imperial option existed side by side with the national option (first Greek, then Bulgarian and Romanian).
In order to demonstrate these processes I will highlight specific families on the one hand, and specific networks that spanned families, state institutions, and religious groups, on the other. One of the goals of this paper is to carve out a new approach to the “proto-nationalist” and “early nationalist” periods, and to explore how nationalism was not a fully formed ideology that determined behavior (as is often assumed in retrospective historiography). Instead, the choice to join a national movement, whether it be Greek, Romanian, or Bulgarian, or to remain part of an imperial elite was a strategic choice that often had divergent outcomes for individuals within the same families. (Show less)

Jonathan Spangler : Spreading the Bets: Multi-National Aristocratic Kinship Networks in a Changing Political Environment (1500-1815)
A recent biography of the Prince de Ligne by Philip Mansel traces the fascinating career of a man whose premier loyalties seemed to be to Europe itself, rather than to any one particular monarchy or state. With a career spanning the Age of Enlightenment and the Age of Revolution, Ligne ... (Show more)
A recent biography of the Prince de Ligne by Philip Mansel traces the fascinating career of a man whose premier loyalties seemed to be to Europe itself, rather than to any one particular monarchy or state. With a career spanning the Age of Enlightenment and the Age of Revolution, Ligne underwent radical shifts of employment, serving at different times in the military and government machinery of Austria and the Austrian Netherlands, Russia, and France. Yet his career was not an anomaly; indeed his own father and uncles had had similarly diverse careers in the previous generation, and his sons would continue to do so in the next. Despite his seeming shifts in loyalty, Ligne maintained one constant: the premier importance of family. This feature bound the prince together with an entire society of Europeans, who lived in a virtually boundary-less world in the Early Modern period. Countless examples can be drawn from the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in which family loyalty was prized, and rewarded, above loyalty to an individual monarch or state. Princely status and blood connections to Europe’s ruling houses ensured pardons after rebellion, and opened doors to careers for younger sons all across the map of European courtly society. Far from being extraordinary, the career of the Prince de Ligne can in fact be seen as a model for aristocratic behaviour at the highest, ‘multi-national’ level.
This paper will examine aristocratic clans and their dynastic strategies, particularly those who share a common place of origin with families like the Ligne: Salm, Cro¨, Chimay, Deux-Ponts/Zweibrücken, Arenberg, Fürstenberg. All of these originated and advanced their rank and status either in the area of the Low Countries now known as Belgium, or in the neighbouring areas of the middle and upper Rhine. These regions were under the authority of the Habsburgs, first of Spain, then of Austria, yet retained strong linguistic and cultural links with neighbouring France, and with the United Dutch Provinces to the north. As a result, most of these families employed a tactic of ‘spreading their bets’ to best succeed as minor princes squeezed between two competing larger powers. Their sons were sent into military and ecclesiastical service in different European capitals, sometimes serving in direct opposition on the battlefield, but always maintaining their defining first loyalty to their family of birth. In the era of emerging nationalism, this strategy and practice frequently ran counter to the prevailing moods of the day, and this paper will also examine the pulls toward and away from the concepts of ‘Belgium’ and the construction of a national identity at the end of the eighteenth century. (Show less)



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