Realpolitik or Utopianism?

By the way, I am very strongly Scandinavian.Footnote 1

In the middle of the nineteenth century, being a Scandinavian did not only mean that someone was born in Scandinavia. It was also a term for being a political Scandinavianist, an adherent to the notion that Sweden, Norway and Denmark together should make up a single state. Scandinavianist ideology had many adherents in the mid-nineteenth century, up to the highest political echelons in all three Scandinavian countries. As such there was hardly anything sensational about the idea of Scandinavian unification. Rather, the quote above is sensational because of who it originates from. The words are Otto von Bismarck’s. His life’s work made him the creator of a united Germany and the incarnation of ruthless Realpolitik. It is paradoxical, therefore, that Bismarck expressed himself so clearly in favour of an ideology that posterity has written off as naive idealism, utopian fantasy, and even as “dangerous escapism”.Footnote 2 Does this mean that one of the most avid proponents of Realpolitik, and indeed one of nineteenth-century Europe’s most skilled statesmen, lacked an understanding of Scandinavian politics? Or have Scandinavian historians misinterpreted efforts to unite Scandinavia in the mid-nineteenth century and never fully grasped their ramifications?

Bismarck spoke these words on the evening of 16 December 1864 in his official residence on Wilhelmstraße in Berlin, where he was meeting with the Danish civil servant, journalist and secret agent, Jens Julius Hansen. The meeting took place shortly after the conclusion of the Second Schleswig War of 1864, which saw Denmark being thoroughly defeated by Prussia and Austria, and having to cede the duchies of Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg. Political Scandinavianists had imagined that Scandinavia would unite through war, much as Italy had done in 1861 and as Germany was currently in the process of doing. Unlike Italian and German nationalists, however, their attempts failed. But it was a close-run thing. The First Schleswig War in 1848–1851 and the Crimean War in 1854–1856 had both held potential for Scandinavian unification through war. In the summer of 1863, two Scandinavian kings, Frederick VII and Charles XV, Denmark’s council president and minister for foreign affairs, Carl Christian Hall, and the envoy of the united kingdoms of Sweden and Norway to Copenhagen, Count Henning Hamilton, prepared a political strategy for the coming Danish-German war over Schleswig. This strategy was based on a Scandinavian alliance and the international system that had been created at the Congress of Vienna but adapted to tie in with the increasingly anarchic and warlike course of international politics after the Crimean War. Of the great powers, Great Britain was certainly informed of Scandinavianist plans, while France appears to have been, while at least two Swedish ministers were au fait. One of the latter, the Swedish-Norwegian minister for foreign affairs, Ludvig Manderström, negotiated a treaty of alliance with Hall in Copenhagen in late August 1863. Sweden-Norway looked poised to join Denmark in what looked like certain war with the German states—a war envisaged as a Scandinavian war of unification.

This means that we must take issue with the two narratives that have shaped the history of the Second Schleswig War in Scandinavia. In Denmark, historians, politicians and artists have caricatured the war as being the result of a foolhardy policy, in which a political elite, blinded by arrogance and romantic nationalism, senselessly precipitated the country into a war they could never win. The war has not attracted the same level of interest from Swedish and Norwegian historians, but on the other hand generations of historians have heaped praise on Swedish and Norwegian politicians for putting the brakes on Charles XV’s adventurist policy and keeping Sweden-Norway out of a war that Swedish and Norwegian historians have tended to regard every bit as foolhardy as have their Danish colleagues. This version of events needs to be refined and at certain points rewritten. As was the case in Italy and Germany, the Scandinavian monarchs and several of their key ministers did not consider that the war necessarily presented the main problem, but rather a solution to the common problems that Scandinavia was facing: the question of Schleswig and the threat to the Scandinavian countries from Germany and Russia. Furthermore, like so many other dynasties, the royal house of Sweden-Norway was eyeing yet another crown.

The Scandinavian alliance negotiated in 1863 was never ratified. When war broke out in early 1864, Denmark found itself standing alone against the might of Prussia and Austria and suffered a catastrophic defeat. The meeting between Bismarck and Jens Julius Hansen shows, however, that, although peace may have been concluded, the result of the war was not regarded as final and the fate of Scandinavianism was yet to be sealed. Northern Schleswig could be returned to Denmark in exchange for a united Scandinavia allied to Prussia. Bismarck was looking for options in the event of Russian adversity to Prussia, but he was not inclined to give with one hand without taking with the other.

I regard an alliance between Prussia and the three Scandinavian kingdoms as something for which one would doubtless sacrifice something, even a Gebietsafståelse [cession of territory]. Together, they would create a power that would arouse the interest of Prussia; their navy would be of approximately the same size as ours; our religion is the same, the language, Low German, is still not so markedly different from Danish. And there is no doubt that any future Danish government would have to be Scandinavian, that is to say when it assesses its country’s interests correctly […].Footnote 3

The Prussian minister president was not alone in his support for a united Scandinavia. Efforts to this effect were supported at various times by such figures as the French emperor, Napoleon III, the king of Italy, Victor Emmanuel II, and the Italian prime minister Camillo Cavour. In Great Britain, opinion was divided, but this did not prevent the British discussing the partition of the Danish state with envoys from Prussia and Sweden-Norway, and at the start of 1864 Queen Victoria declared her support for a Scandinavian union. In the summer of 1864, even Russia appears to have been prepared to begrudgingly accept it, were Scandinavian unification to be presented as a fait accompli.

Prominent Scandinavians also had ambitions to create a united states of Scandinavia. In the spring of 1864, King Charles XV of Sweden and Norway, assisted by, among others, his minister of justice (and one of Sweden’s two prime ministers), Louis de Geer, negotiated with Denmark’s king Christian IX and his council president D.G. Monrad to draft a treaty of union and a common succession. While an understanding between the royal houses of Scandinavia would have brought the three Scandinavian countries together under one legal framework, there were also Scandinavianists—and at least one king—who were prepared to act beyond the strict limits of the law.

