Securing Europe After Napoleon: 1815 and the New European Security Culture 1108428223, 9781108428224

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Securing Europe after Napoleon

After the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, the leaders of Europe at the Congress of Vienna aimed to establish a new balance of power. The settlement established in 1815 ushered in the emergence of a genuinely European security culture. In this volume, leading historians offer new insights into the military cooperation, ambassadorial conferences, transnational police networks, and international commissions that helped produce stability. They delve into the lives of diplomats, ministers, police officers and bankers, and many others who were concerned with peace and security on and beyond the European continent. This volume is a crucial contribution to the debates on securitisation and security cultures emerging in response to threats to the international order. beatrice de graaf is Professor of History of International Relations and Global Governance at Utrecht University. She leads an ERC project on security history in Europe and beyond, is an expert on history of terrorism, and is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and the ECFR. ido de haan is Professor of Political History at Utrecht University. He has written extensively about the aftermath of war and collective violence in modern European history, notably after the Napoleonic Wars and the Holocaust. brian vick is Professor of History at Emory University. He has written widely on the Congress of Vienna and its aftermath. His book The Congress of Vienna: Power and Politics after Napoleon won the Hans Rosenberg Book Prize of the Central European History Society of the American Historical Association.

Securing Europe after Napoleon 1815 and the New European Security Culture Edited by

Beatrice de Graaf Utrecht University

Ido de Haan Utrecht University

Brian Vick Emory University

Managing editor

Susanne Keesman Utrecht University

University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 79 Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108428224 DOI: 10.1017/9781108597050 © Cambridge University Press 2019 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2019 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A. A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Graaf, Beatrice de, editor. | Haan, Ido de, 1963- editor. | Vick, Brian E., 1970- editor. Title: Securing Europe after Napoleon : 1815 and the new European security culture / edited by Beatrice de Graaf, Ido de Haan, Brian Vick. Description: Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2018034497 | ISBN 9781108428224 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781108446426 (paperback : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: National security–Europe–History–19th century. | Europe–Politics and government–1815-1871. | Europe–History, Military–19th century. | Congress of Vienna (1814-1815) Classification: LCC D383 .S38 2019 | DDC 355/.0330409034–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018034497 ISBN 978-1-108-42822-4 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

List of Contributors

page vii

Vienna 1815: Introducing a European Security Culture beatrice de graaf, ido de haan and brian vick Part I 1

2

3

5

6

19

Cultures of Peace and Security from the Vienna Congress to the Twenty-First Century: Characteristics and Dilemmas matthias schulz

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Historicising a Security Culture: Peace, Security and the Vienna System in History and Politics, 1815 to Present eckart conze

40

The Congress of Vienna as a Missed Opportunity: Conservative Visions of a New European Order after Napoleon matthijs lok

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Part II 4

Conceptualisations

1

Institutions and Interests

73

The Central Commission for the Navigation of the Rhine: A First Step towards European Economic Security? joep schenk

75

From the Balance of Power to a Balance of Diplomacy? Peace and Security in the Vienna Settlement stella ghervas

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The London Ambassadors’ Conferences and Beyond: Abolition, Barbary Corsairs and Multilateral Security in the Congress of Vienna System brian vick

114

v

vi

7

8

Contents

The Allied Machine: The Conference of Ministers in Paris and the Management of Security, 1815–18 beatrice de graaf

130

The German Confederation: Cornerstone of the New European Security System wolf d. gruner

150

Part III 9

10

11

12

169

Constructing an International Conspiracy: Revolutionary Concertation and Police Networks in the European Restoration ido de haan and jeroen van zanten

171

Security and Transnational Policing of Political Subversion and International Crime in the German Confederation after 1815 karl ha¨ rter

193

The Papacy, Reform and Intervention: International Collective Security in Restoration Italy david laven

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From Augarten to Algiers: Security and ‘Piracy’ around the Congress of Vienna erik de lange

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Part IV 13

Threats

Agents and Practices

Friedrich von Gentz and His Wallachian Correspondents: Security Concerns in a Southeastern European Borderland (1812–28) constantin ardeleanu

14

Diplomats as Power Brokers mark jarrett

15

Economic Insecurity, ‘Securities’ and a European Security Culture after the Napoleonic Wars glenda sluga

Index

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251 271

288

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Contributors

constantin ardeleanu is Professor of Modern Romanian History at the Lower Danube University of Galati (Romania) and research fellow at Utrecht University. His research focuses on the activity of the European Commission of the Danube and its contribution to the establishment of a European security culture in the long nineteenth century. His latest book is titled International Trade and Diplomacy at The Lower Danube: the Sulina Question and the Economic Premises of the Crimean War, 1829–1853 (2014). eckart conze is Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Marburg (Germany) where he is also Director of the International Centre for War Crimes Research and Documentation (ICWC). He held visiting professorships at the Universities of Toronto, Cambridge and Bologna. Recent book publications include Die Suche nach Sicherheit. Eine Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland von 1949 bis zur Gegenwart (2009) and Nuclear Fears, Nuclear Threats, and the Cold War of the 1980s (2016, with Martin Klimke and Jeremy Varon). stella ghervas is Professor of Russian History at Newcastle University and an associate of the History Department at Harvard University. Her main interests are in the intellectual and international history of modern Europe, with special reference to the history of peace and peace-making. She is the author of Réinventer la Tradition: Alexandre Stourdza et l’Europe de la Sainte-Alliance (2008) and Conquering Peace: From the Enlightenment to the European Union (2019), and the co-editor of Lieux d’Europe: Mythes et limites (2008) and A Cultural History of Peace in the Age of Enlightenment 1648-1815 (2019). beatrice de graaf is Professor of History of International Relations and Global Governance at Utrecht University. She was visiting scholar at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge University in 2016. De Graaf publishes widely on security and terrorism in the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries.

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Recent books include Evaluating Counterterrorism Performance (2011; 2014) and the edited volume Terrorists on Trial (2016). De Graaf is currently finalising a monograph on the Vienna 1815 peace settlement titled The Balancers. How Europe Waged Peace after 1815. wolf d. gruner is Emeritus Professor of European History at the University of Rostock, and former Professor for Modern European History at Hamburg University. He is a leading expert on the German Confederation, the German Question and its European context. His most recent books are Der Deutsche Bund, 1815–1866 (2012) and Der Wiener Kongress 1814/15 (2014). He is currently working on a monograph on the German Länder of the south. ido de haan is Professor of Political History at Utrecht University. He has written extensively about the aftermath of war and collective violence in modern European history. Recent publications include ‘An unresolved controversy. The Jewish Honor Court in the Netherlands 1946–1950’ in Laura Jockusch and Gabriel Finder (eds.), Jewish Honor Courts. Revenge, Retribution, and Reconciliation in Europe and Israel after the Holocaust (2015) and ‘The Western European welfare state beyond Christian and Social Democratic ideology’ in Dan Stone (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Postwar History (2012). karl ha¨ rter is Professor of Early Modern and Modern History at the University of Darmstadt and Research Group Leader at the Max-PlanckInstitute for European Legal History in Frankfurt am Main. His major research interests concern legal history, constitutional history and the history of crime and criminal justice. Recent publications include ‘Political crime in early modern Europe: Assassination, legal responses and popular print media’ in European Journal of Criminology 11 (2014) and Revolts and Political Crime from the 12th to the 19th Century. Legal Responses and Juridical-Political Discourses (2013). mark jarrett is an attorney, historian and publisher, and the author of The Congress of Vienna and Its Legacy (2013). He studied at Columbia University, the London School of Economics, and obtained his PhD in European history from Stanford University. He worked as an attorney in the San Francisco office of Baker & McKenzie. Jarrett is currently at work on a study of Lord Castlereagh and counter-revolution in Ireland and France. erik de lange is a PhD candidate at Utrecht University, within the ERCfunded research programme ‘Securing Europe, fighting its enemies’. His research project ‘Menacing tides. The European fight against Mediterranean

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piracy, 1815–1856’ inquires into the dynamics of international security cooperation on the Mediterranean sea. Additionally, he is the chief editor of the USHS (Utrecht School for Historicising Security) blog, in which the ERC team and various guest bloggers discuss current-day security issues from a historical perspective. david laven is Associate Professor at the University of Nottingham. He has published extensively on Italian identity from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, the Risorgimento and the Habsburg Empire, as well as on Byron, Machiavelli and historiography. He is the author of Venice and Venetia under the Habsburgs (2002) and is currently finishing a monograph on how historians between 1815 and 1922 wrote about the history of the Venetian republic. matthijs lok is Assistant Professor of Modern (West-)European History at the European Studies Department of the University of Amsterdam. Lok specialises in the comparative political and intellectual history of Europe (in a global context) from 1500 to the present, with a special interest in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Currently, Lok is writing a monograph on the uses of the past and temporality in ideas of Europe in the postrevolutionary era. joep schenk is postdoctoral researcher at Utrecht University within the ERC-funded project ‘Securing Europe, fighting it enemies, 1815–1914’. He researches the Central Commission for the Navigation of the Rhine and the creation of a European security culture in the nineteenth century. Schenk was previously appointed at Erasmus University of Rotterdam, where he obtained his PhD with a dissertation on the commercial relationship between the port of Rotterdam and the Ruhr between 1870 and 1914. matthias schulz is Professor of History of International Relations and Transnational History at the University of Geneva and Director of the Department of General History. His latest publications include Normen und Praxis: Das Europäische Konzert der Großmächte als Sicherheitsrat (2009), Das 19. Jahrhundert (2011) and The Strained Alliance: US– European Relations from Nixon to Carter (2010, co-edited with Thomas A. Schwartz), as well as numerous articles and contributions. glenda sluga is Professor of International History and Australian Research Council Kathleen Fitzpatrick Laureate Fellow at the University of Sydney. She is the author of Internationalism in the Age of Nationalism (2013), and editor with Carolyn James of Women, Diplomacy, and International Politics since 1500 (2015). She is currently completing a study of peacemaking after the Napoleonic wars, ‘International Society: Europe and the World Remade,

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1812–1822’. She was a founding member of the International Scientific Committee for the History of UNESCO. brian vick is Professor of History at Emory University. He has recently completed several articles and essays for the Congress bicentennial, including on salons and festive culture in international relations and the origins of humanitarian and liberal imperialist diplomacy in the efforts to abolish the African slave trade and interdict the Barbary corsairs during and after the Congress of Vienna. His book The Congress of Vienna: Power and Politics After Napoleon (2014) won the Hans Rosenberg Book Prize of the Central European History Society. jeroen van zanten is Assistant Professor of European and Dutch History at the University of Amsterdam. He studied history and philosophy and obtained his PhD in 2004 from Leiden University. Van Zanten has published extensively on parliamentary history, monarchy, revolution, restoration and political culture in Europe during the long nineteenth century. In 2013 he published a much-acclaimed biography of the Dutch King William II (1792–1849). His most recent publication deals with the battle of Waterloo and its Nachleben, 1815–2015.

Vienna 1815 Introducing a European Security Culture Beatrice de Graaf, Ido de Haan and Brian Vick*

Wine in Vienna In 1814–15, Hans von Gagern, German nobleman and freelance diplomat, acted as the plenipotentiary for the Prince of Orange, later King William I of the Netherlands, at the Congress of Vienna. Hosting numerous meetings at his rooms on the Bräunerstrasse in Vienna, where he outshone many other representatives by serving the most copious dinners and celebrated wines, he exemplified a new type of diplomat.1 Experienced, urbane, flexible, not attached to ancient forms and rituals, but pragmatic and to the point, he offered William straightforward advice: Your Royal Highness is entering the larger European system as one of its powers. From now on, your politics need to show your colour. One should not isolate oneself, and whoever does runs the risk of hurting oneself in the long run. [. . .] Name, honour and immediate interest dictate your Royal Highness to appear and be perceived as the defender of justice, as the champion and hope of the oppressed.

Gagern urged William to stand up for the ‘security and interests’ of other, smaller nations and peoples.2 When consequently in June 1815 the Central Commission for the Navigation of the Rhine was created, the Netherlands and

* Beatrice de Graaf has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007–13) / ERC Grant Agreement n.615313. The Editors wish to thank Susanne Keesman for her invaluable assistance as managing editor; and Yannick Balk, Celine Mureau and Annelotte Janse for their assistance in editing this volume’s many footnotes. We furthermore would like to thank John Kok for his excellent native editing of part of the chapters in this volume and Carla Spiegel for making the index. 1 Cf. M. Hundt, Die mindermächtigen deutschen Staaten auf dem Wiener Kongress (Mainz: Zabern, 1996), 105–10; E.E. Kraehe, Metternich’s German Policy. The Congress of Vienna, 1814–1815, vol.II (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 177; H. Rössler, Zwischen Revolution und Reaktion: Ein Lebensbild des Reichsfreiherrn Hans Christoph von Gagern, 1766–1852 (Göttingen: Musterschmidt, 1958). 2 ‘Von Gagern to William I, Report III, Vienna 26 November 1814’; ‘William to Von Gagern, Brussels 14 December 1814’, National Archives The Hague (NL-HaNA), Algemene Staatssecretarie, 2.02.01, inv.no.6356. Cf. Correspondence between William and Von Gagern in Hessisches Staatsarchiv Darmstadt (HStD), Familienarchiv der Freiherrn von Gagern, Files O11&B24.

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Vienna 1815: Introducing a European Security Culture

the smaller principalities along the river – together with Prussia – accepted a legal constitution and a supranational court to settle disputes and conflicts along the Rhine. They thus mutually restrained one another from pursuing unilateral interests, such as restricting free passage, and fought smugglers together.3 The free trade regime was even extended to the Elbe and Polish rivers, and to the Po. This Rhine regime exemplifies how, following from the effervescent Congress of Vienna, the European powers established elementary conditions not only for the protection of the ‘status quo’4 and the regulation of interstate conflict through ‘political equilibrium’, as the literature on this era has it,5 but also for the creation of a system of collective security, the ‘Pax Europeana’, in which common European interests had to be debated, defined and defended together. Over two hundred years after the Final Act was concluded, it is time to remember, reassess and analyse the extent to which the Congress of Vienna produced new modes of security management, or what we can call new security cultures, combining pre-revolutionary, Napoleonic and postNapoleonic ideas and practices of peace, stability and order in Europe.6 This volume aims to bring into focus the ways in which the Vienna Settlement went far beyond establishing a balance of power, and how a set of European institutions, practices and agents, as well as ideals, principles and perceptions, embedded the territorial settlements in a European security culture. This volume’s primary objective is to analyse and explain the development of this ‘European security culture’ between 1815 and 1914. By this we mean the sum of mutually shared, and often conflicting, perceptions of vital interests 3

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‘Treaty of the Rhine Commission’, Rheinurkunden. Sammlung Zwischenstaatlicher Vereinbarungen, Landesrechtlicher Ausfuehrungsverordnungen und sonstiger wichtiger Urkunden über die Rheinschiffahrt seit 1803, vol.1 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1918), 42–50. See for an overview of William’s and Von Gagern’s initiative B.A. de Graaf, ‘Second-tier Diplomacy: Hans von Gagern and William I in their quest for an alternative European order, 1813–1818’, Journal for Modern European History, 12:4 (2014), 546–66. J.L. Klüber (ed.), Acten des Wiener Congresses in den Jahren 1814 und 1815, vol.II (Erlangen: Palm, 1817), 530–7. ‘Repose’ or ‘tranquility’ were Metternich’s favourite words. See ‘Metternich to Franz Georg, 8 June 1815’, Metternich family papers. Rodinný archive Metternissky. Acta Clementina, Correspondance politique Autriche. Cart 49, vol.5. Státní Ústrední Archiv Prague (SUA). Cf. M. Schulz, Normen und Praxis. Das Europäische Konzert der Großmächte als Sicherheitsrat, 1815–1860 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2009), 74, 559, fn.90. P.W. Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics 1763–1848 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994); Kraehe, Metternich’s German Policy, 3–17. For detailed accounts of the Congress, see B.E. Vick, The Congress of Vienna: Power and Politics after Napoleon (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014); W.D. Gruner, Der Wiener Kongress 1814/15 (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2014); R. Stauber, Der Wiener Kongress (Vienna: Böhlau, 2014); M. Jarrett, The Congress of Vienna and Its Legacy: War and Great Power Diplomacy after Napoleon (London: I.B. Tauris, 2013); G. Dallas, 1815. The Roads to Waterloo (New York: Random House, 2011).

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and threats, as well as the institutions and practices through which different agents acted together upon these ideas and expectations. These themes are addressed in the volume by numerous prominent scholars as well as a new generation of researchers in the field, as they trace the emergence of a new European security culture after the fall of Napoleon. In doing so we offer three main contributions to the scholarship on the Congress of Vienna and its consequences. Firstly, the essays sketch out a new and more detailed understanding of the nature of the Vienna Settlement of 1815 and its aftermath. By presenting the agreements as both the product of an emerging European security culture and as its founding, we focus on the institutions in which this culture was consolidated and on the actors who brought about and maintained these institutions, as well as their motives and ideas. More broadly, we illuminate the concepts, images and narratives of peace, order, conflict and danger that helped to call forth and legitimate this new security culture. Secondly, these studies contribute to debates within the history and the theory of International Relations about security, securitisation and security culture, which so far have focused on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.7 Here, we develop the historiography on the trajectories of securitisation in the nineteenth century, and in this way enrich the theoretical and conceptual insights into the workings and logics of security provided by IR studies. Finally, we expand the timeframe of the history of international cooperation well beyond the traditional threshold of histories of international governance, which generally view the Congress of Vienna merely as a prologue to a narrative that starts only in the second half of the nineteenth century.8 The essays in this volume ultimately show how already in the first quarter of the nineteenth century new multilateral cooperative institutions, habits and perceptions emerged, which contributed to a system of European collective security. Such an approach directs attention to the range of institutions, agents and practices operating between the levels of the congress summit meetings and the traditional bilateral diplomacy from court to court. This new perspective also brings into focus how the caesura between the Congress system of 1814–22 and the subsequent Concert of Europe is less sharp than usually depicted, and the continuities considerably greater, with implications

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E.g. B. Buzan, People, States and Fear: The National Security Problem in International Relations (Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1983); B. Buzan, O. Wæver and J. de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1998); M. de Goede, European Security Culture: Preemption and Precaution in European Security. Inaugural lecture University of Amsterdam (Amsterdam: Vossius Press, 2011). E.g. M. Mazower, Governing the World: The History of an Idea, 1815 to the Present (New York: Penguin, 2012).

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for our understanding of the long period of relative peace in Europe during the nineteenth century. Vienna 1815: The Emergence of a European Security Culture Postulating the emergence of a European security culture, in the broadest sense of the word, from 1815 onwards may seem counterintuitive. Scholars in the history of international relations usually acknowledge the emergence of a European ‘conscience juridique du monde civilisé’ and the corresponding peace and international rights movement in the course of the nineteenth century.9 Yet they frequently situate the beginnings of European security cooperation only after 1918 with the establishment of the League of Nations and Interpol. In their view, the nineteenth century should be interpreted as an era characterised by the realist paradigm of a balance of power, the so-called Concert of Europe where states pursuing their own interests were the main actors.10 Current historical literature often views the first half of the nineteenth century through this lens as well – despite the obvious element of cooperative diplomacy implied in the term ‘concert’ – and sees the second half as shaped by bellicose nationalism rather than by collective security.11 And although a growing body of work on nongovernmental transnational social movements exists, concrete forms and practices of international and supranational security cooperation in the nineteenth century have been largely overlooked.12 Over the last few years, however, more sophisticated narratives about the Congress of Vienna have begun to replace the ‘balance of power’ concept with terms like ‘hegemony’, ‘political equilibrium’, or ‘influence politics’. They signal a gradual shift away from focussing primarily on classical diplomacy, as 9

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L. Tedoldi, ‘Costruire la giustizia internazionale. Alle origini delle organizzazioni giudiziarie internazionali: temi e problemi’, Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento, 35 (2009), 11–37. Predominantly H. Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), 78–102. Also H. Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977); R. Jervis, ‘From balance to concert: A study of international security cooperation’, in K.A. Oye (ed.), Cooperation under Anarchy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 58–79; J.J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: Norton, 2001). For a more nuanced version see G.J. Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 80–116. J. Leonhard, Bellizismus und Nation: Kriegsdeutung und Nationsbestimmung in Europa und den Vereinigten Staaten 1750–1914 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2008). J. Boli and G.M. Thomas (eds.), Constructing World Culture: International Nongovernmental Organizations since 1875 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999); M.H. Geyer and J. Paulmann (eds.), Mechanics of Internationalism: Culture, Society and Politics from the 1840s to the First World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); J. Osterhammel and N.P. Petersson, Geschichte der Globalisierung: Dimensionen, Prozesse, Epochen (Munich: Beck, 2003).

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high-level inter-state relations and conflicts and their outcomes, to unpacking and analysing decision-making processes and considering the role of broader political culture and the realm of ‘norms and practices’.13 In considering the collective threats and interests that, in the perception of the larger and smaller powers of Europe gathered in Vienna, required a collective answer, it is important to emphasise that the powers did not only convene between 1814 and 1815 but also endeavoured to continue and to institutionalise their cooperation thereafter. These multilateral security networks engaged multifarious agents from different branches of government (military, naval, police, judicial and administrative) and involved both military interventions and judicial regimes.14 Their efforts included the fight against purported international revolutionary conspiracies and uprisings (fears of which seemed to be confirmed by revolts in 1819–21, 1825, 1830, 1848 and 1871), but also attempts to regulate international river traffic and European collaboration to counter piracy, corsairing, privateering (state-commissioned attacks on foreign commercial vessels) and contraband slave trading.15 These mixed and multilateral ventures did not end after the Crimean War, but persisted for decades thereafter, for example in the maritime Commission of the Danube (from 1856 onwards), the European expedition to Lebanon and Syria and the ensuing supervision over the Mutasarrifiate regime (1860–1914), the joint Capitulations and Mixed Courts regime in Egypt (from 1876), the Anti-Anarchist Campaign (1881–1914) and the intervention against the Boxer uprising in China and subsequent reparations commission (1898–1901). These security arrangements were not ad hoc undertakings or incidental, bilateral campaigns, but instead instances of truly supranational or transnational cooperation, mostly accompanied by binding laws, courts, standing conferences and instruments of monitoring, mediation and control that profoundly impacted the perception and handling of security issues in the years thereafter. Significantly, many of these multilateral security and humanitarian initiatives also already involved the activities of a variety of nongovernmental actors and organisations from across Europe as they lobbied, gathered 13

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Cf. Vick, Congress of Vienna; Schulz, Normen und Praxis; W. Pyta (ed.), Das europäische Mächtekonzert: Friedens- und Sicherheitspolitik vom Wiener Kongress 1815 bis zum Krimkrieg 1853 (Cologne: Böhlau, 2009). Cf. J. Dülffer, M. Kröger and H. Wippich, Vermiedene Kriege: Deeskalation von Konflikten der Grossmächte zwischen Krimkrieg und Erstem Weltkrieg (1856–1914) (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1997). Cf. K. Härter, ‘Security and cross-border political crime: the formation of transnational security regimes in 18th and 19th Century Europe’, Historical Social Research, 38:1 (2013), 96–106; F. Klose, ‘Humanitäre Intervention und internationale Gerichtsbarkeit – Verflechtung militärischer und juristischer Implementationsmaβnahmen zu Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts’, Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift, 72:1 (2013), 1–21; J.S. Martinez, The Slave Trade and the Origins of International Human Rights Law (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012).

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information and cooperated with militaries and governments in support of their various causes. In this sense the diplomacy and security culture of the Vienna system already point to the transnational ‘polylateralism’ of more recent times, as they extended the multilateral ties among governments into wider social realms.16 These security arrangements, and other similar collective undertakings and institutions such as the ministers’ and ambassadors’ conferences in London and Paris after 1815 (see also the contributions of Schenk and Ghervas, Chapters 4 and 5 in this volume),17 constituted formative moments in the development of a nascent but veritable European security culture, fully acknowledging the fact that this culture ‘remain[ed] uneven and incomplete – as cultures usually are’.18 The question arises of course about the alleged novelty of this security culture after 1815. After all, continuities undoubtedly existed between 1815 and what occurred in previous decades and even centuries. The post-1815 security culture was the sum of developments, experiences, administrative practices and institutions that emerged in the pre-revolutionary, revolutionary and Napoleonic years. The international networks of sovereigns and their diplomats that were forged at least since the Peace of Utrecht already contained elements of a collective conception of a normative order.19 The Napoleonic occupation and conquest of Europe created an ‘inner empire’ whose benefits and advantages the post-1815 regimes took over for their central management of affairs, and which had in many cases already been introduced through reforms during the Napoleonic years in both satellite and enemy states.20 It was in the Napoleonic era, for instance, that we find the first attempts to regulate international riverine traffic; the new institution of the Central Commission of the Rhine created in 1815 had some continuity with the Rhenish Octroi of 1804 under Napoleon.21 One could similarly find earlier examples of

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G. Wiseman, ‘“Polylateralism”: diplomacy’s third dimension’, Public Diplomacy (Summer 2010), 24–39. Cf. N. van Sas, Onze Natuurlijkste Bondgenoot: Nederland, Engeland en Europa, 1813–1831 (Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff, 1985); R. Marcowitz, Grossmacht auf Bewährung: Die Interdependenz französischer Innen- und Aussenpolitik 1814/15–1851/52 (Stuttgart: Thorbecke, 2001), 48. De Goede, European Security Culture, 6–7. F. Dhondt, Balance of Power and Norm Hierarchy. Franco-British Diplomacy after the Peace of Utrecht (Leiden: Brill, 2015); D. Onnekink and G. Rommelse (eds.), Ideology and Foreign Policy in Early Modern Europe (1650–1750) (London: Ashgate, 2011). M. Broers, Europe under Napoleon, 1799–1815 (New York: Edward Arnold, 1996). See on ‘inner empire’ M. Broers, The Napoleonic Empire in Italy, 1796–1814: Cultural Imperialism in a European Context? (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005), 213–74. R.M. Spaulding, ‘Revolutionary France and the transformation of the Rhine’, Central European History, 44:2 (2011), 203–26; Spaulding, ‘Anarchy, hegemony, cooperation. International control of the Rhine river, 1789–1848’ (2007), 2, www.ccr-zkr.org/files/histoireCCNR/21_ anarchy-hegemony-cooperation.pdf (accessed 26 September 2017).

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combined Anglo-Dutch action against Barbary corsairs in the era of Charles II, but that was notably bilateral, not multilateral, in the manner of the institutions emerging after 1814. Moreover, the years of Anglo-Russian, and later also Anglo-PrussianRussian-Austrian cooperation in the manifold coalitions against Napoleonic France forged a sense of shared fate, a solidarity and a modus of informal ‘horseback diplomacy’, which built networks of trust between Metternich, Castlereagh, Alexander I and Friedrich Wilhelm III, as well as among their diplomats and the smaller princes and sovereigns. The gains in mutual trust and transparency from such face-to-face summit diplomacy cannot be overestimated in an age where distance and distrust had dictated international relations.22 Even if there is no sharp divide between the pre- and post-1815 epochs, and definitely not a ‘tabula rasa’, the perceptions and practices that emerged from the Vienna Settlement did reflect a more widely shared, and institutionally more deeply embedded, collective political will of Europe’s rulers to prevent, with measures of ‘salutary precaution’,23 the disasters of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic conquest of Europe from ever occurring again. Not only was this an intensification, acceleration and convergence of longer-term trends.24 It was also experienced at the time as a new beginning, and as a shared belief that a peaceful new international order could be created by means of collective management. This effort at collective management was undertaken on the basis of norms and institutions designed to protect Europe against various security threats, including disputes between the states of Europe themselves, internal radical conspiracies, external attacks such as those by North African corsairs and financial and economic anxieties and crises.25 Historicising Security Current literature on International Relations has introduced the concepts of security, security cooperation and security culture, but in a highly presentist or generalising fashion, giving little or no attention to manifestations of collective

22 23

24 25

J. Paulmann, Pomp und Politik. Monarchenbegegnungen in Europa zwischen Ancien Régime und Erstem Weltkrieg (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2000). Castlereagh, ‘Memorandum, 13 July 1815’. Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin (GStA-PK) III, Hauptabteilung (HA) Ministerium des Auswärtigen (MdA) I, Politische Abteilung, no.1464: Konferenzprotocolle der Minister der alliierten Mächte in Paris. See for the acceleration argument R. Jones, ‘1816 and the resumption of “ordinary history”’, Journal for Modern European History, 14:1 (2016), 119–42. E. Fureix and J. Lyon-Caen, ‘Introduction: le désordre du temps’, Revue d’histoire du XIXe siècle, 49:2 (2014), 7–17.

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threat perceptions and security cultures prior to 1945, let alone 1918.26 In this volume, therefore, we aim to ‘historicise security’,27 that is, to pay attention to the intersubjective character of threat and interest constructions as these developed within historical contexts. Eckart Conze, to a lesser extent Martti Koskenniemi28 and most importantly Matthias Schulz, with his work on ‘norms and praxis’ between 1815 and 1860, have paved the way toward developing a profoundly transnational, multidisciplinary and cultural-discursive perspective on the combined history of international relations and internal policy.29 In exploring this path further, we aim to understand how European powers sometimes acted cooperatively in ways apparently unrelated to, or even contrary to, their own interests and at other times resorted to overt unilateral strategies of power and the direct use of coercive military force. Cultural repertoires of diplomatic exchange, mediation and arbitration and a ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ body of the ius publicum europaeum nevertheless survived such external ruptures. By stepping outside the usual path of research on war and peace, and pointing instead to a series of security regimes in peacetime and the security culture these produced, the present essays offer a fuller understanding of the origins, trajectories and determinants of nineteenth-century Europe’s international relations. In historicising security, we aim to take into account some of the conceptual and theoretical instruments developed in the context of present-day security studies, yet deploy them to construct a more historical framework for analysing the emergence of the security cultures: (1) the institutional structures and their corresponding interests; (2) identification of threats and practices of assessing and neutralising them, including the demarcations between friends and foes, insiders and outsiders; (3) a closer look at the agents involved in these processes, and in particular at the emergence of a new class of professional 26

27

28 29

Cf. most chapters in the seminal volume of P.J. Katzenstein (ed.), The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996); Buzan et al., Security; M.C. Williams, Culture and Security: Symbolic Power and the Politics of International Security (London: Routledge, 2007); T. Balzacq (ed.), Securitization Theory: How Security Problems Emerge and Dissolve (London: Taylor & Francis, 2011); H. Müller, Die Chance der Kooperation: Regime in den Internationalen Beziehungen (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1993); Ibid., ‘Security Cooperation’, in W. Carlsnaes, T. Risse and B.A. Simmons (eds.), Handbook of International Relations (Thousand Oaks: SAGE, 2002), 369–91; De Goede, European Security Culture. E. Conze, ‘Securitization. Gegenwartsdiagnose oder historischer Analyseansatz?’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 38:3 (2012), 453–67; B.A. de Graaf and C. Zwierlein, ‘Historicizing security: entering the conspiracy dispositive’, Historical Social Research, 38:1 (2013), 46–64. M. Koskenniemi, The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). E. Conze, ‘Abschied von Staat und Politik? Überlegungen zur Geschichte der internationalen Politik’, in: U. Lappenküper and G. Müller (eds.), Geschichte der internationalen Beziehungen: Erneuerung und Erweiterung einer historischen Disziplin (Cologne: Böhlau, 2004), 14–43; Schulz, Normen und Praxis.

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9

diplomats and functionaries trained to monitor and interpret threats and interests, and to negotiate and mediate challenges and opportunities of international (dis)order. These three aspects of security cultures – and the practices that follow from them – imparted contexts and continuities for the security cultures and regimes that developed in the twentieth century. Studying collective security in these terms helps shed new light on the nineteenth-century predecessors, and attention to the latter in turn helps nuance broader understandings of the categories and of the actors, ideas and practices, as the chapters in this volume reveal. Structure of the Book The three main elements of security cultures just defined provide the framework for this volume’s division into parts. The first part, ‘Conceptualisations’, explores conceptions of security and security structures in the first half of the nineteenth century, as a first foray into defining the ‘epistemic communities’ of actors and ideas that undergirded them and offering further considerations on how to think about security cultures. Matthias Schulz (Chapter 1) provides a systematic overview of the emergence of ‘cultures of peace and security’ within the international state system from 1815 to the present. For Schulz, these international cultures (as instantiated in the Concert of Europe, the League of Nations and the United Nations) are driven by a set of recurring dilemmas, originating from fundamental questions regarding the relationship between victorious and defeated powers after wars, the distribution of power, the procedural and normative setup and the corresponding modes of security governance. Only if a security institution is ‘owned’ by a strong and attractive alliance that has incentives to offer and is following a convincing set of norms and principles, can a collective security culture guarantee a lasting and just peace. Eckart Conze (Chapter 2) sets out some of the broader thinking about European security, and insecurity, at the time and among scholars today. Conze articulates how the concept of ‘security culture’ ‘can help to analyse the non-simultaneous dynamics of objective and subjective, national and international, foreign and domestic security and to describe the interaction of security-related discourses and security-related practices’. Matthijs Lok’s essay (Chapter 3) takes us back to 1815 as a moment when such an alliance tried to construct such a framework, and when everything seemed possible for building a new European peace and security system. As he shows, there were many far-reaching plans for European reconstruction at the time, not just among liberals, but equally among conservatives, including or especially religious conservatives. Nor did such plans fade after the final settlement in 1815 – that it fell so short of the hopes of many meant that visionary plans continued to surface in the decades thereafter.

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The three parts following concentrate respectively on institutions, threat perceptions and agents. Each contribution of course draws on the whole security cultures framework, of ideas, agents, institutions, threats and interests, but tends to concentrate on those aspects central to the separate parts. Part II, ‘Institutions and Interests’, focusses on the range of new institutions after 1815 lying between traditional bilateral relations from court to court and the new-style congresses that brought together the leading statesmen and rulers for face-to-face talks. Countering threats and protecting interests precipitated intense discussions about regulation, interventions and the possible juridification thereof. The proper methods to fight the North African corsairs, or to protect navigation on the Rhine for example, were already debated during the Congress of Vienna, and novel institutional structures were created to negotiate and defend these collective interests in the succeeding years. Respecting civil rights as well as weighing the use of force and intrusions into other countries’ territories proved bones of contention between groups of states and within their respective societies. When formalising and determining discussions in these new councils, conferences and committees, distinctions were made between the political and commercial domains, between urban and maritime environments and between Europe and beyond (neighbouring states, the Ottoman Empire, colonies). Arbitrary acts of single states operating on the seas, exerting control over Europe’s rivers and persecuting foreign citizens and exiled communities were met with stiff opposition. Extradition treaties, for example, were negotiated within these institutional fora to enable convergence between European states on matters of political asylum,30 deportation procedures and named points of entry for deportees. Their main objective was to define whom states were obliged or willing to accept as such, and to ensure that those aliens most likely to be troublesome in this regard could be expelled at all times. Since ‘nationality’ and the status of aliens were not clearly demarcated yet in the immediate post-1815 period, the emergence of a security culture as international and transnational as it was did bring about the entrenchment of national responsibilities, thereby creating new identities and state boundaries. Anti-anarchist conventions, for instance, produced (secret) international administrative and police cooperation, while they simultaneously caused divergence on political and societal levels regarding questions of state and nationhood and extradition jurisprudences. New methods of anticipation, projection, reporting, monitoring and surveillance were also developed and deployed by the various institutions created in

30

See C. Shaw, Britannia’s Embrace: Modern Humanitarianism and the Imperial Origins of Refugee Relief (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).

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1815 and beyond, producing new ‘logics of security’.31 New instances of ‘precautionary security logic’32 blurred (legal) distinctions between war and peace, European expatriates and colonial indigenes, ‘good’ and ‘undesirable’ citizens, wanted and unwanted aliens, criminality and hostility, civilians and combatants. The standards for centralising, professionalising and modernising bureaucracies as well as management techniques that European states took from the Napoleonic era post-1815 were honed to seeming perfection.33 Varied types of councils, conferences and committees created rationalised security practices and new technologies, thus producing governmental and international security regimes that were also driven by economic rationalities. The European powers would never have consented to establish the highly supranational Central Commission for the Navigation of the Rhine (1815) without the pressure exerted on them by trading and shipping companies who championed free trade, secure passage, absence of arbitrary customs, more space for larger vessels and, eventually, steam-engineered flotillas. Joep Schenk’s contribution (Chapter 4) reconsiders this classic and seminal case of an international institution, the first in the modern sense and continuing today. Schenk shows how a cooperative framework could emerge from conflicting interests and disagreements about free trade and how the Rhine Commission became a forum for mediating protectionist and mercantilist economic rationalities. Stella Ghervas’ essay (Chapter 5) examines the role of the new congress diplomacy as representative of a partial shift from balance-of-power to what she aptly terms a ‘balance of diplomacy’. Security emerges as integral to conceptions of peace at the time, and the Holy Alliance treaty of Tsar Alexander I is seen to play a more prominent part than often thought in helping to draw European states into a cooperative framework. Brian Vick (Chapter 6) and Beatrice de Graaf (Chapter 7) each highlight perhaps the most important institutional innovation in nineteenth-century diplomacy, the ministerial or ambassadorial conferences, first instantiated in London and Paris from 1815–16. Even when not formally negotiating, these meetings kept the great power representatives talking together, offering greater transparency and a means of preventing as well as managing crises. Engaging in informationsharing and executive functions as well as handling diplomatic matters, the conferences helped keep potentially conflicting interests aligned in cooperative 31

32 33

The ‘logics of security’ connect a specific threat perception to a valued interest or vulnerability, constitute a security situation and dictate certain practices and procedures. Cf. De Goede, European Security Culture, 6–7. C. Aradau and R. van Munster, ‘Governing terrorism through risk: taking precautions, (un) knowing the future’, European Journal of International Relations, 13:1 (2007), 89–115. T. Skocpol, Social Revolutions in the Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

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frameworks. In the case of the London conferences, Vick shows how the Vienna Settlement reached beyond Europe through attempts to bring abolition of the African slave trade to the Atlantic World and to tackle the problem of corsairs in the Mediterranean basin and thereby relations with the North African regencies and the Ottoman Empire. Vick’s contribution also illuminates some of the ways in which new conceptions and languages of security and humanitarianism could interwine in the production of new international norms and practices. De Graaf follows with a study of the Allied occupation of France, especially the way this occupation was managed politically between 1815 and 1818 as an instance of the new European security system and corresponding culture at work. The preparations for this occupation, mainly through the deliberations and activities of the Allied Conference of Ministers, provide a perfect case study to show how contentious and conflict-ridden this allied cooperation was (on matters of finance, French politics and military administration), but also how it moved towards a more collective, consensual method of decision making in a highly volatile environment. This – until the present not fully contextualised and researched – Allied Conference was arguably the first instance where Europe’s system of collective security was inaugurated on the ground, albeit haphazardly and contested, between 1815 and 1818. Like Vick’s essay, this chapter shows how the allied powers tried to avoid and suppress revolutionary or counterrevolutionary extremes and steered a course of ‘balancing’ and reconciliation. Wolf Gruner’s essay (Chapter 8) on the German Confederation examines the largest cornerstone of the new European security system, designed to stabilise the European centre and provide an institutional structure for the cooperation of the thirty-eight remaining German states in relation to the other powers. He puts his analysis of the Confederation squarely in the context of European collective security operations, with the Bund as one of the pillars of this new post-Napoleonic security edifice, especially tasked with securing a ‘double balance of power’, as the Bundeskriegsverfassung put it: to provide security for the states of the German Confederation and at the same time for the ‘pacific state of Europe’.34 Part III, ‘Threats’, explores the perception of threats and the construction of interests. A recurrent aspect of the threats as perceived by European Restoration powers is the suspicion that most were figments of the imagination of reactionary rulers and overzealous police informers. In contrast to the depiction of a ‘phantom terror’, Ido de Haan and Jeroen van Zanten (Chapter 9) demonstrate that there was a wave of revolutionary revolts against the regimes established by the Vienna Settlement, but also a widespread doubt 34

A.H.L. Heeren, Der Deutsche Bund in seinen Verhältnissen zu dem europäischen Staatensystem; bei Eröffnung des Bundestages dargestellt (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1816), 14.

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13

regarding the extent to which these were part of an internationally orchestrated conspiracy.35 Analysing the way police services collaborated in attempts to identify such revolutionary concertation on a European scale, the authors show how this effort at collective security contributed to the very political tensions police surveillance aimed to prevent. The chapter by De Haan and Van Zanten leads perfectly to Karl Härter’s presentation (Chapter 10) of the German Confederation as a model of a ‘multilevel system of sovereign states with autonomous and different legal systems’. With the German Confederation, a whole new political and security regime entered the political arena, embracing new legal systems, administrations and instances of cooperation. Härter further demonstrates how the Confederation functioned as ‘a transnational space’, which fulfilled an exemplary function in the emergence of a transnational network of police services committed to fighting international political crimes. Even if it failed to prevent the revolution of 1848, it played a pivotal role in shaping the transnational policing of political subversion after 1815. David Laven (Chapter 11) challenges existing historiography of restoration Italy that has remained remarkably critical of the system established at the Congress of Vienna. He argues not only that most Italians were happy to see the establishment of a Habsburg hegemony, but that Austrian dominance was also the main driver for reform within the peninsula. At the same time, the major European powers were generally glad to see the Austrians as guarantors of stability in a traditionally contested area, where unrest or international rivalry risked triggering European war. One element of the Italian situation that especially underlined the new climate of collective security was the generally accepted need to defend the Papacy, while simultaneously encouraging successive popes to forestall domestic unrest through adopting more progressive politics. This reflected the degree to which all of Europe’s major powers had to deal with either strong Catholic majorities or numerically significant Catholic minorities. The Vienna Settlement in Italy should not be viewed teleologically as a failure, but rather as yet another example of new modes of collective security management. Erik de Lange (Chapter 12) argues that the Congress of Vienna provided a platform on which the corsairing organised by the Barbary regents of Algiers was defined as a shared threat exerted by a common European enemy, but did not guarantee a joint response by the European powers. While smaller European powers, notably the Netherlands, declared an interest in forcibly repressing the threat the corsairs posed to their commercial interest, they only received support for active intervention when Great Britain perceived the 35

A. Zamoyski, Phantom Terror: Political Paranoia and the Creation of the Modern State (New York: Basic Books, 2015).

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need to prevent a coalition of Spain and the Netherlands and was able to connect this geopolitical interest to the moral cause of a fight against both Christian and African slavery. The latter motive formed the basis for an AngloDutch coalition, which acted as the representative of a European ‘community of moral righteousness’ by subjecting Algiers to a lethal bombardment at the end of August 1816, destroying the corsair fleet at the cost of several thousand lives. Underlying the operations and strategies investigated in these chapters were distinct but contested lines of inclusion and exclusion, underpinned by particularist or more universal principles. ‘Useful’ immigrants, artisans, merchants, professionals and European expatriates abroad could enjoy security provisions, whereas others (colonial populations, non-European foreigners, ‘troublesome’ aliens, vagrants, ‘mobile people’) became increasingly locked out of this system of expanding security regulations, or became targeted.36 Research into nineteenth-century threats tends to take threats and enemies as givens. These chapters aim to open the black box of threat production. Which threats were deemed so urgent, pressing and ‘general’ that they were perceived as ‘dangers to world community’? To unpack the objects of security production is as illuminating for analysing the level of constraints accepted as ascertaining what or who had to be protected. The construction of threats can be considered as an attempt to reiterate or consolidate systems of beliefs and commercial or professional interests and identities. At the same time, public voices made themselves heard in this process, interfering with and triggering decision making in security-related issues such as the slave trade, human trafficking and naval security, from the worries and media campaigns associated with the abolition movement in the early nineteenth century to those later in the century. The fourth and final part of the volume, Part IV, ‘Agents and Practices’, considers the actors, the practices and the networks of people and ideas that constituted the epistemic communities underlying the new security cultures. The ideas and practicalities that make up security culture thrive and are produced in a community of informed actors and agents. In the end, it is persons and personalities who shaped threat perceptions, set agendas, made decisions and reflected upon them, and helped to define the terms and languages surrounding the various security issues. Current literature on the history of International Relations still focusses on states and ‘powers’ as producers of threat identification. The call of Conze, in 2004, to include nonstate actors and social and cultural factors in historical IR research has been heeded by scholars of migration and socioeconomic history and by some diplomatic historians, but has not been met for nineteenth-century transnational

36

Cf. Koskenniemi, Gentle Civilizer of Nations, 130.

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security history (as a distinct stratum between police/crime history on the one hand and the history of war and peace on the other). We therefore introduce a broad concept of ‘(professional) agents’ to the field of transnational security, including diplomats, ministers, consuls, police and judicial officials, navy and army officers, trading/insurance professionals, ‘freelancers’ (such as von Gagern), public experts and intellectuals. The Congress of Vienna heralded an age in which this guild of diplomats, experts and other professional agents steadily grew. Through informal or institutionalised meetings (conferences), international courts, treaties, instances of arbitration, exchanges of letters, reports and negotiations, a body of ius europaeum publicum was forged. These instances of transnational exchange also facilitated social learning processes, e.g. social participation leading to a shared knowledge and understanding of the world and a common set of practices and way of comporting oneself, amounting to a ‘habitus’. As a result, collective threat discourses emerged and mutually shared norms and attitudes became instilled regarding the appropriate use of force, the ways and means to handle conflicts and disputes and the settlement and defence of shared interests. Through these expansive means of communication, the aggregate of ideas and concepts and the intensity of their circulation also increased. The final part of this volume therefore discusses the agents, who as members of an epistemic community acted upon deep-seated beliefs and convictions, even when they aimed to make realistic evaluations of threats and interests as guides to action. Constantin Ardeleanu (Chapter 13) investigates Friedrich von Gentz’s role from 1812 to 1828 as middleman between the Austrian government and the Wallachian princes, serving not only his own financial interest and Austria’s vital interests, but also those of the Wallachian princes in Bucharest, who through Gentz gained access to the intelligence network of the European great powers and thus were able to bolster their own position. Ardeleanu also brings in the hospodars’ perspective, based on Rumanian and Russian archives, to argue that this strategic connection gave the Danubian principalities a decisive geopolitical advantage in the Eastern Question left unresolved by the Vienna Congress, a matter which contined to be an imminent threat to Europe’s collective security until the outbreak of the war in 1828 between the Russian and Ottoman empires (and indeed beyond). Mark Jarrett (Chapter 14) focuses on the British Foreign Secretary Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh. While arguing that Castlereagh, like all other diplomats, was motivated by a realist maximisation of Britain’s interests, for which the talk of peace and concertation to a considerable extent constituted mere rhetoric, Jarrett at the same time emphasises how diplomats like Castlereagh were formed by their experiences and viewpoints accumulated over long periods of time. It was political socialisation, notably shaped by the lengthy struggle against French Jacobinism and Bonapartism, which informed his beliefs about the most dangerous threats to the security of the continent and,

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by implication, of Great Britain. These mixed beliefs then informed his decision making in ways that could promote both British interests and collective security and peace in the years after 1813. Stepping beyond the ranks of major and minor diplomats per se, peacemaking at the end of the Napoleonic Wars brought onto the international scene new agents including financiers, rentiers and bankers, funding the future of Europe. Their presence reflected the emergence of a new capitalist economic order buttressed by industrialisation and imperialism. In the final chapter, Glenda Sluga (Chapter 15) investigates how questions of financial ‘security’ were brought before the peacemakers. She demonstrates how challenges of both political and economic insecurity were taken up at congresses, provoking diplomatic debates and practices that resonated the double meanings of ‘security’: physical safety and economic sureties. In this context, historical actors emerge from the shadows who are rarely included in Congress narratives or in conventional security studies: independent women, entrepreneurs, Jewish bankers and public intellectuals. We can hear in the voices of Sluga’s historical actors the echoes ‘not only of liberal internationalism, but of the late-twentieth century motifs of “Human Security”, freedom from fear and want’. With the author we affirm that ‘it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that this strand of Congress history was as woven into the security culture of the early nineteenth century as “balance of power” doctrines, or the innovation of congressing itself.’ The Added Value of a European Security Culture For a long time the literature on the Vienna and Paris conferences has argued, as noted above, that the victors of 1813–1814 were mainly bent on restoring the ancien régime and securing a balance of power upheld by conservative states. And indeed, the logics of connecting security at the international level to security at home did mean that transnational threats of revolution and sedition were put high on the collective agenda. Instruments to neutralise the radical press, to curb extremes from the right and the left (both white and red terror), to guide refugiés and émigrés back to their indigenous countries, to return prisoners of war without delay: all these were persistently debated, contested and executed. An apparatus of informers was created in every capital – more often than not by relying on the structures built by Napoleon and his sentinels in the years previous. (The Dutch King William I, for instance, took over most of Louis Napoleon’s secret agents.37 The Austrians notoriously already had their own security police well in place.) 37

Cf. J. van Zanten, Schielijk, Winzucht, Zwaarhoofd en Bedaard: Politieke discussie en oppositievorming 1813–1840 (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek, 2004), 104.

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It would be fundamentally misguided, however, to conclude that the practices that resulted from the Vienna Congress were mainly restorative and repressive. The security logics dictating these practices were too divergent for that. Limited constitutional concessions to local aristocratic and bourgeois elites, for example, and efforts to ‘amalgamate’ the old and new nobilities, also shaped the search for a domestic stability that was meant in part to lay the foundations for international stability as well.38 This volume will demonstrate how the Congress acted as midwife to produce a new, open and contested European security culture spanning the domestic and international levels. The added value of the approach adopted here is threefold. First, applying concepts taken from the social sciences (such as ‘professional agents’, ‘social learning mechanisms’) and security studies (such as ‘silenced voices’ and ‘labelling’) can sharpen the analytical focus. By combining insights from contemporary security studies, international law and International Relations with empirical, historical research into the specific practices of security operations, this multidisciplinary approach enables us to ascertain and understand developments, variations and changes in European security culture. It contributes to ‘historicising security’ by providing a conceptual framework for analysis and by hypothesising a relationship between the transformation of this European security culture and the normative and deliberative constraints operating at the time. Secondly, by focussing on the concept of security and security regimes/ cultures, instead of remaining locked in debates about the use of diplomacy to prevent war and create peace based on treaties between states, new insights emerge into the great variety of international cooperation and transnational security networks in peacetime. A diverse range of multilateral institutions filled the diplomatic space between bilateral exchanges and congress-based summit diplomacy and helped maintain European stability across the divide between the congress and concert eras. Even if the European security culture emerged after 1815 in the context of a peace settlement, its focus was much more than just peace, but involved a set of ideas and practices that could, and actually did, expand beyond the Vienna system proper, into the Atlantic and Islamic worlds and beyond. Moreover, viewing developments through the lens of security cultures might help overcome the dichotomy of foreign versus domestic policy and politics as dictated by twentieth-century monodisciplinary research paradigms. Security logics dictated an inextricable nexus between the external and the internal, foreign and domestic stability and order. As several contributors to this volume emphasise, attention to the transnational epistemic communities and processes 38

D. Laven and L. Riall (eds.), Napoleon’s Legacy: Problems of Government in Restoration Europe (Oxford: Berg, 2000); Vick, Congress, ch.6.

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of social learning among the agents operating in security contexts also helps explain the nature of domestic threat/interest demarcations. This approach tells us more about how governments developed prerogatives to execute discretionary powers in purported times of necessity, about their sense of the right to interfere in matters of vital interests and perceived threats in other countries and in citizens’ lives and about how security practices effectively conditioned civil liberties.39 The studies here also show how broader cultural trends could influence security cultures and their agents, as with the role of religious beliefs and identities that also emerge as significant in several chapters. Thirdly, and finally, by introducing this multidisciplinary approach to security history in the nineteenth century, we can contribute to the project of ‘historicising’ the Congress and its outcomes.40 Notions like ‘the balance of power’, ‘great power hegemony’, ‘equilibrium’ and ‘security’ should not simply be taken for granted; it is high time that they be studied as historical concepts, with their own historical trajectories of imbued meaning and political application.41 The Congress of Vienna and the Congress system most certainly were invoked to influence later international organisations and were reconfigured in successive peace conferences and subsequent security regimes, at moments of crisis and in day-to-day operations. This collection therefore appeals to the scholarly community to make further inroads into the existing corpus of literature on the European concert itself, to historicise that corpus and to develop a research agenda that accommodates a more dynamic, cultural and inclusive (i.e. non-hegemonic and possibly also non-European/colonial) understanding of the Congress system and the Concert of Europe. The scholars assembled here offer several insightful steps in this direction.

39

40

41

In this sense, such an approach also tests Koskenniemi’s thesis about the production of international law as a battlefield between the imperial powers amongst each other and vis-avis indigeneous contenders attempting to impose their visions of justice. The production of international norms was not simply the consequence of an imperialist struggle with the universal human rights principle, but was equally the outcome of collective deliberations about threats and security interests. Koskenniemi, Gentle Civilizer of Nations, 67–97, 116–78. Q. Skinner, ‘The history of the concept of security. From the Roman Republic to the risk society of today’. Expert seminar, Centre for Advanced Security Theory, University of Copenhagen/ Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters (26–28 November 2012). First attempts to historicise security have been made, e.g. the quest to embed the meaning and consequences of the security concept, and all of its adjacent notions, within its own historical context. See Conze, ‘Securitization’; De Graaf and Zwierlein, ‘Historicizing Security’.

Part I

Conceptualisations

1

Cultures of Peace and Security from the Vienna Congress to the Twenty-First Century Characteristics and Dilemmas Matthias Schulz

A great statesman once said that he wished to work seriously for peace in order to guarantee his country’s security; for ‘security even takes preference over peace’. The alternative would be to live forever in enmity with one’s neighbours.1 Thus, if peace means more than the absence of a state of war, it ought to include, first of all, a feeling of security. For peace without security means that states have to be alert all the time, leaving political leaders in a state of constant preparedness, perhaps with civilian organisations also preparing for the eventuality of war. The fear of war, under such conditions, risks making preparing for war an obsession. ‘Peace of mind’ is absent under such conditions. Only those who do not understand the dangers of war will remain calm. Security is the state of being or feeling safe. This state can be induced by material conditions providing actual security, as well as by human commitments and behaviour that reassure – i.e. that dissipate danger, fear and anxiety. On the societal level, first steps to peace and security are taken by the creation of a peacefully regulated political system and civic culture within societies. State domestic ‘security cultures’ may try to prevent violence by emphasising the internalisation of rules and norms through learning and education, aided by providing incentives for good behaviour, or punishments as a deterrent. In international society, the current and the last two centuries have underlined that the security dilemma remains the central problem as long as modern states continue to insist on maintaining their sovereignty, including choosing whichever rules and norms they adopt (or not) in their conduct in international relations. Therefore, an international, especially a universal culture of peace and security2 is more difficult to establish than a domestic one, as there is no single political authority (yet) that has the power to adopt and enact

1

2

Address to the Knesset by Prime Minister Rabin Presenting his Government, 13 July 1992, Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs Documents, vol. 13–14, 1992–1994, http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/ foreignpolicy/mfadocuments/yearbook9/ (accessed 3 October 2018). For the notion ‘culture of peace’ see M. Schulz, Normen und Praxis: Das Europäische Konzert der Großmächte als Sicherheitsrat, 1815–1860 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2009), 4–19.

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Conceptualisations

international law. The notion ‘security culture’, then, refers to the reassurances which may enhance peace with a view to fostering a feeling of security, although an overriding international authority is still absent. Which tools are required for the creation of an international security culture, and which tools have already been developed? A culture of peace and security may contain structural elements relating to the distribution of power and status accorded to crucial state actors, but these will not suffice. For the distribution of power fluctuates over time and, even if the strongest actors have similar power in a (sub-)system of states, there will be other actors who have less power and remain, therefore, exposed to insecurity. Whatever the power distribution is like in an international system, it is rather likely to cause jealousy and tensions. More ‘reassuring’ elements of a culture of peace and security are related to what we may call the broader design of an international society of states, i.e. the rules, norms and institutions agreed to by the greatest possible number of states for the purpose of achieving peaceful governance. Such agreements, if attained and if sufficiently just, can generate a broad acceptance of the unequal distribution of power, and foster a sentiment of common ‘ownership’ by state agents of the international system, if there are sufficient possibilities for state actors to participate. Accordingly, similar to domestic societies, an international society needs a peacefully regulated political system, i.e. international institutions for security and cooperation, and a civic (non-military/non-violent) culture in the constituent states. Rules and norms of the international political system have to be learned and internalised by diplomatic agents and politicians to prevent recourse to violence. Such material conditions for security may theoretically be best obtained by assuring that potential adversaries become and remain democratic societies promoting a kind of ‘internationalist’ education, as democracies tend not to wage war against other democratic states. However, as this doctrine would culminate in a threat of war for democracy, and thus generate insecurity for non-democratic states, the state-system must operate on a different basis. Since the Congress of Vienna, states have instead developed deterrents for transgressors, in the form of alliances or institutions of collective security with friendly states, with mixed success. Besides providing deterrents against norm violations, alliances and institutions for collective security may also offer incentives for ‘good behaviour’ (i.e. good governance), for example, in the form of open access to markets for those states respecting human rights, or by providing development aid to countries that maintain human rights standards and cooperative relations with other states. This chapter embraces the overarching concept of a ‘security culture’, as postulated in the introduction of this volume, and aims to analyse and compare some crucial elements that distinguish cultures of peace and security that were established after major wars, beginning with the European international system established at Paris and Vienna in 1814–15. For such an analysis, I propose the

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following points of comparison: the foundations for the relationship between victorious and defeated powers after wars; the distribution of power; the communicative culture; the procedural and normative setup; characteristics of institutions for security governance, including incentives and deterrents offered; shortcomings and dilemmas. Hence, we will trace the emergence of a common security culture from the early nineteenth century to the present day. The Concert of Europe and the Emergence of a Culture of Peace and Security Eighteenth-century diplomacy had not really succeeded in providing cultural practices of peaceful international governance, and even these were in total disrepair after numerous wars about colonies, trade, and successions during twenty-three years of nearly uninterrupted warfare in Europe (1793–1815). However, the rise of governance during the nineteenth century makes plain that important modernisations were taking place in the international system.3 That system was conceived by the decision-makers and their advisors after years of reflection with a view to opposing French revolutionary ideology and hegemony, and with an eye to providing lasting peace. The system established at the Congress of Vienna (1814–15) and in the peace treaties concluded with France in 1814 and 1815 (after the return and final defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo), featured several very special innovations that went beyond a simple settlement of borders. The first major characteristic of the peace of 1815 is that Napoleonic France, which had coveted hegemony and challenged the international system for years, was not punished with territorial losses that touched the substance of pre-revolutionary metropolitan France. This softened the antagonism that had developed between revolutionary France and the other major powers of Europe. Apart from a few minor rectifications, France lost the territorial conquests it had made and the influence over those puppet states where Napoleon had put family members and close friends on the throne. Thus, the peace did not per se incite resentment and revisionism on the part of the defeated power, although there were some post-Napoleonic elites who longed for the glory that the Emperor-warlord’s armies had bestowed upon France and did resent the occupation of France and the dominance of the Allied Powers in the Paris Conference during the first post-war years.4 As is well known, the reparations France had to pay were small enough to be transformed into 3

4

Cf. M. Schulz, ‘The construction of a culture of peace in post-Napoleonic Europe: peace through equilibrium, law and new forms of communicative interaction’, Journal of Modern European History, 13:4 (2015), 464–74. See also Chapter 7 by De Graaf in this volume.

24

Conceptualisations

bank-held securities three years after the end of the war already, despite the world-wide economic distress caused in 1815–17 by the ashes of the eruption (or, more appropriately, explosion) of Mount Tambora on Java. The political system established in France under the influence of the victorious powers, which sought to meld tradition with the signs of the times, was arguably a reasonable compromise between old-style dynastic legitimacy and legitimacy by a constitution. Finally, France maintained its great power status and was quickly integrated into the new post-war system of great-power consultations, the Concert of Europe. Indeed, had France not been integrated, historians would have spoken of ‘the consultation mechanism of the Quadruple Alliance’ laid down for twenty years in November 1815. As for further elements of a territorial and federal nature and their impact on the distribution of power, a particular feature of the Vienna arrangements is, first, the enhancement of the defensive capabilities of states along the eastern border of France. Starting in the south, Piedmont-Sardinia was strengthened by its union with Genoa. Switzerland was strengthened by integrating three more cantons, ancient allies of Bern, into the confederation (Neuchâtel, Wallis, Geneva), and several border rectifications favourable to Geneva and Basel, i.e. with a view to rendering these territories slightly more easily defendable and less dependent on France (e.g. by the transfer of territories linking Geneva to Vaud). In addition, although the cantons remained formally sovereign, the confederation was slightly strengthened compared to the old confederation (and imposed itself in the Sonderbund war to form a federation in 1847–8), and its security was fostered by the seven initial signatory powers’ collective guarantee of Swiss neutrality. The Netherlands were strengthened against France by the union of the northern with the southern Netherlands and Luxembourg. In addition, the weakest and arguably most threatened part of that personal union, Luxembourg, was integrated, for historical and military reasons, into the defensive system established by the new German Confederation, linking thereby the King of the Netherlands as Grand Duke of Luxembourg to the German defensive system.5 Likewise, the Danish and the British kings were bound into the defence of the German states system through the territories re-allotted to them – Hanover to the British royal family and Holstein to the Danish royal family. Finally, the German states were strengthened following almost the same logic: Prussia, by far the weakest of the great powers demographically and territorially speaking, was given the Rhineland and the garrison in Luxembourg, and with that the crucial function of defending the German states (and the Netherlands) against potential French aggression; and Bavaria, the largest German middle state, obtained the

5

See also Chapter 8 by Gruner in this volume.

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Palatinate so as to become engaged in defending the German states system as well. Austria, on the other hand, eschewed its former belongings on the Rhine and instead obtained a crucial defensive function for the safeguarding of the Italian states system, through annexations in northern Italy (Venetia and Lombardy), through the implantation of Austrian princes in Italian principalities, and through defensive arrangements with the most important autonomous principalities, Piedmont-Sardinia, the Two Sicilies (Naples) and the Papal States.6 So basically, all the countries bordering France were strengthened, and powerful-enough states were drawn into defending the Rhineland and Alps against future French encroachments. Taken together, those territorial arrangements provided structural guarantees and, therefore, a certain feeling of security. Those guarantees were even more important because the Final Act of the Vienna Congress was the first truly multilateral European peace treaty, as it was adopted by France, the six major victorious powers (Austria, Portugal, Prussia, Russia, Sweden, United Kingdom) and, subsequently, adhered to by all European states except for Spain (because Spain was not admitted to the inner circle of the great powers). The general accession to the agreement signalled the general recognition of the state of territorial possessions, reassuring the ruling dynasties. The distribution of power arranged at the Vienna Congress was the outgrowth of thorough exchanges among the princes and ministers of the victorious powers, but the territorial arrangements alone would not justify speaking of a security culture, which derives, as I have argued above, from lasting commitments and the development of cultural practices that go beyond the momentous settlement of structural questions. We find several such pledges and new practices in the Vienna peace accord. In the wider realm of international security, the culture of peace (and security) of 1815 included rules for the freedom to navigate the Rhine river system (i.e. including all major rivers flowing into the Rhine), which led to the founding of the oldest international institution still in existence, the Central Commission for Navigation on the Rhine (1816–31),7 which helped in turn with the spectacular growth of trade in Europe. Also included was the Vienna protocol on diplomatic ranks, immunity rights and rules of conduct for diplomatic representations. In the narrower realm of security governance, two elements were crucial. First, in the Quadruple Alliance, the four great powers pledged for a period of twenty years to unite their forces against Napoleon should he return to power or against any other renewed French aggression. They also obliged themselves 6

7

These Habsburg princes were also parachuted into the Italian states for dynastic reasons. See Wolfgang Siemann, Metternich. Stratege und Visionär. Eine Biographie (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2016), 512–13, 627–8. See Chapter 4 by Schenk in this volume.

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Conceptualisations

to consultations in the case of a new French revolution. This alliance was the first durable commitment by major powers to collective security measures against a specific threat. And most importantly, within the Quadruple Alliance the four victorious powers established the first durable (restricted) multilateral consultation mechanism for matters of international security, which outlived the Quadruple Alliance and to which France, the defeated power, was allowed to adhere in 1818, thus forming the so-called Concert of Europe, or Concert of great powers – a major product of the culture of peace and security in 1815. All five great powers remained part of the mechanism until 1914, with the Ottoman Empire and Piedmont-Sardinia/Italy becoming involved in the second half of the century. The great-power conferences, meeting during peace-time, constituted a new communicative practice within the international system that generated a mutual understanding of each other’s perspective and motives, and, at best, helped to foster mutual confidence.8 Despite important failures and shortcomings, those conferences of ambassadors provided ‘ordering functions’ within the states system until 1914, and were generally accepted as a forum for mediation and conflict resolution by diplomats from European non-member states. Foremost, the conference mechanism developed ‘cultural practices’ for dealing with disputes among states and with domestic violent conflict. Those cultural practices comprised informal and formal reunions for consultation and decision-making (more than forty formal conference series from 1815 to 1914, often consisting of numerous sessions), collective and coordinated mediation (e.g. during the SchleswigHolstein conflict between the German states and Denmark, 1848–52 and anew in 1864), collective ambassadorial representations and dispatches, fact-finding and border-fixing missions (e.g. in Bulgaria, 1880), collective naval representations (e.g. against Egypt in 1840), collective ultimatums (e.g. against the Ottoman Empire in 1877), mandated and collectively sanctioned interferences and interventions (e.g. the French intervention in Syria, 1860–1, and the European one in China, 1900), collectively mandated police actions (e.g. in Macedonia, 1898), and activities related to state-building, like helping with the drafting of constitutions (e.g. Switzerland in 1815, Romania in 1859, Albania in 1913) and providing financial aid and supervision (Greece in the 1830s, Albania in 1913). In the process of collective deliberations, the great powers developed a normative discourse with a view to finding criteria according to which changes should be effected, and considered legitimate or not. These exchanges also led to disputes, of course, for example on how to deal with revolutions, with an early anti-revolutionary majority of powers in favour of intervention

8

See also Chapter 6 by Vick and Chapter 7 by De Graaf in this volume.

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(in Piedmont, Naples, and Spain, 1820–2), which ran counter to the principle of non-intervention propagated by the United Kingdom, before giving way to a more flexible attitude toward revolution, which even allowed for the majority’s support of national independence movements during the Greek and Belgian wars of independence.9 Another major dispute concerned dealing with humanitarian emergencies. Should massacres against civilians be considered domestic affairs, or a legitimate cause for foreign intervention? Several such interventions eventually took place (in Greece, 1827–31, Syria 1860, on Crete 1866–9, in the Eastern Balkans in 1877 – after the massacres committed against Rumelian Christians in Bulgaria, and the resumption of the Ottoman war against Serbia and Montenegro – and in Macedonia in 1903–8), establishing a practice and pattern of nineteenth-century humanitarian intervention, even though the humanitarian emergency was by no means the only consideration for the intervening power and the interventions were explicitly tied to notions of protecting Christians from Muslims.10 Thus, the Concert mechanism furnished the capacity to respond flexibly to challenges, be it with soft power (collective diplomatic persuasion, competence in drafting constitutions and by an appeal to normative ideas) or, within limits, with hard power (naval demonstration or military intervention).11 Despite the innovations that the first organ of international security governance produced, the Concert should not be regarded as a model.12 Rather, it should be understood as a beginning of institution-building in the realm of international security, with important deficiencies and idiosyncrasies. Excluding non-European states, the Concert was biased by the interests of the European great powers, and never conceived to provide social peace nor worldwide justice. The member states initially responded to social unrest and national and constitutional movements with the use of repression, before learning that social and political reform provided more stability. It began to 9 10

11 12

See e.g. M. Rendall, ‘A qualified success for collective security: The Concert of Europe and the Belgian crisis’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, 18:2 (2007), 271–95. See for a new systematic analysis of humanitarian interventions in the Ottoman Empire D. Rodogno, Against Massacre: Humanitarian Interventions in the Ottoman Empire, 1815–1914. The Emergence of a European Concept and International Practice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012). For the complex case of the Great Oriental Crisis see M. Schulz, ‘“Guarantees of humanity”: The Concert of Europe and the origins of the Russo-Ottoman War of 1877’, in B. Simms and D.J.B. Trim (eds.), Humanitarian Intervention: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 184–204. See Chapter 6 by Vick, Chapter 11 by Laven and Chapter 12 by De Lange in this volume. M. Schulz, ‘Paradoxes of a Great Power Peace: The Case of the Concert of Europe’, in T. Hippler and M. Vec (eds.), Paradoxes of Peace in Nineteenth Century Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 131–52; M. Schulz, ‘The Concert of Europe and international security governance: how did it operate, what did it accomplish, what were its shortcomings, what can we learn?’, in H. Müller and C. Rauch (eds.), Great Power Multilateralism and the Prevention of War: Debating a 21st Concert of Powers (Oxon/New York: Routledge, 2018).

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Conceptualisations

operate in an age when communicating across long distances was timeconsuming, and executing (soft or hard) power over long distances was difficult. It did not abolish the ius ad bellum or prevent war altogether. Its attempts at mediation met with mixed success, in an area largely confined to Europe initially, and expanding only gradually. Yet it provided security not only for the strong, but also, in several instances, security gains for the weaker states, especially when confronted with one of the major powers. I have provided thorough analyses of such cases in earlier publications, so let me only recall that, during the Egyptian crisis, it contained France, during the Crimean War, Russia, and during the Neuchâtel crisis, Napoleon’s mediation and a Concert conference secured Swiss rights to Neuchâtel, abandoning Prussian rights.13 During the First Moroccan crisis the Algeciras conference successfully contained a rather aggressive German Empire.14 The Concert did well what it was created for, namely to promote restraint, and prevent hegemony by a single power in Europe. Where it was not successful at mediation, it often shortened conflict, and/or limited discord geographically. It contributed to preventing general European war for a century. While the procedural practices and means were employed until 1914, the norms and values with which it continued to operate, and the ends for which the Concert was used, changed over time. In other words, the security culture was not static, but dynamic. In the first stage (1820–3), the Concert mandated interventions to quash revolutions abroad that were allegedly threatening the security of monarchical rule – a practice that lasted until the Greek war of independence brought about a change in paradigm. During the second and longest period, it pragmatically managed the international order and the political equilibrium in Europe with some sympathy for national movements (Greece, Belgium, Romania), until these movements outpaced the Concert’s system of management and could no longer be contained (e.g. the German and Italian wars of unification). Finally, during the age of imperialism the Concert served to regulate imperial competition to the detriment of extra-European societies, whilst its traditional norms of conflict resolution, inspired by moderation and disinterestedness, withered away. ‘Imperial diplomacy’ became the defining trait of the Concert. At the Congress of Berlin in 1878, it began to sanction territorial bargains in favour of the powers, and, most conspicuously, an enlarged Concert adopted the principle of ‘terra nullius’ at the Berlin conference in 1885, providing legal cover for the partition of Africa. Accordingly, the post-Vienna culture of peace and security demonstrates that a commitment by great powers to consultation does not guarantee that the 13 14

See the respective chapters in Schulz, Normen und Praxis. H. Jones, ‘Algeciras revisited: European crisis and conference diplomacy, 16 January–7 April 1906’, EUI Working Papers, 2009:1 (Florence: European University Institute, 2009).

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outcomes are just. Several important elements were lacking. The normative framework was disputed and uncertain; there was no general participation by smaller states (except for the parties involved in a dispute, who were listened to, but could not decide); and extra-European states were generally excluded. There was no effective control, and decisions lacked transparency, even though some progress was made here after the publication of diplomatic documents became a more widespread practice around mid-century. There was no consensus either on how to deal with civil war and massacres committed by government agents, although a general consensus developed that permitted powers to intervene in the name of humanity since the Greek war of independence, whatever their other motives were. Wilson, the Allies and the Birth of the League of Nations Despite its numerous shortcomings, the universal importance of the Concert of Europe and nineteenth-century security culture resides in the fact that it established for the first time a relatively durable communicative practice among great powers with respect to mutual security concerns, a kind of directorial leadership in international relations with a view to providing so-called ordering functions within the states system, and numerous cultural practices geared towards the preservation, maintenance and restoration of international peace and security. With Stanley Hoffmann,15 the nineteenthcentury Concert can thus be considered as a precursor and intellectual origin of more elaborate forms of international security governance, in which the primacy of great powers is formally acknowledged, namely the League of Nations and the United Nations. The League of Nations introduced several crucial ideas for the establishment of a security culture into the international system: It enhanced and broadened the practice of multilateral cooperation in peace-time (as already practised within the Public International Unions of the pre-1914 era), regularised the communicative interactions about security issues, assured the participation of small states in multilateral negotiations and provided them with equal rights (despite their unequal power), worked towards disarmament and universalised the international system. Therefore, it could be argued that the League potentially widened the sentiment of ‘ownership’ in the international system. Especially in France, the whole debate about peace in 1919 was associated with the notion of peace through law (‘la paix par le droit’), as the late nineteenthcentury lawyers’ peace movement had demanded. Finally, the League of Nations was based on the notion, spelled out for the first time in 1924, of 15

S. Hoffmann, Organisations internationales et Pouvoirs politiques des États (Paris: A. Colin, 1954).

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Conceptualisations

‘collective security’ (Edouard Benes). Hence the members of the League brought about substantial innovations at the conceptual level. Notwithstanding these discursive innovations, the ideas put into the Covenant of the League of Nations were not internalised by the statesmen of the time, and did not even correspond to the imperialist mentalities still prevalent in Europe and, at the time, also in Japan. Shaken already in 1920–23 by several crises, beginning to crumble in 1931–3, and collapsing de facto in 1938 after Nazi Germany’s annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland, the League in fact did not succeed at all in establishing a common culture of peace and security – which prompts the question of why this was the case. Generally speaking, the League of Nations system foundered on contradictions between norms and practice, between prevailing imperial mentalities and wishful thinking. Moreover, these contradictions were exacerbated by some serious flaws in the ‘security architecture’ – that were not properly addressed nor fully repaired in the years following the peace treaties. First of all, there was an exclusion problem. Soviet Russia and Germany did not participate in the general peace negotiations, and therefore initially had no incentive to legitimise the peace settlement. Both were also excluded from the League of Nations as the central organ of international governance (Soviet Russia until 1934, and Weimar Germany until 1926). Thus, neither Weimar Germany nor Soviet Russia initially developed a sense of participation and ownership in the international order when it was conceived. In the German case, adhesion to the League in 1926 was too late to generate a lasting effect, for in 1929 the international order already began to crumble with the onset of the Great Depression, throwing the country into turmoil and making it an easy prey to Nazism. Second, the peace had a vindictive air, which was embodied in the German reparations question. Reparations (initially 269 billion Goldmark, reduced to 132 billion Goldmark, i.e. 47,000 tons of gold), amounted to roughly 290 per cent of the pre-war German GDP (if one takes into account the territorial losses), and were supposed to be paid over 66 years. These amounts in gold did not factor in the fact that Germany was supposed to deliver some of the reparations in raw materials (coal and wood), which would accordingly become scarce (and more expensive) for its own industries. Neither did the economic arrangements take sufficiently into account that pre-war property and patents abroad had been confiscated, that the commercial fleet, wagons, locomotives and airships had been largely confiscated too, and that post-war Germany was surrounded by high tariff countries and therefore bound to wage trade wars to gain the foreign reserves needed to pay the remainder of the reparations. The domestic and international debt contracted before and during the war added further to Germany’s financial dilemma. In sum, the reparations question contributed to a substantial sense of insecurity, not just in Germany,

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but throughout Europe, since the Allies doubted German compliance with the treaty. In fact, German leaders did indeed question the stipulations, as they rejected its underlying logic provided by the war guilt clause (art. 231) of the Versailles Treaty. Third, the territorial arrangements in general were contested from the start, even among the victorious powers. US President Woodrow Wilson had unilaterally propagated, before the end of the war, the principle of the selfdetermination of peoples, and called for a peace without annexations. The European allies had other plans and, for that reason, did not include the principle of self-determination in the Pact of the League, a kind of constitution of the new states system. They sought to annex former German colonies and non-Turkish Ottoman territories, and to provide new East European states with territorial gains, taken from Germany and the defunct Habsburg monarchy, which would assure their long-term support of the Allies and the system. The territorial arrangements contrasted with the unilaterally proclaimed principle of self-determination, and thus their legitimacy was widely contested from the start. In addition, Wilson’s insistence on this very principle led to his refusal to distribute certain territories coveted by the victorious powers (the Ruhr, the Saar, Fiume, Vilnius), thus creating revisionist tendencies not only among the loser states (such as Hungary, which found three million Hungarian-speakers living outside its borders, or Germany, which ‘lost’ ten million citizens to neighbouring countries), but also among the winners of the war (France, Italy, Poland). In addition, Wilson refused simply to pass former Ottoman territories and German colonies on to France and the United Kingdom, which then required distributing the spoils more widely (among France, Britain, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, South Africa), and setting up a ‘mandate system’ under the League of Nations as a kind of cover-up.16 Thus there was no consensus on how security would be achieved in the new system: some advocated creating an international system that would allow those who lost a war to subscribe to it, and that would generate a certain legitimacy based upon principles of justice and self-determination, but others contended that considerations of power and alliance should guide the distribution of territories. In the end, Wilson’s principle of self-determination remained on everyone’s mind, also among colonised peoples, but was not backed by a charter, and not applied (or, in some cases, was inapplicable) in practice.17 Fourth, there was no consensus about the shape that institutional security governance should take. In the end, a compromise was found in the solution to 16 17

See S. Pedersen, The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). E. Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

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Conceptualisations

restrict the Council to initially four permanent members (Britain, France, Italy, Japan), as the United States did not join, plus four (since 1926 six) nonpermanent members, plus an Assembly of all states. Thus, the primacy of the great powers was recognised. This was, however, a far from clear-cut solution, since no one knew exactly what this design entailed. Theoretically, the Assembly had the same competences as the Council, as these were not specified in the Pact. Moreover, when France’s plans for a League army were rejected, the French government asked Britain and the United States to conclude an alliance. This came to naught. Therefore, the harsh peace with Germany, Austria, Hungary and Turkey, as set forth in the treaties, was to be upheld by the weak security architecture provided by the League. The virtual absence of material enforcement structures was compounded by the disunion of France and Britain on the treatment of Germany, and by the unreliability and revisionism of other wartime allies such as Italy. The Pact of the League of Nations did provide for procedures for the peaceful settlement of disputes: political ones (although not defined) through mediation, inquiry and political arbitration (under arts. 12 and 15) by the Council (or Assembly – their competencies not having been specified); and juridical ones through arbitration by the Permanent Court of International Justice or any other court (arts. 13 and 14). These procedures were, however, obligatory only for member states and did not legally rule out war once a procedure failed. In addition, there was only a single procedure, political arbitration according to art. 15, in which the parties to a dispute could not vote, otherwise the unanimity principle was upheld. The single most important innovation was perhaps the provision on economic sanctions, to which all member states had to comply once the Council decided to deploy them. But it was only applied twice – and then too late and too timidly. Then there was the problem of rampant revisionism by two of the main victorious powers’ allies, Italy and Poland. In 1921, Poland seized Vilnius, disputed with Lithuania (going against the decision by the Council, which had sent in an armistice commission to keep a truce line), annexed it, and got away with it. In 1923, Italy, following the orders of its prime minister (Mussolini), bombarded and briefly occupied the Greek island of Corfu in order to obtain compensation from Greece for the death of an Italian member of an international boundary delegation whose members were murdered on Greek soil. Italy refused to submit the matter before the Council and put it before the Conference of Ambassadors of the victorious powers in Paris instead. This Conference duly sent a fact-finding mission and kept the League Council out. When its report discharged Greece of any wrongdoing, Mussolini refused its publication, demanded the reparations anyway, and got away with it as well. In both instances, the League Council was bypassed or openly defied, and the

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more powerful country got its way. This state of affairs was symptomatic of the great powers’ behaviour in the interbellum: whether victorious or, in the 1930s, on the losing side of World War I, states either systematically bypassed the Council or simply quit the League. Britain had a League commission resolve the dispute with Turkey about Mosul (Iraq) in 1926, but the commission was, bar one member, composed solely of Europeans. Japan walked out of the Council after its occupation and de facto annexation of Chinese Manchuria was condemned by the League Assembly. Italy did the same after annexing Ethiopia, although both China and Ethiopia had been member states of the League and could thus count on its protection. Germany had already left the League before annexing Austria and Sudetenland in 1938 (the latter sanctioned by Mussolini, Britain and France at Munich, again outside the League of Nations dispute settlement procedures). Tragically, the League did not resolve a single asymmetrical conflict in favour of a small state against a big one.18 The discrepancies within the League between normative discourse (under the banner of peace through law, equality of states, self-determination) and practice were numerous. Although the League system was more formalised, the norms (in contrast to the procedural rules) for conflict resolution were not specified in the Pact, giving the League almost as much leeway to take unjust decisions as could the Concert. Thus, the League either systematically favoured the greater powers instead of guaranteeing security for all states, or it was bypassed. The League did not intervene in domestic conflicts or for humanitarian purposes, except in a purely humanitarian mission (High Commissioner for Refugees), or by means of mandated military interventions. It only began to experiment hesitantly with economic sanctions during the Chaco War between Paraguay and Bolivia19 and the Ethiopian war against Italy, before dropping any pretence of being a safeguard for any state. As these arguments may have shown, it makes little sense to speak of a common culture of peace and security when it comes to the Paris peace order of 1919.20 Procedures for the peaceful settlement of disputes were in place, but the territorial order remained in part contested, and the allies failed to agree on providing material security guarantees. Those who lost at war – for example,

18

19 20

M. Schulz, ‘La Société des Nations et la résolution pacifique des différends: règles, normes et pratiques’, in R. Kolb (ed.), Commentaire sur le Pacte de la Société des Nations (Brussels: Bruylant, 2015), 1247–99. See R.S. Kain, ‘The Chaco Dispute and the peace system’, Political Science Quarterly, 50:3 (1935), 321–42. R. Marcowitz’ application of the term ‘peace culture’ to both 1815 and 1919 indicates a lack of analysis and understanding of both peace orders and their consequences. Marcowitz, ‘Wiener Kongress 1814/15 und Pariser Friedenskonferenz 1919/1920 – Zwei Friedenskulturen im Vergleich’, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, 22–4 (2015), 21–6.

