After the 1815 Congress of Vienna, Europe witnessed a wave of new parliamentary forms. Many political assemblies were established, revived, or adapted across the continent. These assemblies were often created to govern disputed border regions and aimed to combine traditional authority with emerging forms of political representation. Periodic unrest spurred calls for more revolutionary changes, as people demanded greater involvement in governance. While these new systems were designed to stabilize empires, they also contributed to growing movements for national autonomy and self-rule. This conference examines how power operated within empires and how ideas of sovereignty and representation evolved during this transformative period.
Venues:
- German Historical Institute, Warsaw (23rd of January 2025)
- Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw (24th of January 2025)
Organizers:
- Piotr Kuligowski (Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History, Polish Academy of Science)
- Bartosz Dziewanowski-Stefańczyk (German Historical Institute Warsaw)
- Wiktor Marzec (Robert Zajonc Institute for Social Studies, University of Warsaw)
PROGRAM
First day, 23 January 2025
Venue: German Historical Institute
Welcome and introduction, 10:00–10:20
Keynote lecture 10:30–11:30
Silvia Marton (New Europe College / University of Bucharest)
Voting and Electoral Fraud in Nineteenth Century Romania. A Contribution to the History of Corruption
Project showcase 11:30–12:15
Piotr Kuligowski and Quentin Schwanck
How Revolutionary Assemblies in Paris, Brussels, and Warsaw Claimed Legitimacy, 1830-31
Panel I: LANGUAGES 13:00–15:15
Chair: Anna Grześkowiak-Krwawicz
Radosław Szymański
‘Madness does not make right’, or can a parliament bind itself forever? A Rousseau-inspired polemic in reaction to a 1767 parliamentary crisis in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
Tamas Nyirkos
The “sacred property of language”: the rhetoric of linguistic emancipation in the Hungarian parliament (1825–1844)
Wiktor Marzec, Ivan Sablin
A Sejm and Constitution for the Russian Empire: Conceptualizing a State Assembly and Basic Law in the Context of Reforms, Wars, and Revolutions 1801–1831
PANEL II: CONCEPTS 15:45–18:00
Chair: Joanna Innes
Arthur Ghins
What was Representative Government?
Charris De Smet
Conceptual innovations within French parliament in the wake of the 1830 Revolution as seen through discussions about luxury and consumption
Jussi Kurunmäki, Jani Marjanen
In the Absence of Representation. Foreign models, conceptual innovation, and the emerging public sphere in Finland, 1809–1863
Dinner 18:30
Second day, 24 January 2025
Venue: Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences
Welcome, 9:20–9:30
Roundtable Residues and Innovations in Representative Assemblies 9:30–10:45
Participants:
Marnix Beyen (University of Antwerp)
Anna Grześkowiak-Krwawicz (The Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences)
Joanna Innes (University of Oxford)
Paulina Kewes (University of Oxford)
Chair: Piotr Kuligowski
PANEL III: PRACTICES 11:00–13:15
Chair: Silvia Marton
Cristian Ploscaru
The State Assembly of Moldavia (1832–1848) between constitutional principles, models and parliamentary practices
Simon Van Oort
The Mother of Parliament in the Low Countries: Dutch Parliamentary innovations on a British Mould (1815–1848)
Tamás Dobszay
Antecedents of the constitutional parliamentary turn of 1848 between 1825 and 1848
PANEL IV: PEOPLE 14:00–16:15
Chair: Marnix Beyen
Sylvain Duchesne, Franck Duchesne
French Senators’ Mobility in the Napoleonic Empire. A Cartographic Approach to Parliamentary Activities (1799–1815)
Lauren Lauret
The King’s Colonial Men? Re-migrants in Dutch Restoration Politics, 1815–1840
Marek Maj
Silent Assemblies: Peasant Gromady in the Free City of Kraków, 1815–1846
PANEL V: FORMS 16:45–19:00
Chair: Paulina Kewes
Boris Popivanov
Representation as legitimation and deliberation of popular demands: Evidence from the Bulgarian pre-Liberation notions and practices (1811–1878)
Artur Kula
Octroyed or Sovereign Republicanism. The Free City of Kraków at the Imperial Junctures
Kseniya Tserashkova
The formation of the system of urban commoners (“meshchane”) self-government in the Russian Empire and its features in the Belarusian-Lithuanian provinces