For the better part of two decades, a revolution aimed at uniting Scandinavia lay on the drawing board. As early as the beginning of 1848, Danish Scandinavianists were considering a revolution that was to pave the way for a member of the Bernadotte family to take their place on the Danish throne. In the mid-1850s some members of the Bernadotte family were harbouring thoughts themselves of exploiting, or even triggering, a revolution in Copenhagen. Still, at no time was the question of revolution more relevant or plans more concrete than in the years between 1863 and 1865, when Scandinavianists in the higher echelons of Danish society proposed kidnapping the Danish royal family and securing power for themselves in Copenhagen with the assistance of Swedish-Norwegian troops and foreign powers. These plans ended up in the Bernadotte family’s own archives and have left traces elsewhere too.

The hopes, and more especially the fears, which nineteenth-century Scandinavianists felt for the future meant that a number of them were prepared to take up arms to create the society and the polity that, in their eyes, were necessary if Scandinavia was to survive. This meant that they considered war and revolution as legitimate tools in their armoury. For most people, a revolution involves the overthrowal of a state’s political order in favour of another. However, there is less agreement about what constitutes the primary cause of revolution. Historians, political scientists and sociologists have proposed everything from economics to class conflict and from social, cultural and intellectual changes to technological and structural development. Several of these play a part in the origins of Scandinavianism, the course it took, and revolutions planned in its name. In practice, however, revolutions are not solely about such underlying factors. They are also about agency, about chance events and about ideas. As the current authors have shown in the book Scandinavia after Napoleon, 1814–1851, the fusion of underlying factors, agency, chance events and ideas was evident in the Scandinavian repercussions of the European revolutions of 1848–1849, which could have brought about Scandinavian unification when Denmark and the German Confederation plunged into war over the duchy of Schleswig. However, just as King Oscar I of Sweden and Norway, backed by his two governments and parliaments, was about to take the leap into military intervention and possibly launch a Scandinavian war of unification, structural conditions came in the way as Russia and Britain agreed to pull the brake to preserve the status quo. The international political system created at Vienna in 1815 ultimately weathered the storms of 1848–1849, but it was severely shaken. Much like their Italian and German counterparts, Scandinavianists shook off their disappointment and adapted to the changing political climate of the 1850s—which seemed to offer unprecedented opportunities when France, Britain and Russia plunged into war in 1854.

This is the point of departure for the current book. It serves as the sequel to Scandinavia after Napoleon, which mapped out the ideological origins and evolvement of the Scandinavianist movement and ideology, and surveyed the political development and history of Scandinavia in the first three and a half decades after the Napoleonic Wars, through the European revolutions of 1848–1849 and the First Schleswig War of 1848–1851. However, despite its disappointment at the inconclusive war over Schleswig, the Scandinavianist movement did not culminate at the end of the 1840s. It had only reached the end of the beginning. The 1850s and 1860s saw Scandinavianists plotting revolutions and wars in earnest, as they stepped up their efforts to unite the Scandinavian countries and very nearly succeeded in their endeavours. As such it is worth offering here a brief recapitulation of the core idea underlying Scandinavianism and the geostrategic anatomy of Scandinavia.

Scandinavianism and Scandinavia

In the nineteenth century, the term Scandinavianism covered a broad movement that was looking for a deeper and broader Scandinavian collaboration in spiritual, economic and political spheres. The movement arose originally among conservative artists striving for a closer cultural link, and it developed into a student revolt and movement that envisaged constitutional reforms before becoming a serious political programme in the mid-nineteenth century encompassing a project of nation-building and a Scandinavian union of states. It then took the shape of practical endeavours stretching from, for example, the Scandinavian monetary union (1873/1875) to the Nordic passport union (1954)—to say nothing of several Nordic associations established in the meantime—before ending up as institutionalised collaboration through bodies such as the Nordic Council (1952) and Nordic Council of Ministers (1971).

Scandinavianism included notions of a common nationality and culture, a need for shared national security and the desire for Scandinavian integration. It took inspiration from British and French liberalism, German idealism, and Italian and German nationalism. Scandinavianism extended from cultural and practical collaboration to a defensive alliance to a political and dynastic union. One idea, however, lay at its root: the idea of a Scandinavian entity that would be developed through closer communal links. Questions, however, remained as to the degree to which it should be realised, how it should be realised, and how quickly it should be realised.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Finland and Åland were part of Sweden, while Norway, Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands belonged under the Danish king, who was also duke of the Danish duchy of Schleswig and the German duchy of Holstein. This changed with the Napoleonic Wars. Sweden lost Finland and Åland to Russia in 1809, Norway was ceded by Denmark in 1814 and united with Sweden, while Denmark, by way of compensation, was given the German duchy of Lauenburg in 1815. The Napoleonic wars turned Sweden and Norway into nation states in a Scandinavian union, while its separation from Norway made Denmark less Scandinavian and more German by increasing the proportion of the German-speaking part of the population from 25% to 40%. These upheavals gave rise to the question of what should constitute Scandinavia and the Nordic countries, which indeed became a hotly contested issue in post-Napoleonic Scandinavia.

Common to all applications of the terms Scandinavia and the Nordic countries was the fact that they were used either in extension of or as a replacement for a national appellation. What set them apart was what they designated. There were four distinct interpretations here, and these were linked either to the existing unions or to those that people wished to create. The most comprehensive included not only what we understand today as the Nordic countries but also the Danish king’s German territories of Holstein (and, from 1815, Lauenburg). Such a union was a probability during the Napoleonic Wars, when members of the Augustenburg family—prominent Danish princes with marriage links into the Danish royal family and even claiming hereditary rights to the kingdom of Denmark—were contenders to the Swedish throne. However, after 1815 increasing national antagonism marginalised this interpretation of Scandinavianism. The three other ways of conceiving Scandinavia were either as Sweden and Norway, or as Sweden, Norway and Denmark, or as Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland. Of these the first is known as two-state Scandinavianism and was based on the Swedish-Norwegian union created in 1814. The other two were associated with three-state or four-state Scandinavianism.