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Conceptualisations

the fragile German democracy, in the first place, but also Soviet Russia – were (initially) excluded from the new international (security) architecture. Furthermore, immediately after the League began its operations, striking discrepancies began to appear between penned norms and state practice. The League had little soft power to attract outsiders into the system, and the member states withheld the hard power that the League needed during international crises. In addition, it can be argued that the League ‘forgot’ – or at least did not exercise – some of the cultural practices that had emerged in the security culture of the nineteenth century, like deploying civilian and police missions, or intervening when massacres were happening. The United Nations (UN), however, to which we now turn, did resume and refine them. Security Culture within the United Nations: A New League of Nations, a New Concert of Great Powers, or Something Entirely New? The UN, founded in June 1945, drew heavily from the League’s institutional framework, and also inherited the assets of the League in Geneva. Its principal organ, the Security Council, also bears some resemblance to the Concert, due to the clear preponderance of the great powers in the Security Council, and its directorial authority in security matters. The major difference between it and the Concert and League Council is the permanency it embodies, which underscores the ongoing need – evident already during the Vienna Congress – for intensive communicative interaction among the great powers. The Charter of the United Nations endowed the restricted Security Council with clear competences in security matters (which the Council of the League lacked), and globalised its membership with five permanent members China, Soviet Russia, the United States, Great Britain and France – the P-5 – plus six non-permanent members (ten since the reform of 1965). It also provided the Secretary-General with more autonomy and power on security issues: he or she ‘may bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his [or her] opinion may threaten the maintenance of international peace and security’ (art. 99), and may also mediate a conflict in his or her personal capacity. Compared to the League Council, the Security Council has demonstrated a far more activist and decisive approach, both due to League experiences and because a qualified majority (provided it includes the P-5, who retain the power of veto) suffices to make substantive decisions that are legally binding on all UN member states. Procedural decisions are decided by majority rule, without the possibility of a veto. In this sense, the Security Council is rule-based – crucial for the high level of legitimacy it enjoys still today. This legitimacy stands in stark contrast with that of the Concert, which lacked transparency and acted without firm rules, and the League’s Council, whose rules were too cumbersome, and which was either not acting at all, or not being listened to.

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As outlined in the Charter, the Security Council is free to choose the ways and means it deems necessary to facilitate the peaceful settlement of disputes, making it much more flexible than the League Council. In principle, the Security Council can also wield more ‘hard power’ than its predecessors, as the Charter includes the legal possibility of economic sanctions and the establishment of an international army. Given historical experiences, the international community of states had indeed intended to give this Council more ‘teeth’. However, the international army foreseen by the Charter never came into being, due to the rivalry and distrust between the former Allies, the United States and the Soviet Union. Instead of providing a new system of collective security, this endemic enmity and distrust led to the creation of two alliances: NATO and the Warsaw Pact, with automatic obligations for assistance to a member country aggressed. However, during the Cold War, these forces could not be put at the service of the UN, as the alliances were squarely against each other and practically cancelled each other out. To circumvent its absence of hard power, the UN set up the instrument of peace forces, developed in the aftermath of the Suez crisis. The deployment of these forces echoes the police and peace-keeping missions during the Concert period. Their mandate is more limited and tightly formalised, as their sending requires the consent of all parties involved plus the Security Council. Peace-keeping mandates by the Security Council have been rare during the Cold War (e.g. Suez, 1956–67, Congo 1960–3, Cyprus since 1975), but have soared since the systemic opposition between the United States and the Soviet Union ended in 1986–7. Far more than the Concert and the League, the UN Charter points the Security Council to fundamental norms and principles. The UN thus orients its security culture and decision-making processes, in theory, to the principles of self-determination, respect for human rights, and non-interference in domestic affairs. This principled framework, however, is at the same time a productive site for new dilemmas and contradictions with respect to a common security culture. For example, colonial powers have interpreted self-determination as applicable within the limits of imperial borders and sovereignties. Colonised and recently de-colonised peoples on the other hand have understood the principle as a right to national independence. Another dilemma arose from the notion of human rights, as stipulated by the Charter. Within the framework of the East–West conflict, multiple and conflicting interpretations of these rights were advocated. Accordingly, the Human Rights Commission, which was established under the terms of the Charter in 1946, was nonetheless not given the power to supervise or to enforce the states’ respect for human rights. The contradiction between promoting human rights and non-interference in matters under national jurisdiction caused a longlasting blockade in enforcing human rights and for a long time prevented its emergence as a major norm in security culture. This stalemate essentially

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lasted until the mid-seventies when the ‘civil’ and ‘social’ Human Rights Pacts came into force. Today, the emerging norm of a ‘responsibility to protect’, and the notion of ‘human security’ puts the human, not the state, potentially at centre stage. The UN thus encompasses a broader understanding of international security. Its Charter mandated the founding of an Economic and Social Council for enhancing cooperation on issues such as human rights and technical and development assistance in peace-time, acknowledging thereby that social and economic peace complements and re-enforces security. Thus, by propagating self-determination, human rights, and by developing institutions and instruments for aiding the development of poor countries, the UN created strong incentives for societies to adhere to its rules and norms, thereby expanding and compounding its role as a security enforcer. The initial exclusion of defeated Germany did not impinge upon European and international security arrangements in a similar way as after World War I. This time, Germany’s defeat was total. Its initial complete disarmament was decided by the victorious powers. Rehabilitation would take decades, and in 1973 both German states joined the UN. What mattered instead in the UN’s operation was the intensification of an ideological antagonism, accompanied by mutually exclusive missions, between two former allies, the Soviet Union and the United States. Accordingly, the major problems of the Security Council were the veto, and the nuclear arms race, itself a product of insecurity. The Security Council’s decision-making procedure was in fact designed to render any enforcement action under Chapter VII against a great power impossible, due to the power of veto (as stipulated under Chapter V, art. 27). Only under Chapter VI may the Council adopt a resolution against a great power (P-5), for even a P-5 must abstain from voting under a peaceful settlement of disputes procedure if it is party to a dispute (art. 27, §3). The Concert had no such problem, since it did not have any formal rules about voting (and, in practice, a majority often had already determined the outcome). Accordingly, the United States (Vietnam, numerous military interventions in its Latin American ‘backyard’) and the Soviet Union (Ethiopia, Afghanistan, numerous military interventions in its Eastern European backyard) were most likely to wage limited wars during the Cold War. All in all, there were multiple security cultures after World War II, one enshrined in the UN Charter and partly inoperative due to the superpower antagonism, others within the respective alliances which developed in the East and West, and still another consisting of the patterns of interaction among the superpowers and characterised by suspicion, nuclear deterrence, alliances, bloc voting, interventions in one’s sphere of influence, and major surrogate wars, sometimes with the direct implication of the superpowers, where each side supported one of the adversaries.

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Perspectives As these preliminary reflections on security cultures sought to show, a more robust understanding of the post-Vienna 1815 culture of peace and security – although it was imperfect and created its own paradoxes – illuminates the progress and shortcomings of more recent security cultures embedded in international organisations and permits one to draw some conclusions about the necessary requirements for the functionality of security cultures. First, the internationalisation of rules and norms succeeds only by establishing a communicative culture that mobilises intensive and regular exchange in peace-time, and this necessarily must include, as early as possible, former enemies. Second, instead of putting the emphasis on repression or military security only, incentives should be provided for potential disturbers to join the system, without, however, compromising these norms and objectives. Third, the absence of basic norms is to be avoided when entrusting great powers with a directorial function, and concrete norms that can be realised must follow from the general ideas of justice and proportionality. When norms are compromised, unjust or inapplicable, the system will most certainly collapse. Fourth, there must be effective control of great powers by international organs. And fifth, a common security culture may be difficult to attain between democracies and dictatorships due to the nexus between domestic and foreign policy preferences. These political systems operate according to fundamentally different principles domestically, and accordingly their preferences vary concerning the idea of justice, the respect for international norms, providing incentives for outsiders, and concerning the use of threats and repressive measures. Passing beyond these historical reflections on parallels and differences between the security cultures and institutions that emerged from Vienna to the Cold War, I would like to point out some hopeful and some discouraging developments by throwing the spotlight onto the post-Cold War years. On a positive note, the normative foundations of international security cultures have grown and, after disappointments and collapses, have been consolidated over the last two hundred years from the Vienna Congress to today. The rise of human rights as a normative reference for state behaviour, and the growing international machinery to foster respect for rights related issues, mark the greatest progress made in international security culture since 1815; even though the ‘war on terror’ since 2001 has temporarily weakened the respect for human rights norms, making some democracies more illiberal. Parallel to this, the responsibility to protect (R2P) criterion, propagated by SecretaryGeneral Kofi Annan since 1999 (due to the Kosovo crisis), was a major breakthrough in the normative vocabulary and framework of reference of the UN’s security culture, although it echoes somewhat ‘the guarantees demanded

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by humanity’ Alexander Gorchakov wrote about in 1877, and Raphael Lemkin’s anti-genocide convention (adopted in 1948). Secondly, since World War II, the UN-system and the wider international order have developed incentives for states to subscribe and act according to the rules of the international system – incentives that were largely absent in the nineteenth century. With the introduction of technical assistance and development aid, health and food programmes, aid for education and for reforming industries to better protect the environment, the UN has access today to some ‘soft power’ prerogatives that may, in the long term, induce states to contribute to more social justice, and render punitive or repressive instruments for keeping peace less prominent. At the same time, however, great powers like the United States fulfil their obligation to invest in such incentives only unwillingly, or belatedly, as does the European Union when confronted with immigration. On the other hand, the security dilemma per se since the onset of the Cold War has not changed much: it consists of the nuclear armament and proliferation puzzle. Whether a power possesses the right to veto or not, a nuclear power can get away with minor and possibly even major violations of the international order, in large part because the Security Council has difficulty finding means to act against a nuclear power – beyond adopting minor economic sanctions – without risking the lives of millions of civilians. The persistence of this impression provides an incentive for ambitious leaders like Kim Jong Un to develop nuclear weapons. Therefore, nuclear disarmament or full control of nuclear weapons by an international agency should be paramount. Mechanisms of deterrence such as alliances are far from superfluous, because so far the UN has not found the key to resolve this security dilemma. The current security dilemma is compounded by the rise of great power revisionism. Russia, with its outright annexation of the Crimea and the hidden annexation of the Donbas, and, to a lesser degree, China, with its territorial disputes about islands in the East Chinese and South Chinese seas with Japan, Vietnam, and the Philippines, seem bent on abusing their nuclear status for revising the international order in their favour, whether to please domestic audiences, gain access to crucial raw materials or control international waterways. When President Vladimir Putin pretended that Russia was not involved in the 2013 invasion of Crimea (now annexed), although Russian officers and soldiers with Russian military vehicles were present there, and repeated this gimmick when invading Donbas, it was to prevent any action of the Security Council. As prescribed by the Charter, parties to a conflict, even among the P-5, must abstain from voting, according to art. 27, §3, in cases pertaining to peaceful dispute settlement and enquiry procedures. However, when it comes to enforcement, the powers maintain their right to veto in any case. So, for

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Russia, China, North Korea, and many others the game for power is not over yet – rather a new round seems to have begun. The UN security culture is frail and fragmented, due in part to the special rights allotted to great powers, whose hard power is, and may always be, harder than that vested in any international organisation. Given the current debate on security cultures, understanding security logics, and the options tried or available, is crucial. This chapter seeks to serve that discussion – and the objective of this volume – by identifying and mapping a few key factors in the rise and fall of security cultures in the past. The directorial tradition introduced in 1814–15 and prevailing until today has produced numerous new cultural practices in security management, from collective representations to humanitarian and police interventions. Yet any real power-based security culture, from the Concert to the UN Security Council, has also produced idiosyncrasies and deficiencies, due the interestedness of the great powers. For this reason, I have argued that democratic civic culture, and incentives to governments to abide by rules and norms must be strengthened within international institutions. At the same time, it must be acknowledged that, in the presence of the dysfunctions of the Security Council, due to the right to veto and the massive increase in military power around the world, including nuclear power, alliances remain a necessary element to provide security for democratic states.

2

Historicising a Security Culture: Peace, Security and the Vienna System in History and Politics, 1815 to Present Eckart Conze Introduction: Historicising the Congress of Vienna

When Gustav Stresemann, the German Foreign Minister, signed the Locarno treaties in London on 1 December 1925, he was looking at a portrait of Viscount Castlereagh. Austen Chamberlain, the British Foreign Secretary had arranged to hang this painting in the hall where the signing ceremony took place. It was, without doubt, a highly symbolic political gesture. When Stresemann did not recognise the painting, the British delegation told him: The painting is here to convey a message: As in 1818 Lord Castlereagh’s position was that Prussia should withdraw her troops from French territory and that France should become a member of the Holy Alliance, this painting is meant to remind France, how the fates of nations change. It is a symbol for our policy today that Britain and France should withdraw from Germany.1

Ever since 1815 the history of international politics has been full of references to the Congress of Vienna and the international order it established. The scene in London in 1925 is just one example. Not only in politics, however, but also when dealing with international relations and international systems academically, in history, the social sciences or international law, attention has been given time and again to the Vienna Congress, to the Vienna system and to the nineteenth-century European concert: as immediate objects of our research, in a comparative perspective, as a model or even as an ideal type (Idealtypus). When using terms such as ‘Westphalian system’, ‘Vienna order’ or ‘Vienna 1

Akten zur deutschen auswärtigen Politik (ADAP), series B vol.IV (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1970), 604. The references to Castlereagh, of course, also underline the British selfperception in 1925. Prior to Locarno, Austen Chamberlain had already declared: ‘Britain’s part is now the same as in 1815 and mutatis mutandis Castlereagh’s policy is the right one today.’ Later the British Foreign Secretary declared: ‘Great Britain stands forth again as the moderator and peace maker of the New Europe created by the Great War’, cited by P.O. Cohrs, The Unfinished Peace after World War I: America, Britain and the Stabilisation of Europe, 1919–1932 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 217; Z.S. Steiner, The Lights that Failed: European International History, 1919–1933 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 403. My thanks go to Beatrice de Graaf for pointing me to these additional quotes.

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system’ or ‘Versailles order’, we do not only mean a concrete historical constellation in 1648, 1815 or 1919, but we imply general ideas, general characteristics, forms, and structures of an international system.2 It is, however, hardly surprising that the same international order has been interpreted differently in different times and under different and changing national or political conditions. The Vienna Congress and the Vienna order are no exception in this regard. Nineteenth-century liberal historians linked the Vienna Congress to the Holy Alliance, which became the epitome of an anti-liberal policy of repression. In terms of international politics, however, the Holy Alliance was largely irrelevant, an ideological construction, characterised even by Metternich as a ‘loud-sounding nothing’ (lauttönendes Nichts).3 In late nineteenth-century German historiography the view of the 1815 international order was devastating. For Heinrich von Treitschke, court historian of the Prussian-German empire, the Vienna order was the result of what he called, a short-lived and self-centred diplomacy. For Treitschke the German Confederation and its integral linkage with the European order were merely proof of German impotence, afflicted with the ‘curse of ridiculousness’ (Fluch der Lächerlichkeit).4 In preparation for the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 British historian Charles Webster wrote a short study of the Vienna Congress for the British delegation showing which problems and conflicts in 1814–15 arose from the fact that France, which had lost the war, took part in the Vienna negotiations.5 Should the Allies, that was Webster’s unspoken message, repeat this mistake a century later? In German and German-speaking historiography, not least in Austria, on the other hand, the experience of the Paris treaties and, above all, the Treaties of Versailles and St Germain, paved the way for a new and positive view of the Vienna Congress and the European order established in 1815. German-speaking historiography now dealt with Vienna and the Vienna order with revisionist intentions. The historiographical treatment and image of Metternich is particularly interesting in this regard. In his biography of Metternich, published first in 1925, Austrian historian Heinrich von Srbik was almost mourning for the Austrian politician, and he stressed:

2 3

4 5

H. Duchhardt, ‘“Westphalian System”: Zur Problematik einer Denkfigur’, Historische Zeitschrift, 269:2 (1999), 305–15. R. von Metternich-Winneburg and A. von Klinkowström (eds.), Aus Metternich’s nachgelassenen Papieren, vol.1 (Vienna: Braumüller, 1880), 216. For a diverging, but less common view on the relevance of the Holy Alliance, see Chapter 5 by Ghervas in this volume. H. von Treitschke, Deutsche Geschichte im 19. Jahrhundert, vol.1 (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1879–1894), 710–1; Ibid., vol.2, 131. C.K. Webster, The Congress of Vienna 1814–1815 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1919).

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Enormous upheavals have always sharpened the historian’s look at the past and have taught him a better understanding of both general tendencies and individualities in the past. [. . .] The deeply upsetting experience of the World War powerfully provokes memories of a statesman who with his subtle and finely meshed policies was able to prevent Europe from catching fire. The chaotic situation of Europe in our time awakes memories of this coachman of Europe’s thoughtful and precisely calculating policy of equilibrium.6

Even Metternich’s anti-liberal policies were reconsidered after 1918: ‘The “spectre” that he [Metternich] painted on the wall and for which he was criticised by his liberal opponents, has now turned into flesh and blood. Is not now the time ripe to understand the social and socio-political sense of Metternich’s life and Metternich’s system?’7 In the middle of World War II, German historian Karl Griewank regarded the treaties of 1814–15 on the one hand as the basis for a ‘system of liberal and constitutional Gleichschaltung [. . .] which all over Europe stabilised England’s economic and political supremacy’. But at the same time, this German author even in 1943 considered what he called the ‘new order of 1814/15’ to be the ‘result of experienced diplomatic technique, as competent dealing with the mechanics of states [Staatenmechanik], which brings much more honour to its creators than the judgement of the first post-Vienna generations was able to concede. They created and preserved external peace for a much longer time and in a much better way than under any other peace order of the centuries before.’ And still, it was impossible to positively integrate the Vienna Congress in a radically nationalist view of history and a National Socialist understanding of international politics. This determined Griewank’s final verdict: ‘Where the rights of the peoples [die Rechte der Völker] no longer erupted in bourgeois-liberal disguise, but with nature-like force, the Vienna order came to an end. It could not be reconciled with an organic order of Europe, with the dynamics of rising great peoples and with a Greater German Empire as its core.’8

6

7 8

H. von Srbik, Metternich. Der Staatsmann und der Mensch, vol.1 (Munich: Bruckmann, 1925), 43. Srbik’s German wording was: ‘Immer haben ungeheuere Erschütterungen den Blick des Historikers für die Vergangenheit geschärft und ihn allgemeine Tendenzen und Individualitäten der Vergangenheit verstehen gelehrt, [. . .] deren Bedeutung mehr geahnt als voll verstanden worden ist. [. . .] Das aufwühlende Erlebnis des Weltringens ruft mit Macht die Erinnerung an den Staatsmann hervor, der mit subtiler, feinmaschiger Politik jahrzehntelang den Brand Europas hintanzuhalten gewusst hat. Das unsägliche wirre Bild des heutigen Europa weckt das Gedenken an die [. . .] immer denkende und klug berechnende Gleichgewichtspolitik des Wagenlenkers Europas.’ Ibid. K. Griewank, Der Wiener Kongress und die Neuordnung Europas 1814/15 (Leipzig: Koehler & Amelang, 1942). See also Griewank, ‘Die europäische Neuordnung 1814/15’, Historische Zeitschrift, 168:1 (1943), 82–112.

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We could continue this historiographical and literary review.9 We could mention Harold Nicolson’s book The Congress of Vienna, published in 1945, where the subtitle ‘A Study in Allied Unity’ already shows its historical context, if not its message.10 Or we could, of course, point to Henry Kissinger. who ‘as a member of a generation threatened by nuclear annihilation’ in his dissertation on the policies of Metternich and Castlereagh, published in 1957, explored the conditions of peace and stability in post-Napoleonic Europe. Already the question points to Kissinger’s judgement.11 And when, twentyfive years ago, after 1989–90, at the end of a long war – which we can certainly regard the Cold War to have been – politicians, political scientists and political authors developed ideas of a ‘new world order’, their view also went back, not surprisingly, to the Vienna order, which was described as the ‘most successful post-war settlement of the modern state system’.12 The Vienna Congress and its treaties were analysed and praised under the auspices of ‘collective security’ or ‘how to stabilise a multipolar order’.13 Vienna System and Vienna Order In his book Diplomacy, published in 1994, Henry Kissinger finds himself a place in the history of international politics since Cardinal Richelieu. At the very beginning of the book, the historian turned politician deals with the 9

10 11 12 13

There exists a vast literature on the Congress of Vienna to which the Congress’ recent twohundredth anniversary added a number of significant books, among them T. Lentz, Le Congrès de Vienne. Une refondation de l’Europe 1814/15 (Paris: Perrin, 2013); H. Duchhardt, Der Wiener Kongress: Die Neugestaltung Europas (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2013); M. Jarrett, The Congress of Vienna and its Legacy: War and Great Power Diplomacy after Napoleon (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2013) (with an important chapter on the political and academic reception and interpretation of the Congress until today, 353–79). Wolfram Siemann’s seminal biography of Metternich is surprisingly short on the Congress itself and devotes much more attention to the evolution and problems of the ‘System Metternich’. Cf. W. Siemann, Metternich. Stratege und Visionär. Eine Biografie (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2016). An important work of reference especially in terms of the significance of the Congress for the evolution and transformation of the international system in the years around 1815 is still P.W. Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics 1763–1848 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). H. Nicolson, The Congress of Vienna: A Study in Allied Unity: 1812–1822 (London: Harcourt, 1946). H. Kissinger, A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace, 1812–22 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957). C. Lipson, ‘Is the future of collective security like the past?’, in G.W. Downs (ed.), Collective Security Beyond the Cold War (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), 105–31, 117. For example W.H. Daugherty, ‘System Management and the Endurance of the Concert of Europe’, in J. Snyder and R. Jervis (eds.), Coping with Complexity in the International System (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993), 71–105; B. Miller, ‘Explaining the emergence of great power concerts’, Review of International Studies, 20:4 (1994), 327–48. See also a number of contributions (from international relations scholars) in P. Krüger and P.W. Schroeder (eds.), The Transformation of European Politics 1763–1848: Episode or Model in European History? (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2002).

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conditions for a stable international order like the one that, in his view, was established at the Congress of Vienna: ‘Whether an international order is relatively stable [. . .] or highly volatile [. . .] depends on the degree to which they reconcile what makes the constituent societies feel secure with what they consider just.’14 This statement by Kissinger, whom most of us would probably regard as a representative of ‘old-school debates on diplomacy, peace and war’, seems to point in a similar direction as one of the guiding questions of the collaborative research project ‘Securing Europe, Fighting Its Enemies: The Making of a Security Culture in Europe and Beyond, 1814–1914’, based at Utrecht University and directed by Beatrice de Graaf. An unpublished position paper, prepared for the Amsterdam conference in November 2014, states as one of the guiding questions of the project: ‘How did contemporaries reflect on what security should look like, what it should protect, against which other values it could be defended, how it could be sustained and legitimated?’15 Against the background of two-hundred years of historiography surrounding the Vienna Congress and against the background of a renewed and not exclusively historical interest in the Congress, its results and its consequences, it is important to address this pivotal question to the Vienna system and the Vienna order. In the literature we can find both terms: Vienna system and Vienna order. Not all authors draw a clear distinction between the two terms, which, however, is important as a starting point for a systematic analysis of both the Vienna Congress itself and its effects on the evolution of international politics and the international system after 1815. The Vienna system was a system of regular congresses (or conferences) among the great powers (Aix-la-Chapelle, Troppau, Laibach, Verona) established by the so-called Quadruple Alliance (November 1815) and enlarged by the inclusion of France in 1818: an institutional order that fell apart at the beginning of the 1820s when the five powers were no longer able to agree on the politics of intervention and the best way to prevent revolution.16 The Vienna order survived the Vienna system. It rested on the continued willingness of the five powers to cooperate internationally and to respect the international treaties of Vienna – despite diverging opinions as to the best way to prevent revolution. This intention of continued cooperation found its expression in the so-called European Concert: a mechanism aiming at the solution of crises and the regulation of conflict. This mechanism only started 14 15 16

H. Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), 27. See the Introduction to this volume. Cf. with similar understandings of the ‘Vienna system’ (as opposed to the ‘Vienna order’) A. Doering-Manteuffel, Vom Wiener Kongress zur Pariser Konferenz. England, die deutsche Frage und das Mächtesystem 1815–1856 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1991), 41–56; Ibid., Die deutsche Frage und das europäische Staatensystem 1815–1871 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2001), 81; Jarrett, Congress of Vienna, xiii.

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to take shape around 1822 and it even survived the revolutions of 1830. The Concert demonstrated its functionality in the Greek and the Belgian questions around 1830, but also during the so-called Oriental crisis after 1839. Changes within the European geopolitical status quo were possible, and they even had a stabilising effect, because and as long as these changes were decided upon multilaterally and consensually. There were no fixed rules as to how to treat international problems, but the Concert provided a frame for great power communication and, by this token, the precondition for joint measures instead of unilateral action. The basis of the Concert’s politics was still a common understanding, that the five powers together had a European function and responsibility. The ‘Big Five’ considered problems or conflicts like in Greece or the Netherlands as European problems or conflicts that had to be dealt with by ‘Europe’s areopagus’, as Friedrich von Gentz called it.17 We can understand the development of the Vienna system and the Vienna order and conceptually grasp the transformation of the Vienna system with its relatively strong institutions into the Vienna order with its much weaker institutions (including the erosion or even destruction of this order after 1848) as the transformation of a security regime.18 But we can also regard these processes as the result of a changing European security culture: a security culture which between 1815 and 1914 did not remain static as a kind of unchangeable frame of security related policies and politics, but which – as a historical process – underwent dynamic changes during this century. And these changes of the security culture can provide new perspectives on the development of the international system and of international politics during the nineteenth century and until World War I. The concept of ‘security culture’ can help us to analyse the nonsimultaneous dynamics of objective and subjective, national and international, foreign and domestic security and to describe the relationship of securityrelated discourses and security-related practices and, in so doing, help us better understand the changes in security policies and security regimes on the national, international and transnational levels.19 By grasping different factors of security policies and/or strategies, like values and ideas, semantics and 17 18

19

Cf. C. Holbraad, The Concert of Europe: A Study in German and British International Theory 1815–1914 (London: Barnes & Noble, 1970), 17. Based on Robert Keohane’s and Stephen Krasner’s regime theory, Elke Krahmann defines a security regime as ‘sets of implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around which actors’ expectations converge’. S.E. Krahmann, ‘Conceptualizing security governance’, Cooperation and Conflict, 38:1 (2003), 5–26, 7. For the concept of ‘security culture’ cf. C. Daase, ‘Sicherheitskultur als interdisziplinäres Forschungsprogramm’, in C. Daase, P. Offermann and V. Rauer (eds.), Sicherheitskultur: Soziale und politische Praktiken der Gefahrenabwehr (Frankfurt a.M.: Campus Verlag, 2012), 23–44; for a historical approach, concentrated, however, on contemporary history cf. E. Conze, ‘Sicherheit als Kultur. Überlegungen zu einer modernen Politikgeschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland’, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 53:3 (2005), 357–80.

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debates, practices and institutions, and by correlating these factors, we can gain a more historically-informed, complex picture of the political field of ‘security’ – in large part because probably only an historical analysis can probe the degree to which security culture (or security cultures) and security policies and security politics are subject to dynamic change. In order to historicise the Vienna Congress, the Vienna system and the Vienna order under aspects of security, we first need to historicise the term ‘security’ itself. In her position paper, Beatrice de Graaf has pointed to this necessity when referring to Quentin Skinner and the Cambridge School, who discarded ‘neutral definitions’ of concepts like ‘liberty’. Starting in the sixteenth century at the latest, ‘security’ – like ‘liberty’ – has not only become a basic concept (Grundbegriff) of political and social language, but also an ‘essentially contested concept’ (Walter Gallie) the content and meaning of which was, and still is, repeatedly defined and redefined.20 These continuous redefinitions had profound effects on social action and practices, both domestically and internationally. Given this background, it is interesting to note that for European diplomats in the first half of the nineteenth century ‘society’ still was the ‘society of states’, and not so much the societal goings-on within a country. As one diplomat noted during the 1830 London conference: ‘Every nation has its own rights, but Europe has also its rights granted by the order of its society.’21 A New European Security Culture As the word ‘peace’, we can also find the word ‘security’ in our sources for the years from 1814–15. ‘Security’ was a horizon of orientation for the European monarchs, politicians and diplomats assembled in Vienna. What the participants understood in concrete terms when they were talking about ‘security’ as a political objective was influenced by their individual and collective experiences of the time after the French Revolution. Theirs was a shared, common, generational experience. The term ‘generation’ has already been used to describe the Congress participants and their shared political objectives. Some authors used the term ‘generation Metternich’, others

20

21

Q. Skinner, ‘A third concept of liberty’, in F.M.L. Thompson (ed.), Proceedings of the British Academy, vol.117 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 237–68; W. Conze: ‘Sicherheit, Schutz’, in Conze (ed.), Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, vol.5 (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1984), 831–62; W.B. Gallie, ‘Essentially Contested Concepts’, in M. Black (ed.), The Importance of Language (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1962), 121–46. S.W. Näf, ‘Versuche gesamteuropäischer Organisation und Politik in den ersten Jahrzehnten des 19. Jahrhunderts’, in S.W. Näf (ed.), Staat und Staatsgedanke (Bern: Bern Lang, 1935), 9–27.

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‘generation Bonaparte’. We might also call it the ‘generation Vienna’.22 Against this background, security, on the one hand, meant international peace after almost twenty-five years of European war; but security also connoted social peace (in the sense of Ruhe) at home. It meant legitimate political rule and the prevention of revolution. To their minds at the time, these two objectives were connected inseparably. It was their common experience that revolution meant war. The French case had demonstrated this connection all too clearly.23 The European order created in Vienna in 1814–15 was also a European security culture. The key document, demonstrating the idea of an emerging European security culture in a nutshell, was the so-called Quadruple Alliance signed by the four powers Britain, Russia, Austria and Prussia on 20 November 1815, during the negotiations following Napoleon’s final defeat. By concluding this alliance, the powers once again underlined their intention not only to establish a balance of power in the traditional sense (as it had been developing during the eighteenth century), but to establish the ‘repose and happiness of the peoples’ (Ruhe und Glückseligkeit der Völker) and the ‘preservation of peace in Europe’ (Aufrechterhaltung des Friedens in Europa). To achieve this objective, the Congress in Vienna, without questioning the existence and sovereignty of the individual states, had already started to establish a tight network of contractual relations among the states. The Final Act of the Congress (9 June 1815) had brought together all agreements of ‘higher and lasting interest’.24 But it was the Quadruple Alliance that made clear that the powers were not only concluding a peace treaty, but aiming at stabilising a peace that had already been concluded and at consolidating a new international order (based on common interests and perceptions of threat or danger). From this vantage point, the Quadruple Alliance was the expression of the new European security culture and the attempt to establish a normative order in terms of European law (ius publicum Europaeum) based on this security culture. The Quadruple Alliance confirmed all the treaties and agreements that had been concluded since the alliances against Napoleon of early 1814. Article 6 of the Quadruple Alliance contained agreements on regular consultations of the four powers, which, once again guided by the objective of the ‘maintien de la paix en Europe’, laid the foundation for the Congress system that was established in the following years and became the nucleus and centre of the European Concert.25 22 23 24 25

Cf. B. Savoy, Napoleon und Europa: Traum und Trauma (Munich: Prestel Verlag, 2011), 155 (‘generation Bonaparte’); Siemann, Metternich, 490 (‘generation Metternich’). See also Chapter 5 by Ghervas in this volume. ‘Final Act of the Congress of Vienna, 9 June 1815’, cited in J.L. Klüber (ed.), Quellensammlung zu dem öffentlichen Recht des Teutschen Bundes (Erlangen: Palm & Enke, 1830), 13. Cf. H.W. Schmalz, Versuche einer gesamteuropäischen Organisation 1815–1820 (Aarau: H.R. Sauerlander, 1940), 14; Doering-Manteuffel, Vom Wiener Kongress, 39–40.

48

Conceptualisations

The network of treaties was a combination of territorial stipulations, balancing power relations in Europe and establishing a comprehensive geopolitical order, and honouring political agreements serving the purpose of stabilising domestically and socially a system of monarchical states. The question as to how to stabilise domestic and social conditions in different states, however, led to divisive responses from the powers only a few years after 1815. In order to repel liberal and national tendencies and forces, the governments of Russia, Austria and Prussia were pursuing a policy of repression. This policy of repression was, however, not only applied to their own states, but was European in its scope and intention. When revolutionary upheavals broke out in Spain, Portugal and Naples in 1820, the three ‘Eastern’ powers saw this as a threat to the repose and order of Europe. They considered the eruption of revolution, wherever on the continent (not to mention in Latin America and beyond), as a danger to Europe as a whole. Correspondingly, Metternich tried to politically prepare great power interventions in all three countries. In his eyes ‘Europe’ gained importance and political significance as a counter concept and a counter principle to revolution, nation and constitution. The evocation of Europe represented – and this is the ambivalence of the concept – a Europe-wide policy of repression and a doctrine of limited state sovereignty. It was above all Metternich who tried to institutionalise this idea of Europe. One of these institutions was the Allied Council of Ambassadors, a permanent institution located in Paris in which Britain, Russia, Austria and Prussia were represented. This council had a clearing and coordinating function for the European Concert, underlining, even after the end of the Vienna system in the narrow sense, the innovative multilateral political approach that had taken shape since 1814. Time and again, the powers had to agree on a common course vis-a-vis defeated – and occupied – France.26 The ‘Europe’ that the Austrian State Chancellor had in mind was meant to influence and control social and domestic developments in all European states. This becomes clear when looking at Metternich’s proposal to considerably extend the competences and responsibilities of the Ambassadorial Council and to establish it as a European police headquarters, a centre of intelligence and information where the findings of the political police of all European states could be collected, analysed and exchanged. This initiative, however, was bluntly

26

See W. Pyta, ‘Konzert der Mächte und kollektives Sicherheitssystem. Neue Wege zwischenstaatlicher Friedenswahrung in Europa nach dem Wiener Kongress 1815’, in Jahrbuch des Historischen Kollegs 1996, 133–73, 147–51; Cf. B.A. de Graaf, ‘“Principles of salutary precaution”. The Allied Council of Ambassadors and the Occupation of France, 1815–1818’, in M. Broers and A. Caiani (eds.), A History of European Restorations (London: I.B. Tauris, forthcoming).

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rejected by Castlereagh, who in other fields had been thoroughly interested in a close cooperation between London and Vienna.27 The reason for this dissent was that England, and after its readmission to the circle of great powers to a certain degree also France, saw a policy of moderate reform as the best way to prevent revolution, opposing a principle of intervention serving a Europe-wide policy of repression. This dissent, which overshadowed the congresses of Troppau, Laibach (Ljubljana) and Verona, led to a structural change of the European system.28 The ‘Vienna Order’ was based on the political intention of the European pentarchy to cooperate in the realm of foreign and international politics and to further adhere to the treaties and legal agreements of the years 1814–15 – despite the diverging positions with regard to the best way to prevent revolution. Its basic principle ‘agree to disagree’ provided the policies of the great powers with more flexibility. This flexibility found its expression in the mechanism of the European Concert, aiming at crisis prevention, crisis mitigation and conflict resolution, which started to develop seriously after 1822 and which was not affected by the July Revolution of 1830, however deep a political caesura this revolution may have been. Introducing ‘Securitisation’ to the Post-Napoleonic Order Following another theoretical approach from the social sciences, one could argue that in Vienna in 1814–15 the political field or the political objective ‘prevention of revolution’ was ‘securitised’. The concept of ‘securitisation‘ originated from the so-called Copenhagen School of Critical Security Studies, represented by, among others, political scientists Ole Wæver and Barry Buzan.29 With the concept of securitisation the Copenhagen School tried in the first place to find answers to the simple, but fundamental question: how does a certain issue turn into a security problem? Behind this question is the assumption that by using the word ‘security’ or by marking a certain issue as relevant in terms of security or as a security problem, political systems make decisions on the priority of political objectives – including political claims

27

28 29

Cf. Schmalz, Versuche einer gesamteuropäischen Organisation, 27. Cf. W. Siemann, “Deutschlands Ruhe, Sicherheit und Ordnung”: die Anfänge der politischen Polizei 1806–1866 (Tübingen: M. Niemeyer, 1985); Siemann, Metternich: Stratege und Visionär, 713–9. This not only terminological, but conceptual distinction is suggested by Doering-Manteuffel, Vom Wiener Kongress, 41–56. S.D. Mutimer, ‘Critical security studies: a schismatic history’, in A. Collins (ed.), Contemporary Security Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 84–105; R. Emmers, ‘Securitization’, in ibid., 136–51. Cf. B. Buzan, O. Wæver and J. de Wilde (eds.), Security: A New Framework for Analysis (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1998).

50

Conceptualisations

implying and legitimising actions or measures beyond the established norms and limitations of the political system (laws, constitutions, etc.). ‘In naming a certain development a security problem, the ‘state’ can claim a special right’.30 The securitisation of the post-Napoleonic international order provided this order – and especially its domestic political implications: the repression of liberal and national tendencies – with a certain measure of legitimacy and stability (at least in the first years after 1815). Both its legitimacy and its stability were based on the consensus that liberal and national developments would endanger the ‘repose and happiness of Europe’.31 The argument of the Copenhagen School is that political issues or problems can be securitised and are being securitised when those issues or problems are being regarded as existentially threatening. Successful securitisation, however, needs an audience willing to follow the ‘securitising move’ (understood as a speech act). The audience has to accept the communication of threat or insecurity, it has to regard it as plausible. As we know, views about the conditions (or preconditions) of European peace and security developed in different directions already a few years after Vienna. While the eastern powers, Austria, Russia and Prussia, preferred and pursued a policy of repressing liberal and national tendencies in order to prevent revolution, including a quasi-automatic anti-national and anti-liberal right of intervention, Britain, in particular from the 1820s, later and to a lesser degree joined by France – regarded moderate reforms and a careful policy of liberalisation as the best strategy to prevent revolution. This disagreement in matters of security was clearly expressed in a British state paper (dated 5 May 1820) by Castlereagh against the background of revolutionary unrest in Spain, later in Portugal and Naples: The principle of one State interfering by force in the internal affairs of another, in order to enforce obedience to the governing authority, is always a question of the greatest possible moral as well as political delicacy. [. . .] to generalise such a principle and to think of reducing it to a System, to impose it as an obligation, is a Scheme utterly impracticable and objectionable. [. . .] We shall be found in our place when actual danger menaces the System of Europe, but this Country cannot, and will not, act upon abstract and speculative Principles of Precaution; the Alliance which exists had no such

30

31

Cf. O. Wæver, ‘Securitization and desecuritization’, in R.D. Lipschutz (ed.), On Security (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 46–86, quote on 54. For the use of ‘securitization’ in historical research see E. Conze, ‘Securitization. Gegenwartsdiagnose oder historischer Analyseansatz?’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 38:3 (2012), 453–67; A. Bauerkämper and N. Rostislavleva (eds.), Sicherheitskulturen im Vergleich. Deutschland und Russland/UdSSR seit dem späten 19. Jahrhundert (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2014). ‘Article 6 of the Quadruple Alliance, 20 November 1815’, cited by Schmalz, Versuche einer gesamteuropäischen Organisation, 14.

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purpose in view in its original formation. It was never so explained to Parliament; if it had, most assuredly, the sanction of Parliament would never have been given to it.32

The security consensus on the threat or threat potential of liberal and national tendencies had dissolved; its double effect to stabilise the system and its institutions and to legitimise the political order became weaker. Different actors interpreted security, or better insecurity and threat, differently. It is important to stress that these actors were not only states or governments, but also social groups or forces articulating and communicating their ideas of security, i.e. prevention of revolution not through repression, but through political reform, in parliaments and the press (above all in the British case).33 It becomes clear at this point that perceptions and interpretations of threat or insecurity are part of intersubjective constructions of reality. This leads to competing ideas of security and to competing ideas of how to produce or achieve security. Transformations to the System In this perspective, Britain was the pioneer in a process in which external security in particular, security in the realm of international affairs, was more and more regarded and understood as ‘national security’. Although domestic and international security separated more and more during the nineteenth century, the state still remained the main producer or guarantor of security. The state represented and implemented the idea of security. In connection with the idea of ‘national interests’ national security became an influential and powerful concept.34 More and more, ideas of security were linked to ideas of 32

33

34

‘The State Paper of 5 May 1820’, in H. Temperley and L.M. Penson (eds.), Foundations of British Foreign Policy from Pitt (1792) to Salisbury (1902) (London: Cass Publishers, 1966), 48–63. The terms ‘precaution’ and ‘prevention’ are finding increasing use in the realm of security studies, see, for example, F. Ewald, ‘“The Return of Descartes’’ Malicious Demons. An Outline of a Philosophy of Precaution’, in T. Baker and J. Simon (eds.), Embracing Risk: The Changing Culture of Insurance and Responsibility (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 273–301; U. Bröckling, ‘Dispositive der Vorbeugung. Gefahrenabwehr, Resilienz, Precaution’, in Daase et al. (eds.), Sicherheitskultur, 94–108. In an International Relations context, see M. de Goede, Security Culture. Preemption and Precaution in European Security. Inaugural lecture University of Amsterdam (Amsterdam: Vossius Press, 2011). For the British case see A. Wirsching, Parlament und Volkes Stimme. Unterhaus und Öffentlichkeit im England des frühen 19. Jahrhunderts (Göttingen/Zurich: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990). Locus classicus for the rise of the concept of ‘national interest’ is a speech by British Prime Minister Palmerston in the House of Commons (1 March 1848): ‘I hold with respect to alliances, that England is a Power sufficiently strong, sufficiently powerful, to steer her own course, and not to tie herself as an unnecessary appendage to the policy of any other Government [. . .]. We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal, and those interests it is our duty to follow’, cited in Hansard Parliamentary Debates, http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1848/mar/01/treaty-of-adrianople-charges-against #column_122 (accessed 21 August 2018).

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Conceptualisations

national sovereignty, of state sovereignty, a development that found its expression in international law and was fixed there in a normative way, but which also gained importance within different societies. Social processes of fundamental nationalisation and a growing nationalism within European nation states provided a background for a growing tendency to legitimise government action by arguing in terms of threatened national sovereignty or the need to defend national sovereignty. In that sense the idea of national sovereignty was securitised, too. For the German case in particular, we could argue, securitising the idea of sovereignty also served the purpose of legitimising and stabilising structures of political power, above all of the German Empire after 1871. In these processes not only national security cultures were changing, but also the European security culture as a whole. Both developments had profound consequences for the European state system of the decades before World War I. It is certainly true that after the crises and wars between 1848 and 1871 the European system entered, at least on the surface, a more quiet and stable phase. But the calm was built less and less on comprehensive agreements, safeguards or even common institutions to deal with conflictual questions, and increasingly on the individual intentions, perceptions and risk calculations of the great powers, and these were strongly influenced by domestic constellations and developments. Already for Bismarck, not only for Wilhelm II, ‘Europe’ was only a ‘carp pond’ (Karpfenteich), a mere ‘notion géographique’, as the ‘Iron Chancellor’ once put it.35 ‘Who talks about Europe, is wrong’ (Wer von Europa spricht, hat Unrecht), Bismarck wrote in 1876.36 That was his verdict on the Vienna Congress and the Vienna order and on the attempt, fifty years earlier, to institutionalise a common European security culture, which, as a common culture, had taken shape for a short historical moment. For Konstantin Frantz, a political author and a strong critic of Bismarck, the principle of state egoism had wiped out the last remainder of Europeanuniversal substance in the realm of state politics; for Frantz it had destroyed ‘Europe’ as an idea and a political reality.37 We should read that not only as a critique of Bismarck, but as a diagnosis of profound changes within the European security culture in the decades after 1815. Frantz may have been right; but he was a lone voice, whose positive view of the Vienna order was not shared by the majority of politicians and intellectuals, and not only in Germany. The European security culture as it developed in the decades 35

36 37

Cited by T. Schieder, ‘Bismarck und Europa. Ein Beitrag zum Bismarck-Problem’, in W. Conze (ed.), Deutschland und Europa. Historische Studien zur Völker- und Staatenordnung des Abendlands (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1951), 15–40, 28 (‘carp pond’); J. Lepsius, A. Mendelssohn Bartholdy and F. Thimme (eds.), Die Große Politik der europäischen Kabinette 1871–1914, vol.2 (Berlin, 1922), 87 (‘notion géographique’). Lepsius, Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Thimme (eds.), Die Große Politik, 86. Cited by Schieder, ‘Bismarck und Europa’, 15.

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before 1914 was characterised by a growing tension between accelerating international interconnection and interdependence on the one hand38 and an intensifying and more confrontative nationalism on the other, limiting the institutionalisation of interconnection and common security. It is not sufficient to state that prior to 1914 a European war, a Great War, was avoided. This is too much an ex-negativo argument, and it ignores the growing number of voices – again, not only in Germany – that were convinced that such a war could in no way be avoided. Towards a ‘New’ Balance of Power? A power concert in Metternich’s sense not only needs a fundamental political, but also a cultural consensus, referring to a security culture shared between its members. This consensus eroded during the nineteenth century. Was a new consensus thinkable after World War I with its ideological and propagandistic confrontation and with its millions of victims? Britain and the United States in particular tried to use their political weight to establish a new internationalism. We should not link this internationalism too directly to the Congress of Vienna, but certainly even less to the so-called European concert of the decades before 1914. By that time, the idea of the autonomous national state, one refusing almost any international integration and limitation of independent action, had become the dominant feature of the European system. British diplomats and politicians at the time developed ideas of an international post-war order that clearly demonstrate an increasing interest in the Vienna order of 1815. The so-called Phillimore Report, developed in the Foreign Office in 1918, did not only envision a ‘new league of nations’, but also a ‘council of nations’, not a judicial court, but a political entity, as its central institution with the task of international mediation and conflict resolution.39 Robert Cecil, Undersecretary of State in the British Foreign Office, opted for a ‘new concert’ with regular great power conferences and a permanent secretariat – an improved version, we could say, of the 1815 system.40 Woodrow Wilson also kept talking continuously about a ‘new’ concert of power. On the one hand, the American president was referring to the Vienna system when condemning the confrontative treaties and alliances of the decades after 1870. In a real ‘power concert’, Wilson stressed in his address 38

39 40

Cf. M.H. Geyer and J. Paulmann (eds.), The Mechanics of Internationalism: Culture, Society, and Politics from the 1840s to the First World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); M. Herren-Oesch, Internationale Organisationen seit 1865. Eine Globalgeschichte internationaler Ordnung (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftlichen Buchgesellschaft, 2009). Cf. M. Mazower, Die Welt regieren. Eine Idee und ihre Geschichte von 1815 bis heute (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2013), 142. See also Jarrett, Congress of Vienna, 370. Cf. Mazower, Die Welt regieren, 145.

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‘Peace without Victory’ (22 January 1917), there would be no space for an entangling alliance. ‘When all unite to act in the same sense and with the same purpose, all act in the common interest and are free to live their own lives under a common protection.’ And then, as if taken from Metternich, Gentz or Castlereagh: Is the present war a struggle for a just and secure peace, or only for a new balance of power? If it be only a struggle for a new balance of power, who will guarantee, who can guarantee the stable equilibrium of the new arrangement? Only a tranquil Europe can be a stable Europe. There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power; not organised rivalries, but an organised common peace.41

But then, on the other hand, the president modified the Vienna model in a decisive respect, as he explained in April 1917 when the United States entered the war: ‘A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations. No autocratic government could be trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants. [. . .] Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honour steady to a common end and prefer the interests of mankind to any narrow interest of their own.’42 Was that not a revitalisation of the old republican and democratic critique of Metternich and the Vienna system? A ‘concert for peace’ through a ‘partnership of democratic nations’: How important is the similarity or dissimilarity of political systems for the formation, but above all for the stabilisation and, in that sense, the ‘success’ of an international security culture? Security culture is not a positive state as such, it is not a normative concept, but an analytical category, which can be applied by empirical research to different temporal or spatial contexts. It is also a dynamic concept. If we understand security culture as ‘the sum of beliefs, values and practices of institutions and individuals that determine (1) what is considered to be a danger or insecurity in the widest sense and (2) how and by which means this danger should be handled’,43 we have to take into account that these convictions, values and practices can be different in different political systems, social circumstances and cultures, and we have to deal with the question of what these differences mean for the formation and development of an international or even transnational security culture. My allusion to Woodrow Wilson and his ‘To make the world safe for democracy’ does not have the intention to bring the theory of ‘Democratic 41 42 43

W. Wilson, ‘Peace without Victory (address to the US Senate, 22 January 1917)’, cited by e.g. www.firstworldwar.com/source/peacewithoutvictory.htm (accessed 21 August 2018). Ibid., ‘War Message to Congress, 2 April 1917’, wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Wilson%27s_ War_Message_to_Congress. C. Daase, ‘National, societal and human security: on the transformation of political language’, Historical Social Research, 35:4 (2010), 24–39, 24.

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Peace’ into an already complex picture. But it might be worthwhile to address the question of whether stable and efficient security cultures can only develop between states with at least similar political systems, but also with at least similar social or socio-economic structures? The post-1815 European situation was lacking this common ground. It was able to develop a security consensus based on the shared experience of revolution, war and French hegemony, but diverging interests in the socio-political and socio-economic realm made this consensus precarious and led to its erosion, which began in the early 1820s and was completed with the European revolutions of 1848 and the Crimean War. Following De Graaf’s suggestion to understand security culture as ‘the sum of mutually shared perceptions regarding enemies of the state, vital interests and corresponding practices’, what does political, constitutional, social or socioeconomic dissimilarity then mean for a security culture? There are quite a number of historians explaining the erosion of the Vienna system with such arguments.44 The concept of ‘security culture’ in that sense provides an instrument to reconsider this thesis and, at the same time, to develop fresh perspectives on an old issue.

44

See, for example, Doering-Manteuffel, Vom Wiener Kongress; H. Gollwitzer, ‘Ideologische Blockbildung als Bestandteil internationaler Politik im 19. Jahrhundert’, Historische Zeitschrift, 201:2 (1965), 306–33.

3

The Congress of Vienna as a Missed Opportunity Conservative Visions of a New European Order after Napoleon Matthijs Lok* Introduction: A New European Order

‘It is not only peace that Europe demands, it is above all order that she needs; without order, peace is nothing but a misleading tranquillity.’1 These words were written by French counterrevolutionary theorist and politician Louis Gabriel Ambroise, Vicomte de Bonald (1754–1840) in his pamphlet Reflections sur l’intérêt générale de l’Europe (1815). In this pamphlet Bonald gave his advice to the statesmen who had the task of reconstructing Europe after the collapse of the Napoleonic Empire. Bonald’s reflections on a new European order were structured by the memory of an older peace conference, that of Westphalia (1648). After Westphalia, the careful European balance of power, which had existed since Charlemagne and especially after Charles V, was disturbed. This political fragmentation and division of Europe had been especially beneficial to Protestantism and had caused almost continuous internal European warfare. In a way, the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars were for Bonald a continuation of the religious wars of the Reformation; Protestantism was the ultimate cause of Europe’s troubles.2 Bonald saw ‘Vienna’ as a potential counterpoint to Westphalia; as an opportunity to establish eternal peace in Europe, but only if this peace would entail also a new moral European order. ‘Order’, according to Bonald, ‘is the supreme law of intelligent beings [. . .]. The order that prevents revolutions, upheavals and conquests, rests in the great European family, on the two foundations of religion and monarchy.’3 Apparently not discouraged by the * I would like to thank Lotte Jensen as well as the editors for their comments on this chapter. 1 ‘C’est n’est pas seulement la paix que l’Europe demande, c’est surtout et avant tout de l’ordre qu’elle a besoin, de cet ordre sans lequel la paix n’est qu’un calme trompeur.’ L. de Bonald, Réflections sur l’intérêt général de l’Europe, suivies de quelques considérations sur la noblesse (Paris: le Normant, 1815), 9. 2 Bonald, Traité de Westphalie et celui de Campo Formio et de leur rapport avec le système politique des puissances européennes, et particulièrement de la France (Paris: le Normant, 1801). 3 Ibid., Réflections, 9; Ibid., Écrits sur l’Europe; textes présentés et annotés par Michel Toda (Versailles: ed. de Paris, 2006); G. Gengembre, ‘La Contre-révolution: Europe française ou

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The Congress of Vienna as a Missed Opportunity

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complete defeat of the French armies, the French patriot confidently argued that peace would only succeed if Europe was led by a renewed Catholic and monarchical France. If this France would be returned to its natural borders, the country would stabilise and the aggression would disappear, becoming the most important pillar of the new international system. Bonald’s pamphlet is representative of the high hopes of European conservatives for a new moral as well as political order after the unexpected sudden collapse of the Napoleonic Empire. Although all conservatives shared to a lesser or greater extent a distaste for the French Revolution and its (alleged) legacy, the post-revolutionary ‘conservative mind’ was multifaceted. Some authors, especially state administrators such as the French Minister of the Interior and Justice Etienne Denis Pasquier (1767–1862), argued for a moderate juste milieu between ancien régime and Revolution combined with a strong executive state as the best way to guarantee stability in post-Napoleonic Europe.4 Others, like Friedrich von Gentz (1764–1832), secretary to Metternich at Vienna, proposed a restored and improved version of the eighteenthcentury ‘balance of power’ or ‘equilibrium’ as the main principle of a postNapoleonic Europe. Authors such as Bonald believed that the new European order should above all be Christian and led by a Catholic France. The differences between the different types of conservatives such as ‘reform conservatives’ and ‘reactionaries’, however, should not be overstated: early nineteenth-century statesmen and publicists rarely defended a consistent and systematic ideological position. Close personal contacts and networks existed between the individual members of a European elite that superseded ideological differences.5 Especially those who advocated a Christian Europe, a return to an idealised medieval Christian unity, have often been labelled ‘reactionaries’.6 This label, however, is not justified, as most of these Christian

4

5 6

Europe papale?’, in M. Perrin (ed.), L’idée de l’Europe au fil de deux millénaires (Paris: Beauchesne, 1994), 161–74; Ibid., ‘Dynamisme ou fixité: l’Europe chez les penseurs libéraux et contre-’revolutionnaires après 1800’, Tumultes, 7 (1996), 29–38. On Bonald, see D. Klinck, The French Counter Revolutionary Theorist Louis de Bonald (1754–1840) (Berlin: Peter Lang, 1996); J. Alibert, Les triangles d’or d’une société Catholique: Louis de Bonald, théoreticien de la contre-révolution (Paris: Pierre Téqui, 2002); O. Tort, La droite française. Aux origines de ses divisions, 1814–1830 (Paris: Éditions du CTHS, 2013). M.M. Lok, ‘L’extrême centre est-il exportable? Une comparaison entre la France et les Pays-Bas, 1814–1820’, AHRF, 357 (2009), 143–59; Ibid., Windvanen. Napoleontische bestuurders in de Nederlandse en Franse Restauratie, 1813–1820 (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2009), 247–92. B.E. Vick, The Congress of Vienna. Power and Politics after Napoleon (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 233–77. E.g. M. Broers makes a distinction between post-revolutionary ‘reaction’ and ‘conservatism’. Broers, Europe after Napoleon. Revolution, Reaction and Romanticism, 1814–1848 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996); K. Epstein differentiates between three ideal types of conservatism: ‘defenders of the status quo’, ‘reform conservatives’ and ‘reactionaries’. Epstein, The Genesis of German Conservatism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), 7.

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conservatives did not simply advocate a return to an idealised past, but above all argued that a new, improved and regenerated Europe should be constructed. In many ways, these so-called reactionaries are better termed ‘anti-revolutionary revolutionaries’ as they believed in a radical rupture, not only with the immediate revolutionary and Napoleonic past, but also with the corrupted and decadent eighteenth century.7 It is, indeed, very hard to define or put labels on post-revolutionary ‘conservatism’ (or its related concepts ‘reaction’, ‘restoration’, etc.).8 In many ways conservatism is an anti-ideology, an ideology that is critical of the idea of ideology, understood as a coherent belief system as the basis of a socialpolitical order. There is also a contrast between those labelled by historians as ‘conservatives’ and contemporary usage of the term and related concepts.9 For instance, the Dutch statesman and intellectual Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer (1801–76) refused to be called a ‘conservative’, because conservatives accepted a part of the revolutionary legacy, which he, as self-designated ‘anti-revolutionary’, fully rejected.10 Enthusiastic advocates of the monarchy, who were critical of the moderate policies of the French king Louis XVIII, were dubbed ‘ultra-royalist’ by their opponents, while they referred to themselves as ‘true royalists’.11 At the same time, there exists according to German sociologist Mannheim, a certain conservative ‘basic intent’ (Grundintention), a way of thinking shared by all (German) conservatives.12 Virtually all postrevolutionary conservatives, for instance, shared the idea that religion is necessary for a stable and well-ordered society and a dislike for the revolutionary legacy of individual equality and liberty.13

7 8 9

10 11 12

13

See on this problem C. Armenteros, The French Idea of History. Joseph de Maistre and His Heirs, 1754–1854 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011), 6–10. P. Kondylis, Konservativismus. Geschichtlicher Gehalt und Untergang (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1986). The term conservative originates in the French journal Le Conservateur, founded in 1818 to criticise the moderate policies of the Restoration monarchy. P. Reboul, Chateaubriand et le Conservateur (Lille: l’Université de Lille III, 1973). G. Groen van Prinsterer, Ongeloof en Revolutie. Eene reeks van historische voorlezingen (Leiden: Luchtmans, 1847), 6. Tort, Droite française, 25–32. According to Mannheim this ‘basic intention’ consisted of concrete (meaning not abstract) thought, a qualitative idea of freedom, assumption of pre-established harmony, the tension between liberty and order, and a spatial understanding of history. K. Mannheim, ‘Conservative thought’, in K.H. Wolff (ed.), From Karl Mannheim (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1993), 260–350. Mannheim also famously differentiated between ‘conservatism’, essentially a modern phenomenon, and instinctive ‘traditionalism’. See for the relation between ‘conservatism’ and ‘Counter-Enlightenment’ in the French Restoration D. McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the Making of Modernity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

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The European order created at the Congress of Vienna has often been characterised by hostile historians as the heyday of conservatism and essentially a failed attempt to repress the revolutionary spirit and to turn back the clock. Conservatism in this interpretation is little more than a ‘philosophy of fear’, obsessed with (imagined) threats to domestic and international security and stability.14 The aim of this contribution is to present an alternative vision of post-revolutionary conservative Europeanism, not as a local or national reaction to the universalism of Enlightenment and Revolution, but as a ‘counterrevolutionary international’, embodied by anti-revolutionary émigrés, and those who contributed to an international coalition against Napoleon.15 Conservative Europeanism consisted of more than just the longing for an imagined ancien régime or distant medieval past: ideas of renewal and spiritual as well as moral regeneration were just as important, a characteristic they shared with progressive authors in the ‘European moment’ after 1814. Interesting parallels, which cannot be elaborated on here, can certainly be drawn between the quest for spiritual regeneration of a corrupted ‘old Europe’ after World War I and the conservative or Christian European moment in the postrevolutionary decades.16 Like the period after 1918 and 1945, the crisis years 1814–15 were viewed not only as an opportunity to (re)build a stable new European political order but also to regenerate and re-moralise a decayed European civilisation.17 In this chapter, firstly the development of conservative Europeanism before the collapse of the Napoleonic Empire will be sketched. Secondly, conservative hopes for a new order will be placed in the wider context of the ‘European moment’ of 1814–15. Finally, some examples will be provided of conservative views on the Vienna order after 1815, underscoring the conservative disillusionment with ‘Vienna’. The conclusion will elaborate further on the conservative notion of security.

14

15

16

17

See for a classic example of this interpretation A. Zamoyski, Phantom Terror. The Threat of the Revolution and the Repression of Liberty, 1789–1848 (London: William Collins, 2014). See for the hostile historiographical reception M. Jarrett, The Congress of Vienna and Its Legacy. War and Great Power Diplomacy after Napoleon (London: I.B. Tauris, 2014), 367. C.A. Armenteros and R.A. Lebrun (eds.), Joseph de Maistre and His European Readers. From Friedrich von Gentz to Isaiah Berlin (Leiden: Brill, 2011); J.C. Martin (ed.), La Contrerevolution en Europe XVIII-XIXe siècles. Realités politiques et sociales, résonances culturelles et idéologiques (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2001). E.g. S. Röβner, Die Geschichte Europas schreiben. Europäische Historiker und ihr Europabild im 20. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt a.M.: Campus Verlag, 2009); M. Spiering and M. Wintle (eds.), Ideas of Europe Since 1914. The Legacy of the First World War (Houndsmills/Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2002). For the comparison of European reconstruction in 1814–15, 1918–19 and 1945–51, see B. Stråth, Europe’s Utopia’s of Peace (London: Bloomsbury, 2016).

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‘European Commonwealth’: Conservative Europeanism before 1814 Although the origins of European conservatism can certainly be traced before 1789, the French Revolution was of crucial importance to its development.18 The French historian Marc Belissa has described how the wars between the revolutionaries and their enemies were also an ideological battle between opposing conceptions of a European order.19 In response to the expansion of the revolutionary armies and ideas after 1792, critics were forced to formulate and make their notion of the European order explicit. An important role is played by the eighteenth-century British author Edmund Burke (1729–97). Although Burke certainly was no straightforward defender of the old order, his anti-revolutionary writings met with a wide, if not uncritical, reception in other European countries.20 For Burke, ‘Europe’ was the result of a centuries-long slow development of judicial, political and religious institutions. Although he did not oppose reform, he abhorred the sudden destruction of this age-old historically grown system of institutions by the French revolutionaries and the construction of a political system ex nihilo: ‘the very idea of the fabrication of a new government is enough to fill us with disgust and horror’.21 The Revolution destroyed the rule of law, inaugurating a new era of chaos and violence, basically the end of every possible form of order and morality. Burke’s fight against the revolutionaries was not a conflict between opposing interests, but an ideological struggle between two incommensurable world views. By trying to destroy European civilisation characterised by the spirit of religion and chivalry, revolutionary France had placed itself outside of Europe, more resembling an Asian or African despotism than a European state. Burke’s struggle against the Revolution was first of all a defence of the idea of a European order against chaos and destruction.

18

19 20

21

On pre-revolutionary conservatism, see Epstein, Genesis; W.R.E. Velema, Enlightenment and Conservatism in the Dutch Republic. The Political Thought of Elie Luzac, 1721–1796 (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1993); W.R. Everdell, Christian Apologetics in France, 1730–1790. The Roots of Romantic Religion (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen, 1987). M. Belissa, Repenser l’ordre européen, 1795–1802. De la société des rois aux droits des nations (Paris: Éditions Kimé, 2006). On the political thought of Burke, see R. Bourke, Empire & Revolution. The Political life of Edmund Burke (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015). On the European reception of Burke, see P. Jones and M. Fitzpatrick, The Reception of Edmund Burke in Europe (London: Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2017); M.P. Thompson, ‘Ideas of Europe during the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 55:1 (1994), 37–58. E. Burke, ‘Reflections on the Revolution in France’, in I. Hampsher-Monk (ed.), Revolutionary Writings: Reflections on the Revolution in France and the First Letter on a Regicide Peace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 32.

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In his First Letter on a Regicide Peace (1796), published shortly before his death, Burke further elaborates his ideal of a historically grown European order. For a long time, Europe was a ‘Commonwealth’: in which communities, apparently in peace with each other, have been more perfectly separated than, in later times, many nations in Europe have been in the course of long and bloody wars. The cause must be sought in the similitude throughout Europe of religion, laws and manners. At bottom these are all the same. [. . .] The nations of Europe have had the very same Christian religion, agreeing in the fundamental parts, varying a little in the ceremonies and in the subordinate doctrines. [. . .] When a man travelled or resided for health, pleasure, business or necessity, from his own country, he never felt himself quite abroad.22

Burke’s writings anticipated a fundamental change in European public opinion. Whereas all over Europe, many authors, noble or not, initially supported the revolution to some degree in 1789, after the Terror they came to regret this choice.23 During the Thermidor period in France as elsewhere in Europe, the ideal of building a new community on ahistorical, abstract and universal notions became discredited. Conservative notions of prudence and experience were increasingly valued. In journals such as Journal Littéraire, Le Déjeuner and L’accusateur publique, eighteenth-century philosophie was decried and blamed for the violent turn of the Revolution.24 The turn of the century was a crucial moment in the coalescence of what Chateaubriand termed ‘conservative doctrines’.25 The discovery of the Christian legacy formed a crucial element of almost all post-Terror conservative doctrines. An influential book in this re-evaluation of Christianity was Génie du Christianisme (1802) by Francois-René de Chateaubriand (1768–1848).26 Interestingly, Chateaubriand did not defend (Catholic) Christianity in a traditional apologetic way, but instead mostly used aesthetic and utilitarian arguments, which he claimed were more suitable to win the hearts of his contemporaries. Chateaubriand argued that because of the Catholic tradition, ‘modern Europe’ was superior to the ancient world as well as the non-European world. In contrast to many enlightened philosophes such

22 23 24

25 26

E. Burke, ‘The first Letter on a Regicide Peace’, in ibid., 316–17. De Maistre e.g. evolved from moderate supporter of the early Revolution into a staunch opponent of the Revolutionary legacy in 1791–2. Armenteros, French Idea, 24. M.M. Lok, ‘“Le véritable berceau des muses”. De Oudheid in het Franse Contrarevolutionaire denken, 1786–1800’, in A. Raat, W. Velema and C. Baar-De Weerd (eds.), De Oudheid in de Achttiende eeuw (Utrecht: Werkgroep 18e Eeuw, 2012), 59–74, 67–71. McMahon, Enemies, 123. J.C. Berchet, Chateaubriand (Paris: Gallimard, 2012); J.P. Clément, Chateaubriand (Paris: Flammarion, 1998).

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as Condorcet, who accused the Catholic church of opposing progress and Enlightenment, Chateaubriand argued that the Catholic church was the motor behind the development of modern European civilisation over the centuries: ‘of all religions that have ever existed, the Christian religion is the most poetic, the most human, the most favourable towards liberty, to the arts and letters: the modern world owes everything to the Christian religion, from agriculture to abstract sciences, and the hospitals for the miserable [. . .] she stimulates the genius, purifies taste, develops the virtuous passion, gives vigour’.27 In many ways Chateaubriand continued the European historical narrative, formulated by Enlightenment historians such as Voltaire and William Robertson, only now framing this narrative in the service of the Catholic church and the Counterrevolution.28 A European past was constructed as an alternative to the revolutionary legacy. Chateaubriand advocated a return to the Christian tradition as the solution to the crisis of European culture he had already diagnosed in his earlier work Essai Historique, politique et moral sur les révolutions anciennes et modernes (1797). In this work he blamed the atheism of the eighteenth century philosophes for ‘Europe’s decadence’. Chateaubriand’s work was influential but not unique. Chateaubriand’s Christian Europeanism resonated with other writers in Europe, as for instance the German Romantic movement which longed for the return of spiritual unity projected unto a mythical past of medieval Europe.29 Reformation and Protestantism were often blamed by Catholics for destroying this unity and for paving the way for the destructive atheist forces of the eighteenth-century philosophes and their successors, the revolutionaries. The Papacy was now described as an impartial and just mediator who in the past had ended many conflicts between selfish rulers. Chateaubriand foresaw also a leading role of the Papacy in the regeneration of ‘degenerated’ Europe.30 These Christian inspired visions play an important role in ideas of a new European order after Napoleon.

27 28

29

30

F.R. de Chateaubriand (ed. M. Regard), Génie du Christianisme (Paris: Gallimard, 1978), 469–70. On the Enlightenment European historical narrative, see A. Lilti and C. Spector, Penser l’Europe au XVIIIe siècle. Commerce, Civilisation, Empire (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2014); K. O’Brien, Narratives of Enlightenment. Cosmopolitan History from Voltaire to Gibbon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). On the European ideals of the German Romanticism, see H. Gollwitzer, Europabild und Europagedanke: Beiträge zur deutschen Geistesgeschichte des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts, 2nd edn. (Munich: Beck’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1964), 145–65, 200–12; P.M. Lützeler (ed.), Europa. Analysen und Visionen der Romantiker (Frankfurt a.M.: Insel-Verlag, 1982); Thompson, ‘Ideas’, 37–58. Chateaubriand, Genie, 1053.

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‘Now or Never’: The ‘European Moment’ of 1814–15 The years following the defeat of the ‘man-eater’ Napoleon can be termed a ‘European moment’, in which there was a widespread belief in the possibility of a new European order.31 Authors from different nationalities, denominations and political convictions shared the belief in a peace that would end discord and bring unity.32 Of course, all of these publicists projected their own convictions into this dream of European peace that suddenly seemed to be within reach. Yet it is important to emphasise that conservative notions of a European order were part of this wider European moment. At the start of the nineteenth century the political debate on the idea of Europe was dominated by the struggle between Napoleon’s conception of Europe as a centralised empire and the anti-imperial visions of his critics.33 Napoleon presented his newly founded Empire of 1804 as the vehicle of enlightened progress as well as at the same time as the return of an age old European imperial tradition. Only by uniting continental Europe under a centralised and efficiently governed administration could the enlightened and revolutionary goal of progress and rationalisation be achieved. The incorporation of formerly independent states such as the Netherlands in 1810 was defended with the argument that in the new age small states could not expect to stay independent.34 At the same time, to legitimise his imperial endeavour, Napoleon inscribed himself in the age-old imperial tradition, from the model of the ancient Greek federations, via the Roman Empire and Charlemagne, to the Holy Roman Empire.35 Whereas the term ‘European patriotism’ was used in the first decade by proponents as well as critics of Napoleon, after 1810 this concept acquired a definitive anti-Napoleonic meaning.36 When Napoleon lost support as a result of military defeats and an increasingly oppressive policy towards the 31

32

33 34

35

Thompson, ‘Ideas’, 37–58. Thompson uses the term ‘European moment’ for the whole revolutionary and Napoleonic period. However, I would suggest to use the term only for the years 1814–15. For the liberal Europeanism of Germaine de Staël and Benjamin Constant, see B. Fontana, ‘The Napoleonic Empire and the Europe of nations’, in A. Pagden (ed.), The Idea of Europe. From Antiquity to the European Union (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 116–28, 124–8. On the tradition of aristocratic liberalism inspired by Montesquieu, see A. de Dijn, Liberty in a Levelled Society? French Political Thought from Montesquieu to Tocqueville (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Fontana, ‘Napoleonic Empire’, 116–28. S. Woolf, Napoleon’s Integration of Europe (London: Routledge, 1991); A. Jourdan, L’empire de Napoléon (Paris: Flammarion, 2000); ‘Napoleon’s imperial adventure remained inextricably bound with the revolutionary heritage and with the universalistic tradition of the Enlightenment: it represented a novel, distinctly modern project of European hegemony’, Fontana, ‘Napoleonic Empire’, 122–4. 36 See footnote 49. Gollwitzer, Europabild, 156–7.

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non-French departments, the critics of the Empire gained ground.37 Publicists such as Johann Ancillon (1767–1837), Gentz and Georg Friedrich von Martens (1756–1821) rediscovered the eighteenth-century notion of the ‘balance of power’ or ‘equilibrium’ as the key concept in the anti-Napoleonic discourse. Napoleon’s state was regarded by the critics as only the latest example of a long tradition of European rulers such as Charles V, Philip II and Louis XIV, who had tried to extinguish European freedom by establishing a ‘universal monarchy’. And, as before, European monarchs were urged to unite to restore the equilibrium, rejecting Kant’s solution of a (European) federation of republics to attain ‘eternal peace’.38 When the Napoleonic Empire started to disintegrate by the onslaught of forces of the coalition of European powers in the spring of 1814, it seemed that a unique moment had arrived to truly recreate a new European order. As the anonymous Dutch author of a pamphlet entitled ‘Petition to the allied powers to achieve perpetual peace in Europe’, argued: ‘Now, or never, must the design of the great Henry [The French King Henry IV] be implemented. Never before were your predecessors so united: never before did they share the same noble principles. Will your successors ever be in the same position? You [kings] will now establish the future order of the European powers based on these same principles.39 The writer, who defines himself as a ‘simple subject without access to the kings’ thrones’, gives a short overview of the peace plans formulated in the past centuries by Henry IV, Saint Pierre and, to a lesser extent, Kant.40 According to the author presented, now there was a unique opportunity to establish a perpetual peace in Europe.

37

38

39

40

On Dutch anti-Napoleonic literature and the shaping of Dutch National Identity, see L. Jensen, ‘The Dutch against Napoleon. Resistance literature and national identity, 1806–1813’, Journal of Dutch Literature, 2:2 (2011), 5–26. Gollwitzer, Europabild, 128–45; H. Durchhardt, ‘The missing balance’, in M. Espenhorst (ed.), Frieden im Europa der Vormoderne. Ausgewählte Aufsätze 1979–2011 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2012), 79–86; E. Kaeber, Die Idee des europäischen Gleichgewichts in der publizistischen Literatur vom 16. bis zu Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Alexander Duncker, 1907). ‘Nu, of nimmer, moet het ontwerp van den Grooten Hendrik tot stand komen. Nooit waren uwen voorzaten allen te zamen zoo vereenigd: Nooit waren zij allen zoo door dezelfde edele beginselen bezield. Zullen uwe nazaten het immer zijn? Gij gaat, naar die beginselen, het toekomstig stelsel van de magten van Europa vormen.’ Smeekschrift aan de Vereenigde Mogendheden, om den vrede in Europa voor altijd onverbreekbaar te maken en berigt wegens ontwerpen daartoe (Leiden: D. du Mortier en zoon, 1814), 13. Kant’s design is taken less seriously by the author than the peace designs of Saint Pierre and Sully. It would according to the author take ages before all Kant’s conditions of a republican form of government will have been met and peace cannot be achieved immediately. Saint Pierre’s ideas were regarded as less utopic and more realisable. Ibid., 27. See for the history of the European peace tradition D. Heater, The Idea of European Unity (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1992).

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This sense of urgency is expressed by many authors in different European countries. For instance, the utopian philosopher Claude Henri de Saint-Simon (1760–1825) argued in his De la réorganisation de la société européenne of 1814 that the reconstruction of Europe after the collapse of the Empire could initiate the implementation of the age-old dream by authors such as Saint Pierre and Duc de Sully, starting with merger of the British and the French parliament. In this pamphlet, Saint-Simon criticised the parties at the Vienna conference for aiming at an international system based on monarchical selfinterest and the reason of state. Saint Simon turned to papacy as the European institution par excellence, however, in his case substituting scientists and technocrats for the catholic clergy.41 In the eyes of the German philosopher and one-time admirer of the Napoleonic Empire, Karl Friedrich Krause (1781–1832), to give another example, only the achievement of perpetual peace through the establishment of a European federation in Vienna would give meaning to the many dead of the intermittent warfare of the last two decades.42 A final example of the Europeanism in the early years of the Restoration is the pamphlet written in 1814 by former Batavian revolutionary and ardent Dutch patriot turned Orangist, Johannes van der Palm (1763–1840), entitled De vrede van Europa (The Peace of Europe). This is one of many Dutch pamphlets published in 1814–15 in the Netherlands with ‘Europe’ prominently in the title. In this pamphlet, the Leyden professor Van der Palm contrasts the ‘false’ and bloody European peace (‘sleep of death’ or ‘doodslaap’) which was created by the despotic Napoleon, ‘the slavery of Europe’, with the ‘true’ and free peace constructed by the victorious allies. ‘Europe’ for Van der Palm is essentially an anti-Napoleonic concept. Van der Palm associated ‘Europe’ not with a universal monarchy but with what he called ‘an equilibrium of powers’, as a system of independent states coexisting peacefully with each other. Within the newly found continental unity, ‘unique in the history of the peoples’, led by Europe’s monarchs, the Dutch nation could once again flourish while retaining its unique character.43

41 42

43

C. de Saint-Simon (ed. D. Foufoulas), De la réorganisation de la société européenne (Paris: Éditions Payot et Rivages, 2014). K.C.F. Krause, ‘Entwurf eines europäischen Staatenbundes als Basis des allgemeinen Friedens und als rechtlichen Mittels gegen jeden Angriff wider die innere und äuβere Freiheit Europas’, in F.A. Brockhaus (ed.), Deutschen Blättern, neudruck, vol.IV (Leipzig, 1920); Gollwitzer, Europabild, 116–7. J.H. van der Palm, De vrede van Europa (Leiden: Du Mortier en Zoon, 1814); L. Jensen, Vieren van Vrede. Het ontstaan van de Nederlandse identiteit, 1648–1815 (Nijmegen: Vantilt, 2016), 163–82.

