Particular implementation of normative economic orders in the 19th century

Project manager: Prof. Dr. Andreas Fahrmeir

In the long 19th century, the free trade order established a global economic and trade system with high normative aspirations, which worked towards a comprehensive control of life through technologies of governance. Free trade as an assertion of order soon struggled to legitimize and justify its regulatory claims: resistance and paradoxes of normative validity became the rule at both global and local level. At the same time, the boundaries between the local, the national and the global, the center and the periphery shifted.

In view of the multitude of experiences of individual actors with free trade regimes and their representations, only a multidimensional approach can do justice to this interaction between political organization, ideas and economic activities, their simultaneous differentiation and interdependence. The project aimed at a history of relations between global and local spaces of good reasons and was particularly interested in justification narratives and their reciprocal influences, communication and exchange relationships. The research initiatives brought together under the umbrella of this project explored these interdependencies from a macro- and micro-historical perspective:
The ambivalences of supposed ‘good governance’ and paradoxes of the free trade order emerged clearly in the case of the British Empire. As part of the British global civilizing mission and pillars of the colonial architecture of rule, free trade and the rule of law entered into a tense relationship with each other in the multi-ethnic and multi-religious model colony of India. This was the focus of the first project. Reasons for validity were in conflict, both in specific arenas of law, such as the courts, and in the British public sphere itself.
It was not uncommon for ‘economic’ and ‘moral’ arguments to rival each other, as was the case with the abolition of the slave trade. The free trade orders were also based on the privatization of property rights and the regulation of labour relations, which were based on freedom of contract and the notion of market relations between free and equal individuals. However, this did not preclude the development of new forms of forced labor that were now declared ‘free’: To what extent, therefore, did the success or failure of the free trade order(s) result from problems with the normative order itself or from an implementation that was unjust or ineffective according to its own standards? This question was the subject of a two-day conference.
Contemporary politicians, administrative experts, private and state (trading) companies, merchants, intellectuals and public opinion engaged intensively with the gains and losses of free trade orders and their techniques of governance, with competition on international markets, industrialization and social progress. These discussions were at the same time closely interwoven with debates about the nation and its re-evaluation: on the one hand, the nation remained a constant point of reference in the context of global dynamics, while on the other hand it changed in the very same processes of modernization. For both the British and French colonial empires of the 19th century, colonial expansion influenced the production of historical knowledge about the nation and had an impact on empire-building and the process of globalization. Europe cannot therefore be understood by itself.

In order to show the extent to which the levels of analysis of the global, national and local are interwoven, the micro-perspective remained indispensable alongside the macro-perspective. This helped to capture all intermediary levels of experience that shaped the individual, everyday encounter with free trade: the implementation of the liberalized economic order also displaced economic practices that had previously been based on collective property rights and the combination of economic dependence and domination: How this changed practices of justice and their justification narratives was shown in a second study using the example of peasant liberation and agrarian reforms in Nassau in the first half of the 19th century from a local or regional historical perspective – an approach that, like the other projects, also aimed to reconnect universal free trade order and particular practice.

The project examined the implementation of the ‘liberal’ economic orders of the 19th century on the ground. These were aimed at establishing clearly describable property relations that were intended to unleash a new potential for economic growth that had previously supposedly been held back by communal ownership and the collective exploitation of usage rights and were examined in two contexts: In a smaller German state (Nassau; Heidi Quoika) and in a non-European colony (India; Dr. Verena Steller). The project was intended to help calibrate the normative foundations of the “free trade order” in two ways. On the one hand, it was necessary to answer the question of which elements of the ‘European’ normative order facilitated or made possible the departure from centuries-old collective rights of use, but also to clarify the resistance caused by the legal and administrative changes that sought to create ‘modern’ property relations. On the other hand, it was necessary to clarify whether other normative foundations really hindered the attractiveness of releasing commercial energies outside Europe to a much greater extent and thus required stronger constraints. In both cases, the hypothesis of a complex mixture of interests, consent and resistance was confirmed as expected.

Heidi Quoika’s dissertation project has led to the discovery of extensive, hitherto little researched file holdings of the Waldbott von Bassenheim family, which can be used to trace in detail the ‘modernization’ of the administration and thus also the ownership and property relations from the intermediary perspective of a family that was previously subject to imperial immediacy, family, which had previously been subject to the Duchy of Nassau after 1803, but still had rights vis-à-vis its former subjects – whereby in this case the development ran from a relatively harmonious patriarchalism through fierce conflicts in 1848 to a demand for ‘modernizing’ state reforms from below.

Verena Steller’s project on India has developed into a habilitation project that focuses on the “rule of law” in general, especially on the basis of “political” processes, with particular attention being paid to the group of Indian barristers trained in the British system, which has received little attention to date. Following the conclusion of funding from the Cluster, the project was supported by a grant from the Gerda Henkel Foundation and is now being funded by the DFG as a “dedicated position”.

The most important publications in the project include: Andreas Fahrmeir/Verena Steller (2013): “Wirtschaftstheorie, Normsetzung und Herrschaft: Freihandel, “Rule of Law” und das Recht des Kanonenboots”, in: Andreas Fahrmeir/Annette Imhausen (eds.), The diversity of normative orders. Conflicts and dynamics from a historical and ethnological perspective (Series: Normative Orders, Vol. 8.), Frankfurt/Main, Campus, 165-195; Andreas Fahrmeir (2012): Europa zwischen Restauration, Reform und Revolution 1815-1850 (Oldenbourg Grundriss der Geschichte, vol. 41), Munich: Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag; Andreas Fahrmeir (2011): ‘Civil rioters? Citizens’ restrained violence in Britain around 1800′, in: European Review of History / Revue européenne d’histoire 18, 359-371 and Verena Steller (2014): ‘The “Rule of Law” in British India, or a Rule of Lawyers? Indian Barristers vs the Colonial State”, in: comparative. Journal of Global History and Comparative Social Research (ed. by Christina Brauner, Antje Flüchter: “The Dimensions of Transcultural Statehood”), 24(5), 78-98.

The following events were held as part of the project: “From Bondage to Freedom. The Abolition of Slavery, Serfdom and Unfree Labor”, International Conference, 9-10.7.2010 and “The Production of Colonial Historiographies”. Workshop 4-5.10.2010.