Two-state Scandinavianism was a Swedish-Norwegian unionism, created by Charles XIV John (the former French marshal Jean Baptiste Bernadotte) during and after the Napoleonic wars and based on the revolutionary French concept of natural borders. According to Charles John, the Scandinavian peninsula was destined by nature to form a single polity. Swedes and Norwegians were Scandinavians, united by a common language, culture, religion, origin and geography, and the Scandinavian peninsula gave them a significant geostrategic advantage. The aim of the Swedish and Norwegian monarch was to integrate the two kingdoms, but his efforts fell on stony ground in Norway. The Norwegians feared anything that might be interpreted as an attempt to forge the two nations into one. Still, the union enjoyed support from an influential segment of the Norwegian population and at the beginning of the 1850s a new generation of the Norwegian elite was working for a closer union with Sweden.

Despite the efforts of Charles John and the Swedish government to denote the very term Scandinavia with the Swedish-Norwegian union, most of Europe nevertheless perceived Scandinavia as comprising Sweden, Norway and Denmark. The emergence of the Scandinavianist movement in the 1830s reinforced this understanding of Scandinavia as a geographic term and of Scandinavia as being based on a culture, history and origin that was shared by Norwegians, Danes and Swedes alike. Three-state Scandinavianism included the kingdom of Denmark, its dependencies in the North Atlantic (Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands) and the duchy of Schleswig, but it excluded the state’s German territories. The river Eider between Schleswig and Holstein was perceived as a natural, ethnic and historical border, not only between Danes and Germans but also between Scandinavians and Germans. Yet, much like the term Scandinavia was contested, perceptions of Scandinavia divided the Danish unitary state into two. The term unitary state (in Danish helstat and in German Dänischer Gesamtstaat) covers the Danish-German polity that existed between 1815 and 1864. This term requires some explanation, as the Danish state (or empire) was more composite than unitary in practice. The term helstat can essentially be translated into “all of the state” or “the whole of the state”. Its proponents strove for unity and uniformity within the Danish state, regardless of ethnic or historical diversification, hence them being labelled in the present book as “unitary statists”, and the state they strove to maintain as “unitary state”.

Four-state Scandinavianism was based on the inclusion of Finland in the plans for Scandinavian union and was also based on the idea that Scandinavia’s southernmost border lay at the Eider in Schleswig. To the north and west it lay at Vardø and Stat in Norway, while the river Neva near St. Petersburg was the eastern border. For over 650 years, Finland had been an integral part of Sweden. Substantial sections of the population along Finland’s western coast and among the elite were Swedish-speaking. The question at the time was whether Finland’s connection to Scandinavia was simply cultural or whether it should be reconquered and made part of a Scandinavian polity. Writing in 1866, a leading Scandinavianist ideologue maintained that the “terms for a union, in which Finland should be part, cannot be determined yet; there must be a difference between the internal position of the Finnish-speaking Suomi people and the other three peoples of similar language; the former must stand in a freer, somewhat more remote relation [to the latter]”.Footnote 4

Some historians see Scandinavianism as a pan-national ideology and movement. Being as Scandinavianism encompassed what had, by the mid-nineteenth century, come to constitute Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and Finnish nations—albeit in various stages of development—the term pan-nationalism is applicable, but it is also a contested term. John Breuilly, for example, sees pan-nationalism as a retrospective term describing unification nationalisms that failed in political terms.Footnote 5 On the other hand, Alexander Maxwell argues for a reappraisal of pan-nationalism by dissociating the term from “high-political goals” to emphasise the cultural aspirations of pan-national movements.Footnote 6 Both approaches to the term have their merit, but in order to acknowledge the political aspirations of Scandinavianism—and their viability—we have opted for the purpose of the current book to regard Scandinavianism as a variant of unification nationalism, even if it ultimately failed in its bid for Scandinavian unification. We will return to this terminological discussion in more detail below.

The End of History

Most historians write about countries that still exist. That shapes the questions that they pose and the narratives they create. The result is a set of stories that fit into the larger narrative of the emergence, development and survival of the individual nations. This is understandable but presents potential problems. Presentism in the writing of history leaves us focusing on those political projects that have succeeded. The outcomes of history are seen as issuing a confirmation of their own rightness rather than as subject to chance, circumstance and human agency. This means that it is rare for the continued existence of states or nations to be questioned. This is far from the case for states, nations or unions that fell apart, vanished or never saw the light of day.Footnote 7

Our knowledge of things that have in fact happened may give us tunnel vision when regarding the past. This is hardly surprising. National communities are characterised by the very fact that they remember those events that unite the nation but forget those that divide it. This way of writing history helps create a common identity. The problem is, however, that it gives the course of history an inevitability, a form of determinism that diminishes its vitality—and the vitality of decisions and choices made at the time. This way of writing of history does not simply deprive the past of possible futures but its logical consequence is that the present has to be understood within the framework of these same inflexible structures. History becomes an iron cage of rationality with no space for political dynamics, chance events or individual agency. Determinism is, paradoxically enough, something that present-day Scandinavians share with the Scandinavianists of the past, for they, too, saw the development of history as an inevitable process towards a predetermined goal. Presentism has often prevented us from posing important questions, thus preventing the past from providing answers on its own premises.

Significant areas of European historiography are characterised by largely predetermined narratives about the nation states of today. This is also true of Scandinavia, whose national histories are determined by the nation states that emerged in the nineteenth century. As such the present-day nation states have become “the end of history”. Sweden, Norway and Denmark as of today are all liberal, democratic and national welfare states. They are peaceful and prosperous countries that top international rankings of welfare, living conditions and happiness. As a result, many Scandinavians now harbour the idea that potential changes are not desirable. This inevitably influences their view of the future, and of the past.Footnote 8

Narratives

The fact that the history of the Scandinavian states has for the most part been written from the perspective and confinements of the nation state does not mean that Scandinavianism has been entirely overlooked. Some historians have even been puzzled as to why its aims were not realised. To date, there have been two explanations for this, both of which form part of a master narrative. The first has been based on a picture of the Scandinavianists painted by their contemporary political opponents. According to these so-called anti-Scandinavianists, Scandinavianism was a romantic youth revolt full of high-flown rhetoric, little action and liberal quantities of punch. The student gatherings of the 1840s, when the movement lacked political influence, have often been held up as evidence in the construction of this narrative. Historiography has subsequently often echoed this critique when depriving Scandinavianism of political merit.Footnote 9

