The Rhine Crisis of 1840 and German Nationalism: Chauvinism, Skepticism, and Regional Reception*
The Rhine Crisis began with French imperialism. Aiming to expand its influence to Egypt and the Levant, France lent its support in 1839 to Mehmet Ali, Egypt’s pasha, whose ambition to seek hereditary rule in Egypt and Syria challenged Ottoman suzerainty. After Egyptian-led troops pushed theOttoman army beyond Syria’s border in April 1839, Adolphe Thiers, the French president, envisioned a new sphere of influence in the Orient. He thus played with the fragile equilibrium of the Eastern Question, Western diplomacy’s contest to fill the power vacuum of a reduced Ottoman Empire. The démarche stalled, however, during the opening months of 1840, culminating in dramatic failure on July 15with the London Convention: a four-power treaty ðwithout the consultation of FranceÞ that supported the sultan’s retention of his imperial territories. Isolated and humiliated by this diplomatic loss, Thiers’s government and the Chamber of Deputies sought an honorable retreat through compensation elsewhere and therefore reasserted the claim that France’s frontier extended to the Rhine. The French state thus compounded a diplomatic setback with a political dispute over “natural borders.” In
Which Political Nation? Soft Borders and Popular Nationhood in the Rhineland, 1800–1850
On 22 May 1838, Aachen residents “from the lowest classes” crossed a porous border to nearby Vaels in Belgium to participate in national political rites. They erected a liberty tree, waved the Belgian tricolor, and sang revolutionary songs. On the way home, this crowd, estimated at between 100 and 200 persons, also taunted Prussian custom officials at the border. A week earlier a similar incident had taken place; residents from the same town attempted to hang a Belgian flag from the local church. When prevented by the pastor, they displayed the tricolor from a tavern window to provoke town residents. A similar number of Aachen residents witnessed this former event, too, which raises the question: why exactly were there hundreds of Prussian subjects on hand to witness and participate in these events? Happenstance or design? As is often the case, the documentation is scant. Of particular interest for Prussian officials was the direct involvement of one Franz Huber Nacken, a carpenter’s apprentice from Aachen, who had a record of stirring up trouble on both sides of the border.1
Italian Influence on the Development of Calvinist Scholasticism
THIS ARTICLE TRIES to show that the rise of Calvinist scholasticism, which was the most important development in Calvinist theology during the second half of the sixteenth century, stemmed largely from several converging Italian influences, particularly from the writings of Peter Martyr Vermigli and Jerome Zanchi. Here Calvinist theology refers not only to the personal thought of John Calvin but also to the teachings of the founders of the Reformed or Calvinist tradition as it spread out from Geneva and Switzerland to France, Germany, England, Scotland, Poland, and the Low Countries. In this context Calvin emerges as the brightest star in a galaxy of Reformed theologians which includes Heinrich Bullinger, Pierre Viret, Theodore Beza and Wolfgang Musculus as well as Martyr, Zanchi and others. These theologians were often more influential than Calvin himself at a given place or time or on a given point of doctrine. Bullinger, Martyr, and Martin Bucer were all more important for spreading Calvinist ideas to Edwardian England than was John Calvin. Early Elizabethan Protestantism looked more to Zurich than to Geneva, as did early Polish Calvinism. German Calvinism owed more to Heidelberg than to Geneva.' These leaders developed their theologies sometimes in mutual dependence, sometimes with surprising independence. By no means was their relation to Calvin simply that of disciple to master, for each gave a personal nuance to his style of Calvinism. Thus the sixteenth century Jesuit Cornelius Schulting states on the opening page of his five volume polemic against Calvin and Peter Martyr that Martyr was clearer and far more learned than Calvin.2 Recently John Bray has pointed out that research in seventeenth century Calvinism leads "to the conclusion that the impact of Calvin upon the Calvinistic movement has been greatly over-rated. It may well be that some of