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ABSOLUTE MONARCHY IN LATER EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY DENMARK: CENTRALIZED REFORM, PUBLIC EXPECTATIONS, AND THE COPENHAGEN PRESS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 1998

THOMAS MUNCK
Affiliation:
University of Glasgow

Abstract

By the later eighteenth century, the Danish–Norwegian monarchy had a convincing track record for stability and the near-absence of domestic unrest. That stability, despite the wide-ranging claims of the Royal Law of 1665, depended less on force than on a consensus derived from religious unity, a traditionally approachable monarch, and a fairly accessible system of justice. But the crown also relied on a widespread loyalty which was bound to come under strain at the accession of the demented Christian VII in 1766. Despite the removal of censorship restrictions in 1770, however, a convincing public discussion of social and political issues was slow to emerge. Only after the resolution of the political crisis in 1784 did the government feel sufficiently secure not only to tolerate, but even to come to rely on, an unprecedented if moderate public debate. That debate, as reflected through samples of the Copenhagen press studied here, remained even in the 1790s largely supportive of the view that absolutism offered a viable way to lasting reform.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 1998 Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

This article has benefited greatly from the comments of others. An early version was presented to the Early Modern Europe Seminar at the University of Oxford in October 1992. I am most grateful to its organizer, Dr John Robertson, to Dr R. J. W. Evans, and to their students, for a tremendously enjoyable discussion on that occasion. I would also like to thank my colleague at Glasgow University, Dr Simon Dixon, for his very helpful observations on a more recent draft; and the Historical Journal's anonymous readers for their suggestions.