The second explanation has emphasised that the Scandinavianists did, indeed, attempt to unite Scandinavia politically but that their activist foreign policy lacked realism. Political Scandinavianism is not only presented as an antithesis to the true thrust of history but is also closely associated with the Second Schleswig War, in particular. Denmark’s defeat in 1864 did discredit to the ambitions of Scandinavianism and created a Scandinavia that for many years was characterised by small state policies of appeasement and neutrality. In other words, there has been a widespread sense that Scandinavianism—especially in its political form—failed and ended in 1864. Here, Scandinavian historians have rarely concealed their sympathy for the pragmatic politics of the small state and their distaste for the war of 1864, which is generally regarded as the fault of the Danish national liberals and a dangerous dream of the Scandinavianist. Nor have historians outside of Scandinavia been particularly kind in their verdict of Scandinavianism. An authoritative work on the nineteenth-century European states system asserts that part of British considerations during the war of 1864 was “not to arouse such sleeping dogs as the Scandinavian Union movement, a favourite brainchild of the king of Sweden”. As this book will argue, this movement was far from being a sleeping dog and was much more than a mere royal brainchild.Footnote 10

Our point of departure is that neither Scandinavianists nor their ambitions have been taken sufficiently seriously by historians. Nor have they been understood on their own merits and in the context of their own time. Our aim is to look at Scandinavianism with fresh eyes, to understand it as a political movement on its own terms and merits, and to assess its chances of bringing the political unification of Scandinavia into fruition. The current book does not only issue a challenge to the master narrative of Scandinavianism. It also sets itself apart from the norm in its view of nationality, nationalism and politics in nineteenth-century Europe. The political system, the ideologies and the movements of our time can for the most part trace their roots back to the 1800s. But we often fail to spot the differences, crucial though they are to understanding the past on its own terms. We want, therefore, to introduce an alternative way of thinking about the nationalism and the polities of the nineteenth century. At the same time, we will place Scandinavia in a broader European perspective. This is an ambitious task, made no easier by the challenges presented by the sources to the history of Scandinavianism.

Archives Among the Ashes

The dead may be silent, but their thoughts can be traced in the sources they leave behind. These offer us an opportunity to enter their world and their minds, insofar as the historian can fulfil the Rankean ideal of discerning “how things really were”.Footnote 11 For all the challenges presented by this, writing a history that spans all the countries of Scandinavia is a Herculean task. Not only is the historian faced with a vast quantity of sources, but many sources have disappeared or been deliberately destroyed, rendering the mosaic as difficult for the historian to piece back together.

Count Ludvig Manderström was the foreign minister of Sweden and Norway at the time when political Scandinavianism was at its height in the 1860s. His actions have been furiously debated by historians and disagreements have arisen in part because he erased many of his traces. Manderström commanded his wife to burn certain parts of his archive unread upon his death. This she did. Other parts she was permitted to read so that she could decide for herself which should be committed to flames in the tiled stove and which of the deceased minister’s thoughts could be passed down to posterity.Footnote 12

Manderström’s case, sadly, is not an exception but rather the rule among the central figures that played a part in shaping the future of Scandinavia. In 1913, the Danish historian, Aage Friis, sought out the descendants of the most important Danish politicians involved in the events leading up to the war in 1864. An astonishing number of these descendants declared either that nothing had been passed down or that the deceased’s archive material had been wholly or partially burnt. This was the case, for example, with council presidents C.C. Hall and D.G. Monrad. Others have left extensive archives, among them the estate owner, peasant politician and Scandinavianist, Hans Rasmussen Carlsen, who was briefly Denmark’s minister for the interior in 1864, as well as the Scandinavianist, civil servant and writer, Carl Rosenberg, who was on the payroll of the Swedish and Norwegian king. However, Carlsen’s political correspondence from the end of 1863 to the beginning of 1865 has conspicuous lacunae, while Rosenberg’s archive has been systematically purged of political exchanges. This is probably no coincidence, as both appear to have been deeply involved not only in Scandinavianist efforts but also plots and conspiracies to bring Scandinavian unification about by means of revolution.

The responsibility for the greatest loss of source materials for the history of Scandinavianism, lies not, however with Danish politicians but with the man whom Scandinavianists in all three countries wished to put on the throne of Scandinavia. Like his father, Oscar I, and his younger brother, Oscar II, King Charles XV was deeply involved in political Scandinavianism, but his archive differs from theirs in being limited in size. There are two reasons for this. The first is that Charles commanded that certain confidential information should be “torn into pieces and burnt”.Footnote 13 The second and principal reason for Charles’ small and fragmentary archive is, however, to be found elsewhere. Charles XV had little or no interest in his archive and indiscriminately gave away many of his papers. Many of them ended up in the hands of his librarian, Emil von Qvanten. The Finnish-Swedish Qvanten was no ordinary librarian. He was a passionate Scandinavianist and the king’s secret agent. As such, he played an important role in the attempt to create a Scandinavian union around 1864–1865, and he remained an ardent supporter and defender of Scandinavianism for the rest of his life. However, certain parts of the king’s correspondence—and indeed some of Qvanten’s own letters—are conspicuously missing from the papers left by von Qvanten in the Royal Library and National Archives in Stockholm. The same goes for Charles XV’s diary, which at some point appears to have ended up in the hands of one of Qvanten’s confidants but that we must now assume to be lost. Central parts of the correspondence between the Danish monarchy and the British crown prince are also missing. These are sources that would have allowed us to know far more about the events of 1864. Since these letters are missing from archives on both sides of the North Sea, despite being logged by the Danish royal family, it is difficult to draw any other conclusion than that they have been destroyed deliberately.Footnote 14

As the American historian, Lawrence D. Steefel, commented in his award-winning book, The Schleswig-Holstein Question (1932), one of the greatest challenges facing historians studying the period’s diplomatic history is that our knowledge of important decisions and political discussions often derives from only one source. The meeting between Bismarck and Hansen described at the beginning of this chapter is a good example. The only record we have of the words exchanged in this meeting is from Hansen’s account. Can we trust Hansen, when he notes that the Prussian minister president declared himself to be “strongly Scandinavian”? In situations where sources have been destroyed, it seems most rational to verify the few sources we have in order to see whether their information is reliable and probably set alongside the knowledge we already possess. This makes it even more important to unveil the context for these sources.

