The trial of Henry of Brederode

I: Controversies

Who was Henry of Brederode (1531–68)? To Maurits Cornelis van Hall (1768–1858) the answer was clear: Brederode had been one of the founders of Dutch freedom through his actions in the early days of the Dutch Revolt; he was a courageous man, a Christian. Brederode’s moral behaviour, a subject that caught much attention in Van Hall’s assessment, might have been questionable by 19^th-century standards, but not if one compared it with the morals of Brederode’s contemporaries. Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer (1801–76) held a different view. According to Groen, Brederode had been nothing more than an ‘obstacle’ to William the Silent (1533–84) in the struggle for Dutch freedom; Brederode’s capacities had been mediocre and his manners and character had been ‘loose’ at best (Groen van Prinsterer, 1844: 31).

‘Who was Henry of Brederode?’ was a question that aroused much excitement in Dutch historiography in the 1840s. In a number of pamphlets, Van Hall and Groen vehemently debated the life, character and accomplishments of Brederode: Van Hall wrote Hendrick, Graaf van Brederode, mede-grondlegger der Nederlandsche vrijheid, verdedigd [Henry, Count of Brederode, Co-founder of Dutch Freedom, Defended] in 1844; he was answered by Groen in the same year in his Antwoord aan Mr. M.C. van Hall [Answer to Mr M. C. van Hall]; Van Hall did not consider the Brederode case closed and wrote a Wederwoord [Reply] in 1845; Groen responded only marginally to Van Hall’s last intervention. The controversy between the two was reviewed in general cultural magazines as well as specialist historical journals (Anonymous, 1845a; Anonymous, 1845b; Mees Azn, 1847). P. Scheltema, the Amsterdam archivist, published a small book about a specific episode in Brederode’s life and the future state archivist R. C. Bakhuizen van den Brink wrote an extensive essay on the subject while in exile in Vienna (Bakhuizen van den Brink, 1845; Scheltema, 1846).

What made a 16^th-century nobleman, Henry of Brederode, so important to Dutch historians? Brederode had handed the ‘Request’ of the Dutch noblemen to Governess-General Margaret of Parma in 1566, demanding among other things the abolition of the Inquisition. Afterwards, Brederode had been one of the first leaders of the revolt, before he died in exile in Germany in 1568. The 16^th-century revolt was the most important episode in the Dutch collective memory throughout the 19^th century – perhaps only rivalled by the ‘Golden Age’ of the 17^th century. The revolt was also an arena where contemporary political disputes could be fought out. The story of the revolt counted as the start of the Dutch Republic, but its interpretation was heavily influenced by the ensuing factional struggles in the republic. The two main political factions were those who were in favour of the rule of the stadtholder and those who were opposed to it. The latter had always tried to play down the role of the stadtholderly family, the Orange-Nassaus, in the early revolt, thereby giving a more important part to other figures – like Brederode. In the turmoil of the decades around 1800 the republic had been substituted for a kingdom with a king from the Orange-Nassau family at the helm. Van Hall was a respectable figure in the new kingdom, occupying positions as a magistrate and a senator. In his youth, however, he had sided with the anti-stadtholderly party and as such his support for Brederode was no surprise. His opponent, Groen, was an orthodox Protestant and founder of the anti-revolutionary movement in Dutch politics, who sided with the Orange-Nassaus.

In the 19^th century, historical culture was a culture of honour. Much attention was paid to the deeds of great men, whose reputations were upheld by biographies, paintings, statues, etc. The popularity of a genre like the Pantheon depended on the possibility of uniting and immortalizing heroes from the national past (Tollebeek and Verschaffel, 2004). Access to the Dutch gallery of heroes was not granted on the basis of great military, political, or cultural deeds alone; national heroes needed to be moral models as well. They must possess certain virtues; they had to embody what were perceived as national character traits (Jensen, 2008: 210). William the Silent, for example, was hailed by Groen for his political craftsmanship and his military ability as well as his morals. He possessed such virtues as ‘perseverance’, ‘disinterestedness’ and ‘piety’ (Groen van Prinsterer, 1837: lxv). William (the ‘père de la patrie’ [father of the nation]) was undisputed, but Brederode was a doubtful case: his reputation was the subject of debate. It motivated Van Hall to defend the honour of his hero. Brederode, wrote Van Hall, had been ‘assaulted’ and ‘accused’ for decades now, by various ‘libellers’. Among them were famous authors like Friedrich Schiller in his Geschichte des Abfalls der Vereinigten Niederlande (1788), Dutch poet and historian Willem Bilderdijk, and the ‘foremost of the accusers’, Groen van Prinsterer. For Van Hall, the time had come to strike back, since one should not be ‘indifferent’ towards the ‘fame of the ancestry’:

I saw that the statue of Henry of Brederode, erected by the most honourable of our historians and preserved intact for such a long time, was injured. I remembered the Roman law that gave the right to a son, to prosecute the violator of his father’s statue. (Van Hall, 1844: vi)

Van Hall tried to safeguard Brederode’s statue. Groen was unimpressed. Both discussants firmly held their ground: the Brederode controversy ended undecided.