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Christian Visions of a Post-Revolutionary Order Many of the visions of European unity in 1814–15 were inspired by Christianity. However, there existed rather different strands of Christian Europeanism. Some Catholic authors believed that a regenerated Europe could only be led by the pope as impartial and pan-European spiritual leader far superior to secular princes who only cared about their self-interest. The collapse of the Napoleonic Empire was regarded by authors such as the Sardinian diplomat Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) as an opportunity to end age-old religious schisms, not only referring to Protestantism but also to the split between the Latin and Orthodox churches. Others, such as for instance Bonald, supported a more national interpretation of the new Christian and monarchical European order. Although allowing for an important role for the Papacy, a Catholic France was the true cornerstone of the European system. The Holy Alliance, the project of Tsar Alexander I, can be seen as another variation of the Christian Europeanism of 1814–15. Alexander, influenced by mystical thought, temporarily at least, truly believed in a common European Christian project of Catholics, Orthodox and Protestant churches led by the Christian monarchs of Europe.44 A late monarchical echo of the irenic European spirit after the collapse of the Napoleonic Empire can be observed in the musings (written in French) of the Dutch Restoration king William I (1772–1843). Following the successful conclusion of a concordat with pope Leo XII (1760–1829), the Protestant William personally wrote an unpublished essay in 1827 on religious reconciliation in his kingdom and the possibility of a European ‘paix perpetuelle’ in general. For a king more known for his pragmatic and technocratic mentality than for his grand political visions, this wide-ranging and rather ambitious sketch on the idea of European unity was quite out of character and demonstrates the pervasive influence of Christian Europeanist ideals. William wrote that he expected and hoped that the Dutch concordat of 1827 would be a first step towards a larger European religious and political peace. The end of the Napoleonic era was, according to William, a unique opportunity in European history to end centuries of violent political and religious struggle on the European continent ‘and to assure a solid European peace, uniting all Christians on the basis of sentiment, charity and reciprocal love’.45 A general European peace would be in accordance with ‘the Spirit 44

45

See S. Ghervas, Réinventer la tradition: Alexandre Stourdza et l’Europe de la Sainte Alliance (Paris: Editions Honoré Champion, 2008), as well as her contribution, Chapter 5, in this volume. A. Craiutu, ‘Rethinking modernity, religion and tradition: the intellectual dialogue between Alexandre Stourdza and Joseph de Maistre’, History of European Ideas, 40:1 (2013), 277–89. ‘Opstel des konings, Juli 1827’, in H.T. Colenbrander (ed.), Gedenkstukken der Algemeene Geschiedenis van Nederland van 1795 tot 1840, vol.IX-2 (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1917),

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of the age, the state of civilisation and the progress of the human mind’.46 According to William, ‘civil’ (domestic) as well as ‘European’ (international) peace and security could only be achieved on the basis of religious unity. The pragmatic William explicitly connected the question of a European security culture to the contemporary problem of religious disunity. For William, referring to the dreams of peace of the French king Henry IV, the 1820s presented an opportunity to finally implement the ideal of a larger and enduring European peace. But William also looked for examples in the present. The German confederation established at the Congress of Vienna was an example how states could unite without losing their independence. Also, the young United States of America, still under construction, presented a model for – in his terms – ‘veille Europe’. By adopting the American federal constitution, Europe could prevent or at least postpone the moment the young States would overtake the old continent.47 The Congress of Vienna had already prepared the way towards a more enduring European peace by breaking with the old habits of warfare that had been the usual European solution when conflicts of interest arose. The Holy Alliance was also an important step towards a European peace, but William believed that Alexander I’s project only had a short-lived effect and would not survive a change of political leadership.48 To ensure an enduring peace William therefore proposed the establishment of an ‘Aréopage Européen’ based on the principles of Vienna and the spirit of the Holy Alliance. The contemporary equivalent of the hill in ancient Athens where elders met and law was administered, would be a permanent meeting place of the representatives of the European states presided by a deputy of the pope as moderator. In this European ‘Diet’ conflicts would be peacefully resolved and the principles of European law would be formulated. The security of individual states would be guaranteed without having to compromise their sovereignty or independence. Typical for the financially inclined king, this European cooperation would enable individual states to lower the costs of furnishing expensive armies and to exclusively focus on internal tranquillity and the development of industry and commerce. Finally the European Areopagus would ensure and augment European dominance over the other parts of the world, William wrote optimistically.49

46 49

319; J. Koch, Koning Willem I, 1772–1843 (Amsterdam: Boom, 2013), 426–9; J.A. Bornewasser, ‘“Het credo . . . geen rede van twist”. Ter verklaring van een koninklijk falen, 1826–1829’, in ibid., Kerkelijk verleden in een wereldlijke context. Historische opstellen, gebundeld en aangeboden aan de schrijver bij zijn aftreden als hoogleraar aan de Theologische Faculteit Tilburg (Amsterdam: Van Soeren & Co, 1989), 113–48. 47 48 ‘Opstel’, 322. Ibid., 320. Ibid., 320–1. According to S. Woolf the importance of the Napoleonic period for the development of the idea of Europe is that ‘a European view of the extra-European world was consolidated which drew

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‘Dying with Europe’: Conservative Disillusionment after 1815 Notwithstanding the positive judgment of king William, inevitably, the high hopes of the creation of a new European order at the Conference of Vienna were to be disappointed. Contrary to what one might expect considering the conservative reputation of Vienna, in fact many conservatives were highly critical of the achievements of the Vienna Congress. This sense of disillusion was shared by some of the main protagonists of Vienna. Gentz, translator of Edmund Burke, advocate of Maistre and secretary to Metternich, wrote in the aftermath of the Congress in the summer of 1815: Never have the expectations of the general public been as excited as they were before the opening of this solemn assembly. People were confident of a general reform of the political system of Europe, of a guarantee of eternal peace, even of the return of the golden age. Yet it produced only restitutions decided beforehand by the force of arms, arrangements between the great powers unfavourable to the future balance and the maintenance of peace in Europe, and some quite arbitrary rearrangements in the possessions of the lesser states, but not one act of a more elevated character, not one great measure of public order or security which might compensate humanity for any part of its long suffering or reassure it as to the future.50

Also, Metternich’s hope was dashed that ‘1815’ would bring an end to the tumultuous ‘accelerated time’ of the revolutionary and Napoleonic era and inaugurate a return to ‘normal history’.51 The Sardinian diplomat Joseph de Maistre, originally from a noble family in Savoy, was another disappointed conservative critic of the Vienna order. Especially his treatise Du Pape (On the Pope) presents a good case study of

50

51

on earlier perceptions, but transformed them into a radical different unifying concept of European civilisation and progress, which allowed the classification and justified the material exploitation of the rest of the world. Secondly, a distinctive conviction was forged what constituted the essence of Europe’s superiority, based on the division of its land mass into nation states and the role of the rational state in furthering its progress.’ S. Woolf, ‘The construction of a European world view in the revolutionary-Napoleonic years’, Past & Present, 137:1 (1992), 72–101. Cited in A. Zamoyski, Rites of Peace. The Fall of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna (London: HarperCollins, 2007), 550. On Gentz as a central figure in European conservatism, see R. Cahen, ‘The correspondence of Friedrich von Gentz: the reception of Du Pape in the German-speaking world’, in Armenteros and Lebrun (eds.), Maistre and his European readers, 95–121, particularly 101–2; R. Cahen, ‘Friedrich Gentz, 1764–1832: Penseur post-Lumières et acteur du renouveau de l’ordre européen au temps des révolutions’, PhD diss., Université Paul Cézanne (2014). Jones, ‘1816’, 122. On Metternich’s idea of a European order in 1814–15, see J.R. Sofka, ‘Metternich’s theory of European order: a political agenda for “perpetual peace”’, The Review of Politics, 60:1 (1998), 115–49.

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post-revolutionary conservative ‘historical Europeanism’.52 Maistre started writing Du Pape as diplomat in Russia in 1809 and published the book in 1819. According to Maistre, the Vienna Congress, and the international system it gave birth to, was too much based on short-term interests and power politics of the secular rulers of Europe. These short-term measures to repress revolutionary activities would not defeat the all-pervasive revolutionary spirit. The European rulers had compromised too much with the revolutionary legacy for their own interests. Maistre was far less optimistic than king William that Vienna formed an important step towards an enduring European peace.53 Stability and security – terms Maistre did not often use – could only be achieved through a thorough spiritual regeneration of Europe, to eradicate the horrors of the satanic revolution that had emerged from the philosophie of the Enlightenment and, at an even more fundamental level, from Protestantism. The fall of the Napoleonic Empire presented a unique moment according to Maistre, but in order ‘to re-establish religion and morality in Europe [. . .], to confirm the sovereigns on their thrones and to calm that general fermentation of the spirits which threatens us with even greater calamities, it is indispensable to erase from the European dictionary that fatal word: Protestantism’.54 According to Maistre, a new Europe should not primarily be led by princes, as was the case in the Congress system, but by the Papacy, the European institution par excellence. In Du Pape, the Papacy is not only defended in theological and doctrinal terms, but seen above all as the creator of a common European civilisation and culture.55 Echoing Chateaubriand’s views, Maistre argued that after ages of experience, the pope had demonstrated that he stood above the power-play of secular princes. Only the holy father had always defended the common European interest as an impartial mediator and had upheld European freedom. Yet at the end of his life, after evaluating the achievements of the Restoration monarchy, Maistre had become pessimistic about the possibility of European regeneration. Precisely the fact that the revolutionary legacy has persisted despite the return of the (French) king made him fear the worst for Europe’s future. In his troubled view, his own end became inseparable from the death of his beloved continent: ‘I am dying with Europe, I am in good company’, he wrote in a somewhat melodramatic manner.56

52

53 54 56

On the European reception of Du Pape, see Armenteros and Lebrun (eds.), Maistre and his European readers, especially the article by Cahen on the reception of Du Pape in Germany with Gentz as intermediary, 95–122. On the interpretation of Maistre as a ‘historical Europeanist’ and ‘Du Pape’ as an ‘Europeanist theory of history’, see Armenteros, French Idea, 115–55. 55 J. de Maistre, Du Pape (Génève: Droz, 1966), 350–1. Maistre, Du pape, 293. Cited in Armenteros, French Idea, 30.

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The disappointment about Vienna was not confined to Catholic conservatives. Also the Dutch protestant intellectual and anti-revolutionary statesman Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer (1801–76), in Ongeloof en Revolutie (Unbelief and Revolution (1847)), gave a negative verdict on the Vienna Conference.57 This became clear in his discussion of Gentz, whom he otherwise admired as counterrevolutionary ideologue, who could compete with Maistre and Burke. Yet as secretary at the Vienna Conference ‘it seems to me, perhaps because he [Gentz] was in a too highly elevated position, he did not retain the purity of his former beliefs and he sadly ignored the revolutionary dimension of the diplomacy at that time’.58 Instead of overturning the present era characterised by ‘unbelief and revolution’ and heralding a new era of Christian spirituality, the Vienna conference, according to Groen, had only consolidated the revolutionary and Napoleonic legacy. Conclusion: A Conservative Security Culture? The European order created at the Congress of Vienna has often been characterised by hostile historians as a failed attempt to repress the revolutionary spirit. Conservatism in this interpretation is little more than a ‘philosophy of fear’, obsessed with (imagined) threats to domestic and international security and stability.59 In this contribution, however, I have attempted to situate postrevolutionary conservatism in the wider intellectual and cultural climate of the neglected ‘European moment’ of 1814–15. As for many others, also for conservatives, this European moment was seen as a window of opportunity for a drastic reconstruction of the European order. While some conservatives, such as Metternich, had the more moderate aim of returning to ‘normal history’ and the ‘forgetting’ of the preceding revolutionary decades, many other conservatives claimed that the chronic violence and instability could only end if a new religious as well as political ‘order’ was built.60 Although this article is based on a limited number of case studies and more systematic research from a transnational perspective is needed on the topic 57

58 59

60

On Groen as Europeanist, see J. Bijl, Een Europese antirevolutionair. Het Europabeeld van Groen van Prinsterer in tekst en contekst (Amsterdam: VU University Press, 2011); J. de Bruijn and G. Harinck (eds.), Groen van Prinsterer in Europese context (Hilversum: Verloren, 2004). Groen van Prinsterer, Ongeloof en Revolutie, 33. Typical of this type of conservatism, above all aiming for stability, is the French Restoration minister of Justice and Interior Etienne-Denis Pasquier (1767–1862), who wrote in despair in his political testament to his French compatriots on the danger of a new revolution: ‘Fools, you are sleeping at the foot of Mount Vesuvius!’, E.D. Pasquier, ‘Testament de l’homme politique, 1 July 1862’, Archives Chateau de Sassy (Normandy, France). On the ‘culture of forgetting’ in Restoration Europe, see M.M. Lok ‘“Un oubli total du passé”? The Political and Social Construction of Silence in Restoration Europe,1813–1830’, History & Memory, 26:2 (2014), 40–75.

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conservative Europeanism, it is clear that, for contemporaries, the problem of European ‘security’ after 1814 not only had a political dimension, but was also embedded in cultural, moral and religious ideas and practices.61 For authors such as Maistre, Groen and Bonald only a thorough moral and spiritual revolution could end the insecurity of the post-revolutionary era, which had its historical roots in the corrupting influence of the eighteenth-century philosophie and (according to the Catholics) ultimately in the Reformation. Naturally, the high hopes for a new European order, framed as a partial return to an imagined distant historical Europe, were to be disappointed, not only among liberals and radicals but for conservatives as well. Instead of representing the zenith of conservative Europeanism, many on the right regarded ‘Vienna’ above all as a missed opportunity to truly regenerate a corrupt Europe.

61

See on the religious dimension of the Vienna Conference Vick, Congress of Vienna, 153–92.

Part II

Institutions and Interests

4

The Central Commission for the Navigation of the Rhine A First Step towards European Economic Security? Joep Schenk Introduction

It is remarkable that historians within the field of nineteenth-century international relations and security barely ever mention the earliest and most farreaching institutionalisation of enduring European cooperation of that time: the Central Commission for the Navigation of the Rhine (CCNR).1 Already during the Congress of Vienna in 1815 the European powers committed themselves to the principle of freedom of navigation on international rivers and established the CCNR. None of the literature on the rebuilding of the European order after 1815 reflects much on the principle of freedom of navigation, or the CCNR as such.2 Outside the context of territorial demarcation during peace negotiations historians barely consider rivers as a security issue in international relations. Historians devoted greater attention to the institutional innovations in the field of international political cooperation that Vienna brought about. One of the most important of these was the institution of plurilateral conferences with follow-up conferences.3 During these periodic conferences the major European powers decided on existing issues and imposed their decisions by force.

1

2

3

As pointed out by R.M. Spaulding, ‘Professional agency in negotiating the Vienna “Articles concernant la navigation du Rhin”’, paper presented at the conference Vienna 1815: The Making of a European Security Culture (Amsterdam/The Hague, 5–7 November 2014). Except for recent contributions by Klemann and Spaulding: H.A.M. Klemann, ‘The Central Commission for the Navigation on the Rhine, 1815–1914’, Erasmus University Rotterdam Centre for the History of the Rhine (ECHR), working paper 2013–1 (2013); R.M. Spaulding, ‘Anarchy, hegemony, cooperation: international control of the Rhine river, 1789–1848’, The Consortium on Revolutionary Europe 1750–1850. Selected Papers 1999 (Tallahassee: Florida State University, 2001), 457–64. F.S.L. Lyons, Internationalism in Europe 1815–1914 (Leiden: A.W. Sythoff, 1963), 12; B. Reinalda, Routledge History of International Organizations: From 1815 to the Present Day (London and New York: Routledge, 2009), 3–34. See also A. Iriye, Global Community: The Role of International Organizations in the Making of the Contemporary World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 10–1; M. Herren, M. Rüesch and C. Sibille, Transcultural History: Theories, Methods, Sources (Berlin/New York: Springer, 2012), 73.

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Historians Beatrice de Graaf and Mark Jarrett claim that this ‘Congress system’ exceeded any preceding international cooperation in the field of security.4 Also the German historian Matthias Schulz understands this multilateral regulation of conflicts as a type of peace management that transcended the bilateral diplomacy of the previous centuries. In explaining this shift in international governance, Schulz rightly points at the increasing liberal mindset at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Liberal thinkers, such as the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), were more optimistic about the possibilities of legally binding agreements among states. Disputes could be contained and resolved peacefully by international non-state institutions and by the creation of a body of an ius europaeum publicum.5 Clearly, the European initiatives for free navigation were primarily related to international economic cooperation, but as Schulz states himself by pointing at Adam Smith (1723–90), contemporary liberal theories like the free trade theory did not exclude economic cooperation from the practice of peacebuilding.6 Besides, this form of economic cooperation was not merely a form of technical cooperation as has been suggested by Lyons and Götz. In his book on internationalism in the nineteenth century, Lyons suggests that the CCNR can be seen as the first attempt of nation states to cooperate in pursuit of limited but manageable ends. International cooperation was increasingly understood as a necessity to meet the challenges of fast economic and social change that could not be solved by individual nation states. The declaration of the principle of freedom of navigation and the establishment of the CCNR constituted therefore the starting point of a ‘machinery of international co-operation’.7 This functionalist approach resounds in the more recent study by the political historian Norbert Götz, who points out that the CCNR constituted a new model for state interaction and marked ‘the beginning of functional international and transnational integration’. Götz therefore regards the founding of the CCNR as the most important contribution of the Congress of Vienna

4

5 6

7

B.A. de Graaf, ‘Nederland en de collectieve veiligheid’, in J. Pekelder, R. Raben and M. Segers (eds.), De wereld volgens Nederland. Nederlandse buitenlandse politiek in historisch perspectief (Amsterdam: Boom, 2015), 42–58, 43; M. Jarrett, ‘The “Congress system”: The world’s first “international security regime”’, paper presented at the conference The Congress of Vienna 1814–15: Making Peace After Global War (New York, 5–7 February 2015). In addition, Vienna codified diplomatic customs and the institution of permanent neutrality, see A. Kaczorowska, Public International Law (London/New York: Routledge, 2010), 20. M. Schulz, Normen und Praxis: das Europa¨ische Konzert der Grossma¨chte als Sicherheitsrat, 1815–1860 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2009), 2–13. Schulz claims that free trade was not important for bringing peace in the nineteenth century. In fact, the introduction of free trade in the 1860s, he states, was accompanied by war. I argue however that increasing communication, as intended with the principle of freedom of navigation, was an essential element of increasing international trade and, according the liberal theory, of bringing about peace and security. Lyons, Internationalism, 12–3, 18, 53–9, 366–7.

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‘to international relations in a long perspective’.8 Their conclusion on the exceptionality of the level of international cooperation within the CCNR is adequate. It is also appropriate to assume that the Commission set an example for other forms of international cooperation. But by understanding the CCNR as a form of mere technical cooperation they disregard both the objectives and the implications of such cooperation in the political realm. The CCNR differed from forms of technical cooperation on the international level that developed in the second half of the nineteenth century, such as the International Telegraphic Union (1865) or the Universal Post Union (1874). Rivers are part of an infrastructure that determines the (economic) viability of states. This makes controlling rivers a policy of existential importance. What is more, the nature of this infrastructure is different from non-natural transportation and communication systems. To fully benefit from a river, riparian states have to deal with the given circumstances of the nature, direction and range of the water flow. Fully artificial, more malleable international infrastructures can be agreed upon beforehand. Conflicting national interests might be negotiated in anticipation of their actual construction. Sharing a river on the other hand, easily leads to disputes. In fact, the very word rival, originates from the Latin rīvālis and means ‘one who uses the same stream’.9 Contrary to the discipline of history, the field of political science holds a rich debate on the question whether shared watercourses generally lead to conflict or cooperation.10 Today, water security is very much considered a matter of international politics, since access to water is essential to human life and touches on the (economic) viability of states.11 Rivers provide for drinking water, irrigation water, sanitation water, energy and food and, through its capacity as a transport road, it enables countries to have access to distant markets. Yet, since transboundary river basins often lack an international legal framework, a fair distribution of these resources is not a matter of course.12

8

9 10

11

12

N. Götz, ‘Epilogue: The “Alpine system”’, in N. Götz and H. Haggrén (eds.), Regional Cooperation and International Organizations: Transnational alignment and the Nordic States (Oxon/New York: Routledge, 2009), 248–60, 252. Online etymology dictionary, www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=rival (accessed 9 July 2016). Specifically P.H. Gleick, ‘Water and conflict: fresh water resources and international security’, International Security, 18:1 (1993), 79–112; A.T. Wolf, ‘Conflict and cooperation along international waterways’, Water policy, 1:2 (1998), 251–65; M. Zeitoun and N. Mirumachi, ‘Transboundary water interaction I: reconsidering conflict and cooperation’, International environmental agreements, 8 (2008), 297–316; B. Zala, ‘The strategical dimensions of water. From national security to sustainable security’, in Bruce Lankford et al. (eds.), Water Security: Principles, Perspectives and Practices (New York/London: Routledge, 2013), 273–88. The issue of water distribution is a problem that also occupies international organisations such as the UN: ‘Ban Ki-moon warns that water shortages are increasingly driving conflicts’, UN News Centre, 6 February 2008, www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=25527#.Va44E_ mqrNt (accessed 21 July 2015). Wolf, ‘Conflict and cooperation’, 252–3.

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This chapter adds to the existing historical debate on the rebuilding of the European order after 1815 by focusing on the contribution of economic cooperation to European security. It will investigate whether the declaration of the principle of freedom of navigation of international rivers and the establishment of the CCNR during Vienna can be regarded as part of a collective security effort. It first briefly examines the importance contemporary liberal theories attached to the principle of free navigation for fostering international peace and security. It also looks how these theories transformed into practice during the French Revolution. Then the institutional form of the CCNR will be explained, partly as a result of its practical antecedents during the French Revolution. In the third section the security interests of the involved actors will be analysed. Here it will be shown that the collective European security interest, as understood by the major powers Great Britain, Russia, Austria, Prussia and France, often conflicted with the existing national security interests as perceived by the separate nation states, in particular those of the riparian states along the Rhine. Finally, it will be shown how these interests converged in a form of international institutional cooperation that stood at the beginning of a Rhine regime that still secures free navigation on one of the most important European rivers today. The Principle of Freedom of Navigation on International Rivers before the Congress of Vienna The principle of freedom of navigation found its ideological origins in the liberal principles of revolutionary France. During the Revolution the French government publicly rejected the national appropriation of shared rivers such as the Scheldt, the Meuse and the Rhine. It appealed to natural law and regarded excessive toll systems, forced staple markets, shipping monopolies and other privileges a vestige of the feudalistic past. In 1792, after it had occupied the Austrian Netherlands, France introduced the principle of freedom of navigation and laid the foundations for the application of international river law in the Scheldt decree.13 The decree forbade ‘the right of occupying the channel of a river, to the exclusion of others’ and promised the Belgians to take every measure necessary to re-establish the freedom of navigation on both the Meuse and the Scheldt. It was the first time in modern history that the principle of free navigation was legitimised with an appeal to natural right. This was remarkable because it meant that an international river was regarded as collective property of all riparian states and that the authority of the natural right should exceed the authority of international agreements. 13

M. de Decker, Europees Internationaal Rivierenrecht (Antwerp/Apeldoorn: Maklu, 2015), 111–29.

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Revolutionary France reiterated the seventeenth-century legal theorist Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) who also understood the sovereign rights to be subordinated to natural law. Grotius advocated free international navigation for all who legitimately required free passage. Free passage was, according to him, legitimate in cases of migration and commerce, or even to wage just wars.14 On 23 November 1792 two French gunships arrived in Antwerp to invigorate their appeals to natural right and imposed the decree by force.15 The Brits viewed the appeals to natural law and the rights of man in the Scheldt’s decree with suspicion. In their eyes, France was not establishing liberty and overthrowing tyranny by opening the Scheldt, it simply acquired access to a seaport that would have high strategic value in a possible future confrontation with England. However, a combined British–Dutch military intervention did not change the course of events and, when the Netherlands finally capitulated in 1795, the principle of freedom of navigation on European rivers was officially promulgated for the first time in the Treaty of The Hague.16 Despite the British mistrust, the principle of freedom of navigation did resonate with the increasingly popular ideology of economic liberalism as proclaimed by Adam Smith.17 In his most famous work, The Wealth of Nations, Smith insisted on the abolishment of monopolies and other restraints on the transportation of goods.18 Smith believed that growing commerce contributed to the improvement of the country. Wherever it could prosper ‘commerce and manufactures gradually introduced order and good government, and with them the liberty and security of individuals, among the inhabitants of the country, who had before lived almost in a continual state of war with their neighbours and of servile dependency upon their superiors’.19 The other way around, Smith also believed that order and tranquillity contributed to increasing commerce: ‘[i]n all countries where there is tolerable security, every man of common understanding will endeavour to employ whatever stock he can command in procuring either present enjoyment or future profit.’20

14

15 16 17 18

19

De Decker, Europees Internationaal Rivierenrecht, 373–5. De Decker mentions that Thomas Jefferson also appealed to natural law in his instructions of 1792 that established the freedom of navigation on the Mississippi. In the case of international navigation, Von Pufendorf and De Vattel on the other hand favoured the property rights of the individual riparian states over natural law. Lloyd’s Evening Post, 30 November 1792, 8. De Decker, Europees internationaal rivierenrecht, 116–8. Earlier examples of economic liberalists writing on the relation between trade and peace are the French philosophers Montesquieu and Jean-Francois Melon. R.H. Campbell and A.S. Skinner (eds.), An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations: The Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, vol.II (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 637. 20 Ibid., 412. Ibid., 284–5.

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Smith used the term security here both to indicate the environment in which commerce can develop and to indicate the societal consequence of welldeveloped commerce. Now, even though Smith’s reasoning is not clear when it comes to cause and effect, it is evident that he equated security, or the sense of security, with personal freedom, and personal freedom depended on order and good government. Smith particularly advocated for a separation of the administration of justice from the executive power, as: ‘[t]he persons entrusted with the great interests of the state may, even without any corrupt views, sometimes imagine it necessary to sacrifice to those interests the rights of a private man.’21 The word safety, or security (sûreté), used in relation with commerce and navigation, was at the time closely connected to the abovementioned notion of liberty. Trade security did not necessarily mean that trading was safe. Trade is inherently connected to competition and therefore to insecurity.22 Trade security (also along the Rhine) meant that traders and skippers were treated equally and consistently and therefore could more or less expect what the circumstances were on this river, which allowed them to anticipate on being unharmed in the future. Accordingly, trade security is much connected to the notion of predictability. It is doubtful whether Smith himself actually saw increasing economic connections between peoples as a pacifying force within the international realm.23 Whereas theoretically this might be the case, in practice Smith saw that economic interests could not fully restrain the passions of men, nor of nations. Within nation states the social institution of the market itself and supporting public institutions might have guided men’s passions towards virtue. However, considering the mercantilist spirit of his times, Smith was pessimistic about the establishment of institutions in the international realm: ‘[c]ommerce, which ought naturally to be, among nations, as among individuals, a bond of union and friendship, has become the most fertile source of discord and animosity.’24 International affairs would always be driven by ‘the skill of that insidious and crafty animal, vulgarly called a statesman or politician, whose councils are directed by the momentary fluctuations of affairs’.25 Smith did not fail to observe that also international river transportation depended on the whims of rulers: 21 22 23

24

Ibid., 722. B. Buzan, O. Wæver and J. de Wilde, Security: A New Framework for Analysis (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1998), 95. Especially A. Walter, Adam Smith and the Liberal Tradition in International Relations (London: LSE Research Online, 1996), 2–34, http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/archive/00000748 (accessed 4 August 2016). Other authors do think that Smith considered liberalisation of international trade as a factor for peace and development. See F. Coulomb, ‘Adam Smith: A defence economist’, Defence and peace economics, 9:3 (1998), 299–316, 313–4. Walter regards these thoughts as a projection of nineteenth century ideas onto Smith’s works. Walter, Adam Smith, 30. 25 Campbell and Skinner, An inquiry, 496. Ibid., 468.

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‘The commerce besides which any nation can carry on by means of a river [. . .] which runs into another territory before it reaches the sea, can never be very considerable; because it is always in the power of the nations who possess that other territory to obstruct the communication between the upper country and the sea.’26 It was this kind of arbitrariness that Smith equalled with insecurity that resulted in commercial lethargy. In the course of the French Revolution other thinkers came to a more optimistic conclusion when it came to the pacifying qualities of free international commerce. The arguments they used are expressions of the ‘doux commerce thesis’, first developed by Montesquieu (1689–1755).27 Kant (1724–1804) concluded in Project for a Perpetual Peace that: ‘[i]t is the spirit of commerce that sooner or later takes hold of every nation, and is incompatible with war.’28 Expanding trade relations, so Kant believed, increased interdependence among nations, as it created a basis for the ‘interest in the security of peaceful relations through mutual gain.’29 Likewise, the British-American philosopher and revolutionary Thomas Paine (1737–1809) noted in a chapter called ‘Ways and means of improving the condition of Europe’ that free international commerce would simply ‘extirpate the system of war’30 and could ‘unite mankind by rendering nations, as well as individuals, useful to each other’.31 International trade was not to be understood as a zero-sum game. It provided prosperity for all trading nations, as there was no cheaper way (not even by waging war) to procure onself with the required materials for manufacturing and commerce. On the one hand Paine observed that peace enabled commerce to take its natural course and prosper, but on the other hand he also believed that prospering commerce reinforced peace among nations. Quite explicitly he seems to believe that free commerce would automatically result in a rightful distribution of wealth among the nations when he writes: ‘[t]he great support of commerce consists in the balance being a level of benefits among all nations.’32 Sooner or later, Paine believed, the present anarchic interstate system in Europe would be substituted by a more liberal system.

26 27 28

29

30 31

Ibid., 36; De Decker, Europees internationaal rivierenrecht, 103. See also A.O. Hirschman, ‘Rival interpretations of market society: civilizing, destructive, or feeble?’, Journal of Economic Literature, 20:4 (1982), 1463–84. ‘Es ist der Handelsgeist, der mit dem Kriege nicht zusammen bestehen kann, und der früher oder später sich jedes Volks bemächtigt’, I. Kant, Zum ewigen Frieden. Ein philosophischer Entwurf (Königsberg: Friedrich Niolovius, 1795), 64. As cited by J. Habermas, ‘Kant’s idea of perpetual peace with the benefit of 200 years’ hindsight’, in K. Baynes and M. Lutz-Bachmann (eds.), Perpetual Peace: Essays on Kant’s Cosmopolitan Idea (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 113–54, 121. P.S. Foner, The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine (New York: The Citadel Press, 1945), 400–4. 32 Foner, Thomas Paine, 400. Ibid., 402.

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‘An army of principles will penetrate; where an army of soldiers cannot: it is neither the Rhine, the Channel, nor the ocean that can arrest its progress.’33 Despite the natural glamour that Paine attributed to the liberal principles, it was French soldiers that imposed them on the German-Franco Rhine by force. One year after the enforced territorial and political restructuring of the Holy Roman Empire in 1803, France and the Empire signed the Rhine Octroi Convention that imposed a complete reorganisation of the toll system on the ‘conventional Rhine’, which was the part from the Swiss until the Dutch border. For decades Rhine commerce had suffered from the large number of tolls, shipping monopolies and local privileges of cities and sovereigns.34 Navigating the Rhine not only had become expensive; more than anything else it had become so slow and unpredictable, that trade patterns diverted to land roads instead. The Rhine Octroi Convention entailed a far-reaching simplification of the toll system. The number of toll stations was reduced from thirty to twelve, and tariffs were fixed. In addition, it eliminated the historical ‘rights of staple’ of Mainz and Cologne that compelled all passing merchants to unload and offer their commodities for sale. The German and the French riparian states were obligated to keep the towpaths on their territories in good conditions and an independent police force supervised the navigation on the Rhine. Furthermore, two juridical bodies, a permanent commission consisting of the Director-General supported by two inspectors and an annually convening court of appeal, settled disputes regarding levies and police regulations. Finally, and most revolutionary, the French government and the Archchancellor established an independent and neutral Central Octroi Administration, with its seat in Mainz, that supervised toll collection and the navigability of the river and issued regulations that were legally binding for all. Quickly the advantages of the system became clear as Rhine trade was rising, at least until Napoleon installed the Continental System and international trade plummeted.35 In 1810, after the annexation of the Netherlands by the French and the transfer of the German octroi rights to Napoleon, the Rhine became a domestic river. For several years, its entire course was subject to one national 33 34

35

Ibid., 622. R.M. Spaulding, ‘Changing patterns of Rhine commerce in the era of French hegemony, 1793–1813’, VSWG/ Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, 100:4 (2013), 413–31, 414; Spaulding, ‘Anarchy, hegemony, cooperation’, 457–64. Spaulding, ‘Anarchy, hegemony, cooperation’, 4–7; Spaulding, ‘Rhine river commerce and the continental system’, in J. Joor and K.B. Aaslestad (eds.), Revisiting Napoleon’s Continental System: Local, Regional and European Experiences (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 114–32; Centrale commissie voor de Rijnvaart (CCR), 200 jaar geschiedenis 1815–2015 (Centrale Commissie voor de Rijnvaart, 2015), 27–35; C. Looz-Corswarem, ‘Der Rhein als Verkehrsweg im 18. Jahrhundert’, in C. Looz-Corswaren and G. Mölich (eds.), Der Rhein als Verkehrsweg: Politik, Recht und Wirtschaft seit dem 18. Jahrhundert (Bottrop: Pomp, 2007), 13–60, 50–5; De Decker, Europees internationaal rivierenrecht, 122–8.

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administration. However, after Napoleon’s defeat at Leipzig in 1813, the Franco-German part of the river was placed under German authority and the Rhine Octroi was restored. From the same year the Dutch part of the Rhine fell under the authority of the new sovereign ruler of the Netherlands: Willem I. One of his first political acts was reintroducing the old Rhine tolls. Local taxes also returned in several German regions, as did the staple rights in Mainz and Cologne. Before the start of the Congress in Vienna, the Rhine regime was on the brink of falling back in the anarchic constellation of pre-revolutionary Europe.36 International Cooperation and the Institutional Framework of the Central Commission To prevent North-Western Europe from losing its most viable economic artery, the European powers adopted the principle of freedom of navigation for the Rhine after Napoleon’s defeat in 1814. The Treaty of Paris determined that at the following Congress in Vienna, the European powers should decide how this was to be regulated and whether the principle could be extended to other European rivers as well. For this matter the European powers installed a special committee for the duration of the Congress that occupied itself with the question of free navigation on international rivers.37 On 2 February 1815 the British delegate the Earl of Clancarty received the representatives of France, Austria and Prussia and started deliberations in this temporary committee. Instantly it was decided that the delegates of all riparian states should join the discussion. On 24 March, after twelve sessions, the committee finished its work and submitted its stipulations to the Congress for approval. On 9 June the general stipulations were integrally incorporated in the Final Act and signed by the plenipotentiaries of the eight high powers. An additional thirty-two river clauses were included in the annexes.38 In this document the powers declared that ‘those whose states are separated or crossed by the same navigable river, engage to regulate, by common consent, all that regards its navigation’. Fundamental for these regulations was the principle of freedom of navigation. For the Rhine it was decided that navigation could not be prohibited to anyone from the point where the river became navigable to the sea, provided that the skippers respected the safety 36

37 38

Klemann, ‘The Central Commission for the Navigation on the Rhine, 1815–1914’, 1–4; J.L. Wolterbeek, Proeve eener geschiedenis van de scheepvaartwetgeving op den Rijn (Amsterdam: Frederik Muller, 1854), 39–58. The so-called Congress Commission für die Freiheit der Fluß Schiffahrt. De Decker, Europees internationaal rivierenrecht, 132–5. See for the Final Act T.C. Hansard, The Parliamentary Debates from the Year 1803 to the Present Time, vol.XXXII (London, 1816), 71–113.

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regulations. Existing legal and administrative obstructions to navigation were abolished, whereas riparian states committed themselves to remove all natural obstacles. The amount of toll stations was to be reduced and the level of tolls should not infringe commerce. Furthermore, tolls could only increase with the common approval of all riparian states. Shipping monopolies, the rights of staple and forced transhipments were abolished. A new Central Commission would secure the principle of freedom of navigation for the Rhine and would set the institutional example for other river regimes. The Central Commission for the Navigation of the Rhine would become the only official platform of communication between the riparian states concerning all matters regarding Rhine navigation. Furthermore, it was entrusted with drafting and enforcing common regulations that would go beyond the general guidelines for Rhine shipping and commerce as set by the additional river stipulations in the Final Act of Vienna. Until this Commission would issue the definitive arrangements, the Octroi Convention would remain in force. Finally, it operated as a court of appeal for skippers and traders in disputes concerning toll collection or policing.39 The Commission consisted of the representatives of the seven riparian states and should function as a periodical diplomatic conference that convened once or twice a year. It would take decisions by majority, in which each vote counted equally.40 Each delegate was considered an agent of a riparian state charged with the task to cooperate for the common interest. Furthermore, as a permanent authority, one chief inspector and three sub-inspectors were to be elected for life by the commissioners. These inspectors, constituting the executive administration, were to be installed to monitor the enforcement of the regulations. They would also function as contact persons for merchants and skippers when the Commission was on leave. Finally, the Chief Inspector was to provide the Commission with all the necessary information and counsel to maintain or improve the navigability of the Rhine. Also for that reason the Commission was to publish an annual report with detailed information on the state of Rhine navigation. Both the Commission and the chief inspector would reside in Mainz.41 Clearly, the Powers in Vienna had taken the Rhine Octroi Convention and the Central Octroi Administration as points of departure. However, the institutional setup of the new Central Commission was not entirely the same. When 39 40 41

De Decker, Europees internationaal rivierenrecht, 135–9; Spaulding, ‘Anarchy, hegemony, cooperation’, 11. These riparian states were Prussia, the Netherlands, France, Baden, Hessen-Darmstadt, Bavaria and Nassau. Annex 16B of the Final Act, in Zentral-Kommission für die Rheinschiffahrt, Rheinurkunden. Sammlung zwischenstaatlicher Vereinbarungen, landesrechtlicher Ausführungsverortnungen und sonstiger wichtiger Urkunden über die Rheinschiffahrt seit 1803, 1803–1860, vol.I (The Hague/München/Leipzig: Nijhoff and Duncker&Humblot, 1918), 43–50.

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it comes to the jurisdictional function of the Central Commission one sees a slight dismantling of the existing centralised authority. The international court on Rhine navigation as it existed during the octroi was terminated. Instead, the CCNR would function as a court of appeal. Nonetheless, local courts were required to take an oath in which they accepted that the freedom and uniformity of navigation were the most important principles in the jurisdiction of Rhine navigation. Furthermore, the resulting jurisprudence was immediately applicable to the entire Rhine. Finally, as a court of appeal the CCNR decided on the basis of majority. This means that verdicts were binding, also for states that theoretically might not agree with the decision.42 Also as an administrative body drafting and enforcing common regulations for Rhine commerce and navigation, the authority of the CCNR decreased in comparison with the Octroi Administration. The CCNR was not responsible for the levying of tolls, nor had it a say in the maintenance of the riverbed. It did carry out governmental tasks in the sense that it was responsible for governing the Rhine and that it was charged, for example, with drafting uniform police regulations for the entire river. On top of that the Commission was authorised to decide by majority. Nevertheless, the decisions taken in the Commission would not be binding for those states whose commissioner had not agreed upon them. Consequently, decisions were not implemented in member states without the approval of national institutions. The European declaration of the principle of freedom of navigation in Paris, its re-establishment during Vienna and the establishment of this Central Commission illustrate the powers’ desire not to restore the European status quo ante after Napoleon’s downfall. Freedom of Navigation as a European Security Interest? ‘Paris is become [sic] the Parent of [. . .] Freedom of Navigation’, the British representative lord Clancarty wrote in a memo to the Foreign Office during the Congress of Vienna in February 1815. Clearly he thought of it as a European principle. He wrote it was only just that the signatories of the Treaty of Paris ‘should have the power of fostering and protecting its own offspring from being destroyed by the mistaken cupidity of others’.43 Rather than as a matter exclusively reserved for the riparian states, he understood the protection of the principle of freedom of navigation as a task for the four major European 42

43

G. Thiemeyer and I. Tölle, ‘Supranationalita¨t im 19. Jahrhundert? Die Beispiele der Zentralkommission für die Rheinschiffahrt und des Octroivertrages 1804–1851’, Journal of European Integration History, 17:2 (2011), 177–96, 185. ‘Observations (by Clancarty) on the project presented by the Duke de Dalberg, February 1815’, The National Archives Kew (TNA), Commissioners. statistics, Switzerland, military, Italy, precedence, rivers, redaction. Vienna, Foreign Office Files (FO) 139/11.

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powers and, interestingly, also France.44 To grasp to what extent these European powers understood the principle of freedom of navigation as a European security issue that was worth to impose by force, it seems necessary to turn back to the original peace treaty of May 1814. In the Treaty of Paris the European powers decreed that, first, freedom of navigation on the Rhine should contribute to increasing commerce for all nations. And second, that the future Congress in Vienna should examine and determine how the principle of free navigation could also be extended to other European rivers with a view to ‘facilitate the communications between nations, and continually to render them less strangers to each other’.45 Both phrases appear to indicate that the European powers understood the facilitation of increasing economic connections between peoples as a further pacifying force in the international realm. The second phrase mostly seems to lure with Kant and Paine’s free trade theories on peace. It resonated with Paine’s belief in the soothing force of intensified international communication during which countries lost ‘the awkwardness of strangers, and the moroseness of suspicion’, and learned ‘to know and understand each other’.46 Moreover, increased commerce would, theoretically, allow a further division of labour on an international scale. When nations would depend on international trade, it would make economic sense to prevent war. Not only an increased mutual understanding, but also the very interest of keeping on good terms with each other for the sake of commerce was at stake. Mostly, however, it is the first phrase that points at the significance of free navigation for peace and security. In the years around the French Revolution the liberal idea gained ground that international commerce yields economic prosperity for all involved nations. Already from their deliberations during the meetings in Chaumont in March 1814, it appears that the allies regarded prosperity as a precondition for (political) stability. An example that is of importance here regarded the Netherlands. The Allies wanted to enlarge the Dutch territory with the Belgian provinces and bring it political independence under the house of Orange. This should make it a rather strong buffer state that would prevent new outbreaks of aggression from its southern neighbour and would secure peace in Europe. However, in order to assure stability and independence within this new state the Allies also deemed it necessary to 44 45

46

Also Sweden, Portugal and Sweden signed the Treaty of Paris, but Clancarty wrote in the side line of the memo that these countries could be left out in decisions regarding the Rhine. E. Baines, History of the Wars of the French Revolution, from the Breaking Out of the War, in 1792, to the Restoration of a General Peace, in 1815 (Philadelphia: McCarthy&Davis, 1819), 52–9. T. Paine, A Letter Addressed to the Abbe Raynal: On the Affairs of North-America. In which the Mistakes in the Abbe’s Account of the Revolution of America are Corrected and Cleared Up (Philadelphia/London: C. Dilly reprint, 1783), 42.

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accommodate the Belgian deputies. By imposing three conditions for the incorporation, they guaranteed them ‘the security of these provinces’. The first of these conditions was that the Belgians could maintain their religion; second, that the Belgians would not bear the costs of the Dutch national debt;47 and third, that Belgian commerce would be protected ‘against any obstacle contrary to reason and the nature of its position’.48 The outcome of this line of reasoning was a complete liberalisation of the navigation on the Scheldt.49 The opening of the Scheldt was, according to the British Foreign Secretary Castlereagh (1769–1822), a conditio sine qua non for the incorporation of Belgium in the Netherlands as ‘[u]pon no rational principle ought such a noble river as the Scheldt to be shut to the blessings of commerce.’50 Already well before the Treaty of Paris was concluded, it was clear that the principle of freedom of navigation would also be applied to the Rhine. In April the ex-General Director of the Central Octroi Administration, Johann Joseph Eichhoff (1762–1827), had written the Prussian chancellor Karl August von Hardenberg (1750–1822) about the Rhine. In his effort to get the Octroi regime re-established, including his own position, Eichhoff logically referred to the Prussian chancellor, as he knew that with the newly claimed territories Prussia would become an important power along the Rhine. In his letter Eichhoff described the period before 1804 as a time of arbitrariness and confusion. There were no fixed tariffs, no common rules of measuring ships, no standardised police regulations, as all (local) authorities had their own, self-interested guidelines without much taking notice of those of their neighbours. ‘In short, that what was called Rhine police, in fact was nothing but a bizarre and disgraceful assemblage of the former feudal anarchy’, Eichhoff concluded. Both for the sake of commerce and of toll revenues, Eichhoff made clear, it was necessary that the 1804 Octroi was quickly re-established.51 One month earlier during the meetings in Chaumont, the Prussian statesman and administrator of the liberated territories Heinrich Friedrich Karl vom und zum Stein (1757–1831) checked with Hardenberg whether Rhine tolls also could be used by the allied powers as an extra source of income.52 Moreover, he insisted on a quick arrangement with the Dutch sovereign ‘to encourage him to adopt a corresponding toll system on the lower Rhine’.53 47 48 49 50 51

52 53

‘Memo on the incorporation of Belgium in the Netherlands, 25 May 1814’, TNA, FO37/70. ‘Note verbale (by the allies) adressée aux deputes Belges, 14 March 1814’, TNA, FO92/4. ‘Memo on the incorporation of Belgium in the Netherlands, 25 May 1814’, TNA, FO37/70. ‘Castlereagh to Clancarty, 16 May 1814’, TNA, FO37/70. ‘Eichhoff to Hardenberg, Paris 18 April 1814’, Geheimes Staatsarchiv preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin (GStA-PK). III. Hauptabteilung (HA) Ministerium des Auswärtigen (MdA) no.1367. Quote from the extensive undated memoir in the annex: ‘Eichhoff, Considérations sur l’Octroi de navigation ou Rhin’. Also: Spaulding, ‘Professional Agency’. ‘Stein to Hardenberg, Chaumont 13 March 1814’, GStA-PK, III.HA MdA, no.1367.

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The articles on the freedom of Rhine navigation and the freedom of navigation on international rivers as such were fully completed already in one of the earlier drafts of the Paris Peace Treaty. So it seems that the European powers needed little time to conclude on these stipulations.54 As the French revolutionaries did before, professional agents like Eichhoff, but no less the British agents in Paris, justified their liberal objectives with an appeal to reason and common law as structuring principles of the new European order. One of the objectives they were aiming at was providing the people of Europe a safe environment in which they were enabled to pursue their interests. Subjects of whatever state should be assured to enjoy the benefits of their own industriousness. The future Congress in Vienna was to result in ‘a system of a real and sustainable equilibrium in Europe’.55 And, in the spirit of Thomas Paine, a natural distribution of wealth and a dense international network of interdependencies might, like the territorial rearrangements, contribute to this European equilibrium. Simultaneously, increasing commerce and the re-establishment of a tax administration enabled the European powers to finance this new order. National Security Interests The Prussian delegates. however, were well aware that without a similar system on the Dutch parts of the Rhine, the liberalisation of Rhine navigation would be unthinkable. The Dutch controlled the estuary and without their cooperation a renewed regime on the conventional Rhine would bring little benefit to commerce. In fact, if the Netherlands would continue levying tolls on their part of the Rhine, free navigation on the German parts would merely lead to major disadvantages for Germany.56 Yet, the Netherlands were not an official participant of the negotiations in Paris, henceforth had not ratified the peace treaty and was never asked about the principle of freedom of navigation on international rivers. In fact, not just for economic reasons, but mostly for concerns of political nature, the Dutch sovereign was at this point not at all enthusiastic about the enforcement of such all-embracing European measures and came into conflict with the peace treaty. A memo by the Dutch government addressed the reason and common lawargument of the Allies rather sneeringly: ‘we hope that, in the spirit of justice that drives them, the Allies will be equally willing to allow to the Provinces of Holland to fully take advantage of their natural position which assures them of

54 55 56

‘Drafts of articles Paris Peace Treaty, mid May 1814’, TNA, FO92/4. Article 11 regards the navigation of the Rhine and other international rivers. ‘Draft of article 6 of the Paris Peace Treaty, mid May 1814, TNA, FO92/4. ‘Friedrich zu Solms-Laubach to Stein, transcript, 28 February 1814’, GStA-PK, III.HA MdA, no.1372.

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good commerce’.57 By controlling the estuaries the Dutch possessed important ports like Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Simultaneously they were able, by blocking the Scheldt, to impede commerce from entering competing ports like Antwerp. The closure of the Scheldt was even ratified by international law. ‘Today,’ the memo goes on, the Allies seem to think that it is something against reason and against common law to see a country profit in its own interest from the means that were provided by nature to impede the commerce of others [. . .]. But is that really the case? Isn’t it the local situation in Denmark that allowed the kingdom to establish a right to toll in the Sond that is recognized by the foreign powers? Was the closure of the Black Sea by the Turks regarded as such a violation of law of nations that the entire Christian world believed it to be its duty to oppose it?

Moreover, neither Austria, nor the other countries on the Danube profited from free commerce until its estuary. ‘And did Prussia ever have, or even demanded, freedom of navigation on [the Dutch part of the Rhine] the Waal?’58 If the Netherlands were ever to give up the closure of the Scheldt, it could reasonably expect some sort of compensation. The Dutch called the Allied demand for free navigation as a matter of natural law into question and challenged the claim of its healing effects for Europe. Instead, they claimed that it was justified for any sovereign state to protect its national advantages, even if these did not align with a collective plan for the new European order. About a year later, during the deliberations in the river committee at the Congress of Vienna in February 1815, the British statesman Clancarty called this kind of promotion of national interest ‘mistaken cupidity’. The Dutch government was still quite ambiguous on the issue of free navigation. International cooperation along the Rhine should not infringe national sovereignty. Simultaneously the Dutch also recognised that when applied to the Rhine, the principle of free navigation could also turn advantageous. The governmental instructions for the Dutch delegate in Vienna, Baron Van Spaen (1756–1841), in fact supported the idea of a uniform and efficient toll system for the entire Rhine that was based on moderate tariffs. This was important for stimulating commerce and navigation, and keeping the Rhine commerce competitive with that on other rivers like the Weser or the Elbe.59 Cooperation could also lead to increased security along the Rhine. Internal correspondence shows that the Netherlands, but also the other riparian states

57 58 59

The document does not mention the author’s name, or its provenance, but the very critical tone regarding the conditions for the incorporation of Belgium reveals its Dutch origin. ‘Memo on the incorporation of Belgium in the Netherlands, 25 May 1814’, TNA, FO 37/70. ‘Van Nagell, Instructions for the Dutch representatives in Vienna, Van Spaen and Von Gagern, Brussels 10 August 1814’, National Archives The Hague (NL-HaNA), Gezantschap Oostenrijk tot 1842, 2.05.10.10, inv.no.49.

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connected the word safety, or security (sûreté) to the notion of predictability when applied to commerce, navigation and even tax collection. Exemplary for this line of thought is the explanation by the Dutch minister of Economic Affairs, Johannes Goldberg (1763–1828), of the importance of well-maintained towpaths. As a result of good towpaths skippers and merchants were enabled to determine the arrival time of their cargo. Goldberg wrote: ‘[t]his security is of the utmost importance for commerce. It is only for this reason that one prefers the other, much more expensive, land route over water shipments.’60 Trade security along the Rhine meant that traders and skippers could more or less expect what the circumstances were on this river, and therefore could anticipate on being unharmed in the future. The Netherlands were not alone in understanding trade security on the Rhine a matter of great national interest. Also France sent its delegate to Vienna with the instruction to secure low tariffs. ‘With free navigation on the Rhine and the Scheldt France will acquire the advantages that it also enjoyed when it controlled the countries through which these rivers flowed’, but now without bearing the costs of the occupation.61 For the first meeting of the special committee on river navigation the French delegate had written a proposal that mentioned that limiting the number of toll stations, simplifying the toll collection and abolishing the former local privileges were indispensable for ‘the safety of commerce and the promptness of the transports’.62 Prussia was greatly interested in the introduction of a moderate toll system as it would increase commerce and navigation and would allow its new territories along the Rhine to connect with distant markets. For the Prussian government this was more important than maintaining the old privileges of the city of Cologne.63 The representative of Baden saw it as the mission of a new Rhine regime to provide skippers and merchants with all the necessary means to ‘inspire their confidence’.64 In fact, the riparian states agreed that increased commerce was in the interest of all. Whereas all riparian states had an equal interest in trade security, no one was prepared to accept the most liberal form of free navigation as demanded by the representative of Great Britain. By pointing at the Paris Treaty, but mostly with the aim of securing the interests of his own nation, Clancarty insisted on the opening of the Rhine for trade and navigation for all nations. The other 60 61 62

63 64

‘Advies Goldberg, de Staats Raad Dep. Koophandel en Koloniën, The Hague 20 May 1815’, NL-HaNA, BuZa 1813–1870, 2.05.01, inv.no.58. Cited in CCR, 200 jaar geschiedenis, 39. ‘par M. Eichhoff, n.d.’, GStA-PK, III.HA MdA, no.1372. This is a draft project for the arrangement of navigation on international rivers by Duke de Dalberg. In the final version the phrase ‘sûreté du commerce’ dropped out. See Klüber, Acten, 17. H.A.M. Klemann and J. Schenk, ‘Competition in the Rhine delta: waterways, railways and ports, 1870–1913’, Economic History Review, 66:3 (2013), 826–47, 828. J.L. Klüber (ed.), Acten des wiener Congresses in den Jahren 1814 und 1815, vol.III (Erlangen: J.J. Palm und Ernst Enke, 1815), 93.

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representatives did not want to decide on such a measure, as it would not be in the spirit of reciprocity to open Rhine navigation for non-riparian states. The special congress committee on river navigation determined that only commerce on the Rhine would be free to merchants of every nation, whereas navigation would be reserved to the skippers of the riparian states. Furthermore it was decided that the maintenance of the towpaths, and the inning of the tolls should be administered by each individual riparian state.65 The riparian states promoted their individual, and their common, interests so strongly that Clancarty also had to let go the idea of a mandatory European approval by the Paris Treaty guarantors for future modifications of important matters like tariff regulations.66 The riparian states would decide on all matters regarding commerce and navigation on the Rhine. However, there was great disagreement among the riparian states about the question how to enforce the liberal principles on the Rhine. In the first two meetings of the special congress committee both France and Prussia presented an all-embracing plan for the new Rhine regime. Both advocated a more or less adapted version of the Octroi regime, which would be controlled by a permanent administrative body.67 The French delegate, the Duke of Dalberg (1773–1833), clearly stated that ‘a Central Commission is necessary to continually watch over the exact execution of the agreed stipulations for the safety and the liberty of Rhine navigation’.68 This permanent commission should, according to Dalberg, control the river police and was to administer the toll system. Furthermore, it should consist of representatives of all riparian states that would have an equal vote, and would act on behalf and under the authority of the respective national governments. This French proposition was complemented by a proposal of the Prussian delegate Baron von Humboldt (1767–1835). He favoured a permanent central administration that was enabled to act decisively. Therefore, Humboldt suggested a commission with a limited number of members in which the weight of each vote would be related to the length of the riverbanks that the member state controlled. Clearly this proposal defended well the Prussian interests, as it was this country that had received extended territories along the Rhine during the Congress. The commission should, according to Humboldt, also function as a court of second appeal, while local courts would be installed at each toll office.

65 66

67 68

CCR, 200 jaar geschiedenis, 42. During the first committee meetings Clancarty still believed in the need of such a European approval. ‘Observations (by Clancarty) on the project presented by H.E. the Duke de Dalberg, February 1815’, TNA, FO139/11. Eysinga, Die Zentralkommission für die Rheinschiffahrt, 3–9. Klüber, Acten, 97. The delegate used the words ‘sûreté et la liberté de la navigation du Rhin.’

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The riparian states, except Prussia and to some extent France, showed most reservations however, when it came to the exact configuration of the new Central Commission. They understood such an administration not only as a tool to secure the freedom of navigation on the Rhine,69 but also as a possible threat to their national sovereignty.The most outspoken in this regard was the representative of Baden, Baron von Berckheim (1774–1849). After more than twenty years of French dominance he was tired of the ‘fake authorities’ that were in their executive power merely tools of powerful states taking advantage of the weaker ones. ‘It would be [. . .] extremely useless, and even dangerous, to give such an administration more powers [. . .], because a state, chastised by all other fellow states, that can not fulfil one of the assumed duties, would neither allow, if it has bayonets, that domestic law is determined by a foreign authority.’70 This was a major argument for the introduction of a more modest central authority, as also the other smaller riparian states were wary for a strong executive body. The Dutch representative Baron van Spaen wrote to his government straight after this meeting: I was too optimistic when I told you in my last letter that we were close to an overall agreement. [. . .] [only] yesterday, after long debates it has been decided to install a Central Commission that won’t be permanent and will have the authority of an advisory body and can be a court of final appeal, rather than an executive body, which, according to the views put forward, appeared to be too dangerous.71

The powers in Vienna had been rather cautious in the design of the institutional framework of the Commission. Remarkably, when it comes to the principle of free navigation the European Powers no longer appeal to natural law in the Final Act. The negotiations had made clear that international cooperation was possible, as long as the sovereignty of each riparian state was guaranteed. Freedom of navigation was not considered a natural right, but an act of goodwill by each individual riparian state.72 Nonetheless, the level of international cooperation in the Commission was unprecedented and it incorporated responsibilities that earlier mostly belonged to states. The CCNR was a unique platform for pluriformal deliberations between riparian states. From now on conflicts regarding Rhine navigation and commerce could be contained, as the way to diplomatic talks was always open. The Central Commission, the only intergovernmental organisation of Europe for a long time to come, is a perfect example of a venue that

69 71 72

70 Ibid., 41. Ibid., 96. ‘Van Spaen to Van Nagell, 25 February 1815’, NL-HaNA, Gezantschap Oostenrijk tot 1842, 2.05.10.10, inv.no.18. De Decker, Europees internationaal rivierenrecht, 375–7.

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international relations theorist Jennifer Mitzen calls ‘forum talks’.73 The Central Commission was designed to foster increasing support and legitimacy for international measures and regulations regarding trade and navigation on the Rhine within the riparian states. Simultaneously, each member would have an equal say and decisions would only be implemented after governmental approval. This meant the participating states would not bear an infringement of their sovereignty. Finally, the congress decided that the principle of freedom of navigation was to be applicable to all European rivers. The CCNR should serve as a model for transboundary river regimes elsewhere. Conclusion The declaration of the principle of freedom of navigation of international rivers and the establishment of the CCNR during Vienna can be regarded as part of a collective security effort at three levels. At the European level the major powers appealed to reason and common law with the aim of providing the people of Europe a safe environment in which they could pursue their commercial interests. From the Treaty of Paris one can conclude that the European powers believed that a natural distribution of wealth and a dense international network of economic interdependencies might contribute to a European equilibrium. Simultaneously, increasing prosperity and to a lesser extent the re-establishment of tax administrations contributed to the financing of the new European order. It seems that the European powers understood, like Adam Smith, the relation between economic cooperation and the practice of peacebuilding as a dialectical relationship: each one following out of the other. On the collective level, the CCNR substantially contributed to trade security by enabling the riparian states to improve speediness and predictability of their transactions. Trade security also benefited the individual states, thereby enhancing the rewards of creating such a system of collective security effort. With an eye towards these commercial benefits, states were prepared to cooperate, but not to the extent that it would infringe too much upon their national sovereign rights. Especially the smaller riparian states were afraid to be overruled in the Central Commission and therefore only agreed to participate upon the condition of limited authorities for the CCNR. Thus, national security interests 73

J. Mitzen, Power in Concert: The Nineteenth-Century Origins of Global Governance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013). R. Robert Keohane argues: ‘By clustering issues together in the same forums over a long period of time, they help to bring governments into continuing interaction with one another, reducing the incentives to cheat and enhancing the value of reputation’, cited in Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 244–5. See also Chapter 6 by Vick and Chapter 7 by De Graaf in this volume.

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kept the authority of the CCNR in check, while the principle of freedom of navigation was translated and redefined from a natural right into an act of national goodwill. In short, the CCNR enabled riparian states to work together and functioned as a plurilateral diplomatic forum to prevent acts of military aggression from starting, and to mitigate them once they broke out. More research could further clarify how this balancing act of reconciling national prerogatives with collective interests developed into the following decades and how it contributed to a European security culture.

5

From the Balance of Power to a Balance of Diplomacy? Peace and Security in the Vienna Settlement Stella Ghervas* Introduction

The political system of Europe that emerged from the Congress of Vienna proved to be something more than a repetition of political arrangements from the previous century. In spite of the competing interests that existed among the four main powers (Russia, Britain, Austria and Prussia) after the defeat of Napoleon, they were not exclusively driven by territorial ambitions to the detriment of each other. In particular, Tsar Alexander I and his diplomatic delegation showed restraint about the territorial settlement of Poland (whereas a more ambitious character such as Napoleon would certainly have exploited his military advantage).1 In point of fact, the peaceful outcome was attributable to more than the unilateral moderation of one great power: it was in the nature of a conscious dynamic of stabilisation among the monarchs and diplomats who were negotiating the future of Europe. More specifically, those four states started to behave as an inner circle of the European system, finding their interest in acting together in front of the other minor powers and later against popular rebellions. This enduring solidarity is the main feature that distinguishes the order of Vienna from the ‘balance of power’ of the previous century, where the main European states had been permanently split into two camps.2 Nevertheless, the members of that inner * This chapter was written during my fellowship at the Harvard University’s Center for European Studies in 2013–15. I would like to thank the Center for its wonderful support, as well as the faculty, staff and fellow members for an intellectually stimulating stay. Earlier versions were presented at the conference ‘The Power of Peace: New Perspectives on the Congress of Vienna, 1814–1815’ (Harvard University), and at the conference ‘The Congress of Vienna 1814–1815: Making Peace after Global War’ (Columbia University). I am especially grateful to David Armitage, Laurent Franceschetti, William Graham, Patricia Herlihy, George Liber, Ambassador François Pictet and Jean-Jacques Rey for their close reviews of the successive drafts of this chapter. 1 M. Rendall, ‘Defensive realism and the Concert of Europe’, Review of International Studies, 32:3 (2006), 523–40. 2 S. Ghervas, ‘Balance of power vs. perpetual peace: paradigms of European order from Utrecht to Vienna, 1713–1815’, The International History Review, 39:3 (2017), 404–25.

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circle did not always have converging interests; they had to engage in active negotiation in order to maintain their cohesion towards the outside, a situation that I would call a ‘balance of diplomacy’. I will examine here whether this new form of coexistence was a step toward the establishment of a civil society of states based on a social contract (a ‘league’), or rather a novel system of pack hunting by apex predators, with three questions in mind:  Why did the four victors over Napoleon choose to exert so much restraint and to settle territorial matters in Europe as partners rather than foes, and then to work as a close-knit group in the following years? Specifically, why did they come to the rather innovative conclusion that putting up a unified front would be more beneficial than exclusively following their own separate interests? Why did this political configuration not appear before, and why not later?  The second question raises a paradox: why did the innovative attitude of those four great powers in external relations result in internal disorders, and then reactionary policies against their own subjects (censorship of the press, shutdown of parliaments and suppression of popular movements across Europe)?  The third question would be a more widely relevant one – was the noble aim of establishing peace in Europe only a utopian dream, a futile challenge to the gods of war? Or could we discern some workable principle informing it? Balancing Power, from Utrecht to Vienna An immediate observation is that the monarchs, ministers and diplomats who congregated in 1814–15, first in Vienna and later in Paris, had been allied against Napoleon for years. Having fought together on the battlefields and gathered at military or diplomatic meetings, they knew each other well.3 That situation was in stark contrast, notably, to that of Utrecht in 1713 after the War of the Spanish Succession, where the negotiations had been conducted among former foes. It is as if a moral modus operandi had slowly emerged within the circle of the four Allied powers. (The term ‘moral’ is used advisedly, as such a pattern of behaviour was not backed up by a body of international laws, nor institutions as we understand them today, much less was it enforced by a higher agency.) This ‘spirit of Vienna’, born out of the necessity of the war against the French Empire, led to a common understanding and feeling of

3

See A. Zamoyski, Rites of Peace: The Fall of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna (London: Harper Press, 2007), 35–48; M. Jarrett, The Congress of Vienna and Its Legacy: War and Great Power Diplomacy after Napoleon (London: I.B. Tauris, 2013), 72–84.

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solidarity among the leaders and diplomats of the four Allied great powers.4 It also translated into elaborate protocols, of which a visible aspect was the precedence of Russia in military matters (Tsar Alexander I functioned as supreme commander of the coalition forces at the time the colossal battle of Leipzig in October 1813 and later during the French campaign; the Cossacks of the Russian Imperial Guard were, moreover, the first to enter Paris on 31 March 1814); this fact was later enshrined in diplomatic documents.5 The qualification of ‘moral’ applied even more literally to the Treaty of the Holy Alliance signed in September 1815, as that ideological document sought to introduce (albeit with limited success) an overarching principle of international coexistence with a Christian inspiration.6 Despite the intrinsic failings of those lofty rules – chiefly that they did not allow for the expression of popular representation and provided indefinite leeway to the monarchs for governing on their own – the newly adopted modus operandi of the balance of diplomacy was more complex and tenuous than the net sum of the vectors of military force. It might thus be expedient to reassess the models that have been commonly used to describe the new order of Europe during the Congress of Vienna. Three main perspectives seem to dominate the traditional historiography: (1) That it was a new balance of power established after the fall of Napoleon’s empire. Many works on the Congress of Vienna – not least from the classic studies of Henry Kissinger – insist convincingly on the defining role of this factor among the Allied powers, after the defeat of Napoleon.7 (2) That the Vienna 4

5

6

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P.W. Meerts, ‘Diplomatic Negotiation: Essence and Evolution’, unpublished PhD thesis, Leiden University (2014), 187–90; S. Ghervas, ‘Who is In and Who is Out? Inclusion and Exclusion in European Conference Diplomacy, 1815–2015’, in C. Daase and W. Seibel (eds.), Conference Diplomacy and International Order: From the Congress of Vienna to the G7/G8 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming). See V.K. Nadler, Imperator Aleksandr I i ideja Svjaschennogo Sojuza, vol.5 [Emperor Alexander I and the Idea of the Holy Alliance] (Riga: N. Kimmel, 1886–1892), 1–114; J. Hantraye, Les Cosaques aux Champs-Elysées: les occupations étrangères en France après la chute de Napoléon (Paris: Belin, 2005), 217–31; D. Lieven, Russia against Napoleon: The Battle for Europe, 1807 to 1814 (London: Penguin Books, 2009), 494–520; M.V. Leggiere, The Fall of Napoleon. Volume I: The Allied Invasion of France, 1813–1814 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 48–62. Among recent publications, see S. Ghervas, ‘Antidotes to empire: from the Congress system to the European Union’, in J.W. Boyer and B. Molden (eds.), EUtROPEs. The Paradox of European Empire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 49–81; Ibid., ‘La SainteAlliance: un pacte pacifique européen comme antydote à l’Empire’, in S. Aprile et al. (eds.), Europe de papier. Projets européens au XIXe siècle (Lille: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2015), 47–64; A. Brisku, ‘The Holy Alliance as “An Order of Things Conformable to the Interests of Europe and to the Laws of Religion and Humanity”’, in T. Hippler and M. Vec (eds.), Paradoxes of Peace in Nineteenth Century Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 153–69. H. Kissinger, A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace, 1812–22 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957).

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Settlements were a deal between Britain and Russia, the others powers, such as Prussia being relegated to a secondary role in the decision making (as Schroeder has argued).8 (3) Yet these two views seem to clash with a third one, particularly prevalent in French historiography, which portrayed the four powers as a reactionary cartel of kings, intent together on suppressing political rights and national movements.9 There is an incompatibility between these three views: how could the ‘four’ be in a ‘balance of power’ (which presupposes a conflict of interests, open or disguised), and be so perfectly united at the same time in the defence of the interests of their caste? Since each of these views has good arguments for it, it must be that none of the three captures the full spectrum of reality. More recent works, written from a transnational and even a global perspective, have expanded the range of approaches to take cultural and intellectual history into account.10 The resulting picture is more complex and nuanced. Some clarity is required about the notion of ‘balance of power’ itself. The wide range of different and sometimes contradictory definitions available today could create misunderstanding about the sources, especially when representatives of different disciplines (international relations, political science, law, economy, etc.) are called into the discussion. We will focus here on its meaning in the particular context of Europe in 1814–15, for the individual actors who were called to negotiate and sign treaties in the name of the great powers. It is in that specific light that intentions and deeds should be interpreted. It is worth noting that the notion of ‘balance of power’ was far more circumscribed in the past than it is today. The Peace of Utrecht in 1713 was, arguably, the first time that it appeared expressis verbis in a significant multilateral treaty – particularly in the renunciation by the King of Spain of his right to inherit the crown of France. The chief definition of the word ‘balance’ was (and still is according to recent English dictionaries), a weighing scale formed of two pans connected by a beam. Today, however, this meaning has tended to lose importance in favour of another one: stability or equilibrium, as in ‘keeping one’s balance’, or ‘to maintain a balance’.11 It naturally follows that the balance of power was conceived (witness caricatures of the time) as a dynamic equilibrium between two pans of a balance scale. It was variously

8 9 10

11

On this argument, see P.W. Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics, 1763–1848 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). See E. de Waresquiel, L’histoire à rebrousse-poil: les élites, la Restauration, la Révolution (Paris: Fayard, 2005), 2–53. See notably Jarrett, The Congress of Vienna; S. Ghervas, Réinventer la tradition: Alexandre Stourdza et l’Europe de la Sainte-Alliance (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2008); B.E. Vick, The Congress of Vienna: Power and Politics after Napoleon (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014). Ghervas, ‘Balance of Power vs. Perpetual Peace’, 406–8.

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described to have three functions: first, as a tool used by one power to maintain its own security; secondly, as a joint effort by several powers to prevent hegemony by a single power; thirdly, as a collective system to maintain peace in Europe.12 Several British authors (notably David Hume) had subscribed to the theory that the ‘balance of power’ was a necessary measure in the struggle of ‘liberty’ against ‘universal monarchy’.13 It was a topos that the role of England was to hold the balance of power in Europe, implying that it was in its interest to regularly shift its own alliances in order to tip the scales.14 In that context, the notion of ‘balance of power’ was the mainstay of a very definite and elaborate doctrine on how to conduct the foreign affairs of Britain, one that was regularly put in practice after the turn of the eighteenth century (it thus belongs to the first function of the concept). By contrast, the perception of the ‘balance of power’ on the continent was as a static ‘state of affairs’ or a status quo ante. French authors (particularly Abbé de Saint-Pierre and Rousseau) conceived it as a standoff between two military alliances.15 This conception had its roots in the feud between Austria and its allies on one hand, and those who refused the domination of the continent by the House of Habsburg on the other (hence it should be attached to the third function). Either with the British or the continental definition, the application of the notion of ‘balance of power’ to European politics seemed to work well in practice: at the time of War of the Spanish Succession, a pan-European alliance was created against the French Bourbons; the War of Austrian Succession and the Seven Years’ War also pitted two coalitions of comparable magnitude against each other. One century later, after the spectacular first years of the Napoleonic wars, the Allied powers progressively re-established the balance of power against the French Empire, thereby preventing the continent from falling under Napoleon’s tyranny. Indeed, the Treaty of Chaumont of 1 March 1814 – where the Allies committed to pursue their joint war effort and not to engage in a separate peace with

12 13 14

15

B. Arcidiacono, Cinq types de paix: Une histoire des plans de pacification perpétuelle (XVIIe– XXe siècles) (Paris: PUF, 2011), 80–1. D. Hume, ‘Of the Balance of Power’, in ibid., Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, vol.II (1752), essay VII. ‘Whether in the best or worse meaning, the Balance of Power is a passion of the English people’, wrote Voltaire. See Voltaire, ‘Précis du siècle de Louis XV’ (1755), in Œuvres completes de Voltaire, vol.13 (Paris: Hachette, 1900), 38. Ghervas, ‘Balance of Power vs. Perpetual Peace’, 405–6; B. Bernardi, ‘L’idée d’équilibre européen dans le jus gentium des modernes’, Discussions, 4 (2010); G. Braun (ed.), Assecuratio Pacis: Les conceptions françaises de la sûreté et de la garantie de la paix de 1648 à 1815 (Paris: Institut historique allemand de Paris, 2008); S. Ghervas, ‘In the shadow of Utrecht: perpetual peace and international order, 1713–1815’, in A.H.A. Soons (ed.), The 1713 Peace of Utrecht and Its Enduring Effects (Leiden: Brill, 2019).

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France – was aimed, expressis verbis, at re-establishing a ‘just balance of power’ (which fits into the second function).16 In all those cases – it is necessary to insist on this point – the concept of ‘balance of power’ implied an opposition founded primarily on brute force, that is military power. It was certainly admitted that the respective economic capacities of the states played a role, but a secondary one, as a way to fund and sustain the might of the armies or the navies. Should the term ‘balance of power’ seem too vague for a reader of today, then it should be mentally re-qualified here as a balance (scale) holding two military alliances, so as to make better sense out of treaties, newspaper articles and memoirs of the postNapoleonic era. The Turning Point: The Saxon-Polish Crisis and Napoleon’s Return At the end of 1814, Tsar Alexander I was highly concerned about the diplomatic storm that his plans for Poland were raising. The crisis broke out when he manifested his desire to extend the control he already held over Poland to the Grand Duchy of Posen (Poznan) and Galicia, which had been ceded to Prussia and Austria following the partitions of Poland of the late eighteenth century. To compensate King Frederick William III of Prussia for that loss in the East, Alexander offered him as compensation defeated Saxony, along with large cities such as Dresden and Leipzig. That seemed a fair deal, but the two other powers, Britain and Austria, became seriously alarmed about this scheme, which would have moved Russian borders further west and turned Prussia into a Russian ally and a bulwark state for it.17 It seemed that the scenario of a Europe divided in two mutually hostile alliances could repeat itself. On the last day of the year, the Tsar asked Count Nesselrode, his Minister of Foreign Affairs, to address a pressing note to the plenipotentiaries of Austria, England and Prussia that stated: ‘Convinced [. . .] of the immutable principles of the Christian religion common to all, it is on this single foundation of the political order, as well as the social order that the sovereigns, achieving a fraternal amity, will purify their state maxims and will guarantee

16

17

‘Traité d’alliance entre l’Autriche, la Russie, la Grande-Bretagne et la Prusse, conclu à Chaumont le 1 mars 1814’, in G.F. von Martens (ed.), Nouveau Recueil de traités d’alliance [. . .] de l’Europe, vol.I (Göttingen: Dieterich, 1817–35), 684. See also E.V. Gulick, Europe’s Classical Balance of Power (New York: W.W. Norton, 1955), 151–60, which contains the text of the treaty. On the Polish–Saxon crisis, see Jarrett, The Congress of Vienna, 98–119; Vick, The Congress of Vienna, 278–320; S. Ghervas, ‘Three lessons of peace: from the Congress of Vienna to the Ukraine crisis (1814–2014)’, UN Chronicle, 51:3 (2015), 15–17.

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the good relationships between the peoples entrusted to them by Providence.’18 The missive, which was actually forwarded to the other powers, is interesting in what it tells us about the reflections of the Russian delegation and the Tsar in particular, behind the scenes. Beyond a phraseology that placed the metaphor of the Christian family squarely in the political sphere and is almost word for word that of the future Treaty of the Holy Alliance (an evolution that I have explained elsewhere), it shows that the Tsar did not merely want to deescalate the crisis; he also wanted to ensure that a similar rift would not happen again. While the moderation of Russian delegation was acknowledged (the Austrian delegation called Nesselrode ‘the friend of peace’), Austria and Britain still signed a secret alliance with recently defeated France a few days later (on 3 January), directed against Russia and Prussia.19 As to the relative weights of the great powers, it is important to keep in mind that Russia would have been able to field more troops than Britain, Austria and Prussia combined.20 It therefore had the balance of power firmly tilted towards its own side. In particular, Russia had a seemingly inexhaustible supply of cavalry, a rare and expensive commodity for the other powers of Central and Western Europe. Hence, if Metternich (for Austria), Castlereagh (for Britain) and Hardenberg (for Prussia) succeeded in convincing Alexander I to become amenable to their wishes, it is likely not because they had successfully frightened him with threats of military reprisal. It was rather because of the Tsar’s personal convictions about how a European order should operate, as well as the fact that he no longer wished his country to engage in new military conflicts as the standard procedure to resolve disputes – nor did his counterparts, after all these years of war.21 Finally, the news received in early March 18

19

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‘Pénétrés. . . des principes immuables de la religion chrétienne commune à tous, c’est sur cette base unique de l’ordre politique comme de l’ordre social que les souverains, fraternisant entre eux, épureront leurs maximes d’Etat et garantiront les rapports entre les peuples que la Providence leur a confiés’ (translation mine). In fact, the author of this note (‘Diplomatic note of Tsar Alexander I to the plenipotentiaries of Austria, Great Britain, and Prussia’) was Alexander Stourdza. See ‘Venskij Kongress’ [The Congress of Vienna], Manuscript Department of the Institute for Russian Literature, St Petersburg, RO IRLI, 288/2, no.6, ff.35–41. It was published later under the title ‘Note du comte de Nesselrode, adressée aux plénipotentiaires de l’Autriche, de la Grande-Bretagne et de la Prusse, contenant les idées de la Russie sur les moyens propres à fixer les rapports entre les États, et à consommer l’œuvre de la paix’ (Vienna, 31 December 1814), in Comte d’Angeberg, Le Congrès de Vienne et les traités de 1815, vol.II (Paris: Amyot, 1863–4), 579. F. von Gentz, Dépêches inédites du chevalier de Gentz aux hospodars de Valachie, vol.I, published by Graf A. Prokesch-Osten (Paris: Plon, 1876–7), 95–7. See also Ghervas, ‘Antidotes to Empire’, 49–81. Lieven, Russia against Napoleon, 285–328. This does not imply that Prussia actually sided against Russia, but it underlines the relative strength of the Russian army. A. Arkhanguelski, Alexandre I: Le feu follet (Paris: Fayard, 2000), 253–8; M.P. Rey, Alexandre I (Paris: Flammarion, 2009), 405–8; W.H. Zawadzki, A Man of Honour: Adam Czartoryski as a Statesman of Russia and Poland, 1795–1831 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 278–9.

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1815 of the return of Napoleon from Elba, with the resulting shock and scare, changed the orders of importance of European affairs entirely; the force of necessity threw the four partners back together. The first priority became to wrap up the Final Act of the Congress, so that the Allies could turn their attention to countering the offensive of Napoleon in Belgium. The rest is known: after Alexander I backed down about Saxony and Poland, a deal was struck that was satisfactory for the four powers (though not, of course, for the partisans of the restoration of the integrity of Poland).22 To describe the new rapport that was born between the great powers in the course of that spring, I would rather favour the term ‘balance of diplomacy’. This term (which is arguably modern, but is compatible with, and at least does not contradict, the vocabulary of the nineteenth century) is actually inspired by a caricature that appeared in France in May 1815, entitled ‘La balance politique’.23 This image depicts complacent negotiators stacking gold and money on one pan of the scale, over against populations on the other. Despite the fact that that cartoon was obviously designed to revile the Allied powers (having been published during the Hundred Days), it evidenced that this was now a period where persuasion with discourse and bargaining carried more weight than the number of military divisions. Later, after Napoleon was defeated and the issue became how to preserve the new status quo, this balance of diplomacy evolved into a modus operandi for congresses.24 The experiment in peaceful multilateral diplomacy between the European great powers, called the Congress system, worked for a number of years – strictly speaking until 1822–3. It actually continued, however, to operate for three more decades, with the great powers of Europe remaining effectively allied. It is only shortly before the start of the Crimean War (1853) that good entente broke apart and the European order truly reverted to a balance of power, in a military sense. Peace among the States If we take up the first question (why was peace and cooperation among great powers so important in 1814–15?), we should note at once that during the eighteenth century, the great powers had not found sufficient reason to question the virtues of the balance of power as a system for ensuring the stability of the political order in Europe. The changing factor was that Napoleon had 22 23 24

M. Jarrett, ‘The struggle for Poland at the Congress of Vienna’, History Today, 64:12 (2014), 39–44; Ghervas, ‘Three lessons of peace’, 15–17. Formerly attributed to Eugène Delacroix, this caricature was published in Le nain jaune, 15 May 1815. See H. Nicolson, The Congress of Vienna: A Study in Allied Unity, 1812–1822 (New York: Harcourt, 1946), 200–39; R. Jervis, ‘From balance to concert: a study of international security cooperation’, World Politics, 38:1 (1985), 58–79.

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completely tipped the scales in his own favour, thanks to a military superiority that allowed him to establish a hegemonic continental system. Defeating Napoleon required a long and bloody war; after such a concerted effort, the great powers had every reason to reappraise the foundations of their mutual relations. Furthermore, Napoleon had shattered borders and political entities in many parts of the continent, especially in Germany. If the Congress of Vienna could be compared to a surgery table, then Europe was in need of a long period of convalescence after a series of operations. Furthermore, in order to prevent the patient from relapsing, the great powers would have to ensure that: (1) there would never be again a continental empire like the French Empire of Napoleon, capable of threatening the new status quo ante; (2) they would not start fighting against each other. They needed antidotes against the two chronic diseases of Europe: hegemonic adventures and internecine wars.25 We will briefly describe the British and the Austrian cure before moving on to the Russian one, which was the most original at the time. The British cabinet and diplomats still proposed the traditional antidote, the balance of power. British strategy being anti-hegemonic and long-term, it was important in Vienna, just as in Utrecht one century before, to contain France against a possible military resurgence. We therefore witness, in 1815, the implementation of a similar scenario of buffer states around France as in 1713, with the Dutch Kingdom, Switzerland and Savoy.26 Nevertheless, the British wished to go a little further in the direction of cooperation. They sought a new European order that would be sympathetic to British interests, which were mostly involved with trade (especially maritime trade). If that could be obtained by parley, rather than confrontation, so much the better; within those limits, they were happy to engage in regular diplomatic relations. Indeed, the Quadruple Alliance of 20 November of that year, a defensive alliance brokered by the British cabinet as an alternative to the Tsar’s approach, mentioned in its Article 6 that ‘to consolidate the relations which at this moment so closely unite the Four Sovereigns for the Happiness of the World, the High Contracting Parties have agreed to renew their meetings at fixed periods’,27 effectively laying out the contractual basis for the Congress system. In fact, Britain actively participated in the congresses, even though it refused to sign the Holy Alliance, and maintained a prudent policy of non-intervention on the continent. 25 26 27

S. Ghervas, ‘The Congress of Vienna: a peace for the strong’, History Today, 64:9 (2014), 30–3. See T. Lentz, Le congrès de Vienne: Une refondation de l’Europe, 1814–1815 (Paris: Perrin, 2013), 159–71. ‘Traité entre l’Autriche, la Grande-Bretagne, la Prusse et la Russie, conclu à Paris le 20 novembre 1815’, in Traités et conventions conclus à Paris le 20 novembre 1815, suivis du Traité de 1814 (Paris: Galland, 1816), 105–6.

