Current
The project deals with the French Mexican campaign and France's related efforts to establish an empire in Mexico. The implications of the French intervention in Mexico for the development of the monarchy as a form of state will be examined from a transnational perspective. The importance of the monarchy in the 19th century has attracted increased attention in global historical research in recent years. A more traditional view is represented here by Jürgen Osterhammel, who states a "worldwide tendency toward monarchical decline" in the "Transformation of the World." He invokes the fact that the monarchical form of government has come under increasing pressure since the late 18th century as a result of the trend toward liberalization and democratization.
Recently, however, historians have increasingly pointed to the tremendous persistence of the monarchical form of government into the 21st century. Against this backdrop, the significance of the French Mexican campaign and its associated ambitions must be reexamined: For its failure had only a minor effect on the prestige of the monarchical form of government in France, as it did in Europe in general. For even if the withdrawal from Mexico ultimately ushered in the decline of the second French empire, only a small number interpreted it as the victorious self-assertion of the republic. Otherwise, many contemporaries saw themselves confirmed in their conviction that republican constitutions had a high potential for danger. There was widespread revulsion at the execution of the Mexican emperor Maximilian, and the end of his imperio was seen above all as a shameful triumph of anarchy and barbarism. Mexican President Benito Juarez was Indian, and so racist ideas, as they were gaining virulence in Europe at this time, lent additional force to this interpretation. Even one of Napoleon III's bitterest opponents, the staunch Republican Victor Hugo, wrote a letter urging Juarez not to take Maximilian's life: For his execution would mean the moral defeat of the Republic.
Squatting is a risky form of living. The willingness of squatters to live with the risk of getting into legal trouble could be interpreted as evidence for the decreasing importance of the value of security. However, the study of the squatter movements in Hamburg and London in the 1970s and early 1980s shows that security as a value did play an important role for them, although it was perceived and understood in very different ways. The project examines the various conceptions of security that were negotiated and attempted to be implemented not in the squatter movements themselves, but also in response to them.
Nationalism, which became increasingly virulent in the 19th century, understood the nation as a superior ultimate value, for which its members should go to their deaths if necessary. This put Jews under pressure to confess, as opponents of emancipation repeatedly argued that their loyalty was not to be trusted in the event of war. In the face of these doubts, the majority of European Jews reacted with an unequivocal patriotic commitment to their respective home nations. At the same time, however, many of them, because of their outsider position, recognized the Janus-faced nature of nationalism more clearly than other contemporaries. The project examines how this affected their views of war and peace.
Completed
Prof. Dr. Christine Krüger
The social reforms of the late 19th century were fueled by the fear of revolutionary upheaval - this is a popular but hardly substantiated thesis. Growing social tensions, especially the two major port strikes in London in 1889 and Hamburg in 1896/97, dramatically threatened the urban culture of security. Christine Krüger shows: Revolutionary fears mostly led to demands for repressive measures aimed at social exclusion rather than inclusive social reforms.
Although security has been a central political concern for many eras, its various conceptual designs in nineteenth-century urban centers have hardly been studied in detail. In her exciting study, Christine Krüger compares for the first time the different urban security designs, questions the often drastic reactions and corrects apparent unambiguities in old basic assumptions.
The project was part of the SFB/TRR 138 "Dynamics of Security. Forms of securitization in historical perspective" of the Philipps-Universität Marburg and the Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen as well as the Herder-Institut für historische Ostmitteleuropaforschung.
Publication: Krüger, Christine: „Die Scylla und Charybdis der socialen Frage“. Urbane Sicherheitsentwürfe in Hamburg und London, ca. 1880-1900, Bonn 2022.