Discussion, debate and controversy are at the heart of the historical enterprise. It has been propagated as a means to attain historical knowledge, provided that the participants behave as rational discussants. They should follow the rules of Habermasian discourse ethics, allowing the ‘better argument’ to win (Elvert, 2003: 12–13). In real life, however, controversies tend to be messy. Historians, Klaus Große Kracht has pointed out, do not just pick the best argument. Their positions are heavily influenced by political, biographical, aesthetic and other preferences (Große Kracht, 2007: 257). This was true for Van Hall and Groen: their views on Brederode coincided neatly with their political positions. Even worse for their reputation as rational discussants: Van Hall and Groen debated many more topics than just Brederode. They soon debated each other’s merits and methods as well. Instead of reducing the Brederode controversy to ‘bad history’, I would argue that Van Hall’s and Groen’s rule-breaking actually enhances its value as a subject of historiographical investigation.

The many controversy studies conducted in the history of the natural sciences have shown that a controversy following certain ‘rules’ is hardly imaginable. There is often much more at stake than the content of scientific knowledge alone. The ways in which knowledge is arrived at were disputed together with the outcomes themselves – precisely because outcomes often depend on methods. Studying these controversies is fruitful because it is here that tacit presuppositions about how science should be conducted are articulated by its participants (Golinski, 1998: 20–1). Much of the same holds true for controversies in the humanities, like the one between Groen and Van Hall. Their dispute revolved not just around the question of who Henry of Brederode had been; they discussed the historian’s methods, sources and working place as well. The Brederode controversy offers an insight into discussions that were very pertinent to 19^th-century historiography. In this article I shall treat three of them. First, the role of the historian, and the virtues the historian should possess to fulfil the task, were at stake. Much room was reserved by both Groen and Van Hall for the position of the archive and its contents in historiography. Second, the question of which archival documents the historian could and should use was a source of great disagreement between Groen and Van Hall. Groen worked as an archivist in the Dutch Royal House Archives from 1831 to 1871 (Woelderink and Loonstra, 1989). Finally, the merits of this archive (and by extension the archive in general) as a location of historical knowledge production were discussed in the Brederode controversy.

II: Historians

An immediate cause for Van Hall to take up the defence of Brederode was Groen’s great 8-volume source publication from the Dutch Royal House Archives, the Archives ou correspondance inédite de la Maison d’Orange-Nassau (1835–47). The Archives covered the period from 1552 to 1584. The introductions Groen wrote to each volume had given an unfair judgement of Brederode, Van Hall thought. Therefore he filed his complaints, or rather: Van Hall pressed charges against Groen. He went to the ‘court of appeal’ to ask for a ‘revision’ of Brederode’s ‘conviction’ that was ruled by Groen (Van Hall, 1844: 152). Van Hall’s preference for metaphors from the domain of law was no coincidence; legal terms were omnipresent in the controversy: Van Hall and Groen put Brederode on trial. In consequence, both historians profiled themselves as judges. The metaphor of the judge for the role the historian should play was far from new. It is a metaphor that highlights at least two different aspects of the historian’s work. On the one hand, there is an aspect of research in the task of the judge: assessing witnesses and proof, and evaluating testimonies. On the other hand, the judge has to pronounce a sentence; has to pass judgment. The second use of the metaphor, as Carlo Ginzburg pointed out, almost automatically coincided with a preference for certain ‘judicable’ subjects: political, military and diplomatic events, carried out by individuals (Ginzburg, 1994: 291–3). The historian as a judge and the ‘moralizing historiography’ – despised by Ginzburg – perfectly fitted the aims of both Groen and Van Hall: investigating as well as judging the life and morals of Henry of Brederode.

A great benefit of assuming the role of judge was that both truth and judgment were combined in the person of the judge. This cannot so easily be said of other participants in a trial: the witnesses, the accused, or the accused’s lawyers. Groen, in particular, fashioned himself as a judge, while at the same time denying others that role. In his Antwoord [Answer], Groen assured Van Hall that his ‘verdict’ on Brederode was a verdict pronounced by a ‘judge’ (Groen van Prinsterer, 1844: 8). Groen could not say the same of the German historian Heinrich Leo’s depiction of William the Silent. Leo had written a history of the Netherlands, Zwölf Bücher niederländischer Geschichten (1832–5), in which Groen had found William to be ‘un ambitieux, un intrigant, un traître, un hypocrite’ [an ambitious man, a schemer, a traitor, a hypocrite]. Groen was willing to accept that one did not have to take all the panegyrics of William for granted, but Leo had clearly exaggerated in the opposite direction and therefore abandoned his duty. It seemed as if Leo, Groen said, had forgotten that ‘l’historien n’est pas avocat, mais juge; qu’il ne doit pas former contrepoids, mais tenir la balance’ [the historian is not an advocate but a judge; he must not act as a counterweight but keep the balance] (Groen van Prinsterer, 1836: lxv, lxxii). Groen discredited Leo by assigning to him the role of lawyer. A lawyer participated in a trial like a judge, but he was by definition partial, a contrast with the impartial judge Groen himself claimed to be. What applied for Leo’s attack on William applied, mutatis mutandis, for Van Hall’s final defence of Brederode. Groen deemed Van Hall’s Wederwoord [Reply] worthy only of a reaction in a footnote. According to Groen, the Wederwoord was not a ‘jugement équitable’ [a balanced judgment], stripped of all passion, but rather ‘un plaidoyer’ [a plea] that was ‘une exposition vive et chaleureuse’ [a lively and warm-hearted statement] (Groen van Prinsterer, 1847: lxi). Groen relegated his opponents to parties in the trial, over whom he, as judge, could preside.

