Institute for History Annual Report 2010 - O - Universiteit Leiden

The Dynamics of
European Identity, 1300-
1700
Description
As the recent wave of concern about national and
cultural identity demonstrates, the question of
how, and with whom, people identify is of continuing
political and social importance. This was
also the case in pre-Modern Europe. Although the
power of the state steadily increased between 1300
and 1700, rulers and administrators remained very
much dependent on good relations with their
subjects, or at least with the local elites. Since these
often identified themselves primarily with the
local community, the region, or other group
interests, the creation of panoptic loyalties was
problematic. This was certainly true in new states.
For this reason, rulers such as the Dukes of
Burgundy consciously concentrated on creating a
supra-territorial elite. Any wise administrator
would expend considerable energy on his
patronage networks. Old media, such as ballads,
pageants and spectacles were used to deliver political
messages, and additional new media were
constantly appearing. Pamphlets and newspapers
created a ‘public sphere’, in which new identities
could be propagated. The development of a sense
of ‘fatherland’ in the highly fragmented Republic
of the Netherlands is an excellent example of this
process.
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Yet, state borders were most certainly not the most
important determinant of identity. On the one
hand regions continued to compete with one
another, while, conversely, transnational networks
often proved to be surprisingly resistant to political
division. Even while their rulers were at war,
trade networks continued to unite the Spanish,
Flemish and Dutch trading communities . Cultural
networks also transcended national borders.
Throughout this period, a recognizably European
intellectual culture prevailed, which played an essential
role in the fast transfer of knowledge. Until
1520, the whole of Europe shared one dominant
religious culture. The schism in the Church in the
sixteenth century not only created trans-national
interest groups and refugee flows, it also created
new confessional alliances in international politics.
There are few areas in Europe in which the
dynamics of identity between 1300 and 1700
manifested itself as clearly as in the Low Countries.
Having started out as a loose conglomeration
of semi-autonomous principalities, personal
unions led to the emergence of a fledgling unitary
state until a Revolt against princely authority led
to the creation of two separate states with their
own clear identity, each of which was related
through its dominant religion to confessional
friends elsewhere in Europe. In this world of
constantly changing borders, strong local political
traditions, an important trading culture and the
interdependence of international markets,
‘identity’ was never monolithic. Yet elsewhere in
Europe too, in particular in the great ‘composite
monarchies’ ruled by the Habsburgs, the relation