Making the Most of National Time: Accountability, Transparency and Term Limits in the First Dutch...

Making the most of national time Accountability, transparency, and term limits in the fĳ irst Dutch Parliament (1796-1797)

Joris Oddens

Over the past fĳ ifty years, historians have come to see the closing decades of the eighteenth century as fundamental to the rise of a ‘modern’ concept of time. This is largely due to the German historian Reinhart Koselleck, who wrote a number of articles on this topic during the 1960s and 1970s.1 Both for Koselleck and other historians connected to the German begrifffsgeschichte school, the ‘shock of revolution’, and in particular the French Revolution, has been the most important catalyst for new ideas about time and a ‘rupture in continuity’, that is to say the notion, widespread among contemporaries, that they were living in modernity and that the future was unknown.2 ‘With the [introduction of the French] revolutionary calendar,’ Koselleck writes, ‘the attempt to let a new era of time already begin with that caesura was offfĳ icially sanctioned and celebrated as a revolution.’3

This view has been very influential. One cannot, for example, fail to hear its echo in the following quote taken from a more recent article (2003) by Lynn Hunt:

A new relationship to time would turn out to be the single greatest innova-tion of the revolution […] Revolution meant rejecting the past, introducing a sense of rupture in secular time, maximizing and elongating the present in order to turn it into a moment of personal and collective transforma-tion, and shaping the future in accordance with the discoveries made in the present. Time became an issue; it ceased being a given.4

The French Revolution did not stop at the border, and historians such as Ernst Wolfgang Becker and Peter Fritzsche have recently attempted to show how the revolutionary experience irreversibly changed the concept of time not only in France but also in other parts of the Western world.5 ‘It is difffĳ icult to overemphasize,’ Fritzsche writes, ‘the extent to which the prolonged nature of the French Revolution disrupted Western conceptions of historical continuity.’6

As one of the aims of this book is a critical reevaluation of the relationship between France and its Sister Republics, I will take this assertion as the

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point of departure for my contribution, in which I intend to nuance the view that it was primarily the experience of the French Revolution that reshaped the concept of time everywhere in the West. Equally, I would like to draw attention to the advent of a form of time-bound representative democracy in this epoch, which has, in my view, played a signifĳ icant and overlooked role in this process. I will attempt to achieve this twofold aim by discussing the case of the Batavian Republic where, in March 1796, Dutch revolutionaries founded the fĳ irst Dutch National Assembly.

The number of scholars who have taken into account the temporal char-acter of democratic rule is surprisingly limited.7 A notable exception is the eminent political scientist Juan Linz, who writes that ‘one of the defĳ ining elements of political democracy is that it is government pro tempore. The idea of electing someone for life to exercise efffective power, or representa-tives for unlimited time […] does not fĳ it into our thinking about democracy.’8 Conversely, Linz maintains that ‘rule in non-democratic regimes is not defĳined as limited in time.’9 The Finnish scholar Kari Palonen, whose work is inspired by that of Koselleck, also connects the ‘temporalization of politics’ to the introduction of the practice of regular elections. Palonen traces this back to the Triennial Act of the English Parliament in 1641, which he consid-ers the fĳ irst step towards the understanding that the government has a limited time span and that it needs the continuous support of its electorate.10

This shift toward a temporal concept of ‘politics’ took place at diffferent times in diffferent places, and at a diffferent pace. In the eighteenth-century Republic of the Seven United Provinces, de facto sovereignty resided mainly with the diffferent Provincial Estates.11 These Estates consisted of landed nobles and urban regents. There were many local variations in the way they came to power, including sometimes periodic elections, but despite this, by the end of the eighteenth century, government had everywhere become the domain of a very limited number of ruling families. In theory, terms may have been limited; in reality, local regents were almost always reappointed, as long as they stayed loyal to the Orangist stadholder, who played an important role in the appointment procedure.12

The Provincial Estates sent their deputies to the Estates General in The Hague. The duration of their term was subject to provincial variation, but it was usually long. Zeeland was the only province that named its deputies to the national governing body ad vitam, but national deputies often served for many years in other provinces besides. At the Estates General, voting was not by head but by province, and decisions had to be taken unanimously. As the deputies were sent to The Hague with a strict binding mandate, decision-making processes often lasted interminably.13 Both the long-lasting

MAKING THE MOST OF NATIONAL TIME 117

terms of the deputies and the principle of the binding mandate made it difffĳ icult to think of politics as a ‘time-bound and time-limited’ activity.14

The Dutch oligarchic confederacy was seriously challenged by the democratic reform movement of the so-called Patriots. During the 1780s, these Patriots put forward the view that sovereignty did not reside with the provincial assemblies but with the people at large. The sovereign people, they claimed, possessed a series of inalienable natural rights, including the right to participate in government by choosing their own representatives and the right to dismiss a bad government at any given time. A central notion in their reform programme, which was inspired by the works of French and British political theorists and the political language of the American Revolution, was that regents would have to be called to offfĳ ice through popular election instead of stadholderly appointment.15

The Patriots were, however, much less convinced that the idea of ‘non-permanence’, as they called the principle of term limits, was also a necessary condition for representative democracy. In diffferent plans for the reform of local governments, the very element of permanence was in fact promoted as a bulwark against the arbitrary power of the stadholder; elsewhere, most notably in the city of Deventer, periodic elections were considered a serious option.16 However, in 1787, just as the Patriots began operationalizing their reform projects, stadholder William V succeeded in suppressing the Patriot movement with the support of a Prussian army.