One can also question the other – investigative – side of the metaphor. The comparison of the historian to an investigating judge had currency as well in Dutch historiography in the middle of the 19^th century. Robert Fruin, a future Leiden history professor who would be an opponent of Groen in a dispute in the 1850s, remarked on the great similarities between the investigative activities of historians and those acted out in the court of law. He compared the historian’s work to that of an ‘examining magistrate’, who assembled his sources for the ‘tribunal of critique’ (Fruin, 1901: 225; Fruin, 1902: 351). In the Brederode case Groen and Van Hall had to rely on ‘eyewitnesses’, who also delivered ‘evidence’. They had to check this evidence, which, if it turned out to be unreliable, was nullified. Here, like all historians, Groen and Van Hall faced the problem of testimony as described by Kasper Eskildsen. For their knowledge and judgement of Brederode they had to rely on testimony delivered by witnesses. The evaluation of testimony depended upon the reliability of those witnesses. Therefore the testifier himself or herself had to be scrutinized: was he or she accurate, honest and impartial? In other words: did he or she possess the right epistemic virtues (Eskildsen, 2013)?

Van Hall took his investigation one step further. Many of the sources on Brederode he scrutinized were works written by earlier historians. Those who had acted as judge and pronounced a sentence on Brederode before had become testifiers themselves. Van Hall questioned not only the epistemic virtues of his opponents, but their moral virtues as well. He measured the moral qualities of historians Bilderdijk and N. G. van Kampen, just as they themselves had questioned Brederode’s morals. Van Hall, in other words, developed a historiographical tu quoque: any testifier who did not meet the moral standards he used to judge historical figures was dismissed as unworthy. Van Kampen, who had judged Brederode’s character and drinking behaviour unfavourably, himself lacked the ‘steadiness and calm’ that were required in a historian (Van Hall, 1844: 10). About Brederode’s alcohol abuse, Van Hall wrote that Van Kampen would have left the same impression had he written in his letters about every toast he made. Bilderdijk had been one of the harshest critics of Brederode. He received the same treatment from Van Hall. Bilderdijk’s disapproval of the debts owed by Brederode led Van Hall to remark that ‘he would have expected a milder judgement about this from Mr Bilderdijk’ (ibid.: 100). It was a barely concealed allusion to the financial problems that had troubled Bilderdijk throughout his life – Van Hall himself knew from experience: he had been a creditor of Bilderdijk in 1811 (Cohen, 1928: 42).

The virtuousness of Groen was questioned by Van Hall: the former was provoked to write his Antwoord [Answer] by the reproaches the latter had hurled at him. Although Groen had received some minor compliments from Van Hall – his ‘erudition, industriousness, shrewdness’ had been praised – he felt he had been denied the cardinal virtues: ‘conscientious research, delicacy, impartial love of truth, every indispensable quality for a historian’ (Groen van Prinsterer, 1844: 92, 2). Groen’s reputation was in jeopardy: if a historian (or a judge) was not impartial and had no love of truth, then he was nothing, that much was clear. And if precisely these qualities were questioned by a man of such standing as Van Hall (‘a man of respectable position, relations, merit and character’), a historian like Groen could do nothing but respond and substantiate his claims (ibid.: 2).

Impartiality – denied to Groen by Van Hall – was a key epistemic virtue to historians. It was something completely different from aperspectival objectivity, aiming for a view from nowhere. Instead, it implied by definition a view from somewhere. Impartiality presupposed partisanship in every historian and every historical actor. An impartial historian, then, was not someone who had no partisanship whatsoever, but a historian who could suspend partisanship when passing a judgement. Van Hall readily admitted to his own partisanship: he could hide ‘neither Fatherland nor passion’ and he had a ‘predilection’ for Brederode. He reassured his readers nevertheless by stating that it was ‘truth’ he was looking for, even when it offered a less favourable account of Brederode (Van Hall, 1844: x). Groen tried to prove his impartiality to Van Hall through his partisanship. Groen had judged favourably two persons that were his adversaries, since they belonged to a political current that was not his. The first of them was the 17^th-century hero of the anti-stadtholderly party, Johan de Witt – a hotly contested figure in Dutch historiography. The other one was the 18^th-century historian Jan Wagenaar, who had written an important 21-volume national history in an anti-stadtholderly fashion (Groen van Prinsterer, 1844: 96–7).