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As for Austria, it can be stated that Prince Klemens von Metternich rather believed in an order of Europe based on ‘political equilibrium’: a single peaceful ‘federation’ of states, regulated by treaties and ethical principles (quite the opposite of the balance of power).28 In 1813, when the Russian army marched into Germany and liberated Berlin, joining the Sixth Coalition against France was a life or death proposition. Austria sided with the Allies in the colossal Battle of Leipzig, which marked the beginning of the end for Napoleon. When the French Empire was defeated, the coalition had another serious problem to solve: how to manage its powerful and burdensome Russian ally? After Alexander I backed down in the Polish–Saxon crisis of 1815, the policy of Metternich consisted mostly of cautiously playing Austria’s allies off against one other, in order to ensure its interests on a day-by-day basis. In the face of the Russian giant, persuasion had to play a greater role than military deterrence. In the case of Austria, the term ‘balance of diplomacy’ also applied, as there was little choice but to use intelligence instead of military clout. Fortunately, Russia remained exceptionally open to compromise; furthermore, Tsar Alexander’s view on peace in Europe was by far the most elaborate. Three months after the Final Act of the Congress, he proposed a ‘Holy Alliance’ to his partners. This treaty was signed in Paris in September 1815, by Austria, Prussia and Russia, and ratified by most states of Europe, great and small. That document holds a key to understanding the European order after 1815. This unusual and rather short document (written in French, the diplomatic language of the time) consists of a preamble and three articles. While referring to the ‘Most Holy and Indivisible Trinity’ and to ‘Divine Providence,’ the preamble commands that the sovereigns follow ‘the Holy Religion of our Savior’ and accept the ‘necessity of submitting the reciprocal relations of the Powers upon [its] sublime truths’. The first article declares that the three monarchs are ‘united by the bonds of a true and indissoluble fraternity’ and are ‘fellow countrymen’ called to protect ‘Religion, Peace, and Justice’. The second article requires that sovereigns and their subjects do each other ‘reciprocal service’, that they manifest ‘mutual affection’ with ‘the most tender solicitude’, and that they consider themselves members of the ‘One family’ of Austria, Prussia, and Russia, and more broadly, of ‘the Christian world’ united to the end of ‘enjoying Peace’. The third article invites all states that wish to do so to join in this treaty, to contribute to ‘the happiness of nations, 28

H. Rieben, Prinzipiengrundlage und Diplomatie in Metternichs Europapolitik, 1815–1848 (Bern: Sauerländer, 1942), 10; E.L. Woodward, Three Studies in European Conservatism: Metternich, Guizot, the Catholic Church in the Nineteenth Century (London: Frank Cass, 1963), 38–52; H. von Srbik, ‘Statesman of Philosophical Principles’, in E.E. Kraehe (ed.), The Metternich Controversy (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971), 34–9; J.R. Sofka, ‘Metternich’s theory of European order: a political agenda for “perpetual peace”’, The Review of Politics, 60:1 (1998), 121–32.

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too long agitated’.29 A reader used to the conventions of modern language may no doubt find this lumbering prose rather obscure. It becomes clearer if we consider that it relocates the metaphor of a Christian family piously united (as in fraternity, affection, solicitude and service) squarely into the political sphere, alongside more explicit terms like compatriots, fellow countrymen, nations and subjects. There is a polarised interpretation, especially in France, that the ‘Holy Alliance’ (in a very broad sense) had been a mere regression – social and political – toward the ancien régime. The British envoy, Castlereagh, is famously quoted as saying that the Holy Alliance was a ‘piece of sublime mysticism and nonsense’.30 Of particular interest is the legend, according to which the pact was the invention of a female mystic, Barbara Juliane von Krüdener, who had supposedly suggested it.31 Suffice it to mention the aforementioned dispatch of Alexander I about the Saxon–Polish crisis dated 31 December 1814, i.e. several months before the encounter between the two characters. We know that the Tsar’s pencilled notes on the Holy Alliance were passed to Ioannis Kapodistrias’ brilliant and cultivated secretary, Alexander Stourdza. The latter provided a detailed explanation of the text of the treaty in an unpublished piece called ‘Considérations sur l’acte d’alliance fraternelle et chrétienne du 14/26 septembre 1815’, held by the Pushkin House in St Petersburg.32 The pact of the Holy Alliance embodies an essential concept of (in modern terms) a peaceful alliance of hereditary kings and their states, extendable to all Christian states. In Stourdza’s theoretical construction, Napoleon was the heir of the French Revolution and his fall marked the end of an epoch of social and political disorder. Referring to the recent victory of the Allies following the Hundred Days, Stourdza wrote, ‘[t]he principle of subversion against all religious and social institutions has just been slain a second time.’33 This European unrest found its origin, according to him, in the Seven Years’ War (1756–63) and included the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and the succeeding Napoleonic epoch. Hence the sole solution was to restore a ‘principle of order’ in public life, and therefore to ‘proclaim [. . .] the only 29

30 31 32 33

‘Traité de la sainte Alliance’, in d’Angeberg, Le Congrès de Vienne, vol.IV (Paris: Amyot, 1863–1864), 1547–9. See A. Zorin, Kormia dvuglavogo orla: Literatura i gosudarstvennaia ideologiia v Rossii v poslednei treti XVIII–pervoi treti XIX veka [Feeding the Two-Headed Eagle: Literature and State Ideology in Russia from the Last Third of the 18th Century to the First Third of the 19th Century] (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2001), 297–335. C.K. Webster, The Foreign Policy of Lord Castlereagh, 1812–1815: Britain and the Reconstruction of Europe (London: G. Bell & Sons, 1931), 481–3. See Nadler, Imperator Aleksandr I, vol.5, 251–356. Ghervas, Réinventer la tradition, 186–91. A. Stourdza, ‘Considérations sur l’acte d’alliance fraternelle et chrétienne du 14/26 septembre 1815’, RO IRLI, 288/1, no.21, f.1 (emphasis added).

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conservative principles [principes conservateurs], which had been too long relegated to the subordinate sphere of domestic life’.34 The explanation for the intentional but otherwise incomprehensible intrusion of the ‘sublime truths’ of Christianity into the political sphere therefore lay in an effort to engrave an overarching principle of international order, which would, it was hoped, prevent the repetition of the chaos and atrocities of war – an intention we can also read, mutatis mutandis, behind the Fourteen Points of US President Wilson in 1918.35 In other words, the Holy Alliance stated that an ecumenical Christianity would be (in modern terms) the security keystone that would henceforth support peace in Europe, instead of the balance of power of the Utrecht. While Stourdza’s testimony confirms that the Holy Alliance did pursue a conservative, religious, and counter-revolutionary agenda, it would be a mistake to call it a reactionary or ultra-royalist manifesto. Between these two extremes, there existed not only a vast spectrum of ideas, but also profound divergences.36 We should sooner speak of a middle ground, a ‘defensive modernisation’ of the European order, which indeed sparked a storm of criticism from both sides.37 Furthermore, an overlooked aspect was that there was also some Realpolitik in it (or rather prudence, in the language of the time). The three monarchs decided to put the three Christian traditions of faith – Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox – on an equal footing. This was a disruptive step, as the new political organisation of the continent would henceforth be no longer Roman Catholic, as it had been since the institution of the Holy Roman Empire. It was now fully non-denominational or ‘ecumenical’. With the Holy Alliance, the Allies permanently evicted the Papacy from any political role in Europe; such a desecration appalled Pope Pius VII as well as many Catholic thinkers.38 In fact, it was yet another stage in the collapse of the medieval order of Europe: in 1804, the integrity of the Papal institution had been compromised by the aberrant coronation of Napoleon; two years later, when the Holy Roman Empire was unilaterally abolished by Emperor Francis II, one of the two pillars of the Catholic alliance of the throne and the altar had fallen down. The Holy 34 35

36

37 38

Ibid., f.2. R. de Traz, De l’alliance des rois à la ligue des peuples (Paris: Grasset, 1936), 47–97; S. Ghervas, ‘The long shadow of the Congress of Vienna: from international peace to domestic disorders’, Journal of Modern European History, 15:4 (2015), 458–64. On this aspect, see A.M. Martin, Romantics, Reformers, Reactionaries: Russian Conservative Thought and Politics in the Reign of Alexander I (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1997); Vick, The Congress of Vienna, 235–58. Ghervas, Réinventer la tradition, 430–1. Among the French advocates of Ultramontanism were Felicité Robert de Lamennais and notably Joseph de Maistre, whose book Du Pape (Lyons: Rusand, 1819) was written as a staunch rebuttal of the Pope’s loss of political influence on the European scene, a new state of affairs without precedent in the history of the continent.

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Alliance, by toppling the last pillar, acted as a multilateral sanction of the new state of affairs in Germany, and generally in Europe. It is therefore not a small paradox that this ‘religious’ treaty freed the European political playground from ecclesiastical influence, making it a founding act of the secular era of ‘international relations’. This syncretism of secularism and Christian belief should not be surprising, since it was a hallmark of the so-called ‘moderate Enlightenment’, of which the monarchs and ministers of the post-Napoleonic era considered themselves heirs, notwithstanding the wave of mysticism that washed over Europe in those years.39 The import of the ideas behind the Holy Alliance was noted by the Austrian Chancellor Metternich in his amendments to the original version of the Holy Alliance. He modified the sentence ‘the subjects of the three contracting parties will remain united by a true fraternity’ into ‘the three monarchs will remain united’.40 Similarly the initial version stated that the three Powers were three provinces of a sole nation – a notion that the Austrian minister amended by presenting them as three branches of the same family. Metternich obviously grasped that there was an attempt to pass political reformism under the guise of religious rhetoric (both of which he equally disliked) and was quick to temper the enthusiasm of the Tsar. The paternalist idea that the monarchs were ‘benevolent fathers’ can also be traced to the Austrian Chancellor. It is ironic that a secular mind such as Metternich contributed to overemphasise the mystical rhetoric of the Holy Alliance, in an effort to defuse its most progressive aspects. It might explain why the idea that Europe represented a ‘Christian nation’ still made it into the final version of the text.41 There is another twist to the idea of Christian Europe, stemming from the fact that the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire was a Muslim: the members of the Holy Alliance could be considered either friends to the Sultan because he was a legitimate sovereign, or else his enemies, because he was not a Christian. In that ambiguity we find the prelude to the Eastern Question – the struggle between the great powers over what to do with the spoils of the Ottoman Empire, the ‘sick man of Europe’.42 In accordance with his character, 39 40

41

42

See J. Israel, Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights, 1750–1790 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 140–61. ‘Les sujets des trois parties contractantes demeureront unis par les liens d’une fraternité véritable’ into ‘les trois monarques demeureront unis. . .’. See F. Ley, Alexandre Ier et sa Sainte-Alliance (Paris: Fischbacher, 1975), 149–53 (emphasis added). See also W. Näf, Zur Geschichte der Heiligen Allianz (Bern: Paul Haupt, 1928), 34–7; H.G. Schenk, Aftermath of Napoleonic Wars – An Experiment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1947), 31–43. See O.V. Orlik, Rossija v mezhdunarodnyh otnoshenijah, 1815–1829: Ot Venskogo kongressa do Adrianopolskogo mira [Russia in International Relations, 1815–1829: From the Congress of Vienna to the Peace of Adrianople] (Moscow: Nauka, 1998), 16–24. M.S. Anderson, The Eastern Question, 1774–1923 (London: Macmillan, 1966). For a discussion on the historiography on the Eastern Question, see L. Frary and M. Kozelsky (eds.),

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Alexander I chose the first option in 1823 when faced with the unexpected insurrection of the Greeks against the Ottoman Empire; this is a position that he defended until his death, in spite of his sympathy for their cause.43 Finally, the Holy Alliance was also imbued with the idea of perpetual peace. Abbé de Saint-Pierre had published such a plan in 1713, the same year as the Peace of Utrecht. He argued that the maintenance of the peace through a balance of power was really an armed truce, hence a ‘system of war’. He therefore proposed a ‘system of peace’ where European states could coexist, while retaining their freedom, within a federation – complete with a court to solve conflicts and a common army. Indeed it became a topos after 1815 to compare the Holy Alliance to Saint-Pierre’s European Society (or Union).44 The Holy Alliance, being a declaration of intentions, fell obviously far short of this. While the order of Vienna had no institution of the sort,45 it could nevertheless rely on the Congress system called for in Article VI of the Quadruple Alliance to foster cooperation among the inner circle of the four great powers. (This new feature became later a blueprint for the Councils of the League of Nations and of the United Nations). Despite the limited success of its Christian principle and its alterations before it saw the light of day, the Holy Alliance was innovative: it was a multilateral compact, not for making peace in Europe but for maintaining peace among sovereign European states. In the end, all European states except Britain and the Holy See signed the treaty.46 All in all, the Russian doctrine expressed in the Holy Alliance was a step away from the pre-existing paradigm of the balance of power, even in its revised British version. A key difference was that in order to work, the eighteenth-century system of balance of power had required a dynamic of at least two blocs in Europe – in the system of Tsar Alexander I there was only one left.47 It was therefore an attempt to build a new unified European order based on active cooperation.

43

44

45

46 47

Russian Ottoman Borderlands: The Eastern Question Reconsidered (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2014), 3–34. Ghervas, ‘Philhellénisme et ambitions russes dans le cadre de la Question d’Orient’, in A. Mandilara et al. (eds.), Φιλελληνισμóς. Το ενδιαφέρον για την Ελλάδα και τους Έλληνες από την Επανάσταση ως σήμερα [Philhellenism: Sympathy for Greece and the Greeks, from the Revolution to Our Days] (Athens: Herodotus, 2015), 729–54. S. Ghervas, ‘La paix par le droit, ciment de la civilisation en Europe? La perspective du siècle des Lumières’, in A. Lilti and C. Spector (eds.), Penser l’Europe au XVIIIe siècle: Commerce, Civilisation, Empire (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2014), 62–7. It is worth noting that Alexander I had actually proposed the institution of a common army in a draft of the Holy Alliance. See Ley, Alexandre Ier et sa Sainte-Alliance, 149–53; Ghervas, ‘Antidotes to Empire’, 59–63. Martin, Romantics, Reformers, Reactionaries, 175–210. Ghervas, ‘Balance of Power vs. Perpetual Peace’, 412–15.

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From a System of Peace to a System of Peacekeeping We now come to a further question, connected to the third view of the order of Vienna (as a cartel of reactionary powers): why did the originally innovative Congress system degenerate into the Reaction? It may appear to be a paradox that Tsar Alexander I was a man of rather liberal disposition. For two years, from 1804 to 1806, he had had a Polish patriot, Adam Czartoryski, as his chef de cabinet. In 1815, he upheld the parliamentary system of Finland and he granted a constitution to Poland; he favoured a constitutional monarchy in France under the Bourbons, while actively supporting republican Switzerland. How could the benevolent principles of the Holy Alliance become applied in practice as an instrument of reaction? The root of the problem can, again, be traced in the treaty itself: according to it, the three contracting monarchs considered themselves as appointed by Providence. Notwithstanding their rejection of the intermediation of the Pope, they still firmly adhered to the traditional top-down view of society, where divine legitimacy flowed from God down to the monarchs and from them to the people. Hence, while they felt benevolent toward their subjects, they were not prepared to listen to their demands of political representation beyond a certain point. That was arguably imprudent, since the most active elements started voicing opinions in the press and in parliaments. When that action failed, the population took to the streets – as notably, in the student riots in Germany in 1817.48 The first ‘reaction’ was therefore to silence parliaments and to censor the press.49 In line with the preoccupations of this collective work about security, we should also highlight an essential semantic point: ‘peace’ did not merely signify an ‘absence of war’ or a process of developing regular relations between states. It had a further meaning, which today might be considered somewhat obsolete: according to Noah Webster, it meant also ‘public tranquillity, that quiet, order and security which is guaranteed by the laws’.50 In the French language, which served for diplomacy, there were in effect two words for that notion: the first was sûreté which was the fact of being removed from harm, as well as objective measures taken (typically by the police) in that direction; the second, sécurité, was subjective and indicated the inner confidence of

48

49 50

See, for example, the description of the Wartburg Festival (October 1817) by Lorenz Oken, a professor at Jena, in G.A. Kertesz (ed.), Documents in the Political History of the European Continent (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), 64–7. Jarrett, The Congress of Vienna, 209–23; Ghervas, Réinventer la tradition, 202–17. N. Webster, American Dictionary of the English Language (1828), s.v. ‘order’ (emphasis added). See also Chapter 7 by De Graaf in this volume, on the interpretation of peace and security.

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being safe from harm, which could be either justified or unjustified.51 While the first word came to be progressively replaced by the second over the course of the nineteenth century (not without frowns from the defenders of lexical purity), this original distinction had the merit of highlighting two distinct dimensions of the concept of security (objective and subjective) that are often confused in modern discourse – which may contribute to explain why it is still so charged with ideological connotations. In any case, all those dimensions were wrapped, at the time of the Congress of Vienna, into a single word: ‘peace’, which could range from private to public and be as well the peace of mind. Ironically, this confusion opened the door to a semantic shift that heralded an endless succession of disorders. ‘Keeping the peace’ soon became interpreted as sending armies to put down revolutions all over Europe. Even Czartoryski found himself on the wrong side of a Polish rebellion against Russia. He lamented that while perpetual peace had become the conception of the most powerful monarchs on the continent, diplomacy had corrupted it and turned it into ‘venom’.52 To make things worse, the monarchs even borrowed each other’s armies to put down rebellions (ironically, as that was the advice that Abbé de Saint-Pierre had given for such cases). Hence the Congress system gradually evolved into a ‘directorial system’, a syndicate of monarchs who supported each other against their political competitors, especially parliaments. Troubles in Spain spilled over to Mexico and South America. In other words, the efforts to ‘keep the peace’ in the city streets against revolutionaries could be read today as an instance of domestic security policy. As for Alexander I, his biographers remarked that he became bitter at the end of his life, being keenly aware of the failure of his liberal intentions.53 While the system survived the revolutions of 1848 (since the monarchs assisted each other) it broke down only five years later. In the latter case, the root cause could again be found in a flaw of the Vienna peace system – the omission of the Ottoman Empire. In 1853, when Russia decided to go for the jugular and threatened Constantinople, the British and the French successfully staged a counter-offensive in Bulgaria that forced the invading army to fall back, effectively removing the casus belli. At this stage the Western Allies decided – somewhat pointlessly – to pursue the conflict by landing an expeditionary force in Crimea. The Concert of Europe survived for a few decades, but the dream of perpetual peace died during the siege of Sevastopol.

51 52 53

Dictionnaire de l’Académie française, vol.5 (Paris: J.J. Smits, 1798). A. Czartoryski (ed. N. Toulouzan), Essai sur la diplomatie, manuscrit d’un philhellene (Paris: Didot, 1830), 276–7. See, for example, Arkhanguelski, Alexandre I, 484–512.

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From the Balance of Power to the Concert of Powers This leads us back to the question of how to reconcile the three common, opposing observations on the order of Vienna: (1) as a balance of power among Russia, Britain, Austria and Prussia; (2) as a tandem alliance of Britain and Russia vis-a-vis the others; and (3) the order of Vienna as a cartel of four reactionary powers intent on suppressing freedom and national aspirations? In fact, these observations should be ordered sequentially in time. As regards the first interpretation, the Treaty of Chaumont acknowledged, as noted above, the existence of a balance of power, in the truest military sense, while the war against Napoleon was still ongoing in early 1814 – with a coalition of powers set up to defeat the greatest hegemonic threat that Europe had known in a long time. In the winter of 1815, a new division of Europe into two military blocs of great powers threatened to split Russia and Prussia on one side, and Britain and Austria on the other, over the question of Poland. This did not happen, both because of the resolve of Russia (namely Alexander I and his delegation) to avoid this outcome at all costs, and because Napoleon’s return from the Isle of Elba just after the resolution of the Polish–Saxon crisis further strengthened the de facto solidarity among the great powers in the face of the threat to the edifice being constructed in Vienna.54 After the final victory, the great powers found themselves in a situation where they strongly needed unity and peace among themselves in order to heal the wounds of a long war.55 The Congress system thus represented an attempt to create an alternative, first to the hegemonic system of Napoleon and, second, to the balance of military power. It was clearly more in the nature of a ‘system of peace’ (a one-bloc system based on a balance of diplomacy) than a ‘system of war’ (a two-bloc system based on the balance of military power).56 In practice, the essential difference lay in the way the negotiations were being conducted among the powers – less with secret alliances and open threats of military retribution than with bargaining. This can be summarised under the assertion that the four powers, after having nearly repeated the traditional paradigm of the eighteenth century in the winter of 1815, established a ‘balance of diplomacy’ that allowed them to put up a common front. As regards the second interpretation, Russia and Britain were factually the strongest participants of the power quartet, the first as the unchallenged military power on the continent and the second reigning supreme on the seas.

54

55 56

S. Ghervas, ‘Ten lessons for peace in Europe: from the Congress of Vienna and WWI, to the failure of the G8’, in F. Dane and G.J. Ryan (eds.), Multilateral Security Governance (Rio de Janeiro: Konrad-Adenauer Stiftung, 2014), 217. Jervis, ‘From balance to concert’, 58–79. Ghervas, ‘La paix par le droit, ciment de la civilisation en Europe?’, 51–6.

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Austria and Prussia nevertheless belonged to the ‘first league’ and were always in a position to have a place at the negotiation table.57 Finally, with respect to the third interpretation, the shift to the Reaction was a consequence of the attempt to impose ‘peace’ (as in law and order): instead of answering the aspirations of their subjects to political representation, they sought to impose the principle of divine legitimacy and generally the territorial status quo ante as defined by the Final Act of Vienna. Their obstinacy in following that political doctrine in the face of growing popular frustration and national aspirations is, in a nutshell, the most convincing explanation for the drift from international peace to the Reaction. That more authoritarian phase could be best described, in terms of the European order, under the heading of a ‘directorate’.58 Nevertheless the balance of diplomacy continued to operate among the great powers and generally with the minor powers as well, since they were eager to receive assistance against popular insurrections. This did not imply that the members of the inner circle of the great powers (which by now also included France) were all of the same opinion on the issues submitted to the successive Congresses; in particular Britain strongly indicated to its counterparts on more than one occasion its disapproval regarding their policy of repression. The five partners strove nevertheless to operate in a collegial manner and considerable efforts were invested in finding common ground, so that public declarations and actions would continue to appear consistent in periods of grave threats against public order (a practice that continues to this day on similar occasions). All in all, this doctrine of coexistence among the great powers yielded mixed results. In terms of international peace, it preserved Europe from wars for nearly forty years – not a small feat by any standard. But as far as internal ‘peace’ (as in public order or security) was concerned, the high incidence of civil disorders made it an unmitigated failure, which goes a long way to explain its black legend. In any case it is important to correct the incomprehension of posterity on the initial intentions of the Holy Alliance and to distinguish clearly between that treaty, the Quadruple Alliance, the Congress system and the Reaction – especially its Catholic version of the French ultraroyalists, as well as of Pope Gregory XVI (who strongly condemned religious indifferentism, of which the ecumenism of the Holy Alliance was a shining example).59 It shows, at least, that coexistence among great powers after the 57

58 59

P.W. Schroeder, ‘Did the Vienna system rest on a balance of power?’, in ibid., Systems, Stability, and Statecraft: Essays on the International History of Modern Europe (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 37–57. See Arcidiacono, Cinq types de paix, 168–78. Pope Gregory XVI, Encyclical MIRARI VOS (On Liberalism and Religious Indifferentism) (15 August 1832), Point 13: the ‘perverse opinion [. . .] that it is possible to obtain the eternal salvation of the soul by the profession of any kind of religion, as long as morality is maintained’.

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fall of Napoleon cannot be reduced to a simplistic dog-eat-dog logic or a balance of military power. It had become a topos during the years of the Congress of Vienna to state that the Holy Alliance had materialised the dream of European unity conceived by Abbé de Saint-Pierre. While there is obvious exaggeration in that statement (as we have seen), the experiment of the years of the Congress system proved at least that the European order could become, for a while, something more than an uncivil struggle among great powers, where military aggression, or the threat of aggression, would be the sole way of resolving contentious issues. The profound influence of the treaty of the Holy Alliance, which operated on a moral and cultural plane, should not be dismissed, as it explains much of the behaviour of the actors involved; in particular the term ‘European family’ used in the Holy Alliance also had an exceptional vogue in the press and literature.60 It was an advance for its time in that it held that the keystone of any international security architecture should be commitment to shared values rather than mutual military deterrence. On the other hand, it was archaic in that it refuted any social contract in domestic matters, with its increasing reliance on police coercion to ‘keep the peace’ within the states. We could conclude, from our horizon of experience, that while the Congress system did not establish peace among the nations as Kant would have liked it,61 nor did it even satisfy its preliminary conditions (notably political representation), it was nevertheless an attempt to lay out a ‘system of peace’ based on a workable balance of diplomacy.62 That the entente survived for almost four decades is testament to the merits of this formula for international relations.

60 61

62

Ghervas, ‘La Sainte-Alliance’, 47–64. I. Kant, ‘Toward perpetual peace: a philosophical sketch’, in P. Kleingeld (ed.), ‘Toward Perpetual Peace’ and Other Writings on Politics, Peace, and History (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006), 67–109. Jürgen Habermas elaborates on the Kantian approach by horizon of experience, J. Habermas, ‘Kant’s idea of perpetual peace: with the benefit of 200 years hindsight’, in J. Bohman and M. Lutz-Bachmann (eds.), Perpetual Peace: Essays on Kant’s Cosmopolitanism (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), 113–54. For more on this topic, see S. Ghervas, Conquering Peace: From the Enlightenment to the European Union (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019), ch.2.

6

The London Ambassadors’ Conferences and Beyond Abolition, Barbary Corsairs and Multilateral Security in the Congress of Vienna System Brian Vick Introduction

Through the nineteenth century and beyond, the ambassadorial conferences that emerged from the peace negotiations of 1815 did as much as the more famous congresses to shape the Vienna system of international relations. Institutionally, the ambassadorial conferences point to the origins of international agencies and of specialised multilateral commissions to tackle pressing international issues. They also extended the role of face-to-face diplomacy beyond the summit meetings of leading statesmen and rulers at the congresses, and provided some of the main venues for the influence of what international relations theorist Jennifer Mitzen terms ‘forum talk’ in the formation of binding international obligations among the great powers. The conferences also promoted cooperation through transparency and information sharing.1 The system of collective security inaugurated in Vienna involved elements of both crisis management and crisis prevention, but the ambassadorial conferences were more instrumental in addressing problems before they grew critical, whereas the congresses were generally responding to crises after they had gotten out of hand, as with the successive congresses in Troppau, Ljubljana and Verona called in response to the southern European revolutions of the early 1820s.2 The Allied Council in Paris that oversaw the occupation of France after Waterloo is the better known of the ambassadorial conferences, and forms the

1

2

J. Mitzen, Power in Concert: The Nineteenth-Century Origins of Global Governance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013); R. Jervis, ‘From balance to concert: a study of international security cooperation’, World Politics, 38:1 (1985), 58–79, 71–5, 79; D. Lindley, Promoting Peace with Information: Transparency as a Tool of Security Regimes (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), ch.3. B. Vick, ‘Constitutions and Crises from the Congress of Vienna to the Concert of Europe’, Columbia University European Institute, blogs.cuit.columbia.edu/congressofvienna/files/2015/ 04/Brian-Vick.pdf (accessed 27 May 2016).

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subject of Chapter 7 by De Graaf in this volume.3 This chapter explores the uncharted territory of the London conferences which, if mentioned at all, have chiefly comprised a footnote in the history of abolition of the slave trade. These formal meetings between British Foreign Secretary Lord Castlereagh, one of the architects of the Vienna system, and the ambassadors to the Court of St James of the other great powers of the Pentarchy, were actually the first ambassadorial conferences to be conceived, in the context of the abolition agreement at the Vienna Congress in 1815. Yet the London conferences constituted more than a minor episode in the history of abolition, and significantly, they addressed suppression of the North African Barbary corsairs and the liberation of their European captives as well. The conferences thus reveal as much about relations with the Islamic world as about abolition, and the connections between these issues are not only crucial for understanding the history of either topic, but also helped to shape and establish new international norms of human rights, freedom from enslavement and personal and national security in international law and practice. The London conferences thus also sit at the origins of humanitarian intervention, well before the collective efforts to protect Christian and Jewish minorities in the Ottoman Empire in the second half of the nineteenth century, and even predating the Greek revolt of the 1820s.4 Both the push for abolition and that for interdiction of the corsairs, tellingly, involved a mixture of humanitarian elements and security concerns. For present purposes, the emphasis is on how the London conferences reveal fundamental facets of the development of both the Vienna system of international relations and a European security culture following Napoleon’s defeat. This security culture, and the multilateral diplomatic cooperation with which it was interwoven, were intended by their creators not just to manage but if possible to prevent conflict among the great powers and, at the same time, to respond to perceived threats to European security and stability from outside the usual framework of interstate diplomatic and military relations. Such threats could be domestic and internal to Europe, as in the case of some 3 4

See also J.A. de Sédouy, Le concert européen. Aux origines de l’Europe 1814–1914 (Paris: Fayard, 2009), 48–66. For bringing together both aspects of the London conferences, see F. Klose, ‘Enforcing abolition. The entanglement of civil society action, humanitarian norm-setting, and military intervention’, in F. Klose (ed.), The Emergence of Humanitarian Intervention: Ideas and Practice from the Nineteenth Century to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 91–120, 111–16; B. Vick, ‘Power, humanitarianism, and the global liberal order: abolition and the Barbary corsairs in the Vienna Congress system’, The International History Review, 40:4 (2018), 939–60. On international norms and human rights in the abolition and Barbary contexts respectively, see I. Clark, International Legitimacy and World Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), ch.2 (applicable to all humanity); M. Ressel, Zwischen Sklavenkassen und Türkenpässen. Nordeuropa und die Barbaresken in der Frühen Neuzeit (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012), 752–4 (freedom from enslavement initially restricted to Christians in the eighteenth century in the Barbary case).

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of the issues handled in the Paris conferences, including worries about both underground revolutionary activities and counterrevolutionary white terror. They could also point beyond Europe, as with the issues of the slave trade and Barbary corsairs confronted in London. It is vital to keep in mind that avoiding European conflict and war and responding to other threats to European security were, and were seen to be, connected problems and tasks. Just as statesmen at the time believed domestic and foreign policy to be so interrelated, with subversive movements considered among the major risks leading to renewed warfare, and wars among the prime breeding grounds for revolution, external threats were also seen as potential sources of conflict and disruption that needed to be addressed cooperatively. Hence the Vienna system was predicated on a combination of multilateral cooperation in diplomacy and security not unlike the current Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. The Vienna international system and the emerging security culture were also modern-looking in the engagement of a wide range of public and non-state actors. In this respect, the system involved not only multilateral diplomacy but also an early form of ‘polylateralism’.5 Abolitionist networks and anti-corsairing lobbyists from transnational civil society overlapped and interacted with diplomats in ways that gave diplomacy a ‘third dimension’ beyond state-level multilateral relations. ‘A Sort of Permanent European Congress’ In 1807, Britain and the United States abolished the African slave trade. A mixed coalition of radical, liberal and evangelical conservative activists had finally triumphed over entrenched economic interests of plantation owners, slave traders and others in the colonial economy. From that point, spurred on by public opinion from the powerful British abolition movement, Britain spearheaded diplomatic moves to extend abolition internationally, be it from Christian, Enlightenment humanitarian and/or material motives. Abolitionists knew that so long as any nations practised the trade, slaving would simply continue under other flags, not least because it was so easy for captains of one nation to sail under the colours of another that still allowed it. Hence the British needed to get as many other states as possible, and ideally all, to sign up to abolition. They also knew that contraband slaving would need to be policed even for states already committed to full or partial abolition, whether by their own or other nationals. British abolitionists and statesmen therefore also recognised that mechanisms of enforcement and some regime of maritime police

5

G. Wiseman, ‘“Polylateralism”: diplomacy’s third dimension’, Public Diplomacy, 4:1 (2010), 24–39.

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would additionally be required in order to bring the inhuman trade in human beings to an actual end.6 The statistics bear out their fears. The overall apex as expected lay in the eighteenth century, when half of the total 12.5 million Africans were transported across the Atlantic in the abhorrent conditions of the Middle Passage. The second most heavily trafficked decade of the entire slave trading era, however, was the 1820s, with a sharp upturn already after 1814. Over 1.2 million Africans – 10 per cent of the total – were transported into servitude in the fifteen years from 1816 to 1830.7 At the Vienna Congress, British Foreign Secretary Lord Castlereagh managed to broker the famous declaration in February 1815 of the eight signatory powers of the Peace of Paris condemning the slave trade as ‘repugnant to the principles of humanity and of universal morality’ and stating their intention to work toward full abolition in the next few years. The agreement was couched in humanitarian universalist language of mixed Christian and Enlightenment origin and marked the first time such a humanitarian measure was passed at a major international conference.8 It has rightly been critiqued for lacking enforcement clauses or real teeth, but the document and the surrounding diplomacy were stronger than usually realised.9 As part of the Vienna Final Act, the declaration introduced a powerful new norm into international law, and it provided the basis for continued efforts towards abolition – explicitly meaning actual abolition, not just on paper. Castlereagh, while still in Vienna, also pushed through a bilateral treaty with Portugal as the major colonial slaving power through its connection with Brazil; another followed with Spain, the other principal state remaining in the slave trade, in 1817. Portugal agreed to end the trade immediately north of the equator, but not to the south, while Spain agreed to stop completely in 1820. France had committed to end slaving in 1819 in the 1814 Peace of Paris, but after Napoleon proclaimed abolition

6

7 8

9

D. Eltis, Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987); C. Lloyd, The Navy and the Slave Trade: The Suppression of the African Slave Trade in the Nineteenth Century (London: Longmans, 1949). Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, http://slavevoyages.org/estimates/usp9olbf; slavevoyages.org/estimates/nxVDx2zE (accessed 28 May 2016). Comte d’Angeberg (ed.), Le Congrès de Vienne et les traités de 1815, vol.2 (Paris: Aymot, 1863), 726; On the Vienna negotiations, see B. Vick, The Congress of Vienna: Power and Politics after Napoleon (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 195–208. Critical, S. Daget, La répression de la traite des Noirs au XIXe siècle. L’action des croisières françaises sur les côtes occidentales de l’Afrique (1817–1850) (Paris: Karthala, 1997), 37; J.S. Martinez, The Slave Trade and the Origins of International Human Rights Law (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012), 28, 33. Emphasising the precedent and the role of civil society in establishing the new norm, see P. Kielstra, The Politics of Slave Trade Suppression in Britain and France, 1814–1848 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2000), 52–3; Clark, International Legitimacy, ch.2.

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upon his return from Elba, the re-restored Bourbon regime was obliged to maintain that commitment, though weakly and intermittently as regards enforcement.10 Most importantly here, Castlereagh also secured agreement in Vienna for follow-up conferences on abolition. Castlereagh thereby helped create the institution of ambassadorial conferences and establish them as a new element of international relations and of European security culture. In prior correspondence with Prime Minister Liverpool he referred to the institution as ‘a sort of permanent European Congress’.11 In the preparatory memorandum for the Vienna Congress, Castlereagh originally envisioned parallel commissions meeting in London and Paris. Since ending the slave trade would clearly be ‘a work of some time’ and would ‘depend upon the effectual execution of the regulations adopted by the respective States’, Castlereagh proposed ‘that the Ministers of the several Powers engaged in the cause of abolition resident in London and Paris should by their respective Courts be ordered to act together in concert for watching over the effectual execution of these regulations’. The ambassadors were to meet occasionally ‘to enquire into the progress made and the extent of the evil remaining’ and ‘to consult upon the most effectual means of counteracting evasion and of promoting the common object’.12 Not in the memorandum, but emphasised in Castlereagh’s letter to Liverpool, one of the conferences’ primary goals was continued multilateral negotiation with the recalcitrant powers to urge them to adopt full abolition sooner and more forcefully, as he knew that the Portuguese and Spanish representatives either would not or could not make further concessions in Vienna. The assembled powers did indeed invite Spain and Portugal to participate in the London conferences from 1816, but unsuccessfully. This pressure and corresponding recalcitrance did not prevent Britain from making bilateral deals on abolition with both states, and likely helped, as both seemed to prefer negotiating with Britain alone to subjecting themselves to multilateral parleys. Nevertheless, the ambassadorial conferences set up to deal with abolition became a crucial aspect of the newly emerging European security culture, which also proved to be an effective means to prevent the build-up of tension among the great powers and other European states as a result of actions taken to police the slavers or to end the trade generally in the colonial realm beyond Europe. Most controversial in this respect was the establishment of a 10

11 12

L. Bethell, The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade: Britain, Brazil, and the Slave Trade Question 1807–1869 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 12–14; D.R. Murray, Odious Commerce: Britain, Spain and the Abolition of the Cuban Slave Trade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 53–71; Kielstra, Suppression; Daget, La répression. C.K. Webster (ed.), British Diplomacy 1813–1815: Select Documents Dealing with the Reconstruction of Europe (London: Bell, 1921), 233. Webster, British Diplomacy, 234–5.

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maritime police. Allowing search and seizure of various states’ shipping was always going to be particularly fraught, and had already led to complaints of British naval high-handedness in extending its contested wartime right to search enemy and neutral shipping into peacetime. Reluctance to accept British maritime policing in part involved resistance to its growing global power, but also touched upon questions of national dignity and sovereignty for France and other European states, from Portugal to Russia and Prussia. Having vessels flying one’s national flag boarded by British officers did not sit well with European statesmen, rulers or publics. Tensions thus had plenty of opportunity to develop.13 The idea of a special commission to oversee the slave trade turned out to be an effective way to counter these tensions. After Tsar Alexander had expressed his support for Castlereagh’s proposal in January 1815, the idea was also embraced by the Austrian Foreign Minister Prince Metternich, who noted that the non-colonial powers’ participation had been useful in the Vienna negotiations. From the same point of view [Metternich] entirely approves the ministerial communications following the congress such as Lord Castlereagh has proposed, and if ever disagreeable conflicts among the maritime powers occur upon an object where the greatest harmony is so greatly to be desired, the cabinets placed and thinking like Austria would certainly hasten to employ their good offices to set them in accord with one another and to smooth out all obstacles that stand in the way of this cause’s final success.14

Ambassadorial conferences became formally protocoled meetings equivalent to such face-to-face sessions of commissions at international congresses. The meetings were based on preparatory memoranda from the various courts and on discussions between Castlereagh and the individual ambassadors or among the various ambassadors themselves. Ambassadors could be given full powers but were sometimes required to contact their home courts for further instructions. The conferences could, as we shall see, be tasked with drafting treaties or binding international resolutions, though treaties would still require ratification by the respective governments. Ambassadorial conferences in this form proved to be a flexible and practical institution in the new diplomatic system and security culture, which also included broader publics beyond the circle of state

13

14

For a compelling recent work on Franco-British tensions, see R. Blaufarb and L. Clarke, Inhuman Traffick. The International Struggle against the Transatlantic Slave Trade, a Graphic History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). On French national pride, sovereignty and the rights of war in peacetime, see Kielstra, Suppression, 90; Daget, La répression, 12–13, 45. Angeberg, Congrès de Vienne, vol.2, 725–6. See for Tsar Alexander’s position Webster, British Diplomacy, 274–5.

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representatives, as some of the information shared on matters of policing the slave trade came from reports of the non-governmental African Institute and other anti-slavery activist channels.15 Hence before Waterloo, before the Paris treaties of 1815 and before the Allied Ambassadors’ Council in Paris overseeing the occupation of France, the precedent had been set and a framework established for the great powers to engage in face-to-face diplomacy that could promote cooperation in international governance or at least counter the growth of hostility that might lead to conflict. The mechanism of ambassadorial conferences could be activated to address specific problems as they arose, in a similar way to the use of specialist commissions of second-tier diplomats and experts from the great powers during the Congress of Vienna itself, as with the Committee on the Affairs of Switzerland, the Statistical Commission and the Commission on Free Navigation of Rivers, and similar institutions to oversee the introduction of free trade on international waterways. ‘A Lasting Service to Mankind’ The template created by the ambassadorial conference focused on the abolition of the slave trade soon proved to be useful for the defusing of other international tensions as well. In the summer of 1815 the European and world situation changed, not only with Napoleon’s final defeat at Waterloo just after the signing of the Vienna Final Act, but also with the continued depredations of the so-called Barbary corsairs of the North African Regencies, principally Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli. The return of peace had not stemmed the revived Maghrebi corsairing experienced during the wars against Napoleon but instead saw a further surge. Both Mediterranean shipping and southern European coastlines fell frequent prey to corsairs – not pirates, but sailing under the rulers’ orders in the off-and-on war against the infidel. The most shocking raid took place in October 1815, when Tunisian vessels struck the small Sardinian island of Sant’Antioco, seizing over 150 men, women and children.16 This event and the consequent outcry in European publics and diplomatic circles helped put the Barbary problem on the political agenda in the following months, after previous efforts to convince Britain and the other powers to tackle the issue at the Congress of Vienna had failed.

15

16

African Institute reports cited in conference, Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv Vienna (HHStA), Ges. London Varia M-P, Karton 145, ‘Protokolle 1818–1819’, 10th conference, 4 February 1818. The Portuguese ambassador appeared briefly, also in February 1818. D. Panzac, Barbary Corsairs: The End of a Legend, 1800–1820 (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 58, 74–6, 267–8; S. Bono, I corsari barbareschi (Turin: ERI, 1964), 185–91.

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The Barbary question had been mooted in Vienna by both state and nonstate transnational actors, but it never rose to the level of official negotiations. Austrian Emperor Franz I, particularly concerned by hindrances to commerce, had ordered Metternich to raise the matter at the Congress, and both Spain’s plenipotentiary the Marques de Labrador and Cardinal Consalvi of the Vatican also unsuccessfully supported talks. The representatives of the German commercial city-states of Bremen and Lübeck vigorously pursued an international solution in Vienna, aided by a Lübeck scholar-pamphleteer in an attempt to sway both public opinion and the opinions of rulers and statesmen through the power of the press.17 Private lobbying from figures in the principal Austrian port city of Trieste, who leveraged the newspaper press, helped animate Austria’s interest.18 In general, international press organs gave considerable support to plans for action against the corsairs, from regular newspapers such as London’s Morning Chronicle and the Journal de Francfort of Germany to cultural periodicals such as the Austrian Hesperus, the German Journal for Literature, Art, Luxury and Fashion and the Ladies’ Courier of Milan.19 Most famously, the question of the North African corsairs was trumpeted in Vienna by the iconic and eccentric British admiral Sir Sidney Smith. Historians usually treat his efforts as a comic episode at the Congress, but they rather illustrate the growth of transnational humanitarian engagement by a range of non-state actors. Smith lobbied rulers personally and by correspondence and even arranged a fund-raising dinner involving Tsar Alexander and other rulers, as well as launching a multilingual pamphlet campaign and a voluntary association to promote action against the corsairs. Smith proposed establishing a multinational fleet to strike any of the Regencies that refused to end corsairing.20 And just as Castlereagh and the powers accepted suggestions from abolitionist networks in abolition diplomacy, Smith’s ideas had some resonance when it came time for the powers to explore possibilities for concerted action against the corsairs. Not least, the similar opinions of Admiral Lord Exmouth as expert were referenced in the London conferences in 1816, Exmouth having enthusiastically joined Smith’s organisation in 1815 and

17

18

19 20

Vick, Congress, 221–2; T. Hannemann, ‘Brême et la lutte anti-pirate (1814–1819): un prélude à l’action colonial contre les Barbaresques’, in A. Abdelfettah and A. Messaoudi (eds.), Savoirs d’Allemagne en Afrique du nord, XVIIIe-XXe siècle (Paris: Bouchène, 2012), 73–95. A. Silvestro, ‘L’anno d’oro. A proposito del Congresso di Vienna e della pirateria barbaresca’, Cimbas, 30 (2006), 46–58, www.olivierilillo.it/silvestro/doc/pirateria.doc (accessed 28 May 2016); ‘Hudelist to Metternich, 27 May 1814’, HHStA StK Interiora Korresp.67, Fasz.2, fols.235–6, Vick, Congress, 216–19, 221. See Journal für Literatur, Kunst, Luxus und Mode and Corriere delle Dame. Vick, Congress, 215–17.

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being fresh from leading the Anglo-Dutch expedition that bombarded Algiers in August 1816.21 When the London ambassadorial conferences finally convened, therefore, their agenda was doubled through the addition of the corsair problem to the original one of abolition. Tsar Alexander made the initial request to address the corsair question, and when the British suggested linking the negotiations, Russia and the other powers quickly agreed. There seemed to be a ‘natural connection’ between the two issues involving enslavement and forced labour, and the stated motivating sentiments were similar as well, whether evincing humanitarian or Christian values.22 As Castlereagh wrote to his ambassador in St Petersburg to explain why abolition and Barbary would be joined, the powers saw the Barbary problem as also one of ‘universal interest,’ and he continued, ‘I have no doubt, if we all draw heartily together, upon the broad ground of giving repose upon Christian principles to the human race, of whatever colour, in every part of the globe, that we shall do ourselves credit and render a lasting service to mankind.’23 Castlereagh’s language shows both the Christian and enlightened universalist legitimation of intervention, the Christian component carefully chosen to appeal to Tsar Alexander after the Holy Alliance and to the evangelical portion of the abolitionist constituency back home. The connection between abolition of the trade in Africans and the seizure of Europeans by Barbary corsairs had already been made frequently in the years preceding. Almost all supporters of action against the Regencies pointed to the energy now finally being devoted to ending the transatlantic slave trade as a reason not to neglect the plight of European captives in North Africa. Senator Johann Smidt of Bremen had already reckoned before the Vienna Congress that the most promising avenue to securing aid against the corsairs was to link

21

22

23

‘Report no.3 of Jouffroy, 16 September 1816’, Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preuβischer Kulturbesitz (GStA-PK) I.HA Rep.81, Ges. London, No.284; J. Barrow, The Life and Correspondence of Admiral Sir William Sidney Smith, vol.2 (London: Bentley, 1848), 374–7, Exmouth’s letter accepting Smith’s invitation to join the organisation being misdated (17 October 1815, not 1817). For abolitionist influence, see Kielstra, Suppression, 15, 48. On the background to the Anglo-Dutch bombardment, see Chapter 12 by De Lange in this volume. Quote: ‘Protokolle 1815–1816, 2nd session, 29 August 1816’, HHStA Ges. London Varia M-P, Karton 145; ‘Alexander to Castlereagh, 21 March/2 April 1816’; ‘Lieven to Nesselrode, 16/ 28 May 1816’, both in Russian–British exchange, USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Vneshniaia politika rossii XIX I nachala XX veka. Dokumenty rossikogo Ministerstva inostrannykh del. Series 2, vol.1 (Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1961–1995), 111; 165–6. ‘Castlereagh to Cathcart, 26 May 1816’, quoted in O. Löwenheim, ‘“Do ourselves credit and render a lasting service to mankind”: British moral prestige, humanitarian intervention, and the Barbary pirates’, International Studies Quarterly, 43:1 (2003), 23–48, 40. For Prussian language of ‘l’intérêt général de l’humanité’ linking the two causes, see ‘Hardenberg to Jouffroy, 28 February 1817’, GStA-PK I.HA Rep. 81, Ges. London, No.284.

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the two campaigns and ride abolition’s public and diplomatic success. Sidney Smith (who was also an abolitionist), the Marques de Labrador and various commentators in the press also made the association.24 The Russians reiterated the point when approaching Castlereagh in 1816.25 Moreover, other nations often critiqued the British for tolerating the corsairs, since they enjoyed protective treaties with the Regencies and therefore a commercial competitive advantage. At the same time, continental powers frequently expressed suspicion of Britain’s allegedly altruistic motives for abolishing the slave trade internationally, particularly after its unilateral renunciation in 1807. On this basis, it has been argued that the British may have finally agreed to confront the corsair problem in 1816 as a way to demonstrate the purity of their abolitionist motives.26 In power-political terms, the situation had arisen where the British hoped to gain support for abolition from states more interested in Barbary interdiction, with the continental states seeing advantages to this trade-off in reverse. Sidney Smith for his part pointed to the London conferences and attributed Britain’s policy shift to ‘the public voice of Europe, from the highest to the lowest’ as well as to the ‘official pressure which took place here [London] as soon as the Vienna conferences on the slave trade were renewed’.27 Discussion of how closely to combine negotiations on abolition and Barbary occupied some of the governments’ early attention. For the most part they agreed to proceed in parallel, with the ambassadors’ conference in London handling both, but not necessarily at the same time or in the same way. Some sessions treated abolition, others the corsairs, and some both. The British did at first propose basically a joint solution to the problems, with a multinational fleet that could operate off the West and North African coasts as a means of enforcing interdiction of both corsairs and slave ships. Had it come to pass, this would have been the first armed multinational force engaged in long-term humanitarian operations. The continental powers, however, for the most part sought separate solutions to the two problems. The Russians in particular preferred assembling a grand multinational fleet for a one-time attack on the Regencies over a semi-permanent squadron such as the British envisioned, and all the continental powers favoured approaching the Regencies’ nominal overlord the Ottoman sultan first so as not to sour relations with the Porte, whereas the British insisted on dealing only with the largely independent Regencies directly. When the multilateral discussions shifted to the higher level of summit diplomacy at the Congress of Aachen in 1818, the Russians

24 25 27

Vick, Congress, 220; Hannemann, ‘Brême’, 75–6, 80–1. 26 Vneshniaia, vol.1, 127, 23 March/14 April 1816. Löwenheim, ‘British Moral Prestige’. ‘Smith to Exmouth, 23 January 1817’, in Barrow, Sidney Smith, vol.2, 375.

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countered with a plan to establish an international fleet coupled with international courts under a ‘supreme council’ to enforce the end to the slave trade on the West African coast. This measure in turn would have constituted the first fully international humanitarian institution and military operation, but here the British balked, possibly backed by the Austrians, as both feared Russia’s warm-water naval presence.28 Ultimately, the most that could be achieved militarily for abolition, largely through British bilateral diplomacy, were separate national squadrons acting simultaneously and in vague concert to contain the slave trade, with French and US ships periodically patrolling West African coasts for slavers at the same time as the more active Royal Navy.29 At the judicial level, British bilateral diplomacy bore considerably more fruit. A series of international courts of mixed commission was established to adjudicate cases of suspected slave ships detained normally under a regime of mutual right of search and seizure, the reciprocity of which was a sop to the national dignity of the other power even if in actuality it was usually the British navy doing the searching and seizing. Beginning with treaties with Portugal, Spain and the Netherlands that created courts in Rio de Janeiro, Havana and Surinam as well as Freetown, Sierra Leone, the system expanded to include numerous other nations. Historians sometimes criticise the system for having done little to halt the dramatic growth of the transatlantic slave trade, licit or contraband, but others highlight the courts as precursors of international human rights courts of the present day and as having saved approximately 170,000 Africans from slavery (85,000 freed by mixed commission courts, and an equal number in British Admiralty courts, though it is clear that many of the ‘recaptives’ ultimately ended up in the British army or in some other form of semi-voluntary ‘apprenticeship’ or coerced labour in Africa or the Caribbean). The linked bilateral courts can in turn be seen as having effectively been a multilateral international institution.30 In general, the treatment of the corsairs and abolition demonstrates how the Vienna system and European security culture worked flexibly at several institutional levels, in parallel and sequentially, through bilateral diplomacy and the multilateral congresses and ambassadorial conferences.

28

29 30

For the London conferences, see Kielstra, Suppression, 64–7, 69, 74; for the protocols in foreign ministry archives, see HHStA Ges. London Varia M-P, Karton 145. For the Congress of Aachen, see Sédouy, Le concert européen, 90–1. Lloyd, The Navy; Daget, La répression. Martinez, Slave Trade; J.S. Martinez, ‘Antislavery courts and the dawn of international human rights law’, Yale Law Journal, 117:4 (2008), 550–641 (effectively multilateral, 579); L. Bethell, ‘The mixed commissions for the suppression of the transatlantic slave trade in the nineteenth century’, Journal of African History, 7:1 (1966), 79–93; On ‘recaptives’, see D. Domingues da Silva et al., ‘The diaspora of Africans liberated from slave ships in the nineteenth century’, Journal of African History, 55:3 (2014), 347–69.

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‘A System of Common Security’ On balance, the decision to tackle the problems of abolition and North African corsairing together rather than separately, and in a multilateral venue that could leverage connections between the issues and the potential gains accruing from ‘forum talk’ and transparency in face-to-face gatherings, offered the greatest likelihood of forging agreements and avoiding friction.31 While the talks did not ultimately deliver permanent solutions to either problem, one should not understate the London conferences’ achievements. With respect to abolition, the pressure on Portugal and Spain to participate in joint meetings of powers sympathetic to the emerging international humanitarian norms helped prompt them to cut deals with Britain in bilateral negotiations. The conferences also helped entrench the new humanitarian norms and language of freedom from enslavement for all humanity as available arguments in international relations and law. The ‘freedom principle’ of not being liable to enslavement applied to Africans, Europeans or any people as rights-bearing members of the human race and as children of God.32 Exchanges of information about the nature and extent of contraband slaving similarly lent greater weight to British arguments justifying further diplomatic and military action. The conferences also made progress in addressing the increasingly dramatic corsair crisis, as North African raiders in 1817 ranged even into the North Sea and caused a furore in the German Confederation. By spring 1818 Prussian ambassador Wilhelm von Humboldt, Russian ambassador Prince Lieven and Austrian ambassador Prince Esterhazy had drafted a treaty of forty-five articles for a defensive alliance and international squadron to hold the corsairs in check (partly drawing on the Treaty of Alcalá of August 1816 between the Netherlands and Spain in alliance against the corsairs). Since the Russians in particular had questioned the too-great focus on Christian slavery in previous talks and wanted greater attention to threats against commerce, the ambassadors expanded the conception of the league’s goals. The draft explicitly envisioned the creation of a ‘system of common security’ among the powers, to ensure both safe navigation and ‘the liberty of their subjects’. The multilateral nature of the projected alliance was reflected not only in its drafting but also in its mechanisms. The military force would be international in scope and origin and, to avoid pretexts for conflict with the Regencies, each member state would agree to bring grievances before the other powers and accept their mediation. The North African Regencies could in turn also bring grievances 31 32

Citing the combined London conferences as a fruitful ‘deconcentration’ of the Vienna system, Sédouy, Le concert européen, 66–8. See on the ‘freedom principle’ S. Drescher, Abolition: A History of Slavery and Anti-Slavery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 22–4.

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before this council. The military forces directed against the corsairs were to remain neutral even in case of war among the contracting powers.33 In several ways, the treaty draft went quite far in setting security as an international norm and in defining international mechanisms of security cooperation above national sovereignty, including international mediation and neutral military forces. Bringing the negotiations on abolition of the slave trade and interdiction of the Barbary corsairs together also had effects on the establishment of new diplomatic and humanitarian norms. Highlighting the connections between these campaigns required stepping up a level in abstraction, thereby emphasising the humanitarian and universalist logic and rhetoric in legitimation. This became manifest in the British preparatory document for the London conferences: ‘The object [of the negotiations is] to acknowledge and enforce the great principles of justice, humanity, and the Law of Nations mutually between the States and People of Africa and Europe.’ The memorandum extended the so-called freedom principle, and security of persons, to both populations equally, stating that the goal of any league was to deliver Europe and Africa ‘from having their respective Populations, whether Black or White, forcibly, unjustly, and inhumanly carried away into Slavery’.34 And just as the treatment of abolition made clear that the matter was considered to involve all of humanity and thus non-colonial as well as colonial powers, the draft treaty against the corsairs explicitly invited non-maritime countries to join the alliance too, given that it defended ‘the most sacred principles of humanity’ and ‘the interests of commerce and navigation common to all governments’.35 The example of the London ambassadorial conferences also reveals some limitations of the institution, and of the new system of multilateral security cooperation generally. The ambassadors were not ultimately able to secure an agreement on either the slave trade or the corsairs. Discussions instead continued at the higher level of the Congress of Aachen in October and November 1818, scheduled to handle the early end to the occupation of France but having acquired a significant ancillary agenda. Even the talks in Aachen among the chief ministers and rulers of the great powers, however, failed to deliver effective agreements. On the slave trade, unlike in Vienna, abolitionists sent

33

34 35

‘Draft treaty, 24 May 1818’, GStA-PK III.HA I, No.7974, fols.372–9. The treaty was not the work of Humboldt alone, as assumed by Hannemann, ‘Brême’. In Castlereagh’s original conception, the squadron’s military commander was to communicate with the ministerial conference in London or Paris, and a ‘League Council’ would hear grievances: ‘Jouffroy to King Friedrich Wilhelm, 16 September 1816’, GStA-PK I.HA Rep. 81, Ges. London. For Russian concerns, see ‘Nesselrode to Alexander, 7/19 November 1816’, in Vneshniaia, vol.1, 295–6. ‘Protokolle 1815–1816’, HHStA Ges. London Varia M-P, Karton 145, No.2. ‘Art.44’, GStA-PK III.HA I, No.7974, fol.379.

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their own representative to the congress, no less a figure than the movement’s leader Thomas Clarkson. Clarkson met with a sympathetic Tsar Alexander, yet to little effect. A concerted approach to the King of Portugal pressing him to adopt full abolition was the only gain.36 Regarding the Regencies, the draft treaty for an anti-corsair alliance never came up for discussion. Instead, the powers resolved to send an Anglo-French squadron to Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli with instructions to declare that persistence in seizing European ships and subjects would trigger the establishment of such a league. Led by British Admiral Thomas Fremantle, the joint force carried out its mission but, despite defiance from Algiers and Tunis, the threatened alliance never formed, and there was no repeat of 1816’s Anglo-Dutch bombardment of Algiers by Admirals Exmouth and Capellen.37 The London conferences on abolition and Barbary continued in 1819 following the congress, but sporadically, with little steam.38 Conclusion In his landmark revisionist study of international relations between 1763 and 1848, historian Paul Schroeder argued that in the course of the campaign against Napoleon of 1813–14 and its attendant diplomacy, European leaders came to see the value of a cooperative system of political equilibrium as opposed to the previous competitive balance-of-power model of international relations.39 Such thinking inspired the Congress of Vienna system, including the ambassadorial conferences that comprised a central institution within it. While Schroeder is correct to identify this ‘transformation of European politics’, the ‘learning process’ was a little rockier and longer than he indicates, and the shift away from competitive bilateral diplomacy less complete. Thus in the present context, behind the scenes and off-stage, various powers’ efforts to achieve secret bilateral understandings in other capitals for their own diplomacy on abolition and the North African corsairs disrupted the multilateral talks going on in London. The French secretly sought Russian support against British abolition moves and against an anti-corsair squadron, even as they otherwise tried to maintain close relations with Britain. At the same time,

36 37 38

39

Kielstra, Suppression, 86–91; M. Jarrett, The Congress of Vienna and its Legacy: War and Great Power Diplomacy after Napoleon (London: I.B.Tauris, 2013), 202. Panzac, Corsairs, 289; Jarrett, Legacy, 202. GStA-PK I.HA Rep. 81, Ges. London, No.316. The last in the series met in May 1823, after the Congress of Verona called for continued conferences on abolition, now involving the new Foreign Secretary George Canning; Kielstra, Suppression, 120–3. P.W. Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics, 1763–1848 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994); M. Schulz, Normen und Praxis: das Europäische Konzert der Grossmächte als Sicherheitsrat, 1815–1860 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2009).

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Metternich and the Austrians cooperated with the British on abolition and Barbary (and Italian politics), out of their mutual fear of Russian expansionism in the Mediterranean and Middle East, even as Metternich maintained close ties with Russia and Prussia, in a five-way, flexible great power system rather than the rigid bipolar one of East–West blocs described by Schroeder.40 It thus makes more sense to think of different shifting alliances on several specific issues rather than simple bloc politics, and of a combination of competitive bilateral and cooperative multilateral diplomacy. The existence of the cooperative multilateral ties certainly explains some of the Vienna system’s stability and longevity, in mitigating the remaining secret and competitive elements. The fact that multilateral discussions on European security were not limited to the more exceptional congress summit meetings but rather all along also involved ambassadorial conferences similarly helps explain why the Vienna system remained intact and effective after transitioning from its congress phase into the Concert of Europe. The final congress took place in Verona in 1822, but ambassadorial conferences continued as the preferred instrument of conflict management in the Concert of Europe’s mission to identify and neutralise security threats. Four great power ambassadors in Naples after the revolution there in 1820–1 were tasked with overseeing the restoration of King Ferdinand’s rule, above all to ensure that his government did not steer a too counterrevolutionary course. Later in the 1820s, trilateral Franco-Russian-British ambassadorial conferences helped resolve the crisis arising from the Greek revolt against Ottoman rule, with meetings on the island of Poros and in Istanbul, plus a long-lasting conference in London that completed the job of settling the borders and constitution of the new Greek state.41 Even after the revolutions of 1830 across Europe, great power ambassadorial conferences involving representatives of France’s new July Monarchy addressed both the restoration and reform of pontifical rule in the Papal States and the borders, government and status of Belgium after its revolt against the post-1815 Kingdom of the Netherlands (1830–9).42 The next impulse regarding the Maghrebi states, however, came 40

41

42

‘Richelieu to Noailles, Paris, 12 November 1816’; ‘Noailles to Richelieu, St Petersburg, 13 and 15 December 1816’, Sbornik imperatorskogo russkogo istoricheskogo obshchestva, vol.112 (St Petersburg: Imperial Russian Historical Society, 1867–1916), 658, 709–11, 716–7. Cf. Kielstra, Suppression, 67, 74, overstating France’s role; ‘Metternich to Esterhazy, 3 July’, HHStA England 156, Fasz. Weisungen 1816 IV-VIII, fols.1–2v. For Naples, see G. Galasso, Il Regno di Napoli. Il Mezzogiorno borbonico e risorgimentale (1815–1860) (Turin: UTET, 2007), 243–56, 272–6. For Greece, see Schroeder, Transformation, 656–7; Mitzen, Power in Concert, 170–6; M. Šedivý, Metternich, the Great Powers and the Eastern Question (Pilsen: University of West Bohemia, 2013), 258–60. Schroeder, Transformation, 675–91, 693–6; Sédouy, Le concert européen, 188–215; A.J. Reinerman, Austria and the Papacy in the Age of Metternich, vol.2 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1979–1989), 24, 35–7, 145–6; G. Heydemann, Konstitution gegen Revolution: Die britische Deutschland- und Italienpolitik 1815–1848 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995), 177–206.

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from unilateral colonialist military action with the French conquest of Algiers in 1830. Most further strides against the transatlantic slave trade resulted from Britain’s web of bilateral treaties and courts, as well as from its own unilateral military action in the later stages of the campaign after 1839.43 Yet the British did not entirely give up on multilateral frameworks, finally persuading the other great powers to accept reciprocal search and seizure clauses in the Quintuple Treaty of 1841, even if the document was never ratified by France and thereby remained a partly dead letter. Negotiating the treaty, tellingly, involved revived ambassadorial conferences in London in 1836 and 1838.44 The equally notable abolitionist event of those years emerged not from the realm of interstate diplomacy but from transnational civil society, with the meeting of the international World Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840, as a further development of the lobbying of non-state actors for abolition, and for action against the North African corsairs, in preceding decades.45 The already complex interlinking of multi-level and multi- and bilateral interstate relations, cooperative international security institutions and transnational civil society would continue to grow in the decades thereafter.

43 44 45

Emphasising British unilateral coercion, see Eltis, Economic Growth, ch.7. Kielstra, Suppression, 176–8, 202–8, 211–17, 225–7; Prussian account: GStA-PK I.HA Rep. 89, No.13050, fols.1–5 (5 November 1839), treaty signed in 1841 (fols.30–31v). H. Temperley, British Anti-Slavery, 1833–1870 (London: Longman, 1972), 85–92.

7

The Allied Machine The Conference of Ministers in Paris and the Management of Security, 1815–18 Beatrice de Graaf* Napoleon’s Frustration

Following Napoleon’s refusal to accept the favourable conditions offered him by the Allies after his defeat at the Battle of Leipzig in October 1813, Napoleon is said to have sighed: ‘I am tired of this old Europe! I do not want to reign over such a withered empire!’1 After 1815 the imperial dream of a united Europe under one military ruler came to an end. In its stead came something different: changes that did not revert back to the fragmented world of the Ancien Régime, but that expanded on a fateful sense of solidarity that the European powers nolens volens had been subjected to during the Napoleonic wars. No more war, no more hegemony of one state at the expense of others, and an end to revolution and terror; that was the prevailing attitude and political paradigm. Power must henceforth be subject to law and legitimacy. For Napoleon, this was difficult to fathom.2 Thus the lost emperor despaired: After a twenty years’ war, after the blood and treasures that were lavished in the common cause, after a triumph beyond all hope, what sort of peace has Britain concluded? Lord Castlereagh had the whole Continent at his disposal, and yet what advantage, what indemnity has he secured to his own country? He has signed just such a peace as he would have signed had he been conquered.3

Napoleon’s question can be answered by looking more systematically into the way the Allied occupation of France was organised between 1815 and 1818 – and to analyse it as an instance of the new European security system and * The research leading to these findings has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007–2013) / ERC Grant Agreement n.615313. 1 R. Edgcumbe (ed.), The Diary of Frances Lady Shelley 1787–1817 (London: John Murray, 1912), 57. 2 Comte de Las Cases, Memorial de Sainte Hélène: Journal of the Private Life and Conversations of the Emperor Napoleon, 4:7 (London: Holburn, 1823), 221. See also J. Bew, Castlereagh: A Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 409. 3 Las Cases, Memorial de Sainte Hélène, 3:6, 92. Cited slightly different by Bew, Castlereagh, 408.

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corresponding culture at work. The preparations for this occupation, mainly through the deliberations and activities of the Allied Council, provide a perfect case study to show that Napoleon’s old Europe had indeed shed its shrivelled skin and emerged in a new form from the ashes of the Napoleonic firebrand. This – until the present not fully contextualised and researched – Allied Council of Ambassadors responsible for executing the occupation was arguably the first instance where Europe’s system of collective security was inaugurated on the ground, albeit haphazardly and contested, between 1815 and 1818.4 This chapter explains and analyses how the Council functioned as a first platform to manage security in France and beyond, by looking at its political, military and financial operations. What Sort of Peace? The aftermath of the Napoleonic wars – the ‘horseback diplomacy’ and the solidarity found on the battlefields – had made minds ripe for a new form of peace, a peace that was stable and that by means of a new framework of collective risk management would restore a tranquillity and predictability to the international state system.5 The treaties concluded between 1813 and 1815 reflected the alliance security of the pre-war period, but went even further by accepting reciprocal obligations, which sometimes even seemed to be motivated by a ‘strategy of disinterest’6 and a moral or spiritual sense of duty. This multilaterally negotiated and sealed peace can be seen as Europe’s discovery of 4

5

6

The Allied occupation in France has been discussed from a military perspective, from the German perspective and with respect to the impact on the French populations, but the Allied Council/ Conference of Ministers has not been studied before. See: T.D. Veve, The Duke of Wellington and the British Army of Occupation in France, 1815–1818 (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1992); Ibid., ‘Wellington and the army of occupation in France, 1815–1818’, The International History Review, 11:1 (1989), 98–108; P. Mansel, ‘Wellington and the French Restoration’, ibid., 76–83; E. Kraehe, ‘Wellington and the reconstruction of the Allied armies during the Hundred Days’, ibid., 84–97; V. Wacker, Die Alliierte Besetzung Frankreichs in den Jahren 1814 bis 1818 (Hamburg: Kovac, 2001); C. Haynes, ‘Making peace: the Allied occupation of France, 1815–1818’, in A. Forrest, K. Hagemann and M. Rowe (eds.), War, Demobilization and Memory: The Legacy of War in the Era of Atlantic Revolutions (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 51–67; R. André, L’Occupation de la France par les Alliées en 1815, Juillet-Novembre (Paris: de Boccard, 1924); H. Houssaye, 1814 (Paris: Perrin, 1888); Ibid., 1815: La première restauration, le retour de l’île d’Elbe, les cent jours (Paris: Perrin, 1893); Ibid., 1815: La seconde abdication – la terreur blanche (Paris: Perrin, 1905); P. Rain, L’Europe et la restauration des Bourbons 1814–1818 (Paris: Perrin, 1908). See also C. Haynes, Our Friends the Enemies: The Occupation of France after Napoleon (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018). Cf. J. Paulmann, Pomp und Politik: Monarchenbegegnungen in Europa zwischen Ancien Régime und Erstem Weltkrieg (Paderborn: F. Schöningh, 2000), 131. See also chapter 5 by Ghervas in this volume, for her interpretation of peace and security. ‘To deny interested action, to seem to act in a way unrelated to, or even against the apparent advancement of their interests.’ M.C. Williams, Culture and Security: Symbolic Power and the Politics of International Security (London: Routledge, 2007), 43.

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a collective security agenda, based on the principle of the balance of power. Because the notion of ‘balance of power’ has been so thoroughly uprooted, modernised and re-appropriated since 1945, it is worthwhile to briefly consider how it was understood and configured in 1815. The balance of power was first and foremost conceived as a concept of security management. In 1785 already, Jeremy Bentham was convinced that ‘security turns its eye exclusively to the future’, an insight that he went on to elaborate in a variety of new constitutions and penal and civil codes.7 Bentham was possibly the most widely read and appreciated political philosopher in the Allied circles. Wellington read his books. Russia’s Tsar Alexander I communicated with Bentham in June 1814 to discuss a possible assignment in Russia.8 Security was exactly what the Allied nations wanted: a stable system of checks and balances based on the principle of the ‘balance of power’ that, rather than a lingering line of short-term ceasefires, would ensure the long-term future of Europe. In the words of the Treaty of Chaumont, signed on 9 March 1814 prior to the first capitulation of Paris, it was to be an alliance ‘for the salutary purpose of putting an end to the miseries of Europe, of securing its future repose, by re-establishing a just balance of Power’.9 According to Castlereagh, the new peace had to be ensured by a ‘systematic pledge’, by ‘preserving concert’ and by functioning as a ‘refuge under which all the minor states, especially those on the Rhine, may look forward to find their security upon the Return of Peace’ – thereby suggesting a more institutionalised and sustainable way of structuring and executing international relations than the old-fashioned eighteenth-century conceptions of balance.10 A novel, invigorated balance of power rhetoric permeated the texts of all of the treaties and correspondence exchanged among the Allies between 1813 and 1818; it was mantra, motto, principle, policy and propaganda, all rolled into one. The concept was of course well-known and had been expanded upon and criticised in pamphlets and treatises since the eighteenth century (by Christian Wolff, Emer de Vattel,11 Samuel Pufendorf and Johann Gottlob

7

8

9 10 11

J. Bentham, ‘letter?’, unpublished, incomplete manuscript, in ‘Manuscripts’, box 61, University College Library London, 47. See also: P.J. Kelly, Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice: Jeremy Bentham and the Civil Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 77. M.P. Rey, Alexander I: The Tsar Who Defeated Napoleon (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2012), 214–5; for Alexander’s visit to London, see 277–8; S. Conway (ed.), The Collected Works of Jeremy Bentham: The Correspondence of Jeremy Bentham, vol.8: January 1809 to December 1816 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). See specifically e.g. ‘No.2319, Bentham to Alexander, June 1815 (Act 67)’. ‘Treaty of Chaumont’, in Foreign Office, British and State Papers: 1812–1814, vol.1 (London: Ridgway, 1841), 121. Cited by Bew, Castlereagh, 346. See W. Rech, Enemies of Mankind: Vattel’s Theory of Collective Security (Leiden/Boston: Martinus Nijhoff, 2013).

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von Justi12). But the idea came into full vogue again after the introduction of the British ‘Pitt-plan’ in 180513 and Friedrich Gentz’s 1806 book on the balance of power in Europe14 – both of which included concrete proposals for what Europe should look like after the war, including the desire for a strong Dutch state, free ports on the North Sea, the establishment of a German confederation and redrawing the borders of Italy.15 In 1815, it became much more than a mere description of spheres of influence – be it in terms of souls, territory, taxes or armies. Early-nineteenth century views regarding the balance of power also included ideological, moral and even spiritual notions.16 The European community of princes, their entourages, the diplomats and the thinkers, experts, poets and novelists who hovered about them spoke of repos and tranquillité when they talked about their desire for peace and security, about ‘God’s providence’ and ‘the law of nations’. But above all, the balance of power concept after 1815 was the antonym of tyranny, of the unilateral, aggressive exercise of power on the part of one at the expense of all the others. As such, it was also the opposite of commotion, sudden shock and unexpected revolution. It was the art of moderation, of slowing down the extremely rapid pace of the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, by means of establishing a system of management (which of course could be as repressive and imperialist as the statesmen in power were inclined).17 In the words of Metternich, ‘by putting a brake to those principles subversive to the social order upon which Buonaparte had based his usurpation’.18 ‘Balancing’ was management; it meant, according to the then-current edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, 12

13

14

15

16 17 18

J.H. Gottlob von Justi, Die Chimäre des Gleichgewichts von Europa (Altona, 1758). See also W. Burgdorf, ‘Johann Heinrich Gottlob von Justi (1720–1771)’, in H. Duchhardt et al. (eds.), Europa-Historiker: Ein biographisches Handbuch, vol.1 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006), 51–78. ‘W. Pitt, Memorandum for security and deliverance of Europe’ (part of letter to the Russian Ambassador at London, 19 January 1805), in K. Bourne, The Foreign Policy of Victorian England 1830–1902 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), 197–8. F. von Gentz, Fragments upon the Balance of Power in Europe (London: Baldwin, 1806); Ibid., ‘Über de Pradt’s Gemälde von Europa nach dem Kongress von Aachen’, Wiener Jahrbücher der Literatur, 5 (1819), 279–318; G. Schlesier (ed.), Schriften von Friedrich Gentz: Ein Denkmal (Mannheim: Hoff, 1838), 88–156. H. Duchhardt, Gleichgewicht der Kräfte, Convenance, Europäisches Konzert. Friedenskongresse und Friedensschlüsse vom Zeitalter Ludwigs XIV. bis zum Wiener Kongreß (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1976), 68–76, 137; M. Jarrett, The Congress of Vienna and Its Legacy: War and Great Power Diplomacy after Napoleon (London: I.B.Tauris, 2013), 39–42; N. van Sas, Onze Natuurlijkste Bondgenoot: Nederland, Engeland en Europa, 1813–1831 (Groningen: Wolters Noordhoff, 1985), 41. See B.A. de Graaf, ‘Bringing sense and sensibility to the continent: Vienna 1815 revisited’, Journal of Modern European History, 13:4 (2015), 447–57. See R. Jones, ‘1816 and the resumption of “ordinary history”’, Journal for Modern European History, 14:1 (2016), 119–42. ‘Metternich, ‘Austrian memoir’. Cited by Jarrett, The Congress of Vienna, 165. See also Jones, ‘1816’, 124–6.

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providing ‘a bridle upon the strong and a bulwark to the weak’.19 And one of the primary ways to organise such a daunting management operation was through the efforts of the Allied Council of Ambassadors.20 Inaugurating the ‘Allied Machine’ The ‘Allied Machine’,21 as Castlereagh described the Council in 1816 in a letter to Wellington, was conceived as a platform of political deliberation to handle the military occupation of France and the security of Europe as a whole (leaving its end goals open to further discussions). Its sessions began on 12 July 1815,22 but this three-year-long cooperative endeavour was not invented from scratch. The Council had a precursor in the occupation of 1814 that included two phases: a war occupation (from the time that the Allied forces crossed the French border and seized areas around the turn of the year December 1813– March 1814) and a truce occupation (from the end of March until the Allies left on 1 June 1814).23 On 15 January 1814 the allied powers meeting in Basel agreed that the Allied Central Administration would work out the administrative details for the cooperation called for behind the advancing front, under the leadership of the Prussian minister, Baron Karl vom Stein.24 Civil administrators had to organise the occupation and to make sure the spoils of war and occupation were shared amongst the Allies.25 Since the Prussian war claim amounted to a total sum of 169.8 million French francs, this was not an easy task.26 But once the Allies entered Paris on 30 March 1814, it was not Prussia’s desire for revenge but Russia’s benevolence that held sway. Backed by an awe-inspiring military force, and motivated by mystical charity and 19 20 21 22

23

24 25 26

‘Balance of power’, in Encyclopædia Britannica, vol.IV: supplement 1815–1824 (Edinburgh: Black, 1842), 308–13, 312. Duchhardt, Gleichgewicht der Kräfte, 68–76. ‘Castlereagh to Wellington, 13 May 1816’. Cited by Van Sas, Onze Natuurlijkste Bondgenoot, 122. For the minutes of these meetings see, amongst others National Archives Kew (TNA), Foreign Office Files (FO) 92/139; Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin (GStA-PK). III. Hauptabteilung (HA) Ministerium des Auswärtigen (MdA) I, Politische Abteilung, e.g. no.897, 911, 1464, 1465, 1469. Here: ‘Konferenz der Minister der alliierten Mächte in Paris, protocol 12 July 1815’, GStA-PK III.HA I, no.1464. See on the differences between the occupations and the impact on the local French populations: J. Hantraye, Les cosaques aux Champs-Élysées. L’occupation de la France après la chute de Napoléon (Paris: Belin, 2005); Y. Guerrin, La France après Napoléon. Invasions et occupations 1814–1818 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2014). Cf. P. Graf von Kielmansegg, Stein und die Zentralverwaltung 1813/1814 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1964). Kielmansegg, Stein und die Zentralverwaltung, 22–97; Wacker, Die alliierte Besetzung, 43–5. ‘Report of a meeting of Beugnot, Minister of Finance, with his colleague Bülow, 13 May 1814’. Cited by Wacker, Die alliierte Besetzung, 43–79.

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personal messianic inclinations, Tsar Alexander I proved to be extraordinarily gracious. French prisoners of war were released, most looted art works did not have to be returned27 and the city’s National Guard unit and the gendarmerie were allowed to retain their weapons.28 Thus, the first attempt at managing peace resulted in magnanimous terms for France, and only a short-lived occupation. The first peace of Paris did not last long and was quickly eclipsed in the Cent Jours of Napoleon.29 The second allied attempt was therefore far more rigorous. On 25 March 1815, in a treaty for ‘mutual security’, the Allies declared Napoleon an outlaw and pledged that they would not rest until the peace and security of the continent had lastingly been established. This meant that they would have to take Napoleon down one more time, but also that the restoration of the Bourbons had been insufficient to the task of maintaining peace. In Article II the Allies announced a ‘common action’: Each of the contracting parties would maintain a force of 150,000 men, deployed ‘actively and conjointly against the common Enemy’, until the object of the war had been attained: the completion of the provisions of the existing treaties of Chaumont and Paris.30 In June 1815, the military defeat was total, according to Clausewitz (who took part in the battle), the French forces were struck in the heart.31 Paris had once again to bow to the Allies’ superiority – but this time much more deeply. When the Allied powers dictated the occupation statute for France on 24 July, they did it unisono, and by a unified military command, rather than through the hybrid and overburdened administration of Stein. This time the occupation would be of much longer duration and would serve as a bond of peace for reparations to be paid. The Allies would occupy two-thirds of French territory. 27

28

29

30 31

The Berlin Quadriga, however, was restored in spring 1814, and would be a symbol of Prussia in the festivities at the Vienna Congress: B. Vick, The Congress of Vienna. Power and Politics after Napoleon (London/Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 41. Prussia received some paintings back in 1814, but far less than she, or the other German governments, had laid claims upon. Cf. B. Savoy, Patrimoine annexé. Les biens culturels saisis par la France en Allemagne autour de 1800 (Paris: Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme, 2003), 161–82. Cf. the recollections of the Russian officer and aide-de-camp of the tsar: A. MikhailofskyDanilefsky, History of the Campaign in France in the Year 1814. Translated from the Russian (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1839), 383–90; Bew, Castlereagh, 349; n.n., Alexandrana ou bons mots et paroles remarquables d’Alexandre Ier (Paris: Imprimerie de D’Hautel, 1815), 47. Cited by Rey, Alexander I, 268–9. For a detailed account of the turbulence in 1815, see Houssaye, 1815. Les cent jours; Ibid., 1815. La seconde abdication; E. de Waresquiel, Cent jours. La tentation de l’impossible (Paris: Fayard, 2009). Foreign Office, British and Foreign State Papers: 1814–1815, vol.2 (London: Ridgway, 1839), 443–50. C. von Clausewitz, ‘Feldzug von 1815 in Frankreich’, in P. Hofschroër (trans. and ed.), On Wellington: A Critique of Waterloo (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2010), 173–5.

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French troops had to draw back and remain south of the river Loire while awaiting their disbandment and reorganisation under royal rule. On paper, the civil administration of France was granted to Louis XVIII, but his government would be under the guardianship of an Allied Council of Ministers and an allied occupation army under the command of the Duke of Wellington. This was a real blow to France, and a revolutionary decision in European history: the announcement that a unified allied force would remain intact and occupy the territory for a number of years, to manage the occupation, and other security-related matters.32 The Allied Council, also named Conference des Ministres Alliés (or Paris Conference), held its first session on the 12 July 1815, and consisted of the key actors Wellington, Chancellor Metternich, Castlereagh, the Prussian ambassador Humboldt, the Austrian General Schwarzenberg, his Prussian colleague Gneisenau and the Russian envoys Nesselrode, Pozzo di Borgo and Capodistrias. The idea was that none of them would operate alone, but that all decisions would be based on ‘concerted discussion and deliberation’, following ‘common and uniform principles’. The Council met every day, after November 1815 two or three times a week.33 In October, Wellington was officially appointed by the Allied princes as commander of the allied troops; he was the one who spoke with the French King and government. Owing to his support in 1814 and in 1815 for the return of the Bourbons to the throne, he enjoyed the eternal gratitude of Louis XVIII.34 After October 1815 (until 1818), the council was reduced, and became a Ministerial Conference consisting of three ‘ministers’ (the Austrian Baron Vincent, Pozzo di Borgo and the Prussian Goltz) and Ambassador Charles Stuart, who sometimes invited the French Prime Minister, Armand du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu to their sessions. Wellington was there as often as possible – and, when he was away, travelling between his military headquarters in northern France, along the lines of fortifications in the Netherlands or receiving instructions in London, the Council was instructed to once a week furnish him with reports of its discussions.35 This rather lean institutional structure, physically based in the British embassy and assisted by one or two scribes, made it much easier to coordinate policy and actions in the diverse realms of military, domestic, diplomatic and 32

33 34 35

See the minutes of the Allied Council, ‘3rd, 10th and 13th meeting, 14 and 21 July 1815’, GStA-PK III.HA I, No.1464. See also Wacker, Die alliierte Besetzung, 95–8, 138–43; A. von Ilsemann, Die Politik Frankreichs auf dem Wiener Kongress. Talleyrands aussenpolitische Strategien zwischen Erster und Zweiter Restauration (Hamburg: Krämer, 1996), 304–11. ‘12 July 1815’,GStA-PK III.HA I, No.1464; ‘séances 14, 22, 24, 27 August 1815’, TNA, FO146/6. R. Muir, Wellington: Waterloo and the Fortunes of Peace 1814–1852 (New Haven, CT/ London: Yale University Press, 2015), 108–9. ‘Séance October 1815’, plus annex with instructions and objectives: ‘Nota to Wellington, signed by Castlereagh, Metternich, Nesselrode and Humboldt’, TNA, FO146/6.

