Abstract
Reviewed by: Philip Dwyer, University of Newcastle, Australia
Scandinavia has largely been ignored in the literature on Napoleonic Europe, apart from a few episodes during the wars such as the Second League of Armed Neutrality or the bombardment of Copenhagen by the British in 1807. This book, co-authored by Rasmus Glenthøj and Morten Nordhagen Ottosen (both now at the University of Southern Denmark), on the history of Denmark-Norway is therefore a welcome addition that fills a badly neglected gap in the English-language literature. It is also the first book to look at the two countries from a comparative perspective, placing its history within the larger Scandinavian as well as international context. The two questions at the core of this book are how Denmark-Norway got dragged into the wars in the first place, and what influence and consequences they had for the two countries.
With a combined population of only around 2.5 million people, Denmark-Norway was nevertheless an important trading nation, with a total of 3500 merchant vessels sailing under the Danish flag in 1806. Like the Habsburg Empire, the 400-year-old kingdom of Denmark-Norway was a conglomerate of several different regions and ethnicities loyal to the same ruling house, including the predominantly German duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. One could therefore have different identities that Glenthøj and Ottosen argue took place on three levels: a cosmopolitan, a state patriotic and a national patriotic identity. Norwegians could consequently refer to themselves as Danes and call Danes their fellow countrymen. It was also possible for ‘Danes’ to die for the fatherland (79), an ideal that was widespread among the officer class in particular. The wars, however, were going to completely upset those notions, testing solidarity and loyalty to the Danish-Norwegian state.
Denmark-Norway prospered as a neutral state, until the kingdom got involved in the French Wars, leading first to the British bombardment of Copenhagen in 1807, pushing the kingdom into the arms of the French, and then war with Sweden (instigated by the latter). Morten and Ottosen explain lucidly in the first two chapters how this occurred. Resentment against the British as a result of the bombardment was deep and long lasting in Denmark-Norway. It encouraged the state to enforce Napoleon’s Continental System in a much stricter manner than any of Napoleon’s other allies (174). But friendship with Napoleon was a double-edged sword. The fact that the kingdom more or less became chained to Napoleon inevitably meant that its survival was dependent on the continued military successes of the French. After 1812, with Napoleon’s defeat in Russia, and the ensuing Russo-Swedish alliance, Denmark-Norway could not hold out alone.
The Swedes were just as detested among the ‘Danish’ as the British, to the point where ‘to make a Swede of oneself’ entered the vocabulary in Denmark and Norway alike and came to mean ‘cowardice’. Sweden’s role, as well as that of the man who would become known as Crown Prince Charles John, namely Napoleon’s marshal, Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, are invariably drawn into the narrative, providing additional insights into international relations during this period. The upshot of the wars was the creation of an independent Norway when, paradoxically, a Danish prince, Christian Frederick, was elected king of Norway in 1814. The separation was not inevitable but largely brought about by international pressure. At one point it looked as though Denmark itself might cease to exist as an independent kingdom.
The title of the book may be a little misleading to some, since it is not so much about the ‘experience’ of war as a political-cultural history of Denmark-Norway. In fact there is probably more of a focus on the political and military elite than on the people, although they too are included in the analyses on mentalities. The work could have been usefully augmented by an analysis of the visual material from the period, but that is a personal predilection and would have resulted in a longer work. That said, this is an invaluable addition to the collection of works on Napoleonic Europe, one that succeeds in bridging the gap in the literature, bringing to light little known aspects of the French Wars to English readers, as well as questioning the traditional historiographies of these countries. Also, the last chapter takes us beyond 1815, into the nineteenth and even the twentieth centuries for a brief overview of the political developments that led to four separate Scandinavian states, including the legacy that emerged from 1814 – ‘Scandinavianism’. Morten and Ottosen are to be thanked for providing English-speaking readers with an accessible history of one of the turning points in Scandinavian history, a period that laid the foundations for the Scandinavia with which we are familiar today.