Revolution! Politics of Feeling in Dutch and Flemish songs around 1800

The late eighteenth century was a period that was defined by fundamental social, cultural, and political changes throughout European societies. Old regimes were burned down and new states arose from their ashes. In the Northern Netherlands, the power of the stadtholder was challenged and eventually overthrown leading to the establishment of the Batavian Republic. Also the people of the Southern Netherlands rose up against their ruler in the Brabantine Revolution. The revolutionary achievements, however, soon went down in the chaos of the French revolutionary wars and the Napoleonic whirlwind that swept through Europe in the first years of the nineteenth century. As one of the most turbulent periods in the history of the Low Countries, the decades around 1800 were a time that was filled with a variety of sounds: cries of revolution, the roaring of cannons, and the exciting, enraging, provoking, lamenting, or jubilant sounds of song.