Nation – Power – Subjectivity: The Making of National Subjects in Late Medieval Bohemia and Brabant (1300-1450)

Project Information

NATIONAL-SUBJECTS

Grant agreement ID: 897313

DOI

10.3030/897313

Project terminated on 17 September 2021

EC signature date 3 March 2020

Start date 1 April 2020

End date 31 March 2022

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 166 320,00

EU contribution

€ 166 320,00

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITE SAINT-LOUIS-BRUXELLES ASBL
Belgium

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - NATIONAL-SUBJECTS (Nation – Power – Subjectivity: The Making of National Subjects in Late Medieval Bohemia and Brabant (1300-1450))

Reporting period: 2020-04-01 to 2022-03-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

What is the problem being adresses?
This research project will challenge classical assumptions of the formation of the nation, traditionally seen as inseparable from industrialisation and the rise of capitalism in the 18th century. The problem resembles a vicious circle: the nation in the full sense of the term, as the political project of a self-conscious national community, is considered traditionally as an exclusively modern phenomenon. Only contemporaneists are entitled to talk about it; but because of their specialisation and their focus on the contemporary, they limit themselves to working on an already realised object whose emergence they are not capable of thinking about. Faced with them, medievalists submit to this verdict imposed on them from outside. In these conditions, the 'modernity' of the nation cannot be demonstrated and the genesis of the phenomenon, a decisive moment whose study is essential for its understanding, cannot be studied.

Why is it important for society?
By focusing on the medieval origin of the nation, this project intends to provide a full understanding of the phenomenon of the nation that will lead to a better collaboration between modern and premodern historians. In this way, the nation of today and the various currents (nationalism, populism) that rely on them can also be addressed more appropriately.

What are the overall objectives?
This project will show that the nation had already become a source of legitimacy in the late medieval power struggles between sovereign and political society on the one hand, and between different factions in that society on the other. Thus, the medieval nation was a ‘fundamental political factor’ and cannot be reduced to a simple cultural or ethnic notion. But, in order to exist, a nation needs individuals to identify with it. The national project depended on popular involvement based on the ideology on the ‘common good’ and on a sense of community.
This project intends therefore to consider both individual and collective factors in the making of the nation. It will use a transnational approach, comparing the Kingdom of Bohemia and the Duchy of Brabant between 1300 and 1450. Both entities shared, for a while, the same ruling family and belonged to the Holy Roman Empire. Both were characterised by a strong social group competing with the sovereign and by complex linguistic arrangements with social and political implications. They both developed a significant sense of the nation, albeit differently due to distinct socio-political balances and experiences. While the Czech nation, as a product of the Czech nobility, was associated with feudal and conservative values, that of Brabant was linked to the urban ideals of political representation and liberty. Instead of starting from a fixed definition of the nation, the project will stress its contingent nature through an ‘archaeology’ that retraces the different contexts that gave rise to it and its different uses. The enquiry will be based on a large corpus (chronicles, didactic and courtly literature, songs, hagiography, etc.) that reflects the different positionings within society leading to the making of national subjects.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

I. Internal events and activities:
From the beginning of the project, I tried to be involved in the activities of the Saint-Louis university despite the pandemics.
5/10/2020: presentation of my Marie Curie Project at the Lundi du CRHiDI.
Since October 2020, organisation of a monthly workshop with PhD candidates
Methodology, historiography, epistemology and readings:
29/10/2020: the birth of State (Clastres, James C. Scott);
14/12/2020: Post-colonial and Subaltern studies (Fanon, Spivak, Said);
11/2/2021: Distanciation, engagemet, science (Weber, Elias, Habermas);
25/3/2021: Individual, individualism in the Middle Ages in Europe and Arabic world (Baschet, Dumont, Katsiaficas).

II. Organization of a conference
8-9/12/2020: Naturalisation and Legitimation of Power (1300-1800). An Attempt at a Comparative History II., international conference organized with Jonathan Dumont, cooperation between the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the Saint-Louis Unievrsity in Brusseles and the Institute of History of the University of Luxembourg (with the participation of H. Cools, J.M. Le Gall, A. Destemberg), online event

III. Participation in conferences
14-16/7/2021 “Nation – Power – Subjectivity: The Making of National Subjects in Late Medieval Bohemia and Brabant (1300-1450). Presentation of my Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions project”, 9th International Conference of the Medieval Chronicle Society, Poznań, Poland, online event
8-9/7/2021 Workshop on the Luxembourg Dynastie organized by Julia Burckhardt and Eva Scholtheuber.
28/5/2021 Participation in the roundtable: Researchers Without Borders? Internationalization and Career Paths in Research, 1991-2021, CEFRES, Prague
20/5/2021 “Les cours dans la « monarchie composite » des Luxembourg 1300-1355 (Henri VII, Jean et Charles IV)“, with Michel Margue and Timothy Salemme, Luxembourg, 52e Congrès de la SHMESP – 43es Rencontres du RMBLF, Bruxelles, Palais des Académies, 20-23 mai 2021, online event

IV. Webinar and seminar
9/3/2021 “Dalimilova kronika, pojetí národa a zájmy české šlechty“, lecture given in the framework of the MA seminar of Martin Nejedlý, Faculty of Arts, Charles University
14/12/2020 “Des sujets nationaux en Bohême et au Brabant (1300-1450). Délimitation du corpus, construction de comparables et premiers travaux sur les sources”, online webinar coorganized by the CRHiDI and the Centre belge d’études bourguignonnes 1400-1600

V. Publications
1) Le Nouveau conseil de Smil Flaška de Pardubice : une proposition de refonte du contrat politique entre exigence religieuse et compréhension de la personne humaine, Reinardus: yearbook of the International Reynard Society, 33, 2021, pp. 1-19.
2) Élire le roi. Une fausse généalogie de l’élection contre la succession héréditaire en Bohême au 14e siècle, in: Renée Wagener and Régis Moes (ed.), Cent ans de suffrage universel au Luxembourg et en Europe, Silvana Editoriale, Balsamo, 2021, pp. 37-47.
3) De malis, que post mortem regis Przsemysl acciderunt. L’impact de l’enlèvement du roi Venceslas II sur la vie politique en Bohême, in: Cahiers de recherches médiévales et humanistes (CRMH), 2020, 39, pp. 27-42.

VI. Event for a general public
26/2/2021 Construire la nation et ses sujets au Moyen Âge. Les enjeux politiques et sociaux de l'idée nationale, lecture in the framework of the programme Red Fridays, organized by the Luxembourgish party Déi Lënk, online event
Participation in Fritz Kalteis’ documentary film project 1278 – Die Schlacht um den Kontinent, ORF, ZDF, ARTE

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

I. A permanent job
Tenure track position as assistant professor at the Central European University.

II. Scientific results
Learnig of Duc-tch and Old Dutch, work on sources, better knoledge of this new 'field', participation in the congresss De Brabantse Stad, October 2021.

III. Verification of the hypothesis
this knowledge of the language and sources allowed me to test my hypotheses on the mechanisms at the origin of the development of the nation as well as the relevance of a comparison between two distant and structurally different societies.
I was also able to clarify the link between individualism and nation, which are traditionally thought as contradictory.

IV. Preparation of a monograph

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