Groen’s examples show how entrenched the notions of partisanship were in Dutch history and historiography: no historical actor or historian was without partisanship. Both Van Hall’s and Groen’s expectations of impartiality related – albeit differently – to the changes in politics that had occurred around 1800. Van Hall had lived through these changes. He was born in the Dutch Republic; after 1795, in the short-lived Batavian Republic, he had occupied an important political position. Later on, Van Hall, like many of his generation, had adjusted his political views to the consecutive regimes. He was held in great esteem by King Louis Napoleon (1806–10), as well as by King William I (1813–40), who was the son of the last stadtholder. One of the ambitions in the kingdom was to leave behind the political and historiographical factional struggles that had dominated the republic. It led to a new, reconciling view of history (Blaas, 2000: 18). Van Hall subscribed to this reconciliation; he was very happy with the ‘oblivion’ that the new king had written ‘in golden letters on the first page of the history of his regime’, and opposed all those who wanted to reopen the ‘Etna of former division’ (Van Hall, 1844: 14; Van Hall, 1845: 16). Accounts of national history that tried to revive the political factions from the republic were both historically incorrect and politically undesirable (Van Hall, 1844: 13–16). According to Van Hall, a historian had to be impartial and post-partial at the same time.

The historiographical consequences of the transition from republic to kingdom were estimated differently by Groen. For him, the end of the republic had created the possibility of impartiality, because it had enabled the free investigation of the past. According to Groen, the former historiography, and by extension the still existing tradition (and popular opinion), had been biased. This bias, in favour of the anti-stadtholderly faction, could now be erased: the ‘popular prejudice’ that had been mobilized against his opinions could be brought to an end (Groen van Prinsterer, 1844: 91). The demise of the republic made possible an ‘examen libre et impartial’ [a free and impartial examination]. Whereas Van Hall did not want to stir things up, Groen thought it was time for a thorough investigation that would show a lot of ‘jugements traditionnels’ [traditional judgements] to be false and in need of replacement. It was the ‘sources contemporaines et … pièces inédites’ [contemporary sources and unedited items] that should serve as the basis for these new judgements (Groen van Prinsterer, 1841: 23*, 26*, 29*). It was the archival documents printed in the Archives that occupied first rank among Groen’s preferred sources.

III: Letters

The circumvention of existing historiography in favour of primary source material as a perceived superior foundation for historical knowledge by Groen resembles the larger ‘archival turn’ in 19^th-century historiography. The paradigmatic example of this kind was Leopold Ranke’s archival journey from 1827 to 1831. Through the documents he found in the Venetian archive, Ranke was able to deconstruct existing historiography as false or even fraudulent and supplant it by his own archive-based account of the past. From Ranke’s point of view, secondary sources, that is, existing historiography, could not be trusted: ‘the archive was the only proper site for the production of historical knowledge’ (Eskildsen, 2008: 437). Yet Ranke did not treat all archival documents equally. He preferred a certain kind of source: specifically, the Venetian relazioni. These relazioni were composed by the Venetian diplomats when they returned home from their missions and consisted of overviews of the states to which they had been sent. These reports perfectly fitted Ranke’s needs. He was interested in matters of state and international politics, on which the relazioni provided him with information (Benzoni, 1990). However, the use of these sources did not fail to leave its influence on Ranke: he wrote history from the perspective of his sources and therefore from the perspective of the state.

Marriage contracts, testaments, documents concerning property rights, baptismal certificates and many other documents were available in the Royal House Archives – but its archivist, Groen, did not chose to edit any of these. He had his own favourite source: the personal, confidential letters to and from the Orange-Nassaus. Just as in Ranke’s case, Groen’s choice was guided by his specific historiographical interest. The letters all concerned the era of the Dutch Revolt, up until the death of William of Orange in 1584. Moreover, these sources perfectly fitted the interest in a highly personalized historiography. In Groen’s words: the Archives were ‘saillant’ [striking] because of the ‘communication intime’ [intimate communication] that was offered in the letters (Groen van Prinsterer, 1841: 14*). It was this intimacy that gave almost unrestricted access to the 16^th century. The Archives were a means to suspend the distance in time that separated the historian from the historical figures he described. Groen believed that the era of the Dutch Revolt could be known:

… surtout par des lettres écrites en grande partie à coeur ouvert, par la voix, pour ainsi dire, des morts sortant après trois siècles de leurs tombeaux, qu’on pourra réhabiliter cette belle époque et lui rendre sa véritable signification, sa couleur native, et la place qui lui appartient dans la succession des grandes phases de l’humanité. [… most of all through the letters that were written with an open heart, with the voice, so to speak, of the dead arising from their tombs after three centuries – it is like this that this beautiful era can be vindicated and given its true significance, its own colour and the place it deserves in the succession of great phases in the history of humanity] (Groen van Prinsterer, 1835b: xxvi–xxvii)

Groen was especially interested in William the Silent: William was the hero of the story that Groen told in the introductions to the Archives as well as in other works, such as the very popular Handboek der geschiedenis van het vaderland [Handbook of the History of the Fatherland]. In the Handboek, the revolt was given biblical proportions: Groen compared the history of the Dutch people with that of the people of Israel (Groen van Prinsterer, 1846: 104). The collected letters in the Archives were an unconscious ‘autobiographie’ [autobiography] of William, they offered the possibility to ‘live with him’ (Groen van Prinsterer, 1841: xxiii). William was not alone, as Groen pointed out. He was surrounded by others, many of them close relatives like his brothers the Counts Louis, Henry and John of Nassau. Letters from them were also included in the Archives. It led Groen to conclude that there was no dynasty as rich in ‘grands hommes’ [great men] as the Orange-Nassaus (Groen van Prinsterer, 1835a: viii).

