Project Details
Projekt
Crossing Lines. On Origins, Scale, and Consequences of “illegimate” violence during the Spanish Carlist Wars in the Nineteenth Century
Applicant
Professorin Dr. Birgit Aschmann
Subject Area
Modern and Contemporary History
Term
since 2024
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 407133841
Military violence within Europe in the 19th century is considered to have been “enclosed”. The Spanish Carlist Wars, neglected for the most part in the European historiography of violence, challenge this view and call for amplification. In fact, the practices of excessive violence that developed on the Iberian Peninsula had consequential implications not only for the Spanish, but also for the European history of violence of both the 19th and 20th centuries. The Carlist Wars were more than mere dynastically motivated civil wars: Contemporary Europe saw the wars as epochal quarrel between progress and reaction, between revolution and monarchy as well as between religion and anticlericalism. This ideological framing contributed to the emotionalisation and the brutalisation of the conflicts. In addition to campaigns, guerrilla warfare characterised the Carlist Wars. Thus, the wars formed part of a tradition that had begun with the Peninsular War against Napoleon. With its emphasis on petty warfare (‘Kleiner Krieg’), the present study bridges the projects on the Napoleonic Wars and the preceding project on the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71. First, a classification of excessive practices of violence in the Carlist Wars shall be devised. Second, what constituted ‘illegitimate’ and ‘legitimate’ violence will be reconstructed and analysed, along with the corresponding controversies in politics, the Roman Catholic Church, and the public. Third, the international dimension is addressed by documenting the participation of foreign soldiers and inquiring into the transfer of practices of violence into the military cultures of violence of other states, such as Germany, France, and England.
DFG Programme
Research Units
