Suomen kielikoulutuspolitiikka menneisyyden, nykyisyyden ja vähän tulevaisuudenkin valossa

Tässä artikkelissa Taina Saarinen ja Pasi Ihalainen keskustelevat suomalaisen kielikoulutuspolitiikan historiasta ja tulevaisuudesta. Artikkeli perustuu Saarisen Kari Sajavaara -muistoluentoon ja Ihalaisen kommenttipuheenvuoroon tammikuussa 2020. nonPeerReviewed

A Model Country or a Peripheral Anomaly? The Finnish Women's Suffrage and Female MPs in Transnational Debates, 1906-19

The introduction of women’s suffrage in 1906 and the election of the first female members to parliament made Finland an object of international attention. Contemporary cross-national comparisons were common, and there was a tendency to compete and evaluate each other. In Finland, many women activists and some male politicians, too, felt that they had to prove women’s political competence and hence actively communicated the experiences of women’s suffrage struggle internationally. Abroad, comparisons were exploited either to support women’s suffrage or to demonstrate its evil consequences, depending on party affiliation. The Finnish example encouraged suffragists in France, the Netherlands a…

Svenska kyrkan och det moderniserande nationella tänkandet 1789–1810

[no abstract]

Finnish Political Culture Reinterpreted Through Conceptual History

European History as a Nationalist and Post-Nationalist Project

THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND THE REDEFINITION OF POLITICAL LOYALTIES

This article discusses the study of modernization in the conceptions of political identities and loyalties in Scandinavia in the late 18th century. Opening with a review of recent Scandinavian research on political cultures, the language of politics and emerging nationalism in the 18th century, it locates the ensuing case studies in this burgeoning field and also in a wider, European and comparative context. The construction of identities and loyalties among the nobility, the clergy, burghers, civil servants and peasants is examined. The author argues that, despite much of apparent continuity of values, there was a surprising degree of potential for innovation within Scandinavian political …

Reform and revolution in Scandinavia, 1917–1919 : Entangled histories and visions of the future

The articles in this special issue, entitled Reform and Revolution in Scandinavia, 1917–1919: Entangled Histories and Visions of the Future, deal with the political turmoil in Scandinavia in the late 1910s, accelerated by the First World War and the revolutions in Russia in February/March and October/November 1917 and eventually in Germany in the autumn of 1918. Their special focus is on the political debates about reform and revolution and the related visions of the future of political order and social structures in national contexts and across borders. The articles examine how actors with different agendas in different contexts exploited the opportunities opened up by a window of change. …

Proletariaatin vallasta yhteistyöhön porvarillisten demokraattien kanssa : SDP:n eduskuntaryhmä demokratian määrittelijänä 1917–1920

Pasi Ihalainen tarkastelee artikkelissaan vuosien 1917–1920 eduskunta- ja lehdistöpuhetta diskurssihistoriallisesta näkökulmasta. Hän osoittaa, miten molemminpuolinen epäluottamus ja kärjistynyt retoriikka osaltaan vaikuttivat sodan syttymiseen ja miten sodan jälkeen työväenliikkeen maltillisempi siipi päätyi yhteistyöhakuisempaan linjaan ja parlamentarismiin. nonPeerReviewed

Introduction

This thematic section of Contributions to the History of Concepts takes up the necessity – and at the same time the problematic nature – of studying metaphors as a part of conceptual history. As Frank Beck Lassen argues in his article, “Regular, Dependable, Mechanical: J.F. Struensee on the State of Denmark,” not only concepts but also metaphors must be considered by historians of political thought as politically significant figures of speech. Metaphors may constitute condensed political arguments, the applications of which play an important role in the continuous semantic struggle over the definition of political reality.

Machiavelli’s Critique of Christianity

Key Concepts for Parliament in Britain (1640–1800)

The British Parliament and Foreign Policy in the 20th Century : Towards Increasing Parliamentarisation?