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financial affairs than ever before. In this fashion, with the royal courts at a larger distance, we could even argue that in terms of efficiency, the Allied Council was an upgrade of the Vienna Congress. The various meetings of the special commissions set up at the Congress of Vienna to tackle particular questions in parallel with the main set of negotiations might have provided an example of how to manage the post-1815 changes to the system. It was striking – given the conflicting national interests – how much willingness the ambassadors displayed to achieve agreement up until the end of the occupation. The Allied Council officially had two primary objectives. The first goal was to negotiate, establish and ensure the provisions of the Treaty of Paris. After intense deliberations, requiring the Council to meet at some point as often as three times a week, the Treaty was signed on 20 November 1815. It included: payment of the pecuniary indemnity of 700 million francs, rendering Napoleon harmless once and for all, reducing France’s territory to the borders of 1790, with all fortifications now beyond those borders reverting to the allied powers and permitting and maintaining a 150,000-strong allied occupational army (at France’s expense).36 Through these stipulations, the Allies hoped to stabilise the French government and to suppress any warlike or revolutionary leanings. The second objective was broader, to execute the so-called principles of salutary precaution for the peace of Europe as a whole.37 The Paris Conference (as the Council was now often called) was conceived as a venue in which to address points of contention about peace and security: in France, and beyond. It was an attempt to manage the newly established balance of power by creating an institutional framework to discuss security issues and coordinate policies necessary to uphold and ‘fix’ the system. It was an innovative system for risk management, based on the need for precautionary measures in the face of international crises (yet in comparison to later ages, obviously with less of the necessary will and means to enforce them.) Managing Revolutionary Unrest The Allied Council’s main task was the management of the transformation of France towards a peaceful, orderly and stable nation. It was not a foregone conclusion on the part of everyone that the Bourbons could once again ensure

36

37

Foreign Office, British and Foreign State Papers: 1815–1816, vol.3 (London: Ridgway, 1838), 280–91; for specific conventions on how the debt should be paid and borders drawn, see 292–361. ‘Castlereagh, Memorandum, 13 July 1815’, GStA-PK III.HA I, No.1461. See also Lord Liverpool to Castlereagh, 21 July 1815, in A. Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, Supplementary Despatches, Correspondence and Memoranda, vol.11 (London: J. Murray, 1858–72), 47.

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that stability – restoration of the Bourbon dynasty had not been an official war aim, nor was it promised in any of the treaties. Again, the Council had to find a unified solution. On 24 June, the provisional government led by acting Prime Minister Fouché (on behalf of Napoleon II) offered Wellington and Blücher a truce. But that proposal was rejected since such a reign, as Wellington explained, was not ‘that description of security which the Allies had in view’.38 A range of other possibilities however were still discussed within the political and public debate: a regency headed by Napoleon’s wife (the emperor of Austria’s daughter) or a regime under the liberal noble Louis Phillippe, Duke of Orléans (the possibility of the elevation to the throne of Marshal Bernadotte was already off the table in 1814). But the British and Austrians preferred to give the Bourbon King Louis XVIII the benefit of the doubt. As Wellington explained to Lord Bathurst, Secretary of War: ‘I conceived the best security for Europe was the restoration of the King, and that the establishment of any other government than the King’s in France must inevitably lead to new and endless wars.’ But as a condition for the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy, Wellington demanded that Louis XVIII would embrace reforms and sign a constitution, to respect the ‘changes’ that had happened since the fall of the ancien régime.39 The question was whether, the Bourbon regime was indeed in a position to guarantee stability and quell the lingering unrest in France. The first sessions of the Allied Council were to a large extent devoted to the question of pairing Bourbon rule with domestic stability. The Russians were doubtful, the Prussians vengeful. For the Allies, managing domestic security in France meant that Louis XVIII would have to steer a middle course through the Scylla of revolution and the Charybdis of an ultra-royalism. Since the second Restoration, all kinds of disturbances had broken out in the south, where the Allies had no occupation forces and where Louis’ vindictive brother, Charles Phillippe, the Count of Artois (later King Charles X), had managed to position governors who supported the ultra cause. (Alleged) supporters of the previous revolutionary and Bonapartist regimes were subject to duress, including many Protestants.40 In Paris the King chose to ignore their cries. At first neither Wellington, Castlereagh nor the other Allied ministers paid much heed to the rumours and reports either. That changed after French Protestants alerted their British fellow believers to their fate, and the Prussian head of the allied security agency, Justus von Gruner, sent alarmist reports about ‘une nouvelle

38 39 40

‘Wellington to Bathurst, 25 June 1815’, in J. Gurwood (ed.), The Despatches of Field Marshal the Duke of Wellington, vol.8 (London: Parker, 1844), 163–4. ‘Wellington to Bathurst, 2 July 1815’, in ibid., 188–93. D.P. Resnick, The White Terror and the Political Reaction after Waterloo (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966), 56–62.

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Barthelemy’.41 The Council, acting upon the British and Prussian engagement for their fellow believers, first sent diplomatic notes, attempting to move Louis to contain the ultras.42 The terror nonetheless raged on, leading the Allied Council and Wellington to dispatch Austrian troops to pacify the hitherto unoccupied department of Gard in southern France.43 The elections in August 1815 brought an end to most of the violence, but owing to the overwhelming majority of ultra-royalists in the Chamber of Deputies (350 of the 402 seats), the oppression continued legally in all kinds of restrictive and malicious rules and regulations.44 Wellington and the Council followed the polarisation of French society with increasing anxiety. In February 1816, the Field Marshall even went as far as threatening the King with the outbreak of war once again.45 Wellington, dispatched on behalf of the Paris Conference (as the Council was more often called after November 1815), urged Richelieu and the King to dissolve the Chambre, in return for a troop reduction. The carrot and stick strategy proved quite successful. In August 1816 Louis and Richelieu carried out their coup, dissolved the Chambre and announced new elections, which took some of the tension away. Unrest flared up again in 1816 and 1817 – with the Paris Conference hardly able to moderate the French domestic debate. In June 1816 someone – never found – tried to set Wellington’s house ablaze.46 On the night of 10/11 February 1818 an aggrieved Jacobin from Brussels, named Cantillon, came very close to the Duke and emptied his pistol at him – but missed.47 The revolutionary unrest even spread abroad: Emigré Bonapartists from Brussels 41 42

43

44 45 46 47

‘Martin, Mémoire to Gruner, 24 August 1815’, with annex ‘Bulletin de ce qui s’est passé à Nîmes’, GStA-PK Nl. Gruner 88. ‘Gruner to Hardenberg, Gerüchte, 20 August 1815’; ‘Gruner to the Prussian King, to Hardenberg and to the Allied Council, 30 August 1815’, GStA-PK Nl. Hardenberg 10a. See also ‘Colonel Ross to Sir Charles Stuart, 11 February 1816’, TNA FO27/130; P.J. Lauze de Péret, Causes et précis des troubles, crimes et désordres dans le département du Gard et dans d’autres lieux du Midi de La France (Paris: Poulet, 1819); ‘Letter from Wellington to Louis XVIII, February 1816’, in Wellesley, Supplementary Despatches, vol.9, 309–10; Document No.104. ‘Extraits des rapports du Colonel Ross, Janvier 1816’, in D. Robert, Textes et documents relatifs à l’histoire des Églises Réformées en France: période 1800–1830 (Genève/Paris: Librairie Droz, 1962), 305–11, 307–8; ‘Correspondance [n.d.]’, FO27/119. See also A. Wemyss, ‘L’Angleterre et la Terreur blanche de 1815 dans le Midi’, Annales du Midi, 73:55 (1963), 287–310, 295–6. ‘Rapport Schwarzenberg to the Allied Council, 16 August 1815’; ‘Memorandum Schwarzenberg, 27 August, annex no.97’, GStA-PK III.HA I, No.1465, p.62ff., p.109ff. Schwarzenberg was dispatched again in September and October. G. de Bertier de Sauvigny, The Bourbon Restoration (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1966), 124–40. ‘Letter to Louis XVIII, composed by Wellington and the Allied Council, 28 February 1816’, TNA, FO146/6, séance 28 February 1816. Edgcumbe, The Diary, 202–3. Shelley refers to ‘Monsieur de Cage’, a phonetic rendering in English of the French name (Élie) Decazes, the French Foreign Minister and Minister of Police. Muir, Wellington, 111–13.

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disseminated hateful and subversive pamphlets aimed at overthrowing the French and European order. To manage the combined threat of ‘armed Jacobinism’ (dixit Metternich),48 Bonapartism and other revolutionary unrest, the Allied Conference – together with Richelieu – composed lists of allegedly ‘dangerous radicals’. Bonapartists, members of Napoleon’s family and a series of regicides and other ‘terroristes dangereux’ were put on lists. These lists were despatched throughout France, and to all the foreign courts of Europe with the request of enforcing these persons to leave France and settle in exile in one of the three allied countries: Prussia, Russia or Austria (not in the Netherlands, the smaller German provinces or Italy for reasons of vicinity to France and an alleged lack of resources to monitor them).49 Subsequently, Metternich (with the support of Russia and Prussia) tried to transform the Paris Conference into a kind of ‘European police’, threatening minor countries with military action and enforcement if they would not comply – for example against the new King of the Netherlands, William I. The King, backed by his parliament, was unwilling to adopt censorship laws and limit the freedom of the press such that the plotting and wrangling of French exiles in Brussels – ‘this nest of traitors and libellers’ – would be checked.50 To defuse Austria’s threats, William and his parliament eventually, but reluctantly, introduced a number of new laws and deportation regulations (which were subsequently never seriously enforced).51 But the Allied ministers also had to slow down. For example, the British Foreign Secretary insisted to his ambassador in Paris Stuart that: ‘The Allied Ministers at Paris must be kept within the bounds of their original institution and not be suffered to present themselves as an European Council for the management of the affairs of the world.’52 The boundaries of the proposed European transformation were guarded closely by the British ‘balancers’; they should not go too far, i.e. not be too incendiary themselves. And more importantly: the Paris Conference had to remain what it was, a forum for managing security related affairs, not a supranational institution with a jurisdiction of its own.

48 49

50 51

52

‘Metternich, Memorandum to Hardenberg, 6 August 1815’, GStA-PK III.HA I, No.1461, 75. See e.g. ‘Note Metternich to Allied Council, annex 93, 96, protocol 22/27 August 1815’, GStAPK, III.HA I, No.1465, 89/101; ‘Notice sur les Conventionnels Régicides qui ont pris des Passeports pour le Royaume des Paysbas, annex to protocol 19 May 1816’; ‘Discussion with Richelieu at the Council, 24 February 1816’, TNA, FO146/6; ‘Circulaire of the Allied Council to all the allied partners, 19 July 1817’, TNA, FO146/22. E.g. ‘Séance 25 February 1816’, TNA, FO146/6. ‘Wellington, Memorandum to ministers on the libels published in the Low Countries, 29 August 1816’, in Wellington, Supplementary Despatches, vol.9, 464–9; Van Sas, Onze natuurlijkste bondgenoot, 125–62. See also the contribution of De Haan and Van Zanten in this volume. ‘Castlereagh to Stuart, 22 July 1817’, in Webster, The Foreign Policy of Castlereagh, 71.

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Managing by Force (and Fortresses) Between 1815 and 1817 it was very clear that neither the Bourbons nor the new parliament were willing or able to restore the political peace. The European balance of power with respect to France was therefore first and foremost ensured by the military occupation, an ‘occupation of guarantee’.53 The first test for the Council, the negotiation of the second Treaty of Paris, demonstrated that this occupation was indeed a novelty, and not the most logical outcome of Napoleon’s defeat. Prussia tried to convince the Council during the autumn months of 1815 that France’s territorial expanse be reduced permanently. The northern and eastern frontiers must be drawn such that France would lose all of the territories that it had annexed since the seventeenth century, including the fortifications along those borders. The Prussian ministers believed that the balance of power had to be adjusted on the basis of the rights of conquest. Prussians cared about the balance too, as well as nurturing their sentiments of vengeance, but in their opinion a smaller France would be less of a threat. Wellington, Castlereagh, Metternich and the Russians strongly opposed carving France up, because it would only increase the risk of future attacks and leave a power vacuum on the western front. The balance of power would not be served well by such territorial punishments.54 In the end, the Prussian’s hard, military interpretation of the balance, and their desire for retaliatory actions, had again to give way to the joint Russian, British and Austrian perception of stability. The second test was the management of the occupation itself. The governance of the occupation was administered according to the rules and regulations of the eventual Treaty of Paris. Each power was granted access to a large portion of France: the British in the West, the Prussians and Russians in the North and North East and the Austrians in the South-East. Paris was liberated and left to the French King.55 In late 1815, there were still about 1.2 million soldiers in France, of which 320,000 were Austrian, 310,000 Prussian, 250,000 Russian, 128,000 British plus other troops from smaller German states and Denmark, Spain and Switzerland; the number would be reduced to 150,000 over the coming months. Wellington oversaw the unified command of these national forces at his military headquarters in Cambrai, or from 53 54

55

Haynes, ‘Making peace’, 62. See the protocols of 14/21 July 1815, GStA-PK III.HA I, No.1464; Cf. M. Mandelbaum, The Fate of Nations: The Search for National Security in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 18–19; Cf. Bew, Castlereagh, 207–15, 398–9. ‘Memorandum on the temporary occupation of part of France, 31 August 1815’, in Gurwood, Despatches, vol.8, 253–5; Veve, The Duke of Wellington, 11–31; Wacker, Die alliierte Besetzung, 141–6.

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Paris, and regularly travelled to Brussels and the Netherlands to inspect the building and expansion of a system of twenty-one forts and garrisons along three parallel lines of fortifications, which functioned as the new European ‘collective defence system’, ranging from the fortresses at the North Sea coast (Nieuwpoort, Ostende) via Dendermonde, Ath, Doornik, Oudenaarde, Gent and Dinant until the German lines of defence at Mainz.56 In practice, ‘on the ground’, this meant that Wellington gave the directives, the Paris Conference defined the framework (e.g. regarding the payment of interest and debts, the administration of justice and dealing with complaints against the occupation forces) and the military commanders of the powers in their regions independently arranged for billeting, barracks, requisitions and the general wellbeing of their troops – the latter differing greatly per unit and commander. The occupation transformed a good deal of northern and western France into an ‘alien’ country. French residents had to deal with foreign troops. While Prussian forces suffered a rather bad reputation and were widely resented, in areas where the occupiers and the local population spoke the same language (as in the Alsace region), a sense of fraternity and mutual respect actually took root.57 Also among the Allies themselves, the occupation occasioned a greater degree of understanding and rapprochement. Through joint troop inspections, parades, field exercises and the exchange of military orders or sitting on joint legal committees that dealt with disputes amongst themselves or with French complainants, the first glimmerings of a common European security culture were evident, rooted as they were in the joint management of the French security risk.58 From the outset the military occupation took a huge toll on the French treasury and on the nation’s self-esteem. Skirmishes and incidents on the streets were the order of the day, even though the commanders, given the measures at their disposal, were generally able to keep these insurgencies under control. Wellington struggled as commander with the dilemma that he wanted to keep his military forces up to snuff, but also saw that their presence often only fuelled unrest and in some places even tended to radicalise national discontent. He warned his men, ‘[i]f one shot is fired in Paris, the whole

56

57 58

Cf. W. Uitterhoeve, C. Kraijenhoff, 1758–1840: Een Loopbaan onder Vijf Regeervormen (Nijmegen: Vantilt, 2009), 289–318; H.D. Jones, Reports Relating to the Re-Establishment of the Fortresses in the Netherlands from 1814 to 1830 (London: Spottiswood, 1861); Veve, The Duke of Wellington, 93–108; R. Gils, De Versterkingen van de Wellingtonbarrière in OostVlaanderen (Gent: Provincie Oost-Vlaanderen, 2005). See Wacker, Die alliierte Besetzung, 262–90; Haynes, ‘Making peace’, 62–3. Veve, The Duke of Wellington, 37–40. See for such a cooperation: ‘Rapport van den InspecteurGeneraal der Fortificaties betreffende de ontworpen grondslagen tot een algemeen systema van Defensie van het Rijk, 15 March 1816’, National Archives The Hague (NL-HaNA), Algemene Staatssecretarie, 2.02.01, inv.no.5654.

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country will rise against us.’59 In other words, stabilising the country (the first aim) clashed with executing the Treaty’s stipulations (the second). That was one of the reasons why, after hesitating for some time, the Allied ministers agreed to a reduction in troop levels as partial compensation for the dissolution of the Chambre Introuvable in September 1816. In February 1817 Wellington sent 30,000 of his troops home.60 At the same time, the Conference asked Wellington to accelerate the transition of the military presence from an ‘occupational guarantee’61 towards a collective defence system, the barrier of forts and fortresses in the Netherlands and Germany.62 The Allied Conference had originally wanted to have this ‘Wellington Barrier’ completed prior to the troops’ departure, but its construction and the necessary reinforcements took longer than first planned. In 1818 an initial series of forts was provisionally completed, and – permanently manned by Dutch garrisons – could serve as a replacement guarantee for the security of France and Europe.63 Its completion and staffing by garrisons was secured by a secret military protocol to the Congress of Aachen.64 This physical dimension of security was most evident in the countryside, and did indeed transform the image of security into artefacts of power and protection in the 1820s. Financial Securities The greatest challenge for the Conference was the management of the French payments and the arrangement of financial securities. Again, for the Prussian commanders and the representatives of the smaller German states, the right of the victor to redress was decisive. Moreover, reparations were not only a redress for the payments the German states themselves had had to pay after 1806, but would also help fund a stronger Prussian army and German fortresses in a time of economic hardship in a war-torn Central Europe. Playing to public opinion and achieving satisfaction at home certainly mattered too, as

59 61 62 63

64

60 Cited by Veve, The Duke of Wellington, 67. Ibid., 109–23. Haynes, ‘Making Peace’, 62. ‘Allied Council, 2, 6, 7, 8 October 1815’, GStA-PK III.HA I, No.1469; ‘Correspondence Krayenhoff-Wellington, December 1815’, TNA, FO92/15. Although Wellington and the Allies insisted on an international defensive/garrison force, the Dutch King William I refused to house foreign troops in Dutch forts. So, Dutch troops manned the forts, with German troops nearby. Wacker, Die alliierte Besetzung, 223–31. Wellington, ‘Memorandum’, 5 November 1818 and final version: ‘Reserved protocol – Quadruple Alliance’ & ‘Protocole Militaire’, 15 November 1818, Wellesley, Supplementary Despatches, vol.12, 817–9, 835–7. See also protocol and annexes of the meeting of the Congress of Aachen, 15 November 1818, Aachen, Österreichisches Staatsarchiv/Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Staatskanzlei, Kongressakten, inv.nr. 17, Subfolder ‘Protokolle’, Aachen 1818, pp. 157–72.

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well as deterrence of potential new war-mongerers. That is why the Prussian commander of Paris, Müffling, and after November 1815 Ambassador Von der Goltz on behalf of the King, continually pushed for higher reparations. The Prussian commanders, along with the Dutch, were this time also the first to come, with bayonets at the ready, to retrieve stolen works of art. The Louvre was stripped of the masterpieces of Lucas Cranach, and Cologne got its Rubens back (the Kreuzigung Petri). ‘Fiat Justitia!’ were the triumphant words of the Prussian commissioner John Henry when he wrote home.65 Harder still was the process of making the French financial commissioners not only accept but also carry out the indemnifications and liquidation of private claims and standing debts. With great reluctance and delay tactics, Prime Minister Richelieu and Controller-General of Finance Baron Louis negotiated with their European counterparts to reduce the burden of payments. All the haggling drove the Dutch and Prussian commissioners for the arrears crazy.66 Richelieu’s highest priority was nonetheless to meet the stated deadlines, in order to bring the occupation to an end as quickly as possible.67 Exactly as the Allied Conference had stated, the occupation was the ‘security to the Allies for their punctual Liquidation’.68 Richelieu’s problem was however the total amount of the indemnifications and private claims. The French treasury would simply not be able to cough that up, even with higher taxes and/or further delay. The second Treaty of Paris had determined that the French would have to pay an overdue debt of 700 million francs, added to which was an amount of about 360 million francs per annum for the maintenance of the troops. On top of this came an almost similar claim for the liquidation of private debts. Opinions on the Allied Conference differed initially as to exactly how these payments were to be made. Austria and Germany wanted to be paid more quickly and in cash, whereas Britain and Russia were satisfied with government bonds and longer payment periods. The latter arrangement eventually prevailed.69 France eventually paid a total of 1,893 million francs. That was less than the reparations imposed on Germany after World War I, but in 65 66

67 68 69

Savoy, Patrimoine, 183–95, 183. ‘Rapport sur le travail de la Commission nommé pour assurer l’exécution des articles de la Paix de Paris du 30 Mai 1814 auxquels il n’y a pas été satisfait jusqu’ici par la France’. Untitled piece bearing these words written by Canneman: ‘travail de M. de Humboldt’; and ‘Protocoles des séances des Commissaires des Puissances Alliées et des Commissaires français chargés de discuter la Convention projetée relativement à l’accomplissement du Traité de Paris du 30 Mai 1814, 5–15 November 1815’, NL-HaNA, Canneman, 2.21.005.30, inv.no.36. See also H. Landheer, ‘Afrekenen met het Verleden: De vereffening van de achterstallige schulden van het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in het begin van de negentiende eeuw’, in H. Boels (ed.), Overheidsfinanciën tijdens de Republiek en het Koninkrijk, 1600–1850 (Hilversum: Verloren, 2012), 189–230, 220–2; H.C. von Gagern, Der zweite Pariser Frieden (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1845), 316–22. Bertier, The Bourbon Restoration, 154. ‘Castlereagh to Wellington, 24 April 1818’, TNA, FO92/33. See TNA, FO146/6 for the discussion during the sessions of 6 and 10 March 1816.

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absolute terms more than any other externally imposed war debt in the nineteenth and twentieth century.70 Here too, it was Wellington who reined in the Prussian drive for revenge. He also rejected Gneisenau and Blücher’s argument that Prussian public opinion (in particular via the Rheinische Merkur – a short-lived, 1814–16, liberal newspaper edited by the Catholic publicist and German nationalist Joseph Görres) was breathing down their neck; as Wellington (rather exaggeratedly) claimed in October 1815: ‘The Rhenish Mercury is a paper set up and patronized by the Prussian military Jacobins, having in view to be established in Germany, and eventually all over Europe, the dominion of Prussian military Jacobinism; a tyranny rather more degrading than that from which we have lately escaped.’71 (Interestingly, this citation is also evidence of Wellington’s acceptance of some of the conspiracy theories propagated by Talleyrand, Metternich and others on ‘armed Jacobinism’.) Tsar Alexander supported Castlereagh and Wellington in tempering Prussian vengeance. Another solution had to be found for the remainder of the debt; neither the treasury nor the population could come up with that kind of money within the prescribed period. As a result, Richelieu, with the help of Wellington, forged a plan to enlist international financial assistance. Via Wellington’s Dutch contacts72 the private banking houses of Hope and Baring in London and Amsterdam were contacted and a large loan was secured in 1817, with a second following in 1818.73 Public response to the loans, both in France but also abroad, was immense; twelve times as many subscriptions to the financial securitieson-offer were registered – producing a robust moral boost to political and economic confidence.74 France could now fulfil all of its outstanding financial obligations.

70 71 72

73 74

E.N. White, ‘Making the French pay: the costs and consequences of the Napoleonic reparations’, European Review of Economic History, 5:3 (2001), 337–65, 341, 361. Cited by Muir, Wellington, 93. ‘Baring to Richelieu, 7 October 1817, Paris. Annex to the Allied Council’s protocol of 8 October 1817’, TNA, FO 146/22. See also Oosterlinck a.o., ‘Baring, Wellington and the Resurrection of French Public Finances’, 1081–3; Report of Wellington’s financial liaison in Paris, Dutch financial liquidation commissioner Elias Canneman, to the Dutch King, 12 October 1817. NL-HaNA, ASS, 6366. E.g. ‘Wellington to Castlereagh reporting on a meeting with Hope and Baring, Paris 1 January 1818’, and ‘On a “convention pécunniaire”, 27 August 1818’, TNA, FO92/33. Bertier, The Bourbon Restoration, 154–5; Veve, The Duke of Wellington, 113–4, 150–1. See also Chapter 15 by Sluga in this volume; J. Greenfield, ‘Financing a new order. The payment of reparations by restoration France, 1817–1818’, French History, 30:3 (2016), 376–400; K. Oosterlinck, L. Ureche-Rangau and J.M. Vaslin, ‘Baring, Wellington and the resurrection of French public finances following Waterloo’, The Journal of Economic History, 74:4 (2014), 1072–1102; D.C.M. Platt, Foreign Finance in Continental Europe and the United States, 1815–1870. Quantities, Origins, Functions and Distribution (London: George Allen & Unwin,1984); P. Ziegler, The Sixth Great Power. Barings, 1762–1929 (London: HarperCollins,1988).

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At the Congress of Aachen, meeting between 30 September and 15 November 1818, the final financial conventions were concluded. Hence, France was rewarded with an invitation to accede to Article VI of the Quadruple Alliance (via a special stipulation), and the Allies’ occupying army left France in that same year. With that, this particular project of collective security in the Paris Conference temporarily came to an end. Wellington himself bid farewell to the troops, who were to have left France by 30 November 1818.75 A ‘Europol’ avant la lettre was not set up. France had wrested itself from its financial yoke, was still not-quite bankrupt and the turbulent times seemed to have abated – at least for now. And the Allied Conference had managed to stay intact and in charge till the end, in November 1818, when its protocols were formally ‘closed’ by the princes in Aachen.76 Conclusion The Allied Council (and after November 1815, the Allied or Paris Conference) was a platform for managing the transition in France and the security of Europe. This was a hazardous task since the various objectives of the occupation regime were diametrically opposed. The military occupation, and the seizures associated with it, confirmed the superior power of the Allies but humiliated France. The mere existence of the Allied Council also increasingly undermined the French government that had agreed to it. The attempt to stabilise the King’s government and to mitigate the political divisions and radicalisation in the country could not, in the long run, comport well with the ongoing attempts to sap the country dry, like the Prussian commanders tried to do in the areas that they occupied. That is why Wellington recommended ending the occupation sooner than anticipated, after three instead of five years. Military, the dissolution of the Grande Armée and expulsion of central Bonapartists had been achieved and the construction of a ring of fortresses around France was well under way. Financially, the Allied goal that the debts be paid, and looted artworks returned, had been achieved. Politically, it was still questionable whether the Bourbons would survive and whether Louis XVIII had profited from the support he had received from the Allies’ bayonets. Apart from the changes in France itself, the Allied Council also contributed to a broader culture of European security. The remarkable thing about this 75 76

Cited by Veve, The Duke of Wellington, 161. ‘Protocol 5 December 1818, with formal closing instructions by the Metternich, Castlereagh, Hardenberg, Bernstorff, Nesselrode and Capo d’Istrias from 22 November 1818’, TNA, FO146/ 30. The four members, Vincent, Pozzo di Borgo, Stuart and Goltz, however kept continuing their sessions, as the princes had asked them to manage the remaining territorial and financial matters. But they now did not longer convene as the Allied Conference within the framework of the Paris Treaty, but as a mere ambassadorial conference.

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council was that its participants, from high to low, were in many ways ‘joined at the hip’ for years. Castlereagh, Tsar Alexander I, Friedrich Wilhelm III, Wellington and their ministers were away from home for at least a year. Tsar Alexander was in Europe for almost all of December 1812 through October 1815; Castlereagh left London on 28 December 1813 and remained on the continent, except for two short trips back home, until the end of November 1815, albeit much to the increasing chagrin of Parliament. After the rulers and foreign ministers returned home in late 1815, a large number of notable representatives remained in place: Wellington, Pozzo di Borgo, Vincent, Goltz, Müffling, Charles Stuart. The physical presence of government leaders and their ministers during the lengthy negotiations on peace and security reflect a sense of how much value was attached to these ongoing discussions. In their respective homelands, the physical absence of these leaders and their ministers was generally also deemed to be in the interest of national security. In that light, this period of high profile, intensive, well-documented and, for that time, widely reported consultations qualifies as a modern form of ‘summit’. According to David Reynolds, the modern form of summitry is contingent on the use of aircraft, the presence of daily ‘newsreels’ and the need for bilateral restrictions on the use of weapons of mass destruction.77 There were no planes in 1815, let alone talk shows. But statesmen continued to spend protracted periods in each other’s capitals, with their deliberations reported on extensively in the newspapers and magazines of the day. A review of the (British) Examiner, the Wiener Zeitung, Allgemeine Zeitung and the (Dutch) Rotterdamsche Courant reveals that the ‘news sky’ was already quite transnational.78 And the fear for mass destruction in the conventional wars of the time and the threat of revolution continued to hang like a sword of Damocles over their heads. Indeed, there was even talk of a ‘progressive’ form of summitry that led to the institutionalisation of standards and practices embedded in a growing community of professional agents.79 Owing to their prolonged proximity in working together and to the ease of communicating with those they had come to know well, new ideas and concepts were generated and 77 78 79

D. Reynolds, Summits: Six Meetings that Shaped the Twentieth Century (London: Allen Lane, 2007), 11–36. See for a rich analysis of the European press coverage of Vienna and its aftermath Vick, The Congress of Vienna, 99–111. M. Schulz, Normen und Praxis: Das Europäische Konzert der Großmächte als Sicherheitsrat, 1815–1860 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2009), 70–1; Reynolds, Summits, 7. See also R. Keohane: ‘By clustering issues together in the same forums over a long period of time, they help to bring governments into continuing interaction with one another, reducing the incentives to cheat and enhancing the value of reputation’, Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 244–5. For more on ‘forum talk’ and ‘face-to-face diplomacy’, see J. Mitzen, Power in Concert: The NineteenthCentury Origins of Global Governance (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2013).

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circulated, or new meanings were ascribed to old terms, like the concept ‘balance of power’.80 On the cultural front, an international array of belles lettres were shared and discussed, ranging from the popular novels and writings of Sir Walter Scott (a friend of Castlereagh), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe or Madame de Staël. Intellectuals such as Grimm and Humboldt (despatched to France to identify looted art), worked in the Bibliothèque National and deepened existing ties with French érudits. As stipulated in the Treaty of Paris, the Allied Council established a territorial, a military and, to a certain extent, also a political balance. It was a system of collective risk management, as provided for in Article VI of the second Treaty of Paris: To facilitate and to secure the execution of the present Treaty, and to consolidate the connections which at the present moment so closely unite the Four Sovereigns for the happiness of the world, the High Contracting Parties have agreed to renew their Meetings at fixed periods, either under the immediate auspices of the Sovereigns themselves, or by their respective Ministers, for the purpose of consulting upon their common interests, and for the consideration of the measures which at each of those periods shall be considered the most salutary tor the repose and prosperity of Nations, and for the maintenance of the Peace of Europe.81

In addition to the high-profile summits and meetings of state leaders, this treaty also provided for a new system of ministerial or ambassadorial conferences with which the bellicose and revolutionary ghosts of the future had to be laid to rest, in France and beyond. The Allied Conference in France was the first example of this system, and with an eye to the short-term stipulations of the Paris Treaty (which were met) a successful example. That France in its heart would remain divided, and would again be shaken by a revolution, the Allied Conference could not have prevented – although Wellington was very critical of the ongoing polarisation in France. The system of fortifications did not prove to be a durable barrier, falling prey to urban development and the rapid expansion of train connections in the 1840s. But given what they knew then, the Conference was a thorough and comprehensive instrument to implement the principles of mutual security and the balance of power in a gradual and diplomatic way. It was a masterpiece of change management. The system of ministerial or ambassadorial conferences provided a forum for managing and containing international crises when they started. In fact, we

80

81

See also in this context D. Armitage, ‘Globalizing Jeremy Bentham’, History of Political Thought, 32:1 (2011), 63–82; Ibid., Foundations of Modern International Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). E. Hertslet, The Map of Europe by Treaty: Showing the Various Political and Territorial Changes Which Have Taken Place since the General Peace of 1814 (London: Butterworths, 1875), 372–6.

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could argue that the Vienna Order shifted gears from summitry to the mechanism of the conferences. Royal visits and summits of course still took place, as in Aachen, but they became partly disaggregated from the real diplomatic business. Even during the Congress of Aachen, the Allied Conference kept up its work in Paris. With Vick (Chapter 6 in this volume), we could argue that the governments of the great powers had discovered the efficiency of managing their joint conflicts and interests within a multilateral framework, rather than relying solely on the classical modus of bilateral correspondence or contacts between ambassadors in the respective capitals. Conferences became a seminal modus of international relations from the 1820s onwards. For this discovery, the Allied Council laid the groundwork.

8

The German Confederation Cornerstone of the New European Security System Wolf D. Gruner The Bund: Guarantee for Europe’s Security or Weak Substitute for a German Nation?

The architects of the Congress of Vienna in 1814–15 did not intend to establish a German nation-state as the successor of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. These founding fathers of the Viennese order favoured the foundation of a German confederation in order to entrust it with both European and German tasks. They wanted it to serve as the new bond for a German ‘federative nation’,1 and at the same time to function as a stabilising political entity for the Vienna system and the European society of states at large by providing European as well as German security.2 Notwithstanding these historical considerations regarding the security of Europe, the reconstruction of ‘German Central Europe’ in 1815 has been perceived negatively by many Germans for nearly 200 years. This stigma was the result of a history of politics oriented toward the Prussian-German nation-state of 1870–1, the ‘late’ foundation of the second German Empire, wherein ‘imperial historiography’ (‘Reichshistoriographie’) tried to legitimise historically the fulfilment of Prussia’s German mission.3 Thus Treitschke deemed the German Confederation to be in a weak and ‘more paltry position

1 2

3

Cf. D. Langewiesche and G. Schmidt (eds.), Die föderative Nation (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2000). Cf. W.D. Gruner, Der Deutsche Bund 1815–1866 (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2012); Ibid., ‘The Congress of Vienna 1814/15: intersection in the process of transformation from the Europe of the old regime to the Europe of modernity’, in W. Eberhard and Ch. Lübke (eds.), The Plurality of Europe: Identities and Spaces (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2010), 611–34, 613ff; W.D. Gruner, ‘The Vienna system: reconstruction of Europe beyond power politics, 1812–1820. Reflections on new approaches of the history of international relations’, in P. Krüger and P.W. Schroeder (eds.), The Transformation of European Politics, 1763–1848: Episode or Model in Modern History? (Münster/Hamburg/London: LIT, 2002), 165–85, 171ff; Ibid., Der Wiener Kongress 1814/15 (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2014). See also T. Lentz, Le congrès de Vienne. Une refondation de l’Europe 1814–1815 (Paris: Perrin, 2013). H. von Treitschke, Deutsche Geschichte im neunzehnten Jahrhundert, vol.I (Leipzig: Hirtzel, 1879–1894), 5ff; W.D. Gruner, ‘Preußen in Europa 1701–1860/71’, in J. Luh, V. Czech and B. Becker (eds.), Preußen, Deutschland und Europa 1701–2001 (Groningen: INOS, 2003), 235–63.

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than a third-rank state’,4 the ‘interment of the corpse of German unity’.5 From the perspective of the idea of a strong and powerful state, Treitschke perceived the German system of the petty princes of the Confederation of the Rhine incapable of guaranteeing German security.6 The German nation had missed a wonderful opportunity to take Prussia’s side. Therefore Germany was to be an ‘unfinished building, partly a federation, partly a centralised state’.7 It was this misinterpretation that contributed to the negative image of the Bund. The German Confederation did not want and did not intend to be a German nation-state; it had to be a ‘federative nation’.8 Notwithstanding this negative assessment in Germany, during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the German Confederation was often used as a model for how an international or European institution might well secure peace and stability. In 1855 the French lawyer Francisque Bouvet proposed founding a European federation following the model of the German Confederation in order to guarantee the peace of Europe.9 Especially the emerging European and international peace movement and the international world peace congresses referred time and again to the model of the Central European federative system.10 The British envoy to the German Confederation at Frankfurt, Sir Alexander Malet, published his account of the events of 1866 that led to ‘the overthrow of the Germanic Confederation’.11 Malet discussed the deficiencies of the Military Constitution of the German Confederation, especially the lack of a ‘unity of command’, which had become visible during the campaign of 1866 and in the 1850s. To some extent he admired Bismarck’s 4 5 6 7 8

9 10

11

Von Treitschke, Deutsche Geschichte, vol.II, 126. Cf. Ibid., Der Krieg und die Bundesreform (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1866), 7; Ibid., Die Zukunft der norddeutschen Mittelstaaten (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1866), 5. Ibid., Zukunft norddeutsche Mittelstaaten, 6ff. Ibid., 28. Cf. Ibid., ‘Bundesstaat und Einheitsstaat’, in ibid., Historische und politische Aufsätze, vol.2 (Leipzig: Hirtzel, 1864–1886), 81–241. ‘Peace Treaty of Paris, 30 May 1814’, Ph.A.G. von Meyer and H. Zöpfl (ed.), Corpus Iuris Confoederationis Germanicae oder Staatsakten für Geschichte und öffentliches Recht des Deutschen Bundes, vol.I (in the following: CJCG), (Frankfurt a.M., 1858–1869), 240–46, 242 (Article VI); D. Langewiesche, ‘Föderativer Nationalismus als Erbe der deutschen Reichsnation: Über Föderalismus und Zentralismus in der deutschen Nationalgeschichte’, in Langewiesche and Schmidt, Föderative Nation, 215–42. F. Bouvet, Introduction à l’établissement d’un droit publique européen (Paris: E. Dentu Libraire Éditeur, 1856), xii. Cf. J. ter Meulen, Der Gedanke der Internationalen Organisation in seiner Entwicklung, vol.2.1 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1929), 309ff; A. Schou, Histoire de l’internationalisme, vol.III: Du Congrès de Vienne jusqu’à la première guerre mondiale (1914) (Oslo: W. Nygaard, 1963), 36ff. Cf. W.D. Gruner, ‘Europäischer Völkerbund, weltweiter Völkerbund und die Frage der Neuordnung des internationalen Systems 1880–1930’, in G. Clemens (ed.), Nation und Europa. Studien zum internationalen Staatensystem im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2001), 307–29. Cf. A. Malet, The Overthrow of the Germanic Confederation by Prussia in 1866 (London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1870).

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accomplishments, but also emphasised the German Confederation’s contribution to German and European security: ‘He had pulled down the crumbling edifice of the Germanic Confederation, and was about to remodel the Fatherland. Many will think that the time was ripe [. . .]. It should, however, and will be noted by the historian that these institutions [of the Germanic Confederation] were framed with a view to two great objects – the maintenance of the internal tranquillity of Germany, and the holding France in check; and, that with the brief exception of the troubles of 1848–9, both objects were secured for half a century.’12 In 1859 France was discussing ‘the resumption of the Rhine frontier’, but this was never seriously contemplated in the face of the Confederation’s preponderance.13 Malet thus underlined the important function of the German Confederation for peace and security in Europe, although he wondered whether the appointment of a supreme military commander of the Federal Army would have given even more power and vigour to the Federation.14 In 1817 the British envoy to Munich and later to the German Confederation, Frederick Lamb, one of the leading British experts on Germany,15 came to a similar assessment in a private letter to the Foreign Office: The Confederation promises to arrive at a freedom of action, and a consistency which I at least did not expect, and in that case it will develop such a force as to be by far the most powerful body in Europe, and so situated as to interpose between all the great Powers, and to become the chief guarantee of the Peace of the Continent.16

During the interwar period and thereafter, these rather optimistic, foreign assessments prevailed. Charles Dupuis in discussing the League of Nations also considered the German Confederation as a model for peacekeeping.17

12 14

15

16 17

13 Ibid., 380f. Ibid., 381. Ibid., 382. Cf. W.D. Gruner, ‘Die Würzburger Konferenzen der Mittelstaaten in den Jahren 1859–1861 und die Bestrebungen zur Reform des Deutschen Bundes’, Zeitschrift für bayerische Landesgeschichte, 36 (1973), 181–253; Ibid., ‘Süddeutsche Geschichtslandschaften zwischen regionaler, gesamtstaatlicher und europäischer Integration (1789–1993). Teil II: 1848–1851’, Blätter für deutsche Landesgeschichte, 150 (2014), 423–62, 450ff; J. Flöter, Beust und die Reform des Deutschen Bundes 1850–1866. Sächsisch-mittelstaatliche Koalitionspolitik im Kontext der deutschen Frage (Cologne/Weimar/Vienna: Böhlau, 2001). Frederick Lamb, Lord Beauvale, 3rd Viscount Melbourne (1782–1853) envoy to the Germanic Confederation, in the 1830s he was the ambassador to Austria. For his important private correspondence see British Library London (BL), Department of Manuscripts: Beauvale Papers, Add. MSS 60399–60465; University of Southampton Library, Broadland Papers (USL-BP), G.C.BE 5–69, 408–31. ‘Hamilton, private, 5 March 1817’, The National Archives Kew (TNA), Foreign Office (FO)30/10. Ch. Dupuis, La politique internationale de l’Europe: la confédération germanique et la Société des Nations, les actes de Locarno et le Pacte de Paris (Paris: Dotation Carnegie, 1931); M. Semper, Deutscher Bund und Völkerbund als Organisationen zur Friedenssicherung. (Göttingen: C. Nieft, 1936).

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The German Confederation was discussed again as an organisational model for Europe or for the United Nations after the experience of World War II. Reginald Lang combined the model of the German Confederation and the idea of a European confederation when arguing: As the Germanic Confederation pointed toward a new pattern for the Germanies to be erected on the ruins Napoleon made of the Holy Roman Empire, so a European Confederation arising out of the present general desolation of Europe might revive that continent upon a new model. As the Germanic Confederation was guaranteed by the non-German great powers, so a European Confederation could be guaranteed by the non-European Great Powers.18

The peace and security issue also came up in the debates of German emigrants during World War II on the question of constructing an ‘other’, non-Prussian Germany after the war. A group of German émigrés in Switzerland, among them Wilhelm Hoegner, Professor of Constitutional Law, former member of the German Reichstag and later Social Democratic prime minister of Bavaria, and also Hans Nawiasky, Munich Professor of Public Law, who was forced to leave Germany in 1933, proposed a ‘Federation of German States’ (‘Bund deutscher Länder’). They suggested an improved and more federal (‘bundesstaatlich’) version of the German Confederation of 1815. This new German confederation was to be integrated into a federation of European states.19 With the revived interest in German and European federalism after World War II, the German Confederation gradually became the focus of attention again. In 1950, the great American historian Enno Kraehe, who also published a landmark study on Metternich’s German policy and on the Congress of Vienna,20 even compared the German Confederation to the United Nations.21 Since the mid-1960s the idea of a German confederation to solve the German

18 19

20

21

R. Lang, ‘The Germanic Confederation and a European Confederation today’, South Atlantic Quarterly, 45 (1946), 434–42, 435. ‘Guidelines [Richtlinien] August 1944’ and ‘“Zurich Declaration” of Bavarian emigrants, 26 April 1945’, Institut für Zeitgeschichte München, Hoegner Papers ED 120/127; W.D. Gruner, Deutschland in Europa 1750 bis 2007: Vom deutschen Mitteleuropa zum Europäischen Deutschland (Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitară Clujeană, 2009), 275f. E.E. Kraehe, Metternich’s German Policy, vol.I: The Contest with Napoleon 1799–1814, vol.II: The Congress of Vienna (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963, 1983); Ibid., ‘Austria and the problem of reform in the German Confederation 1851–1863’, American Historical Review, 56 (1951), 276–94; Ibid., ‘Practical politics in the German Confederation. Bismarck and the Commercial Code’, Journal of Modern History, 25 (1953), 13–24; Ibid., ‘The German Confederation and the Central European order’, American Historical Association Convention Washington 1955. Personally received from the author. E.E. Kraehe, ‘The United Nations in the light of the experiences of the German Confederation 1815–1866’, South Atlantic Quarterly, 49 (1950), 138–49. See also R. Spencer, ‘Thoughts on the German Confederation 1815–1866’, The Canadian Historical Association Report, 41 (1962), 68–81.

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question and the post-war division of Germany resurfaced in West Germany.22 Notwithstanding their achievements, important aspects of the Bund’s history – its functions, its machinery, its successes and its impact on both the German and European level – are still misunderstood, and under-researched. This can be explained in part ‘by the complexity of the subject’.23 A full-scale history of the German Confederation therefore is still a desideratum, despite the fact that since the early 1970s several special studies on certain aspects of the German Confederation of varying quality have been published. Quite useful for research on the Confederation are the many volumes of documents, not yet completed, covering the whole period of the German Confederation, especially the formative years between 1813 and 1819, the years of crises, 1830–4, and the vital period for reform and security between 1850 and 1862/1866.24 One of the aspects that is mostly overlooked is its ‘double balance of power’-function, the Bund’s twin task, as it were, to ensure ‘external and internal security’, as delineated in the Bundeskriegsverfassung: to provide security for the states of the German Confederation and at the same time to be the ‘pacific state of Europe’, as the historian Arnold Herrmann Ludwig Heeren called it.25 Therefore, such a highly overdue analysis of the German Federation would need to take into account all three levels of its workings: the confederate level, the member states and the European level. They are indissolubly connected, or, as Heeren once described it: ‘From Germany, the central state of Europe, must begin our survey of each of the states. That with its fate is closely united the fate of Europe itself, modern history has too forcibly inculcated, to need any further demonstration.’26 In the 1990s, the forgotten history of the German Federation and its function within the European security system was drawn out of the shadows through new studies – most notably initiated by Schroeder’s classic monograph27 – into the transformation of Europe between 1750 and 1850 and the role and function of great powers. Schroeder rightly argued that ‘international politics does 22 23 24

25

26

27

Cf. W.D. Gruner, ‘Der Deutsche Bund – Modell für eine Zwischenlösung’, Politik und Kultur, 9 (1982), 22–42; Ibid., Deutschland mitten in Europa (Hamburg: Krämer, 1992), 45–69, 48–53. Spencer, ‘German Confederation’, 68. For a bibliographical survey: Gruner, Der Deutsche Bund, 116ff; H. Seier, ‘Der Deutsche Bund als Forschungsproblem 1815–1860’, in H. Rumpler (ed.), Deutscher Bund und deutsche Frage (Munich/Vienna: Oldenbourg, 1990), 31–58. A.H.L. Heeren, Der Deutsche Bund in seinen Verhältnissen zu dem europäischen Staatensystem; bei Eröffnung des Bundestages dargestellt (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1816), 14. Cf. W.D. Gruner, ‘Arnold Herrmann Ludwig Heeren (1760–1842): Deutscher Europahistoriker von Weltruf’, Historische Mitteilungen der Ranke-Gesellschaft, 27 (2015), 109–38. A.H.L. Heeren, A Manual of the History of the Political System of Europe and Its Colonies from Its Formation at the Close of the Fifteenth Century to Its Re-Establishment upon the Fall of Napoleon (London: Henry and Bohn, 1873), 479. Cf. P.W. Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics 1763–1848 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994); Ibid., ‘A mild rejoinder’, AHR Forum, 97:3 (1992), 733–5.

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belong in history on its own terms, as an equal and autonomous element, inextricably interwoven, naturally, with other parts of the collective human endeavour, but to be understood and approached primarily from the standpoint of its own system and structure’.28 This statement is compelling, but it requires qualification as far as ‘society’, ‘mentalities and outlooks’, ‘trade and economy’ and other decisive variables – like national interests and security – are concerned.29 Only by applying these determinants together can the complex process of transformation between the middle of the eighteenth century and the final decades of the nineteenth century be rightly understood.30 As literature in the 1990s and the recent works coming out of the bicentennial celebrations have demonstrated, in this process the Congress of Vienna was a decisive intersection in the period of transformation.31 Below, we will further consider the genealogy and trajectories of the emergence of this European security system, with a special focus on the German Federation, one of the crucial hinges on which this system was constructed. Origins of the Bund: Reshaping Europe from 1800 to 1814–15 Unlike the German middle states and the smaller political entities of the Old Empire, Austria and Prussia were European and German powers simultaneously. They oversaw territory outside the boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire and followed their own political and military aims regardless of the Empire’s interests. They were fighting wars in the eighteenth century and

28

29 30

31

Ibid., Transformation, ix. Cf. Ibid., ‘Did the Vienna settlement rest on a balance of power?’, AHR Forum, 97:3 (1992), 683–706; E.E. Kraehe, ‘The European international system 1789–1848. A comment’, in W.D. Gruner (ed.), Gleichgewicht in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Hamburg: Krämer, 1989), 140–3. Cf. Krüger and Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics. I have discussed these determinants earlier in two case studies, on Britain and on the French Revolution of July: W.D. Gruner, ‘The revolution of July and southern Germany’, in C.B. Davis (ed.), The Consortium on Revolutionary Europe 1750–1850. XIIIth Proceedings 1983 (Athens/Georgia: University of Georgia, 1985), 509–46; Ibid., ‘The Vienna System’, 165ff; Ibid., ‘Europa in der Krise von 1830/31: Entscheidungsprozesse zwischen Systemstabilisierung und Eigeninteressen’, in W.D. Gruner and M. Völkel (eds.), Region – Territorium – Nationalstaat – Europa. Beiträge zu einer europäischen Geschichtslandschaft. (Rostock: Universitätsbibliothek, 1998), 199–244, 202ff. Cf. W.D. Gruner, ‘The Congress of Vienna 1814/15. Intersection in the process of transformation from the Europe of the old regime to the Europe of modernity’, in W. Eberhard and C. Lübke (eds.), The Plurality of Europe: Identities and Spaces. (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2010), 611–34; Ibid., Wiener Kongress 1814/15, 15–24; Ibid., ‘The reconstruction of Europe after the Napoleonic wars and the Vienna system: Some structuralist considerations’, in K.O. Eidahl and D.D. Horward (eds.), The Consortium on Revolutionary Europe 1750–1850. Selected Papers 1998 (Tallahassee: Florida State University, 1999), 553–64.

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joining opposing alliances.32 Antagonism existed, hidden or more openly, between the Catholic great power of Austria and Prussia, the rising German Protestant power – a religious, power-political and ideological conflict that persisted as part of the political antagonism between the German great powers till the end of the German Confederation in 1866 and beyond.33 The territorial consolidation between 1803 and 1806 in German Central Europe led to the formal dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806. The destruction of the European balance of power meant that there was no longer a need for holding up the Old Empire. Instead of fighting for the Empire’s survival, Austria and Prussia, as well as the medium-sized states, aimed at full sovereignty beyond the constitutional framework of the Empire. The dismemberment of the Empire provided the means for territorial consolidation and a redistribution of power. The southern German states, after being promoted by Napoleon in their ranking to kings and grand dukes, joined the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806, became sovereign and were granted territorial enlargements. They were not prepared to give up this sovereignty to any new successor organisation for the Old Empire. This historical development promoted the German middle states, the so-called third Germany, into contenders for key roles in German and European history, next to Prussia and Austria, that would have to be taken into consideration in any future German and European reconstruction. Sanctioning domestic constitutions was a major factor in incorporating the middle states into the Confederation after 1815, and thus contributing to the Confederation’s stability.34 The bipolar system of the Treaty of Amiens, with France being the continental power and Britain being the sea power, had failed by 1803. Therefore, for domestic, European, imperial and trade reasons Great Britain, after the renewal 32

33

34

Cf. U. Planert, ‘International conflict, war, and the making of modern Germany, 1740–1815’, in H.W. Smith (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Modern German History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 91–118. Religion played an important role in Austro-Prussian relations before and during the lifetime of the German Confederation. Cf. W.D. Gruner, ‘Süddeutsche Geschichtslandschaften zwischen regionaler, gesamtstaatlicher und europäischer Integration 1789–1993. Teil III: 1851–1867’, Blätter für deutsche Landesgeschichte, 151 (2015), 527–618; ‘Bismarck to Manteuffel, Frankfurt 1 March 1859’, in R. von Poschinger (ed.), Preußen im Bundestag 1851 bis 1859, vol.III 1856–1859 (Leipzig: S. Hirtzel, 1882), 487–514, 493f; ‘Kabinettsakten König Maximilian II, 9 September 1852’, Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv München (BHStAM), Geheimes Hausarchiv (GHA) 78/3/ 127; ‘Von der Tann, Gegensätze in Deutschland und in Bayern insbesondere’, BHStAM, Staatsministerium des Äussern (MA)618/2, 1866: Konfessionelle Verhältnisse des oberfränkischen Regierungsbezirks mit Rücksicht auf den Bundeskrieg; R. Hogg, ‘Fighting the religious war of 1866’, in M. Geyer and H. Lehmann (eds.), Religion und Nation – Nation und Religion. Beiträge zu einer unbewältigten Geschichte (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2004), 49–75; L. Mache, ‘Die Katholikenhetze in Preußen während des deutschen Kriegs’, Historisch-Politische Blätter für das katholische Deutschland, 2 (1866), 654–80; Treitschke, A History of Germany I, 58ff. Cf. E. Weis, Reformen im Rheinbündischen Deutschland (Munich/Vienna: Oldenbourg, 1984); H. Berding and H.P. Ullmann (eds.), Deutschland zwischen Reform und Restauration (Königstein: Athäum, 1981); Gruner, ‘Süddeutsche Geschichtslandschaften I’, 68ff.

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of war against France, was interested to reach a peace settlement that would restrict future French expansion and bolster British interests. The prerequisite was a settlement that would deter attempts at hegemony and contribute to a stable international system after war had ceased. The British foreign policy on this was informed by the landmark memorandum drafted by William Pitt (then prime minister) and his aide Castlereagh in 1805 on ‘the Deliverance and Security of Europe’,35 which made the case that only a peace system that fulfilled these conditions would be in accordance with British interests. The memorandum envisaged returning France to its former borders, reconstructing the independence of (some of ) the countries France had occupied and crafting a general peace agreement ‘for the mutual protection and security of different Powers, and for re-establishing a general system of public law in Europe’.36 Although the proposed alliance between Britain, Russia, Austria and Prussia did not materialise until years later, the 1805 stipulations did indeed resurface in Castlereagh’s instructions for his negotiations in the Allied Headquarters,37 in the Treaty of Chaumont, in the Peace of Paris of 30 May 1814 and in the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna.38 The projected European security system was constructed around four central regions: The Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland and the former Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. For the Allied powers, the resurrection of an independent Low Countries was as paramount39 as the establishment of a new political organisation for Central Europe, solving the problems of the Italian peninsula,40 deciding the future

35

36 37 38

39

40

‘Memorandum on the Deliverance and Security of Europe, 19 January 1805’, TNA, FO65/60, C.K. Webster (ed.), British Diplomacy 1813–1815. Select Documents Dealing with the Reconstruction of Europe (London: Bell & Sons, 1921), Appendix I, 389–94. ‘Memorandum on the deliverance and security of Europe’, TNA, FO65/60. ‘Memorandum of Cabinet, 26 December 1813’, TNA, FO92/1. Cf. for more detail W.D. Gruner, Großbritannien, der Deutsche Bund und die Struktur des europäischen Friedens (Munich: Ludwig Maximilian Universität, 1979), vol.I: 110ff, vol.II: 114ff. Cf. ‘Memorandum, November 1813’, TNA, FO37/64; H.T. Colenbrander (ed.), Gedenkstukken der Algemeene Geschiedenis van Nederland van 1795 tot 1840, vol.VII 1813–1815 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1905–1922), 371ff; B.A. de Graaf, ‘Second-tier diplomacy: Hans von Gagern and William I. In their quest for an alternative European order, 1813–1818’, Journal of Modern European History, 12:4 (2014), 546–56; N.C.F. van Sas, Onze natuurlijkste bondgenoot: Nederland, Engeland en Europa 1813–1831 (Amsterdam: Wolters-Noordhoff, 1985); Gruner, Großbritannien, der Deutsche Bund, vol.I, 115ff; Ibid., ‘Die belgischluxemburgische Frage im Spannungsfeld europäischer Politik 1830–1839’, Francia, 5 (1977), 299–398, 301ff. Cf. Anonymous [Benedetto Bonselli], Note d’un Italien aux Hautes Puissances Alliées sur la nécessité d‘une confédération Italienne pour la Paix de l’Europe (Paris: P. Didot L’Ainé, 1814); K. Großmann, ‘Metternichs Plan eines italienischen Bundes’, Historische Blätter, 4 (1931), 37–76; A.M. Bettanini, ‘Un disegno di Confederazione italiana nelle politica internazionale della restaurazione’, in Bettanini, Studi di Storia dei trattati e politica internazionale (Padua: Cedam, 1939), 2–50; W.D. Gruner, ‘Italien zwischen Revolution und Nationalstaatsgründung 1789–1861’, in W.D. Gruner and G. Trautmann (eds.), Italien in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Hamburg: Krämer, 1991), 105–55, 120ff.

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political status of Switzerland and finding a settlement for the unresolved colonial questions. The concluding piece of this system was the foundation of a German Confederation as the successor organisation of the Holy Roman Empire. Over the centuries the heartland of Europe had been one of the main theatres of war. Therefore, the new Germany that emerged after the Wars of Liberation had to become a stable and functioning political entity. Between 1803 and 1806, as a result of the process of secularisation and mediatisation, more than 380 political units disappeared, among them most of the imperial cities of the Empire, the small principalities of the imperial counts and knights and especially the ecclesiastical territories and imperial abbeys. The next question pertained to the political organisation of this German ‘Mitteleuropa’. Various ideas were discussed, but the federal blueprint for the reconstruction of Central Europe that prevailed in the end was not that of an Austrian/Prussian condominium but another kind of federal organisation altogether. The end of the Old Empire in 1806, in addition to the sovereignty of the newly formed states, the enlarged middle states (especially in Southern Germany) and others that had survived the Napoleonic cleansing, had made anything other than a federal solution next to impossible.41 In 1806 the ‘hour of German federalism had struck’.42 For the new European system to remain stable and to secure peace, a German balance of power was the prerequisite for a stable European balance of power. This ‘double balance of power’ (W.D. Gruner) was what Castlereagh had pointed to, and what matched Britain’s interests. With the new German Confederation, the German great powers would be bound together, and their antagonism would end.43 Austria and Prussia were considered as stabilising pillars for the new Germany, whereas the other German states, the ‘third Germany’, would act as a buffer. The First Peace of Paris had already made a preliminary decision when it stated that the states of Germany should be independent and be united by a federal bond.44 41

42 43 44

Cf. M. Umbach, Federalism and Enlightenment in Germany, 1740–1806 (London: Hambledon Press, 2000); J. Whaley, ‘Federal habits: the Holy Roman Empire and the continuity of German federalism’, in M. Umbach (ed.), German Federalism: Past, Present, Future (London: Palgrave, 2002), 15–41; M. Umbach, ‘History and federalism in the age of nation-state formation’, in Umbach, German Federalism, 43–69; B. Mazohl-Wallnig, Zeitenwende 1806. Das Heilige Römische Reich und die Geburt des modernen Europa (Cologne/Weimar/Vienna: Böhlau, 2005), 217ff; E. Deuerlein, Föderalismus: Die historischen und philosophischen Grundlagen des föderativen Prinzips (Bonn: Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung, 1972), 66ff. K.O. Frhr. von Aretin, Vom Deutschen Reich zum Deutschen Bund (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1980), 10. Cf. B. Mazohl-Wallnig, ‘Altes Reich und moderner Staat: Österreich und Preußen als rivalisierende Mächte’, in ibid., Zeitenwende 1806, 183–216. ‘Art.VI: Les États de l’Allmagne seront indépéndans et uni par un lien fédératif’, CJCG, I, 240–6, 242.

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The Federal Act, signed on 8 June 1815, which established the German Confederation, sealed this option.45 Articles 1–11 (General Provisions) were included in the Act of the Congress of Vienna of 9 June 1815.46 In the case of an attack, Confederation members promised to defend Germany and every federal state and to guarantee the territorial integrity of their possessions within the Confederation. Moreover, after any declaration of war by the Confederation, no member was permitted to conclude an armistice or to sign a separate treaty of peace on its own account. In peacetime, all member states had the right to form alliances, under the condition that these alliances would not endanger the security of the Confederation or that of single members.47 Tellingly, the preamble of the Federal Act assigned a double task to the German Confederation: this lasting und permanent union would have to vouchsafe both the security and independence of Germany and the repose and balance of power for Europe.48 The German Confederation as Cornerstone of the European Security System The settlement of the German constitutional and territorial question in 1814–15 was a constituent part of the European security system designed in the years between 1813 and 1815. As far as the open territorial questions were concerned, the architects of the emerging European Concert had to oppose conflicting ambitions of German and other European powers. Castlereagh’s strategy for a peace settlement in Germany entailed restoring and expanding the Kingdom of Hanover and having it again join in a personal union with the United Kingdom. The Hanoverian electorate-turned-kingdom was to receive secure boundaries and access to the sea. After the breakup of the Kingdom of Westphalia in October 1813, the Hanoverian ministry used the argument of security to put forward a claim for enlarging the electorate to boundaries defined by the Elbe, the North Sea, the rivers Ems and Rhine, the Harz Mountains, and the rivers Saale and Lahn towards the south.49 45 46

47 48 49

‘Die deutsche Bundes-Acte vom 8. Juni 1815’, CJCG, II, 1–7. Shortened English version: germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/1_C_NS2_Federal_Act.pdf (accessed 1 August 2016). ‘Acte du Congrès de Vienne du 9 Juin 1815’, ‘Actes d’Accession de Sa Majesté le Roi de PaysBas, au traité complémentaire du Traité de Paris du 30 Mai 1814, conclus et signé à Vienne le 9 Juni 1815’, CJCG, I, 254–277, Art.LIII-LXIII, 7ff; N.n., Actes du Congrès de Vienne. (Brussels: Weissenbruch, 1819); TNA, FO88, Germany No.1637 and TNA, FO93/11/15. ‘Bundes-Acte’, CJCG, II, 5; ‘Acte sur la Constitution Fédérative de L’Allemagne du 8 Juin 1815’, in Actes du Congrès de Vienne, 220–43 (German), 244–59 (French). CJCG, I, 1; Actes du Congrès de Vienne, 220–44. Niedersächsisches Landesarchiv Hannover (NLA-HA), Dep.110/A70, v. Berg; NLA-HA, Dep.110/AV57a/1, Promemoria Bremer; Friedrich Schlegel: ‘Ueber Hannover, das Gleichgewicht im nördlichen Deutschland, die Hansestädte und den Continentalfrieden, November

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Bavaria received new territories in the northern part of Southern Germany and in 1816 were granted the Palatinate on the left bank of the Rhine. Its demands to procure the important entrepôt and fortress of Mainz and a direct land connection between its main territory and its Rhenish province were refused due to security considerations (again). As in these cases, the balance of power principle within the German Federation also pertained to the refusal to grant Prussia a coherent territory. Prussia was only allowed a military road between its heartland in the east and its Rhenish provinces in the west. A wider swath of land, a so-called land-bridge (‘Landbrücke’), was declined. To the east, the European powers likewise rejected Prussian attempts to expand its kingdom (into Poland, stretching towards the Vistula river, and complete annexation of the Kingdom of Saxony). The balance of power perspective dictated a more centralised Prussian kingdom. This, again, tied in with Pitt’s memorandum to create a powerful barrier of states around France.50 The final territorial arrangements of 1814–15 did indeed move Prussia directly to the Rhine, bordering on France. Prussia thereby became one of the strategic countries to defend North-Western Europe, as the great power behind the enlarged middle state, along with the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, against any French encroachments. In southern Germany, the containment of France was assigned to Bavaria, the third-largest German power, which, as a result of the Second Peace of Paris, drew massive territorial profits from this arrangement. For the European security system as a whole, Austria was the sentinel on the southern frontiers, protecting Italy against any renewed French ambition.51 Here, the same Pittian balance of power logic held sway: a concert of great powers commissioned Austria to contain France in the Mediterranean.52 The security system agreed to at the Congress of Vienna obliged Austria and Prussia as German and European great powers to take on the task of providing security and mutual protection for the different powers of South- and North-Western Europe in concert. At the same time, they were considered the supporting pillars that secured the German Confederation’s (and that of its member states’) stability. To complete this security system, two foreign sovereigns were invited to join the German Confederation. The King of the Netherlands – as the Grand Duke of Luxembourg – was appointed a member,

50 51

52

1813’, NLA-HA, Dep.110/A70. Cf. W.D. Gruner, ‘England, Hannover und der Deutsche Bund 1814–1837’, in A.M. Birke and K. Kluxen (eds.), England und Hannover – England and Hanover (Munich/London/New York: K.G. Saur, 1986), 81–126. ‘Pitt, ‘On the deliverance and security of Europe, 19 January 1805’, TNA, FO65/60. S. Patriarca and L. Riall (eds.), The Risorgimento Revisited. Nationalism and Culture in Nineteenth-Century Italy (New York: Palgrave, 2012). See also Chapter 11 by Laven in this volume. ‘Pitt, ‘On the deliverance and security of Europe’.

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thus including the Netherlands in the Central European defence system, with Luxembourg transformed into a federal fortress of the German Confederation. The old imperial territory of the Duchy of Holstein still belonged to the Kingdom of Denmark, and so, in 1815, the Danish king – as Duke of Holstein – joined the new German Confederation as a member as well. Through Holstein, Denmark was once again safely connected to the German Federation and hence to the Central European security system. The formation of the German Confederation was an essential component in the peace aims of the great powers – and the stabilisation of Central Europe – as laid down already in the Treaty of Chaumont of March 1814, and crucial for the realisation and functioning of the European Concert as a security council in post-Napoleonic Europe. The German Confederation was intended to raise the stakes and turn any attack on the post-war order, either from the west (France) or from the east (Russia), into a high-risk venture for the aggressor. In the European and German political systems, the German and European great powers were to assume different but complementary tasks, Prussia as a rather German power, Austria as a rather European power – with more than two decades of England functioning as a ‘third major German power’ (until 1837, the monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was also in personal union with the King of Hanover). After some last-ditch attempts by Württemberg to establish a South German Confederation instead, the German states signed the Federal Act, having received assurances that there would be no Federal Court and that religious affairs would be the domain of the member states.53 The acceptance of the Federal Act by the largest state in Southern Germany (Bavaria)54 closed, for the time being, the avenue of arriving at a Confederation of the South.55 It was the general view in 1815 that remaining uncertainties and open-ended questions would be addressed after the Diet would set out to complete the ‘Special Regulations’ of the Federal Act.56 The German Confederation thus provided a flexible framework for further developments and improvements, thereby offering actual mechanisms for

53 54 55

56

‘Bavarian Declaration of 8 June 1815’, BHStAM, MA1037. It is worth noting that discrimination against Christian religious denominations was forbidden in the Federal Acts. ‘Rechberg-Maximilian I, Vienna 11 June 1815’, BHStAM, MA1034. Cf. Gruner, Wiener Kongress 1814/15, 179ff. Cf. Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg (LBW), Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart (HStAS) E70, Bü.12 ‘Flüchtige Gedanken’; ‘Württemberg proposal: ‘Eventueller Entwurf eines Bundes Vertrags’, Vienna 26 March 1815’, BHStAM, MA1032; LBW, Generallandesarchiv Karlsruhe (GLA) 48/ 2464, 48/2921. ‘Münster to Prince Regent, Vienna 3, 7, 11 June 1815’, NLA-HA Hann.92/XLI/112 (II); ‘Smidt to Gröning, Vienna 9 June 1815’‚ Staatsarchiv Bremen 2-M-3a-2 Bd. III: “Der gemeinschaftliche Bund ist nun doch einmal geschloßen, es ist jetzt doch ein Centralpunct der deutschen Nationalbestrebungen vorhanden”. Cf. Gruner, Großbritannien, der Deutsche Bund, vol.I, 456ff.

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executing its security function. In the negotiations for the contents of the special regulations of the Federal Act, the ministers representing their states in the Diet found a solution to improve the organisational structure of the Federation and at the same time guarantee the member states’ sovereignty. The southern German states that worked to integrate their new and expanded territories through nation-building were not prepared to allow any interference of the Confederation into their domestic affairs. Concerned that the Diet in Frankfurt was about to regulate constitutional affairs (Article 13, ‘estate-based constitutions‘) and mercantile matters (Article 19, ‘trade, traffic’), they accelerated their constitutional timelines. In 1818–19 Bavaria, Baden and Württemberg adopted constitutions and two-chamber representative estates.57 With poor harvests, rising food prices and looming social unrest in 1816–17, they sorely needed to consolidate the new constitutional states and transform the states’ war economy into a peace economy.58 In the process of completing the special regulations of Articles 12–20, the members of the Confederation fought hard to find a balance between the rights of the member states and the rights of the Confederation. The Austrian Chancellor Metternich, one of the architects of the Vienna system, clearly saw this mediation between single state loyalty and loyalty to the Bund as one of the Bund’s key institutional functions, since domestic and international peace in Germany and Europe hinged on the stability of Central Europe. Therefore Metternich ‘tried to give the German princes a proper appreciation of the unique balance of states’ rights and federal duties that the confederation offered. Thus he attempted to make the Confederation a school of nationalism for the German princes, a school that taught a pacific, federalist brand of nationalism that was Metternich’s own creation.’59 The German Confederation at Work It was the aim of the German Confederation ‘to maintain the external and internal security of Germany and the independence and inviolability of the individual German states’ (Article 2). The Federal Act also decreed that all members of the Confederation ‘have, as such, equal rights. They all engage 57 58

59

Cf. for more detail and further literature: Gruner, ‘Süddeutsche Geschichtslandschaften I’, 83ff. Ibid., ‘Die deutschen Einzelstaaten und der Deutsche Bund. Zum Problem der “nationalen Integration” in der Frühgeschichte des Deutschen Bundes am Beispiel Bayerns und der süddeutschen Staaten’, in A. Kraus (ed.), Land und Reich, Stamm und Nation. Probleme und Perspektiven der bayerischen Geschichte. Festschrift für Max Spindler zum 90. Geburtstag. Vol. III: Vom Vormärz bis zur Gegenwart (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1984), 19–36. R.D. Billinger, Metternich and the German Question. States’ Rights and Federal Duties, 1820–1834 (Newark/London/Toronto: University of Delaware Press, 1991), 12. Cf. ‘Metternich to Emperor Francis, 1 August 1819’‚ in R. von Metternich (ed.), Aus Metternichs nachgelassenen Papieren, vol.III (Vienna: W. Braumüller, 1880–1884), 261–8.

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alike to maintain inviolate the Federal Act’ (Article 3). The Diet of the German Confederation operated as Plenum and Special Council. All members were equal. In the Plenum of the Diet every member had at least one vote (Article 6); and they had to decide on fundamental changes of the Federal Act. The decisions of the Diet were taken in the Special Council (‘Engerer Rat’). The seventeen votes were split between the larger states with one vote and the smaller states that shared plural votes (‘Kuriatstimme’), such as the four free cities (Article 4). The Special Council decided by majority vote.60 Before the Diet met for its inaugural session on 5 November 1816, Wilhelm von Humboldt, who had favoured a stronger federal structure for the Confederation, presented an influential constitutional memorandum.61 He pointed out that the German Confederation from the point of view of international law presented an interesting hybrid – which he considered an opportunity. The Confederation did not need to get mixed up with a permanent treaty of alliance, since in its inception it was in its nature and in fact a federation. Its aim was to maintain ‘peace, security and the balance of power’ through legally fixed positive obligations. According to its original political intentions it was a confederation, which, due to its internal and external aims, turned it into a federation (because in a confederation membership is voluntary, whereas in a federation it is not and member states are subordinated to the federal executive power). This hybrid nature characterised the German Confederation as a ‘collective state’.62 And only as a collective state and as a European institution was the German Confederation able to fulfil its tasks for Germany and Europe alike. These tasks entailed, first of all, providing a common bond for the German nation, one that guaranteed the existence, independence and legitimacy of the German states, be they smaller or larger. Secondly, the German Confederation’s flexible political-territorial and social order, as well as its constitutional status, rendered it exceptionally well-equipped to manage a multipolar European balance of power. Finally, its function as a hinge, on which the European security system could count (the ‘Scharnierfunktion’), turned the Confederation into a factor of power and security without in itself striving for hegemony. Without assessing the Bund as a passive political entity or a neutral realm, the German Confederation was a calculable and nonthreatening power for its neighbours. 60 61

62

For an organisational scheme of the German Confederation cf. Gruner, Der Deutsche Bund, 128; CJCG II, 3f, Art.II-VI. W. von Humboldt: ‘Ueber die Behandlung der Angelegenheiten des Deutschen Bundes durch Preußen, 30 September 1816’, in W. von Humboldt, Werke: Schriften zur Politik, vol.IV (Darmstadt: WBG, 1964), 347–417. Ibid., 352, 371, 371f., 375; W.D. Gruner, ‘Der Deutsche Bund und die europäische Friedensordnung’, in H. Rumpler (ed.), Deutscher Bund und deutsche Frage 1815–1866 (Vienna/ München/Oldenbourg, 1990), 235–63, 247ff.

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One of the litmus tests for the Federation’s viability and effectiveness as an organisation was its ability to project military force into the European theatre. Between 1816 and 1821 the Diet intensively debated the issue of an appropriate military constitution for Germany. The middle and smaller states were under no circumstances willing to accept Austria and Prussia as directive powers. The Prussian idea to set up a military condominium between the German great powers, with Prussia commanding the military forces of the states in northern Germany and Austria in the south, sparked heated debates.63 After long and controversial discussions as to whether the military constitution should create a more federal or confederal military system, the Diet passed the Federal Military Constitution in 1821–2. The federal army was to be based on ten army corps totalling 300,000 men. Austria and Prussia provided three corps each, Bavaria the seventh. The remaining three corps were combined forces. The ten army corps were organised geographically.64 Each member state had to make contributions in men and money for the federal army and the federal fortresses in proportion to its population census. Therefore, under the conditions of the Military Constitution, the German Confederation really functioned as a federation, enforcing member state compliance, financially and otherwise. Multifarious revisions and improvements to the Federal Military Constitution were made and implemented during the German Confederation’s lifetime. However, all attempts for a fundamental reform, especially in the 1850s and early 1860s initiated by the German middle states, failed.65 For the architects of the European order of 1815, the German Confederation achieved its aim of creating a system of defence for the heartland of Europe without turning itself into a new centre of gravity in Europe, which might well have destabilised the whole multipolar system. Heeren referred to this essential element when he commented on the future role and function of the German Confederation when the Diet started its deliberations in 1816. ‘Germany, the central state of Europe’ was the core to the new post-war settlement, and ‘with its fate is closely united the fate of Europe itself’.66 For Heeren, Germany’s

63

64 65 66

Cf. Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv (HHStA), Staatskanzlei (St.K.), Deutsche Akten Neue Reihe 76, 36; ‘Martens to Prince Regent George, 19 January 1818’, NLA-HA Hann.92/ 1468; BHStAM, Ges. Deutscher Bund 36, 79; J. Smidt, ‘Einige Gedanken über das künftige Militärsystem des Deutschen Bundes’, Staatsarchiv der Hansestadt Bremen, 2–M.3.c.6.b.1.a; Hessisches Staatarchiv Darmstadt (HStADA), G I 1–1a; ‘Betrachtungen über die Militärorganisation’, HStADA, G1:1; HHStA St.K., Deutsche Akten N.R.36. GLA 48/1438; N.n., Ueber die Souveränität der deutschen Bundesstaaten. September 1816. Cf. Gruner, ‘Deutsche Mittelund Kleinstaaten’, 132ff. CJCG, II, Grundzüge der Kriegsverfassung des Deutschen Bundes v. 9.4.1821 and 11.7.1822, 133–46. Cf. Gruner, ‘Würzburger Konferenzen’; Flöter, Beust und die Reform des Deutschen Bundes 1850–1866; Gruner, Der Deutsche Bund, 77ff. Heeren, Manual of the Political System of Europe, 405, 479, fn.26.

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role in maintaining the ‘double balance of power’ was crucial to prevent another great power from striving to become the new ‘universal monarchy’.67 However, he did make an important restriction as to the Confederation’s success in maintaining European peace and security: The ‘German Federation is only in so far in accordance with the nature of the general state system as it helps to maintain its freedom.’68 If this state ‘would be a great and strongly united monarchy with all the material resources Germany is endowed with – then secure repose would be possible for them’. He was convinced that the emergence of a single and universal monarchy in Germany would sooner than later become ‘the grave of European freedom’.69 Heeren’s early identification of this basic problem of German statehood is striking. Although Heeren admitted that a federal state – simply given its nature – cannot and would not make moves towards conquest, and for now could rightfully be branded the ‘Pacific State of Europe’, the gap between its strong defences and weak internal integration could prompt hegemonic ambitions in the future.70 The German Confederation and European Security – A Balancing Act Past research often accused the German Confederation of being an old-school institution that did not fulfil its assigned tasks within the Vienna system. A closer look at the history of the German Confederation and its institutions shows that the Confederation could not be blamed for the shortcomings and diverging interests of its members, but that it instead performed its balancing act persistently and expediently. First of all, with respect to the Federal Act, which laid out the Confederation’s mission, only two articles – both touching upon the internal and external position of the Bund – were not fully completed. Article 13 of the Federal Act on the establishment of estate-based constitutions (‘Landständische Verfassung’) was interpreted by most of the member states as being in line with the old ancien régime view, rather than taking this article in the sense of representative representation of the citizens. Article 19 of the Federal Act on trade, traffic and shipping, for creating a common economic space for the Confederation, failed to be implemented for various conflicting reasons, one being that after the foundation of the German Customs Union (a federation within the federation led by Prussia), Prussia was unwilling to accept Austria as a member. Second, as far as the Military Constitution is concerned, there was a permanent conflict over who would be commander-in-chief of the federal army in case of war. Conflicting interests of the middle states and the German great 67 69

68 Heeren, Der Deutsche Bund, 9f. (Translation WDG). Ibid., 11 (Translation WDG). 70 Ibid., 12 (Translation WDG). Ibid., 15 (Translation WDG).

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powers made a solution even in peacetime already quite impossible. Notwithstanding this in-built deficiency, the German Confederation succeeded in preventing the need to go to war. During periods of crisis, as in 1830–1, 1854 and 1859, the Confederation deployed ‘observation corps’. The experience of these deployments initiated smaller reforms such as the establishment of a reserve corps and regular inspections of the federal army corps. Third, in the final years of the German Confederation the power-political antagonism between Austria and Prussia for the leading role in Central Europe blocked all initiatives for reform. Nevertheless, the Diet of the German Confederation, its federal committees and its committees of experts did contribute extensively to adjusting the German legal and judicial system, and they also improved its machinery and logistics, exemplified in the passing of a Commercial Code in 1861 and regulations concerning weights and measures.71 Hence, despite the many flaws listed above, the German Confederation functioned as the cornerstone of the European system, as the central state and as the pacific state of Europe. In so doing, it helped stabilise Europe and prevent any major crises involving the great powers from erupting. It furthered the process of internationalisation and globalisation. In 1829, 1830–1, 1840–1 and in the 1850s, France continued to pose the Eastern Question, threatening to retake the borderline of the Rhine from Germany.72 The revisionist aims of France initiated a large-scale defence programme, involving the erection of fortresses along the western borders and other military precautionary measures.73 Military preparedness was improved and assured on a structural plane between the 1820 and the 1860s, as were provisions for the mobilisation of the federal army. These mobilisation plans did function in 1870.74 To their credit, the middle and smaller states of the Confederation insisted in the Diet that no territory of the German Confederation was to be transferred to a foreign state. When the Luxembourg province of Arlon was handed over to the new Belgian state in 1839, the Diet demanded territorial indemnification from the King of the Netherlands. Consequently, in 1839, the Dutch created

71 72

73

74

Cf. Müller, Deutscher Bund und deutsche Nation; Gruner, Der Deutsche Bund, 77ff. Cf. ‘Mémoire sur un progrès de partage de l’empire Ottoman, September 1829’, Archives Muncipales/Archivage Electronique (AMAE), C.P.179; M. Šedivý, Metternich, the Great Powers and the Eastern Question (Pilsen: University of West Bohemia, 2013), 801ff; W.D. Gruner, ‘Frankreich in der europäischen Ordnung des 19. Jahrhunderts’, in W.D. Gruner and K.J. Müller (eds.), Über Frankreich nach Europa (Hamburg: Krämer, 1996), 201–74, 219ff, 242ff. ‘Mémoire of Wolzogen for the Federal Military Commission: ‘Ueber die Vertheidigung der westlichen Gränze von Deutschland’, Bundesarchiv Berlin Deutscher Bund (BAB DB), M.K. annex 1 to Prot. of 23 March 1818; ‘Le système defénsif 1818–1825’, AMAE, M.D.122. Cf. ‘Denkschrift betreffend die Vertheidigung Deutschlands gegen Westen und die Beurtheilung des Würzburger Conventions-Entwurfs, 5 August 1860’, BHStAM, MA501; ‘Plan for the mobilisation of the Bavarian Army 1866–1870’, BHStAM, IV.A.IV/6/vol.1.