The judgement Groen made of Brederode was somewhat less favourable. Brederode’s letters showed a ‘manque de principes et de moeurs’ [lack of principles and morals] (Groen van Prinsterer, 1835b: ix). He did not regret, at least not for the sake of the memory of Brederode, that he had not found any more of the nobleman’s letters (Groen van Prinsterer, 1836: xvii). Groen considered his judgement to be infallible, since the letters offered the possibility of some sort of time travel. Through the Archives, a historian no longer needed to rely on witnesses or the judgements of others. The letters enabled a personal encounter. Brederode’s letters allowed Groen to judge Brederode’s morals at first sight – and he needed just one look:

… just as there are persons, whom one only has to meet once, to despise without being premature, it is enough to read only one of these letters to know what place Brederode should hold in the estimation of contemporaries and descendants. (Groen van Prinsterer, 1844: 27–8)

It was with the letters – an ‘infallible standard’ – that Groen could convict Brederode (1844: 27–8).

What could Van Hall bring forward against an opponent who claimed to have met Brederode through his letters – letters that could be found in the Archives? First of all, he did not agree with Groen’s judgement – this was why he wrote his defence of Brederode in the first place. More importantly, Van Hall plainly rejected the Archives as historical source material: he found them unreliable as well as considering their use immoral. Van Hall’s argumentation was not wholly consistent. On the one hand, Van Hall dismissed every publication of letters that had not been authorized by the writer of these letters himself or herself, as was the case with Brederode’s letters. The publication had been unfair because Brederode was not in a position to defend himself, and unreliable because the letters were not written to be published. If Brederode had known about the publication of his letters, Van Hall argued, he would have made sure he left a better impression. On the other hand, Van Hall seemed to let his judgement depend on the content of those letters. In the Archives he wished to tolerate the letters that pertained to ‘public life’, as opposed to those that revealed ‘domestic life’: these letters had been written confidentially and should remain private. Furthermore, only letters could be published that in no way harmed the writer’s honour (Van Hall, 1844: 22–4).

Like most of the reviewers of the controversy, Groen reacted with surprise to this reproach in an era that saw many publications of letters. At that moment, ‘the entire scientific world was’, as Groen observed, ‘revolting against [Van Hall’s] law’ (Groen van Prinsterer, 1844: 39). It was not the first time, however, that Van Hall propagated this way of working with private letters. Some years before, Van Hall had written a biography of his friend, Admiral Jan Hendrik van Kinsbergen (1735–1819). Van Hall had been in a position to use many letters from Van Kinsbergen’s estate. In the foreword to his Het leven en karakter van den admiraal jhr. Jan Hendrik van Kinsbergen [The Life and Character of Admiral Jan Hendrik van Kinsbergen] he acknowledged the great value of these letters. They enabled him to show Van Kinsbergen in his ‘daily life’, which affirmed the greatness of the man just as much as his ‘feats of arms and triumphs’ (Van Hall, 1841: xxi). There was a considerable difference between Groen’s use of Brederode’s letters and Van Hall’s use of the correspondence of Van Kinsbergen: Van Kinsbergen had explicitly given his permission to his future biographer. There was only one condition Van Hall had to meet: Van Kinsbergen strictly forbade any use of his letters that could be dishonouring to families and persons other than himself (ibid.: xix). These were almost exactly the conditions Van Hall wanted Groen to follow with respect to Brederode’s letters.

The reaction from Groen was not unequivocal. He partly subscribed to Van Hall’s conditions by stating that he had chosen the published letters with ‘modesty and discretion’. Not every letter was publishable according to Groen, only those which served the ‘inquisitiveness’ of the researcher as opposed to letters that facilitated ‘general curiosity’. At the same time, however, Groen wanted to give the ‘whole truth’ and he acknowledged that even the smallest of details from domestic life could be important evidence for judging the character and dealings of historical figures (Groen van Prinsterer, 1844: 45, 34, 51). Van Hall recognized the value of the letters, and a complete halt to the Archives (as Groen had rhetorically proposed) seemed undesirable to him, too. In his Wederwoord [Reply] Van Hall maintained that the letters that were included in Groen’s edition thus far could not count as historical evidence, at least not Brederode’s letters, because the conditions of a fair trial had not been met. A historical figure whose letters were published was not able to defend himself against accusations based on these letters, Van Hall argued. The trial was therefore no more than an ‘Inquisition against the dead’, whose reactions to the accusations were not and could not be heard (Van Hall, 1845: 18–19). Van Hall dismissed Groen’s Archives as useless source material: Groen had declared that he had ‘lived in the midst of Brederode and his contemporaries’, but for his accusations he had furnished no other proof than Brederode’s letters. Letters, said Van Hall, that were ‘weapons, that fell into your hands by coincidence and the use of which was not free to [Groen]’ (ibid.: 114).

