addresses the dynamics of performative displays of enthusiasm and disdain in public confrontations between rulers and ruled.
While acclamations remain a familiar phenomenon today, they tend to be understood as an atmospheric, rather than a functional, element of political life. In consequence, the historical variability of their practice and impact remains understudied. Building on a survey of current research, this contribution addresses the forms, functions and situations of acclamation in Europe during the Age of Revolutions.
Focusing on the tensions between the practice’s symbolic holism – suggesting a direct expression of the communities’ undivided will – and its underlying complexities as a mode of collective action, it argues that acclamations gained a historically unique impact during the (post-)revolutionary period. While other opportunities for political articulation and participation remained sharply constrained, these public vocalizations presented one of the very few available modes of regular political engagement. At the same time, public interactions between rulers and ‘the people’ gained new performative significance against the background of experiences of political upheaval and regime change.
A consideration of a wide range of case studies from across the continent shows how practices of acclamation and their reception became part of a transnationally entangled contestation of political legitimacy, constituting an ephemeral, but momentous mode of popular politics.
Many thanks to the editors for their hard work in getting this excellent volume together.
On January 13 and 14, I am attending the conference
Languages, Discourses and Practices beyond the Vote: New Perspectives on Politicization in the Nineteenth Century
which was originally planned in Madrid, but is now held online. The organizers, Oriol Luján and Diego Palacios Cerezales (Madrid), seek to build on recent debates on nineteenth-century processes of politicization, collective mobilization, citizenship-buidling, electoral practices and petitioning.
In my own contribution, titled
Plebiscites on the Streets: The Politics of Public Acclamation in Early Nineteenth-Century Europe
I will discuss the politics of applause, cheering and other modes of vocal support and disapprobation.
Theo Jung (Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg), Plebiscites on the Streets: The Politics of Public Acclamation in Early Nineteenth-Century Europe
Emmanuel Fureix (Université Paris-Est Créteil), Visual History and Popular Politicization in the 19th Century: Approaches and Proposals (France, 1814-1871)
11.00 Coffee break
11.15 Second Session– Mass Politics? Associations and campaigns
Maartje Janse (Leiden University), Voluntary associations and political participation
Diego Palacios Cerezales (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), Comparative cultures of mobilisation. Transnational Catholic campaigns in the 19th century
12.35 Lunchbreak
15.00 Third Session – Representation and citizenship
Henry Miller (Durham University), Petitioning and representation
Florencia Peyrou (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid), Women, politics and politicization in Spain (1808-1874)
Volker Köhler (TU Darmstadt), A Republican Intermezzo? Changing Perceptions of State and Citizenship in the city of Mainz, 1793-1814
17.00 End of the day
Thursday 14 January 2021
9.30 Fourth Session – Popular mobilisation
Álvaro París Martín (Université Toulouse-Jean Jaurès), Popular Royalism in the Marketplace: Women, Work and Everyday Politics in Marseille and Madrid (1814-1830)
Jordi Roca Vernet (Universitat de Barcelona), Popular mobilization through the National Militia. Cities and liberal revolution
10.50 Coffee break
11.00 Fifth Session – Participation in elections beyond vote
Malcolm Crook (Keele University), Hoarse throats and sore heads: popular participation in elections before democracy
Oriol Luján (Universidad Complutense de Madrid), Political citizens, thanks to or despite the law? The empowered voice of subjects in electoral claims
Theo Jung 