Some eight years later, with the French Revolution now well on its way, Dutch Patriots who had gone into French exile convinced their fellow revolutionaries to invade the Dutch Republic. A successful invasion in January 1795 led to the collapse of the stadholderate, forcing William V to take refuge in England. In exchange for an indemnity of 100 million florins, power was left to the former Patriots, who now called themselves Batavi-ans.17 In the fĳ irst year of the Batavian revolution, the now revolutionary Estates General decided that a National Assembly was to be established. The question was, however, whether this assembly was to have constituent as well as legislative and executive powers, or whether the assembly had to be preceded by a constitution drawn up by a small constituent com-mission. The disagreement on this matter proved so great that it took the diffferent provincial delegations in the Estates General almost a full year to reach a compromise. The fĳ inal agreement was that a fĳ irst draft of the constitution would be written by a constitutional commission composed of members of the legislative assembly but that worked independently from it, and that this draft would subsequently have to be approved by the full assembly.18

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When measured by the standards of the ancien régime, the lengthy dis-cussions that had preceded this decision were not unusual. In the Batavian Republic, however, they met with rapidly escalating intolerance. Even if the Dutch Republic had never had a real constitution, many now felt that the state of revolution the country had entered early in 1795 could only be brought to an end when the country was given such a constitution. Hopes were high that the abolition of the binding mandate would make it possible for the National Assembly to be more decisive than the Estates General had been, and that this would become manifest both in its legislative and constituent activities.

On 30 December 1795, the provincial delegations in the Estates General fĳ inally agreed on the semi-constitutional document that constituted the founding of a National Assembly. This document established that a draft constitution was to be presented to the nation at the latest one year after the fĳ irst meeting of the assembly, and that the assembly was to remain in session for no longer than eighteen months.19 It needs to be pointed out that this eighteen-month term was specifĳ ically meant for the National Assembly in its function as a constitutional convention. When, in August 1797, the draft constitution was rejected by a majority of the people, the same conditions applied for a second National Assembly that convened on 1 September 1797. After the second assembly had been in session for nearly fĳ ive months, a group of radical members staged a coup d’état and barred their more moderate colleagues from the assembly, changing the name of the remaining rump parliament to Constituent Assembly. Less than two months later, this assembly concluded a new draft constitution, which was ratifĳ ied by the people on 23 April 1798. When instead of holding new elections, the unconstitutional Constituent Assembly decided to turn itself into a constitutional Representative Body, it was soon swept away by a countercoup. While maintaining the constitution, the new regime did not hesitate to organize elections, after which a new Representative Body was convened on 31 July 1798.20

In their constitution, the Batavians opted for a system of rotation that bore strong resemblances to the French Constitution of the Year III, includ-ing annual elections and the renewal of one-third of the members at each election.21 This choice of a parliamentary system that combined elements of continuity and discontinuity points to the extraordinariness of time-bound politics in the time of the two National Assemblies, from 1 March 1796 to the fĳ irst coup d’état on 22 January 1798. For nearly two years, however, this was the reality with which members of the parliament and their followers everywhere in the Batavian Republic had to contend. As Linz writes:


The confĳ ining character of time in democratic politics is […] almost inevitably a source of frustration and failure of democratic leadership […] The time-bound character of democratic power […] is likely to be one of the sources of instability and inefffĳ iciency of democratic governments.22

The members of the fĳ irst Dutch parliament were soon to discover this. On 21 April 1796, Gerard Vatebender delivered his maiden speech to the National Assembly. Although Vatebender had himself sat in the assembly for little more than two weeks, he presented his colleagues with a gloomy reflection on its functioning so far. Vatebender said he considered it his duty to make use of his freedom of speech, even if his remarks were unflattering towards the body of which he himself was a member.23

The deputy from Gouda started out by saying that he would not comment on the behaviour of the deputies, as he was sure they were themselves very familiar with the appropriate rules. He then nonetheless summed up what he felt such rules should prevent his colleagues doing, like wasting the precious ‘time of the Fatherland’ by repeating in detail what several others had said before them, or submitting meaningless proposals about ‘names, words, and sounds’. It is clear that the members of the assembly and the audience in the public galleries all knew that Vatebender was not simply articulating a syllabus of possible errors here, but that he was referring to misbehaviour that he considered to have actually taken place during the opening weeks of the assembly.24