In Hansen’s case, the answer is that there are strong arguments to support our trust in his note. According to the document, Hansen’s minute was written down two hours after the meeting. It is part of a package containing an exchange of letters between Bismarck and Hansen and minutes of other diplomatic meetings, some of them with Bismarck. Letters from Hansen to Bismarck are also to be found in the latter’s archive. The Danish government was aware of these meetings, and they are described both in Hansen’s own memoirs, in a report he filed to top-level Danish politicians, and in Danish historiography. Bismarck himself confirmed to Prussian diplomats that he had received Hansen in Biarritz and Berlin. In other words, there can be no doubt that their meeting in Wilhelmstraße took place. Although Bismarck was later keen to tone down their exchanges and stress that he did not find “the personality of the p[erson] Hansen important enough”, Hansen was sufficiently interesting for Prussian diplomats to regularly keep the minister president informed about Hansen’s whereabouts and activities as an agent for the “national-Scandinavianist group”.Footnote 15

The question is why is there no mention, either by Hansen in his memoirs or by historians, of Bismarck’s alleged wish for a united Scandinavia and a Prussian-Scandinavian alliance? The explanation is not hard to find. It was not only Bismarck but also Hansen who introduced into their discussion the possibility for a Scandinavian solution. Whereas Bismarck had been thinking in such terms since at least 1857 as a possible means to advance Prussian interests, unofficial discussions with a minister president of a foreign country about such matters amounted to high treason on the part of Hansen. This was made abundantly clear in the spring of 1865, when Hansen and the network that had dispatched him to Paris and Berlin were being investigated by the Danish minister of justice, Eugenius Sophus Ernst Heltzen. Heltzen suspected them of being behind a Scandinavianist plot to overthrow the Danish monarchy. The case exploded in the press, but, as Heltzen was in no position to prove his accusations against prominent members of the opposition, he was forced to resign in disgrace. Still, even when a conservative Danish periodical got hold of and published a copy of a report written by Hansen about his meetings with Bismarck, the contents of which largely match Hansen’s own notes, there was no mention of Bismarck’s remarks about Scandinavianism. These remarks may perhaps have been left out of Hansen’s original report, but it seems more likely that, coming from Bismarck, they were too embarrassing for conservative anti-Scandinavianists to publish. Hansen, on his part, made no mention of his Scandinavianist discussions and efforts when he published his memoirs a mere ten years later. This would have been akin to admitting to having taken part in a conspiracy and, what was more, by this time political Scandinavianism was generally discredited. Thus, both Hansen and his opponents ultimately remained silent about Bismarck’s Scandinavian remarks, leaving these to be forgotten by posterity.Footnote 16

Hansen’s archive, however, along with other sources, shows that Heltzen was right in suspecting that Hansen was at the very least connected to a Scandinavianist plot. There was not only a conspiracy; there were also concrete plans for revolution. Just as there was good cause for politicians of the time to burn their letters, so there were weighty reasons for Hansen not to include everything from his personal notes in his memoirs. What is more, talks of a Prussian-Scandinavian alliance after the Second Schleswig War have probably seemed incredible to historians, given Danish-Prussian animosity and Scandinavianism’s alleged lack of realism. Consequently, to the extent that they have been aware of such ideas and talks, historians have dismissed them.Footnote 17

This does not mean that Hansen’s notes reflect Bismarck’s genuine standpoint. Can we believe that the Prussian exponent of Realpolitik expressed his support for an idea that most historians have dismissed as a political pipedream for the last 120 years? The idea of a Scandinavian-Prussian alliance can be traced back to the 1830s and, as the Swedish diplomat and historian Einar Hedin showed in 1953, Scandinavianism played a significant role in Prussian foreign policy in the period 1860–1863, leading up to the Danish-German war of 1864. There is evidence to show that, in 1863, Bismarck was seeking to partition the Danish-German unitary state between Prussia and Sweden-Norway. What has hitherto been unknown is that Bismarck, both during and after the Second Schleswig War, apparently kept regarding Scandinavianism as a possible way of advancing Prussian interests under given circumstances. This was a policy that would not only divide up the Danish unitary state but could also lead to a Prussian-Scandinavian alliance. It was this possible outcome that underpinned the policies of political Scandinavianists after Denmark’s defeat in 1864. As we will demonstrate in this book, this can be seen not only in their propaganda but also in their political activities and plans.Footnote 18

Structures, Agency, Windows

The influence of individuals and chance events on the course of history remains subject to seemingly perpetual debate by historians. As historiography has moved away from theories of “great men” and, to the extent that they have been recognised, “great women”, structuralist and functionalist approaches have gained much ground, to the point that some historians may even have grown sceptical to the notion that human agency can alter, or even influence, the general course of history. Although the political aspirations of Scandinavianism faced notable structural and cultural challenges, which contributed to the failure to unite Scandinavia during the First Schleswig War, the 1850s and 1860s brought a European political climate where agency, circumstance and chance arguably mattered more than at any point since the Napoleonic Wars. In the time of blood and iron—as Bismarck, the era’s embodiment, put it in 1862—political opportunism and ideological flexibility was the very essence of the Realpolitik espoused by such statesmen as Bismarck himself and Camillo Cavour. For them, politics was the art of the possible.

History is obviously not determined only by individual agency nor is it determined solely by structural conditions. As Margaret MacMillan argues, individuals making decisions and acting on them, often with high stakes or at great risk, have had crucial influence on the course of history by determining the outcome of events or situations that proved to be historical crossroads.Footnote 19 For all that, the expanded scope for individual agency in the 1850s and 1860s was also determined by structural conditions. Whereas the failure to unite Scandinavia during the First Schleswig War in 1848–1851 was above all a consequence of the international system weathering the storm and Russia retaining its influence over it, the undermining of the international system caused by the Crimean War caused more fluid international political conditions in which major constitutional and geopolitical changes were possible to a much greater extent than during the previous four decades. This created opportunities that statesmen such as Cavour and Bismarck exploited—and did so because they could and, crucially, dared to. The new era also brought an international political climate more favourable to national movements. It was no coincidence that several national ideologues came forward after the Crimean War, some of whom were prepared to sacrifice liberal and radical political demands, and even align with conservative regimes, in return for the creation of constitutional nation states. The support of Napoleon III for the principle of nationality and the ability of Cavour and Bismarck to exploit it played a crucial part in facilitating a resurgence of national movements from the 1850s, but it was also a case of nationalism increasingly being regarded by otherwise conservative regimes as serving their own political ends, and of nationalism being tied more closely to geopolitical considerations. This, too, helped expand the room for changes to the map of Europe, and of individual agency to bring these changes about.

