Abstract
With the ‘operatic’ revolution, and the diplomatic, military and political consequences it entailed, a new nation was effectively born in 1830. Not only was a new and independent government (including a king) to be installed, the institutions of a modern nation state had to be built as well. In this chapter, three particular institutions are introduced, viewed through the lens of their architectural construction: parliament, the barracks and the primary school. As all three of them were thought of as material representations of the nation, their construction was connected to the constructions of citizenship performed by their inhabitants. Additionally, because they were all-male institutions, the identities articulated in these buildings participated in the development of a national common language of masculinity.
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Notes
On Gustaf Wappers and his involvement in Belgian and local politics, see J.F. Buyck, Gustaf Wappers en zijn school, Antwerp: Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Künsten, 1976.
Hendrik Conscience, De omwenteling van 1830: herinneringen uit myne eerste jeugd, Antwerp: Van Dieren, 1858.
Arianne Baggerman, ‘Autobiography and Family Memory in the Nineteenth Century’, in Rudolf Dekker (ed.), Egodocuments and History. Autobiographical Writing in its Social Context since the Middle Ages, Hilversum: Verloren, 2002, 161–174.
Margaret Kohn, Radical Space. Building the House of the People, New York: Cornell University Press, 2003, 13–26
Thomas A. Markus, Buildings and Power: The Origin of Modern Building Types, London & New York: Routledge, 1993.
On the permeability ol buildings and the power-relations it can engender and convey, see Thomas Widlok, ‘Mapping Spatial and Social Permeability’, Current Anthropology, 40, 3 (1999), 392–400.
On the’ school as masculinity-making device’, see also R.W. Connell, The Men and the Boys, Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000, 155–156
Robert Morrell, From Boys to Gentlemen: Settler Masculinity in Colonial Natal, 1880–1920, Pretoria: UNISA, 2001
Mairtin Macan Ghaill, The Making of Men: Masculinities, Sexualities and Schooling, Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1994.
Marc Depaepe, Maurits De Vroede and Frank Simon (eds.), Geen trede meer om op te staan. De maatschappelijke positie van onderwijzers en onderwijzeressen tijdens de voorbije eeuw, Kapellen: Pelckmans, 1993.
Jozef Blockhuys and Karel Weyler, Goed lezen en verstaan. Leesboekjes voor lager en middelbaar onderwijs, Antwerpen: Kockx & co, 1891, 50.
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T. Grein, Zinnelyk en zedelyk aanschouwings-onderwys, leesboek voor lagere scholen. Naer het hoogduitsch, Antwerp: Van dieren, 1853, 35.
On the evolution of the Belgian army’s recruitment methods and the percentage of young men drafted, see Luc De Vos, Het effectief van de Belgische krijgsmacht en de militiewetgeving, 1890–1914, Brussels: Royal Museum of the Armed Forces and Military History, 1985.
Odile Roynette, ‘Discipline, patriotisme, virilité...Quand la vie de caserne forgeait les hommes’, L’histoire, 259 (2001), 6065
As lor other visitors, most ol the camp was simply not accessible to the king, who could not experience the camp by walking its lanes (or experience it from what Thomas Widlok would call a ‘carrier’s’ perspective). Thomas Widlok, ‘Mapping Spatial and Social Permeability’, Current Anthropology, 40, 3 (1999), 392–400.
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© 2014 Josephine Hoegaerts
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Hoegaerts, J. (2014). Men in Space: The Construction of All-Male Spaces. In: Masculinity and Nationhood, 1830–1910. Genders and Sexualities in History Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137392015_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137392015_2
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