The real aim of his speech, Vatebender argued, was to draw attention to the fact that the assembly was daily confronted with an ‘endless stream of addresses, petitions, proposals, letters and statements’, which were often of minor importance for the nation as a whole but nevertheless gave rise to extensive debates, causing more important matters to remain undiscussed. If the deputies wanted to make sure that they could not be held responsible for the loss of ‘precious time, not their own but the time of the nation’, then the assembly would have to change its ways. Vatebender suggested that the assembly should name a permanent commission that was to investigate how the assembly could work more efffĳ iciently. It should do so by fĳ inding ways to save time on the practice of reading and discussing matters put before the assembly by its citizens, and by deciding which matters were of such importance that they should always be given precedence over less important matters.25

Four months earlier, when the National Assembly still only existed on the drawing board, Vatebender had given a farewell lecture at the Latin School of Gouda, where he had been the rector. This lecture, which was later

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published, can be considered the most systematic contemporary survey of the qualities a citizen needed to possess in order to make a ‘worthy representative of the people’. He would, among many other things, have to be irreproachable, loyal, honest, amiable, a good speaker, and a hard worker, and he would have to know the legal system, the interests, the history, and the geographical situation of his country.26 When we compare the farewell lecture to Vatebender’s maiden speech in the assembly, it is striking to note that whereas in the lecture nothing is mentioned about the required ability to prioritize and to make efffĳicient use of what would soon come to be known as ‘national time’, this had become the central theme of the speech.

‘Political and social concepts,’ Koselleck writes, ‘do not only indicate or record given facts. They themselves become factors in the formation of consciousness and the control of behavior.’27 Consequently, the concern over the importance of time, which Vatebender and many of his contemporaries suddenly developed, can be made visible by focusing on the genesis and frequent use of the concept of ‘national time’ and related phrases like ‘time of the fatherland’ and ‘time of the nation’. This conceptual cluster, which referred to the limited time that the nation had put at their representatives’ disposal, was born in the assembly, where the diffferent but related phrases soon became popular catchwords. This did not go unnoticed outside the domain of parliament. The nationally distributed weekly De Democraten, for example, included the expression ‘to save the national time’ in a satirical dictionary made up of new words that were used by the leading politicians of the time.28

As far as I am aware, Gerard Vatebender was the fĳ irst to formulate the concept of national time in the assembly. Similarly, he was also the fĳ irst to thematize what can be described as the tension between accountability and efffĳ iciency that was felt by the deputies in diffferent ways. Above all, members of the National Assembly were convinced that they could only make a legitimate claim to be a representative body when they enabled all citizens in the Batavian Republic to express their ideas, their comments, and their grievances by means of petitions. To encourage them to do so, they issued a proclamation afffĳ irming each individual citizen’s right to petition and request.29 This right was readily exercised. Each day the as-sembly received at least some, but more often several dozen, addresses: comments, both positive and negative, on decisions that had been taken; attempts to influence decisions that had not been taken; complaints about lower levels of government; requests for offfĳ ices and state pensions; and all kinds of other private matters that petitioners hoped could be settled by the assembly.


As Vatebender’s speech suggests, the assembly struggled to handle this infĳ inite influx. There are instances of discussions over single petitions that lasted for hours and even for days, but it was the fact that all petitions had to be read in full in the Assembly which weighed most heavily on the shoulders of the deputies. The deputies could not hide their profound despair and frustration over this practice. After eight diffferent petitions on the same subject had been read in the session of 27 April, Jacob Hahn exclaimed:

I cannot conceal that my blood is boiling inside my veins, and that maybe it would be wiser not to speak; I will only say that we are wasting the National Time on this subject, when […] there are so many matters under discussion that have to be settled.30

The problem of the petitions had already been brought to the forefront during the fĳ irst month of the assembly’s meeting. While the deputies were discussing a draft version of the Reglement van Orde (Rules of Order), representative Jacob van Manen had suggested that a commission of twelve members should be formed that was to read incoming correspondence and then inform the assembly about its contents.31 The commission charged with drafting the Rules of Order had advised negatively on Van Manen’s proposal, as it ‘went against the right of the citizens to bring their interests before the assembly in detail’. This view had been accepted and, in the Rules of Order that were eventually adopted, nothing was included to modify the standing practice that all petitions be read in full.32

