Religion, Political Culture and the Emergence of Early Modern Society: Essays in German and Dutch History by Heinz

Schilling; Heiko A. Oberman Review by: Gerald Strauss The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 66, No. 4 (Dec., 1994), pp. 844-846 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2125201 . Accessed: 09/03/2013 20:15
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Book Reviews

from intensive involvement. In retrospect, the historical question is a simple but perplexingone: Was the Netherlandsa modem imperialistpower?The debateover this has issue in Dutch historical circles is one that Kuietenbrouwer hoped to resolve. conclusion is balanced.In acknowledgingand carefully accountKuietenbrouwer's factor" in Dutch colonial policy, particularlythe influences ing for the "international and the rivalry of Great Britain and Imperial Germany, he suggests that "the internationalfactor therefore functioned as a cause for Dutch imperialism in the IndonesianArchipelago, while at the same time preventingit elsewhere" (p. 341). The Netherlandsseemed to many Dutch policymakersto exist at the suffranceof a powerfulGermanyand to benefitfrom, more thanto endure,the Pax Britannica.Thus, while ambition was full-scaled in the hearts and minds of some political figures, the ability to realize such ambition was gravely circumscribed.As the nation retreated from its earlier position-and territory-in Africa, it concentratedits efforts more in Java and the OuterTerritories,thus expanding by military force its dominationin the IndonesianArchipelago. The beginning of this activity is clearly markedby the first war against Acheh in 1873, an unsatisfactory undertakingfrom the Dutch perspective that, because of resistance, led to a policy of concentration,of holding on to coastal territorywithout further thrusts into the interior. In the 1890s, however, expansionism replaced concentration,according to the author, as a new military expedition into Lombok occurredand "pacification"took place in Acheh. Thus, writes Kuietenbrouwer,"the Netherlands'colonial expansion in the 1890s did correspondmore and more with that of the other colonial powers" (p. 215). Kuietenbrouweroffers us the first effective assessment of this complicated and intense history that may have been peripheralto the activity of the Great Powers but that nonetheless serves to qualify further the complexity of intentions, acts, and accidents that make up modem imperialism.His is a very detailed political analysis, nicely framed by a sharp considerationof currenttheories of imperialism and by a thoughtfulconclusion on the extent of the Dutch shadow in that "place in the sun." work, based on his doctoral thesis, furthersour appreciationof the Kuietenbrouwer's position assumedby the policymakersof the Netherlands uncertainand uncomfortable in the age of modem imperialism.Although encumberedwith a ratherunfelicitous translation,this study strongly commandsour attentionas it refines our knowledge of the subject.
RAYMONDF. BErrs

Universityof Kentucky Religion, Political Culture and the Emergence of Early Modem Society: Essays in German and Dutch History. By Heinz Schilling. Studies in Medieval and ReformationThought, volume 50. Edited by Heiko A. Obennan. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1992. Pp. xi + 434. $100.75. Anyone wishing to experience the vigor and freshness now animatingscholarshipin the history of Germanyduring the Reformationperiod cannot do better than to read this collection of essays by the Professor for Early Modem History at Humboldt University in Berlin. Heinz Schilling is a stunningly prolific historical thinker and writer with an unmatched knowledge of the sources of north German and Dutch