This article demonstrates the complexity of the foreign policy involvement of the British parliament during the 20th century. Parliamentary government as such provides some procedural means for involvement in foreign policy debate, in Britain as well as in other countries. Researchers have, nevertheless, often argued that parliaments play a limited role in foreign policy. Approaching our topic by combining the analysis of policy documents with more discourse-oriented analysis of parliamentary debates, we argue that noticeable, but not straightforward, parliamentarisation of foreign policy took place in the course of the 20th century. The aftermath of the First World War led to reconsiderati…

The chair of verity: political preaching and pulpit censure in eighteenth-century Scotland

Ronald Lyndsay Crawford’s survey of political preaching in eighteenth-century Scotland presents several Scottish preachers as ‘authentic Enlightenment voices’ (p. 3), demonstrating the centrality o...

Parliament as a Conceptual Nexus

Introduction to the new Nordic Yearbook and to the thematic section on eighteenth-century philosophy

Redescriptions : 2004, vol. 8 yearbook of political thought and conceptual history

A Finnish socialist female parliamentarian stopped on the Dutch border

A Finnish socialist female parliamentarian stopped on the Dutch border: the (de) politicization of Finnish women’s suffrage in Dutch battles on votes for women This research article in transnational history analyses an incident during which Hilja Pärssinen, a Finnish socialist woman MP, was stopped on the Dutch border in September 1913 on her way to visit a suffragette college in London. This two-hour event at the border and public controversy that followed were clashes between competing ideological and gendered discourses on women’s political agency. The incident was a nexus of intersecting discourses on a range of issues: Dutch and international debates on women’s suffrage, discourse on ‘…

Demokratian käsitehistoriaa digitaalisin menetelmin

Edustuksellisen demokratian sanotaan olevan kriisissä. Akatemiaprofessori Pasi Ihalaisen johtamassa monitieteisessä tutkimushankkeessa Poliittinen edustuksellisuus / Political Representation selvitetään käsitehistorian näkökulmasta ja digitaalisten ihmistieteiden avulla, missä määrin näin näyttäisi todella olevan. nonPeerReviewed

The First World War, the Russian Revolution and Varieties of Democracy in Northwest European Debates

Revolutionary concepts and languages in the Sister Republics of the late 1790s

Monarchists, Republicans, Revolutionaries : Criticism of Parliamentarism and the reception of Anti-Parliamentarism among the Finnish and Swedish left and right, 1917−1919

Diskurssit osana sisällissotaan johtanutta poliittista prosessia

The fragility of Finnish parliamentary democracy at the moment when Prussianism fell

The Finnish case is in many ways illustrative of the complexities of democratisation after World War I. Finland found itself at the nexus of a Swedish constitutional tradition, legalism and ideological controversies adopted from Imperial Germany, the radicalised Russian Revolution, and Western parliamentary democracy. After having been a model for reformers demanding women’s suffrage, for instance, the country found itself in autumn 1918 going in the opposite direction to almost all other European countries. This article analyses the fragility of Finnish parliamentary democracy then, contrasting it with longer-term trends supportive of democratisation. ‘Democracy’ had been the goal for mos…

Towards a Religion of Popular Sovereignty, Democracy and Equality : The Lutheran Sermon as a Nexus of Traditional and Modern Discourses on Political Values and a Collective Identity

The external forms of contemporary occasions of Finnish and Swedish national worship organized to celebrate political events differ little from those of early-modern Sweden. However, the expressions of the political values of the national community in them have been totally revolutionized. After discussing social theory on the relationship between religion, nationalism, modernization and secularization and introducing a long-term historical context, this chapter proceeds to analyze two sermons given in 2009 and 2010 to demonstrate the adaptability of the Lutheran religion to modernity: the national churches have turned from advocates of theocratic monarchy and uniformity to preachers of pop…

From estate representation to the representation of the people and the nation in the Age of Revolutions