The assembly had not changed its mind in December 1796, when it fĳ inally discussed the commission report that had been written in response to the proposal that Vatebender had made fĳ ive months earlier. The commis-sion had proposed four possible measures that might help the assembly work more efffĳ iciently, the most important of which was the creation of a designated commission that was to read and summarize the addresses and petitions before they were brought to the assembly, endorsing the very same suggestion that Jacob van Manen had made during the assembly’s opening weeks.33 It did not enjoy a happier fate this time: as representative Johan van Leeuwen immediately objected, this went against the rule, put down in the Reglement constituting the assembly, that its sessions had to be held in public.34 This argument was all that was needed to ensure that the commission report was rejected; the assembly desisted from further discussion, and it did so, ironically, ‘in order to save the National Time’.35

The introduction of public sessions was, in fact, another key aspect of the reform programme of the Batavian Revolution. Judging that political

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transparency was a necessary condition for a functioning representative democracy, the revolutionaries granted public access to the meetings of the National Assembly. Another important element of the Batavian campaign for a maximum degree of transparency was the decision to grant a printing house in The Hague permission to publish the Dagverhaal, a verbatim record of the day-to-day proceedings of the National Assembly. 36 The proceedings appeared on a daily basis with a few days’ delay, amounting to more than fĳ ive thousand pages for the First National Assembly alone. This information was ravenously devoured in private residences, societies, and cofffee houses all over the country.

As with the comprehensive right to petition, the publication of par-liamentary proceedings was intended to lend truth to the claim that the National Assembly was indeed a representative body and thus able to meet the accountability standards that the Batavian revolutionaries thought fĳ it for the new type of government. The result was that the deputies sensed the continuous presence of the public while they were fulfĳ illing their role as representatives. This afffected their public performance in a way that was hard to combine with the Assembly’s wish to be an efffĳ iciently working governing body. When we return to Gerard Vatebender’s speech, the fĳ irst time-wasting practice that he mentions is the endless repetition of arguments that had been made by many others before.37 Throughout the sessions of the assembly, the anger generated by this practice rivalled the annoyance over the reading and discussion of the petitions. In fact, Vatebender’s colleague Johan van Leeuwen, whom we just met as a great advocate of publicity, even claimed that if the National Assembly wanted to save time, the solution would not be to hide its activities from the nation by assigning them to preparatory commissions but rather to stop the members from repeating each other over and over again in the plenary sessions.38

Unlike its ancien régime predecessor, the National Assembly did not con-sist of provincial delegations that would name a single speaker to represent them. The assembly did see the rise of what we could call political parties, but their legitimacy was contested by many, while the modern practice of choosing party spokesmen for diffferent subjects was still a step too far.39 Thus, all of the deputies had the right to speak on each subject under discussion. Controversial matters that were deemed important usually returned to the assembly on more than one occasion, and vital decisions were postponed time and time again. Each time a discussion was revived up to two-thirds of the 126 deputies enlisted to read long speeches, which were often largely made up of the same arguments they had already used on previous occasions. Moreover, the deputies generally read speeches


which they had written out in advance, making it impossible for them to take into account arguments that had been made by preceding speakers.

Especially when they took part in time-consuming debates on subjects that the assembly had addressed many times before, most of the deputies had long lost faith in the possibility of convincing their fellow representa-tives. The reason why they nevertheless continued to reiterate their position was, as representative Willem Hendrik Teding van Berkhout both stated in the assembly and confĳided to his diary, that they felt their speeches were the only way they could justify themselves before the Dutch people.40 The all-seeing eyes of the people, cast upon them through the Dagverhaal, made the deputies less willing to compromise. They realized that their intransigent positions, like those of their opponents, led to an endless repeti-tion of arguments and an indecisiveness that could not fail to displease the nation, but they did not have the heart to repudiate their perceived duty to keep speaking out according to their conscience.

Conclusion

‘Alles wird so ganz anders’. When Peter Fritzsche penned these words, he was quoting the German historian Johannes von Müller, who wrote about the French Revolution in 1797.41 The same fĳ ive words would, however, also have made a good motto for the German Begrifffsgeschichte school, whose theoretical premises play an important role in Fritzsche’s recent book. While they may give diffferent answers to the question as to which of the revolutionary experiences was most disruptive – the speed with which the meaning of political concepts evolved, the death of the king and the shift to a republic, the Terror, the introduction of a new calendar, or the devastating revolutionary wars – Koselleck cum suis, Fritzsche, and others all agree that the French Revolution gave contemporaries all over Western Europe the feeling that everything was becoming diffferent, a feeling that indicates ‘a new relationship to time’.42

Of course, Dutch contemporaries in 1795 were aware of the course of events in the French Revolution, in which they had, in some cases, been personally involved.43 Even then, it was generally an experience they found alien, in which they had only played an active role in order to advance the Dutch cause by convincing the French to give them military support. For most Batavians, France was a foreign country where they did things diffferently. In general terms, they felt ideologically connected to the French revolutionaries, while the great and irreversible changes French state and

