19th-Century European Protestantism: A Network Approach

As many historians have stressed, the spread of Protestantism during the early modern era owed much to the migration of both ideas and people across a multitude of political and physical frontiers, even if the emergence of particular Protestant communities remained a highly localized phenomenon. This paper seeks to explore the more neglected history of Protestant networks and networking during the long nineteenth century. While some of the networking that developed after 1800 clearly built on existing ties and relationships, it was driven by new energies and ultimately encouraged the foundation of organizations that fostered a palpable sense of Protestant community that transcended state and even continental borders. Through such agencies as the London Missionary Society and the British and Foreign Bible Society, the former not only promoted religious revival in Norway, Finland and French-speaking Switzerland, but encouraged the foundation of Protestant communities in southern and eastern Europe. In Central Europe, German Pietists also drew inspiration from the Evangelicals, in time becoming active partners in promoting European-wide projects such as the Inner Mission and the YMCA. The commanding influence of German theology after 1800 owed much to Schleiermacher, both in terms of his renewal of Lutheran theology and his encouragement of theology as science (Wissenschaft). The new energy at German universities—Berlin and Tübingen, Leipzig and Erlangen—drew students in from across Europe who would then play leading roles in their home universities: Cambridge and Leiden, Stockholm and Zurich. Until 1871, the University of Strasbourg also promoted the diffusion of German theology in French-speaking Europe. The networks of personal ties, moreover, were complemented and extended by the evolution of scholarly print culture, both the triumph of the vernacular in theological publishing and the translation of major German texts into other European languages.