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the Duchy of Limburg (within its own borders), which became a member of the German Confederation.75 The Diet also, contrary to Austria and Prussia that had signed the agreement, refused to accept the stipulations of the 1852 London Protocol regarding the Danish question. For the internal security of the German Confederation it was vital that the territorial possessions of its members should not be jeopardised.76 The German Confederation took on the conflicting and daunting tasks assigned to it. In the context of the European security system of 1815, its ‘hybrid’ and ‘dynamic’ federal structure contributed to preserving European peace for years to come. In the long run, its role might have been even more substantial had it been able to introduce more structural reforms. Analysed from a perspective of the twenty-first century, the Bund managed to deliver on an almost impossible balancing act.

75 76

Gruner, ‘Belgisch-Luxemburgische Frage’, 375ff. Cf. Ibid., ‘Der Deutsche Bund, das “Dritte Deutschland” und die deutschen Großmächte in der Frage Schleswig und Holstein zwischen Konsens und Großmachtarroganz’, in O. Auge and U. Lappenküper (eds.), Der Wiener Friede 1864 in deutscher, europäischer und globaler Perspektive (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2016), 101–40, 111ff.

Part III

Threats

9

Constructing an International Conspiracy Revolutionary Concertation and Police Networks in the European Restoration Ido de Haan and Jeroen van Zanten Introduction

How dangerous was political life in Europe in the Restoration era? Historians disagree about the reality of international conspiracies and subversive plots threatening the regimes established in the Vienna Settlement. According to Adam Zamoyski, the fear of a resurgence of revolutionary terror, coordinated by a comité directeur, was a form of political paranoia, which despite its imaginary nature led to the creation of a vast security apparatus, laying the foundation for an invasive and prosecutorial police state.1 Police historian Clive Emsley similarly argues that ‘the fear of [secret societies] was always greater than the reality; but it was the fear of them that kept political policemen and their mouchards in a job’.2 Various factors might have contributed to the political paranoia of the period. In the first place, European politics had already been in the thrall of conspiracies for much longer. In the eighteenth century, there were frequent rumours about ‘aristocratic plots’, and the narrative of conspiracy contributed much to the radicalisation of the French Revolution, culminating in the Terror as an attempt to eradicate all sinister plots.3 Fear of subversion was also an issue during the Napoleonic rule over Europe. In his classic account of the Vienna Settlement, Guglielmo Ferrero contended that it emerged from fear of revolution, counterrevolution and war, but above all, fear of France.4 1 2

3

4

A. Zamoyski, Phantom Terror. Political Paranoia and the Creation of the Modern State (New York: Basic Books, 2015), 284. C. Emsley, ‘Introduction. Political police and the European nation-state in the nineteenth century’, in M. Mazower (ed.), The Policing of Politics in the Twentieth Century. Historical Perspectives (Providence, RI: Berghahn, 1997), 1–26, 7. M. Linton, ‘“The Tartuffes of patriotism”: fears of conspiracy in the political language of revolutionary government, France 1793–1794’, in B. Coward and J. Swann (eds.), Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theory in Early Modern Europe. From the Waldensians to the French Revolution (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 235–54; M. Price, ‘The “foreign plot” and the French Revolution: a reappraisal’, in ibid., 255–68; C. Zwierlein and B.A de Graaf, ‘Historicizing security – entering the conspiracy dispositive’, Historical Social Research, 38:1 (2013), 46–64. G. Ferrero, Reconstruction. Talleyrand à Vienne, 1814–1815 (Paris: Plon, 1944), 1–13.

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Moreover, many of the new regimes seemed vulnerable, most of all the rule of Louis XVIII in France. Diehard aristocrats looked with suspicion upon attempts to find a middle way between the order of the Ancien Régime and the new-found liberty of the post-revolutionary era, and were convinced that the revolutionary impulse needed to be suppressed, first of all in France, but also elsewhere in Europe.5 The presence of an army of occupation in France contributed to this apparent frailty.6 At the same time, fear for the stability of the new order was exacerbated by the return of demobilised soldiers, in total about 2.5 million: 1.66 million veterans in France and the rest scattered across Europe. In the minds of many ‘the army was [. . .] a force recruited and paid by an internal enemy. For a significant portion of the population, being a soldier also meant being Bonapartist’.7 This suspicion was further reinforced by the spectre of Napoleon, who even after he had died was sighted in many parts of Europe, often ‘believed to be accompanied by armed forces recruited from a host of different nations: Austrians, Saxons, Bavarians; as well as Turks, Indians, Algerians, American negroes, Persians and even Chinese’.8 Against the pathological interpretation of these fears, as a form of collective paranoia, it can be argued that they represented a rational response to an actual wave of revolutionary activity across Europe. Even if the conflicts of the immediate post-Vienna years did not generally involve the mobilisation of starving masses, there were violent conflicts among members of the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie – especially the frustrated youth of the well-educated middle class – the army and the clergy about the legacy of the Revolution and the Napoleonic era.9 But the fears of the defenders of the Vienna Settlement went beyond concern about scattered revolts. They feared a concerted European-wide revolutionary movement – and to what extent such a movement existed remains contested. In his account of the revolts in Spain, Italy, Greece and Russia, Richard Stites contended that they shared ‘mechanical similarities’, the most important of which was their ‘internationalism’.10 5

6 7

8 9 10

D.P. Resnick, The White Terror and the Political Reaction after Waterloo (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966); B. Fitzpatrick, ‘The Royaume du Midi of 1815’, in D. Laven and L. Riall (eds.), Napoleon’s Legacy: Problems of Government in Restoration Europe (Oxford: Berg, 2000), 167–82. J. Hantraye, Les cosaques aux Champs-Élysées. L’occupation de la France après la chute de Napoléon (Paris: Belin, 2005). N. Petitau, ‘Survivors of war: French soldiers and veterans of the Napoleonic armies’, in A. Forrest, K. Hagemann and J. Rendall (eds.), Soldiers, Citizens and Civilians. Experiences and Perceptions of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, 1790–1820 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 43–58, 49. S. Hazareesingh, ‘Memory and political imagination. The legend of Napoleon revisited’, French History, 18:4 (2004), 463–83, 466. M. Lyons, Post-Revolutionary Europe 1815–1856 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2006). R. Stites, The Four Horsemen. Riding to Liberty in Post-Napoleonic Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 323.

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According to Alan Spitzer, there were intensive contacts between Italian and French Carbonari, or even ‘a revolutionary International’, even if ‘this was a movement [. . .] with a circumference everywhere and a center nowhere, or rather with a center in the mind of every conspirator who believed that he pulled the strings that moved his foreign comrades’.11 Given this mixture of fact and imagination, it is hard if not impossible to know if there was actually an international revolutionary conspiracy.12 It is in the nature of the secret societies that they did not document much of their activities and, when they did, used veiled or secret modes of communication. Much of the relevant archival material has also been lost. Most of the police archive of the Restoration era in France was burned during the Paris Commune. Nearly all of the Austrian police papers from the same period were destroyed in a fire caused by riots in 1927, and then again during the battles at the end of World War II.13 But the extent of international subversive coordination is not only a scholarly disagreement among today’s (and yesterday’s) historians. More importantly, it was heatedly debated among contemporaries. Some were convinced there was an international group of conspirators, but even Metternich was certain ‘that they lack leaders of distinction capable of inspiring confidence, and that they have neither an overall directorship nor any of the other means required to effectively provoke revolutionary movements’.14 Even if it was then, or is now, impossible to confirm the actual existence of an international revolutionary conspiracy, the debate about it is itself telling about the perception and construction of the dangers of revolution in the Restoration era. The crucial question is therefore not whether there was actually an international conspiracy, but rather how those who feared such a threat used fragmentary information to support their suspicions of international conspiracy. We aim to demonstrate that this involved a number of epistemic and practical operations, which all contributed to the emergence of a European security culture. However, this culture was not a unified whole, but riddled with political tensions, as a result of competing political interests in the fight against real threats to the Restoration order.

11 12 13

14

A. Spitzer, Old Hatreds and Young Hopes. The French Carbonari against the Bourbon Restoration (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), 271. See also J. Kloosterman, ‘Secret societies’, European History Online (EGO), www.ieg-ego.eu/ kloostermanj-2013-en (accessed 18 July 2016). R.J. Rath, The Provisional Austrian Regime in Lombardy–Venetia, 1814–1815 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1969), ix–x. Rath’s study includes archival material he collected in the 1930s, which since has been lost. Metternich’s report to Emperor Franz of his Italian trip, 3 November 1817, quoted in Zamoyski, Phantom Terror, 173.

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‘A Threat to the Existence of Every Throne’ In contrast to its reputation as a reactionary and even rather dull period, the more recent historiography presents the Restoration as a tumultuous and politically innovative time.15 While the main concern of the parties at the conference tables in Vienna was to suppress revolutionary tendencies in France, the most disruptive political turmoil emerged around 1820 in Spain and Italy. In Spain, the political vagaries of the Restoration era were a continuation of the national uprising against Napoleon, which had led to the Constitution of Cadiz of 1812 as the most liberal constitution in Europe. The attempts of King Ferdinand VII to repress the liberales resulted in a series of smaller and unsuccessful uprisings, and finally in a revolt under the leadership of the regimental commander Rafael di Riego y Nuñez, who after a six-month campaign succeeded in reinstalling the Constitution of Cadiz, inaugurating a trienio liberal, which was ended in 1823 by a French military intervention.16 On the Italian peninsula, Austria’s direct or indirect control of most of the territory was challenged both by the previous French regime of Joachim Murat and by some of the British, whose representative, the commander of Sicily Lord Bentinck, had called for the North Italian secret societies to rise up against the Napoleonic regime.17 These societies consisted of former members of Masonic sects and its offshoots, the Illuminati, from which they inherited their religious rituals and initiations; Jacobin clubs that previously had supported the French; and organisations of disaffected army officers. The most consequential were the Carbonari, who attracted a large following – estimates vary between 300,000 and 600,000 members – the majority of whom was in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.18 After a period of sporadic and inconsequential revolutionary activities, they organised a short and effective campaign against King Ferdinand I of Naples, and appeared to constitute ‘a threat to the existence of every throne’, as Baron Karl Vincent, the Austrian ambassador to France, wrote to Metternich in July 1820.19 His suspicion was confirmed

15

16 17 18

19

Laven and Riall (eds.), Napoleon’s Legacy; S. Kroen, Politics and Theater. The Crisis of Legitimation in Restoration France 1815–1830 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000); E. de Waresquiel and B. Yvert, Histoire de la Restauration. Naissance de la France 1814–1830 (Paris: Perrin, 1996). Stites, The Four Horsemen, 28–120; M. Jarrett, The Congress of Vienna and Its Legacy: War and Great Power Diplomacy after Napoleon (London: I.B. Tauris, 2014), 309–48. C. Duggan, The Force of Destiny. A History of Italy since 1796 (London: Penguin, 2008), 61. See A. Lehning, ‘Buonarroti and his secret international societies’, International Review of Social History, 1:1 (1956), 112–40; R.J. Rath, ‘The Carbonari: their origins, initiation rites, and aims’, The American Historical Review, 69:2 (1964), 353–70; Rath, Provisional Austrian Regime, 190–242. As quoted in P.W. Schroeder, Metternich’s Diplomacy at Its Zenith 1820–1823 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1969), 40.

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when the north of Italy was also swept by a series of revolts. In response, Austria sent an army (with support from the other great powers), which on 23 March 1821 entered Naples, thereby temporarily ending the revolutionary movement in Italy.20 After the failure of the revolts of 1820–1, many Italian activists went into exile, creating a ‘liberal international’ in France, England and the Low Countries, as well as in Latin America.21 Such large-scale uprisings did not take place in Austria or the German states. However, fears of a resurgence of revolutionary activities were nourished by the emergence of nationalist Burschenschaften, by the lenient response to them, notably from the South German states, but before that already by the edict of 22 May 1815 on popular representation issued by the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm III. The panic about a lack of steadfastness in response to the revolutionary challenge reached its zenith in July 1819 after the murder of the conservative playwright in Russian pay, August von Kotzebue, by the university student Carl Sand.22 In response, Russia and Austria increased the pressure on the passive Prussian king to impose stricter controls, leading to the Carlsbad Decrees, enforcing in all German lands an even stricter censorship, the proscription of the Burschenschaften, monitoring of teachers and students and the establishment of the Central-Untersuchungs-Commission in Mainz to monitor revolutionary movements.23 In France, the first violent upheaval after Waterloo was launched by counterrevolutionary forces, which after the Hundred Days unleashed a White Terror in the south of France against Bonapartists and former Jacobins. In this counterrevolutionary climate, there was little room for revolutionary activities.24 But there were still scattered and unsuccessful attempts to initiate armed revolt, carried out by revolutionary organisations with colourful names such as Les Amis de la Patrie, Les Chévaliers de la liberté, and the Épingle noire. For instance, there was an armed uprising in Grenoble in May 1816, a rebellion in Lyon in June 1817, as well as a failed attack on the night of 10–11 February 1818 on the commander of the occupying forces in France, the Duke of Wellington, apparently planned from Brussels by a Jacobin émigré and miserably executed by a former Napoleonic army officer. Tensions rose after the murder of the Duc de Berry in February 1820. A plot to kill the king was 20 21 22 23 24

Stites, The Four Horsemen, 121–85. M. Isabella, Risorgimento in Exile. Italian Émigrés and the Liberal International in the PostNapoleonic Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). J. van Zanten, ‘“Met verscheidene dolksteken afgemaakt.” Moraal en politiek in de berichten over de moord op August von Kotzebue’, De Negentiende Eeuw, 27:1 (2003), 39–49. Jarrett, The Congress of Vienna, 209–20; W. Siemann, Metternich. Stratege und Visionär. Eine Biografie (Munich: Beck, 2016), 662–700. Fitzpatrick, ‘The Royaume du Midi of 1815’; Resnick, The White Terror; P. Triomphe, ‘Les sorties de la “Terreur blanche” dans le Midi’, Revue d’histoire du XIXe siècle, 49:2 (2014), 51–63.

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unmasked in August 1820, leading to a series of arrests and interrogations, which seemed to disclose the existence of several committees involving a large number of very prominent liberal deputies, generals and bankers.25 Two years later, a series of conspiracies in the army was unveiled, with a strong presence of charbonniers. But like all previous revolts, this too ended in failure and severe punishment.26 According to the French foreign minister Étienne-Dénis Pasquier, some of those who received the death penalty for conspiracy against the government were no more than ‘imbéciles’ who were unable to organise a revolt.27 Also Louis Blanc, one of the heirs of this revolutionary legacy, admitted that in the end ‘only chaos remained’.28 Simultaneous with the Spanish, Italian and French unrest, the Greeks revolted under the leadership of Alexandros Ypsilanti, a former officer in the Russian army, who led an international force against the Turks and vainly hoped for support from the Russian Tsar. This was proof for Metternich that the Greek plot was orchestrated by Italian Carbonari to drive a wedge between Austria and Russia. Yet despite enthusiasm from some members of the Russian Orthodox clergy for the Greek fight against Muslims and the memory of the Russo-Turkish War of 1806–12, Tsar Alexander I held his distance from what he perceived as yet another ‘shameful and criminal action of a secret society’.29 Finally, in Russia a revolt broke out, inspired by liberal values to which Tsar Alexander seemed to have appealed when in 1812 he had called upon the Spanish troops in Napoleon’s army to follow the example of the khrabrye partizanay (brave partisans) who resisted Napoleon at home, and promised ‘all subjugated people [. . .] liberation from foreign enslavement’.30 Yet when officers revolted in the name of those same values in 1825, these Decembrists soon learned that Alexander’s successor Nicholas I was adamant not to let Russia be overrun by the wave of liberal revolts that had hit other parts of Europe. At the time, there was widespread uncertainty as to whether these disparate revolts and secret societies were in some way coordinated. It is clear some had this ambition, like Claude-François Cugnet, who in 1824 established the

25 27

28 29

26 Spitzer, Old Hatreds and Young Hopes, 39–50. Ibid., 77–141. É. Guillon, Les complots militaires sous la Restauration. D’après des documents des Archives (Paris: Plon, 1895), 80, 84. See for the suspicions about the police as the source of some conspiracies M. Froment, La police dévoilée, depuis la restauration, et notamment sous MM. Franchet et Delavau (Paris: Lemonnier, 1829); R.S. Alexander, Bonapartism and Revolutionary Tradition in France. The Fédérés of 1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 254–9; Spitzer, Old Hatreds and Young Hopes, 24. L. Blanc, L’Histoire de dix ans 1830–1840, vol. I (Paris: Pagnerre, 1842), 115. 30 Stites, The Four Horsemen, 186–239. Ibid., 56.

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Légion de la Liberté Européenne, ordre du Soleil.31 Its goal was to create a ‘Sainte-Alliance des peuples’. But was this as real as the Holy Alliance of Christian monarchs signed in September 1815? This was in the first place an epistemic problem: how to identify conspiracies, to unveil secrets and to observe the connections between disparate revolutionary activities? Yet it also entailed a practical problem: how to make connections between different police services, and how to share information? This in itself furthermore created a political problem of coordinating conflicting interests and positions regarding the repression of perceived threats. In the remainder of this chapter, we illustrate these epistemological, practical and political operations through examples from the first years of the post-Vienna security culture in different parts of Europe. Creating Suspicions Perhaps the most crucial epistemological challenge presented by the fear of a European conspiracy is to create a reliable suspicion, that is, to ascertain the reality of something that is essentially opaque and even perhaps not yet in existence. This requires preemptive and precautionary police technologies, identifying threats and risks before they actually materialise.32 In the case of Restoration politics these technologies entailed at least five epistemic operations: the creation of lists; the disclosure of networks; the monitoring of mobility; the comparison of conspiracies; and the decoding of communication. We briefly discuss how in France, Italy, Austria and the German states, police services deployed each of these operations. Drawing up lists – The most common technology to control risks is blacklisting, i.e. to draw up a list of persons who are considered suspicious and in need of monitoring or restriction in their freedoms. The fact that a person figured on a list created the suspicion that he (seldom she) was part of an international conspiracy, even if there was not (yet) sufficient proof of malicious motives or criminal acts. This basic operation was already

31

32

Cf. L. Nagy, ‘Un conspirateur républicain-démocrate sous la restauration: Claude-François Cugnet de Montarlot. Origine de l’élaboration d’une culture révolutionnaire’, Annales historiques de la Révolution française, 370 (2012), 131–56, 150. Cugnet was put to death in 1824 after being arrested for his role in the Spanish insurrection. See also L. Nagy, ‘L’Emissaire de charbonnerie française au service du trienio liberal’, Historia Constitucional, 15 (2014), 223–54; F. Mastroberti, Pierre-Joseph Briot, un giacobino tra amministrazione e politica (1771–1827) (Naples: Jovene, 1998). M. de Goede, European Security Culture. Preemption and Precaution in European Security. Inaugural lecture University of Amsterdam (Amsterdam: Vossiuspers, 2011); M. de Goede and S. Randalls, ‘Precaution, preemption: arts and technologies of the actionable future’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 27:5 (2009), 859–78.

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widespread before the Vienna Settlement. For instance, in spring 1814, Emperor Franz I of Austria had tried to smoke out the secret societies by forcing all officials in the occupied areas to declare under oath that they had no dealing with any secret society, followed by an edict of June 1814 prohibiting all Masonic and other secret sects. The final step was to compile lists of all who were or had been members of Masonic lodges in Italy.33 Another example is the list of names presented in the Livre noir by the French Director General of Police François Franchet d’Esperey and his associate, the Parisian police prefect Guy Delavau, who after their appointment in 1819 developed a brutal surveillance regime in which they collected information on an enormous amount of people. The study of their regime, in four volumes of several hundred pages, contains an alphabetical list, starting with a report of 2 April 1822 on ‘actors of the theatre de la Gaité’ who demonstrated ‘some irreverence vis-à-vis the actual government’, deemed insufficiently subversive to continue their surveillance.34 More troubling was for instance Stephen Grellet, an American Quaker of French origins, who drew the attention of the authorities when in April 1820 he arrived in Paris, travelling from Turin, and before that in other parts of Europe. It was remarkable and perhaps no coincidence, noted Delavau, that all of these countries revolted just after he had visited them.35 More effective and systematic were the lists created by the CentralUntersuchungs-Commission established in 1819 in Mainz. The appendix to a study of the commission’s activities includes two lists with dozens of names, mainly of students but also of their teachers, as well as members of the clergy, lawyers and businessmen who were accused of (complicity in) high treason or membership in secret organisations and were subsequently convicted, often to years of imprisonment. On each of these individuals, some short remarks were added. For instance, on 21 June 1825 Samuel Gottlieb Liesching, trader in Stuttgart, was sentenced for high treason to six months’ imprisonment plus the trial costs, while further punishment was suspended as long as investigations did not reveal more aggravating circumstances.36 33

34

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Rath, Provisional Austrian Regime, 190–3; Zamoyski, Phantom Terror, 166–7. The more general use of lists in this period is also noted by K. Härter, ‘Security and cross-border political crime: the formation of transnational security regimes in 18th and 19th century Europe’, Historical Social Research, 38:1 (2013), 96–106, 102. Le Livre noir de M.M. Delavau et Franchet ou Répertoire alphabétique de la police politique sous le ministère déplorable. Ouvrage imprimé d’après les registres de l’administration, précédé d’une introduction par M. Année, vol.I, (Paris: Libraire-éditeur Moutardier, 1829), 1–2. Ibid., vol.IV, 1–4. L.F. Ilse, Geschichte der politischen Untersuchungen welche durch die neben der Bundesversammlung errichteten Commissionen, der Central-Untersuchungs-Commission zu Mainz und der Bundes-Central-Behörde zu Frankfurt in den Jahren von 1819 bis 1827 und 1833 bis 1842

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Disclosing networks – Although having a name listed was already incriminating, it was insufficient to weigh the risk of the persons involved. A second step was to locate suspicious individuals within a network of like-minded persons, who then all became guilty by association. Unveiling such networks was explicitly formulated as the goal of the Mainz commission, which aimed ‘to corroborate through aggregation of individual investigations the true existence of revolutionary initiatives as perceived in various German states, their genesis in different periods, their connections and branches appearing under various names’.37 Indicative of the way in which international networks were analysed are the police interrogations of the IR Commissione di I Instanza in LombardyVenetia, led by Antonio Salvotti, intended to unveil a conspiracy of Carbonari in the Papal States. The main focus of its interrogations was the musician Pietro Maroncelli of Forli. After a first interview with Gio Angelo Canova, clown at a circus in Milan, who denied any contacts with Maroncelli, the commission talked to his brother Giovanni Amadeo Canova, clown at another circus, who admitted to having passed on two letters, ‘treatises of the Carbonaria’, to a certain Zuboli as well as to a brother of Maroncelli. After his arrest, together with his collaborator Silvio Pellico, followed a series of interrogations of Pietro Maroncelli, who soon started to mention names, all belonging to the aristocracy, high bourgeoisie and civil service of Northern Italy.38 Striking in these and other police interrogations is the focus on contacts and names, and the almost complete lack of interest in the ideas or deeds of the people involved – most seemed to be guilty by association only. This presumption of guilt by association also seemed to guide the French government, as is demonstrated by a note of 22 January 1821 from DirectorGeneral of Police Claude Mounier: ‘Various symptoms lead us to believe that the revolutionary faction is preparing something. Perfect unity and extremely active communication exist among the liberals of Paris, Madrid, Naples, Lisbon, Turin, and London.’39 A telling example of how this suspicion was construed comes from a series of reports sent in 1824 by the prefect of the Jura to the Paris General Directorate of Police, discussing the findings of an

37

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geführt sind, appx.1 (Frankfurt a.M.: Meidinger Sohn & Comp., 1860), xiv–xv. See W. Siemann, ‘Deutschland’s Ruhe, Sicherheit und Ordnung.’ Die Anfängen der politischen Polizei 1806–1866 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1985), 76–86. Discourse by the Bavarian Generaldirektor of the Minister of the Interior (and from 1823 to 1831 Minister of Justice) Georg Friedrich Freiherr von Zentner, quoted by Siemann, ‘Deutschland’s Ruhe, Sicherheit und Ordnung’, 83. A. Pierantonio, I carbonari dello Stato Pontificio pontificio ricercati dalle inquisizioni austriache nel regno Lombardo-Veneto (1817–1825), 2–87. Quoted by Spitzer, Old Hatreds and Young Hopes, 62–3.

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informant who had observed a ‘detestable spirit’ among prominent members of the government council. They had been present at a banquet where they had sung obscene songs, ‘offensive and outrageous for the Bourbons’.40 On the basis of this and other information, the Ministry of the Interior contrived a report disclosing preparations for a revolutionary uprising, in which a central role was played by Frédérique César de la Harpe, former tutor to the Russian emperor Alexander and well-known liberal. During his travels through France, Germany, Switzerland and Italy, he had participated in several revolutionary meetings, notably a gathering on 14 July 1823 in Aarau, where he met with ‘the main leaders, who from Switzerland, direct their secret, revolutionary conspiracies, under the guidance from a supreme Directorate – invisible and universal – presiding over it all in Paris’. During this meeting, a secret society, the Reformateur Gaulois, was established, organised ‘on the model of the ancient Roman armies’, and with a complicated password members used to recognise one another (‘Aldeboran’, expressed while holding a fist at one’s breast, and responding with the phrase ‘She continues to be a shining light until the tyrants of the earth will be crushed’). While no other names were documented, the decisive information on the meeting in Aarau came from an anonymous source.41 Monitoring mobilities – As the previous example already demonstrates – De la Harpe’s European travels were documented in the passports he had received – the great powers had a persistent interest in the movement of strangers within their territory. Some of these strangers were well-known. For instance, the Habsburg Police Ministry kept close watch on French exiles who had fled the Bourbon regime, such as the former French ministers of police, Joseph Fouché and his successor Anne Jean Marie René Savary, Duc de Rovigo.42 Other foreigners were less famous, and were less directly monitored. Dispatches sent from border regions reveal that the authorities were deeply concerned about their presence, and compiled extensive reports about persons who wanted to enter the country. For instance, the Comte de Breteuil, prefect of the department Sarthe, wrote a long letter to the Director-General of Police Mounier about a Monsieur Tavary, who, being a veteran from the Vendée, was deemed politically reliable, and also had a good education, but

40

41 42

‘Préfecture du Jura aux Ministre de l’Interieur, Direction de la Police. Confidentiel. 11 June 1824’, National Archives France (AN) F 6684 d.4. This folder contains several other reports from prefects in the French border departments. ‘Ministre de l’Intérieur, Direction de la Police, Extrais d’une lettre du Préfet de Jura à son S. le Ministre de l’Intérieur, 13 June 1824’, AN F 6684 d.4. D.E. Emerson, Metternich and the Political Police. Security and Subversion in the Hapsburg Monarchy 1815–1830 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1968), 41.

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regrettably, ‘his addiction to drunkenness pushed him away from society’ – and this was only the first of much more personal observations.43 In the period around 1820, the General Directorate of Police in Paris received many more such detailed reports, for instance, in August 1821 about the presence of Italian revolutionaries in Lyon, but also a report from Besançon, arguing that the charbonniers of the Franche-Comté were innocent workers, who had no connection to Neapolitan Carbonari.44 The most direct way to control the mobility of potentially dangerous individuals was through the issuing of passports and the registration of travellers. In many European countries after 1815, the mobility of people became more strictly monitored. In France, passports and stricter border control had already emerged during the Revolution and in the Napoleonic era, but further regulation came about in 1816. In 1817, a new Prussian law required that a passport was needed to cross the border, focusing in particular on groups considered a liability to public and private security. In 1820, the Englishman Thomas Hodgkin observed how the Prussian police controlled the whereabouts of foreigners: ‘A person is placed by the police in each inn as a valetde-place, and to be at the same time a spy; he is obliged to give an account of all strangers on their arrival, and to carry their passports to the police for inspection.’45 In this way, police services seemed able to keep track of dangerous individuals, even if only after the fact. For instance, after the murder of the Duc de Berry, the French police followed the path of the assassin Louvel through Europe, collecting information from Hamburg, Brussels, Florence, The Hague and other places, often through the intervention of the foreign minister, Pasquier.46 Yet the systems to identify potentially dangerous travellers were unreliable. To begin with, before the era of photography it was very difficult to establish a person’s identity. Indicators of identity were generally inscribed in the documents.47 But even then, registers were not always kept systematically: not all travellers were registered, and registers were soon discarded. Moreover, extensive background checks were time-consuming and inefficient in an increasingly mobile society. Gradually, the control of people’s movement shifted to retroactive checks of domicile, notably with respect to claims for poor relief

43 44 45 46 47

‘Letter of the prefect of Departement Sarthe to General Director of Police, 18 April 1821’, AN F7 6689 d.1. See documents in AN F 6684 d.1 and d.5. T. Hodgkin, Travels in North-Germany, vol.I (Edinburgh: Constable and Co., 1820), 83–4; Quoted in Emsley, ‘Introduction’, 7. G. Malandain, L’introuvable complot. Attentat, enquête et rumeur dans la France de la Restauration (Paris: Éditions EHESS, 2011), 142–3. Quoted in G. Noiriel, ‘Surveiller les déplacements ou identifier les personnes? Contribution à l’histoire du passeport en France de la Ie à la IIIe République’, Genèses, 30:1 (1998), 77–100, 89.

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and later on also voting rights.48 But before that, ‘for all the passports, visas, hotel and inn registers, feuilles de route of the stagecoaches and other red tape, it seems the police were continually losing track of people supposedly under close surveillance’.49 Comparing conspiracies – The suspicion that the activities monitored by the police services of the European states were part of a vast European-wide conspiracy were further confirmed by comparison. In general, there was a widespread idea that the French Revolution had created a kind of template that could be used to interpret other subversive events. For instance, commenting on the revolt in Spain, the French newspaper La Quotidienne stated that ‘revolutions develop along the same lines, they have similar phases and all arrive at the same results. [. . .] Is not the Palace of Madrid what once was the Palace of the Tuilerie, a house of detention?’50 Comparison was also a technique used to verify information. This was apparently the goal of a letter of December 1820, sent by the French foreign minister Pasquier to Director-General of Police Mounier. In his letter, Pasquier passed on messages received from Berlin about the activities of a certain Bretel, native of Besançon, who was actively engaged in the organisation of Masonic lodges and Carbonari venti from Italy, with the aim to have the Prussian army support the revolutionaries at the universities and to turn Switzerland into a unified republic. These were deemed dangerous developments so close to the French border and, although Pasquier thought the source of these messages was a little suspect, he still wanted to pass them on to Mounier, ‘so that you can compare them to those you have received on the same object’.51 Finally, comparison served to confirm similarity as proof of coordination. Such seemed to be the goal of a ‘tableau comparatif’, composed in October

48

49 50

51

J. Torpey, ‘Le contrôle des passeports et la liberté de circulation. Le cas de l’Allemagne au XIXe siècle’, Genèses, 30:1 (1998), 53–76; A. Fahrmeir, ‘Too much information? Too little coordination? (Civil) registration in nineteenth-century Germany’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 182 (2012), 93–112, 102–6. Zamoyski, Phantom Terror, 289. ‘La Quotidienne, 14 January 1821’, quoted in Kôbô Seigan, ‘L’influence de la mémoire de la Révolution française et de l’empire napoléonien dans l’opinion publique française face à la guerre d’Espagne de 1823’, Annales historiques de la Révolution française, 335 (2004), 159–88, 163. ‘Letter from Pasquier to Mounier, 1 December 1820’, AN F7 6684 d.9. Apparently following up on a request for further information, the prefect of the Doubs department responded that his investigation of Carbonari activity had revealed that a certain Bretet, a former forester, had been dismissed because of bad behaviour and ‘mauvaise opinion’. He was known as a member of the local masonic lodge ‘et toujours grand partisan des idées revolutionnaires’, ‘Letter of prefect of Doubs to Director General of Police, 14 December 1820’, AN F7 6684 d.5. See for another example of comparison as a mode of verification Spitzer, Old Hatreds and Young Hopes, 204–5.

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1824 by the French Directorate-General of Police, with an appendix, divided in two columns, enumerating on the left the statutes of the French Société des Sublimes Maîtres Parfaits and on the right those of the German Société Teutonique. Although the articles of the two statutes did not always neatly coincide, the author of the document persisted in enumerating them side by side. Both secret societies envisioned social reform (art.I), and both aimed to ‘républicaniser’ the state (art.II) by means of a ‘constitution républicaine’ or ‘constitution libérale’ (art.III). Both organisations were led by a directing body with absolute power over its members (art.IV). The following articles covered the internal composition, but here local differences created differences between French églises and loges, and the German Burschenschaften and Propaganden-Kreisen. Both aimed to find as many recruits as possible (art.VIII), especially among the military (art.IX). Article XIII in both statutes similarly stated that members recognise one another through fixed answers and responses, but in the remainder of the documents the articles seemed to diverge more substantially. Nevertheless, the conclusion was clear: these societies ‘came from the same source’ and ‘obey the same ulterior and secret direction’.52 Decoding communications – European police services intercepted letters and other forms of communication between secret societies, but it was not always easy to interpret the messages. The deliberately mysterious ways in which these groups expressed themselves added to the suspicion that they were trying to hide their true intentions. Some of this opaqueness stemmed from their preference for religious mysticism. This was a legacy of the Masonic roots of many of the secret societies, but those of the Restoration era definitely upped the ante by presenting themselves with names such as Society of the Black Pin, Calderari, Sanfedisti, Concistoriali and Federati, and by ‘a good deal of mumbo jumbo and mock religious ceremony’.53 For instance, police investigators in the Papal States reported to Vienna that when members of the Adelfi sect used the name Emilio, they actually referred to Rousseau’s Emile, as a way to declare their support for revolutionary ideas.54 In the context of the trial against the Frenchman Philippe Alexandre Andryane in Milan in 1823, the suspect provided copious documents concerning the regulations and rites of the Sublimes Maîtres Parfaits. Much of this material ended up in Paris as well, where it was intensively studied and documented in the archives of the General Directorate of Police.55 Drawings 52 53

54 55

‘French Directorate-General of Police, Mémoire, October 1824’, AN F7 6684 d.5. S. Hughes, Crime, Disorder, and the Risorgimento. The Politics of Policing in Bologna (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 78. See also the example of the Carbonari catechism in Zamoyski, Phantom Terror, 169–71. Rath, Provisional Austrian Regime, 206. Spitzer, Old Hatreds and Young Hopes, 201–2.

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and seals also contributed substantially to the secretive reputation of Carbonari and other societies. For instance, the report of the prefect of the Jura on revolutionary sects in Switzerland mentioned that each section of the organisation had their own knives, of which the author provided a drawing. However, the most secretive aspect of the societies was the use of signs, codes and cryptography. The French authorities saw their suspicions confirmed when in 1824 they received papers found among the belongings of an arrested former French army officer who after the Hundred Days had fled to Catalonia, containing the keys for coded messages. Similar suspicions were raised by the use of secret code in the communication of Italian and German sects.56 The key to a secret code is perhaps the most graphic illustration of the epistemological operations that were involved in the creation of reliable suspicions about international revolutionary conspiracies. Police organisations created lists of persons, connected in a secret network that spanned all parts of Europe, who were supposedly members of organisations that were structurally similar and therefore in all likelihood practically coordinated by way of mysterious and secretive modes of communication. Making Connections All this epistemic labour contributed not only to a widespread presumption of an organised attack on the stability of the Vienna Settlement. More importantly, it also led to the development of an international network of police services. The central nodes of this network were national police organisations, which were connected to society through a wide range of sources of information and informants, and to each other via various channels of communication. Creating police organisations – The emergence of the international cooperation of police forces is generally dated to the second half of the nineteenth century,57 yet already from 1815 onwards, in every part of Europe, a similar model of policing emerged, due to the impact of Napoleonic reforms on police organisations and to the increasing efforts of police services to investigate international revolutionary threats and protect internal security.58 At both the 56 57 58

‘Cryptographic notes and comments, 8–10 June 1824(?)’, AN F7 6684 d.6; Rath, Provisional Austrian Regime, 207. M. Deflem, Policing World Society. Historical Foundations of International Police Collaboration (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 45–51. C. Emsley, Gendarmes and the State in Nineteenth Century Europe (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999); Ibid., ‘A typology of nineteenth-century police’, Crime, Histoire & Sociétés, 3:1 (1999), 29–44; D.H. Bayley, ‘The police and political development in Europe’, in C. Tilly (ed.), The Formation of the National States in Western Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,

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national and the local level, these organisations began to monitor political opinion and to prosecute presumed enemies of the state. Already in 1815, a Sicherheits-Kommission was established in Hanover. In 1819 a MinisterialUntersuchungs-Kommission was created in Berlin, shortly thereafter followed by an Immediat-Untersuchungs-Kommission and a Staatspolizeiliche Ministerialkommission. The most well-known is the Mainzer Central-UntersuchungsCommission installed in 1819, which claimed to play an overarching role for all German states.59 Metternich and his minister of police Count Sedlnitzky also set up central police directories in Venice and Milan to supervise all police activities in the Italian territories.60 In the Papal States, a Carabinieri Pontifici (or forza politica) was established, which filed a weekly Rapporto Politico with information on a wide range of topics, notably on issues of political conformity, or alta polizia, related to the security of the Papal States. Moreover, Metternich created a Beobachtungs-Anstalt in Milan and similar bureaus of investigation in Florence and Rome to monitor secret societies in Italy.61 Perhaps ironically, the French police force after 1815 was less well organised than the police in other countries. In 1818, the Ministry of Police was incorporated into the Ministry of the Interior, and became a General Directorate of Police led by Claude Mounier. At the same time, several other police services were created, some little more than private intelligence services for various individuals at the court of Louis XVIII. At the municipal level, local mayors shared power over the police with a commissaire appointed by the Ministry of the Interior. Departmental prefects ruled the gendarmerie, but could also mobilise local officials to collect information. And then there was the Cabinet Noir, which in some form or another had existed already in the ancien régime but played a pivotal role in the Restoration in the surveillance of communication. As such it was more closely connected to the postal service and the ministries of Finance and Foreign Affairs than to the police itself, yet it contributed to the chaotic multiplication of police services as well as to an

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1975), 328–79; M. Raeff, The Well-Ordered Police State. Social and Institutional Change Through Law in the Germanies and Russia, 1600–1800 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983). Siemann, ‘Deutschland’s Ruhe, Sicherheit und Ordnung’, 77, 123–222. See also A. Lüdtke, ‘Praxis und Funktion staatlicher Repression: Preußen 1815–50’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 3:2 (1977), 190–211; A. Lüdtke, ‘Gemeinwohl’, Polizei und ‘Festungspraxis’: Staatliche Gewaltsamkeit und innere Verwaltung in Preussen, 1815–1850 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1982). Rath, Provisional Austrian Regime, 23–4, 73–5. Hughes, Crime, Disorder, and the Risorgimento, 35–45, 76; S.C. Hughes, ‘Fear and loathing in Bologna and Rome. The papal police in perspective’, Journal of Social History, 21:1 (1987), 97–116; Zamoyski, Phantom Terror, 167.

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abundance of information, and according to some critics even to an ‘intelligence cult for intelligence purposes’.62 Collecting information – Police services collected information about revolutionary activities from various sources. Some of these sources were publicly available. One of the first decisions made by the Mainzer Commission was to acquire subscriptions to about nineteen journals and newspapers from various countries.63 Also in the French intelligence reports public sources, like newspapers and pamphlets, were quoted or copied.64 Other sources were private, such as letters and other private communication, available due to a frequent violation of the confidentiality of mail. In many cases postmasters were responsible for forwarding letters to the authorities.65 The most important source of information however was the intelligence provided by paid informants, many of whom worked undercover.66 Some went to great trouble to get information. For instance, in a report of April 1824 to the Garde de Sceaux, the juge de paix of the canton of Mulhouse tells about an informant who, while hiding in a cupboard, overheard that a secret society in Jena was ‘planning to assassinate all the sovereigns, with the sole exemption of the Grand Duke of Weimar Saxony’.67 Although many informants did not seem very reliable, many of them were able to get the authorities’ attention.68 Important information also came from the confessions of arrested conspiracy suspects. Famous cases include the Danish Johannes Ferdinand Witt von Döring and the Frenchman Alexandre Andryane. Witt von Döring had travelled extensively around Europe, until in the spring of 1824 the police of Bayreuth turned him over to the Prussian authorities. In his long confession, he claimed there was a close link between French and German revolutionaries, in which a central role was played by the prominent philosopher and politician Victor Cousin. While visiting friends in Saxony, Cousin was then arrested in

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63 64 65 66

67 68

P. Riberette, ‘De la police de Napoléon à la police de la congrégation’, in J. Aubert et al. (eds.), L’État et sa Police en France (1789–1914) (Genève: Librairie Droz, 1979), 35–58, 45–7; J. Tulard, ‘Le mythe de Fouché’, in ibid., 27–34, 31. Siemann, ‘Deutschland’s Ruhe, Sicherheit und Ordnung’, 81. E.g. copies of pamphlets and of articles of Der Staatsmann and other newspapers, AN F7 6684 d.3. Hughes, Crime, Disorder, and the Risorgimento, 77; Emerson, Metternich and the Political Police, 44–5; Zamoyski, Phantom Terror, 162–3. C. Fynaut and G. Marx, ‘Introduction: the normalization of undercover policing in the West: historical and contemporary perspectives’, in C. Fijnaut and G. Marx (eds.), Undercover. Police Surveillance in Comparative Perspective (The Hague: Kluwer, 1995), 1–28, 4–9; Riberette, ‘De la police de Napoléon’. ‘Report of Chagué, juge de paix of the canton of Mulhouse to the Garde de Sceaux, 16 April 1824’, AN F7–6684 d.2. Rath, Provisional Austrian Regime, 245–73; Riberette, ‘De la police de Napoléon’, 51.

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October 1824, and interrogated for months by the Mainzer Commission, until his release in summer 1825.69 Witt-Döring also gave testimony about the Sublimes Maîtres Parfaits, but his confession on this point could not match the information provided by Alexander Andryane, who was arrested in Milan in January 1823, carrying papers containing the statutes, codes and rituals of the sect, among them a document of the Grand Firmament – as the leadership of the Sublimes Maîtres Parfaits was called – of 17 September 1820, which stated their goal as being to turn public opinion, notably among the army, towards hatred against their oppressors and a political revolution against tyrants.70 Communicating intelligence – The documentation Andryane provided to his Italian interrogators was sent to Paris and stored in the archive of the General Directorate of Police. It is but one example of the lively communication between national police services. Even if there was no actual international network of revolutionaries, police services in their search for connections between local revolts did create an international network for policing revolutionary threats. According to the Livre noir on the French political police, ‘The embassies, consulates, foreign police, the ministries, the regional and local administration, certain religious communities and clerical authorities maintained secret ties to the Paris police force.’71 The same was the case with the police services in Italy, which frequently reported back to Vienna. But there was also lively communication between other parts of Europe. For instance, the French General Directorate of Police in Paris corresponded with the Superintendencia General de Policia del Reino in Madrid on French revolutionaries in Spain,72 and with a Swiss representative of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs on reports about ‘weapon factories’ and ‘secret societies’.73 A most remarkable document in this respect is the Mémoire sur les Sociétés Sécrètes & les Conspirations sous la Restauration from 1823, sent to Metternich, who deemed it of such importance that he forwarded it to the Russian tsar, who in his turn thanked the French for this thorough piece of work. The honours were received by Franchet, but the actual author of the report was Simon Duplay, former secretary of Robespierre,

69

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71 72 73

Spitzer, Old Hatreds and Young Hopes, 202–9. De Witt Döring revealed much of this information in a memoir, J. Witt, Les sociétés secretes de France et d’Italie, ou Fragments de ma vie et de mon temps (Paris: Levasseur, 1830). A. Lehning, De Buonarotti à Bakounine. Études sur le Socialisme International (Paris: Éditions Champ Libre, 1977), 288, fn.37. Excerpts of the interrogations of Andryne are in I. Rinieri, Della Vita e delle Opere di Silvio Pellico da lettere e documenti inediti, vol.II (Turin: Libreria Roux di Renzo Streglio, 1899); Rath, Provisional Austrian Regime, 209. Le Livre noir de MM. Delavau et Franchet, vol.I, lxxxvii. All these letters collected in AN F7 6684 d.6. Letters and bulletins collected in AN F7 6684 d.2.

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and turncoat par excellence, who became the most important expert on secret societies and other subversive activities in France.74 Raising Tensions: Brussels as a Liability The creation of reliable suspicions and the concomitant emergence of an international police network did not lead automatically to thoroughly organised police states, but did create political tensions, which in some cases undermined the system of collective security emerging after 1815. This can be illustrated by the example of debates on revolutionary conspiracies planned and organised in the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. In 1814 the Allied peacemakers created the new United Kingdom by combining the old Dutch Republic with the former Austrian Netherlands as a European bulwark against France. To provide political legitimacy for his rule, the new king of the Netherlands, William I, declared the recent revolutionary partisanship a thing of the past and adopted a liberal attitude to constitutional freedoms.75 Although this cautious and liberal governance was successful pro domo, it made the United Kingdom of the Netherlands a sanctuary for Bonapartists and Jacobins who managed to escape prosecution in France. The Netherlands offered many advantages for French refugees. It was close to France, and in the southern provinces French was the dominant language. Also, there was no danger of extradition, since article 4 of the Dutch constitution stipulated that foreigners enjoyed the same rights as residents. For this reason the radical journal Le Nain Jaune Réfugié advertised the Netherlands as ‘une terre hospitalière et libre’ in which refugees enjoyed protection by the king.76 At the end of 1816, Brussels had become a safe haven to several regicides – Emmanuel-Joseph Sieyès, Jacques-Louis David, Lazare Carnot – many proscrits and more than thirty distinguished officers from Napoleon’s army, for example Georges Mouton, comte de Lobau and Dominique Vandamme.77

74

75

76 77

L. Grasilier, ‘Un secrétaire de Robespierre. Simon Duplay (1774–1827) et son Mémoire sur les sociétés secrètes et les conspirations sous la Restauration’, Revue International des Sociétés Sécrètes (March 1913), 6–49; Riberette, ‘De la police de Napoléon’, 45; G. de Bertier de Sauvigny, Metternich et la France après le Congrès de Vienne, vol.II (Paris: Hachette, 1970), 565. See I. de Haan, P. den Hoed and H. te Velde (eds.), Een nieuwe staat (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2013); M.M. Lok, Windvanen, passim; J. Koch, Koning Willem I (Amsterdam: Boom, 2013); J. van Zanten, Schielijk, Winzucht, Zwaarhoofd en Bedaard (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek, 2004), passim. Le Nain Jaune Réfugié, February 1816. W. Lemmens, ‘“Une terre hospitalière et libre?” Franse migranten tussen restauratie en revolutie in het Brussel van Willem I (1815–1830)’, De Negentiende Eeuw, 36:4 (2012), 263–84; H.T. Colenbrander, ‘Willem I en de mogendheden (1815–1824)’, De Gids, 95 (1931), 370–407, 376.

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It did not take long until the concentration of these revolutionary leaders and Bonapartists in the Low Countries became a source of anxiety to the great powers.78 Especially Prussia and Austria were concerned that the bulwark against French expansionism they had created was itself becoming a security risk. Metternich reminded King William that ‘French exiles were not to be tolerated in the medium states [. . .] at the frontier of the French kingdom.’79 At the same time, the Austrian ambassador in the Netherlands Baron Binder advised the Dutch government to ‘surrender’ the French refugees to Russia, Austria and Prussia, where they could be kept under close surveillance.80 The Austrian pressure caused disagreement among the Dutch ministers. King William’s general-secretary Falck opposed extradition on historical grounds: the Netherlands had been a hospitable and congenial nation since the seventeenth century.81 But the minister of Foreign Affairs Baron van Nagell complained that the Netherlands was isolating itself, while the minister of Police and Justice Van Maanen – already in office under Napoleon’s brother King Louis Napoleon Bonaparte – thought ‘the French faggots’ were corrupting the already frustrated youth with their liberal periodicals. He suggested monitoring all foreigners by checking their travel documents and whereabouts regularly. He also ordered the police to look for connections between journalists, students, veterans and refugees, and especially to pay attention to French exiles.82 William, however, claimed that his tolerant policy regarding refugees was a question of national honour.83 He believed that the French government was responsible for the situation by issuing travel papers to the refugees.84 At the end of April 1816, Wellington tried to mediate on behalf of the French. The Dutch king convinced the Duke that the problems with the refugees could be easily solved by stricter oversight in France on travel documents. He also repeatedly emphasised that the security threat they posed

78 79

80 81 82 83

84

Emerson, Metternich and the Political Police, 40. M. Chvojka, ‘Joseph Fouché and the Austrian State Police after the Congress of Vienna’, http:// irhis.recherche.univ-lille3.fr/dossierPDF/CIRSAP-Textes/Chvojka.pdf, 7 (accessed 12 July 2017). Colenbrander, ‘Willem I en de mogendheden’, 376. H.T. Colenbrander, Gedenkschriften van Anton Reinhardt Falck (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1913), 185–91. National Archives The Hague (NL-HaNA), Legatie Frankrijk 1814–1884, 2.05.47, inv.no.87, 218–222; Lemmens, ‘Une terre hospitalière et libre?’, 277. A. van de Sande and H. de Valk, ‘Italian refugees in the Netherlands during the Restoration 1815–1830’, in L’émigration politique en Europe aux XIXe et XXe siècles. Actes du colloque organisé par l’École Française de Rome (3–5 mars 1988) (Rome: École Française de Rome, 1991), 191–204. Colenbrander, ‘Willem I en de mogendheden’, 378; Cf. E.H. Karsten, ‘Fransche uitgewekenen in het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden’, Vaderlandsche Letteroefeningen, 105 (Utrecht, 1865), 65–87, 79–82; N.C.F. van Sas, Onze natuurlijkste bondgenoot. Nederland, Engeland en Europa, 1813–1831 (Groningen: Wolters Noordhoff, 1985), 128–34.

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was not as real as the French and the other Allies imagined. Wellington seemed convinced by the king’s argument that the regicides were ‘old and infirm, and either very rich or poor [. . .] desirous of being allowed to live in tranquility and obscurity’.85 Despite Wellington’s reassuring dispatches, on 29 August 1816 the Ambassadors’ Council demanded that William extradite the regicides and take action against the liberal and revolutionary press. Under threat of dissolving the kingdom and abandoning its defence against French aggression, the Dutch king agreed to an Alien Bill, which made it illegal to insult foreign governments or heads of state. He also became more receptive to the arguments of Van Maanen and allowed the minister to take legal action against French journalists who had found shelter in Brussels. After some were extradited, most journals and publicists went underground, which made them even more obscure and suspect. In February 1818 it became clear that Brussels was still a liability when an assassination attempt was made on Wellington in Paris. The Duke now changed his view on the exiles in Brussels, blaming the Dutch government for sheltering refugees, but also for encouraging their plotting against France and its allies.86 Wellington’s accusation was not entirely unfounded. The refugees played an important part in salons or private clubs, like the lodges of Brussels Freemasonry. These establishments quickly became places where diplomats and aristocrats were robbed of their secrets and conspiracies were planned. Moreover, one of the most prominent members of these societies was the Dutch crown prince William. After he had fallen out with his father in the autumn of 1815, he started to consort with Bonapartist refugees in the Masonic Lodge L’Espérance and the ill-famed salons of ‘La vieille garde’, a circle of French ladies who had been well known in Parisian society during the Empire and still harboured warm feelings for Napoleon. His subversion became even more threatening when in July 1816 the journal Le Mercure suggested that the Prince of Orange would make a good candidate for the French throne, in case of a revolution against the Bourbons. Adding to the suspicion was the claim of the French police in 1818 that his friends De Crucquembourg and Brice were behind the Paris attack on Wellington. In a letter to the prince, Wellington warned his old subordinate in the Spanish campaign: ‘I will not conceal that this [. . .] has brought your name into discussion in a way very disagreeable to your friends.’87 85

86 87

‘Wellington to Sir Charles Stuart, 9 May 1816’, in H.T. Colenbrander, Gedenkstukken der Algemeene Geschiedenis van Nederland van 1795 tot 1840, vol.8.I (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1915), 33. ‘Wellington to Clancarty, 24 March 1818’, quoted in Karsten, ‘Fransche uitgewekenen in het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden’, 77; Van Sas, Onze natuurlijkste bondgenoot, 155. Colenbrander, ‘Willem I en de mogendheden’, 396.

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Things went from bad to worse when the name of the crown prince was also mentioned in a plot against the French king. Already in 1816 Prince William was approached by Carnot to organise a coup in Paris. In his diary the prince wrote that the plan ‘seemed noble’ because the French were suppressed by the Bourbon.88 It took until 1820 before a plan was devised in which Prince William, as commander-in-chief of the Dutch army, would invade France as soon as Wellington’s army of occupation had left, while the French opposition would start a revolution against Louis XVIII, to be replaced by the Dutch prince. Fortunately for Louis XVIII, the French secret police discovered the conspiracy. In a painful turn of events, the Allies allowed the French minister of foreign affairs Pasquier to interrogate the Prince of Orange without the intervention of the Dutch government. During the interview the prince denied everything: ‘I’m innocent, like everyone before the law. I cannot be subjected to intervention by a foreign minister.’ But in his autobiographical notes he complained that ‘a chatterbox’ had thwarted the conspiracy.89 By 1820 Europe’s interest in the Netherlands ebbed away. Other seats of unrest took pride of place. But still, the Dutch crown prince was kept under close observation by the Prussian ambassador in the Netherlands, Franz Ludwig von Hatzfeldt. When the young William appeared to be a supporter of the coup in Naples, Hatzfeldt reported to Berlin that the crown prince was still willing to help the revolutionary party.90 His father decided to do the opposite, and to cooperate fully with the Allied powers in matters of security, thus contributing to the concertation of policing revolutionary threats to European security. Conclusion All over Europe, there were revolutionary uprisings of disaffected supporters of the Revolution, Napoleon, a liberal regime or national liberation. The regimes confirmed or established by the Vienna Settlement were deeply worried that these uprisings formed part of an international conspiracy. They set up police organisations, which stood in frequent communication with one another, exchanging information on suspected travellers, comparing notes on secret societies and piecing together information that appeared to confirm the existence of an international network of activists, which threatened to undermine the Restoration order. To what lengths the post-Vienna regimes went to uphold this order is shown by the large number of arrests and convictions, often involving the death penalty, and, as the ‘Dutch moment’ in this period

88

Van Zanten, Koning Willem II, 262.

89

Ibid., 276–8.

90

Ibid., 279.

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demonstrates, also by the fact that they allowed the French government to interrogate an heir to the throne of a sovereign country. The result of these responses to the epistemic, practical and political challenges posed by the fear of an international revolutionary conspiracy was not the emergence of a fully developed police state. On the contrary, the European security culture emerging after 1815 was characterised by contrasts and tensions, which contributed to its contested nature and its eventual demise. For one thing, despite the large number of informants and dossiers, the response to the epistemic challenge of making a reliable estimate of invisible and secret threats to the established order was rather weak. Much of it consisted of conjectures and guesses, based on limited, partial and manipulated information, following leads of highly unreliable and often deceptive paid informants. Moreover, on closer inspection, it was often not clear on whose side the members of the government, army, police and court, as well as members of the wider public, actually stood. In many cases, the people involved had been supporters of previous regimes, members of a Masonic lodge or clubs and societies, politically in opposition or otherwise indisposed to accept the regimes of the Vienna Settlement. ‘Loyalty was a matter of dates’, as Talleyrand famously said. The result of policing an international conspiracy was also mixed, because of the growing critique and resistance against the intrusive nature of much of the police surveillance. In fact, much of the documentation on the post-Vienna security culture comes from critics of the police, who were thought to be more inimical to peace and liberty than the alleged internationally active revolutionaries.91 Political leaders also became aware of the counterproductive effect of repression. For instance, after the publication of Le mie prigioni in 1832, the prison memoirs of Silvio Pellico, Metternich observed that they ‘did not contain a single word of truth [. . .] but their effect was more terrible for Austria than a lost battle’.92 In other countries, more than a battle was lost: by 1830, some of the states established in 1815 had disappeared, or undergone a dramatic political transformation. The suspected revolutionaries of the immediate post-Vienna period hardly played a role in the upheavals of 1830 and beyond. In the end, they created a danger for the established order, not because they themselves undermined the Vienna Settlement, but because the states responding to these fears curbed political participation by its citizens, which in the end undermined their own legitimacy.

91 92

Le Livre noir de M.M. Delavau et Franchet, vol.I, lxxviii. Quoted in J.A. Davis, ‘Cultures of interdiction: the politics of censorship in Italy from Napoleon to the Restoration’, in Laven and Riall (eds.), Napoleon’s Legacy, 237–56, 252.

10

Security and Transnational Policing of Political Subversion and International Crime in the German Confederation after 1815 Karl Härter Introduction

In 1815 the Congress of Vienna created the German Confederation as an association of sovereign German states (Staatenbund) and stated in the final act of the congress (Deutsche Bundesakte – German Federal Act), article II: ‘The object of this Confederation is the maintenance of the external and internal security of Germany, and of the independence and inviolability of the confederated States.’1 Security and state protection were thereby codified in an international, constitutional document and defined as the prime purpose of the German Confederation (1815–66), which itself constituted an important element of the system of European powers and the emerging European security regime. Although existing research has primarily addressed the issue of external security,2 the internal security of the Confederation was intertwined with European security culture too. This included, for instance, the protection of the Confederation’s constitution by the European signatories of the Treaty of Paris and the German Federal Act. Thus, the internal security of the German Confederation constituted a mutual interest of the European powers, notably regarding political subversion and other types of cross-border crimes that could endanger other nations and were, consequently, perceived as threats against European security interests. As a result, the protection of the federal constitution and state security generated a federal-transnational security regime that was not limited to the Confederation and its sovereign member states but was embedded in the emerging European security culture of the nineteenth century and, in the long run, shaped it as well.

1

2

‘Deutsche Bundesakte, 8 June 1815’, in E.R. Huber (ed.), Dokumente zur deutschen Verfassungsgeschichte, vol.1: Deutsche Verfassungsdokumente 1803–1850 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1961), no.29. J. Furneaux (trans. and ed.), An Abridged History of the Principal Treaties of Peace [. . .] (London: Rodwell, 1837), 436. J. Angelow, Von Wien nach Königgrätz: Die Sicherheitspolitik des Deutschen Bundes im europäischen Gleichgewicht (1815–1866) (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1996).

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The formation of security regimes in Europe after the Congress of Vienna was a response to global socioeconomic and political developments and the intensification of cross-border activities in the nineteenth century, such as increases in migration, mobility and political refugees, as well as communications and mass media, all of which also triggered the emergence of crossborder political subversion and international crime (or the respective narratives thereof ).3 The state authorities reacted with security regimes that dealt with manifestations and threats of cross-border political and international crime. These federal-transnational regimes were crucially shaped and instantiated within related institutions, laws, discourses and administrative-judicial and policing practices.4 In this regard, one can conceptualise security culture and processes of securitisation on symbolic and practical levels as a product of communication, discourses and practices of security regimes that focused on specific security issues.5 To some extent these processes of securitisation show some continuities with the eighteenth century, notably concerning practices and techniques of policing, which will be briefly indicated in the following. However, the French Revolution, the Congress of Vienna and the creation of the German Confederation resulted in the formation of a new type of federaltransnational security regime dealing with new political, cross-border security threats. Since the French Revolution one could observe an enormous increase in the number of groups and activities that were politically motivated, challenged the political order, operated transnationally and had cross-border effects. They ranged from political opposition and dissident movements through protest, sedition, revolt and revolution to political violence and assassination attempts. The political opposition and attendant dissident groups acted transnationally in Europe and formed loose networks that sometimes operated secretively and across borders, using refugees, political exile, emissaries, propaganda and print media. A few even propagated violence and cross-border insurrections.6 3 4

5

6

J. Osterhammel, The Transformation of the World. A Global History of the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014). K. Härter, ‘Die Formierung transnationaler Strafrechtsregime: Auslieferung, Asyl und grenzübergreifende Kriminalität im Übergang von gemeinem Recht zum nationalstaatlichen Strafrecht,’, Rechtsgeschichte, 18 (2011), 36–65; Ibid., ‘Security and cross-border political crime: the formation of transnational security regimes in 18th and 19th Century Europe’, Historical Social Research, 38:1 (2013), 96–106. E. Conze, ‘Securitization. Gegenwartsdiagnose oder historischer Analyseansatz?’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 38:3 (2012), 453–67; C. Daase, ‘Die Historisierung der Sicherheit. Anmerkungen zur historischen Sicherheitsforschung aus politikwissenschaftlicher Sicht’, Ibid., 387–405; C. Zwierlein and B.A. de Graaf, ‘Security and conspiracy in modern history’, Historical Social Research, 38:1 (2013), 7–45. For an overview, see A. Zamoyski, Phantom Terror. The Threat of Revolution and the Repression of Liberty 1789–1848 (London: Collins, 2014); K. Härter et al. (eds.), ‘Terrorismus für die Rechtsgeschichte? Neuerscheinungen zur Geschichte politischer Gewalt im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert’, Rechtsgeschichte, 22 (2014), 374–85.

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Accordingly, European authorities perceived political subversion as a crossborder phenomenon and fundamental transnational security threat, labelling these various groups a transnational and international conspiracy that prepared sedition, assassination, cross-border insurrections and overthrow, endangering, therefore, not only single states but order and society in Europe as a whole.7 This perception considerably influenced the legal development and conceptualisation of political crime8 as a form of ‘international crime’, which referred to different types of cross-border crime as well as to specific ‘international perpetrators’ and networks that operated secretly and across borders to elude national prosecution.9 Issues of cross-border crimes and security, including smuggling, the slave trade and illegal immigration, had been topics of discussion as early as the Congress of Vienna.10 One of its results was that such security issues could no longer be dealt with by national criminal justice and police systems alone. The European powers considered Central Europe in particular a breeding ground of political subversion and conspiracy through the ‘revolutionary party’ and other dissident groups, which would plan plots, assassinations and overthrows that could spread and spark similar incidents in other European countries. In the German Confederation, the cross-border network of political dissidence and subversion was even more apparent, implicating, for instance, academics, student fraternities (Burschenschaften), journeymen, the liberal movement and Bonapartists. All such groups were somehow connected with similar groups in other European countries through correspondence, exchange of propaganda and subversive pamphlets and meetings, such as the Wartburg festival of 1817. The ‘wave’ of upheaval, revolt and assassination attempts in Europe between 1815 and 1822 seemed to prove that the ‘Vienna system’ required a security regime to deal with internal security threats by such means as intervention and transnational policing. In this regard, the constitution of the German Confederation and the maintenance of its internal security were also

7 8

9 10

See also Chapter 9 by De Haan and Van Zanten in this volume. B.L. Ingraham, Political Crime in Europe. A Comparative Study of France, Germany, and England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979); J.I. Ross, An Introduction to Political Crime (Bristol: Policy Press, 2012); K. Härter, ‘Legal concepts of terrorism as political crime and international criminal law in eighteenth and nineteenth century Europe’, in A. Masferrer (ed.), Post 9/11 and the State of Permanent Legal Emergency. Security and Human Rights in Countering Terrorism (Dordrecht: Springer, 2012), 53–75; Ibid., ‘Legal responses to violent political crimes in 19th century central europe’, in K. Härter and B.A. de Graaf (eds.), Vom Majestätsverbrechen zum Terrorismus: Politische Kriminalität, Recht, Justiz und Polizei zwischen Früher Neuzeit und 20. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann, 2012), 161–78. P. Knepper, The Invention of International Crime. A Global Issue in the Making, 1881–1914 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). M. Jarrett, The Congress of Vienna and Its Legacy (London: I.B. Tauris, 2013), 144–6.

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considered interests of common security, and were guaranteed as such in the final act of the Vienna Congress.11 Therefore, the German Confederation acquired an exemplary function in the development of the emerging European security regime and transnational policing dealing with political subversion and crime. As a multilevel federation of sovereign states with distinct and autonomous legal systems bound together through a common tradition of criminal law and policing, the German Confederation constituted a transnational space that was embedded in the European system.12 The treatment of security, crime and policing was twofold. The level of the German states was characterised by sovereignty and monopolies on the legitimate use of force, manifested in domestic legal systems, criminal laws, judiciaries and police agencies. As sovereign states, they could partially act on the European or even international levels and, for instance, conclude extradition treaties with foreign nations. However, as member states they were confronted with the problem of developing a federal-transnational security regime, which, however, was characterised by various levels. Notably, the bifurcated nature of the security regime of the German Confederation allows an exemplary study of structures and problems of security in a transnational European context, and it provides insights into the development of a European security culture after 1815.13 This potential applies in particular to the policing developed in response to the transnational dimension of political and international crime.14 Although 11

12

13

14

W. Siemann, Metternich. Stratege und Visionär. Eine Biografie (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2016), 655–700, 713–9; G. Williamson, ‘“Thought is in itself a dangerous operation”: the campaign against “revolutionary machinations” in Germany, 1819–1828’, German Studies Review, 38:2 (2015), 285–306. A.C. Hofmann, ‘Suprastaatlichkeit, Interstaatlichkeit und Transstaatlichkeit. Ein Drei-EbenenModell zur Beschreibung zwischenstaatlicher Beziehungen im Deutschen Bund’, in M. Huhn et al. (eds.), Transkulturalität, Transnationalität, Transstaatlichkeit, Translokalität. Theoretische und empirische Begriffsbestimmungen (Berlin: Lit, 2010), 133–48; J. Müller, Der Deutsche Bund 1815–1866 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2006). K. Härter, ‘Schlichtung, Intervention und politische Polizei: Verfassungsschutz und innere Sicherheit im Deutschen Bund’, in T. Simon and J. Kalwoda (eds.), Schutz der Verfassung: Normen, Institutionen, Höchst- und Verfassungsgerichte. Tagung der Vereinigung für Verfassungsgeschichte in Hofgeismar vom 12. bis 14. März 2012 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2013), 129–54. For recent overviews on the history of transnational policing and international police cooperation, which, however, usually begin with the second half of the nineteenth century, see C. Fijnaut (ed.), The Internationalization of Police Cooperation in Western Europe (Arnhem: Springer, 1993); M. Deflem, ‘Borders of police force: historical foundations of international policing between Germany and the United States’, PhD diss., University of Colorado Boulder (1996); Ibid., Policing World Society. Historical Foundations of International Police Cooperation (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2002); Ibid., ‘International police cooperation – history of’, in R.A. Wright and J.M. Miller (eds.), The Encyclopedia of Criminology (New York: Routledge, 2005), 795–8; Ibid., ‘International policing’, in J.R. Greene (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Police Science, Third Edition (New York: Routledge, 2007), 701–5; J. Jäger, Verfolgung

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most European governments established political police agencies and paid some attention to the transnational level of policing, the German Confederation acquired a leading role in the development of transnational policing through its various political police agencies established after 1819. For example, the Central Investigating Commission (Central-Untersuchungs-Commission), established in 1819, is regarded as ‘one of the earliest modern attempts at international political policing’, and the German Police Association (Polizeiverein), in operation between 1851 and 1866, ‘may count as one of the first formal initiatives in industrialised society to establish an organised police system across national borders’.15 Both are closely related to various forms of transnational policing and modes of operation that are still practised. The ‘commission-mode’ of the Central Investigating Commission refers to a joint, continuously operating institution with administrative, judicial and police powers set up for specific tasks by sovereign states that commission deputies, experts or agents. The ‘conference mode’ of the German Police Association, on the other hand, refers to joint activities of independent police institutions of sovereign states that delegate representatives to meet occasionally to deal with various matters of policing. Mostly, though, the states’ representatives met to exchange information and discuss activities that were carried out separately by the participating police agencies. Both modes had already been established in the eighteenth century within the Holy Roman Empire, in particular to combat cross-border security threats such as revolts or robber bands. This regime of public/state security influenced political policing in Central Europe in its surveillance techniques and the production of ‘police knowledge’ through acquiring and disseminating information. Policing thereby constituted a key element of transnational security regimes and was strongly interconnected with other security institutions, procedures, actors, experts and discourses in the political, administrative, judicial and public spheres.16

15

16

durch Verwaltung. Internationales Verbrechen und internationale Polizeikooperation 1880–1933 (Konstanz: Universitätsverlag Konstanz, 2006). H.H. Liang, ‘International cooperation of political police in Europe, 1815–1914. An essay based on some Austrian archival sources’, Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs, 33 (1980), 193–217, 197; M. Deflem, ‘International policing in nineteenth-century Europe: the Police Union of German States, 1851–1866’, International Criminal Justice Review, 6 (1996), 36–57, 36. K. Härter, ‘Security and “Gute Policey” in early modern Europe: concepts, laws and instruments’, Historical Social Research, 35:4 (2010), 41–65; Ibid., ‘Die Reichskreise als transterritoriale Ordnungs- und Rechtsräume: Ordnungsnormen, Sicherheitspolitik und Strafverfolgung’, in W. Wüst and M. Müller (eds.), Reichskreise und Regionen im frühmodernen Europa – Horizonte und Grenzen im spatial turn (Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 2011), 211–49; A. De Benedictis and K. Härter (eds.), Revolts and Political Crime from the 12th to the 19th Century. Legal Responses and Juridical-Political Discourses (Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann, 2013).

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Thus, conceptualising transnational political policing merely as the formal cooperation of national police forces is insufficient.17 Rather, its scope should be expanded to include various actors, techniques and modes as well as the mutually interdependent levels of national and transnational policing. This includes: security issues, such as political subversion or international crime, which various institutions of the regime – understood as an agglomeration of actors/agents, practices and norms – dealt with in national, transnational and international settings; the functions of prevention, social control and prosecution; specific techniques, like gathering, compiling and disseminating information; executive measures like search, arrest, detention, expulsion and extradition; formal and informal types of collaboration and communication through personal contacts, visits, meetings, conferences and conventions; the security and expert discourses in which police agencies and actors not only took part, but through which they disseminated security narratives too; and the interdependences between policing and criminal law/legal norms. The latter not only regulated policing, but also responded to security threats, developed the respective legal concepts of political and international crime, created and disseminated the respective security narratives and were reciprocally influenced by police actors.18 17

18

On the history of political police, see W. Siemann, Deutschlands Ruhe, Sicherheit und Ordnung. Die Anfänge der politischen Polizei 1806–1866 (Tübingen: De Gruyter, 1985); H.H. Liang, The Rise of Modern Police and the European State System from Metternich to the Second World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); C. Emsley, ‘Political police and the European nation state in the nineteenth century’, in M. Mazower (ed.), The Policing of Politics in the Twentieth Century. Historical Perspectives (Providence, RI: Berghahn Books, 1997), 1–25; J.J. Nolte, ‘Die Institutionalisierung der politischen Polizei in Preußen im Kontext der Demagogenverfolgung zwischen 1809 und 1840’, Policey WorkingPapers. Working Papers des Arbeitskreises Policey/Polizei in der Vormoderne, 11 (2006), www.univie.ac.at/policey-ak/pwp/pwp_11.pdf (accessed 13 May 2016). On the history of modern police in general, see W. Knöbl, Polizei und Herrschaft im Modernisierungsprozeß. Staatsbildung und innere Sicherheit in Preußen, England und Amerika 1700–1914 ((Frankfurt a.M.: Campus, 1998); C. Emsley, Gendarmes and the State in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); L. Antonielli (ed.), La polizia in Italia e in Europa: punto sugli studi e prospettive di ricerca (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2006); C. Emsley, Crime, Police and Penal Policy, European Experiences, 1750–1940 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). On the various dimensions of transnational policing in general, see Liang, ‘International cooperation of political police’; Ibid., Rise of Modern Police; Siemann, Anfänge der politischen Polizei; Fijnaut, Internationalization of Police Cooperation; Deflem, ‘Borders of police force’; Ibid., ‘International policing in nineteenth-century Europe’; Ibid., ‘Bureaucratization and social control: historical foundations of international police cooperation’, Law & Society Review, 34:3 (2000), 739–78; Ibid., Policing World Society; Ibid., ‘Technology and the internationalization of policing: a comparative-historical perspective’, Justice Quarterly, 19:3 (2002), 453–75; J. Sheptycki, In Search of Transnational Policing (Aldershot: Avebury, 2002); Jäger, Verfolgung durch Verwaltung; Emsley, ‘Political Police’; Ibid., Crime, Police and Penal Policy; J. Casey, Policing the World: Theory and Practice of International Policing (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2009); Härter, ‘Legal responses to violent political crimes’; Ibid., ‘Security and

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The Federal Police Agencies and the ‘Commission-Mode’ of Transnational Policing Following the Congress of Vienna, the rates of political subversion and violence continued to increase and were perceived by European powers as a ‘wave’ of assassination attempts, unrest and revolt, which included such diverse incidents as the Spa Fields Riots in London (1816), the assassination attempt on the British Prince Regent (1817), the Wartburg festival (1817), the assassination attempt on Wellington in Paris (1818), the Peterloo massacre in Manchester (1819), the assassination of the writer and Russian official August von Kotzebue (1819), the assassination attempt against the Nassau government minister Karl Ibell (1819), the assassination of the Duc de Berry in Paris (1820), the Cato Street Conspiracy in London (1820) and the revolts-cumliberation movements in Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece in 1820 and 1821.19 Although the protagonists of these incidents were very different and followed quite diverse motives, the reactions of the Concert of Europe and the governments concerned surpassed mere military suppression and intervention.20 Indeed, their responses also extended to the control and criminalisation of political subversion in domestic sedition and penal laws, which were often conceptualised as emergency laws to maintain security, strengthen political police agencies and intensify transnational policing. Great Britain, for example, in 1819 enacted the ‘Six Acts’, sedition laws that aimed to control meetings and newspapers and criminalised violation of the laws as treasonable conspiracy.21 The actors of the Vienna system were well aware of these developments. The Austrian foreign minister, Prince Clemens Wenceslaus von Metternich, for instance, followed the events in Britain including the ‘Six Acts’, and English and French politicians conversely observed the developments in Central Europe, notably the assassination of August von Kotzebue and the genesis of the Carlsbad Decrees.22 The assassination of August von Kotzebue in March 1819 was perceived as the outcome of a conspiracy by the subversive academic elite, since the

19

20 21 22

cross-border political crime’; R.B. Jensen, The Battle against Anarchist Terrorism. An International History, 1878–1934 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). For an overview, see Jarrett, Congress of Vienna; B.E. Vick, The Congress of Vienna. Power and Politics after Napoleon (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014); Zamoyski, Phantom Terror. M. Schulz, Normen und Praxis. Das Europäische Konzert der Großmächte als Sicherheitsrat, 1815–1860 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2009). See C. Tilly, Popular Contention in Great Britain 1758–1834 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995). Siemann, Metternich, 655–61, 691, 695–7, 713–19; K. Härter, ‘Political crime in early modern Europe: assassination, legal responses and popular print media’, European Journal of Criminology, 11 (2014), 142–68.

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German student Carl Ludwig Sand killed the writer and Russian councillor as a representative of the ‘system’. The incident evoked an enormous media response in the German Confederation and to some extent in England and France, seeming to prove once again that public media could spread or even justify political subversion and violence throughout Europe. This also implied a need to control and quell the dissemination of news by means of censorship and policing, which would include its cross-border distribution and smuggling.23 The assassination certainly helped Metternich obtain support for the Carlsbad Decrees, four federal laws enacted by the Federal Diet in September 1819.24 The decrees were influenced by former sedition laws and were prepared in the conferences of Aachen (1818), Troppau and Carlsbad (1819). Furthermore, Metternich had discussed intensifying censorship and policing with the Prussian police minister Wilhelm zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Hohenstein and the Austrian police chief Josef Graf Sedlnitzky.25 Thus, high police officials were involved in creating the first sedition laws of the Confederation’s security regime, which emerged in a European context and were aimed at political and transnational policing. The Decrees extended control over the press and universities, prohibited student associations and fraternities, committed the member states to mutual assistance in the framework of federal execution and intervention and established the Central Investigating Commission in the city of Mainz. The latter’s function and duties were explicitly based on article II, the ‘security’ article, of the German Federal Act, and it was to conduct a joint investigation, as thoroughly and extensively as possible, of the facts relating to the origin and manifold ramifications of the revolutionary plots and demagogical associations directed against the existing constitution and the internal peace both of the union and of the individual states; of the existence of which plots more or less clear evidence is to be had already, or may be produced in the course of the investigation.26

23

24

25

26

Härter, ‘Political crime’, 160–2; Williamson, ‘Campaign’; T.C. Müller, Der Schmuggel politischer Schriften. Bedingungen exilliterarischer Öffentlichkeit in der Schweiz und im Deutschen Bund (1830 – 1848) (Tübingen: De Gruyter, 2001). E. Büssem, Die Karlsbader Beschlüsse von 1819. Die endgültige Stabilisierung der restaurativen Politik im Deutschen Bund nach dem Wiener Kongreß von 1814/15 (Hildesheim: Gerstenberg, 1974); Siemann, Metternich, 697–712. Büssem, Karlsbader Beschlüsse; Siemann, Metternich, 690–2; Nolte, ‘Institutionalisierung der politischen Polizei’; M. Chvojka, Josef Graf Sedlnitzky als Präsident der Polizei- und Zensurhofstelle in Wien (1817–1848). Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Staatspolizei in der Habsburgermonarchie (Frankfurt a.M.: Lang, 2010). Huber, Dokumente, vol.1, 90–5, 105–7; J.H. Robinson (trans. and ed.), Readings in European History. A Collection of Extracts from the Sources Chosen with the Purpose of Illustrating the Progress of Culture in Western Europe since the German Invasions, vol.2 (Boston: Gin, 1906), 547–50, www.history.hanover.edu/texts/carlsbad.html (accessed 28 November 2011). Cf. E. Weber, Die Mainzer Zentraluntersuchungskommission (Karlsruhe: C.F. Müller, 1970).

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To this end, it was to obtain and distribute all relevant information regarding the ‘overthrow party’, secret associations, Burschenschaften, individual dissidents (notably academics), plots, conspiracies, subversion, sedition and related activities in the member states of the Confederation and including German political refugees in other European countries. The Commission was set up in November 1819 and comprised commissioners – former investigating judges and members of the central administrations – and additional staff from seven German states: Austria, Prussia, Bavaria, Hanover, Hessen, Nassau and Baden. Although the commissioners were in close contact with their respective governments, the Commission was subordinated only to the Federal Diet, to which it was obliged to report.27 Hence, the Confederation established a joint political police agency that operated from 1819 onwards in a transnational setting, because it was concerned with political subversion and security regarding the individual sovereign German states, the Confederation as a whole and its constitution and to an extent the European level. At the Congress of Verona (1822) Metternich even proposed establishing a similar central police commission in Italy. Although the Congress discussed a further proposal concerning an international police force to suppress the slave trade and piracy, it was rejected because the Italian police agency was to be combined with a special central criminal court to adjudicate political criminals.28 Some of the commissioners of the Central Investigating Commission in Mainz likewise strove to expand its scope of activities to the adjudication of political crimes. However, the Commission remained restricted to investigation, reporting and collaboration with the governments, criminal courts and police agencies of the German states.29 After intense activity in its first years, with eighty-two reports on various ‘conspiracies’, dissident groups and political offenders and several state trials in some German states, the Confederation 27

28

29

A. Petzold, ‘Die Zentral-Untersuchungskommission in Mainz’, in H. Haupt and P. Wentzcke (eds.), Quellen und Darstellungen zur Geschichte der Burschenschaft, vol.5 (Heidelberg: Winter, 1920), 171–258; E.R. Huber, ‘Zur Geschichte der politischen Polizei im 19. Jahrhundert’, in ibid. (ed.), Nationalstaat und Verfassungsstaat. Studien zur Geschichte der modernen Staatsidee (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1965), 144–67; Weber, Mainzer Zentraluntersuchungskommission; Liang, Rise of Modern Police; Siemann, Anfänge der politischen Polizei, 1985. Files and records of the commission are preserved as ‘Akten und Berichte der Zentraluntersuchungskommission Mainz’, Hessisches Staatsarchiv Darmstadt, D12, 50/47, G1: No.140–143, G2 A, 51/1; Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Wiesbaden, 210: 2790, 3780, 3796, 7434. S. Furlani, ‘Metternichs Plan einer italienischen Zentraluntersuchungskommission auf dem Kongress von Verona’, Mitteilungen des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs, 31 (1978), 182–95; I.C. Nichols, The European Pentarchy and the Congress of Verona, 1822 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1971), 205–11. It should be noted that in this period ‘police’ and ‘criminal justice’ still were not separated and ‘criminal courts’ carried out criminal investigations, in some cases also as ‘commissions’ that were set up temporarily.