In the Age of Revolutions, the legitimacy of political rule was increasingly derived in Western countries from popular sovereignty realised through parliamentary representation. This chapter analyses how the members of the representative institutions in Britain, France and Sweden attempted to solve tensions between popular sovereignty and representation during a revolutionary or evolutionary transition from the early modern representation of the interests of estates by delegates to the representation of the people by individual members. We also consider the American, Dutch and German assemblies and transnational interaction between political cultures. Tensions between the concepts of repres…

Anti-teleological history of concepts taken to the extreme

Non-socialist Internationalisms before and after the First World War

Poliittisen keskustelun historian metodeja metsästämässä

Puheenvuoro.

Lutheranism and the Nordic Spirit of Social Democracy : A Different Protestant Ethic [Book review]

Kansainvälistymisestä on ollut Suomelle suurta hyötyä : ”se on ollut elämän ja kuoleman kysymys”

Suomen säilyminen itsenäisenä oli pitkälti seurausta kansainvälisen yhteisön tuesta. Viime aikoina monissa kansallisvaltioissa on sen sijaan nähty uusnationalistinen käänne, kirjoittavat Antero Holmila ja Pasi Ihalainen Jyväskylän yliopistosta. nonPeerReviewed

Tolerans eller flexibilitet för att bevara uniformiteten?

Växelverkan mellan religion och politik har nyligen – efter en lång period som helt dominerats av sekularisationsteser – rönt växande uppmärksamhet inom nordisk historieforskning rörande tidigmodern politisk kultur. Johannes Ljungbergs avhandling utgör ett viktigt bidrag till denna religionshistoriska forskning genom att undersöka toleransens gränser som en politisk fråga i Sverige under början av 1700-talet. nonPeerReviewed

Scandinavia and the great powers in the First World War

Between historical semantics and pragmatics

This paper discusses the methodology of conceptual history, a branch of the study of the history of political thought which focuses on the changing meanings of political concepts over the course of time. It is suggested here that methodological disputes among historians of political thought frequently arise out of differing theories of language and meaning and that historians should be more open-minded to the idea of combining various research strategies in their work. Conceptual history, for instance, can be viewed as the combination of historical versions of semantics and pragmatics. While the study of the macro-level semantic changes in the language of politics can reveal interesting lon…

Multi-sited and historically layered language policy construction: parliamentary debate on the Finnish constitutional bilingualism in 1919

In this article, we analyse the construction of Finnish constitutional bilingualism in the aftermath of gaining independence, a traumatic civil war and during the construction of a new republican polity based on regulated parliamentarism in 1917–1919. We take a multi-sited and historically informed approach to the dynamics of political discourse at the parliamentary level, analysing the discursive cycles of people, nationality and nation. We demonstrate the interconnectedness of language policy discourses with historically and spatially multi-sited and highly complex contexts and show how language policy confrontations can add important dimensions to increase our understanding of power stru…

Prospects for Parliamentary Government in an Era of War and Revolution: Britain and Germany in Spring 1917

De Finse verkiezingen vanuit een Europees perspectief / The Finnish Elections from a European Perspective

Building and Testing a Comparative Interface on Northwest European Historical Parliamentary Debates : Relative Term Frequency Analysis of British Representative Democracy

Tensions between the people and parliament over representation are a normal feature of representative democracies. In this paper, we demonstrate how digital humanities analysis tools help in answering questions about the timing of debates on popular representation, tensions over its realization, and representatives’ changing perceptions on their parliamentary role. Our long-term approach to the conceptual history of political representation is based on the analysis of digitized parliamentary debates as nexuses of multi-sited political discourse. We combine computer-assisted distant and context-sensitive close reading to consider diachronic trends and synchronic political struggles surroundi…

The Springs of Democracy : National and Transnational Debates on Constitutional Reform in the British, German, Swedish and Finnish Parliaments, 1917-1919

Revolution Beyond Borders : The Universal and Cosmopolitan in the French Revolution, 1789–1815

Inledning / Introduction / Innledning

Scandinavia and the great powers in the First World War

In this compact and accessible volume, Michael Jonas sets Northern European experiences of the First World War in an international context, exploring the relationship between great powers and small...