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society were clearly undergoing certainly supplied them with useful exam-ples, both positive and negative. However, the French remained a diffferent people with a diffferent national character.44

It must be stressed just how diffferent the revolutionary experience of the Dutch was. In the fĳ irst place, the Batavian Republic succeeded a republic and not a monarchy, and the deposition of the stadholder, who came the closest to being a monarchical fĳ igure in the Netherlands, was by no means unique in Dutch history. Second, the Batavian Revolution did not have a Ter-ror. In fact, the revolution was largely conducted without bloodshed. Third, Dutch contemporaries generally considered the Batavian Revolution, after the Patriot Revolution and the Orangist Restoration, the third Omwenteling in little over a decade. And fĳ inally, even if the Batavians followed French precedent by calling 1795 ‘Year One of Batavian Liberty’, the Anno Domini system remained in widespread use and no new calendar was introduced.

One of the most noteworthy innovations of the Batavian Revolution was the founding of a National Assembly, which was at the same time a constitutional convention and a legislative body. The introduction of an eighteen-month term limit for the National Assembly meant that the draft-ing of the constitution became subject to a deadline; when this deadline was not met, the framing process would be taken over by a new group of representatives, who were likely to make diffferent choices. The principle of popular elections meant that the composition of the National Assembly could not be predicted. Until the moment when new elections had taken place, the future of the Dutch people would therefore remain uncertain. More than anything, it was the time-bound nature of the constitutional project that gave the Batavians the idea that they were living in a present that was diffferent from the past with which the current intermediary government had broken, and equally diffferent from a future when a new constitutional government would rule.45

It was, in particular, the novelty of this situation that caused time to ‘cease being a given’ and ‘become an issue’ in the Batavian Republic. The deputies of the fĳ irst Dutch National Assembly were not experienced members of parliament. In the years preceding their election, they had developed high-minded ideas about the accountability required by this new type of government, and they were determined to meet these requirements when they had the chance to put their ideas into practice. Hence, as we have seen, the deputies insisted on granting citizens direct access to the assembly by allowing addresses and requests to be read in full, and they continued accounting for themselves in long and repetitive speeches. The representatives soon became aware that these and other, similar practices


were time-consuming and inefffĳ icient but, seeing no reasonable alternative, they persisted with them.

Not only did the members of the fĳ irst Dutch parliament have little ex-perience fĳ inding the right balance between accountability and efffĳ iciency, they also had no previous experience in dealing with the frustration that tension between these essential elements of democracy inevitably produces. Whereas we have by now generally accepted the idea that the scarcity of time is a feature inherent in democratic politics, it instilled in the fĳ irst democratic politicians a sense of agitation that was almost unbearable. During the sessions of the assembly, they could not stop repeating that ‘the time of the nation’ was ‘precious’, and that ‘national time’ was being ‘wasted’.

The published proceedings of the assembly were read by many, on a daily basis, and in every corner of the country, thus making the parliamentary debates the fĳ irst major event with a truly national scope and impact that was experienced simultaneously by all citizens.46 Thus, the parliamentary concern over the time of the nation became a concern shared by the whole nation and contributed to the sense that time was scarce, or to put it in Koselleckian terms, to a ‘feeling of acceleration’.47 If the closing years of the eighteenth century were formative in constructing a new concept of time in the Batavian Republic, this should not be sought primarily in the experience of revolution, which was less forceful and disruptive than it had been in France, but rather in the shared temporality that was brought about by the debates in the fĳ irst Dutch parliament.

278 THE POLITICAL CULTURE OF THE SISTER REPUBLICS, 1794-1806

3. Pierre Serna, ed., Les Républiques soeurs: le Directoire et la Révolution atlantique (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2009) and Jacques Godechot, La grande nation. L’expansion révolutionnaire de la France dans le monde de 1789 à 1799 (Paris: Flammarion, 1983; 1st ed. 1956).

4. Andreas Kalyvas and Ira Katznelson, Liberal Beginnings: Making a Republic for the Moderns (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008) and An-drew Jainchill, Reimagining Politics after the Terror: The Republican Origins of French Liberalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008).

5. Annie Jourdan, La Révolution batave entre la France et l’Amérique (1795-1806) (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2008).

6. Marc H. Lerner, “The Helvetic Republic: An Ambivalent Reception of French Revolutionary Liberty,” French History 18 (2004): 66-71 and idem., A Laboratory of Liberty: The Transformation of Political Culture in Republican Switzerland, 1750-1848 (Leiden: Brill, 2011).

7. Timothy Tackett, Becoming a Revolutionary. The Deputies of the French National Assembly and the Emergence of a Revolutionary Culture (1789-1790) (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 228, and Patrick Brassart, Paroles de la Révolution. Les assemblées parlementaires (1789-1794) (Paris: Minerve, 1988).