Influential Scandinavians, ranging from royalty to leading politicians, were thus presented from the mid-1850s with opportunities to confront and even bypass some of the structural challenges to Scandinavianism that had impeded its political aspirations in the 1840s. A few occasions arose when Scandinavian unification, at least on a dynastic level or by virtue of a military alliance, could possibly have been concluded by individuals and presented as a fait accompli. At the same time, individual agency could work several ways. Whereas individual actions were crucial to the unification of Italy and Germany, even if the conclusion of these processes was not solely down to individual masterminding, the scope for individual agency could just as well work to the detriment of national unification. Even when structural stars appeared to align for political Scandinavianism, key individuals vested with powers to make decisive decisions vacillated, balked at risk or failed to act altogether, thereby perpetuating an impression among historians that Scandinavian unification was structurally inhibited and as such unrealistic.Footnote 20

Still, as this book will argue, there were several junctures that manifested themselves as crossroads, where the future course of Scandinavianism and Scandinavian history in no small part hinged on individual agency and even chance. As such they constituted windows of opportunity. One such had occurred during the European revolutions and the First Schleswig War, although the scope for individual agency was significantly smaller at this juncture than in the 1850s and 1860s. These decades saw another window opening during the Crimean War and its immediate aftermath, while a third window emerged during the culmination of the Danish-German conflict in 1863 and extended throughout the war of 1864. Even a fourth window of opportunity was arguably open in the aftermath of Denmark’s defeat in the Second Schleswig War, when revolutions were plotted and the Scandinavian countries could well have become parties to other international conflagrations, most notably the Austro-Prussian and Franco-Prussian wars. Although Scandinavianism had plenty of structural challenges to overcome, the conclusion of a military alliance, a change of government, the prevention of a press leak, or the death or survival of key individuals could potentially have wholly altered its preconditions as well as the course of events.

This is not to say that the structural and cultural challenges presented to Scandinavianism should in any way be underestimated. As the current authors showed in Scandinavia after Napoleon, its elitist ideological outlook and the movement’s social composition provoked fierce resistance from many quarters, as did its visions for the national future of Scandinavia, to say nothing of its embrace of war as a continuation of politics. Any form of Scandinavian unification would thus have required considerable remoulding of institutions and a significant shift in collective perceptions and attitudes. Contemporaries and historians alike have thus rightly pointed to a plethora of obstacles to Scandinavianism. Anti-Scandinavianists feared the obliteration of the individual Scandinavian nations and states as well as foreign policy activism and war, and dismissed Scandinavianism as utopianism lacking in ideological clarity, resources and political support, both from the broader population in the Scandinavian countries and great powers. By and large, these are all valid arguments and are reflected by the extent and force of the resistance to Scandinavianism. For all this, the eventual triumph of anti-Scandinavianism was not a predetermined outcome, even if many historians have—as we have shown in Scandinavia after Napoleon—defined political Scandinavianism as the antidote to modern democracy, the modern Scandinavian nation states and the politics of peace—all of which are central components in present-day Scandinavian identities and understanding of history.

Still, it cannot be assumed that Scandinavianism inevitably fell victim to history’s equally inevitable march towards its destined endpoint. Culture is not static and structural conditions do not predetermine the course of history—especially not in the nineteenth century, when national movements were largely elitist, nations still very much in the casting ladle, borders in a state of flux and the notion of democracy highly contested. Too rigid an emphasis on social and cultural structures can also turn our understanding of history into an iron cage of rationality, to paraphrase Max Weber. Individual agency, the fluidity of politics, timing and chance also mattered in determining the fate of Scandinavianism, as this book will show.

Even if many contemporaries believed in the Zeitgeist and saw historical development as progress towards a desired and given outcome, they imagined several “futures past”.Footnote 21 If historical research is solely turned into a quest to discover and discern the roots of the present, it can easily turn into The Whig Interpretation of History (as Herbert Butterfield termed it in 1931), in which historians not only apply their own progressive political views on their understanding of the past, but also regard the course of history as predetermined. Thus, for all its failures, shortcomings and challenges as an ideology and movement, the history of Scandinavianism offers something of a cure for presentism and determinism, and as such also a challenge to traditional Scandinavian historiography with a penchant for regarding the modern Scandinavian welfare states as the inevitable end of history.Footnote 22

The Dog That Did Not Bark

The aim of the current book is to offer a new understanding of political Scandinavianism that is different from than that provided by the master narrative of the predictable and inevitable demise of Scandinavianist ideology. However, it is more than just an exciting story. It is also important for our understanding of Scandinavian and European history. The concept of popular sovereignty and nationalism in the nineteenth century created the foundations for modern Europe, but there are crucial differences between the world of that time and the present world. Nineteenth-century nationalism cannot be reduced to perceptions of aggressive chauvinism or demands for nation statehood that we see today. This is particularly true of the nationalism to be found in lesser nations and in those larger nations that had yet to coalesce into a single unit. They were driven more by the desire for greater independence and by the fear of foreign dominance or of the nation’s annihilation. Such existential angst must be seen in the light of the genuine external threats to be found in a Europe that had always been riven by conflict. It comes as no surprise that defeat, war and threats produced a mobilising effect and influenced national identities and the nationalism of the time.Footnote 23

In the story Silver Blaze, Sherlock solves the crime by explaining why the guard dog did not bark. Many historians have so far in their own way done the same when they have focused on why political Scandinavianism failed. It failed because Scandinavianism allegedly could not bark. It was too vague, unclear and divided; it lacked support and resources, went against the interests of the great powers and sprang from youthful idealism, romanticism and utopian longings. As soon as such arguments are placed in a European context, several seem open to questioning. The answers are important since they are crucial in determining whether Scandinavianism failed because it was doomed to do so, or whether the explanation lies more in the political domain and whether, in fact, history was more of an open book. This is interesting in the context not only of Scandinavia but also of Europe. As the student of nationalism, Ernest Gellner, astutely put it, we learn more about nationalism by understanding the movements that failed than by studying those that succeeded.Footnote 24

