Project Details
Projekt
Resilient in Adversity. The European Nobility in the Age of Revolution 1760-1830.
Applicant
Dr. Amerigo Caruso
Subject Area
Modern and Contemporary History
Early Modern History
Early Modern History
Term
from 2017 to 2024
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 386400968
Resilience is the capacity of a system, an enterprise or a person to maintain its core purpose and integrity during dramatically changing circumstances. In analyzing the very slow and gradual erosion of the Old Regime in Revolutionary Europe (1760-1830), the notion of resilience seems more adequate than the static and passive concept of persistence, as described in Arno Mayer's classic work on the aristocratic elites in the long nineteenth century. The idea itself of resilience in fact combines dimensions of change, adaptability and vulnerability, offering a much more nuanced and multi-faceted view of the ongoing process. Furthermore, Reinhart Kosellecks theory of multiple temporalities and the concept of Sattelzeit - the transitional period between the eighteenth and the nineteenth century - provides a solid theoretical framework for comparing resilience-strengthening strategies, ideas and networks employed by the European nobilities.The project aims at filling a long lasting research gap and intends to investigate the resilience shown by European aristocracies during the Sattelzeit in order to overcome adversity. It will examine both social and intellectual dimensions, especially focusing on the complex interaction between political discourses, family strategies and monarchic loyalty. The methodological approach combines prosopographic methods with qualitative analysis. On the one hand, the project will take into account crucial agents of change from a longue durée perspective, studying a group of influential aristocratic families from Denmark, Piedmont, Portugal and Saxony. On the other hand, it will shed light on discourses of legitimacy, on transnational experiences and on resilience-strengthening activities of aristocratic networks during dramatic political crisis and revolutions.Is the paradigm of decline and fall that David Cannadine assumed for the British aristocracy a meaningful reference for continental Europe? Certainly, liberal and revolutionary ideas and networks increasingly spread throughout Europe; however, in the meantime, old elites actively faced the challenge of complementing or reinventing the institutional, cultural and social justification that sustained the previous political order. The consolidated discourse of monarchical loyalty - a military and aristocratic habitus along with paternalism, religious traditions and public service ethos - continued to shape resilience during the nineteenth century. The aristocratic elites made strong efforts to lead political and cultural transformations as long as they presumed to be able to control the revolution. This project aims to attest that the resilience of the European nobility and the monarchical state was a crucial agent of change in the Age of Revolution.
DFG Programme
Research Grants
International Connection
Denmark, Italy, Portugal