8. Jacques-Vincent Delacroix, Constitutions des principaux États de l’Europe et des États-Unis de l’Amérique. 6 vols. (Paris: Buisson, 1791-1801), trans. into English and German, and Matteo Angelo Galdi, Discours sur les rapports politiques-économiques de l’Italie libre avec la France et les autres États de l’Europe, trans. L.-P. Couret-Villeneuve (Paris: Baudouin, 1798).

Making the most of national time

1. The most important articles Koselleck wrote in the course of four dec-ades, many of which deal with the concept of time, have been translated into English: The Practice of Conceptual History. Timing History, Spacing Concepts, trans. Todd Samuel Presner et al., foreword by Hayden White (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002); Futures Past. On the Semantics of Historical Time, trans. Keith Tribe (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004, German ed. 1979).

2. See especially Koselleck, Conceptual History, chapters 9 and 10; Futures Past, chapters 3, 13 and 14; See also Rolf Reichardt and Eberhardt Schmitt, “La Révolution française – rupture ou continuité? Pour une conceptualisation plus nuancée,” in Die Französische Revolution – zufälliges oder notwendiges Ereignis?; idem, eds. vol. 3 (Munich [etc.]: Oldenbourg, 1983), 3-71; Reinhard Koselleck and Rolf Reichardt, eds., Die Französische Revolution als Bruch des gesellschaftlichen Bewußtseins (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1988).

3. Koselleck, Conceptual History, 165. More generally, much emphasis has been placed on the signifĳicance of the revolutionary calendar. See the vast litera-ture on this subject in the bibliographies of Matthew John Shaw, Time and

NOTES 279

the French Revolution. The Republican Calendar, 1789-Year XIV (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2011); and Brecht Deseure, Onhoudbaar verleden. Ge-schiedenis als politiek instrument tijdens de Franse periode in België (Leuven: Universitaire Pers, 2014).

4. Lynn Hunt, “The World We Have Gained. The Future of the French Revolu-tion,” American Historical Review 108 (2003): 6. It must be stressed that the idea of the French Revolution as a rupture in history has been present in Hunt’s work ever since her Politics, Culture and Class in the French Revolu-tion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). Her fascination with time, however, seems to be of a more recent nature. See also Hunt, “ ‘No Longer an Evenly Flowing River’. Time, History, and the Novel,” American Historical Review 103 (1998): 1521: ‘Although much remains to be uncovered about “the planes of historicity” [Hunt is referring here to the title of one of Koselleck’s articles] the topic of time is clearly on the agenda’.

5. Ernst Wolfgang Becker, Zeit der Revolution! Revolution der Zeit? Zeiterfahrun-gen in Deutschland in de Ära der Revolutionen, 1789-1848/9 (Göttingen: Van-denhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999); Peter Fritzsche, Stranded In the Present. Mod-ern Time and the Melancholy of History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004). See also Matthew Rainbow Hale, “On Their Tiptoes. Political Time and Newspapers During the Advent of the Radicalized French Revolu-tion,” Journal of the Early Republic 29 (2009): 191-218.

6. Fritzsche, Stranded, 25.7. Cf. Andreas Schedler and Javier Santiso, “Democracy and Time. An Invita-

tion,” International Political Science Review 19 (1998): 9. Scholars who have reflected, more in general, on the factor of ‘time’ in politics include J. G. A. Pocock, Politics, Language and Time. Essays on Political Thought and History (New York: Atheneum, 1971); idem, The Machiavellian Moment. Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Prince-ton University Press, 2003, 1st. ed. 1975); H. J. Rutz, ed., The Politics of Time (Washington DC: American Anthropological Association, 1992); Gisela Riescher, Zeit und Politik. Zur institutionellen Bedeutung von Zeitstrukturen in parlamentarischen und präsidentiellen Regierungssystemen (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1994); Heinrich Bußhofff, Die Zeitlichkeit der Politik. Politik als Mechanismus zur Verzeitlichung der Zeit (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2003); and Jussi Kurunmäki and Kari Palonen, eds., Zeit, Geschichte und Politik. Zum achtzigsten Geburtstag von Reinhart Koselleck (Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä, 2003). See also the work of Linz and Palonen cited below.

8. Juan, J. Linz, “Democracy’s Time Constraints,” International Political Science Review 19 (1998): 19. See also Linz, “Time and Regime Change,” in idem, Rob-ert Michels, Political Sociology and the Future of Democracy (New Brunswick: Transaction, 2006), 81-115.

9. Linz, “Time Constraints,” 20.10. Kari Palonen, The Struggle With Time. A Conceptual History of ‘Politics’ as an

Activity (Münster [etc.]: Lit, 2006), 17, 62-63, 77. See also Jürgen Jekewitz, Der


Grundsatz der Diskontinität der Parlamentsarbeit im Staatsrecht der Neuzeit und seine Bedeutung unter der parlamentarischen Demokratie des Grundge-setzes. Eine rechtshistorische und rechtsdogmatische Untersuchung (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot 1977), 44-46.