Zenith

As the current authors have shown in Scandinavia after Napoleon, much ideological groundwork for Scandinavianism was laid in the 1830s and 1840s. War, upheaval and prospects for dynastic union in 1848−1851 contributed to the transformation of Scandinavianism into a more overtly political and ideologically flexible movement reaching the highest political echelons. This made the 1850s and 1860s the high tide of political Scandinavianism. Developments in the 1850s broadened the political spectrum and social base of the ideology’s adherents, but the increased flexibility offered by this broader basis was tempered by internal tensions, particularly as to the concrete terms of Scandinavian union. Still, active support in court and government circles made Scandinavianism an integral part of high politics at the time, both domestically and internationally.

Political developments within the three Scandinavian countries were seen by many as working in favour of Scandinavian unification. Political opponents such as the national liberals and democratic peasant politicians in Denmark, and liberal burghers and conservative aristocrats in Sweden, found common ground and could even unite behind the banner of Scandinavianism. Even in Norway, always reluctant towards notions of close unionism, supporters of Scandinavianism had by the early 1860s come to make up nearly half the government and parliament. The question of reforming the Swedish-Norwegian union was high on the agenda, including considerations for the creation of a union parliament. At the same time, these discussions raised the question of Denmark’s accession to the union, which came to a head with the outbreak of war in 1864. Moreover, demands for parliamentary reform in Sweden were reignited in the early 1860s and were tied to Scandinavianism through what King Charles XV considered a trade-off with Louis De Geer, his minister of justice and one of Sweden’s two prime minister, and also the architect behind the parliamentary reform bill. The trade-off was reform in return for a Scandinavian parliament, as King Charles XV related to a British diplomat.Footnote 25

Scandinavianism also influenced international politics, as the great powers contemplated if and how Scandinavian unification could serve their interests. Scandinavian unification featured prominently in various plans and proposals for a general European reshuffle, in which Scandinavian unification played part and faced odds no worse than those confronted by those striving at the same time for German and Italian unification. The thorny conflict over Schleswig and Holstein continued after the status quo ante bellum peace of 1851 to end the First Schleswig War, making the question of a military alliance with Sweden-Norway a perpetual matter of interest for Denmark, whereas Swedish-Norwegian security concerns over Russia and Prussia made the interest reciprocal, if sometimes reluctantly so. Most were aware that a Scandinavian military alliance would mark a significant step towards unification, if not pave the way for it outright. The conflict over the duchies and its potential to turn into a major conflagration in Northern Europe—if not a general European war—was also very much a matter of concern for the great powers, several of whom were no strangers to a “Scandinavian solution” to it. Britain, France and Prussia all considered various means of redrawing the map of Scandinavia as part of substantial changes to the map of Europe. Russia and Austria were prepared to go along with it. As international politics entered a period of transition in the mid-1850s, war became a more acceptable political means, even if it entailed the clashing of great powers. By increasingly favouring might over treaties and legitimacy, international politics—or the revolutionary foreign policy espoused by such actors as Bismarck and Cavour—became more flexible and open to major reshuffles.

Napoleon III—emperor of the French, self-proclaimed champion of the principle of nationality and bent on dismantling the Vienna settlement—emerged from the Crimean War triumphantly.Footnote 26 It is no coincidence that processes of Italian and German unification gained momentum in the wake of Russia’s defeat in that war. Nor was it coincidental that Scandinavianism shifted gear and direction at precisely this point in time. This shift included determined efforts by kings Oscar I and Charles XV of Sweden and Norway to secure Napoleon III’s active support for Scandinavian unification. The Scandinavian legacy of the Napoleonic Wars was thus tinted with a bit of irony, given how Charles John (father and grandfather of kings Oscar I and Charles XV, respectively) almost half a century previously had effectively ruled out Scandinavian union including Denmark and turned his back on Napoleon I (uncle of Napoleon III).

Scandinavianist efforts from the mid-1850s were driven in no small part by fear and opportunism. The increasingly anarchic nature of international politics reinforced fears of national annihilation, particularly among small nations such as the Scandinavian. It also gave added impetus to the “threshold principle”, a term coined by the historian Eric Hobsbawm to describe the notion that the viability of nations was determined by its demographic, geographic, economic, cultural and military size and scope.Footnote 27 The core of this principle was that only nations with sufficient resources could survive, develop and have any real independence in an anarchic world of states. This principle was widespread and had substantial influence on contemporary European national thought, but this has seldom been acknowledged by historians. A map of future Europe drawn up by the highly influential Italian nationalist Giuseppe Mazzini included a mere 11 nation states. It is telling that Mazzini drew his map in 1857, just as the international political system was in transition and major changes to the map of Europe seemed imminent. By the mid-1850s Europe was entering a time of upheaval, of war and of fierce competition as to how the map of the continent should look. This was a contest several Scandinavianists—many of whom were to be found in governments, parliaments, royal houses and diplomatic missions—were eager to enter.

The “threshold principle” ties in well with the “realist” school of international relations, in its anarchic approach to national and international political thought. However, it needs to be stressed that neither the “threshold principle” nor the idea of a realist type of nationalism (which we have discussed in Scandinavia after Napoleon) were contemporary concepts. They are analytical concepts that encapsulate a widespread tendency within nineteenth-century nationalism and power politics across Europe at the time that found a strong expression in political Scandinavianism. The emphasis in contemporary national thought on resources, viability, survival and expansion—which were all espoused by the threshold principle—turned fear and the pursuit of power into driving forces in international politics for several decades from 1850s onward. Although its scope and application were not universal, the threshold principle influenced a particular type of political nationalism prominent in mid-nineteenth-century Europe, in which national unification and expansion was crucial. Nationalism became even more militant and warlike, continuing a process that had begun during the revolutions of 1848, and as such contributed to increasing anarchism in international politics. The Crimean War and the subsequent Italian and German wars of unification cemented the tie between politics, nationalism and war. A central part of the international political transformation beginning in the 1850s was that war—at least major wars between the great powers—went from being regarded as undesired to being accepted and even actively utilised as a political tool. Indeed, the German wars of unification brought the deceased Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz to the fore through the endorsement of his works by the chief of the Prussian general staff, Helmuth von Moltke, a former Danish officer who had entered into Prussian service in 1822. Prussia’s successful wars in the 1860s helped perpetuate Clausewitz’s view of war as “not merely an act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, carried on with other means”. As we will demonstrate in this book, leading Scandinavianist politicians were also thinking in this vein. While it is true that "the hard lesson to be drawn from all the wars of the 1860s was that ultimately states must rely for their security on armed might, not on treaty rights", we argue that this realisation did not emerge retrospectively. Rather, the lesson was learned successively from the mid-1850s, when it became apparent to contemporaries that the international political system and its mechanism were in transition.Footnote 28