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secretly suspended the Commission in 1829, which, nonetheless, managed to file a comprehensive final report.30 However, this desecuritising trend lasted only a very few years, and familiar patterns of securitisation recurred after 1830. The repercussions of the French July Revolution of 1830 in Central Europe, the Hambach Festival of 1832 and the insurrection in Frankfurt of 1833 (Wachensturm), were perceived as cross-border security threats and again stimulated the enactment of emergency laws. Britain and France followed these developments closely and intervened as guarantor powers of the Confederation’s constitution after the Wachensturm.31 Between 1830 and 1836 the Confederation further developed the federal security regime, and the Federal Diet enacted several sedition and criminal laws to enhance preventative measures, surveillance, censorship and the prohibition of public assemblies and speeches, extending the scope of federal and transnational policing.32 The ‘10 Articles’ of 1832 prohibited all associations with a political purpose and threatened instigators and participants alike with punishment (article II). Beyond the actual perpetration of a political crime, article VI also criminalised participating in seditious activities and plans through public speeches, writings or other acts and prescribed the cross-border prosecution of all secret associations, conspiracies and individuals threatening the security of the state. This included the surveillance of all suspect foreigners and German citizens who operated in other countries or tried to enter the Confederation to commit political offences. To ensure cross-border prosecution and punishment, the ‘10 Articles’ obliged all German states to extradite refugees, suspects and political criminals, or to punish their nationals themselves. In 1836 a further criminal law penalised every act against the existence, integrity, security or constitution of the German Confederation as high treason and obliged the member states to extradite every person and political refugee suspected of instigating, committing or supporting such crimes, or being a member of a

30

31

32

J.D.F. Neigebaur, Die Central-Untersuchungs-Commission zu Mainz und die demagogischen Umtriebe in den Burschenschaften der deutschen Universitäten zur Zeit des Bundestagsbeschlusses vom 20.9.1819 (Leipzig: Barth, 1831); L.F. Ilse, Geschichte der politischen Untersuchungen welche durch die neben der Bundesversammlung errichteten Commissionen, der Central-Untersuchungs-Commission zu Mainz und der Bundes-Central-Behörde zu Frankfurt in den Jahren 1819 bis 1827 und 1833 bis 1842 geführt sind (Frankfurt a.M.: Meidinger, 1860). E. Bieker, Die Interventionen Frankreichs und Großbritanniens anlässlich des Frankfurter Wachensturms 1833. Eine Fallstudie zur Geschichte völkerrechtlicher Verträge (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2003); S.-L. Schmidt, Der Frankfurter Wachensturm von 1833 und der Deutsche Bund (Hamburg: Kovač, 2011). Siemann, Anfänge der politischen Polizei, 72–122; Härter, ‘Legal responses to violent political crimes’; Ibid., ‘Legal concepts of terrorism’; Ibid., Schlichtung, Intervention und politische Polizei.

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group involved in subversion and sedition, and to prosecute such crimes as an attack against the Confederation themselves.33 These sedition and emergency laws provided a legal basis for a federal political police force, initiated and legitimised widespread political policing, surveillance and prosecution and extended transnational policing as well. Although the laws were to be enforced by the police agencies and criminal courts of the sovereign member states, the transnational-federal dimension of security and policing required a federal institution to coordinate investigation and prosecution. By referring to the Final Act of Vienna, a federal law of 1833 (re)established the Central Investigating Agency (Zentraluntersuchungsbehörde Frankfurt) in Frankfurt to investigate and collect relevant information on seditious plots, conspiracies and associations, including initiators, participants and supporters, and to initiate prosecution and criminal proceedings. It was organised in a fashion similar to the previous Commission, now with five states (Austria, Prussia, Bavaria, Hessen and Württemberg) delegating commissioners, who again were former investigating judges, among them two former commissioners. Like its predecessor, it operated in the ‘commissionmode’, but had no authority to directly detain and interrogate suspects or to interact with criminal courts. The Agency was to report solely to the Federal Diet (or its committee) and communicate with the central administrations of the German states. On the whole, the Central Investigating Agency continued the work of the Commission in many respects, notably in gathering information as well as producing and providing intelligence.34 Additionally, in 1833 Metternich established a secret Austrian intelligence service in Mainz, the Mainzer Informationsbüro, in which initially Prussia, Bavaria and Württemberg were to cooperate. Under the direction of Karl Gustav Noé, the former commissioner of the Viennese police, the Informationsbüro created a Europe-wide network of informers and gathered and evaluated information on political subversion. In contrast to the Frankfurter Investigating Agency, it could actively operate in the strictest secrecy as an intelligence service with informers and spies at its disposal, whereas both federal police agencies had to collaborate and communicate with other institutions. Although the Austrian Informationsbüro and the federal Agency did 33

34

‘Bundesbeschluß über Maßregeln zur Herstellung und Erhaltung der Ruhe in Deutschland, 21 October 1830’, ‘Sechs Artikel, 28 June 1832’, ‘Zehn Artikel, 5 July 1832’, ‘Bundesbeschluß wegen eines gegen den Bestand des Deutschen Bundes und die öffentliche Ordung in Deutschland gerichteten Komplotts, 30 June 1833’, ‘Bundesbeschluß über Bestrafung von Vergehen gegen den Deutschen Bund und Auslieferung politischer Verbrecher auf deutschem Bundesgebiete, 18 August 1836’, in Huber, Dokumente, vol.1, 1961, nos.41–4, no.66. ‘Bundesbeschluß wegen eines gegen den Bestand des Deutschen Bundes und die öffentliche Ordung in Deutschland gerichteten Komplotts, 30 June 1833’, in T.A. Löw, Die Frankfurter Bundeszentralbehörde von 1833–1842 (Frankfurt a.M.: Gelnhausen, 1932), 80–1. Cf. Huber, ‘Geschichte der politischen Polizei’; Siemann, Anfänge der politischen Polizei.

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not formally cooperate, Metternich and the Viennese government enabled the occasional exchange of information.35 Both federal police agencies and, to some extent, the Informationsbüro shared a number of principal functions. The prime task was to collect information from courts, administrations and police agencies of the various German states as well as to monitor print media and correspondence. This included information on gatherings, meetings, movements and speeches of suspects, among them especially academics, tradesmen and journeymen. This surveillance was extended to the burgeoning community of German political exiles in France, Belgium and Switzerland, since these countries granted political asylum.36 Surveillance also incorporated the cross-border issues of smuggling pamphlets, newspapers or propaganda to states of the Confederation, the exchange of letters, the movements of emissaries and the preparation of insurrection. Moreover, the agencies collected information on political opposition and subversive groups in Poland, Switzerland and France, including their sojourns in Germany to detect emissaries and agents. The Central Investigating Agency produced reports on German, Italian and Polish refugees as well as a tabular list of German political refugees and other suspects in Switzerland, France, Belgium, England, the United States of America, the Netherlands and Denmark that sometimes included personal descriptions. As a consequence, the scope of policing was gradually extended to the control of migration and mobility, the passport system and the identification of suspect travellers.37

35 36

37

Siemann, Anfänge der politischen Polizei, 139–74; Siemann, Metternich, 774–8. See H. Reiter, Politisches Asyl im 19. Jahrhundert. Die deutschen politischen Flüchtlinge des Vormärz und der Revolution von 1848/49 in Europa und den USA (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1992); W. Siemann, ‘Exil, Asyl und Wirtschaftswanderung in Westeuropa 1789–1860’, in J. Kocka, H.-J. Puhle and K. Tenfelde (eds.), Von der Arbeiterbewegung zum modernen Nationalstaat. Festschrift für Gerhard A. Ritter zum 65. Geburtstag (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1994), 315–28; K. Härter, ‘Asyl, Auslieferung und politisches Verbrechen in Europa während der „Sattelzeit”: Modernität und Kontinuität im Strafrechtssystem’, in U. Schneider and L. Raphael (eds.), Dimensionen der Moderne. Festschrift für Christof Dipper (Frankfurt a. M.: Lang, 2008), 481–502. See, in general, on these techniques of political and transnational policing J. Jäger, ‘Die informelle Vernetzung politischer Polizei nach 1848’, Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte. Germanistische Abtheilung, 116:1 (1999), 266–313; Deflem, ‘Bureaucratization and social control’; Ibid., ‘Technology and the internationalization of policing’; J.J. Nolte, Demagogen und Denunzianten. Denunziation und Verrat als Methode polizeilicher Informationserhebung bei den politischen Verfolgungen im preußischen Vormärz (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2007); Ibid., ‘Polizeirecht, Spitzel und Denunzianten – Eine gemeinsame Entstehungsgeschichte während der Demagogenverfolgung in Preußen’, forum historiae iuris (2009), www.forhistiur.de/2009-04-nolte (accessed 13 May 2016); V. Moritz and H. Leidinger, ‘Der Überwachungsstaat. Polizei, Geheimdienst und Zensur. Der Wiener Kongress und die Kontinuität staatlicher Kontrolle’, in T. Just, W. Maderthaner and H. Maimann (eds.), Der Wiener Kongress. Die Erfindung Europas (Vienna: Gerold, 2014), 162–79; Siemann, Anfänge der politischen Polizei.

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Although the federal agencies were monitoring communication and public activities, they did not command any agents of their own, nor could they conduct criminal proceedings. Instead, they had to report to the Federal Diet, which could initiate appropriate measures, or they had to collaborate with various administrative, judicial and police institutions of the German states. These institutions provided information, albeit only selectively in some cases, and received reports, ‘secret notes’, ‘advice’, ‘guidance’ and formal requisitions to detain, interrogate and prosecute suspects from the federal agencies. In this respect, the police agencies participated in many investigations and trials against political dissidents and provided intelligence that could be used as evidence. In return they demanded records and information from the courts that had been gained through criminal prosecution, including interrogation protocols and confessions, which again were evaluated, systematised and distributed to other security actors. As a result, the federal police agencies were connected to some extent with policing activities on the local level to deal with cross-border issues such as the smuggling of print media and propaganda, the search for emissaries, the surveillance of refugees and German political exiles and the expulsion and extradition of suspects and offenders. However, only in a very few cases did the agencies collaborate directly with the executive level of policing, as was the case, for instance, with informers in Strasbourg or the police in Bern.38 The police agencies therefore functioned as a federal interface between the administrations, police forces and judiciaries of the individual states, enabling and coordinating surveillance and prosecution through the exchange of information. The information collected was used to systematise, produce, distribute and exchange intelligence relevant to security – in particular concerning suspects and offenders, accomplices, supporters, conspiracies, contacts and networks and seditious print. They communicated such intelligence through reports to the Federal Diet and the governments as well as systematic search lists, dossiers, black books, semi-official publications and other emerging public media of policing. Both police agencies accumulated vast bodies of intelligence. The Central Investigating Commission reported on more than 120 incidents, conspiracies and networks consisting of about 10,000 suspects and offenders. The Central Investigating Agency produced a so-called black book (Gesamtinkulpantentabelle – Comprehensive prosecutors’ table) that comprised information on 2,140 suspects and offenders, 2,100 of whom had been prosecuted in state trials, many conducted by non-public special courts and commissions using inquisitorial procedures against citizens from nearly all 38

See Petzold, ‘Zentral-Untersuchungs-Kommission’; Weber, Mainzer Zentraluntersuchungskommission; Löw, Frankfurter Bundeszentralbehörde; Liang, ‘International Cooperation of Political Police’, 197–202.

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social classes.39 The actual prosecution and punishment was left solely to the judiciaries of the German states, which often relied on traditional legal concepts and – from the perspective of the federal agencies and some governments (notably Austria and Prussia) – did not prosecute or punish political offenders according to the needs of internal security. However, the intelligence produced by the federal police agencies was used by the German states for various policing purposes, such as search, identification, surveillance, investigation, detention, interrogation, censorship and confiscation. Furthermore, the knowledge and expertise of the federal agencies influenced legislation. The Central Investigating Agency in particular and some of its members compiled expert legal reports and filed proposals and draft laws to the Federal Diet, as was the case for several laws from 1832 and 1833 and the 1836 extradition law.40 Moreover, a few members of the federal agencies participated in the public discourses on crime, criminal law and policing. The Central Investigating Agency published a specially designed comprehensive semi-official report in 1839 that aimed to influence the public discourse on security by deterring the political opposition and assuring the public that the Confederation’s security regime had been able to re-establish and maintain public order and security.41 Using print media to systematically disseminate ‘police knowledge’ was by no means an innovation of the political police. Rather, it was based on experience and techniques that had been developed within the security regime of public security in the eighteenth century, such as ‘wanted lists’ or ‘reports from the files’. The police of the nineteenth century adopted and refined these techniques, in particular with regard to political and transnational policing. Some police bulletins, which appeared after 1850 and focused on the exchange of information between various police institutions and the transnational search and identification of political subversives and perpetrators, used intelligence the two federal police agencies had produced and disseminated. The Anzeiger für die politische Polizei, published in 1855, included such information and

39

40 41

Partly published in F.M. von Wagemann, Darlegung der Haupt-Resultate aus den wegen der revolutionären Complotte der neueren Zeit in Deutschland geführten Untersuchungen: auf den Zeitabschnitt mit Ende Juli 1838 (Frankfurt a.M.: Bundes-Präsidial-Dr. Krebs, 1838); Ilse, Geschichte der politischen Untersuchungen; K. Glossy (ed.), Literarische Geheimberichte aus dem Vormärz. Mit Einl. u. Anm. (Vienna: Konegen, 1912); H. Adler (ed.), Literarische Geheimberichte. Protokolle der Metternich-Agenten, vols.1–2 (Cologne: Leske, 1977); W. Kowalski (ed.), Vom kleinbürgerlichen Demokratismus zum Kommunismus, vol.2: Die Hauptberichte der Bundeszentralbehörde in Frankfurt am Main von 1838 bis 1842 über die deutsche revolutionäre Bewegung (Berlin: Akad.-Verlag, 1978). Cf. Petzold, ‘Zentral-UntersuchungsKommission’, 213–23; Huber, ‘Geschichte der politischen Polizei’, 152–3. Löw, Frankfurter Bundeszentralbehörde, 13, 24, 26. Wagemann, Darlegung der Haupt-Resultate. Cf. Löw, Frankfurter Bundeszentralbehörde, 29.

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published hundreds of names and descriptions of political dissenters, refugees and offenders, not only from the German Confederation, but also from France, Britain, Poland and Hungary, regardless of their respective ideologies or political systems.42 The German Police Association and the ‘Conference-Mode’ of Transnational Policing The Central Investigating Agency was never formally dissolved, but its activities were suspended around 1842, since most German governments believed that the threat of subversion and revolution had been successfully curbed. However, the desecuritisation of the security regime again lasted only a few years, as the Revolution of 1848 demonstrated anew the threat of revolt, overthrow and their cross-border influences. As a result, the German states and the Confederation continued to develop the security regime after the suppression of the 1849 revolution, but they changed the institutions and the mode of political and transnational policing. The reorganisation of transnational political policing was again accompanied by the enactment of several federal sedition laws in 1851 and 1854 that explicitly referenced ‘security’ as in article II of the German Federal Act.43 They abolished the fundamental rights of the democratic constitution of 1849, reinstated the protection of the former federal constitution as well as the control of all print media and censorship and significantly restricted political gatherings and associations (politische Vereine) that could have threatened order and security. Furthermore, they prohibited all forms of collaboration, fraternisation, networks and cross-border interaction of such associations, and they maintained the 1836 law and the obligation to extradite ‘political offenders’, a term extended to include other serious crimes. In order to ensure enforcement, which remained a matter of the German states, the law of 1851 announced a federal ‘commission’ and referred to the Dresden conference, which had already paved the way for a new mode of federal police cooperation. 42

43

F. Rang, Anzeiger für die politische Polizei Deutschlands auf die Zeit vom 1. Januar 1848 bis zur Gegenwart. Ein Handbuch für jeden deutschen Polizeibeamten (Dresden: Liepsch & Reichardt, 1855). Cf. Liang, ‘International Cooperation of Political Police’, 202. ‘Bundesbeschluß über Maßregeln zur Wahrung der öffentlichen Sicherheit und Ordnung im Deutschen Bund, 23 August 1851’, ‘Bundesbeschluss über die Aufhebung der Grundrechte des deutschen Volkes, 23 August 1851’, in Protokolle der Deutschen Bundesversammlung (Frankfurt a.M., 1851) §§120–21; ‘Bundesbeschluß wegen Auslieferung der Verbrecher auf dem Bundesgebiet, 26 January 1854’, ‘Allgemeine Bundesbestimmungen zur Verhinderung des Mißbrauchs der Preßfreiheit, 6 July 1854’, ‘Maßregeln zur Aufrechthaltung der gesetzlichen Ordnung und Ruhe im Deutschen Bunde, insbesondere das Vereinswesen betreffend, 13 July 1854’, in Protokolle der Deutschen Bundesversammlung (Frankfurt a.M., 1854) §§25, 213, 219.

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Some German states had further institutionalised more or less independent political and higher police agencies and services.44 These formed the basis of the German Police Association in 1851. The Association was established as secret regular conferences of the highest police officials of seven German states that had taken the initiative to organise these new forms of federal police cooperation.45 The idea of an independent federal ‘commission’ directed only by the Confederation, which Austria and Prussia initially proposed, was abandoned. By establishing the Association as police conferences that secretly operated in the ‘conference-mode’, the federal-transnational security regime referred back to the Vienna Congress system of 1815 and foreshadowed the direction of future international police cooperation dealing with political subversion and international crime. In April 1851 police officers from Austria, Prussia, Hanover and Saxony met in Dresden, where representatives of these governments also conferred in July 1851, which is when they prepared the laws of 1851. The national police agencies and the high police officials of some German states – notably Karl Ludwig Hinckeldey,46 the Police President of Berlin and founder of the Prussian political police – played key roles in creating the Association as police conferences, demonstrating that the police as an independent institution had developed a demonstrable self-interest in transnational policing and security. This was again triggered by the security threat/narrative of cross-border subversion. Hinckeldey and other actors referred to the political opposition and the ‘overthrow party’, which spread subversion through emissaries, agitators, the press and seditious propaganda, explicitly as a Europe-wide, cross-border threat to the security of the Confederation and the German states. As a consequence, they initially proposed extending police cooperation and surveillance to other European countries, in particular to Paris and London as the centres of political subversion and the German political exiles. Although this was generally rejected, some European-level collaboration was established. The Belgian political police were informally integrated into the network of the Police Conferences, and the police directors of Brussels, Basel, Copenhagen and the London Metropolitan Police occasionally interacted with the Police 44

45

46

W. Siemann (ed.), Der Polizeiverein deutscher Staaten: eine Dokumentation zur Überwachung der Öffentlichkeit nach der Revolution von 1848/49 (Tübingen: De Gruyter, 1983); Siemann, Anfänge der politischen Polizei, 242–304; Deflem, ‘International Policing in NineteenthCentury Europe’; Jäger, ‘informelle Vernetzung politischer Polizei’. The seven were Austria, Prussia, Hanover, Saxony, Bavaria, Baden and Württemberg, most of which had already been members of the federal police agencies. It should be noted that these states could exert influence on the weaker German states that did not formally participate in the Association. S.M. Eibich, Polizei, ‚Gemeinwohl’ und Reaktion. Über Wohlfahrtspolizei als Sicherheitspolizei unter Carl Ludwig Friedrich von Hinckeldey, Berliner Polizeipräsident von 1848 bis 1856 (Berlin: Berliner Wissenschafts-Verlag, 2004).

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Association, sometimes via ‘confidants’. The members of the Association placed agents and informers in Paris, Brussels, London and New York, and police officers were appointed with the German embassy in London. There are also traces of secret arrangements, covert action and prosecution on the level of local police in border regions.47 Although the Police Association was organised differently and operated in the ‘conference-mode’, the former objectives and techniques of political policing within the setting of the federal-transnational security regime of the Confederation persisted and were developed further. These included gathering and exchanging information, collaboration regarding the circulation and censorship of print media as well as the surveillance and investigation of oppositional ‘subversive’ groups and movements. The ‘conference-mode’ enabled the direct exchange and circulation of intelligence among the police agencies and their higher officials through regular conferences – which were actually held on twenty occasions – personal meetings and visits, comprehensive reports and exchanges of search lists and weekly police bulletins to the various police agencies of the German states.48 As a result, a secret police system was further developed that evaluated, used and disseminated this police knowledge in reports to the governments and contributions to the expert and public discourses on crime and security.49 The Conference participants also continued to file proposals to their governments to improve and align legislation, administration and policing through a common German directory, to adjust passport administration and instructions for customs officers and to standardise control techniques for the press, the postal service and travel. Furthermore, they considered how the police could actively influence public opinion through daily newspapers or the foundation of a police-controlled political journal. That is, they discussed the public use of police knowledge to disseminate the desired security narratives and to influence the security discourse, not least to justify the expansion of police institutions and the scope of policing. The annual conferences dealt with diverse information provided by the police agencies of the various states, from informers and to some extent 47 48

49

Siemann, Anfänge der politischen Polizei, 253–60; Deflem, ‘International Policing in Nineteenth-Century Europe’, 42; Jäger, ‘informelle Vernetzung politischer Polizei’, 269. See the edition of the basic documents of the Association Siemann, Polizeiverein deutscher Staaten; F. Beck and W. Schmidt (eds.), Die Polizeikonferenzen deutscher Staaten 1851–1866. Präliminardokumente, Protokolle und Anlagen (Weimar: Böhlau, 1993); Rang, Anzeiger für die politische Polizei; Deflem, ‘International Policing in Nineteenth-Century Europe’, 43, 47; Siemann, Anfänge der politischen Polizei, 259–61. See, for example, the book by the police directors of Hanover and Berlin C.G.L. Wermuth and W. Stieber, Die Communisten-Verschwörungen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts. Im amtlichen Auftrage zur Benutzung der Polizei-Behörden der sämmtlichen dt. Bundesstaaten, vols.1–2 (Berlin: A.W. Hayn, 1853–54).

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from foreign countries, which was analysed and compiled in comprehensive reports, memoranda, surveys, lists and notes with additional supplements. These sources ranged from confiscated pamphlets and personal descriptions to instructions and provisions for various agencies. The prime target remained political subversion, but the scope was further extended to the transnational and international levels. Many reports dealt with the activities of German exiles and political refugees in other European countries, notably in France, Belgium, Poland, Switzerland and England, where German refugees were collaborating with the domestic political opposition. Consequently, the Police Association collected information and evaluated such issues as the political opposition in Poland; freemasons in Belgium and Belgrade; French journeymen unions; Hungarian, Italian, French and Polish émigrés; and the assassination attempt on Napoleon III in 1858, including evaluation of the bombs employed. The conferences distributed weekly bulletins and several specific lists with information on prohibited associations, prohibited and confiscated propaganda and individual dissidents, emissaries, refugees and extradited persons from Germany and other countries, some with personal descriptions, occasionally including lithographs or photographs, plus information on activities, contacts, sojourns, travel, detention and extradition. The circulation of information employed new technologies of duplication and identification, most notably photographs, and displayed improvements in the observation and surveillance of the politically subversive milieu and activities not only in Germany, but also in other European countries that granted political asylum. As a result, the conference drew more attention to general cross-border administrative and legal issues such as political asylum, extradition, crossborder prosecution of criminals, requisitions and mutual legal assistance, passport administration, border control and the control of travellers, correspondence and customs.50 As an association of the representatives of the police agencies of the more important German states, the Association was more closely linked to the territorial/local level of policing. It consequently divided the territory of the Confederation into seven police districts with one police official responsible for each, regardless of the actual jurisdictions of the states concerned. The local police agencies, in Hamburg or Württemberg for instance, used the intelligence the conference provided and collaborated closely with other police agencies and actors within that network in matters of tracing, search, 50

This claim is based on the documents printed in Siemann, Polizeiverein deutscher Staaten; Beck and Schmidt, Polizeikonferenzen deutscher Staaten. Cf. Siemann, Anfänge der politischen Polizei, 259–69; Deflem, ‘International policing in nineteenth-century Europe’, 43–6; T. Haalck, ‘Die Staatspolizeiliche Koordinierungsmassnahmen innerhalb des Deutschen Bundes zwischen 1851 und 1866’, Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Universität Rostock, 9 (1959/60), 99–105.

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identification, detention, prosecution, expulsion and extradition.51 Felice Orsini’s assassination attempt on Napoleon III in 1858, for example, alarmed the German governments and the Police Association, which feared that the repercussions could affect the security of the Confederation. Saxony received a message from an informer in London that Giuseppe Mazzini and a German accomplice, who were considered to be members of the assassination plot and the ‘European overthrow party’, had travelled to Germany. The news was immediately circulated to the governments and the Police Association, which started targeted surveillance and search measures, using a photograph of Mazzini provided by the Viennese police that was distributed to various territorial and local police forces. Although the suspects were not apprehended, search and surveillance extended to towns, villages, railways and stagecoaches and was noticed in the broader population, for instance in Württemberg, as a coordinated security measure.52 Hence, the growing intensity of cooperation on the local and transnational level in the German Confederation was based on the systematic exchange of information, shared police knowledge and especially on the mutual perception of cross-border security narratives and common security interests.53 The German Police Association ended with the dissolution of the German Federation in 1866, and the German Empire of 1871 did not establish a new central imperial police agency. Although transnational political policing still continued in the ‘conferencemode’ and dealt with threats such as international ‘anarchist terrorism’,54 the security narrative changed in the last third of the nineteenth century, and ‘international crime’, referring, for instance, to the drug trade and white slave trade, gained a more prominent role in the further development of international police cooperation. The German Police Association was already paying more attention to general cross-border issues in the last years of its existence. The various police agencies of the German states in the Empire still cooperated and used techniques and knowledge that the security regime of the German Confederation had developed. Regarding transnational policing and police cooperation, various transnational security regimes employed and extended the ‘conference-mode’ – most notably the international conferences in Rome in 1898, St Petersburg in 1904, Monaco in 1914 and Vienna in

51

52 53 54

Deflem, ‘International policing in nineteenth-century Europe’, 46–50. See also the case studies W. Siemann, ‘Giuseppe Mazzini in Württemberg? Ein Fall staatspolizeilicher Fahndung im Reaktionssystem des Nachmärz’, Zeitschrift für Württembergische Landesgeschichte, 4 (1981), 547–60; Jäger, ‘informelle Vernetzung politischer Polizei’. Siemann, ‘Giuseppe Mazzini in Württemberg’. Jäger, ‘informelle Vernetzung politischer Polizei’, 308–13. Jensen, Battle against Anarchist Terrorism; Ibid., ‘The international campaign against anarchist terrorism, 1880–1930s’, Terrorism and Political Violence, 21 (2009), 89–109.

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1923 – which had been established in 1815 as a prime element of the emerging European security culture.55 Conclusion The policing of political subversion and international crime constituted a crucial element of the federal-transnational security regime of the German Confederation, which the Congress of Vienna had created in 1815. A common security interest and the main objective of the Vienna system had been to prevent the cross-border spread of revolution, political subversion and conspiracy. Although existing research has occasionally stressed that the German Confederation’s security regime failed to prevent the revolution of 1848, it served as a significant complement to the Vienna system in launching and shaping the transnational policing of political subversion after 1815. Since national sovereignty and diverse political and legal systems impeded the formal cooperation of the European powers’ national police agencies, only a security regime that extended to various local, national, federal, transnational and international levels enabled them to establish and develop institutions and techniques of transnational policing. Through the ‘commission-mode’ (as a joint agency) and the ‘conference-mode’ (as a joint operation) the two federal police commissions and the German Police Association were related to other actors, modes and discourses of the security regime, expanded their scope to federal and transnational issues of securitisation and developed the corresponding techniques of coordinating and circulating information. This, furthermore, strengthened the basic security narratives and interests shared within the Concert of Europe regarding cross-border political subversion and international crime, and it fostered further sedition and criminal laws. In sum, political and transnational policing within the federal security regime aimed at intelligence gathering, surveillance and suppression in matters relating to the internal and transnational security of the German states and beyond the borders of the German Confederation. The main effects of the federal police institutions were the production and dissemination of systematic knowledge on political subversion, the development of basic techniques of transnational policing and the coordination of the security regime’s various actors. As a result, transnational policing also produced and disseminated the respective security narratives and influenced the security discourses. This 55

Fijnaut, Internationalization of Police Cooperation; Deflem, ‘Borders of police force’; Ibid., Policing World Society; Ibid., ‘International police cooperation’; Ibid., ‘International policing’; Jäger, Verfolgung durch Verwaltung; Ibid., ‘Internationales Verbrechen – Internationale Polizeikooperation 1880–1930: Konzepte und Praxis’, in S. Freitag and D. Schauz (eds.), Verbrecher im Visier der Experten. Kriminalpolitik zwischen Wissenschaft und Praxis im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2007), 295–319.

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included the dissemination of ‘police knowledge’ and the respective narratives and logics of securitisation through policing that further influenced administration, prosecution and legislation as well as public and expert discourses. They can, therefore, be characterised as an element of the European security discourse initiated by the Vienna system. However, we are restricted from merely characterising political and transnational policing between 1815 and 1866 as a continuous development or success. Just as it is virtually impossible to measure security, security regimes and security culture, transnational policing defies strict objective criteria. Nonetheless, we can discern various periods of securitisation and desecuritisation between 1819–28, 1830–42 and 1850–66 that were influenced by actual incidents as well as by legal and political developments and the logics and practices of the respective police institutions. Furthermore, the example of transnational policing within the German Confederation demonstrates that such federal-transnational security regimes were characterised by a relatively low level of juridification and constitutional control. Consequently, the ‘conference-mode’, as established by the Congress of Vienna as the basic pattern of the emerging European security regime and culture, also eventually shaped the development of transnational policing in nineteenth-century Europe.

11

The Papacy, Reform and Intervention International Collective Security in Restoration Italy David Laven

The Contested Legacy of Austrian Rule in Italy On the eve of the Franco-Austrian war of 1859, A.L.V. Gretton, occasional contributor to Charles Dickens’s Household Words and The British and Foreign Evangelical Review, published The Vicissitudes of Italy since the Congress of Vienna.1 Gretton, who had lived in Italy for almost a decade,2 was damning of the legacy of the post-Napoleonic settlement in the peninsula: The Congress of Vienna, in 1815, is the fatal starting-point in modern Italian history. It restored temporal authority to the Papacy, and re-established and extended Austrian domination. The two primary evils which had afflicted her for centuries – the source of her civil wars, her conspiracies, her revolutions – were thus rooted anew in Italy.3

Gretton’s position was widespread among British observers in the aftermath of 1848–9, and over the decades that followed. The creation of a United Kingdom of Italy in 1861, and the establishment of Rome as its capital ten years later, were widely greeted by British commentators as bringing an end to the injustices imposed at Vienna. Even during the Restoration period, it had become a commonplace among critics of the new order to argue that the Congress of Vienna had done away with ‘the attractive vision of Italian greatness, unity, and advancement’ supposedly fostered under Napoleon, and had instead, contrary to the wishes of the Italian people, imposed ‘a system of narrowness and oppression everywhere’.4 This view persisted long after unification. For example, although in the early 1930s G.F.-H. Berkeley was prepared to acknowledge grudgingly that ‘[t]he settlement wins a certain degree of approval from writers on diplomacy, on the grounds that it brought peace to Europe for nearly half a century’,5 he was uncompromising in 1 2 3 5

A.L.V. Gretton, The Vicissitudes of Italy since the Congress of Vienna (London: Routledge, Warners, and Routledge, 1859). As Mrs George Gretton, she published The Englishwoman in Italy. Impressions of Life in the Roman States and Sardinia, during a Ten Years’ Residence (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1860). 4 Gretton, Vicissitudes, 2. Ibid. G.F.H. Berkeley, Italy in the Making, 1815–1846 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932), 2.

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blaming a century of Italian – and European – anguish and misfortune squarely on those who had gathered in Vienna: In reality, the settlement of 1815 was responsible for most of the suffering in Europe, until finally it was overthrown by the Great War. Its faults were twofold: it drew frontiers where the inhabitants on either side of the line did not want frontiers, and it imposed absolute rulers on peoples which were too far developed to submit to absolutism. [. . .] In Italy five million inhabitants of Lombardy and Venetia were forced back under the German bureaucracy of Austria, and the rest of that peninsula was parcelled out under absolutist rulers.6

This negative judgment did not come principally from the diminutive and unrepresentative section of the Italian population who espoused a nationalist position after 1815. Indeed, anti-Habsburg sentiment emerged in large part outside Italy, among those who sympathised and engaged with the cause of Italian nationalism, or used it as a pretext for pushing their own interests within the peninsula.7 Criticism of the Vienna Settlement has instead been a product above all of a teleological reading of Italian and wider European history. Such a reading viewed the Settlement from the perspective of the creation of so-called nation states during the nineteenth century, and the emergence of successor states after World War I. Put simply, if the process of forming new nation states along Mazzinian or Wilsonian lines of self-determination is to be portrayed in a positive light, any denial of this ‘natural’ order has to be condemned or treated as anomalous. One consequence of this has been a generally unfavourable and often wilfully distorted view of the multinational Habsburg monarchy, its role within the collective security system established after the fall of Napoleon and the part it played in Italian affairs after 1815.8 Those historians who have attacked the status quo established in 1814–15 have often reserved special hostility for the Austrian presence in Italy, both because of the supposed failings of Austrian rule, and because it was the Austrians who effectively guaranteed the Restoration order against threats both external and internal. Even in the face of a growing literature that has demonstrated the many positive aspects of the Habsburg presence in Italy, the anti-Austrian perspective has never evaporated. Much of the condemnation of Austria appears simply to have ignored the findings of new research. For example, in the 2007 ‘new’ edition of his study of Manin and the 1848–9 revolutions, Paul Ginsborg makes no mention at all 6 7

8

Ibid., 2–4. The most sophisticated and intelligent analysis of the relationship between Italian liberals and nationalists and the wider world is M. Isabella, Risorgimento in Exile: Italian Émigrés and the Liberal International in the Post-Napoleonic Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). For a brilliant and persuasive call to reconsider the nature of the Habsburg monarchy in much more positive terms, see P. Judson, The Habsburg Empire. A New History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016).

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of thirty years of extensive research on Austrian rule of Venetia, which puts the Habsburgs in a vastly more positive light. Instead, Ginsborg focuses his scant historiographical amendments almost entirely on the work of Alberto Banti.9 This approach – whether conscious strategy or unfortunate oversight – permits Ginsborg to repeat his damning judgment of the Austrians. Such persistent repetition of these anti-Habsburg mantras has meant that the ‘black myth’ of Austrian hegemony in Italy endures.10 Yet, in the aftermath of 1815 there was broad consensus about the positive consequences of the Austrian presence in Italy, both on account of its contribution to the collective security of Europe following almost a quarter century of war, and because of a widespread sense within the peninsula that Habsburg hegemony was preferable to the rule of Napoleon or Murat. Despite the appeals of both Murat and the British general Lord William Bentinck to unity and nationhood as they attempted to mobilise Italian support for their own quite different ends, very few Italians wanted to be united in a single state.11 For the overwhelming majority of Italians, the Restoration brought blessed relief. The fall of Napoleon meant an end to energetically anticlerical policies, to onerous and often arbitrary taxation and to the hated conscription that had characterised the decennio francese; the collapse of the Napoleonic regimes also ensured that tens of thousands of Italian men would no longer die in a foreign emperor’s vainglorious campaigns.12 Meanwhile, although the restored regimes relieved some former Napoleonic administrators of their posts, and some inhabitants of Lombardy-Venetia resented the introduction of non-Italians into the higher echelons of the civil service and police, Italians understood that the lands ruled by Habsburgs – the Kingdom of LombardyVenetia, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the Duchy of Parma – enjoyed more professional and responsive administration, less arbitrary taxation, less

9

10 11

12

P. Ginsborg, Daniele Manin e la rivoluzione veneziani del 1848–49, new edn. (Turin: Einaudi, 2007); A.M. Banti, La nazione del Risorgimento. Parentela, santità e onore alle origini dell’Italia unita (Turin: Einaudi, 2000). For a summary of the historiography of Habsburg rule in the Restoration, see D. Laven, Venice and Venetia under the Habsburgs, 1815–1835 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 1–26. On Bentinck see especially J. Rosselli, Lord William Bentinck. The Making of a Liberal Imperialist, 1774–1839 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974); Rosselli, Lord William Bentinck and the British Occupation of Sicily, 1811–1814 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956). On Murat see principally J.A. Davis, Naples and Napoleon. Southern Italy and the European Revolutions (1780–1860) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). For the richest discussion of Napoleonic imperialism in Italy, see M. Broers, The Napoleonic Empire in Italy. Cultural Imperialism in a European Context? (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). On the disastrous impact of Napoleonic military activity, see F. Della Peruta, Esercito e società nell’Italia napoleonica. Dalla Cisalpina al Regno d’Italia (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 1988); M. Canella (ed.), Armi e nazione. Dalla Repubblica Cisalpina al Regno Italico (1797–1814) (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2009); Davis, Naples and Napoleon, 219–20.

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oppressive censorship and more generous charity than those of the other restored monarchs.13 Italy’s restoration rulers in general recognised the benefits of and aspired to implement monarchia amministrativa, a rationalising and bureaucratic system of absolute government, built on both Napoleonic structures and practices, and on the model of eighteenth-century reforms, which permitted consultation while eschewing actual constitutionalism.14 But it was the Habsburg rulers who did so most effectively. Indeed, Italians unfortunate enough to live under the deeply reactionary House of Savoy, and, to a lesser extent, those who found themselves once again under the rule of the Pope or the Bourbons, looked jealously to Parma, Milan, Venice and Florence.15 In reality, Austria’s Italian hegemony, traditionally identified as one of the great wrongs of the Congress of Vienna, helped guarantee both the stability and the welfare of the Italian peninsula, which became a cornerstone of the Pax Europeae. The peacemakers at Vienna understood that Italy was a key zone of possible conflict between a potentially resurgent France and a recently victorious but vulnerable Austria. Austrian fears concerning revolution in Italy were not predicated – as A.J.P. Taylor suggested – on Metternich’s anxieties regarding Italian nationalism (since neither the anxieties nor the nationalism existed), but rather on the danger that unrest in the peninsula brought about by inadequate government in the non-Habsburg lands might trigger French intervention in a strategically sensitive area.16 Napoleon’s defeat had in part been a consequence of British naval supremacy fused with disillusionment within his imperial possessions at fiscal exploitation and warmongering, but the fundamental reasons lay in the Spanish ‘ulcer’ and the Russian campaign. Yet historically neither Iberia nor Russia were contested zones; European wars were instead likely to erupt in the Low Countries, along the Rhine or in the Italian peninsula. Since the days of the ‘Spanish Road’, diplomats and generals had been aware that the security of these regions was linked.17 Following Austrian defeats in the Napoleonic wars, it became an article of faith for Metternich and Austrian generals that it was on the River Po that the Rhine 13

14

15 16 17

M. Meriggi, Amministrazione e classi sociali nel Lombardo-Veneto (1814–1848) (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1983); Ibid., Il Regno Lombardo-Veneto (Turin: UTET, 1987); Laven, Venice and Venetia. M. Meriggi, ‘Società, istituzioni e ceti dirigenti’, in G. Sabbatucci and V. Vidotto (eds.), Storia d’Italia. 1. Le premesse dell’unità (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1994), 119–228; M. Soresina, L’età della restaurazione 1815–1860. Gli stati italiani dal Congresso di Vienna al crollo (MilanUdine: Mimesis, 2015), 20–5. For a fuller discussion of this, see D. Laven, ‘Austria’s Italian policy reconsidered: revolution and reform in restoration Italy’, Modern Italy, 3 (1997), 3–33, 6. A.J.P. Taylor, The Habsburg Monarchy 1809–1918. A History of the Austrian Empire and Austria-Hungary, new edn. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981), 40–1. G. Parker, The Army of Flanders and the Spanish Road, 1567–1659. The Logistics of Spanish Victory and Defeat in the Low Countries Wars, 2nd edn. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004 [1972]), 109–10.

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was defended.18 Austrian policy was premised on ensuring that revolutions did not occur, not because those insurrections posed a significant threat in their own right, but because they could offer a pretext for French intervention. Faced by revolution in Spain, Metternich simply observed from a distance as the Duc d’Angoulême’s ‘Cien mil hijos de San Luis’ crossed the Pyrenees to crush the liberals in April 1823.19 But while memories of Napoleon’s soldiers strolling in the Prater remained fresh, the thought of a French presence in Italy terrified Vienna. Such fears did not diminish after 1815. Nor were they confined to Austria. In March 1832, for example, Sir Richard Rawlinson Vyvyan, the Tory MP for the soon-to-be abolished Cornish rotten borough of Okehampton, asked in the House of Commons about the British government’s knowledge of the French occupation of Ancona, and remarked that ‘the French had never entered Italy without bringing a train of evils, and inflicting the greatest miseries upon the people’.20 If the conservative Baronet Vyvyan was no friend of revolution, he was even more notorious as an enemy of Popery. By 1832, with France under the house of Orléans and with Casimir Périer, champion of the parti de résistance, at the helm, Vyvyan’s fear was not of revolution in Italy (although he believed the French had been guilty of leading on conspirators with promises of support); nor was he hostile to reform in the Italian states. His anxieties were that a French presence would destabilise the peninsula, and ‘excite a civil war’. Behind such sentiments lay a desire for stability, a desire that swiftly trumped any anti-Catholicism. Vyvyan’s views were not confined to conservative politicians; Europe needed peace and cooperation in Italy.21 Austrian dominance within the peninsula served the interests of other powers. As policemen of the Italian order, the Austrians looked south. This obliged the Austrians after 1815 to operate in partnership with Prussia within the German Confederation, bringing obvious advantages to the biggest north German state.22 Britain benefitted too. The Napoleonic Wars had strengthened the British reluctance to engage in foreign entanglements, so the expansion of Austrian influence in Italy fitted British policy perfectly: the Austrians would keep the French out of Italy. Moreover, Francis I had no aspirations either to extend his territories or to build a significant navy. Indeed, the Austrian 18 19 20

21 22

Laven, ‘Austria’s Italian policy’, 10–13; Ibid., Venice and Venetia, 80. On the complex debates surrounding intervention in Spain, see P.W. Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics, 1763–1848 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 621–7. ‘Sir Richard Vyvyan, 7 March 1832, House of Commons debate’, in Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, 3rd Series Beginning with the Reign of William IV, vol.X, 7 February–8 March 1832 (London: Baldwin & Cradock, 1829–1891), 1227–8. E. Jaggard, Cornwall Politics in the Age of Reform, 1790–1885 (London: Royal Historical Society/Boydell Press, 1999), 44. T. Nipperdey (trans. D. Nolan), Germany from Napoleon to Bismarck, 1800–1866 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 73–4.

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government’s sale to Denmark of the warships found at Venice signalled that Austria would not challenge British Mediterranean dominance.23 The reluctance of the Habsburgs to extend their Italian territories was essential to Castlereagh’s plans: were the Austrians to dominate more of the Italian coastline, they would have no choice but to develop a navy that might lead to conflict with the British.24 I shall not rehearse arguments here that I have made before about the methods used to maintain Austrian hegemony in Italy.25 Rather I want to underline that, notwithstanding Metternich’s failure to establish an Italian Confederation,26 the Austrian domination of the peninsula – through direct rule; through dynastic links and marriage; through treaties; through a commanding military presence and, if necessary, a readiness to intervene militarily; through diplomatic pressures – was a positive force both for most Italians and for European collective security. In addition, I wish to highlight two key points for understanding Restoration attitudes to collective security. The first is – to turn to that other area identified by Gretton as an especially pernicious aspect of the Vienna Settlement – the enormous importance of the restoration of Papal authority. The second is that, to the extent that there existed a Primat der Innenpolitik among the powers after 1815, the way that domestic considerations influenced policy formulation in Austria, Russia and Prussia was very different from the manner in which they operated in Britain and France. The existence of constitutional government, a (notionally) free press and, in France, a recent tradition of violently overthrowing regimes, meant that the foreign policies of London and Paris were to a large degree responses to perceived popular opinion. It is ironic that – precisely because they had to take account of the press, the ballot and the barricade – the governments of France and Britain were more likely to pursue irresponsible foreign policies than those of more autocratic Austria, Russia or Prussia. The Restoration of Papal Authority The revolutionary and Napoleonic era had weakened the Catholic Church much more than even the most dramatic eighteenth-century reforms. While figures such as the Portuguese reformer the Marquês de Pombal, Andrea 23 24

25 26

C.A. Macartney, The Habsburg Empire, 1790–1918 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969), 320. The notion that Habsburg expansion could be beneficial for the peninsula did not disappear during the early years of the Restoration. For example, in 1833 the Piedmontese Ferdinando Dal Pozzo (1768–1843) published Della felicità che gl’italiani possono e debbono dal governo austriaco procacciarsi (Paris: Cherbuliez, 1833). Laven, ‘Austria’s Italian policy’; Ibid., Venice and Venetia. Schroeder, Transformation, 567.

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Tron – ‘el paron de Venexia’ –, Pietro Leopoldo of Tuscany and Joseph II had tried to limit the wealth, autonomy and influence of ‘national’ Catholic churches, and had challenged the authority of the Pope, the French revolutionary regimes had adopted a policy of aggressive de-Christianisation that reached its apogee in the brutal civil war in the Vendée.27 Napoleon’s seizure of power and the 1801 Concordat did not stop fiercely anticlerical policies, which the French exported through war and conquest. Napoleon’s measures to control the Italian Church led to what Michael Broers has called ‘the war against God’.28 The revolutionary and Napoleonic authorities were responsible for the massive seizure of church property, the blanket closure of religious houses, the driving of thousands of religious from monasteries and convents and the active persecution of legion priests. On 17 May 1809, having already chipped away at Papal territory, Napoleon finally annexed the rump of the Papal States, and, from July 1809, Napoleon also held the Pope captive.29 Yet Pius VII returned triumphant to Rome in early 1814, and the subsequent restoration of Papal territory by the Congress of Vienna changed the configuration of European politics. Relations with the Papacy assumed a new significance. In practice, Catholicism remained an incredibly potent political force, vastly more influential in Restoration Italy – and the rest of Europe – than any secret society or, indeed, organised political opposition. The pulpit had unique potential for mass mobilisation. Managing relations with the Pope and the state of which he was the temporal prince became central to the peace and security of post-Napoleonic Europe. The importance of the Papacy to the rulers of Restoration Europe is scarcely surprising. Two of Europe’s great powers – France and the Habsburg Empire – were overwhelmingly Catholic. So too were Spain, Portugal (still ruled from Rio de Janeiro until 1822) and all the Italian states. Moreover, some middleranking states, including the newly constituted Kingdom of the Netherlands and the Kingdom of Bavaria, either possessed Catholic majorities or had very significant Catholic minorities. This was also true of other significant states within the German Confederation such as Württemberg and Baden. The other major powers had Catholic minorities. The acquisition or reacquisition of lands at Vienna ensured the respective Orthodox and Protestant majorities of Russia and Prussia were diluted through gaining significant Catholic populations. Meanwhile, Britain’s George III acquired continental Catholic subjects 27 28 29

On the horrors of the Vendée see Reynald Secher’s controversial Le génocide franco-français (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1986). M. Broers, The Politics of Religion in Napoleonic Italy. The War against God 1801–1814 (London: Routledge, 2002). R. Regoli, ‘Cardinal Consalvi and the restitution of the Papal States’, in H. Duchhardt and J. Wischmeyer (eds.), Der Wiener Kongress – eine kirchenpolitische Zäsur? (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013), 113–15.

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alongside English and Scottish recusants, the Irish majority and uniformly Catholic Quebeckers: elevated to the status of King of Hanover, he found that, through the acquisition of former prince-bishoprics, he had become the ruler of many more Germans who looked to Rome; Malta also became British. For Catholic rulers, cordial relations with the Papacy brought obvious advantages. After 1815, such relations assumed priority for the British, Dutch, Russians and Prussians too. The British authorities had long considered both mainland Catholics and their Irish coreligionists as threats. But the later eighteenth century had witnessed a growing desire for accommodation with those who looked to Rome. The Quebec Act (1774), the Papists Act (1778) and the Roman Catholic Relief Act (1791) had ushered in greater tolerance. Both Pitt and Fox championed emancipation, only to encounter royal intransigence.30 Nevertheless, the 1811 guarantee that soldiers need not participate in Anglican worship recognised Catholics’ role in fighting Napoleon. Emancipation would not take place until 1829, and resentment did not disappear overnight or heal the bitter internal divisions in British Catholicism. But the ongoing nature of these issues meant that British politicians and diplomats retained an interest in carefully managing relations with the restored Papacy.31 Much the same was true of Russia. Even after Nicholas I adopted an aggressively anti-Catholic stance in the mid-1820s, the need to prevent the Catholic Church from becoming the focus for resistance in Poland ensured that the Tsar constantly considered relations with the Papacy; this was particularly the case after the failed Polish revolution of 1830–1, when Gregory XVI came out publicly against the insurgents.32 A similar tale can be told for Prussia, where a third of the population after 1815 was Catholic.33 Anti-Catholicism was frequently manifest – for example, in 1832 when the authorities attempted to 30

31

32 33

For George III’s resistance to reform, see M. Turner, British Politics in an Age of Reform (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), 47–8; J. Mori, Britain in the Age of the French Revolution, 1785–1820 (London: Routledge, 2014), 17–8. On the sometimes fractious relationship between the Irish bishops and the British and, on occasion, the Papacy, see O. MacDonagh, ‘The politicization of the Irish Catholic bishops, 1800–1850’, The Historical Journal, 18:1 (1975), 37–53; J.H. Whyte, ‘The influence of Catholic clergy on elections in nineteenth-century Ireland’, English Historical Review, 75:295 (1960), 239–59. On the inconsistency of British responses to the religious practices of Catholic soldiers, see C. Kennedy, Narratives of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Military and Civilian Experience in Britain and Ireland (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 62. The British desire to maintain good relations with the Pope was motivated also by the desire for markets in central Italy. See S. Matsumoto-Best, Britain and the Papacy in the Age of Revolution, 1846–1851 (London: Royal Historical Society/Boydell & Brewer, 2003), 11; M. Buschkühl, Great Britain and the Holy See, 1746–1870 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1982), 50. N.V. Riasanovsky, Nicholas I and Official Nationality in Russia, 1825–1855 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 229. C. Rathgeber, Frömmigkeit, staatliches Handeln und die frühe Politisierung preußischer Katholiken (1815 bis 1871). Acta Borussica. Neu Folge. 2. Reihe: Preussen als Kulturstaat (Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2016), 2.

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reintroduce a measure of 1810 obliging Catholic soldiers to attend a Protestant church every fourth Sunday34 – and continued to resurface until the end of the Kulturkampf, but even the persecution of the 1870s was a symptom of the significance attached to Catholics because of their capacity for organisation and collective action.35 As one British observer remarked in 1844: Whoever is paramount at Rome has a prodigious influence over all the Romish priesthood in the world, and over the consciences of all Papists. It is all very well for shallow theorists to affect contempt for the Pope’s spiritual power, and to pretend that Rome is no longer what it was. [. . .] The Church of Rome, as settled by the Council of Trent, is unchanged and unchangeable.36

The Papacy’s restoration to full temporal powers created problems that Europe’s major powers addressed collectively for reasons of both domestic and foreign policy. This does not mean that they necessarily agreed on how to proceed, or that there was domestic consensus among their statesmen, within the ranks of opinion formers or within public opinion. Yet there was a strong sense that stability in the Papal States was a boon to Europe as a whole and that nudging the Pope towards reform was desirable.37 Permitting the Papal government to turn back the clock was dangerous. As Cardinal Consalvi – Papal representative at Vienna, and Secretary of State – recognised, the greatest threat to Papal authority came from the Zelanti,38 ultraconservative cardinals who pressured the Pope to embrace reaction. Incompetent government was the quickest way to trigger revolt. This was demonstrated barely a lustrum after Vienna when inept rule led to insurrection in the Two Sicilies and Sardinia-Piedmont; thanks to Consalvi the Papal States weathered this period unscathed. But, with the death of Pius VII in August 1823, the election of Annibale della Genga as Pope Leo XII in September 1823 was followed

34 35

36 37

38

Ibid., 6. J. Sperber, Popular Catholicism in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984); M.B. Gross, The War against Catholicism: Liberalism and the AntiCatholic Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007); M. Borutta, Antikatholizismus. Deutschland und Italien im Zeitalter der europäischen Kulturkämpfe (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010). See also M.L. Anderson, Windthorst. A Political Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981); H. Walser Smith, German Nationalism and Religious Conflict. Culture, Ideology, and Politics, 1870–1914 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995). N.n., ‘Arnaldo da Brescia. Tragedia di Gio. Battista Niccolini’, The North British Review, 1/2 (May 1844–August 1844), 458–85, 465. C.T. McIntire argues that the key driver behind British support for Italian unification was the wish to end the Pope’s temporal power. C.T. McIntire, England against the Papacy 1858–1861: Tories, Liberals, and the Overthrow of Papal Temporal Power during the Italian Risorgimento (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). On the use of the word ‘Zelante’ see R. Regoli, Ercole Consalvi: Le scelte per la Chiesa (Rome: Editrice Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 2006), 158–62.

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immediately by the Secretary of State’s dismissal; Consalvi’s death in January 1824 ended hopes of any swift return to moderate policies. Leo XII rapidly revealed his reactionary side: persecution of the Jews; the imposition of tighter clerical control over education; the abolition of Consalvi’s carabinieri.39 Yet Leo XII’s position was in some ways paradoxical.40 When first elected, he flirted with the ‘liberal’ Catholic ideas of Lamennais, ideas that chimed with autochthonous developments among many Italian progressive and reforming Catholics.41 In the summer of 1826, however, under pressure from Metternich, the Pope definitively rejected popular Catholicism. Henceforth ‘cooperation with the Powers in defence of the Restoration Order [was] the cornerstone of his policy’.42 Yet one consequence of Leo XII’s conversion to prioritising peace and good order was his jettisoning of ideas that might have made him more open to reform. His instinctive conservatism in domestic policy now blossomed. Ironically, it was this conviction that made Leo’s rule increasingly unpalatable to his subjects and ineffective in confronting economic and social problems; in his desire to combat revolution lay the origins of disorder and rebellion. And it was ultimately this unrest that led Europe’s powers to push for reform within the Papal States as part of their strategy for collective security. Leo XII’s reign escaped without insurrection. Matters changed with his death in February 1829. The election of a new Pope caused a power vacuum and a succession crisis, triggering tensions between foreign powers, anxious that a sympathetic candidate should wear the tiara. Pius VIII, Leo’s moderate and pro-Austrian successor, weathered the storm generated by the poor harvests and economic unrest of the late 1820s, the impact of the July 1830 revolution and French espousal of non-intervention.43 Another conclave in quick succession – Pius died in November 1830, shortly after recognising

39

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41 42 43

A.J. Reinerman, Austria and the Papacy in the Age of Metternich, vol.I (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1979–89), 125; R. Aubert, ‘The Catholic Church and the Restoration’, in R. Aubert et al. (eds.), The Church between Revolution and Restoration, (London: Burns & Oates, 1981), 85–260, 103; S.C. Hughes, Crime, Disorder, and the Risorgimento: The Politics of Policing in Bologna (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 29–66. For the tensions between Leo XII’s desire to break with the traditionalism of the ancien régime and to embrace a more open, progressive and even democratic vision of the Church, and his eagerness to combat any revolutionary threat through an alliance of throne and altar, see the still unsurpassed studies of R. Colapietra, La Chiesa tra Lamennais e Metternich: il pontificato di Leone XII (Brescia: Morcelliana, 1963); Ibid., La formazione diplomatica di Leone XII (Rome: Istituto per la Storia del Risorgimento italiano, 1966). Aubert, ‘The Catholic Church and the Restoration’, 253–6. Reinerman, Austria and the Papacy, vol.I, 142. Ibid., 160–74. See also O. Fusi-Pecci, La vita di Papa Pio VIII (Rome: Herder, 1965); A. Pennacchioni, Il Papa Pio VIII, Francesco Saverio Castiglioni: nato a Cingoli 1761, [morto a] Roma 1830: diplomatica nel Archivio ecclesiastico cingolano (Cingoli: Mazzini, 1994).

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Louis-Philippe as King of the French – gave a chance for political discontent to manifest itself. In the Romagna provinces – the so-called Legations – unrest turned to open rebellion in February 1831. Insurrection spread across the northern Papal States to the borders of Lazio, although the population of Rome remained loyal to the newly elected Gregory XVI.44 In response to the unrest, Metternich sent troops into the Papal States to crush the rebellion, yet he did so with little enthusiasm, despite the need to prevent revolutionary contagion from infecting Lombardy-Venetia. Such interventions cast Austria in a negative light as expansionist and aggressive; the costs put strains on Austria’s fragile finances, and were hard to recoup. Moreover, so long as Italian rulers could count on Austrian military assistance, they had little motivation to reform. Contrary to the myth, Metternich’s preference was always for reform over repression. But intervention also stretched military resources, weakening Austria’s capacity to respond to threats elsewhere. Metternich also feared that intervention might actually trigger a war.45 Rome 1831: Containing the Rivalry between Vienna and Paris Already in the winter of 1830–1 war had seemed possible. Sections of opinion in France were openly defiant, even bellicose. As I have already argued, the existence of a constitution and the tradition of successful regime change through revolution meant that French governments did not ignore popular opinion, even in matters of foreign policy. Since the Revolution, France’s rulers had learned to use war as a means of dealing with problems at home; a key legacy of the Napoleonic period was a widespread assumption that France had an automatic right to dictate affairs across the continent. These ‘molesting propensities’ of the French, as one British observer dubbed them, made it important for the Austrians to monitor French politics and to avoid provoking France.46 In December 1830 and January 1831 Jacques Laffitte’s government, representing the parti du mouvement, mobilised troops and aggressively reiterated French condemnation of outside interference in the internal affairs of foreign states. This stance had more to do with popular desires for national prestige and to signal a determination to defend the new order in France than with ideology. When the more conservative parti de la résistance assumed office under Casimir Périer on 13 March 1831, the new ministry was less vociferous in support of non-intervention. If Périer was by no means immune

44 45 46

On Gregory XVI’s election, see C. Korten, ‘Defining moments: the reasons Mauro Cappellari became Pope Gregory XVI’, Archivum Historiæ Ponticificæ, 47 (2009), 17–39. See Laven, ‘Austria’s Italian policy’; A.J. Reinerman, ‘Metternich, the powers, and the 1831 Italian crisis’, Central European History, 10:3 (1977), 206–19, 207–8. P.E. Turnbull, Austria, vol.II (London: John Murray, 1840), 409–10.

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to populist sabre-rattling, he was also keen not to jeopardise Europe’s collective security. Like Metternich, Périer understood that without reform, the Papal States were ‘the Achilles’ heel of the conservative order’.47 Unrest there could destabilise the whole of Europe. The new King of the French appreciated this too. Indeed, as early as February 1831 Louis Philippe had suggested that France and Austria collaborate in offering mediation between the Pope and the rebels, and in drawing up a reform plan designed to forestall future unrest. After 13 March, Metternich was anxious to include the Périer government in discussions. If this served in part as a signal to future rebels that France was attached to the established order, it could also help salvage French pride. France could no longer pose as the guarantor of revolution, but involvement in determining the future of Papal rule gave it a measure of equality with Austria. Metternich hoped that, by appeasing French jingoism, he could also shore up the Périer ministry. From Périer’s perspective, of course, cooperation with Austria made it harder to appeal to the wide sections of public opinion that still wanted a more aggressive foreign policy. Neither Périer nor Louis Philippe could entirely ignore such opinion, even if neither wanted to risk war with Austria. In the spring of 1831, the international crisis that emerged from the vicissitudes of the Papal government resulted in a conference of ambassadors in Rome. From the outset the delegates revealed markedly different approaches. Perhaps curiously given the potential rivalry between Vienna and Paris, the Austrian ambassador Graf Rudolf Lützow and his French counterpart LouisClaire de Beaupoil comte de Saint-Aulaire both saw eye-to-eye on key issues. French and Austrian hegemonic aspirations clashed, but their populations were overwhelmingly Catholic, and though Saint-Aulaire represented an anticlerical and liberal government, he was personally ‘devout and moderate’.48 He also recognised the danger that revolution posed. As he wrote in July 1831 to the Foreign Minister Horace François Bastien Sébastiani de La Porta, in times of peace, revolutionaries were ‘les plus redoutables ennemis’.49 Other delegates had less in common as individuals. Britain’s representative Sir Brook Taylor was supposed to be no more than an observer, but could not refrain from intervening in debates, often without concealing his typically British antipopery. The Russian Grigorii Ivanovich Gagarin blended Russian Orthodoxy and free-thinking into a distaste for the Catholic Church. Moreover, despite the Pope’s recent readiness to tell the Polish bishops and clergy to respect the Tsar,

47 49

48 Reinerman, Austria and the Papacy, vol.II, 34. Ibid., 42. Letter from Saint-Aulaire to Sébastiani, 30 July 1831, cited in N. Jolicoeur, La politique française envers les États pontificaux sous la monarchie de juillet et la seconde République (1830–1851) (Bern: Peter Lang, 2008), 84.

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Gagarin and then-Cardinal Cappellari had clashed in the past over the Polish church.50 Finally, there was Christian Karl Josias von Bunsen. A patriotic Prussian who believed that Berlin should not accept Austria’s primacy within the German Confederation,51 Bunsen was also a brilliant scholar and protégé of Barthold Georg Niebuhr, the great historian of ancient Rome and, from 1816 until 1823, Prussian ambassador to the Papal Court. By the time of the conference of ambassadors, Bunsen had succeeded Niebuhr as a renowned expert on ancient Rome and as Prussia’s representative to the Vatican. Often criticised for outspoken attachment to Protestantism, Bunsen was both friendly with Gregory XVI, whom he had known as Cardinal, and extremely wellinformed about the local situation.52 The representatives of the three nonCatholic powers thus brought different sets of prejudices and loyalties to discussions of the Papal question. The Rome conference demonstrated on a reduced scale the wider difficulties behind collective security in the decades after the Congress of Vienna. On the one hand, whatever their own national interests and however much they felt the need to satisfy domestic opinion, the rulers of the five powers and their representatives all broadly agreed ‘on the danger that revolution in a minor state would endanger the peace and stability of Europe’.53 Gregory XVI recognised this too.54 Here was a genuine sense of collective security, a desire to act together to avoid war. On the other hand, notwithstanding the shared recognition of the dangers posed by unrest in Italy in general and the Papal States in particular, the positions of the different powers differed widely and sometimes wildly. These tensions were manifest in clashes – sometimes bitter and obvious, sometimes simply fractious and muted – between the representatives of those powers in Rome. But what is really significant is that, despite the conflicts and tensions, not to mention personal rivalries and animosities, it was considerations of European security that largely trumped the interests of the individual powers. In other words, the memories of revolution and war before 50

51 52

53

54

On Gregory XVI’s response to the Polish rising and his attitude to Gagarin, see the dated but detailed and well-researched work of the Jesuit Adrien Boudou, Le Saint-Siège et la Russie. Leurs relations diplomatiques au XIXe siècle, 1814–1847 (Paris: Plon, 1922), 170–92. Reinerman, Austria and the Papacy, vol.II, 43. Curiously, when Bunsen returned to Prussia in 1834 he was greeted with ‘undisguised hostility’ alongside accusations of ‘crypto Catholicism’. F. Bunsen (née Waddington), A Memoir of Baron Bunsen Late Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary of His Majesty Frederic William IV, vol.I (London: Longman, Green, & Co, 1868), 401–2. A.J. Reinerman, ‘The concert baffled: the Roman conference of 1831 and the reforms of the Papal State’, The International History Review, 5:1 (1983), 20–38, 20–1. On the different perspectives of the powers’ representatives, see Reinerman, Austria and the Papacy, vol.II, 42–3. ‘Même chez lui et dans ses domaines, le pape se voit dans une position difficile, et les complications menacent de s’étendre jusqu’à une guerre européenne.’ Boudou, Le Saint-Siège et la Russie, 170.

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1815 were sufficient to make major powers bury their differences in Italy, even if domestic considerations demanded a degree of public posturing, and individual disagreements on occasion risked derailing discussions. During the 1831 conference, the principal threat to peace came from France. Périer’s stance during the 1831 conference often tended towards arrogance and bullying, especially over his demands for Austrian evacuation and the amnestying of insurgents.55 The French prime minister’s position came not from ideological commitment, but simply from the need to satisfy volatile domestic opinion. Nevertheless, Périer’s stance contributed to a good deal of disagreement and squabbling among the powers, which in turn triggered mutual suspicion. Palmerston, for example, began to wonder whether the Pope and the Austrians were holding secret negotiations; this was possibly the origin of his turn against Austria in Italian affairs.56 But what is striking about the conference is not that there were disagreements between the powers’ representatives over detail, but that despite markedly different perspectives on the Italian situation, the Rome conference did not degenerate into open conflict. Instead, it agreed a package of administrative and judicial reforms – the so-called Bunsen memorandum of 21 May 1831 – which Lützow was entrusted by the other delegates to persuade the Pope to implement. If the conference resulted in the Bunsen memorandum, it also led to the French demand that Austria withdraw from the Legations, a demand that was backed up by the preparation of French troops in Toulon and French naval patrols of the Adriatic coast. Although French actions threatened the peace, the withdrawal of the Austrian forces eventually took place on 15 July 1831.57 Austrian regiments would soon return. In late January 1832, in response to local resistance to Papal forces, the whitecoats once again entered the region. Périer responded swiftly. Having initially suggested a compromise occupation by Piedmontese troops – trying to avoid any perceived international conflict with Austria – he caved in to domestic pressure and sanctioned an occupation of Ancona in February 1832, which lasted until 1838. The French military presence, in violation of international law, served no purpose, except within the context of domestic politics in France. Among the powers only Britain refused to condemn the French actions, perhaps because Palmerston instinctively sympathised with Périer’s crowd-pleasing gunboat diplomacy. The effect was to turn the Adriatic port briefly into a centre for agitation, but, significantly, such a blatantly provocative action did not lead to war, or even to the serious threat of it. Many senior French figures – including 55 56 57

A.J. Reinerman, ‘An unnatural “natural alliance”: Metternich, Palmerston, and the reform of the Papal States, 1831–1832’, The International History Review, 10:4 (1988), 541–58, 544. Reinerman, ‘An unnatural “natural alliance”’, 548. Ibid., Austria and the Papacy, vol.II, 76.

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Sainte-Aulaire – were in despair at the policy’s short-sightedness. As François Guizot, the dominant French political figure of the July Monarchy, would write much later: ‘[t]he act seemed too much opposed to public rights, and too rash to have been committed during perfect peace, and without the consent of either the Pope or of the allies of France.’58 Yet the most striking aspect of the French presence in Ancona was that it did not trigger war or even a serious escalation. Metternich was prepared to accept French conduct in the wider interests of European peace; and Louis Philippe, Périer and those at the head of subsequent ministries after Périer’s death – with the exception of the latter part of Thiers’ first ministry in 1836, and the whole of his disastrous second ministry in 1840 – were also eager to avoid conflict. Indeed, one anonymous Italian patriot observed furiously in 1832 that the French were not prepared to push for a war that would drive the Austrians from the peninsula: Everyone thinks that France with so daring a move intends to display its power in the heart of Italy, and to threaten the enemies of the people. But it is not genuine of the ministers of Louis Philippe to sustain a dignified and daring policy. Diplomacy is involved in the occupation of Ancona: furious notes from the Roman court provoke grovelling replies; every day a new protest, a new act of cowardice on the part of France: a shameful capitulation eventually crowns the disgrace of a nation that should be the first, but whose government does its best to be the worst in the world!59

Challenges to Habsburg Hegemony within Italy: A Threat to Europe’s Collective Security The Ancona episode demonstrated both the fragility and the durability of the European sense of collective security. The major powers in the aftermath of Napoleon’s defeat sought peace. This longing for ‘Ruhe und Ordnung’ or ‘Ruhe und Sicherheit’ was driven by Austrian policy: Austria was a satiated power, with a wise and pacific ruler who had no personal investment in military glory and who understood the financial straits of his government.60 As the outspoken apologist for the Habsburgs Peter Evan Turnbull argued in 58

59 60

F. Guizot (trans. J.W. Cole), Memoirs to Illustrate the History of My Time, vol.II (London: Bentley, 1859), 282. See also the French original Mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de mon temps, vol.II (Paris: Lévy, 1859), 299. N.n., Guerra o Pace? ossia L’Europa nel 1832 (Brussels: Ruggia e Comp., 1832), 70–1. For contemporary emphasis on the emperor’s and his advisors’ desire for peace and stability, see e.g. the largely positive accounts of A.H. Müller, Ritter von Nittersdorf, Franz I., Kaiser von Österreich (Vienna/Leipzig: Carl Gerhold & F.A. Brockhaus, 1816); H.G. Meynert, Franz I., Kaiser von Österreich und sein Zeitalter, ein Characterbild aus der Gegenwart (Leipzig: Albert Robert Friese, 1834); N.n., Der Kaiserstaat Oesterreich unter der Regierung Kaisers Franz I. und der Staatsverwaltung des Fürsten Metternich (Stuttgart: Hallberger’sche Verlagshandlung, 1836).

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1840, ‘[t]he foreign policy aims essentially at peace.’ This is why the Habsburg government tolerated the French presence in Ancona: ‘Austria did not choose to risk a general war on account of it.’61 If the powers had a sense of collective security in the years after the Vienna Settlement, then they also recognised that this security was dependent not only on the integrity of the Austrian empire, but also on Habsburg hegemony within Italy. The challenges to this status quo came principally from France and, increasingly, Britain. In France, the more radical press, jingoistic elements of the electorate and politicians who hankered for an assertion of French power sometimes saw the destabilising of the peninsula as a good in itself, not because it favoured particular French national interests but because it was consonant either with some dream of republican solidarity or, more significantly, with ideas of national ‘gloire’. In Britain, the challenge emerged from a growing – and often poorly-informed – sympathy with Italian nationalism, however ill-supported within the peninsula itself, which grew in large part out of anti-Catholic sentiments and a growing liberal belief in the fundamental superiority of British institutions. If the foolhardy and ultimately pointless French occupation of Ancona is the most obvious illustration of the French readiness to undermine Europe’s collective security, then the public outcry in 1844 over the opening of Mazzini’s letters and the passing of information to the Austrian authorities is perhaps the best example of the wrongheadedness of the British press and wider public, not to mention numerous MPs.62 What is often missed in accounts of the decision by the Home Secretary, Sir James Graham, to violate the privacy of Mazzini’s correspondence is that for well over a decade, Mazzini had systematically urged and encouraged armed rebellion. Despite the protestations of figures in both the Lords and Commons that Mazzini was essentially a man ‘of literary habits’ or of ‘great literary attainments’,63 Mazzinian risings resulted in loss of life, recriminations and threatened instability. If we look at the Home Secretary’s actions from the perspective of stability and security, Graham was quite right to be passing information to Austrian secret police, who were themselves far from arbitrary or repressive in their use of such intelligence.64 What Graham had done was to 61 62

63

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Turnbull, Austria, vol.II, 407, 412. For the standard accounts of the affair caused by the opening of Mazzini’s letters, see D. Vincent, The Culture of Secrecy: Britain 1832–1998 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 1–9; F.B. Smith, ‘British Post Office espionage, 1844’, Historical Studies, 14:54 (1970), 189–203. See also B. Porter, Plots and Paranoia. A History of Political Espionage in Britain, 1790–1988 (Abingdon: Routledge, 1989), 77–8. W. Pleydell-Bouverie, Earl of Radnor, 4 July 1844, House of Lords debate, in Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, 3rd Series Beginning with the Reign of William IV, vol.LXXVI, 27 June to 3 September 1844 (London: Baldwin & Cradock, 1829–1891), 296–314, 302–3. D. Laven, ‘Law and order in Habsburg Venetia 1814–1835’, Historical Journal, 39:2 (1996), 383–403.

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spy on a conspirator who plotted bloodshed and the overthrow of legallyconstituted states. Mazzini’s plotting was likely to do little more than generate what today would be classed as terrorist acts, terrorist acts designed to inspire rebellion that might lead to European war. Graham’s actions – in part motivated by the belief that accurate intelligence actually prevented excessive repression – should not be seen by historians as disregard for the rights of the individual, but rather as the rational response of Peel’s second ministry to questions of domestic and collective international security. The significance of the decision to stop spying on correspondence was less that, in David Vincent’s elegant formulation, ‘Britain became the only major power bereft of the most effective weapon for spying on external enemies’ than that it was tantamount to a rejection of Britain’s role as a champion of international peace within the traditions established at Vienna.65 During the course of the nineteenth century Britain became the place of refuge, the residence of choice for a ragtag of conspirators, exiles and would-be insurgents, whose actions constituted a threat to European peace.

65

D. Vincent, ‘The origins of public secrecy in Britain’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 1 (1991), 229–48, 230.

12

From Augarten to Algiers Security and ‘Piracy’ around the Congress of Vienna Erik de Lange*

Introduction On 9 June 1815, the plenipotentiaries who had contributed to its making assembled to listen as the Final Act of the Congress of Vienna was read out.1 The words echoing through the Chancellery reception hall, the sounds of peace being concluded, would reverberate far beyond the European continental territories with which so many of the treaty stipulations were concerned. A little over a year later, in the summer of 1816 on the shores of North Africa, it became clear that the echo of the peace could also come in the aural form of a roaring cannonade. William Shaler, the American consul in Algiers, witnessed how the Vienna order came to North Africa. While most of his colleagues had left, Shaler stayed to observe an attack on the city. In the early hours of 28 August 1816, he ventured to peek outside from the consular residence. As a thunderstorm swept over the bay, Shaler noted in his diary how the bolts of lightning provided glimpses of ‘hostile fleets retiring with the land breeze’, the outline of masts and sails discernible ‘on the deep obscurity of the horizon’.2 The ‘hostile fleets’ that the American consul saw drifting off were a merger of Dutch and British navy squadrons. They had come to bombard Algiers and destroy its corsair fleet. The extent of the damage done was clear the next day. ‘I could not distinguish [. . .] the many fine houses which I had seen in the city the day previous’, * The research leading to these findings has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007–2013) / ERC Grant Agreement n.615313. My thanks also go out to the editors of this volume for their support and guiding pointers as well as to Aggelis Zarokostas for his invaluable advice on all things Mediterranean. 1 A. Zamoyski, Rites of Peace. The Fall of Napoleon and the Congress of Vienna (London: Harper Press, 2007), 485–6. 2 W. Shaler, Sketches of Algiers, Political, Historical, and Civil. Containing an Account of the Geography, Population, Government, Revenues, Commerce, Agriculture, Arts, Civil Institutions, Tribes, Manners, Languages, and Recent Political History of That Country (Boston: Cummings, Hillard, and Co., 1826), 281.

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a Royal Navy interpreter noted. ‘Besides this’, he went on, ‘all the bay was full of the hulks of their navy, smoking in every direction and the water inside the mole was all black, covered with charcoal and half-burnt pieces of wood. But the most shocking and dreadful sight was the number of dead bodies which were floating in the water.’3 Surveying this devastation, Dey Omar Agha, the Regent of Algiers, acceded to the demands posed by the British Admiral Lord Exmouth and his Dutch colleague Theodorus Frederik van Capellen. He signed a declaration forever renouncing ‘Christian slavery’: the centuries-old practice of holding captured Europeans imprisoned and asking for ransom while putting them to forced labour.4 Current estimates of the casualties that fell during the bombardment range from two to eight thousand. The Anglo-Dutch attack on Algiers illustrates that while the conclusion of the Congress of Vienna might have signified the beginning of a lasting, general peace on the European continent, it had very different consequences for Europe’s near neighbours. In effect, the peace of Vienna created the frameworks in which European powers could pursue cooperative security efforts like this bombardment. Concerted efforts could come in the violent form displayed by the British and Dutch warships before Algiers. The Congress of Vienna thereby marked a point of substantial historical change for Tunis, Tripoli and Algiers – the ‘Barbary Regencies’ of the North African coast. The literature on the Regencies largely recognises the significance of 1815 as a pivotal moment. Various publications stress that the Congress of Vienna marked the beginning of a gradual change. During the first half of the nineteenth century, the international standing of the Barbary Regencies was challenged and gradually debased as European statesmen and diplomats no longer accepted their legitimacy as states. Over the decades that followed the Congress, European political actors would begin to perceive and treat the Regencies as delegitimised robbers’ nests that were up for imperial grabs.5 Initially, calls for conquest or colonisation were largely beholden to pamphleteers and other radical voices in public debates, but, as the century progressed,

3 4

5

D. Panzac, Barbary Corsairs. The End of a Legend, 1800–1820 (Leiden: Brill, 2005), 286–7. For a terminological discussion of ‘slavery’ versus ‘captivity’, M. Fontenay, ‘Esclaves et/ou captifs. Préciser les concepts’, in W. Kaiser (ed.), Le Commerce des captifs. Les intermédiaires dans l’échange et le rachat des prisonniers en Méditerranée, XVe–XVIIIe siècle (Rome: École française de Rome, 2008), 15–24. M. Kempe, Fluch der Weltmeere. Piraterie, Völkerrecht und internationale Beziehungen, 1500–1900 (Frankfurt: Campus, 2010), 22–3. See also A. Jamieson, Lords of the Sea. A History of the Barbary Corsairs (London: Reaktion Books, 2013), 20; B.E. Vick, The Congress of Vienna. Power and Politics after Napoleon (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 194, 213; C. Windler, ‘Diplomatic history as a field for cultural analysis. MuslimChristian relations in Tunis, 1700–1840’, The Historical Journal, 44:1 (2001), 79–106, 97.

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policies of imperial expansion and aggressive rhetoric would come to replace the caution and restraint that had characterised earlier diplomacy.6 The emerging idea that the Barbary Regencies and their corsair fleets were piratical threats to European security was central to this process of change. The concept of international security, however, remains largely absent in histories dealing with the nineteenth-century repression of North African corsairing.7 Moreover, barring some general overviews, there is no detailed analysis of how the Congress of Vienna came to mark the beginning of an altered European engagement with the Barbary Regencies. The Anglo-Dutch bombardment of 1816 and the diplomatic talks at Vienna are linked, yet the question of how they are connected remains to be answered. Understanding the continental order constructed at Vienna as a nascent security culture helps make the nature of these links apparent. The run-up to the 1816 bombardment provides numerous historical examples of the processes of bargaining that made up the core of international cooperation for the sake of security. The Anglo-Dutch attack on Algiers should, I argue, be understood as an attempt to exercise this security culture on the Mediterranean Sea. Situating the bombardment within the theoretical frameworks of security cultures also challenges prevailing readings of this concerted action. All too often, the Anglo-Dutch cooperation has been presented as a mere coincidence – actually it provides an illustrative example of European cooperation and the active role that smaller powers could take in such ventures.8 The dynamics of agenda setting, diplomatic negotiation and decision-making that preceded the bombardment are of central importance in clarifying how the attack fits within the larger history of the security culture’s regional extension. I analyse these political dynamics to show how naval cooperation only coalesced as Dutch and British threat perceptions and interest demarcations came to converge on the basis of shared outrage over ‘Christian slavery’. Notions of Barbary corsairing as a threat to merchant shipping did not work to bring about concerted action with Great Britain, even though Dutch actors repeatedly applied such framing. Why the great power eventually did 6

7

8

For the many incarnations of the idea of colonial conquest of Algiers, A. Thomson, ‘Arguments for the conquest of Algiers in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries’, Maghreb Review, 14:1–2 (1989), 108–18. Janice Thomson does discuss the nineteenth-century fight against piracy, but in the framework of the state’s monopoly on violence. J. Thomson, Mercenaries, Pirates, and Sovereigns. Statebuilding and Extraterritorial Violence in Early Modern Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994). R. Perkins and K.J. Douglas-Morris, Gunfire in Barbary. Admiral Lord Exmouth’s Battle with the Corsairs of Algiers in 1816: The Story of the Suppression of White Christian Slavery (Havant: Mason, 1982), 129; O. Löwenheim, ‘“Do ourselves credit and render a lasting service to mankind”. British moral prestige, humanitarian intervention, and the Barbary pirates’, International Studies Quarterly, 47 (2003), 23–48, 31.