11. G. de Bruin, “De soevereiniteit in de republiek. Een machtsprobleem,” Bijdragen en mededelingen betrefffende de geschiedenis van Nederland 94 (1979): 36-37; A. J. C. M. Gabriëls, De heren als dienaren en de dienaar als heer. Het stadhouderlijk stelsel in de tweede helft van de achttiende eeuw (Den Haag: Stichting Hollandse Historische Reeks, 1990), 13.

12. Gabriëls, Heren, 13-16.13. Gabriëls, Heren, 43-54; N. M. Japikse, “De Staten-Generaal in de achttiende

eeuw (1717-1795),” in 500 jaren Staten-Generaal in de Nederlanden, eds. S. J. Fockema Andreae and H. Hardenberg (Assen: Van Gorcum & Comp., 1964), 110.

14. Cf. Palonen, Struggle, 17.15. On the Patriot Era, see S. R. E. Klein, Patriots republikanisme. Politieke cul-

tuur in Nederland (1766-1787) (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1995); N. C. F. Van Sas, De Metamorfose van Nederland (Amsterdam: Am-sterdam University Press, 2004), 173-274; Joost Rosendaal, De Nederlandse Revolutie. Vrijheid, volk en vaderland, 1783-1799 (Nijmegen: Vantilt, 2005), 17-56; Wyger R. E. Velema, Republicans. Essays on Eighteenth-Century Dutch Political Thought (Leiden [etc.]: Brill, 2007), 115-200.

16. Van Sas, Metamorfose, 223-53; Klein, Patriots republikanisme, 261-83.17. On the Patriots and the French Revolution, see Simon Schama, Patriots and

Liberators. Revolution in the Netherlands, 1780-1813 (New York [etc.]: Knopf, 1977), 138-210; Joost Rosendaal, Bataven! Nederlandse vluchtelingen in Frank-rijk, 1787-1795 (Nijmegen: Vantilt, 2003); Annie Jourdan, La Révolution batave entre la France et l’Amerique (1795-1806) (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2008), 60-78.

18. On the fĳirst phase of the Batavian Revolution, see Pieter Geyl, Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse Stam (6 volumes, Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek, 1961-62, 1st. ed. 1930-37), 1517-1606; Schama, Patriots, 211-44; Joris Oddens, Pioniers in schaduwbeeld. Het eerste parlement van Nederland 1796-1798 (Nijmegen: Vantilt, 2012), ch. 1. The best contemporary account is by Cornelius Rogge, Tafereel van de geschiedenis der jongste omwenteling in de Vereenigde Neder-landen (Amsterdam: Johannes Allart, 1796).

19. G. W. Bannier, ed., “Reglement, volgens het welk eene algemeene Nationale Vergadering door het volk van Nederland zal worden byeen geroepen en werkzaam zyn (30 december 1795),” in Grondwetten van Nederland: teksten der achtereenvolgende staatsregelingen en grondwetten sedert 1795, met ver-schillende andere staatsstukken, historische toelichtingen en eenige tabellen (Zwolle: Tjeenk Willink, 1937), appendix B, 34, articles 144 and 145.

20. Oddens, Pioniers in schaduwbeeld.

NOTES 281

21. Joost Rosendaal, ed., Staatsregeling voor het Bataafsche volk 1798. De eerste grondwet van Nederland (Nijmegen: Vantilt, 2005), 80, article 37. Cf. Jacques Godechot, ed., “Constitution du 5 Fructidor an III (22 août 1795),” in Les constitutions de la France depuis 1789 (Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1970), 109, article 53.

22. Linz, “Time Constraints,” 22.23. Dagverhaal der handelingen van de Nationaale Vergadering representerende

het volk van Nederland (9 volumes, Den Haag: Van Schelle & Comp, 1796-98) vol. 1, no. 41 (session 21 April 1796): 325; no. 47 (session 21 April 1796): 372-75.

24. Dagverhaal vol. 1, no. 47 (session 21 April): 372-73.25. Dagverhaal vol. 1, no. 47 (session of 21 April): 375.26. G. C. C. Vatebender, Reedevoering over het caracter, de kundigheden en

vereischte zielsgesteldheid van eenen waardigen vertegenwoordiger des volks; uitgesproken in het choor der Groote of St. Janskerke te Gouda, wanneer hij op den 26. dec. 1795 van zijnen post, als rector der Latijnse Schoolen aldaar, plechtig afstand deedt (Gouda: H. L. van Buma & Comp, 1796).

