När stormen kom till Stockholm: Europatanken i svensk pressdebatt under revolutionsåret 1848

Around the 150th anniversary in 1998, historical research showed new interest for the wave of revolutions that swept across Europe in 1848. This research focused on providing a new European frame of interpretation for the events in 1848, questioning the exclusive national historiographical traditions of European history, a field of study already formed by the works of Jean-Baptiste Duroselle in 1990. Among other results, this research has concluded that the revolution of 1848 can be considered as a birthplace for modern thinking about Europe as a political concept, and has emphasised the transnational dimensions of the national and democratic movements that were the root cause of upheaval. It also inquires about the relationship between the forming of new nations (nationalisation), international political ideas (internationalisation) and a common European consciousness (Europeanisation). Since then, the interest in historical research about 1848 from a European context has to a large extent vanished from the academic history. This study aims to reopen this field of study from the angle of Swedish politics. Although being a country on the geographic periphery of the major events in 1848, previous research of journalism in 1848 has shown that the revolutionary events in continental Europe provided a foundation for intense debate and political reasoning in Sweden. The aim of this study is to contribute to filling this gap by inquiring if political reasoning around Europe as an idea appeared in the Swedish press in 1848, as well as how and why such views were articulated. Through applying a method based on framing theory, common in contemporary research about journalism, this study aims to analyse a set of political ideas that were articulated in three major Swedish newspapers with different political profiles – liberal, radical and conservative − in 1848. In this regard the political ideas expressed in the newspapers are analysed through the eyes of the journalist. However, the triangular historical concepts of nationalisation, internationalisation and Europeanisation provides a theoretical foundation for a deeper analysis of the views on Europe from the perspective of the political historian. Here, emphasis is put on how political ideas about Europe relate to the development of nationalism as well as other ideas about an international political world order. The results show that thinking about Europe as a political concept indeed appeared in the Swedish press in a highly diversified form. In the liberal and radical press, Europe was used as a polemic symbol of democratic progressivism and national emancipation. We can observe that proponents of pan-Scandinavianism combined these views in a larger vision of national emancipation on the European level. Somewhat surprisingly, elaborate thinking about Europe as a political concept in 1848 was to no extent limited to the liberal and radical press but did also appear in a conservative newspaper. In fact, pacifist views relating to Europe, similar to the values promoted by today’s European Union, were present in the conservative press to a larger extent than in their liberal and radical counterparts. Even the more radical ideas of pan-European federalism, with Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Mazzini as a leading figure, were expressed in the Swedish press, although with limited exposure. These findings are new observations that contribute to a broader understanding of the Swedish experiences in 1848. Next to the historical interest in the Swedish experience of 1848 this study also aspires to contribute to 1848 as a meta-historical narrative in modern European identity-building. This relates to the view held by modern research of intellectual history that European identity lacks historical depth, which might be explained by the one-sidedness in defining modern European identity through the lens of the great disasters of the 20th century. While historical knowledge relating to the Holocaust and the Great War of 1914 forms collective memories for modern Europeans with negative historical lessons, collective memories with positive historical lessons that highlight the pan-European historical roots of our democratic institutions, are rare. The author of this study argues that the European memory of 1848, based on the evidence found in the Swedish experience, has the potential of providing Europeans with a lieu de mémoire. Similar to what Pierre Nora accomplished in tracing the historical roots of French republicanism, modern European historians could here also find a task in tracing the positive historical lessons from the history of democracy, nation-building, social consciousness and transnational political development in the “people’s spring” of 1848. The fact that 1848 is used as the start of a modern, democratic and pan-European consciousness in the permanent exhibition of the newly inaugurated House of European History in Brussels, provides us with reason to believe that 1848 also has the potential for identity building in today’s political institutions of the European Union