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Book Reviews

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political and social history, the area in which he has specialized. Never less than posed by this field, he exhibits originalin his approachto the problemsof interpretation in all his work an unusuallybalancedblend of theoreticalscope and contextualdetail, of generalization-always offered cautiously and with qualifications-and presentation of the particularin all its abundanceand multiformity.Hardly anyone else now active in the field is as familiar as is Schilling with the profuse regional and local variationsthat have injected so much debate into the writing of early modem German history. Schilling's skill at trenchantabstractionfrom masses of evidence enables him to offer many helpful suggestions toward a more coherent view of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Germanhistory.But he never lets us forget the differencebetween paradigmsand historicalreality.His basic method is one of persistentdifferentiation. The articles contained in the present book display all these virtues. They are but a small sample of Schilling's copious output, each being in its way a summary that makes a general argumentbased on much detailed prior work and that offers fresh interpretationfor discussion. They are substantial, long, amply documented, conterms defined, structed with exemplary clarity (argumentset out programmatically, tight organization),forcefully argued, and totally devoid of rhetorical obfuscation. Four articles deal with urban society in northem Germany in the period of early Protestantism,including a powerful but constructivecritique of Peter Blickle's thesis of a "communal reformation";two make the case for "confessionalization"and a "Second Reformation"as integratinganalytical concepts for the second half of the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth centuries;three, including a previously unpublished piece, treat the Netherlands as a "pioneer society" in early modem Europe.They have been idiomaticallytranslatedby Stephen G. Bumett and read very well in English. To synopsize very briefly: "Civic Republicanism in Late Medieval and Early Modem GermanCities" examines the ideas of political orderprevalentamong urban citizens in Hanseatic, Hessian, Rhenish, and Thuringian towns and shows that genuinely republicanprecepts of fundamentalrights, equality, political participation, and burgherconsensus were not only held but also acted on, and thus were fruitfulin making early modem urbanculture receptive to "modem" concepts of naturallaw. "UrbanElites and Religious Conflicts"undertakesseveral case studies to discover the circumstancesunder which urbanelites accepted or rejected the ProtestantReformation; crucial determinants,some acting as barriers, others as incentives, were the rulerand the pressuresexertedby that relationshipof a particular place to its territorial prince, the antihierarchical implications of sola fide, the affinity between the early Reformation's communal theology and the city's communal tradition, and the Protestantidea of the Christianmagistrate.For a time before the city's integrationinto the territorial state, the Reformation strengthened the urban elite in its domestic position. "The Rise of Early Modem BurgherElites" looks at the process of transformation and at the causes of this process that, in the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth of centuries,changed the traditionalStadtburgertum patriciansinto a new type of elite characterized academictrainingand a taste for more challengingcareersin territory by and empire: these characteristics,in tum, led to a loosening of the old ties between Honoratorien and their cities. "The Communal Reformation in Germany" sharply disputes Peter Blickle's contentions that there existed in the German countryside a peasant communalism as pronouncedand formative as the urbankind, that one can distinguish between an upper German communal society and a lower German

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Book Reviews

noncommunalsociety, that there was such a thing as a common religion of ordinary folk in town and village, and that 1525 was a "turningpoint." Schilling notes that the "communalReformation"continued well after that date in northernGermany. "Confessionalizationin the Empire, 1555-1620" describes "confessionalization" as a fundamentalsocial process occurringin all three chief denominations,exhibiting strong centralizing, integrative, and disciplinary impulses, and resulting in the inseparablecoupling (for a time) of religion and politics. In thus advancingthe goals of the early absolutist state and the rationallyorganizedmodem society, "confessionalization" also spawned opposition movements, including in some instances Lutheran ones, and encouragedthe formulationof resistance doctrines. "The Second Reformation: Problemsand Issues" depicts a model of mental and social change at the close of the sixteenth century based initially on Reformed Protestantism'spolitical and social activism but promotedmost effectively by the occurrencein all confessions of a "turn toward life," which was matched by the state's desire to "discipline" society, a goal avidly embraced also by an internationalnetwork of academically schooled civil servants. This article is a good guide to the large literaturethat has grown around Schilling's own development of the concepts of confessionalization and Second Reformationas heuristic paradigms. The last group of articles, on the Netherlands, examines the characteristicsthat caused the Low Countriesto be seen, at the time, as an innovative society with many features that struck contemporaries(though not more recent "modernization"theorists) as "modern."These were geographic mobility, widely sharedpolitical respona sibility and participation, highly developed class structure,general literacy,religious tolerationand limits placed on the church,a desacralizedattitudetowardpolitical aims, and a fully articulatedtheory of republicanism. The above summaries convey nothing of the richness and imaginative sweep of Schilling's writing, qualities that make the reading of his articles so rewarding. Schilling counts as a social historian,but he never fails to transmitto his readersa vivid sense of the inseparabilityof social and religious strandsin the historical texture of early modern Germany,althoughhe is also intent on situatingspiritualand ecclesiastical matters in the larger context of general historical processes. His work demonstrates the great merit of locally focused research when this underpins a flair for abstractionand generalization.The concreteness and acuity his work has brought to our image of northernGermanyand the Netherlandsin the early modernperiodjustify his conclusion thatin that region of Europe,and at that time, is found "the seedbed of modern middle class society."
GERALD STRAUSS

IndianaUniversity
Die unsichtbare Grenze:-Protestanten und Katholiken in Augsburg, 1648-1806. By ttienne FranVois.Translatedby Angelika Steiner-Wendt. Abhandlungenzur Geschichte der StadtAugsburg, volume 33. Edited by Wolfram Baer. Sigmaringen:Jan ThorbeckeVerlag, 1991. Pp. 304. DM 68. One of the main functions of the Holy Roman Empireafter 1648 was to maintainthe religious peace. It did so successfully. The religious conflicts that had dominated Germansociety since the Reformationceased. The Peace of Westphaliaenshrinedthe principleof paritybetween Catholics and Protestantsin the Empire.Any conflicts that

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