27. Koselleck, Conceptual History, 129. This statement may be considered the main impetus of the German Begrifffsgeschichte school. It lies at the basis of the two ambitious projects in which the historians connected to this school have participated: Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, and Reinhart Koselleck, eds., Geschichtliche Grundbegrifffe. Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland (9 volumes, Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2004) and Rolf Reichardt et al., eds., Handbuch politisch-sozialer Grundbegrifffe in Frank-reich, 1680-1820, 20 vols. (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1985-). On Begrifffsgeschichte, see Melvin Richter, The History of Political and Social Concepts. A Critical Introduction (New York [etc.]: Oxford University Press, 1995); Iain Hamp-sher-Monk, Karin Tilmans and Frank van Vree, eds., History of Concepts. Comparative Perspectives (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1998).

28. [Isaac Gogel and Willem Anthonie Ockerse], eds., De Democraten, vol. 1 (Amsterdam: Crajenschot, 1796), 224.

29. Dagverhaal vol. 1, no. 19 (session of 10 March 1796): 152.30. Dagverhaal vol. 1, no. 46 (session of 27 April 1796): 365.31. Dagverhaal vol. 1, no. 12 (session of 16 March 1796): 92.32. Dagverhaal vol. 1, no. 18 (session of 24 March 1796): 141.33. Dagverhaal vol. 3, no. 240 (session 8 November 1796): 581-82.34. “Reglement,” 32, article 111. 35. Dagverhaal vol. 4, no. 296 (session 6 December 1796): 217-18.36. See footnote 23 for the full reference.37. Dagverhaal vol. 4, no. 47 (session 21 April): 373.38. Dagverhaal vol. 2, no. 150 (session 9 August 1796): 582.39. See A. R. M. Jourdan, “Les minorités politiques dans la République bat-

ave,”, in Minorités politiques en révolution 1789-1799, ed. C. Peyrard (Aix-en-Provence: Université de Provence, 2007), 159-81; Joris Oddens, “Menisten-streken in het strijdperk. Het eerste parlement van Nederland en de mythe


van de moderate middenpartij,” Doopsgezinde Bijdragen 35/36 (2009/2010): 337-61; Oddens, Pioniers in schaduwbeeld, ch. 5.

40. Dagverhaal vol. 4, no. 320 (session 11 January 1797) 415; Willem Hendrik Teding van Berkhout, Dagboek van een patriot. Journaal van Willem Hendrik Teding van Berkhout, ed. L. de Gou (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhofff, 1982), 134.

41. Fritzsche, Stranded, 25.42. Hunt, “World,” 6.43. Rosendaal, Bataven!.44. The leading fĳigure with respect to Batavian thinking on the diffferences

between the Dutch and French national characters was the prominent revolutionary Willem Ockerse, who completed a study on the ‘general science of character’ in 1797 and addressed the subject in his own political periodical: Ontwerp tot een algemeene characterkunde (3 volumes, Utrecht: G. T van Paddenburg & zoon, 1788-90 and Amsterdam: Johannes Allart, 1797); [Gogel and Ockerse], eds., Democraten, vol. 2, 277-84. See also Van Sas, Metamorfose, 309-11; Willem Frijhofff, “Het zelfbeeld van de Nederlander in de achttiende eeuw: een inleiding,” Documentatieblad Werkgroep Achttiende Eeuw 24 (1992): 23-28.

45. Cf. William E. Scheuerman, Liberal democracy and the social acceleration of time (Baltimore [etc.]: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 31-32.

46. Cf. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London [etc.]: Verso, 2006, 1st. ed. 1983), 24.

47. Koselleck, Futures Past, 50; idem, Conceptual History, 165, 168.

The invention of democratic parliamentary practices in the Helvetic Republic

1. I am grateful to my assistant Lorenz Schläfli for a close reading of the edi-tion of the parliament’s records, which served as the basis for this paper.

2. For an exhaustive analysis of the Federal Diet in the long term, see Andreas Würgler, Die Tagsatzung der Eidgenossen. Politik, Kommunikation und Sym-bolik einer repräsentativen Institution im europäischen Kontext (1470-1798) (Epfendorf: Bibliotheca Academica, 2013); Andreas Würgler, “Tagsatzung”, in Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz. Accessed 21 February 2011. www.hls-dhs-dss.ch/textes/d/D10076.php.

3. Holger Böning, Der Traum von Freiheit und Gleichheit. Helvetische Revolu-tion und Republik (1798-1803) - Die Schweiz auf dem Weg zur bürgerlichen Demokratie (Zurich: Orell Füssli, 1998); Andreas Fankhauser, “Helvetische Republik,” in Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz, vol. 6 (Basel: Schwabe, 2007), 258-67; Andreas Fankhauser, “Helvetische Revolution,” in Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz, vol. 6 (Basel: Schwabe, 2007), 267-70; Daniel Schläppi, ed., Umbruch und Beständigkeit. Kontinuitäten in der Helvetischen Revolution von 1798 (Basel: Schwabe, 2009).

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