Dr B.J.J. Rulof

My current research activities focus upon two projects in particular:

Mass Politics without Parties: Royalism in Nineteenth-Century France (tentative title, monograph to be published)

This project contributes to the understanding of the nineteenth-century change from elite-based politics to party-based politics that took place across Europe. It will do so by means of a local case study of French legitimism, a movement which, in terms of its organisation and culture, represented the transition phase of mass politics without parties well. The project focuses on monarchism in Montpellier, a royalist stronghold throughout much of the nineteenth century. Royalism is commonly portrayed as an example of elitist politics; moreover, research carried out so far suggests that monarchies in, for example, England and the Netherlands mobilised support among the popular classes ‘from above’, by means of festivities such as Queen’s Day. In contrast, this project examines popular royalism in the context of the living conditions and political culture and practices of the lower classes themselves. It shows that royalism was, in fact, a contested institution which meant different things to different people. Universal manhood suffrage introduced in 1848, for example, not only highlighted widespread popular support for legitimism, it also revealed the contradictions between notions of social hierarchy at the pinnacle of which elites and king would rule over society and the necessity to mobilise lower-class support. The movement’s leadership nevertheless drew working-class and petty-bourgeois royalists into politics, and thus contributed to the politicisation of people who had hitherto played no role in formal politics. Yet, the legitimist movement would never develop into a political party. As such, it was typical of the era of mass politics without parties that would end in the years preceding the First World War, for it was only then that France saw the rise of mass parties. While mass parties accompanied democratisation elsewhere in Europe, the widening of suffrage preceded party formation in France by decades. Thus this project not only discusses the social and cultural settings of (popular) royalism but it also examines important aspects of the history of democracy, citizenship and party formation.

The Politics of Bureaucratic Language in Mid-Nineteenth-Century France

Traditionally, the image of an omnipotent and omnipresent state that ruled over its ‘naked’ citizens has dominated research about post-revolutionary France. Recently, this interpretation has come under attack. Negotiation and accommodation rather than domination seem to have characterised the relationship between state and civil society. During the Second Empire especially, the state administration (local and national levels combined) more than doubled in size. In many ways, officials such as prefects, public prosecutors and mayors (who were nominated administrators rather than elected politicians) were crucial for the official information gathering. The ideal prefect, for example, was something of a diplomat who represented the state in the department, while conciliating local interest groups with one another (and the state). The mayor, in his turn, had to be competent as well as loyal, to both government and his commune. The reconciliation of these demands turned out to be difficult to achieve. Information gathering and analysis were, and still are, crucial for governments. Yet, the prefects’ and mayors’ powers of observation varied as much as the quality of hierarchical reporting for which they depended on civil servants and an informal network of acquaintances.

This project will examine the manner in which these officials produced and manipulated information about social and political life in the Hérault under the Second Empire especially. It will do so by means of two pilot studies: an in-depth case study of a complex political conflict in the village of Florensac as well as an analysis of a large body of documents wherein the state officials tried to account for what they believed to be remarkable characteristics of society and politics in southern France. The first will show how information was selected, highlighted or played down, and condensed in accordance with (partially changing) ulterior motives and aspirations of all those who played a role in the affair. Their stories were shaped (and changed) so as to defend their own actions and to prepare and to legitimise future (political) decisions. Moreover, it seeks to throw light upon the way in which information was adapted as it passed up and down the hierarchical levels of administration, from local police and judges of the peace, via mayors and sub-prefects, to prefects and to the Ministry of the Interior, and back.
As prefects tried to make sense of the departments they were sent to administer, they often turned to the use of a specific imagery so as synthesise (and ‘translate’) complex social and political realities. Tropes such as the notion that essentialist traits of “the southerners” explained political and social behaviour dominated their reconstruction of regional and local “reality”. Under (rather) normal circumstances, it helped them to depoliticise local politics; at times of crises, however, the same imagery was used to construct a more alarmist description of society and politics in the Midi. In this respect, the stereotyping, it will be argued, was part of the contemporary debates about national identity as well as the criteria of active citizenship which determined who was given or denied access to formal politics.

This second project is part of the Faculty’s research programme “Administrative Governance” (section III: Administrative Governance in a Historical Perspective (The Language of Bureaucracy from the 19th Century to the Present).