The Breakup of a Composite State and the Construction of a National Conflict: Denmark and the Duchies in the 19th Century

This paper will discuss some aspects of the end of the composite state. It presents a critical and, in some respects, alternative reading to the traditional nation state-biased way of describing the development that led to the breakdown of the Gesamtstaat in the nineteenth century, and suggests that the composite state was not inherently destined to fail. We should be aware that the ancien regime lost out by only very small margins, and should not uncritically accept the view propagated by adherents of national ideology that different nations cannot live together in peace and harmony within the same state.