7 - The French Revolution

Summary

The French Revolution ended a period in which Britain had concentrated on its extra-European empire, and placed the continent at the top of its agenda for the first time since 1760. Similarly, British debate about Hanover reverted to the arguments of mid-century; the electorate was once again intrinsically important, if not mentioned as frequently as before. Strangely, the French Revolution did not introduce an egalitarian strain into British debate over Hanover. There is corroborating evidence for continuity across the watershed of 1789; British radicals followed their predecessors in arguing that Hanover hurt their countrymen irrespective of station. Their omission accentuated Britain's discursive disconnect with Hanover, where the burgeoning press increasingly examined Britain through a social prism. Initially, reformers hoped that dynastic union might facilitate the introduction of British social mobility to the electorate. But Britain's employment of Hanoverian mercenaries against France threatened to reinforce inequality at home and abroad. By the end of the decade, Hanoverian dissidents argued that Britain maintained its empire over Hanover by building up a compliant oligarchy.

Complaints about aristocratic privilege were nothing new in Hanover. But Hanoverians believed the elector was the only political force competent to address it, at least until the late 1780s. But by then, Hanover had been ruled for nearly thirty years by a foreign elector who never visited it. Hanoverians began to imagine that homegrown institutions, such as theestates, might redress the grievances with privilege. This may seem odd, since the estates embodied privilege. But they had recently received a fillip from Göttingen professor Ludwig Timotheus Spittler, who had rhetorically amplified the opinions of Treuer and Strube in his 1786 Geschichte des Fürstenthums Hannover (History of the Principality of Hanover). Spittler, a Stuttgarter who tended to support the influential Swabian estates against the duke of Württemberg, presented a traditionally dualistic analysis of Hanoverian politics in which the estates moderated princely excesses. While he did not address aristocratic privilege per se, his description of the Hanoverian estates as ‘representatives of the nation’ encouraged others to ascribe them a remit for its reform. Even while France witnessed aristocrats’ reluctance to part with their privileges, Hanoverians reposed great faith in their estates’ capacity for self-abnegation.