M. Meumann, J. Rogge (Hg.): Die besetzte res publica (Peter H. Wilson)

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Francia-Recensio 2008/4 Frühe Neuzeit – Revolution – Empire (1500–1815)

Markus Meumann, Jörg Rogge (Hg.), Die besetzte res publica. Zum Verhältnis von ziviler Obrigkeit und militärischer Herrschaft in besetzten Gebieten vom Spätmittelalter bis zum 18. Jahrhundert, Münster (LIT) 2006, 412 p. (Herrschaft und soziale Systeme in der Frühen Neuzeit), ISBN 3-8258-6346-8, EUR 40,90.

rezensiert von/compte rendu rédigé par

Peter H. Wilson, Sunderland

The phenomenon of military occupation has been studied primarily from twentieth-century examples, notably those from the two world wars. The contributors to the volume edited by Markus Meumann and Jörg Rogge add greater chronological depth and analytical range by examining examples from the twelfth to the early nineteenth centuries. A number of issues emerge, featuring with varying presence in all sixteen papers. First, all the authors note that military occupation entails the intrusion of armed outsiders into a defined, settled area. Invasion can expose underlying problems, as illustrated by Lucien Bély’s study of French policy in the Austrian Netherlands 1744–1748 where the occupiers received numerous petitions from inhabitants requesting reform. While occupation generally follows a military defeat, this is not invariably the case, as demonstrated by Stephan Huck’s discussion of the Brunswick troops sent to protect Canada during the American Revolutionary War. Michael Kaiser offers a further example through the »agreed occupation« of Brandenburg towns in the Lower Rhine by the Dutch between 1614 and 1674. All contributors stress that the presence of armed outsiders raised complex problems of legitimacy. Ernst-Dieter Hehl, Heinhard Steiger, and Horst Carl discuss how these questions were addressed between the twelfth and eighteenth centuries by Christian writers and lawyers. Successful conquest legitimised subsequent rule, but this became more problematic with the practice of temporary occupation. According to Jörg Rogge, this arose only in the fifteenth century as rulers acquired the logistical, military and judicial infrastructure necessary to make occupation a viable means of applying pressure on enemies during war. The central thesis of the volume is that military occupation emerged in Europe parallel to the development of the centralised state with more clearly defined frontiers and the capacity to project force beyond those boundaries. Occupation entailed the temporary control of an area where authority rested primarily on a military presence, with full legitimacy dependent on recognition through a peace treaty. The experience of the Napoleonic Wars added to the controversy through the association of occupation with illegality, as indicated in Helmut Stubbe da Luz’s discussion of the French presence in northern Germany. Time plays a major part in the discussions of the legitimacy as well as the definition of military occupation. Though temporary, all writers agree that occupation involved more than the transient passage of troops or a raiding party. Catherine Denys nonetheless applies the term, with justification, to the Dutch control of Lille 1708–1713, during the War of the Spanish Succession. Markus Meumann covers the equally short occupation of Magdeburg and Halberstadt by the Swedes after 1631, whereas Paul Baks discusses the seventeen year occupation of Friesland by ducal Saxony after 1498 and Jürgen Paul examines the somewhat longer Mongol presence in thirteenth-century Bukhara. In all cases, the invaders intended their rule to be permanent and took steps to establish their own civilian control. Whereas the Mongols largely left existing structures in place in Bukhara, the Saxons swiftly imposed their own government with lasting effects, despite the relative brevity of their rule in Friesland. Strategies of occupation are further explored by Denis Crouzet’s study of the Catholic and Huguenot treatment of captured towns during the opening phases of the French Wars of Religion, and by Stephan Selzer’s examples of princes who built new fortifications to stamp their authority on recalcitrant cities in fifteenth-century Germany. Though touched on in most papers, the issues of collaboration and resistance are covered primarily by Martin Kintzinger’s examination of French opposition to English occupation during the later stages of the Hundred Years War. The problem of legitimacy is clearly central to all these discussions and is rightly related by the authors to wider questions associated with justifications for violence and state authority. However, Ludolf Pelizeaus sounds an appropriate note of caution in his extended commentary on Crouzet’s and Baks’ papers when he advises against constructing neat categories of different types of occupation for the early modern period. The evidence is not yet sufficient for such sophisticated conclusions to be drawn, if indeed they prove justified at all. Nonetheless, the volume succeeds on several counts. It presents a variety of interesting case studies demonstrating the diversity of experience encountered by occupiers and occupied in early modern Europe. Perhaps more fundamentally, it forces historians to approach the term »military occupation« with greater care in their own research and suggests that a phenomenon chiefly associated with the twentieth century has a much longer heritage.