1864: Sønner af de Slagne by Rasmus Glenthøj (review)

Historical commemorations transcended borders in 2014, but individual national perspectives remained visible. Whereas most of Europe remembered the outbreak of World War I in 1914 and neighboring Norway celebrated its 1814 constitution, Denmark primarily looked back on the lost war of 1864. Even though the commemorations provided neither self-affirmation nor a call to action, since the military route produced no beautiful losers and its most hurtful consequences had been remedied by the return of South Jutland in 1920, the country seemed enthralled by the echoes of a distant national trauma.

Rasmus Glenthøj has established himself as one of Denmark’s new authorities on the country’s process of nation-building. Having previously focused on the loss of Norway following the Napoleonic Wars, the productive young historian has now turned his attention to the second great disaster to befall the Oldenburg Monarchy in the nineteenth century. This once powerful polity had, in Glenthøj’s words, transformed into an empire in miniature, which had shrunk to the size of a lesser state but retained the cultural and constitutional diversity of a monarchic conglomerate. As such, it was challenged by the new doctrine of popular sovereignty in its dual expressions of nationalism and liberalism. National ideology pulled the monarchy’s Danish and German subjects in different directions, and it was the liberals in both communities who challenged the dynastic patriotism of the conservative establishment.

International diplomacy preserved the composite monarchy during the revolutionary turmoil of 1848-1850, without resolving the fundamental differences over the national future of Holstein and especially Schleswig. The Danish national movement’s attempts to implement its preferred solution, which entailed the incorporation of the bilingual duchy of Schleswig into Denmark proper, ultimately resulted in the military intervention of the German powers and the loss of both duchies in 1864.

The author strives to explore the origins, the course, and the consequences of the war of 1864 for Danish society. The implications were profound indeed. The continental Oldenburg Monarchy shrank by more than a third and had undeniably been reduced to a minor polity on the European periphery. Even more damaging, perhaps, were the psychological consequences. Glenthøj took his subtitle “Sons of the Vanquished” from a 1906 poem by Danish author and Nobel laureate Johannes V. Jensen, which betrayed the profound impact of 1864 on the collective sense-of-self Many Danes experienced their country’s history as a series of defeats. In a dramatic turnaround from the ostensible self-confidence that had escalated the conflict in the 1860s, Denmark’s political leaders henceforth saw caution and acquiescence as the guideposts of foreign policy.

In one of his central arguments, Glenthøj questions the historical basis for this political reorientation. In his eyes, Danish leaders were well aware of their country’s military inferiority but hoped for international support, not least of all in the shape of Scandinavian cooperation or even unification. They were also driven by a fear of national extinction, doubting a further reduced Denmark’s capability to survive as an independent country. It is difficult to quantify the impact of these motivations, but, at the very least, they nuance the era’s political legacy.

1864: Sønner af de Slagne is a comprehensive history of Denmark’s transformation into the polity of today. In spite of its attention to detail, it remains highly readable and tries to reach a wider public without compromising scholarly standards. This popular appeal is further enhanced by lavish illustrations. The author demonstrates his broad knowledge of modern Scandinavian history and consistently illuminates the political and cultural interconnections between the region’s leaders and societies. His dependence on secondary literature makes him less sure-footed in his description of non-Scandinavian developments.

The massive work is both wider and narrower than a mere study of 1864. It is a story of nation-building in nineteenth-century Denmark, in which 1864 only forms the dramatic pivot. At the same time, this framework imposes a distinctly...