IV: Location

Brederode himself, the historians judging him and his letters used as source material, were all judged (at least partly) in moral terms. A moral problem arose from the historian’s working place, the archive, as well. Groen faced problems not only because he used a certain type of archival document (private letters) but also because he took these letters from an archive. The possibility of the use of archival material in the 19^th century offered great benefits to historians. They could consult all kinds of sources that had previously been unavailable, and archival documents were believed to have great force and reliability. Both Groen and Van Hall used archival documents to strengthen their argument. Source material that came from archives suffered from a great problem, however: they were local and unique, consultable only in the archival depot where they were kept.

In the 18^th century, the particularity of historical knowledge produced in archives had led some philosophical historians to reject archival research altogether. They strove for a more universal form of history (Eskildsen, 2008: 430–3). In the 19^th century – when archival research became the standard in historiography – the singularity of the archive was a problem that still caused historians some considerable concern. The most important remedy for it was the source publication; it could overcome several problems simultaneously. First of all, archival documents were an endangered species always threatened by theft, neglect, or fire. Groen sought a new accommodation, or at least a safe, that would better protect his most valuable documents (Pelinck, 1971: 19). The most enduring way of protecting at least the contents of the documents was, of course, the printing of them: it happened on a massive scale in the Netherlands in the 19^th century, often by archivists. A source publication overcame the practical problem of accessibility. Sources pertaining to one subject were scattered over many depots to which it was often difficult to gain access. Publication led to the unification of these sources in one volume or series. In the process of edition and publication meaning was bestowed on the sources, as Daniela Saxer has argued. What were loose documents in archives, now became documents that belonged to a certain collection (Saxer, 2010). Most of these publications were national projects. As such, these publications had a preparatory function: they should provide ‘historiography with a material substrate of “national” documents’. These source publications were often of an unforeseen magnitude and mobilized a great deal of manpower; they were ‘monumental undertakings’ in themselves (Saxer, 2012).

All these classifications were also true for Groen’s Archives. The sheer size of a first series of 8 volumes as well as its subject matter, the Orange-Nassaus, contributed to its monumentality. The gentleman historian and long-time friend of Groen, Hendrik Jacob Koenen, complimented the editor on the ‘monumentum aere perennis’ [sic] [monument more enduring than bronze] he erected (H. J. Koenen to G. Groen van Prinsterer, 25 July 1847 [Groen van Prinsterer, 1964: 796]). Groen, too, was praised for his preparatory work: his colleagues regarded the Archives as part of the ‘foundations’ on which a complete Dutch history could be built (Nijhoff, 1842: 53). Here the Archives differed from the great projects described by Saxer: they were only one of many different edition projects. The Netherlands would not see a national source publication until the early 20^th century. The Archives were in the first place – as the title already suggests – a substitute for the archival depot of which Groen himself was the archivist. Groen had travelled to Germany and France in 1836 but the great majority of his letters came from his ‘own’ archive in The Hague. Therefore, the Archives enabled every reader to make a ‘virtual visit’ to the Dutch Royal House Archives. Normally, entrance to the archive was restricted. Groen had been one of the few historians who could make use of the documents that were kept there, and one of the few people who could enter the archive at all. He saw it as his task to ‘communicate’ the documents (Groen van Prinsterer, 1841). If historians could not enter the archive, matters would have to be reversed: the Archives would enter the historian’s study. And they did. They were reviewed by German historians like Leo and Friedrich Christoph Schlösser (Van Essen, 1981: 189–91). Bakhuizen wrote his essay on Brederode in Vienna, where he could make use of his copy of the Archives (Bakhuizen van den Brink, 1845: 329).

By multiplying the documents in it, Groen made his archive more or less ‘placeless’: it was accessible from everywhere. This was a way to surmount an epistemological problem that was inherent to the singularity of the archive. A historian who based his work on archival research had to be trusted. His readers often did not have access to the same archival material as the historian. Therefore they were in no position to check the historian’s work against his sources. Source editions like the Archives could bridge this problem by making the content of archives readily available. This was what Groen pointed out to his critics as well. His findings on William the Silent, Henry of Brederode and others had simply been copied from the letters that were included in the Archives, as the readers were free to do for themselves, too (Groen van Prinsterer, 1837: lxiv–lxv). Still, there was a difference between the archive itself, and its substitute: the Archives. The Archives were compiled and selected by a specific type of archival historian, the editor. Therefore, in the case of a source publication, trust shifted from the historian using sources to the editor selecting them. Groen assured his readers that he was trustworthy, by stressing the resemblance between Archives and the Dutch Royal House Archives and minimizing his own actions. In his editing work Groen had tried to efface himself, he said. He was ‘scrupuleusement astreint à la rèprèsentation exacte des originaux’ [scrupulously held to the exact representation of the originals] (Groen van Prinsterer, 1841: xii).

