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and the Cult of Sensibility 1 edwina hagen This article proposes a combined perspective of Greenblatt's famous concept of 'self-fashioning' and Reddy's well-known theory of 'emotives' as a possible new approach to the study of Dutch political culture, and more specifically to political figures. Exploring emotions as an aspect of public self-fashioning, it focuses on the Dutch statesman Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninck as an early modern example. Schimmelpenninck, like his fellow revolutionaries, radicals and moderates, was familiar with the vocabulary of the French political version of sensibility (Reddy's sentimentalism) with its strong emphasis on sincerity. However, in contrast to France, emotions in Dutch revolutionary politics remained of crucial importance thanks to the emergence of an alternative calm style developed by the moderates, most fully embodied by Schimmelpenninck. Helped in part by his republican friends, he promoted himself by stressing his 'meekness' as the virtue of his political leadership, but it was precisely this aspect of his public persona that his Dutch political enemies equated with 'weakness'. Emotionele 'self-fashioning'. De Nederlandse staatsman Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninck (1761-1825) en de cultus van het gevoel Dit artikel beoogt een nieuwe impuls te geven aan het historisch onderzoek naar de Nederlandse politieke cultuur door aandacht te vragen voor de historiografische verrijking die mogelijk besloten ligt in een verbinding van Greenblatt's beroemde concept self-fashioning en Reddy's bekende theorie van de emotives. Als eerste verkenning van de mogelijkheden van deze gecombineerde benadering wordt een analyse gemaakt van de manier waarop de Nederlandse staatsman Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninck emoties inzette voor de cultivering van zijn politieke imago. Schimmelpenninck was net als zijn mede-revolutionairen goed op de hoogte van de

This article investigates the connections between theatre and politics during the Patriotic and Batavian revolutions from the perspective of the history of emotions. In order to understand differences and shifts in emotional styles among the Dutch revolutionaries, it explores the semantic field of two closely interlinked concepts crucial to their emotional culture: passion (drift) and political enthusiasm (geestdrift). Late eighteenth-century plays and parliamentary proceedings from 1796 reveal a spectacular change in the emotional meaning of these concepts, not just from an abstract intellectual point of view, but also on the level of physical embodiment. Passion appears as a central theme in many plays. It is often depicted as a source of negativity for impulsive hotheads. Ultimately, however, from the 1790s on, passion appears as essential to a new spirit necessary for political renewal and reform. On stage but also in parliament a new distinctive emotional strategy was promoted, a type of behavior which could be described as a demonstrative display of ‘enthusiasmus’, a totally new political concept stripped of its original connotations of religious fanaticism. This new positive meaning describes the force animating the revolutionary drive to end all economic, social, and political injustice.

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