Democratic Monarchy? Rhetoric in the Battle for the Danish Constitution of 1849

The years 1848-49 marks a significant turning point in the history of the Danish concept of democracy, as the concept within a few months in the spring of 1848 gained political actuality, hereby becoming a centrally contested concept, 'kampfbegriff', in the battle for the Danish constitution of 1849. This paper examines how the concept of democracy was used in - and influenced by – this battle. The existing research on the history of ideas and concepts of this period has mainly focused on the ideology of the liberal opposition, often named the national-liberals. In contrast hereto, this paper evolves around the case of the peasants-movement, 'Bondevennernes Selskab'. Founded in 1846, the movement quickly became well organised; it succeeded in winning about a third of the seats on Denmark’s first national parliament, the national assembly of 1848-49, and it played a crucial part in Danish politics in the following decades. The paper presents the politics of the peasant-movement in 1848-49 with emphasis on how the movement argued for democratic reforms with a rhetoric that sought to connect the concept of democracy to the idea of a strong monarchy. This leads to a discussion of how this rhetoric influenced the concept of democracy and how liberals and conservatives responded to this rhetoric. One way, in which they did respond, was with innovative usages of the concept of democracy as well. The paper focuses on parliamentary debates in the years 1848-49, with inclusion of other public sources. The analysis can be placed in the tradition of Begriffsgeschichte with inspiration from scholarship investigating the theory and method of rhetoric on parliament and parliamentary speaking. I argue that the rhetoric used by the peasant-movement during the battle for Denmark’s first constitution had significant impact on the early conceptual history of Danish democracy.