Every reader of the Archives could see, however, that Groen was a prolific editor. He compared – in metaphors that are hardly original – his own work in the archive with the exploitation of a ‘mine’ and described the Cassel Archives, which he visited on his archival journey, with ‘a waste field’ that would yield ‘great harvests’ to whomever would cultivate it (Groen van Prinsterer, 1841: 4*; Groen van Prinsterer, 1837: x). The mine, in particular, was an evergreen among 19^th-century historians like Ranke or the Belgian Paul Fredericq (Eskildsen, 2008: 440–1; Tollebeek, 2008: 122–3). Groen filled his volumes with footnotes and lengthy introductions. And, as he admitted when confronted with Van Hall’s objections to the publication of Brederode’s letters, he did not include all the letters. Moreover, Groen pursued a double strategy. His Archives should make the Royal House Archives placeless, but at the same time Groen engaged in what Robert Kohler has so aptly termed ‘practices of place’. Like the field biologists described by Kohler, Groen embraced his specific working place – the Royal Family Archive – to make his work more credible (Kohler, 2002: 192). Groen tried to privilege the Royal Family Archive as a site for the production of historical knowledge, thereby discrediting those who could not enter.

Two dominant archival fantasies that circulated in the historiography of the 19^th century have been discerned by Jo Tollebeek. One was the scientific fantasy: the urge of historians to collect ever more documents and to strive – in utopian style – for a complete collection of all documents. The other was the ‘Romantic’ fantasy of direct contact with the past, through touching the old documents or inhaling their dust. This breach in time and space has most famously been described by Jules Michelet, who had experienced visions of the past in his Archives Nationales and who aspired to give a second life to historical figures (Tollebeek, 2004: 242). The rhetoric in which Groen spoke of the 16^th-century letters – they enabled the dead to rise from their tombs – strongly resembled Romantic fantasy. The great difference is that Groen seemed to suggest that for this contact with the past, no relic or material object was necessary: the content, as printed in the Archives, would do. Here, location was of no importance.

Or, was it? Groen offered a variation of the Romantic fantasy that gave him a distinct epistemological advantage. The 19^th-century Romantics as well as later historians such as Johan Huizinga ascribed a momentous and sublime character to their moments of ‘historical sensation’. In contrast to this strike of lightning – an Erlebnis – was Groen’s prolonged experience of his archival work – Erfahrung (Ankersmit, 2005: 145–6). Groen’s work in the Royal House Archives was a ‘privilège de vivre au milieu d’un trésor de lumière’ [a privilege to live in a treasury of light]. It was because of this privilege that he felt obliged to publish his Handboek as an addition to his source edition that covered only a short time span. Groen had been living in the past, he said: not through a momentous adjournment of all barriers in time and space, but through a ‘commerce habituel avec les personnages les plus marquants des siècles écoulés’ [habitual dealings with the most notable persons of the past centuries]. His time spent perusing the documents of the Orange-Nassaus had permitted him to travel into historical regions, where no voyager had gone before, and he therefore had to publish his ‘impressions de voyage’ [impressions of the journey] (Groen van Prinsterer, 1847: ix–x). This provided Groen with a lead on his opponents: they could not compete with him since they had no access to the archive. It was an argument he used to defend his judgement of Brederode as well. Groen considered Van Hall unfit for discussion, because the latter had not had the time or opportunity to thoroughly study the letters. Groen thought he was the most able judge, because he knew the letters from close by as a result of his ‘acquaintance with the Royal House Archives’ – this, Groen expected, rendered him more or less invulnerable to attacks (Groen van Prinsterer, 1844: 15, 104).

His adversaries decided otherwise. They saw the ambiguity of Groen’s strategy and thought that it was precisely his privilege that made him vulnerable: as an editor Groen made clear that it was only content that mattered and that location was of no importance and, therefore, that a source publication was as good as the archive itself. This was in contrast with the importance Groen attributed to his privileged entry to the archive. The fact that Groen’s adversaries relied on him for their access to the letters that Groen put forward as his most important evidence, made them suspicious. Schlösser criticized Groen for his selection of letters. Schlösser suspected that the selection had not been impartial but biased in favour of the Orange-Nassaus, William in particular, and against the tragic figure of his second wife, Anna of Saxony. Groen had little to say in response to this. Of course he denied the allegation, but he could not direct Schlösser back to the Archives because he himself was the editor of the collection. The reliability of the Archives rested on the resemblance between the Archives and the archive from which they were extracted. Since this resemblance could not be shown, it was the editor’s reliability that had to be proven. Therefore Groen tried to enhance his reliability by pointing to the nature of his work. A source edition, Groen claimed, could only be made by someone who loved ‘l’histoire pour elle-même’ [history for herself], and this love should be an antidote to the cynical partisanship of which Schlösser accused him (Groen van Prinsterer, 1837: lxv; Van Essen, 1981: 190).

