Saga - 2019, Page 84

Abstract
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JÓN SIGURÐSSON, THE SCIENCES OF THE STATE, AND THE MAKING
OF MODERN ICELANDIC POLITICS, 1840–1852
Although few topics in Icelandic historiography have attracted as much scholarly
attention as Jón Sigurðsson, the political thought of Iceland’s founding father has
not been sufficiently explored. In the years preceding the end of absolutism in
Denmark in 1848, Jón assumed the leadership of the Icelandic movement for
increased self-government within the Danish composite state. It has long been
assumed that Jón was a “national-liberal” who argued for increased national and
individual liberty in a liberal language of rights. Focusing on his ideas about gov-
ernment in the period following the reestablishment of the Alþingi in 1843 to the
Revolutions of 1848, this article argues something different. It makes the case that
Jón embraced the political theory of Staatswissenschaften, or the German Sciences
of the State, because he believed that a strong Icelandic state was necessary to
reverse the nation’s social and economic backwardness. Staatswissenschaften was
an outgrowth of the eighteenth-century German Cameralist tradition, which saw
individual welfare and happiness as the essential end or purpose of good govern-
ment, and flourished in the German states, Scandinavia and the Baltic in the
decades following the Napoleonic Wars. Like contemporaries Friedrich Dahl -
mann and Lorenz von Stein in Schleswig-Holstein, another province agitating for
autonomy within the Danish state, Jón infused his nationalism with the academic
language of Staatswissenschaften. Having studied the field at the University of
Copenhagen in 1840–1842, he read widely before developing an account of the
Icelandic past and a vision for the future. He assailed the Danish government in
Iceland through the ages as a weak government that had neglected its obligations
to promote domestic improvement. Governing Iceland from Copenhagen violated
the maxims of good government. Thus, Jón argued that a domestic government
lo cated in Reykjavik was the prerequisite for carrying out an ambitious governing
programme to advance Iceland’s social and economic development. Jón envis -
aged a much more interventionist Icelandic state than is usually assumed, one
that would play a key role in providing elementary and occupational education,
furnishing transportation and communications infrastructure, regulating manners
and morals, improving agriculture, fisheries and other industries, and helping
Icelanders rediscover their public spirit.
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