It was no coincidence that this period also saw the introduction of the very term Realpolitik, coined in 1853 by the German journalist and liberal politician Ludwig August von Rochau when he published the first volume of his Grundsätze der Realpolitik angewendet auf die staatlichen Zustände Deutschlands.Footnote 29 Rochau may have been an obscure author in his day, but he articulated ideas that were becoming highly influential in intellectual circles and international politics, and were clearly espoused by political Scandinavianists. Realpolitik denotes a ruthless approach to politics, based on calculations of interests and the cynical exploitation of opportunities, if need be by force, as well as being largely devoid of ideological and even legal principles and considerations. The connection between the threshold principle, Realpolitik and geopolitics is evident both in the transformation, outlook and efforts of political Scandinavianism and many of its adherents in the 1850s and 1860s, giving credence to the realist school of international relations in the study of these decades. In this period a bond was forged between geopolitics and nationalism, in which the threshold principle functioned not only a framework and ideal for how nation states ought to be constructed, but also a convenient tool for some of the great powers. Indeed, Napoleon III saw a unified Italy, if not necessarily quite to the extent striven for by Cavour and Garibaldi, as a useful ally, as did both Napoleon III and Bismarck in the case of Scandinavia. As this book will show, this interest from Napoleon III and Bismarck provided crucial momentum as well as opportunities for Scandinavianism.

The 1850s and 1860s marked the zenith of political Scandinavianism—as well as its ultimate failure and demise. However, for the ramifications of Scandinavianism to be properly discerned and understood, the ideology and movement must be approached as transnational history in a European context. European context and perspectives are crucial, because ultimately Scandinavia’s fate lay in the hands of the great powers. The aim of the current book is therefore to transcend traditional narratives, which have largely confined Scandinavianism to national contexts, as evidenced by how even some of the major works on the subject are titled or subtitled Political Scandinavianism in Denmark, Scandinavianism in Sweden and Norwegian Reactions to Scandinavianism.Footnote 30 Traditional studies of Scandinavianism have thus been severely lacking in international context and perspective, which is unfortunately also the case with much traditional political historiography of nineteenth-century Scandinavia.

Consequently, the current book is also very much a reaction to what an international panel evaluating Norwegian historiography termed as “methodological nationalism”.Footnote 31 Similar surveys of Danish and Swedish historiography would likely have yielded similar results.Footnote 32 National approaches to the study of an ideology and movement that was by its very nature transnational harbour dangers of determinism and risk falling short of fully comprehending the ramifications of complex political issues that very much preoccupied contemporary Scandinavianists—and their opponents. Several of the most important domestic political issues of the day in Denmark, Norway and Sweden were interlinked and presented opportunities for Scandinavianism just as much as they represented obstacles. Moreover, several decision-makers exerting decisive influence on domestic political matters were part of transnational Scandinavianist networks or at the very least aware of the Scandinavianist implications of these issues, however much they might have resented the ideology. For example, Georg Sibbern, Norway’s prime minister in Stockholm from 1859 to 1871, condemned Scandinavianism and all its works, but was nevertheless acutely aware of the connections between the question of Swedish parliamentary reform and constitutional struggles in Denmark, to say nothing of their Scandinavianist ramifications.Footnote 33 In other words, Scandinavianism was a crucial factor in many of the important political issues that many Scandinavian historians have hitherto tended to consider as purely domestic in kind, and treated as such.

Not all historians agree that the 1850s and 1860s marked the zenith of Scandinavianism. Instead, some regard the upheaval of 1848 as its point of culmination.Footnote 34 Still others see the transformation of Scandinavianism in the 1850s as marking a point of departure. The historian Jens Arup Seip, for example, refers to it as a new brand of “power Scandinavianism” based on “purely political and military considerations”.Footnote 35 In a similar vein another scholar, Dag Thorkildsen, sees Scandinavianism from the mid-1850s as “dynastic Scandinavianism”, arguing that its efforts centred largely on political unification through a union of the crowns.Footnote 36 Underpinning such categorisations seems to be an impression that Scandinavianism lost its liberal ideological and cultural outlook, becoming instead an instrument of power politics and dynastic ambition which some historians may have found less appealing than the philological and politically progressive ideas espoused by Scandinavianists in the 1840s. Indeed, Thorkildsen maintains that Scandinavianism lost much of its strength and appeal from the end of the 1850s, as the era of the “student revolt” ended. However, it is difficult to see how an ideology that by the mid-1860s was taken seriously enough in government, parliament, court and diplomatic circles to make the question of Scandinavian unification a serious matter for the great powers had lost strength and appeal.

Yet, by the early 1860s Scandinavianism had no doubt changed significantly since its inception in the 1830s and 1840s, and some of the means advocated by its most devoted and increasingly desperate adherents were certainly not particularly attractive. War and violent revolution never are. Still, the shift in international politics after the Crimean War turned war and revolution into parts of the contemporary international political toolbox. This was grasped by leading Scandinavianists, which is crucial to our understanding of their aims and efforts. It is not for the historian to condone or condemn these, but to try as best as we can to understand them on grounds of Ranke’s ideal.Footnote 37 This ideal, however unattainable, guides the current book, which has nine chapters offering a chronological interpretative narrative of political Scandinavianism from the end of the First Schleswig War in 1851 to the Franco-Prussian war in 1870–1871.