Suomalaisen kansanvallan ja parlamentarismin legitimiteettikriisi 1917-19 kansainvälisessä kontekstissa

Miten yleisen äänioikeuden mallivaltiona pidetystä Suomesta tuli ensimmäisen maailmansodan loppuvaiheessa niin ruotsalaisille, saksalaisille kuin briteillekin varoittava esimerkki poliittisen järjestelmän kriisistä? Entä miten Suomessa onnistuttiin sisällissodan jälkeen saavuttamaan valtiosääntökompromissi, jonka pohjalle rakentui ”maailman vakain valtio”? Mitä voisimme vuosien 1917−19 kokemuksista edelleen oppia? nonPeerReviewed

The Sermon, Court, and Parliament, 1689–1789

Konflikter och kompromisser på vägen till parlamentarisk demokrati för hundra år sedan

Nationalism and Internationalism Reconciled : British Concepts for a New World Order during and after the World Wars

The carnage of World War I gave rise to liberal visions for a new world order with democratized foreign policy and informed international public opinion. Conservatives emphasized continuity in national sovereignty, while socialists focused on the interests of the working class. While British diplomacy in the construction of the League of Nations has been widely discussed, we focus on contemporary uses of nationalism and internationalism in parliamentary and press debates that are more ideological. We also examine how failed internationalist visions influenced uses of these concepts during World War II, supporting alternative organizational solutions, caution with the rhetoric of democracy a…

European Parliamentary Experiences from a Conceptual Historical Perspective

Evolving Conceptualisations of Internationalism in the UK Parliament : Collocation Analyses from the League to Brexit

This chapter explores a historical distant reading strategy of British Parliamentary discourse. It uses historical collocation analyses of ‘internationalism’ and the ‘international’ in the British Hansard Corpus and a selection of Commons and Lords debates concerning British membership in international organisations as it relates to the League of Nations, United Nations, Council of Europe, EEC and Brexit. The collocates that were deemed to be politically significant are grouped in 13 loose semantic fields. This macro-level analysis of long-term trends of discourse is supplemented with an analysis of the said key debates in their historical contexts, including comparisons between the two Hou…

Transnational Constructors of Parliamentary Democracy in Swedish and Finnish Constitutional Controversies, 1917–1919

During the First World War, the legitimacy of established polities was challenged everywhere in Europe. Not only the combatant great powers but also smaller states witnessed a resurgence of constitutional disputes and competing ideological conceptualizations of revolution and reform, the will of the people, democracy, and parliamentarism. While these controversies primarily focused on the future of the national polities concerned, historical experiences and discourses accelerated by the war and the Russian Revolution were transnationally interconnected and contributed to discursive transfers between political cultures. Swedish and Finnish socialists were linked by their internationals, libe…

"Läntinen demokratia" Euroopan sisäisenä jakolinjana ensimmäisen maailmansodan lopulla

Muistetaan ”kansallisen” suhteellisuus myös vuonna 2017

Vuosi 1917 vertailevan ja ylirajaisen historiantutkimuksen näkökulmasta

Kansansuvereniteetti ja kansainvälisyys vallankumouksissa

© Kirjoittaja & Historian ja yhteiskuntaopin opettajien liitto, 2021 nonPeerReviewed

Edustuksellisen demokratian läpimurrot

Internationalization and democratization interconnected : the Swedish and Finnish parliaments debating membership in the League of Nations in 1920

In the aftermath of the First World War, constitutions of European states were widely democratized and parliamentarized, and similar turns were expected in international relations as a consequence of the creation of the League of Nations. This comparative analysis of Swedish and Finnish parliamentary debates on the League membership focusing on conceptualizations of the national versus international demonstrates how democratization and internationalization merged discursively. This happened to a greater extent than in the British parliament or the First Assembly of the League. Such entanglements followed from the interconnectedness of constitutional and foreign policy questions during prece…

