From Slavery to Freedom. Republican Concepts of Liberty in Icelandic Political Thought in the Nineteenth Century

This essay revisits the history of political thought in nineteenth-century Iceland through the lens of republican ideas of liberty. Focusing on seminal events in the political history of the period, it argues that republican conceptions of liberty as self-government, or independence from arbitrary power, formed the intellectual background and context for the Independence Movement in the 1840s and 1850s and the Women’s Rights Movement in the 1890s. This argument breaks with standard narratives in Icelandic historiography according to which the movements for Icelandic self-rule and the rights of women are described as manifestations of nationalism and/or liberalism. To the contrary, this essay argues that men and women defined liberty — in opposition to slavery — as independence that depended on virtuous participation in public affairs. They censured negative liberty for promoting self-indulgence and private interest at the expense of reason and the public good. Similarly, Icelandic self-rule would be meaningless if power remained in the hands of the few, regardless of their nationality. The republican influence on Icelandic political thought offers conceptual tools to integrate the participation of women into intellectual history and write a history of political thought that includes both genders. Immersed in classical Greco-Roman texts at the school at Bessastaðir, the male elites who led the movement for Icelandic independence adapted republican ideas to Icelandic conditions, seeking to empower householders to participate in parliamentary politics without challenging their authority over dependents in the home. Women’s rights activists, however, used republican conceptual resources to shift the focus to power relationships within the household. By enslaving their wives and daughters, men were charged with the misapplication of republican principles. As women drew on the intellectual resources surrounding them, they contributed to the expansion of the republican tradition. Women went beyond legal and political rights in their attempts to universalize the language of republican liberty. Calling for a cultural regeneration, they insisted that men’s domination over women had led to the inculcation of cultural attitudes, traditions and values that imposed an arbitrary constraint on their participation in the polity.