Royalism and revolution

In the closing roundtable, Gabriel Di Meglio (Universidad de Buenos Aires-Conicet, Argentina) confessed that when he told a friend he was coming to Yale for a conference on popular royalism, his friend joked that he was going to the “bad guys” conference. Indeed, popular royalists have long been depicted as the unthinking lower classes that chose to fight with the monarchy against the liberalizing (i.e. “good”) revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. On October 28-29, roughly 40 scholars met in New Haven to nuance, diversify, and defy the prevailing portrait of popular royalists as the bad guys.

“Popular Royalism in the Revolutionary Atlantic World” gathered scholars from three continents who study popular royalism in Jamaica, Haiti, France, Italy, Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil, and Sierra Leone, among other places. Because “popular royalism” is a newly conceptualized field of study, organizers Marcela Echeverri (Yale, History) and Clément Thibaud (Nantes) hoped that this international group of scholars would begin the process of defining popular royalism and draw connections between its different instantiations. They were not disappointed.

Five thematic panels brought to light different facets of popular royalism. The first panel, Revolution and Counterrevolution, suggested that popular royalist ideology should not simply be described as “traditional” but rather as offering an alternate path to modernity. Next up was the panel on Legality and Monarchial Legitimacy, whose presenters raised questions on how the type of monarchy and the royalists’ distance from the monarchy affected expressions of popular royalism. Rounding out the first day of the conference was a panel entitled Military Organization and Violence, which made large strides toward trans-imperial comparisons. In particular, the presenters noted the similarities between the Spanish and British Empires’ interactions with armed indigenous peoples and black maroon communities.

Starting off the second day was a panel on Politics and Religion, which allowed the scholars to focus on questions that had been raised throughout the previous day: did popular royalists always have the support of the clergy? How did millenarian ideas play out in the political upheaval of revolution? And, how did popular royalists use religious symbolism to promote their cause? The second panel of the day was Alliances, which examined the forms of vertical attachment between popular royalists and the King.

During this penultimate panel, Paul Chopelin (Université Lumière Lyon 2, France) described three possible ways historians can understand popular royalism: as a subordination to the interests of royalist elites, as an act of opportunism, or as a manifestation of deep personal convictions. The opening remarks of the conference had already set the tone in unequivocally rejecting the first understanding, insisting that historians take the actions of the populous seriously and acknowledge them as conscientious political actors. Presenter Ruma Chopra (San Jose State University) put it best: “Royalism is an act of choice.”

As for the second and third ways proposed by Chopelin, conference attendees hotly debated whether historians should interpret popular royalism as a strategic tool, or alternately, as a sincerely expressed worldview. In a memorable phrase that reverberated throughout the panels, Sergio Serulnikov (Universidad de San Andrés-Conicet, Argentina) called popular royalism an “empty vessel” that could be proclaimed and filled with almost any meaning to achieve strategic aims. Other presenters, however, used their case studies to show how people became politicized and that popular royalism was a sincere conclusion of this process. In the end, both sides conceded that our inability to fully understand historical actors’ motivations necessitates us grappling with this difficult question of the extent to which popular royalism was a tactic or a belief.

The conference ended with a lively discussion of whether “popular” and “royalism” are the right terms to use to describe the related phenomenon found in the presenters’ many case studies. The fact that the scholars present could not reach a conclusion is a good omen for this burgeoning field of study – it promises a lively continuation of communication between scholars of these various places and peoples.

To view the full program of the conference, with presenter names and presentation titles, visit http://macmillan.yale.edu/popular-royalism-revolutionary-atlantic-world.

This conference was made possible by funding from the Edward J. and Dorothy Clarke Kempf Memorial Fund; Yale Department of History; Université de Nantes, Région des Pays de la Loire; STARACO; and Centre de Recherches en Histoire Internationale et Atlantique.

Written by Catherine Treesh, Ph.D. Student in History.