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Roads Not Taken

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Scandinavia After Napoleon

Part of the book series: War, Culture and Society, 1750–1850 ((WCS))

Abstract

This introductory chapter situates the book in the context and aftermath of the great upheaval brought upon Scandinavia by the Napoleonic Wars. The chapter’s point of departure is the efforts to unite the Scandinavian countries in conjunction with the Swedish crises of succession in 1809 and 1810, before the emergence from the late 1830s of an articulated Scandinavianist ideology and movement marked the beginning of more concerted attempts to bring about Scandinavian unification. The chapter also offers a brief overview and a crude typology of Scandinavianism, as well as a historiographical and methodological perspective, arguing that emphasis on structural conditions and tendencies of methodological nationalism has contributed to somewhat deterministic and generally negative depictions of Scandinavianism in traditional Scandinavian historiography. This book offers a reappraisal of Scandinavianism by assessing the grounds, emergence and content of the ideology in the context of its own time, as well as regarding the course of Scandinavian history as more open-ended than the advent and ultimate triumph of the modern Scandinavian nation states suggests.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Quoted in Sather (2015, 226).

  2. 2.

    Clausen (1896, 111–119).

  3. 3.

    See for example Kaiser (2009).

  4. 4.

    Glenthøj and Ottosen (2014, 18).

  5. 5.

    Barton (2009, 136–160).

  6. 6.

    Friis (1897–1899, 273–275), Clausen (1896, 120–126), Broers (2022, 86–87).

  7. 7.

    Plunket Barton (1921, 251–291).

  8. 8.

    Broers (2022, 88), Glenthøj and Ottosen (2014, 146 ff).

  9. 9.

    Clausen (1896, 121–122), Friis (1897–1899, 279 ff).

  10. 10.

    Las Cases (1836, 107–108, 209).

  11. 11.

    Koselleck (2004).

  12. 12.

    Gerven (2023, 7 ff), Hobsbawm (1992, 31–41), Ræder (1852, 473), Sather (2015), LUB. HA. 4. II:4. ”En gamal Bondes Testamente till sina barn och Grannar”; Glenthøj (2019).

  13. 13.

    Gerven (2022, 133 ff), Anderson (2000 [1983], 83 ff), Sørensen (1998).

  14. 14.

    Bessel (2003, 15–20).

  15. 15.

    Macmillan (2015, 10–29, 48–64).

  16. 16.

    Collins (2012).

  17. 17.

    Evans (2016, 266).

  18. 18.

    Nilsson (2015), Glenthøj (2015).

  19. 19.

    Danstrup (1944), Sanness (1959), Becker-Christensen (1981).

  20. 20.

    Amundsen and Seip (ed.) (1962 (VIII), 204).

  21. 21.

    Gerven (2023, 3).

  22. 22.

    For discussions of different concepts of Scandinavia and Scandinavianism, see Berg (2014), Hemstad (2017, 2018a, 2–3, 10, 2018b, 49–54), Nielsen (2014, 102), Seip (1971, 313, 344, 1981, 42, 1990, 90).

  23. 23.

    KBS. Sohlmans saling. L10:2. Ploug to Sohlman 28.10.1864.

  24. 24.

    Bjerrum et al. (2018, 9–13), Glenthøj (2022).

  25. 25.

    Ranke (1885 [1824], vii).

  26. 26.

    Glenthøj (2018), Butterfield (1931).

  27. 27.

    See Clausen (1900), Danstrup (1944), Holmberg (1946), Sanness (1959).

  28. 28.

    Stenberg (1943), Møller (1948), Lundh (1950, 1951), Gullberg (1952), Hedin (1953a, b), Møller (1954, 1954–1955, 1955–1956).

  29. 29.

    Hvidt (1994, 293–304).

  30. 30.

    Hemstad (2008), Haarder Ekman (2010), the essays in Harvard and Hillström (2013), Johnsen (2021), Gerven (2022). Hemstad and Stadius (eds) (2023).

  31. 31.

    Maxwell (2022, 11).

  32. 32.

    Leerssen (2018, 18).

  33. 33.

    Leerssen (2018, 19–20), Gellner (2002 [1983], 43).

  34. 34.

    Clausen (1896, 129 ff), Friis (1897–1899, 123, 127, 145).

  35. 35.

    Clausen (1896, 139–145).

  36. 36.

    Christian August’s claim: Clausen (1896, 146). Plans: Tscherning (1877, 2, 249–259), Jensen (1934, 450–451), Rerup (1982, 97), Glenthøj (2014, 140), Clausen and Poulsen (1980, 281–283).

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    1. University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark

      Rasmus Glenthøj

    2. Norwegian Defence University College, Oslo, Norway

      Morten Nordhagen Ottosen

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    Correspondence to Rasmus Glenthøj .

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    Glenthøj, R., Ottosen, M.N. (2024). Roads Not Taken. In: Scandinavia After Napoleon. War, Culture and Society, 1750–1850. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46561-1_1

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