Van Hall adopted the same strategy as Schlösser. He acknowledged that Groen had had the advantage of living in the midst of the ancestral documents. Van Hall suggested that Groen had used his archival depot as an arsenal. Time and again, Groen could take ‘written testimonies’ from his archive that supported, as Van Hall reproached him, the ‘facts and opinions that you consider true and right’. Van Hall was in no position to check these testimonies, since he ‘had no greater access to this sanctuary, than and in as much as you permit this to me and everybody else’ (Van Hall, 1845: 2–3). Here, Van Hall did not depict Groen as a laborious miner or farmer, but as the priest who guarded the access to the archive. Later on, Van Hall even expressed his doubts about whether some of the documents published by Groen were genuine. Groen had used 18^th-century copies of 16^th -century letters and, Van Hall remarked, he could not account for the provenance of the copies. Groen’s Archives were again under attack. Groen responded by trying to bridge somewhat the gap between the Royal Family Archive in which he worked and the Archives he published: he tried to ‘show’ his archive to Van Hall as exactly as possible. In the final volume of the Archives Groen included facsimiles of the documents in question, as a proof of his benevolence. Did Groen’s efforts to prove his reliability by rendering the Royal Family Archive more transparent convince Van Hall? Probably not, since the only proof for Brederode’s letters in the Archives to be written by the nobleman himself, were ‘that they were found by you in the Archive of the Dynasty of Orange-Nassau’. Such evidence, Van Hall said, would not stand up in a regular court of law.

Conclusion

After Van Hall and Groen had written their pamphlets on Brederode, Bakhuizen van den Brink wrote his review and scrutinized the work of both discussants. He made a firm plea for Brederode. The background of his opinions was his history lessons at school: they had taught him his love of Brederode. At the same time, Bakhuizen showed disdain for Van Hall’s rejection of the publication of private letters and gave his praise to Groen’s Archives. Without them, Bakhuizen stated, he himself could not have written his review in defence of Brederode. The ‘sadness’ with which Bakhuizen greeted Van Hall’s stance towards the publication of letters, has become normative (Bakhuizen van den Brink, 1845: 271). Commentators of the controversy have judged Van Hall’s defence of Brederode to be based on ‘tradition rather than argument’; with his outdated principles Van Hall had ‘excluded himself from modern science’ (Aerts, 1997: 120; Cohen, 1928: 151). Indeed, with the benefit of hindsight it is not easy to approach Groen and Van Hall symmetrically.

If we do take both participants in the Brederode controversy seriously, however, it becomes clear that the norms with which Van Hall is judged today were a subject of debate during the controversy. The free use of 16^th-century letters, so self-evident later on, was objected to by Van Hall. The Brederode controversy therefore offers a picture of historiography at a time when the archive and its content, archival documents, were not the obvious location and working material of the historian. Neither Groen nor Van Hall questioned whether the private letters as they were found in the Royal House Archives and printed in the Archives could yield interesting information (yes, they could). They questioned whether or not the use of this specific type of archival documents was immoral. Groen made clear that he did not cross the line of what was decent. He only published the letters that were relevant to history, not the passages that merely satisfied vain curiosity, that drew attention to things ‘piquant et scandaleuse’ [striking and notorious] (Groen van Prinsterer, 1837: lxiv). For Van Hall, this still went too far. These concerns with the morality of the source material are illustrative of 19^th-century historiography, with its interest in the ‘honour’ and ‘character’ of historical figures. A similar discussion about the ethics of using the annual accounts of the Vianen estate of Brederode would be unimaginable. Equally unsuitable would be the metaphor of the judge for a historian who investigated not the merits of Brederode, but, for example, the trade cycle of the 16^th-century Netherlands.

Finally, the Brederode controversy points to the problems of trust that came with archival research. Steven Shapin has shown how our knowledge of things depends on our knowledge of people. Scientific cultures – for example, the 17^th-century Royal Society famously studied by Shapin – have tried to overcome this reliance by committing themselves to empirical observation. Still, we owe most of our knowledge not to our own observation, but to others. Therefore trust plays an ineradicable role in every process of knowledge production (Shapin, 1994: 3–41). The ‘archival turn’ of the 19^th century constituted a similar attempt to circumvent the reliance on others’ observations by going to the archival material, the remains of the past, directly. But these attempts shifted the problem of trust to archival historians, or, in the case of Groen’s Archives, to the editor of a source publication. Whether archival research, in the form of a monograph, an article, or an edition, was considered reliable depended on the judgement of the historian who conducted the research. So, knowledge of the past depended on knowledge of people. Groen was not trusted by his adversaries, nor were his findings. Both happened at the same time, to be more exact: if Groen was not trusted, his Archives were not – and vice versa. There was not much Groen could do to enhance his trustworthiness. Historians knew the content of the Royal House Archives only through his mediation. Groen could not redirect his adversaries to the Royal House Archives, he could only affirm his own decency and trustworthiness. According to Shapin a problem in the order of knowledge is always a problem of social and moral order. Those who are not trusted are excluded from such order. Groen had more or less the same experience and he thus made an appeal to the decency of his opponents. In response to Van Hall’s doubts, Groen asked for courtesy – using the words of François Guizot: ‘Je suis en droit de demander que nous nous traitions comme des honnêtes gens. Vous voyez que j’ai raison de la demander, car l’on paroît dispose à nous réfuser cette courtoisie’ [I am right to ask that we treat each other as honest men. You see that I have the right to ask this since I have been denied this courtesy] (Groen van Prinsterer, 1847: lxvi). What honesty and courtesy were, was a subject of debate as well. Here, the controversy was extended from the life and morals of Brederode, through the virtues, methods and location of the historian, up to the ethics of discussion.