Miten edustuksellinen demokratiamme on muuttumassa? Digitaalisen käsitehistorian näkökulma

Recent concerns about representative democracy being in crisis should be related to longer-term histories of ‘representation’ and ‘democracy’. Conceptual history analyses diachronic change and synchronic contestability of such key terms. Digital history can help understand evolvement in tensions over popular representation and representatives' changing perceptions on their parliamentary role. N-gram analyses and visualizations of relative word frequencies reveal long-term patterns and justify selections for qualitative analysis. Contextualising close reading shows how representative democracy has been increasingly complemented with participatory and direct democracy in the UK parliament, fo…

Debating Internationalisms : Contexts, Concepts and Historiography

Integrating a Nexus: the history of political discourse and language policy research

Historians of political discourse and language policy researchers should join forces to develop methods of textual analysis that help to integrate political and intellectual history. They could do so by focusing their analysis on interconnections between material realities, human physical action, practices and structures, as well as institutions and ideologies as discursive constructs. Such a version of soft constructivism underscoring the discursive nature of much of politics encourages historians to analyse past political discourses more systematically. Concepts such as nexus, historical body, mobility and discursive transfers borrowed from language research deepen our analytical understa…

The 18th-century traditions of representation in a new age of revolution : History politics in the Swedish and Finnish parliaments, 1917−1919

What happened to shared historical experiences in the discursive processes of constitutional reform in Sweden and Finland? This article examines the use of 18th-century history in early 20th-century politics. Building on a long-term survey of Swedish and Finnish estate and parliamentary debates, it analyses the political implications of differing national historiographies in the two successor states of the 18th-century Swedish realm, focusing on how the ancient past and collective (and often selective) memories of the Age of Absolutism, the Age of Liberty and the Gustavian Age were used by parliamentarians in constitutional debates. The analysis demonstrates how the Finnish polity continued…

The Political Sermon in an Age of Party Strife, 1700–1720: Contributions to the Conflict

Abstract This article analyses the ways the English party-political conflict was conducted in the pulpit. It examines English political preaching using the perspective of the broader West European tradition of delivering political sermons in political forums and on relevant national occasions. It then outlines the state of research on party-political conflict and its reflection in Anglican preaching. Finally, the article studies the political content of two distinctive and controversial sermons.

The Launch of the Swedish National Project in Conceptual History

Ecumene Redefined : Concepts of Religious (Inter)national Unity in British, Dutch and Swedish Parliamentary Debates, 1880–2020

© Berghahn Books, 2022 peerReviewed

Parliamentary sources in the comparative study of conceptual history: methodological aspects and illustrations of a research proposal

SUMMARY This article proposes that historians and political theorists should exploit parliamentary sources to move from the writing of national histories to the comparative study of the conceptual history of European political cultures. Complementing the German lexicographical approach to conceptual history, the authors argue that parliamentary debates in several European countries provide more reliable sources for the past use of the language of politics. They emphasize the possibilities for the study of political history and the rhetoric of parliamentary institutions offered by the use of parliamentary debates side by side with the study of archival sources and published literature. Rheto…

Konflikter och kompromisser på Finlands väg till parlamentarisk demokrati för hundra år sedan

Parliaments as Meeting Places for Political Concepts

Parliamentary sources in the comparative study of conceptual history: methodological aspects and illustrations of a research proposal

Summary: This article proposes that historians and political theorists should exploit parliamentary sources to move from the writing of national histories to the comparative study of the conceptual history of European political cultures. Complementing the German lexicographical approach to conceptual history, the authors argue that parliamentary debates in several European countries provide more reliable sources for the past use of the language of politics. They emphasize the possibilities for the study of political history and the rhetoric of parliamentary institutions offered by the use of parliamentary debates side by side with the study of archival sources and published literature. Rhet…