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proceed to act against Algiers should be understood with reference to smaller power diplomacy within European politics during and following the Congress of Vienna. The cooperative efforts that the Vienna peace facilitated are not only of interest because they allow us to historicise security; they also impacted the Mediterranean region itself. In his The Great Sea. A Human History of the Mediterranean, David Abulafia has characterised the nineteenth century in Mediterranean history as a period with ‘a greater degree of peace and safety than at any time since the heyday of the Roman Empire’.9 Elsewhere, this period is defined as the moment when the Mediterranean became a ‘colonial sea’ as the result of (North) European imperial interventions in the region.10 The notion of a security culture can unite these two conceptualisations in a single historical frame. The Congress of Vienna in this way signified the construction of a European order that was subsequently imposed and implemented upon the Mediterranean. Its waters might indeed have become more ‘peaceful’ and ‘safe’ as the shared threat of ‘piracy’ was fought in a concerted manner. Yet, these cooperative security efforts could also provide the pretext for conquest and subjugation, as exemplified by the 1830 French occupation of Algiers.11 The Anglo-Dutch bombardment can be understood as an initial endeavour in this longer process of ‘securing’ the Mediterranean. The manner in which the Barbary Regencies were discussed in Vienna has already been vividly and minutely described elsewhere. Therefore, the focus of my analysis lies mainly on the period between June 1815 and August 1816.12 Still, in order to explain how Barbary corsairing came to be perceived as an international problem in the first place, I begin by discussing how historical actors tried to set the security agenda during the Congress of Vienna. I then explain how these attempts informed the cooperative action that marked the security culture’s extension to the Mediterranean seaboard. Agenda-Setting at the Augarten: Knights and Pirates Before Napoleon had even been chased out of Paris and banished to Elba, the merchant classes of Amsterdam were already worrying about renewed dangers to Dutch ships on the Mediterranean Sea. Early in 1814, the Amsterdam Board 9 10 11

12

D. Abulafia, The Great Sea. A Human History of the Mediterranean (London: Allen Lane, 2011), 561. M. Borutta and S. Gekas, ‘A colonial sea. The Mediterranean, 1798–1956’, European Review of History, 19:1 (2012), 1–13. For a discussion of the conquest of Algiers as linked to the fight against piracy, see G. Weiss, Captives and Corsairs. France and Slavery in the Early Modern Mediterranean (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011). Vick, The Congress, 212–24.

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of Levantine Trade queried the government about the status of diplomatic contacts with Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli. The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Anne Willem van Nagell, gave a clear answer: ‘The security of shipping dictates that our relationships with the Barbary Regencies be renewed.’13 While the reinstatement of peaceful relations was easily arranged with Tunis and Tripoli, the Regent of Algiers proved more demanding. Dey Hadj Ali (r. 1809–15, the predecessor of Dey Omar Agha) argued that the Dutch government was behind on the tribute that it normally paid every year to maintain peace. Arrears had been built up while the Netherlands was under French occupation. This deficit, the Dey claimed, had to be paid before peaceful relations could be restored.14 The Dutch government declined, even if the Amsterdam merchants vocally rejected this decision and urged the Minister of Foreign Affairs to give in to the demands.15 Dutch sailors quickly felt the consequences of this diplomatic standoff. In June and September, Algerine corsairs captured two ships flying the flag of the Netherlands.16 Such renewed corsair activity marked a significant change from the later years of the Napoleonic Wars. Barbary corsairing had steadily decreased from 1806 onwards. The Regencies had adapted to the changing circumstances of European war by shifting their maritime activities from corsair chases to transportation and trade. As peace returned, this short-lived period ended too. After the Napoleonic Wars, Maghrebi sailors found themselves pushed out of their merchant ventures by European competitors. Revolts against central rule and successive natural disasters also made corsairing seem like a viable option for the Regencies again.17 The upsurge of corsair activity thus coincided with the return of peace to Europe. Contemporaries on the continent considered it a grave anomaly that merchant shipping would come under threat right at a time when war was supposed to be over. The Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs hoped that the upcoming negotiations in Vienna would quickly bring a solution to this issue. Writing to King William I, Van Nagell ruminated: ‘And we may content ourselves in the hopes that the unheard of violent actions of the Barbary Regents will be an important subject of the deliberations of the Congress of Vienna.’18

13 14 15 16 17 18

‘Memoir on relations with the Barbary states, 4 February 1814’, National Archives The Hague (NL-HaNA), BuZa, 2.05.01, inv.no.94, doc.88a. On the Dey’s demands, see ‘Fagel to Castlereagh, 24 June 1814’, National Archives Kew (TNA), Foreign Office Files (FO)37/73. ‘Ortt to Van Nagell, 3 July 1814’, NL-HaNA, BuZa, 2.05.01, inv.no.48. ‘Fagel to Castlereagh, 7, 17 September 1814’, TNA, FO37/73. Panzac, Barbary Corsairs, 293–304. ‘Van Nagell to King William I, 16 November 1814’, NL-HaNA, BuZa, 2.05.01, inv.no.96, doc.1036.

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There were plans to put the Barbary Regencies on the congress agenda, but, in the end, the issue was never part of the official deliberations.19 The renewed corsair attacks did feature prominently in the whirl of events and pamphlets that accompanied the Congress sessions. The British ViceAdmiral Sir William Sidney Smith was one of the main attendees who endeavoured to make an issue out of Barbary. After having served in the Mediterranean during the Napoleonic Wars, Smith came up with the idea of forming a society for the sake of Christians imprisoned in North Africa. This ‘society’ became the chivalric order of the ‘Knights Liberators of the Slaves in Africa’. The naval commander had been inspired by abolitionist efforts to ban the trans-Atlantic slave trade, a highly popular cause in Great Britain at the time.20 To help popularise the cause of his knightly order amidst the clamour of the Congress, Smith issued a pamphlet that set out its programme. The mission statement deplored the tribute that ‘civilised peoples’ paid to the Barbary Regents in general and Algiers in particular.21 This tributary status made the European powers dependent on a ‘chef de voleurs’ which, Smith argued, was ‘absurd’, ‘monstrous’ and ‘outrageous’ to religion, humanity and honour.22 As a more honourable alternative, he proposed that all interested states provide naval contingents for a composite maritime force that could surveil, arrest and prosecute pirates ‘on land and sea’. Smith claimed that a squadron under his command would not only bring ‘perfect security’ to commerce, it could also help ‘civilise’ the coasts of Africa.23 In Vienna, the prime chevalier arranged an audience with the Russian Tsar and initiated correspondences with, among many others, Talleyrand and Metternich.24 On 29 December 1814 he also organised a fund-raising ‘picnic’ to further his agenda-setting endeavours. This gathering took place in the Augarten, and among the invitees were Emperor Franz I of Austria, Tsar Alexander I of Russia, King Frederik VI of Denmark, King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia and Prince Leopold of Sicily.25 The event was allegedly an elaborate and spectacular affair, even if many attendees were slightly at a loss 19 20 21 22 24

25

Brian Vick provides some interesting and plausible explanations for the absence of Barbary corsairing on the official agenda: Vick, The Congress, 221–3. J. Barrow, The Life and Correspondence of Admiral Sir William Sidney Smith, vol.II (London: Richard Bentley, 1848), 366–8. W.S. Smith, Mémoire sur la nécessité et les moyens de faire cesser les pirateries des états barbaresques (London, 1814). German and English translations were also issued. 23 Ibid., 3–4. Ibid., 5–6. ‘Narischkin to Sidney Smith, Vienna 30 October 1814’, National Maritime Museum Greenwich (NMM), Personal Collection of Sir Sidney Smith (SMT) 13. Other correspondences are printed in E. Howard, Memoirs of Admiral Sir Sidney Smith, vol.II (London: Richard Bentley, 1839), 316–7, 319–20. The invitation and ‘List of illustrious chevaliers gathered at Augarten’ are in NMM, SMT/13.

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about the purpose of it all.26 The money raised at the picnic was to be distributed among the consuls in North Africa, so they could set up a hospital and provide ‘instant relief to the wretched sufferers’. To follow up on the publicity and ‘strike at the root of the evil’, Smith proposed to open negotiations with the Ottoman Sultan (the suzerain of the Barbary Regents) and ask for his assistance in repressing the North African corsairs.27 To one British commentator, all this personal effort and self-important running about ‘smack[ed] a little Cervantic’.28 Yet, Sidney Smith and his knights were hardly the only ones pushing this agenda at the Congress. Representatives of Lübeck and Bremen also called for action against the Barbary Regencies.29 Lübeck’s delegate, Senator Johann Friedrich Hach, criticised the inconsistency of being compassionate about the black slaves of Africa, while doing nothing to redeem the unfortunate ‘civilised and Christian Europeans’ enslaved by the Barbary ‘pirates’.30 The Marques de Labrador, the Spanish representative, picked up these arguments and raised them with Lord Castlereagh during talks on Spain’s abolition of the slave trade.31 The British statesman also received a letter by the Florentine Prince Corsini, representing Tuscany. The Prince called for British reprimands against the Barbary Regencies as the states of Italy simply could not protect their navigation like Great Britain could.32 The British government, however, was not very interested in confronting the Barbary powers. Russian delegate Count Nesselrode later recalled that whenever the subject of Barbary corsairing was raised, Castlereagh simply brought up the peace treaties that existed between the Regencies and Britain.33 The Barbary Regencies had helped supply British troops on the Iberian Peninsula during the Napoleonic Wars. Moreover, commercial relations between Great Britain and Barbary were well in place, thanks to which, Sir William A’Court, a British envoy to Algiers (and later ambassador to Sicily and Naples), wrote, ‘the Public Service has been facilitated, and a material saving [. . .] obtained for

26 27 28

29 30 31 32 33

T. Pocock, A Thirst for Glory. The Life of Admiral Sir Sidney Smith (London: Pimlico, 1998), 221; Vick, The Congress, 216–8. Howard, Memoirs, 321–5. W. Hone, The Cruelties of the Algerine Pirates. Shewing the Present Dreadful State of the English Slaves and Other Europeans at Algiers and Tunis (London: Hay and Turner, 1816), 10–1. Vick, The Congress, 217–8, 221. ‘Van Spaen van Voorstonden to Van Nagell, Vienna 4 October 1814’, NL-HaNA, Legatie Oostenrijk 1814–1842, 2.05.10.10, inv.no.18, doc.15. Ibid. ‘Prince Corsini of Tuscany to Castlereagh’, Vienna 15 October 1814’, TNA, FO139/21, fp.79–84. ‘Verstolk van Soelen to Van Nagell, St Petersburg 18, 25 October 1816’, NL-HaNA, BuZa, 2.05.01, inv.no.90, doc.4338.

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Government’.34 To the British delegates at the Congress, the Barbary Regencies were allies rather than a potential threat.35 Castlereagh was thus reluctant to commit to, or even discuss, violent action against the states of North Africa. Still, it would prove impossible for him to ignore the issue altogether. The adjacency in the public mind of ‘black’ and ‘white’ slavery ensured that the Barbary Regencies would come up almost any time abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade was mentioned – which was often, considering the centrality of international abolition to British goals for the Congress.36 Spurred on by a strong and very vocal public opinion, Castlereagh could hardly retreat on the subject and tried hard to settle it at Vienna.37 The negotiations on abolition slid into haggle and outright barter as Spanish and Portuguese delegates asked for financial concessions in return.38 Sceptics, moreover, assumed that, for Britain, abolition was really about gaining some competitive, commercial advantage.39 The enduring plight of the Christian captives in the Barbary Regencies seemed to prove their point. If Great Britain was so poised to end the black slave trade, the critics held, then why did its government do so little to end this other, ‘white’ type of slavery as well? By the time the deliberations in Vienna ended, they had resulted only in a general declaration calling the slave trade ‘repugnant to the principles of humanity and universal morality’. The statement carried little legal weight, but it did serve to cast a moral sheen over further negotiations.40 Deliberations at Vienna also did little to alleviate the threat that the Barbary corsairs posed to Europe’s smaller maritime powers. However, it had become clear that the perceived corsair threat could be used as a bargaining chip in international negotiations on abolition. Towards Algiers: Translating Threats, Interests and Practices No thought-out plans on how to engage with the Barbary Regencies were agreed at the Congress of Vienna. Still, the efforts of German and Italian 34 35 36 37

38 39 40

‘McDonell to Colonel Bunbury, Algiers 1 June 1814’, TNA, FO3/16. See also, ‘Instructions to A’Court, 27 March 1813’, TNA, Colonies and Dependencies (CO) 2/3, fp.23. G. Fisher, Barbary Legend. War, Trade and Piracy in North Africa 1415–1830 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957), 4. Vick, The Congress, 10–1. P. Kielstra, The Politics of Slave Trade Suppression in Britain and France, 1814–48. Diplomacy, Morality and Economics (London: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2000); J. Reich, ‘The slave trade at the Congress of Vienna. A study in English public opinion’, The Journal of Negro History, 53:2 (1968), 129–43. Reich, ‘The slave trade’, 137. Zamoyski, Rites of Peace, 346; B. Fladeland, ‘Abolitionist pressures on the Concert of Europe, 1814–1822’, The Journal of Modern History, 38:4 (1966), 355–73, 358–9. H. Berding, ‘Die Ächtung des Sklavenhandels auf dem Wiener Kongress 1814/15’, Historische Zeitschrift, 219:2 (1974), 265–89, 282–5.

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delegates, as well as the activities of the ‘Knights Liberators of the Slaves in Africa’, indicated that the Barbary corsairs represented a topic of transnational importance, an issue that could be discussed on the European level and framed as a European concern. In a geopolitical sense, the Vienna territorial settlements worked to sharpen Great Power conceptions of their national interests in the Mediterranean region. The security of Mediterranean shipping would come to be perceived in a different light due to territorial gains and alterations. Count Nesselrode, for one, claimed that the Russian acquisition of Finland, with its sizable merchant fleet, had made Mediterranean navigation a more pressing concern for the Tsar.41 But it was perhaps most significant that the Vienna settlements recognised the acquisitions that Britain had made in the Mediterranean during the wars. The terms of peace solidified Great Britain’s imperial and naval predominance in the region. Malta remained a British possession and the Ionian Islands became a protectorate under the post-Waterloo Treaty of Paris in November 1815.42 Such territorial gains also brought obligations. As early as 1798, Admiral Nelson had promised Royal Navy protection for Ionian subjects if they would expel the French troops stationed on their islands. This protection was a prime aspect of the tightening British hold on the islands.43 Correspondingly, the occupation of Malta raised questions of how Britain would carry on the work of its previous rulers: the Order of St John, whose knights had derived their very raison d’être from opposing the North African corsairs. The Governor of Genoa argued that by occupying Malta, Great Britain had taken on ‘the obligation’ to act: ‘The squadrons of the order protected the navigation and the coasts of those nations which could not purchase the peace from the Barbaric powers. Is not England charged with this protection? As to her ability to do so there can be no doubt.’44 The Vienna settlements also contained a strong emotive component, rooted as they were in an emotionally resonant preference for ‘sense and sensibility’.45 In this new European context, Barbary corsairing was made to seem absurd and abhorrent – even if it was perfectly acceptable from an international legal point of view. Diplomats and pamphleteers starkly contrasted corsairing and paying tribute to the general peace. The Dutch ambassador in London, 41 42 43 44 45

‘Verstolk van Soelen to Van Nagell, 18, 25 October 1816’, NL-HaNA, BuZa, 2.05.01, inv. no.90, doc.4338. See also N. Harding, ‘North African piracy, the Hanoverian carrying trade, and the British state, 1728–1828’, The Historical Journal, 43:1 (2000), 25–47. For the consequences of these promises, Vick, The Congress, 232. Howard, Memoirs, 318–9. B.A. de Graaf, ‘Bringing sense and sensibility to the continent. Vienna 1815 revisited’, Journal of Modern European History, 13:4 (2015), 447–57, 453.

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Hendrik Fagel, claimed that the existence of a European peace had made the ‘depredations’ of the Barbary corsairs particularly ‘insufferable’.46 The fact that the European powers were no longer at war with each other, another Dutch diplomat stated, would allow them to redirect their attention and take a common stand against ‘these revolting robberies’ and ‘humiliating vexations’.47 One British pamphleteer argued along very similar lines: Christian Europe is now called upon by every humane and honourable principle to put an end, as far as it can, to evils which exist to its disgrace; and at no time can it be urged to do so with more propriety than at a crisis when we are taught to believe that a Saturnian reign is about to commence in each particular state, and bonds of Christian unity and brotherhood are solemnly subscribed to.48

Before this peaceable ‘Saturnian reign’, perpetual internal strife had hindered European powers from working together. Governments in Europe had long preferred to pay tribute to the Regencies in return for friendly dispositions as they would not or could not participate in collective action. Moreover, the authorities of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli played on the inter-European rivalries to further their own agendas.49 Paying tributes for peaceful relations with the Barbary Regents thus came to be seen as outrageous, even if it had been common practice only ten years before. This sudden reluctance to fulfil tributary obligations provoked new corsair captures, which were then framed as an outrage to the general European peace. In turn, captures were no longer accepted as a legal act of privateering, but, instead, came to be deplored as brigandage and piracy. Coastal raids of Italian islands, exemplified by a Tunisian razzia of Sant’Antioco in October 1815, further strengthened perceptions of Barbary brutality and illegality.50 These altered attitudes and rising irritations were noticed in Constantinople as well. In August 1815, the Ottoman Sultan sent a firman warning his vassal in Algiers to cease ‘these aggressive acts and abandon this sanctionable course of action’.51 Even if the Barbary Regencies were nominally part of the Ottoman Empire, European diplomats tended to view the Sultan as a potential ally, rather than a complicit foe. Historical actors generally differentiated between various Muslim rulers and societies, more than they clung to essentialist notions of 46 47 48 49 50 51

‘Fagel to Castlereagh, 9 November 1815’, TNA, FO37/84. ‘Nijssen to Van Nagell, Tunis 10 January 1815’, NL-HaNA, BuZa, 2.05.01, inv.no.55, doc.354. Hone, The Cruelties of the Algerine Pirates, 15. F. Hunter, ‘Rethinking Europe’s conquest of North Africa and the Middle East: The opening of the Maghreb, 1660–1814’, The Journal of North African Studies, 4:4 (1999) 1–26, 14–5. In the raid of Sant’Antioco, southwest of Sardinia, 160 Sardinian subjects were captured. Panzac, Barbary Corsairs, 272–3. Ibid., 268–9. See also A. Temimi, ‘Documents turcs inédits sur le bombardement d’Alger en 1816’, Revue de l’Occident musulman et de la Méditerranée, 5:5 (1968), 111–33, 112.

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Islamic perpetrators. In his Congress pamphlet, Sidney Smith argued that Tunis’ head of state had a completely different character than the Dey of Algiers and would thus be more amenable to work with.52 The dichotomous rhetoric of a crusade against the infidel did, at times, inform perceptions of the corsair threat but diplomats generally shied away from such discourse.53 European perceptions of Algiers, however, did become increasingly hostile – not just because of corsair attacks, but also as the result of diplomatic events. A peace treaty concluded between the United States and Algiers added to the idea that something ought to be done about corsairing. An American commander had managed to conclude a peace without tribute after he had taken Algiers’ flagship, killed its commander Raïs Hamidou and threatened to bombard the city.54 In Europe, this success was seen as an example of how ‘half a dozen ships of war’ could ensure that the Barbary Regencies were ‘reduced into complete humiliation’.55 For the Dutch government, the US treaty signified something of a missed opportunity. King William I had ordered the Dutch Mediterranean commander to cooperate with the Americans, but the instructions arrived too late.56 The plan itself, though, indicates that the United States were also taken into account as potential cooperative partners and thus could be envisioned within the security culture as well. Just as cooperation with the Americans failed, the Dutch government was equally unsuccessful in obtaining British assistance in its enduring conflict with Algiers. British officials maintained that they could not provide armed support because of the existing treaties between Britain and the Regency of Algiers.57 In London, Dutch ambassador Fagel repeatedly tried to convince Castlereagh that the Algerians’ conduct warranted violent action. According to Fagel, the ‘security of Mediterranean navigation’ was at stake as ‘these pirates’ hindered the commerce of Dutch subjects.58 These agenda-setting moves had hardly any effect on British officials, even when the ambassador conveyed a disconcerting vision of an unchecked corsair fleet that would spread terror on the world’s oceans.59 Threat perceptions and the corresponding notions of the interests at stake were evidently too divergent. What Dutch diplomats represented as a menace to security did not seem that threatening to British 52 54

55 56 57 58 59

53 Smith, Mémoire, 7. Vick, The Congress, 219–20. For a detailed discussion of the American expedition, F. Leiner, The End of Barbary Terror. America’s 1815 War against the Pirates of North Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); R. Parker, Uncle Sam in Barbary. A Diplomatic History (Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 2004), 128–32. Hone, The Cruelties of the Algerine Pirates, 7. ‘Royal Decree, 21 July 1815’, NL-HaNA, BuZa, 2.05.01, inv.no.61, doc.1411. ‘Fagel to Van Nagell, 12 August 1814’, NL-HaNA, BuZa, 2.05.01, inv.no.49, doc.978A. ‘Fagel to Castlereagh, 24 and 25 June 1814’, TNA, FO 37/73. ‘Fagel to Van Nagell, 7 November 1815’, NL-HaNA, Gezantschap Groot-Brittannië, 2.05.44, inv.no.26, doc.154.

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statesmen. Castlereagh was averse to the idea of naval intervention because he feared the Royal Navy would probably carry all the costs, while the other powers could safely further their own commercial interests.60 Two factors helped to change this constellation, altering British officials’ outlooks to the point where concerted action did become a conceivable policy option. The first was the increasingly frequent and ever more pressing call to end the ‘slavery’ of Europeans in the Barbary Regencies. Early in 1816, the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs began to allude to the question of the ‘White slave trade’ in his letters to Castlereagh. The Minister, who also carried on a correspondence with Sidney Smith, wrote to compliment the British government on the zeal of its abolitionist efforts and wondered whether these should not be extended to end ‘Christian slavery’ as well?61 In their diplomatic correspondence with London, Dutch officials thus shifted the emphasis of their threat and interest representations from the security of commerce to the plight of prisoners. Thereby, they tied in with public pamphleteering and activism, helping to further frame Barbary as a test of the supposedly limited idealism of British abolitionist efforts.62 The second aspect that contributed to changes in British policy were the small-power initiatives that ensued. As the Dutch government obtained nothing but largely inconsequential promises of consular assistance from Britain, it began to look for partners elsewhere. A unilateral Dutch expedition to Algiers in July 1815 failed miserably, further strengthening the official idea that cooperation was an absolute necessity.63 Moreover, a report by the Dutch Minister of the Marine stressed that the navy did not possess the bomb vessels that were needed for a ‘safe’ attack on Algiers.64 Technical limitations of the fleet thus further stimulated the search for partners. The Dutch eventually found such a partner in the government of Spain. Together, the two powers negotiated the Treaty of Alcalá, a defensive pact against the Barbary Regencies that could be turned into a general European maritime league. The Dutch would invite the courts of Copenhagen, Stockholm and St Petersburg to join, while the Spanish would ask Naples, Turin and Lisbon. The move further illustrates that small-power initiatives were part of the security culture and that European security cooperation was by no means an exclusively great power affair. In the end, however, reactions

60 61 62 63 64

‘Fagel to Van Nagell, 8 December 1815’, ibid., doc.168. ‘Fagel to Castlereagh, 10 January 1816’, TNA, CO2/6. Löwenheim, ‘British moral prestige’, 40–1. ‘Van Nagell to Van der Hoop, 24 January 1816’, NL-HaNA, BuZa, 2.05.01, inv.no.31, doc.19. ‘Van der Hoop to Van Nagell, 25 January 1816’, NL-HaNA, Marine/Geheim Verbaal, 2.12.21, inv.no.4, doc.16.

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from the invitees were lukewarm at best, which certainly had to do with British averseness to the initiative.65 Van Nagell had sent a copy of the projected articles of alliance to Castlereagh on 10 January 1816.66 Tellingly, by the 29th of that very same month, the British Foreign Secretary was drafting instructions for a diplomatic mission to the Barbary Regencies. Even if British officials worked against the Spanish– Dutch proposal, the small-power plans for a general league helped prod Great Britain to take action. The commander of the British Mediterranean fleet, Admiral Exmouth, was tasked to sail to Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli and obtain declarations from each of the Regents that ‘Christian slavery’ would be abolished. ‘Your Lordship’, the orders read, is aware of the very general spirit of indignation that exists throughout Europe at the unrestrained system of piracy and violence, carried on under the pretext of war by the Barbary Powers [. . .] and there is no feature of this system so revolting to the general feeling as the mode in which their captives are thrown into, and retained in slavery.67

The wording of the instructions displays a threat perception of the Barbary Regencies and their ‘system of piracy’ that was centered on the issue of slavery, posing the matter as an affront to a supposedly shared European morality. In the same breath, this labeling of the Regencies as piratical also questioned those powers’ legitimate rights as belligerents. Ambivalently enough, Exmouth was also tasked to clarify that the British government in no way intended to deny the Barbary Regencies ‘their just right of war as independent states’.68 Treaties could also still be concluded, which shows that the delegitimation of the North African states was a gradual and sometimes conflicting process.69 Admiral Exmouth sailed up and down the North African coast in the spring of 1816, visiting Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli, and then touching at Algiers again. In Tunis and Tripoli, agreements were signed quickly and without much haggling, but Dey Omar Agha of Algiers did not comply with British wishes right away.70 The Dey only promised to consult with Constantinople first and then take the matter of abolition into consideration. During the negotiations, Exmouth and Omar were involved in heated debate. The two discussed the particularities of the ‘European practice’ of keeping captives as prisoners of 65 66 67 69

70

For a detailed analysis of the Spanish-Dutch pact: N. van Sas, Onze natuurlijkste bondgenoot. Nederland, Engeland en Europa, 1813–1831 (Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff, 1985), 117–23. ‘Fagel to Castlereagh, 10 January 1816’, TNA, CO2/6, fp.7–14. 68 ‘Castlereagh to Bathurst, 29 January 1816’, TNA, FO8/2, fp.19. Ibid., fp.21. For treaties as constituents of international hierarchies, see E. Keene, ‘A case study of the construction of international hierarchy. British treaty-making against the slave trade in the early nineteenth century’, International Organization, 61:2 (2007), 311–39, especially 320–30. ‘Exmouth to Lord Melville, Tunis Bay 17 April 1816’, TNA, FO8/2; ‘Abstract of dispatch from Exmouth, Tripoli 30 April 1816’, TNA, FO8/2.

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war and, at one point Exmouth even threatened to resort to violence. In the end, however, the Admiral settled for the Regent’s proposal and sailed back to England.71 Besides obtaining declarations from the Regents of Tunis and Tripoli, Exmouth had also concluded peace treaties and ransomed captives on behalf of Sardinia and Sicily. Moreover, he arranged that citizens of Hanover and the Ionian Islands would possess ‘all the rights and security which British subjects enjoy’ – solidifying the British hold on its new imperial gains.72 The Admiral was optimistic and jubilantly stated that his efforts had ‘finally smoked the horrors of Christian slavery’.73 Such appraisals of the expedition were at odds with its results. While the instructions (and Exmouth’s writings) were steeped in universalist rhetoric, the treaties and ransom deals only concerned subjects of the British Empire and the Italian states Sardinia and Sicily.74 Upon Exmouth’s arrival in England, it turned out that his diplomatic mission had actually done little to dampen the ‘general spirit of indignation’. The British government faced mounting domestic and international critiques. Henry Brougham, an opposition MP in the House of Commons, demanded that the documents relating to Exmouth’s negotiations be made public.75 He argued that the treaties concluded on behalf of Hanover, the Ionian Islands, Sardinia and Sicily would only lead the Regencies to redirect their corsair activities to target other, unprotected powers. The British government thus would tacitly sanction continued robberies. ‘In what other light can the affair be viewed by the rest of Europe?’, he wondered.76 And indeed, journals on the continent lamented that this ‘forbearance’ was what had come of ‘the hopes that Europe had vested in the Congress’.77 One anonymous commentator in the British weekly The Independent Whig argued that any treaty concluded

71

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73 74

75

76 77

‘Exmouth to Croker, Algiers 18 June 1816’, TNA, CO2/6, ff.168–78. At their first meeting, the Dey objected to Exmouth that he could not agree to peace treaties without tributes as it would lead him to be ‘cut off from all his supplies, and exposed to extreme danger’, ‘Exmouth to Croker, Algiers 6 April 1816’, TNA, FO8/2. A concise discussion of the treaties is in R. Playfair, The Scourge of Christendom. Annals of the British Relations with Algiers Prior to the French Conquest (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1884), 253–4. For the rights and security of British subjects, ‘Castlereagh to Bathurst, 29 January 1816’, TNA, FO8/2, fp.25. C. Northcote Parkinson, Edward Pellew Viscount Exmouth. Admiral of the Red (London: Methuen & Co., 1934), 429. Sardinia and Naples had enjoyed protection against Barbary when they were under French occupation and looked to Britain for a continuation of these privileges. ‘Castlereagh to Bathurst, 29 January 1816’, TNA, FO8/2, fp.20–1. Brougham’s motion is discussed in Edinburgh Review, XXVI:LII (June 1816), 451–6 and ‘Fagel to Van Nagell, 21 June 1816’, NL-HaNA, Gezantschap Groot-Britannië, 2.05.44, inv. no.27, doc.87. Edinburgh Review, XXVI:LII, 455–6. Arnhemsche Courant, 21 May 1816, 1–2, which cites an article from Journal de Francfort.

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with ‘the Prince of Ruffians at Algiers [. . .] the ringleader of a banditti of Corsairs’ was ‘quite a farce’ anyway.78 Questions of Barbary state legitimacy went hand in hand with calls for violent action against Algiers. The public indignation behind such appeals only increased when news reached Europe of a tragedy in Bona, a coastal town about 600 kilometers east of Algiers. On 23 May 1816 an order by the Dey to arrest the members of a Sardinian fisher community under British protection had resulted in violence. About two hundred people were killed or wounded in what become known as the ‘Bona massacre’.79 Tragically enough, the Dey had tried to reverse his orders but these commands did not reach the town in time. The event provoked a new wave of transnational outrage as it was discussed and denounced in newspapers all over Europe.80 Castlereagh had long fended off critiques of Exmouth’s mission by stating that violent action against Algiers would be a breach of treaty.81 The other powers of Europe could complain all they want, he argued, but until they were prepared ‘to purge themselves of the taint of the Slave Trade’ they had little reason to condemn ‘piracy’ on the Mediterranean.82 After Bona, however, Castlereagh’s stance changed profoundly. He instrumentalised the ‘Bona massacre’ to reframe the use of force as an act of retaliation, rather than as a suspension of the peace that was in place between Britain and Algiers. In a new set of instructions to Exmouth, the statesman now posed the ‘outrages which had recently been committed’ as the main incentive for another expedition. This time, Exmouth was to proceed to Algiers, declare war and demand that the Dey sign a declaration renouncing ‘Christian slavery’ forever.83 Most notably, an addendum to his instructions stated that the Admiral was to cooperate with the Dutch Mediterranean squadron. The orders held that ‘no opportunity should be lost of reviving in the two countries those ancient habits of naval & military cooperation, by which the liberties of Europe have heretofore been so happily upheld’.84 After more than two years of repeated diplomatic calls for assistance, the Dutch government finally got the British cooperation it had so persistently striven for. On 10 August 1816, Admiral 78 79 80

81 82 83 84

Parkinson, Edward Pellew, 429. ‘McDonell to Bathurst, Algiers 30 June and 21 July 1816’, TNA, FO3/18. The Times, 24 June 1816, Rotterdamsche Courant, 25 June 1816 and Overijsselsche Courant, 5 July 1816, each referencing Italian and French newspapers. For the Dey’s position: ‘McDonell to Bathurst, 21 July 1816’, TNA, FO3/18. ‘Fagel to Van Nagell, 31 May 1816’, NL-HaNA, Gezantschap Groot-Britannië, 2.05.44, inv. no.27, doc.77. ‘Castlereagh to Cathcart, 28 May 1816’, TNA, FO65/102, fp.9. ‘Croker to Exmouth, 18 July 1816’, NL-HaNA, Gezantschap Groot-Britannië, 2.05.44, inv. no.59. ‘Bathurst to the Admiralty, 17 July 1816’, TNA, FO8/11; ‘Fagel to Van Nagell, 13 August 1816’, NL-HaNA, Gezantschap Groot-Britannië, 2.05.44, inv.no.27, doc.108.

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Exmouth met his Dutch colleague in the Bay of Gibraltar.85 Their composite fleet totalled twenty-one warships, frigates and corvettes, as well as numerous smaller vessels.86 Rumours of the impending attack had been circulating in Algiers since June, when the Dey wrote to Constantinople about ‘an allied fleet of the Christian nations’ on its way with ‘evil intentions’.87 Those intentions became clear within hours of its arrival. Of the ensuing bombardment, Exmouth later wrote how his Dutch collaborators had displayed great ‘energy and zeal; from the youngest Midshipman to the highest rank, all seemed animated by one soul’.88 In the clamour and clouds of battle it may have been hard to imagine how much haggling, bickering and hesitancy had preceded this cooperative attack. The security culture did not work in a self-evident manner: the fact that the powers of Europe attempted to create a new order of peace and stability by convening to discuss shared security issues did not necessarily signify that shared action would follow. Cooperative security efforts, as in the case of the Anglo-Dutch bombardment of Algiers, could require lengthy processes of negotiation. If anything, the dynamics leading up to 27 August 1816 indicate that the security culture was characterised by disagreement, by divergent notions of what security was and how it should be attained. But at the same time, the episode illustrates how these differences could be mediated, how ideas of vital interests and representations of threat could be made to fit different policy agendas. Conclusions: The Links and Their Consequences The very linkages between the festivities at the Augarten in 1814 and the flames at Algiers in 1816 can help us conceive how historical actors made sense of the order created at Vienna, how they used the Congress as a call for action and how these calls could have considerable consequences on nonEuropean ground. The Congress of Vienna did not directly cause the bombardment of Algiers, and the years 1815–16 were characterised by diplomatic bargaining and various failed attempts at cooperation. Still, the peace did create the circumstances in which violent security efforts could result. Despite the destruction that the bombardment wrought, the authorities of Algiers managed a rather quick recovery. By the year’s end its coastal fortifications were largely rebuilt and the first new corsair ships were out at

85 86 88

‘Correspendence between Van Capellen and Exmouth, Bay of Gibraltar, 10 August 1816’, Ibid., inv.no.59. 87 Panzac, Barbary Corsairs, 280–2. Ibid., 284; Temimi, ‘Documents turcs inédits’, 115. The London Gazette, 15 September 1816, NL-HaNA, Gezantschap Groot-Britannië, 2.05.44, inv.no.59, doc.1791.

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sea again.89 Even so, the legacy of the bombardment would prove to be longlasting. If anything, the Anglo-Dutch victory had made asymmetries of power between the European and North African states blatantly clear. The Barbary Regencies would no longer appear as menacing as they once had, though they remained on the international security agenda. Over the course of the subsequent years, Barbary corsairing became the focus of more institutionalised forms of cooperation. Later in 1816, a series of ambassadorial conferences commenced in London that continued to treat the slave trade in unison with the Barbary corsairs.90 Up until the French conquest of Algiers, the North African Regencies were the subject of continuous diplomatic deliberation.91 In this longer historical process, the Congress of Vienna primarily stands as an important moment of international agenda setting. Its main significance lies in providing a platform on which Barbary corsairing could be presented as a shared threat, where the Regencies could come to be delineated as a common European enemy. The fact that delegates from the German and Italian states, as well as the transnational ‘Knights Liberators’, had publicised the issue certainly helped strengthen the notion that this topic was of European significance. Even then, it still took lengthy debate and the overcoming of disagreement before proposed norms of action began to take shape. Agitated pamphleteers called for the outright destruction of the Barbary Regencies, and while Dutch diplomats urged a concerted display of force, British statesmen initially preferred to stick to diplomatic negotiations. The discussions on how to act against Barbary corsairing made clear that there were considerable differences in threat perceptions and interest demarcations between various groups of actors. What smaller maritime powers such as the Netherlands considered a threat to the security of their navigation and commerce did not resonate with British government officials. The latter did not consider the security of other powers’ maritime commerce a vital British interest. This British stance changed when the threat of corsairing was framed differently and ‘Christian slavery’ came to be the main concern. By mirroring the ‘white’ to the ‘black’ slave trade, historical actors managed to connect the Barbary threat to British abolitionist policies. The allegedly smaller powers of Europe played a prominent part in setting the international agenda, framing the Barbary corsairs as a common European threat and bringing about concerted security efforts. The Royal Navy only came to attack Algiers as a result of the incessant efforts of smaller powers, augmented by public critiques in Britain and elsewhere. Averseness to the 89 90 91

‘McDonell to Bathurst, Algiers 10 November 1816’, TNA, FO3/18. See Chapter 6 by Vick in this volume. J. Swain, ‘The struggle for the control of the Mediterranean prior to 1848. A study in AngloFrench relations’, PhD diss., University of Philadelphia (1933), 63–5.

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proposed general maritime league of Spain and the Netherlands, combined with a sense of commitment to the Italian allies Sardinia and Sicily, helped to bring about British involvement. As such, the Anglo-Dutch bombardment of Algiers illustrates that smaller powers and non-state actors could take active part in the security culture, at times even contributing to the formation of great power policies. Additionally, the 1816 case illustrates how contemporaries understood the new European order founded at Vienna. The source materials on the months between June 1815 and August 1816 are rife with indications of how the Congress of Vienna informed perceptions of international security. The notion that the Vienna Acts laid the basis for a peaceful and secure Europe, supported by moral and legal imperatives, came to shape the way in which European powers engaged with the Mediterranean ‘beyond’.92 Contrasting the continent to its Barbary neighbours, contemporaries constructed Europe as a community of moral righteousness, legality and peace. Lines of exclusion from this community followed the delineations of shared threat perceptions, and violence lay at the limits of the European order of peace and tranquillity. There, on these margins, the ‘Saturnian reign’ could wreak destruction – to that, the battered walls of Algiers and the bodies floating in its bay could attest.

92

Glenda Sluga states that the Congress of Vienna ‘enabled new ways of thinking about the universal relevance of morality and politics enacted in a sphere that was imagined as international – albeit from a European perspective’. G. Sluga, ‘Madame de Staël and the transformation of European politics, 1812–17’, The International History Review, 37:1 (2015), 142–66, 143.

Part IV

Agents and Practices

13

Friedrich von Gentz and His Wallachian Correspondents Security Concerns in a Southeastern European Borderland (1812–28) Constantin Ardeleanu*

When Russia declared war on the Sublime Porte in April 1828 and its armies swiftly occupied the Danubian principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, the lucrative business of a certain epistolary soldier of fortune in Vienna came, from a historian’s perspective, to a sad end. For more than fifteen years Friedrich von Gentz had been the incessant political correspondent of three successive hospodars in Bucharest, who rewarded his intelligence with Oriental magnanimity. After his latest sponsor’s flight and the termination of his freelance geopolitical intelligence and consulting contract, Gentz informed his superior, the Austrian Chancellor Prince Metternich, that, in the absence of alternative financial means, he would have to retire from public service and lead a secluded and simple life, more appropriate to his limited resources.1 The chancellor sympathised with his associate’s financial security dilemma, just as he had done in December 1812 when he originally introduced Gentz to the profitable Wallachian connection. This correspondence had provided Gentz with the best of two worlds. Not only did his generous clients in Bucharest pay top dollar for his political insight, but Gentz was gifted enough to encapsulate in his messages Austria’s (and to his mind Europe’s) vital interests in the Eastern Question, part of the nascent security culture that was being crafted at Vienna in the aftermath of the Napoleonic wars. The hospodars struck an equally advantageous deal. Gentz could justly boast that, as a historian paraphrased it, ‘his regular reports [dispatched to Wallachia] contained more exact information than that received by any great power from its ambassador at Vienna’.2 The princes enjoyed the services of

* The research leading to these findings has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007–2013) / ERC Grant Agreement n.615313. 1 P.R. Sweet, Friedrich von Gentz. Defender of the Old Order (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1935), 283. 2 Ibid., 245.

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other well-paid confidential agents in Vienna, Paris or Istanbul, who kept them posted on the latest political news. Their association with one of Europe’s best-informed statesmen, however, came to be treasured for something more than the mere content of his dispatches. A reliable source in Metternich’s entourage was an asset that strengthened the hospodars’ position at the Porte and could equally be employed as a backchannel to push Ottoman priorities onto Europe’s political agenda. For almost a century and a half, historians have used Gentz’s reports to the Wallachian hospodars as a valuable source for early nineteenth-century European diplomatic history. Gentz’s political writings, ideology and activities have also been thoroughly scrutinised, with the conclusion that his contribution to the conceptualisation and implementation of the post-1815 order is hard to refute.3 However, his relations to the hospodars have not received much attention except in two minute, dated and little-known historical analyses.4 The complex relationship between Gentz and his Wallachian correspondents is for several reasons worth exploring within the framework of Europe’s post-1815 emerging security culture. Firstly, the diplomat was among the authors who conceptualised a new continental political order, and the princes were premium subscribers to his political philosophy. One of his most explicit pieces is a report sent to Bucharest in March 1818 in which he presented hospodar John George Caradja (1812–18) with a sketch of the security architecture drafted by Europe’s Concert of Powers. Europe was une grande famille politique, réunie sous les auspices d’un aréopage de sa propre création, dont les membres se garantissent à eux-mêmes, et garantissent à chacune des parties intéressées, la jouissance tranquille de leurs droits respectifs. [. . .] [I]l serait, après tout, la meilleure des combinaisons possibles pour assurer la prospérité des peuples et le maintien de la paix qui en est une des premières conditions.5

Secondly, as unofficial diplomatic agent, confidant and tutor, Gentz was engaged in a process which might be termed ‘distance social teaching’ in relation to his princely correspondents, ‘intelligence brokers’ in Europe’s

3

4

5

Some of the more recent approaches on Gentz’s life and work are B. Dorn, ‘Friedrich von Gentz und Europa. Studien zu Stabilität und Revolution 1802–1822’, PhD diss. Rheinische FriedrichWilhelms-Universität Bonn (1993); G. Kronenbitter, Wort und Macht. Friedrich Gentz als politischer Schriftsteller (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1994); H. Zimmermann, Friedrich Gentz. Die Erfindung der Realpolitik (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2012). I.C. Filitti, ‘Corespondenţa domnilor şi boierilor români cu Metternich şi cu Gentz între anii 1812–1828’, Analele Academiei Române, series II, 36 (1914); P. Sweet, ‘Friedrich von Gentz and the Danubian Principalities. A sidelight on Austria’s Eastern policy in the age of Metternich’, offprint from Birmingham Southern College Bulletin, 26:6 (1935). A. Prokesch-Osten (ed.), Dépêches inédites du Chevalier de Gentz aux Hospodars de Valachie pour servir à l’histoire de la politique européenne (1813 à 1828), vol.I (Paris: Plon, 1876), 354–6 (Gentz to Caradja, 24 March 1818).

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southeastern periphery and equally interested in the collective security regime that was being implanted on the continent. Thirdly, in his Wallachian enterprise Gentz was more than a mere ideologue who preached the coming of a peaceful continental order. As Wallachia and Moldavia had become a lively scene of diplomatic dispute between Russia and the Sublime Porte, Gentz defended Austrian and European interests there in an attempt to curtail further escalations in this chapter of the Eastern Question. Hospodar Gregory Ghica (1822–8) often appealed to Gentz for expert guidance on his attitude in the diplomatic conflict between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, a lesser-known episode in which ambassadorial conferences worked for the cooperative management and resolution of international crises. The correspondence between Gentz and his addressees assumed further functions besides that of conveying political news from Vienna to Bucharest. In fact, it was not at all a unidirectional relationship in which one traded intelligence in exchange for generous stipends. The hospodars provided Gentz with valuable information on Southeastern European realities, which allowed the Viennese diplomat to better comprehend local political mentalities. In 1820, for example, he expressed his gratitude to Prince Alexander Soutzos (1818–21) for ‘la communication précieuse de V. A. que nous devons les premiers nouvelles exactes’6 on Ali Pasha’s insurrection in the Balkans. Gregory Ghica kept Gentz regularly updated on the political situation of the Danubian principalities, supplementing the regular reports to Vienna by the Austrian consuls in Bucharest and Jassy. Although the hospodar’s role could only be that of a ‘dumb character’ in the continental drama staged in an Ottoman–Russian–Austrian contact zone, in his epistolary relation to ‘his mentor’, Ghica revealed an insatiable thirst for understanding the construction and functional mechanisms of Europe’s political system. Explaining his interest in the situation of the Spanish colonies, the hospodar noted that ‘à présent que toutes les puissances de l’Europe forment pour ainsi dire, une famille inséparable, . . . aucune affaire ne peut être discutée en Europe sans attirer plus ou moins l’attention générale et la question des colonies espagnoles entre absolument dans cette catégorie’.7 The letters of a hospodar who had had a very limited understanding of larger international politics increasingly displayed an articulated discourse of labelling and combating transnational threats that endangered tranquillity all over Europe, including in his small principality. As this chapter will show, the security culture (understood, in the vein of this volume, as the ‘sum of mutually shared

6 7

Filitti, ‘Corespondenţa’, 977. ‘Ghica to Gentz, 17 March 1824’, in V. Georgescu, Din corespondenţa diplomatică a Ţării Româneşti (1823–1828) (Bucharest: Muzeul Romîno-Rus, 1962), 124–6.

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perceptions regarding enemies of the states, risks, vital interests and corresponding practices’8) that emerged in Europe after 1815 gradually made its way to this Ottoman–Russian–Austrian contact zone, and the correspondence between Gentz and the Wallachian hospodars substantially contributed to this end. Looking at how Gentz’s intelligence and consulting services were used by his Wallachian contractors will throw more light on the diffusion to Southeastern Europe of modern ideas on, for instance, peace, stability, order, balance of power and security. The Communication Network When John George Caradja was appointed prince of Wallachia in September 1812, amidst the tumult of Napoleon’s Russian campaign, he was well aware of his frail position. Geographically, Wallachia stood midway between the Porte, Russia and Austria, and the hospodar, like many of his predecessors, aimed to turn this dangerously exposed position into an asset. Bucharest had become a busy scene of contradictory rumours and unabated propaganda, and to secure his life and throne Caradja needed regular and reliable intelligence from all belligerent parties. At the end of a long war against Russia (1806–12), Caradja’s suzerain power the Porte also needed information from the empire’s northern regions, and the new hospodar knew that providing it was a proper way to prove his loyalty to the Sultan. In fact, by controlling information networks in Wallachia, Caradja aimed to preserve the influence he had enjoyed as a first dragoman of the Porte.9 Such information was also crucial for his own material prosperity, to recover the huge amount invested at Istanbul for attaining the princely nomination (8,000 bags of gold or about 4 million piasters).10 In November 1812 the hospodar wrote to Metternich to announce his enthronement and to profess his willingness to contribute to a rapprochement between Austria and the Porte. He also requested and got the Austrian minister’s permission to keep an agent at Vienna, Constantin Ștefan Bellio (Belu), to look after his interests in the imperial capital.11 Metternich also welcomed

8 9 10

11

See also B.A. de Graaf, ‘Bringing sense and sensibility to the continent. Vienna 1815 revisited’, Journal of Modern European History, 13:4 (2015), 447–57. N.G. Alexandresco, La correspondance du Chevalier Frédéric de Gentz avec le Prince de Valachie Jean Caradja et la question d’Orient (Paris: Pedone, 1895), 11–3. ‘Andréossy to Duke of Bassano, 4 January 1813’, in A. Odobescu (ed.), Documente privitoare la istoria românilor. Urmare la colecţiunea lui Eudoxiu de Hurmuzaki¸ supplement I/2 (1781–1814) (Bucharest: Socec și Teclu, 1885), 739 (hereafter Hurmuzaki, I/2). Generally on bidding for the princely throne, K. Hitchins, The Romanians, 1774–1866 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 19–21. Filitti, ‘Corespondenţa’, 977–80; The letters are published in A. Oţetea (ed.), Documente privind istoria României. Colecţia Eudoxiu de Hurmuzaki, new series, vol.II: 1812–23 (Bucharest: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, 1967), 64, 68–9 (hereafter Hurmuzaki, n.s., II).

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the hospodar’s desire to have a political correspondent in Vienna, which for Austria’s Eastern policy provided an excellent occasion to establish a new line of communication, via Bucharest, with Istanbul. During an interview with Gentz on 27 December 1812, the minister approached his adviser on ‘cette importante affaire’.12 Gentz wrote to the hospodar later that night and offered his services as an independent correspondent who could ‘fournir des notions correctes et satisfaisantes sur ce qui se passe chez nous et autour de nous, . . . uniquement par les rapports honorables, dans lesquels je me trouve avec les hommes les plus instruits de cette monarchie, et par la considération et confiance personnelle, qu’ils m’accordent’.13 The details of his contract were set up by Austria’s consul to Bucharest, Fleischhackel von Hakenau, who introduced Gentz as ‘one of the most famous political authors of our times’ and praised his connections with Europe’s political and intellectual elite.14 The financial details were left to the patron’s generosity.15 The correspondence assumed, from the very beginning, a semi-official character, apparently enjoying the full backing of the Austrian foreign office. Gentz worked hard to fulfil his obligations, and his diary shows him busy late at night preparing the reports.16 The freelance diplomat was very well paid for his services. According to his account, he originally received 1,000 ducats a year from the Wallachian hospodar, but later his annual gratuities amounted to 4,000 ducats, forming a large part of his overall income.17 In May 1819 Gentz described his work as involving two main dispatches per month, and ‘si dans les intervalles il arrivait quelque nouvelle exigeant une prompte communication, je ne manquerai pas de la mander de suite, soit par la poste, soir, si le cas était urgent, par une estafette expédiée à mes frais’.18 Gentz provided his sponsors with other commissions as well, such as sending them

12 13

14 15 16 17 18

A. Sorel, ‘Un confident du prince de Metternich, le chevalier de Gentz’, Revue des Deux Mondes, 18 (1876), 805–833, 808. ‘Gentz to Caradja, 27 December 1812’, in C. von Klinkowström (ed.), Aus der alten Registratur der Staatskanzlei: Briefe politischen Inhalts von und an Friedrich von Gentz aus den jahren 1799–1827 (Vienna: Wilhelm Braumüller, 1870), 110–2; Sorel, ‘Un confident’, 808–9. General details on this correspondence also in D. Hîncu, ‘Gentz, corespondent al domnilor munteni’, Magazin istoric, I:3 (1967), 46–52, 46–8. ‘Hakenau to Metternich, 20 January and 18 February 1813’, Hurmuzaki, n.s., II, 81–2, 93–4. ‘Gentz to Hakenau, 30 December 1812 and 2 February 1813’, in Von Klinkowström (ed.), Aus der alten Registratur, 113–6. L. Assing (ed.), Aus dem nachlass Varnhagen’s von Ense. Tagebücher von Friedrich von Gentz (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1873), 1, 4, 13, 15ff. Sweet, ‘Gentz and the Danubian Principalities’, 4–5; Ibid., Gentz, 176–7, 245, 249. ‘Gentz to unknown, 5 May 1819’, quoted in Filitti, ‘Scrisori inedite ale cavalerului de Gentz’, in Filitti, Contribuții la istoria diplomatică a României în secolul al XIX-lea (Bucharest: n.p., 1935), 4.

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different products from the Viennese market19 or lobbying for Wallachian entrepreneurs seeking influence in the Austrian capital. Such was the case with members of the Bellio and Sakelario families, who applied to become imperial barons. Nicolas Rasty managed Gentz’s communication with Wallachia from 1814 to 1820, and he was followed by Bellio and the Sakelarios.20 Caradja’s successor, Alexandros Soutzos, was aware of the correspondence and decided to continue it. In 1820, with his middlemen’s support, Gentz also entered into an agreement with Moldavia’s hospodar, Michael Soutzos21 (Caradja’s son-inlaw and political rival), making double profit by selling the same intelligence to Bucharest and Jassy. When in January 1821 Alexandros Soutzos died, Sakelario mediated an agreement with Scarlat Callimachi, Soutzos’ replacement, but the new hospodar never made it to Bucharest due to the outbreak of the 1821 Wallachian and Greek insurrections. As Michael Soutzos of Moldavia also fled to Russia in March 1821, Gentz remained ‘jobless’. However, his prestige among the political elite in the Danubian principalities made several princely pretenders seek his intelligence and consulting services, and he unsuccessfully lobbied on their behalf at Istanbul.22 Gregory Ghica, a conservative boyar, was the Sultan’s choice for Wallachia’s throne. Ghica got to Bucharest in September 1822, and Bellio advertised to him the advantages of having a certain private diplomatic adviser in Vienna. The hospodar invited Gentz to update him with intelligence and analysis on European political developments, which the freelance expert happily accepted.23 It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship between the two statesmen, and their correspondence continued until the outbreak of the Russian–Ottoman war in April 1828. The communication network remained about the same, with consul Hakenau in Bucharest, and Bellio and the Sakelarios travelling between Vienna and Bucharest in connection with their economic ventures.24 Gentz institutionalised his relation with the Wallachian hospodars and integrated the vital interests of his contractors into the larger Austrian and

19

20 21 23 24

‘Gentz to Soutzos, 18 March 1820’, in A. Pippidi, ‘Nicolas Soutzo (1798–1871) et la faillite du régime phanariote dans les Principautés roumaines’, Revue des Études Sud-Est Européennes, 6:2 (1968), 313–38, 320. ‘Hakenau to Metternich, 20 January 1820’, in Hurmuzaki, n.s., II:228, 568–9; Filitti, ‘Corespondenţa’, 984–5, 990. 22 Sweet, ‘Gentz and the Danubian Principalities’, 8. Ibid., 9–11. L. Assing (ed.), Aus dem nachlass Varnhagen’s von Ense, vol.III (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1874), 110. Sweet, ‘Gentz and the Danubian Principalities’, 10.

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Western European strategy of preventing war between Russia and the Porte. From reasons both private and of state, the hospodars were interested in maintaining order and tranquillity in the principalities, although their means to impose them were rather limited. Wallachia and Moldavia were vassal states of the Porte, but enjoyed a large degree of internal autonomy. Muslims were not allowed to settle in the principalities proper; however, Ottoman soldiers were stationed in several strongholds along the Danube (having a different juridical status), and were responsible for the principalities’ security. The princes were veritable Oriental despots in their own countries, but they completely lacked diplomatic and military agency, reserved to their suzerain. Since the late eighteenth century Russia had the right to intervene on behalf of the Porte’s Christian subjects, and the Russian consuls to Bucharest and Jassy became extremely influential in domestic politics as well. The hospodars tried to establish a functional ‘balance of subjection’ between the Porte and Russia, thus having multiple and often conflicting agendas. The official one was set from Istanbul, but the real(ist) one was dictated by their sincere faith that Russia would eventually be the saviour of the Balkan peoples. As most of the hospodars came, until 1821, from among the wealthy Hellenised families residing in the Phanar district of Istanbul, Greek national aspirations strengthened their secret loyalty. The hospodars usually seized the day and made those decisions that maximised the material benefits of their short princely terms (seven years, according to the 1802 Russian–Ottoman agreement). Conflict Monitoring, Threat Perception and Diplomatic Mediation in Caradja’s Reign It was in the midst of Napoleon’s Russian campaign when Caradja came up with the idea of acquiring a political correspondent, and he most probably aimed at getting news related to the rapidly changing odds of the European war. Controlling an alternative intelligence network to that going directly from Vienna to Istanbul and acting as an information gatherer in an advanced Ottoman post on Russia’s border was definitely worth investing in.25 The importance of such up-to-the-minute military and political intelligence is clear when following Caradja’s relations with the foreign consuls accredited to Bucharest, with the prince well aware that the victors’ influence at Istanbul might eventually decide his fate. If in early 1813 Ledoulx, the French consul,

25

For a modern approach, see Ş. Costache, ‘At the end of empire: imperial governance, interimperial rivalry and “autonomy” in Wallachia and Moldavia, 1780s–1850s’, PhD diss., University of Illinois (2013), 72–115.

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reported that Caradja played the card of impartiality,26 a couple of months later the hospodar seemed impressed by the alliance between Russia and Austria (March 1813) and the advance of the Russian armies towards Western Europe. Ledoulx blamed Caradja’s ‘correspondants mal intentionnés’,27 who were swiftly contradicted by the French successes at Lützen and Bautzen in May 1813. The prince ‘semblait n’être plus le même homme’ and confessed to the Frenchman ‘qu’il respirait enfin’.28 Caradja spread the good news to Istanbul,29 but before long things changed once again, as the prince was promptly informed about Austria’s declaration of war in August 1813, the foundation of the Triple Alliance in September, the fall of Leipzig and the Russian entry into Amsterdam.30 By 1814 Caradja was in open conflict with Ledoulx, whose dismissal from Bucharest was requested of the consul’s superiors in Istanbul, Vienna and Paris, a satisfaction finally granted by Talleyrand after Napoleon’s fall.31 Insight into continental developments was crucial for Caradja not only for such exercises in political dissimulation. It was part of the hospodars’ duty to provide the Porte with intelligence, and their entire career depended on the quality and timeliness of their reports. The French ambassador to Istanbul considered the two hospodars as ‘les deux yeux du Gouvernement ottoman’,32 a proper depiction of their function on the Empire’s northern periphery. Gentz was part of a larger network of informants who provided Caradja with detailed reports on European politics throughout 1813. However, many of his letters were filled with references to Austria’s role in a peaceful Europe envisioned by Metternich and his ideological friends. In his very first report, from February 1813, Gentz advertised the role of the Viennese court in clear terms: ‘C’est elle [l’Autriche] qui, par sa position centrale, par son ancienne réputation, par ses rapports d’intérêt réciproque, de bienveillance et d’amitié commune avec les Puissances les plus divisées entre elles, parait être spécialement appelée au rôle honorable de pacificateur général.’33 The hospodar was 26

27 28 29 30 31 32 33

‘Ledoulx to Maret, 29 January 1813’, in N. Hodoş (ed.), Documente privitoare la istoria românilor, culese de Eudoxiu de Hurmuzaki, vol.XVI, Corespondenţă diplomatică şi rapoarte diplomatice franceze, 1603–1824 (Bucharest: Institutul de Arte Grafice Carol Göbl, 1912), 956 (hereafter Hurmuzaki, XVI); V.A. Urechia, ‘Din domnia lui I. Caragea. Avenire la tron. Mişcări contra grecilor. Finanţe, 1812–1818’, Analele Academiei Române, series II:22 (1900), 141–300, 144. ‘Ledoulx to Maret, 3 and 17 April 1813’, in Hurmuzaki, XVI, 961, 963; Urechia, ‘Din domnia’, 180. ‘Ledoulx to Maret, 22 May 1813’, in Hurmuzaki, XVI, 966. ‘Caradja to Maret, 26 June 1813’, in ibid., 970. Urechia, ‘Din domnia’, 183. Comments of the Austrian consul in ‘Hakenau to Metternich, 21 August 1813’, in Hurmuzaki, n.s., II, 119–20. ‘Caradja to Talleyrand, 7 July 1814’, in Hurmuzaki, XVI, 970; Urechia, ‘Din domnia’, 191. ‘Andréossy to the French Foreign Minister, 7 August 1813’, in Hurmuzaki, I/2, 749. ‘Gentz to Caradja, 2 February 1813’, in Prokesch-Osten (ed.), Dépêches inédites, I, 6–9; similar remarks in other letters: 54–6 (5 February 1814); 118–22 (7 November 1814); and 195–214 (1 January 1816). A thorough analysis in Alexandresco, La correspondance, 21–41.

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versed enough in international politics to know that in such fluid times Austria was a power worth befriending, especially as Metternich seemed sincere in his overtures to support Ottoman interests. In 1814 and 1815, Caradja served as a backchannel for the Austrians to persuade the Porte to defend its interests and territorial integrity. Gentz wrote often to Bucharest to convince Caradja that Sultan Mahmud II should seek proper guarantees for its possessions,34 an effective means to check Russia’s growing influence in the Danubian area and to secure Europe’s balance of power. Metternich insisted on this point in another letter from Gentz in November 1814. But when Caradja, with or without permission from Istanbul, replied that the Porte wanted to question the loss of Eastern Moldavia through the 1812 Treaty of Bucharest, his request was seen at Vienna as unreasonable, due to Tsar Alexander’s apparent hostility to reopening this question.35 Gentz continued his game of persuasion, and Caradja paid on for his thorough accounts. To prove his usefulness, the Viennese diplomat provided his sponsor with confidential and exclusive information, such as details on the Holy Alliance and an elaborate narrative portraying it as indirectly favourable to the Porte (since the Christian monarchs swore to protect peace on the continent).36 But by 1816 Caradja was convinced, like most representatives of the political elite in the Danubian principalities, that Russia was the real victor of the Vienna Congress and that a new Russian–Ottoman conflict had become inevitable. All its provisions looked too idealistic to be believed in an Ottoman–Russian–Austrian borderland, with a Russian army mobilised in Eastern Moldavia (Bessarabia), a province annexed by Russia four years earlier. From 1816 Caradja started to prepare his retreat, and Austria and Russia seemed the best destinations to escape the Sultan’s retribution. According to the 1802 Russian–Ottoman convention, hospodars were appointed for a term of seven years, and they could only be discharged with clear proof of misconduct. However, in 1815, after three years in office, the Porte would have liked the prince to step down, as a sign of loyalty. Unwilling to leave Wallachia yet and enjoying the support of Russia’s ambassador to Istanbul, Caradja kept his throne but knew he had to leave before the end of his term.37 In 1816 Tsar Alexander appointed Count Stroganov as his new diplomatic representative to the Porte, and the latter pursued a more determined policy of defending Russia’s interests in the Near East. Stroganov insisted on complete fulfilment of the Treaty of Bucharest, and the rights of the Danubian 34 35 37

‘Gentz to Caradja, 28 September 1814’, in Prokesch-Osten (ed.), Dépêches inédites, 104–5. 36 ‘Gentz to Caradja, 7 November 1814’, in ibid., 118–22. Urechia, ‘Din domnia’, 204–6. Ibid., 200–1.

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principalities featured prominently on the Russian–Ottoman agenda.38 Rumours of a Russian invasion were rife, and Sultan Mahmud instructed Caradja to assist with reinforcing and provisioning the Danubian fortresses, a task that proved extremely expensive and unpleasant for the taxpayers.39 Caradja fulfilled all his vassal obligations, but the redirection of his allegiance was clear. Since 1816 the hospodar initiated a secret correspondence with top Russian statesmen, to whom he disclosed his true feelings. When Gentz apprised him that the Austrian Embassy to St Petersburg had information on his Russian connection, Caradja replied indignantly (13 August 1816), but at the same time wrote to Russia’s foreign minister Count Kapodistrias about this life-threatening leak.40 Caradja forwarded the Russian statesmen the reports of his Viennese correspondent, which apparently, according to a letter of December 1817, impressed Kapodistrias.41 Since the autumn of 1816 Caradja was in even closer contact with Stroganov, to whom he sent information not only on Ottoman abuses in Wallachia, but also on political intrigues in Istanbul.42 Caradja’s connection with Gentz, although both parties vouched for its complete privacy, was well-known in European political circles. Leopold von Schladen, the Prussian ambassador to Istanbul, noted that ‘La Porte est mieux instruite qu’on ne le suppose, de tout ce qui a trait aux affaires de l’Europe et je croirais assez volontiers que ses informations viennent, par l’entremise des hospodars, de la part du chevalier de Genz, qui fournissait des bulletins du plus grand intérêt au prince Caradja et qui vient d’entrer en relations avec son successeur.’43 A British physician who visited the princely court in January 1818 also noted the correspondence, ‘the immediate transmission of which to Constantinople, was of no small importance to the Hospodar, in strengthening his interest with the ministers of the Grand Seignior’.44 By making liberal use of Gentz’s letters, Caradja spread to Istanbul useful ideas about Russia’s avowed pacifism and to St Petersburg details on Austria’s 38

39 40 41 42

43 44

Details in G. Yakschith, ‘La Russie et la Porte ottomane de 1812 à 1826’, Revue historique, 91 (1906), 283–310; M.S. Anderson, The Eastern Question, 1774–1923: A Study in International Relations (London: Macmillan, 1966), 59. Urechia, ‘Din domnia’, 203. P.A. Argyropoulo, ‘Une correspondance diplomatique, 1816–1818’, offprint from Les Balkans (Athens: Ėditions Flamma, 1937), 16–9. C.J. Caradja, ‘Corespondența lui Capodistria cu Ioan Caragea Voevod’, Revista Istorică, 7:7–9 (1921), 181–189, 187. Argyropoulo, ‘Une correspondance’, 9; The entire correspondence was published in P.A. Argyropoulo, Correspondance diplomatique de l’hospodar de Valachie J. Caradja avec le baron de Stroganof (Athens: n.p., 1954). ‘Schladen to Friedrich Willhelm III, 25 January 1819’, in N. Iorga, Acte și fragmente cu privire la istoria Românilor, vol.II (Bucharest: Impr. Statului, 1896), 550. W. Macmichael, Journey from Moscow to Constantinople in the Years 1817–1818 (London: John Murray, 1819), 114.

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commitment to defend Ottoman interests as a way of contributing to Europe’s stability and peace. Caradja’s calculated indiscretions proved useful in the negotiations that Stroganov and the reis effendi started in 1816, making all parties more disposed to bargain. Strongly criticised by the local aristocracy who sought for support equally in the Ottoman Empire and in Russia or Austria, Caradja took time to prepare his retreat.45 Metternich and Gentz promised him safe passage through Austrian territory,46 and Kapodistrias guaranteed that he would be allowed to settle in Russia. On 11 October 1818 Caradja fled to Austrian Transylvania.47 A new diplomatic conflict ensued at Istanbul, as Stroganov intended to use Caradja’s case to force a change in the Ottoman leadership, whereas the reis effendi insisted on Russia’s involvement in the hospodar’s treason. By fleeing to neutral Austria, Caradja aimed first and foremost to protect his fortune, safely deposited in Austrian and Swiss banks.48 The Wallachian Hospodars and the Russian–Ottoman Diplomatic Dispute Caradja’s successor, Alexandros Soutzos, continued to correspond with Gentz, who updated him on political realities in Europe and on the Russian–Ottoman negotiations in Istanbul. The Viennese diplomat seemed convinced that the question of the Danubian principalities was only an ‘hors-d’œuvre, adroitement mis en avant pour compliquer la discussion’; the only serious issue was Russia’s acquisitions on the Asian coast during the previous war, which were supposed to be returned to the Porte. Although justice stood with the Ottoman cause, Gentz advised ‘moderation, resignation, condescendence’ and a necessary sacrifice for Europe’s peace.49 He seemed equally convinced that, with Tsar Alexander committed to the common cause, there was no danger of an imminent war ‘si elle n’est amenée par d’autres incidents imprévus, ou par des fautes graves, heureusement peu vraisemblables, du Gouvernement turc lui-même’.50 45 46 47 48

49 50

V. Georgescu, Mémoires et projets de réforme dans les Principautés Roumaines. 1769–1830 (Bucharest: Association internationale d’études du Sud-Est européen, 1970), 47–93. The entire correspondence between Caradja, Gentz and Metternich is published in Von Klinkowström (ed.), Aus der alten Registratur, 118–48. Filitti, ‘Corespondenţa’, 987. ‘Appendix, Hakenau to Metternich, 11 October 1818’, in Hurmuzaki, n.s., II, 482–4. A. Oţetea, ‘Fuga lui Caragea’, in Omagiu lui P. Constantinescu-Iaşi: cu prilejul împlinirii a 70 de ani (Bucharest: Editura Academiei Republicii Populare Romîne, 1965), 386. On his exile, see A. Pippidi, ‘Jean Caradja et ses amis de Genève’, reprinted in A. Pippidi, Hommes et idées du sud-est européen à l’aube de l’âge moderne (Bucharest: Editura Academiei Republicii Socialiste România, 1980), 295–314; ‘Notules phanariotes, II, Encore Jean Caradja à Genève’, Ho Eranistes, 17 (1981), 74–85. ‘Gentz to Al. Soutzos, 2 May 1820’, in Prokesch-Osten (ed.), Dépêches inédites, II, 23–5. ‘Ibid., 2 June 1820’, in ibid., 32–53.

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Such an unforeseen incident came sooner than expected with the outbreak of the Wallachian and Greek insurrections in the Danubian principalities in January and February 1821, shortly after Soutzos’ unexpected death. In a public statement, Alexander Ypsilanti, the leader of the Greek movement, boasted that a ‘great army’ would follow on his footsteps, and this was widely considered as the beginning of a new Russian–Ottoman war. Tsar Alexander was at the Congress of Laibach (Ljubljana), occupied with containing the revolution in the Italian peninsula, being thus caught between his sympathy for the Greek cause and the pledges made for securing order on the continent. In March 1821, the Tsar and his ministers repudiated the Greek insurrection and condemned Ypsilanti, ‘who misleads his compatriots and brings them to inevitable misfortunes’.51 Ottoman troops intervened to pacify the principalities, but their abusive and excessive conduct added to Russia’s complaints and resulted in the breaking off of diplomatic relations with the Porte in August 1821, which left the other ambassadors in Istanbul to mediate. Lord Strangford, the British ambassador to Istanbul and main negotiator with the Porte, used his own unconventional means to pull the strings in Istanbul, then visited Bucharest in September 1822 and headed to Verona for the next Congress, where he met Gentz. The latter was also greatly involved in trying to cope with Russia’s demands and return the principalities to their pre-1821 status, and provided valuable insight to the British envoy from his deep knowledge of Danubian realities. As Strangford noted, his correspondence with Gentz ‘originally began on subjects purely literary, but in the course of these he [Gentz] had often unreservedly expressed his sentiments to me in respect to political transactions growing out of events in the Principalities’.52 Negotiations in the ambassadorial conferences were fruitful, and the Porte accepted the appointment of new hospodars. As the Greeks were compromised by their ongoing insurrection, the Sultan and his advisers agreed in 1822 to nominate native boyars to the principalities’ thrones – Gregory Ghica in Wallachia and Ioniță Sandu Sturdza in Moldavia. A conservative boyar with little formal education, Ghica was barely qualified to govern in a buffer state on the Russian–Ottoman border. In a letter to Gentz he acknowledged that it was always difficult to serve as prince of Wallachia, but ‘[cette position] est effrayante dans les circonstances du moment, surtout pour un homme qui, d’une vie tranquille et bornée, se trouve tout d’un coup transplanté au milieu des événements les plus extraordinaires’.53 Gentz’s

51 52 53

Quoted in B. Jelavich, Russia and the Formation of the Romanian National State, 1821–1878 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 24. R.R.N. Florescu, ‘Lord Strangford and the problem of the Danubian principalities, 1821–4’, The Slavonic and East European Review, 39:93 (1961), 472–488, 476, fn.19. ‘Ghica to Gentz, 15 August–4 September 1823, in Georgescu, Corespondenţa, 82.

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geopolitical intelligence and consulting services were consequently a real boon for the inexperienced hospodar, who also relied heavily on Consul Hakenau’s support.54 Later, the prince seems to have also paid Baron Ottenfels, the Austrian internuncio, to provide him with information from Istanbul, a connection mediated by Gentz.55 Ghica considered Gentz his political ‘mentor’, and the hospodar’s letters are filled with flatteries for ‘le seul astre dont la lumière est en état de me tirer avec confiance du labyrinthe inextricable des affaires en question’.56 Ghica accepted the Austrian tutelage, but aimed to keep it as confidential as possible. In March 1826, for example, he asked Gentz and Ottenfels ‘de ne pas montrer à la Porte trop d’affection pour moi, car je peux être fortement compromis par là’.57 During the period 1822–6 the Danubian principalities remained an important issue in Russian–Ottoman relations, with Austrian and British diplomats involved in mediating a compromise. The main issue was the maintenance of Ottoman troops in Wallachia and Moldavia, stationed there since 1821. The armies were withdrawn through international arbitration, but when the new hospodars came from Istanbul they were accompanied by a large number of Ottoman ‘beshlis’ (2,000 soldiers in Wallachia, 1,000 in Moldavia), responsible for securing domestic tranquillity. Russia argued that such a military force was no longer needed, and that its presence prolonged the uncertainty preventing exiled boyars from returning home. Ghica had an ambivalent attitude towards these military corps. He wrote to Gentz that they were a foreign army with negative effects on the country’s administration and budget, and accepted his correspondent’s opinion that it was necessary to require only a partial evacuation of the Ottoman troops.58 But in January 1824 he told Russian envoy Matei Minciaki his ‘honest’ opinion, ‘qu’en laissant ici une garde turque, la Porte n’a eu pour but que le bien-être du pays’.59 In October 1823 the two Christian emperors met at Czernowitz in Austrian Bukovina. Ghica was afraid to send an envoy to the conference, but asked Gentz to lobby for him, ‘car il est toujours bon pour un Prince Régnant de 54 55

56 57 58

59

Sweet, ‘Gentz and the Danubian Principalities’, 10. ‘Kreuchely to Miltitz, 27 October 1824’, in N. Iorga (ed.), Documente privitoare la istoria românilor culese de Eudoxiu de Hurmuzaki, vol.X, 1763–1844 (Bucharest: Stabilimentul Grafic I.V. Socecu, 1897), 302 (hereafter Hurmuzaki, X); ‘Gentz to Ottenfels, 21 April 1826’, in Gentz Digital. Digitale Erschliessung der Korrespondenzen des Friedrich von Gentz (1764–1832), http://gentz-digital.ub.uni-koeln.de/ (accessed 18 July 2016). ‘Ghica to Gentz, 18–20 June 1823’, in Georgescu, Corespondenţa, 78–80. ‘Ibid., 31 January and 7 March 1826’, in ibid., 199, 202–4. ‘Ibid., 18 October 1823’, in ibid., 89–90. See also B. Lungu, Les grandes puissances et les Principautés Roumaines, de 1821 à 1826 (Paris: École Roumaines en France, 1935); M. Šedivý, Metternich, the Great Powers and the Eastern Question (Pilsen: University of West Bohemia, 2013), 95–105. ‘Ghica to Gentz, 20 November 1823 and 4 January 1824’, in Georgescu, Corespondenţa, 95, 108–9.

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Valachie, quand il est bien vu de la Russie’.60 Metternich and Russian Foreign Minister Count Nesselrode discussed the issue in Lemberg (L’viv), with the Austrians fully determined to mediate the restoration of diplomatic relations between Russia and the Porte. Ghica sincerely wished for peace between his two masters, as advised by Gentz. In Istanbul Strangford convinced the reis effendi to accept a reduction of the number of ‘beshlis’ in Wallachia and Moldavia, and the hospodars sent written assurances that they could secure domestic tranquillity.61 Ghica wrote to Gentz, proud of his actions that ‘contribuera beaucoup à aplanir les obstacles d’une négociation à laquelle toutes les puissances de l’Europe s’intéressent vivement’.62 Needless to say that Gentz was busy, through his epistolary connections with Ghica and the internuncio, reinforcing the pacific messages to the Porte. Domestic security in Wallachia and Moldavia was crucial for preventing a Russo-Ottoman war, as the hospodars’ inability to cope with local disorders could have provided a pretext for Russian military intervention. Ghica learnt that it was vital for him to have European interests well implanted into the principalities as a way of containing both Ottoman and Russian excesses in his buffer state: ‘l’influence russe nous est nécessaire pour contrebalancer d’une bonne manière les prétentions exorbitantes des autres, mais cette influence n’en devient pas moins onéreuse, quand elle dépasse ses bornes légitimes et raisonnables’.63 Austria seemed the power to do this. No wonder that Gentz treasured him and considered him the best Wallachian ruler for his balanced attitude between Russia and the Porte.64 Yet perhaps a better reason was that mentioned in another letter to the internuncio where Gentz noted that he had carefully cultivated this relationship for its financial and political benefits.65 Throughout his reign, Ghica kept updating the Porte and the Ottoman pashas of the Danubian strongholds with intelligence from his sources. Gentz also sent him information to forward to Istanbul, referring especially to ‘les intentions pacifiques des cours alliées’.66 The hospodar tried to assure his Viennese correspondent that the Porte had no clear details about his foreign source, but this did not fool anyone given the content of the diplomat’s dispatches and their philo-Austrian tone.67 However, as mentioned in Caradja’s case, such transparency on the peaceful intentions of the European courts 60 62 63 64

65 66 67

61 ‘Ibid., 19 September 1823’, in ibid., 86–7. Florescu, ‘Lord Strangford’, 485–6. ‘Ghica to Gentz, 18 June 1824’, in Georgescu, Corespondenţa, 145–7. ‘Ibid., 15 October 1824’, in ibid., 154. ‘Gentz to Ottenfels, 30 October 1826’, in A. von Prokesch-Osten, Zur Geschichte der orientalischen Frage: Briefe aus dem nachlasse Friedrichs von Gentz, 1823–1829 (Vienna: Braumüller, 1877), 156. ‘Ibid., 29 October–2 November 1825’, in Gentz Digital. ‘Ghica to Gentz, 4 September 1823 and 4 January 1824’, in Georgescu, Corespondenţa, 81–3, 110. ‘Ibid., 7 March 1826’, in ibid., 202–4.

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contributed to the collective effort of convincing the Porte that it was a favourable time for bargaining. When Ottenfels wrote Gentz that Strangford knew about his reports to Ghica, the freelance diplomat replied that he and the British ambassador had discussed this communication channel before, which was also well known to the Russians, and such openness was definitely useful for helping the negotiations to a positive result.68 Everything changed with Tsar Alexander’s death in 1825, which occupied many letters between the two. With Nicholas’ coming things moved swiftly in Russian–Ottoman relations, with a Russian ultimatum regarding the principalities already in May 1826. The Porte initially yielded and, after renewed negotiations, the Convention of Akkerman was signed on 7 October 1826, reconfirming Russia as protector of the Christians from the Ottoman Empire. A political crisis in Istanbul and Mahmud’s repudiation of the Convention, however, led Russia to declare war on 26 April 1828. It was no surprise to anyone in Europe, and Ghica had long prepared his withdrawal. Minciaki’s arrival at Bucharest as Russia’s consul general in 1826 shifted Ghica’s allegiance, though the prince tried to preserve his good relations with Hakenau and continued to pay Gentz for his precious political insight. In January 1828 Ghica wrote to Gentz still hoping that a ‘just and peaceful’ spirit would watch over the mediation between Russia and its allies,69 but Gentz was less idealistic and finally advised the hospodar to quit his post when war became imminent.70 Ghica took a special interest in international politics and in the European powers’ attempts to contain the spread of instability and disorder on the continent and beyond.71 The Spanish question and the Greek war occupied much of the correspondence between Gentz and the hospodar, and Ghica wished for a peaceful settlement of the conflicts under the mediation of the European Concert. He often referred to ‘l’esprit pacifique qui a dirigé toujours ces souverains quand il se sont trouvés ensemble’.72 Ghica was equally interested in the policy of collective intervention, and believed that ‘une puissance ne peut intervenir dans les affaires d’une autre puissance que lorsque elle en est expressément invitée’, with the exception of the case when ‘la puissance qui doit être secourue, n’a pas assez de liberté pour faire une telle démarche’.73

68 69 70 71

72 73

‘Gentz to Ottenfels, 17 May 1823’, in Gentz Digital. ‘Ghica to Gentz, 21 January 1828’, in Georgescu, Corespondenţa, 248–9. Prokesch-Osten (ed.), Dépêches inédites, III, 467 (editor’s note). He subscribed to some of the major European journals: Le Constitutionnel, L’Etoile, Gazette Universelle, Journal des Débats, Journal de St Pétersbourg, L’Observateur Autrichien. See C.I. Scafeș and V.E. Zodian, Grigore al IV-lea Ghica (1822–1828) (Bucharest: Editura Militară, 1986), 94. ‘Ghica to Gentz, 19 September 1823’, in Georgescu, Corespondenţa, 85–7. ‘Ibid., 19 February 1824’, in ibid., 118–9.

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The hospodar was similarly very critical of the British tendency to act in isolation of the European Concert.74 Gentz and an Alternative View on Southeastern European Stability One of the persons familiar with Gentz’s correspondence with the Wallachian hospodars was Constantin Samurcaș, a Greek entrepreneur who sought his fortune in Wallachia in the late eighteenth century. During the next couple of decades, Samurcaș climbed the social ladder and became an influential dignitary during all regimes. In 1821 he took possession of Gentz’s letters and handed them over to the Russian consul. Samurcaș was involved in the insurrections of 1821, and felt threatened when they ended in total anarchy and Ottoman troops entered the country. Samurcaș fled to the Transylvanian town of Kronstadt (Brașov), together with a large group of Wallachian boyars who feared Ottoman retribution.75 In 1822 Samurcaș attempted, through Sakelario’s mediation, to enter into direct contact with Gentz. He supplied the Viennese diplomat with an autobiographical sketch, and later his associate Mavros got to Vienna and tried to convince him to accept such a contract. But Gentz refused when he got details on the pretenders’ former political activities. Samurcaș wrote again in September 1822,76 and the correspondence was established a year later, when Gentz updated Samurcaș on current international negotiations, which hopefully would allow the latter’s return to Wallachia. Samurcaș replied with his own interpretation of political events and with political news from the Ottoman Empire. In November 1823 Samurcaș drafted a memorandum entitled ‘Considérations sur une intervention de la Russie dans l’affaire des Grecs’. His main argument, based on Gentz’s own conception of the balance of power, was that European powers should use the Greek revolt as a means to replace the Ottoman Empire with a new and more effective counterweight. A weak Porte constantly endangered the balance, and it was crucial for the Habsburgs to intervene and prevent the possibility that a Greek secession would serve Russia’s interests exclusively.77 Gentz responded in December 1823 with his own memo in which he defended his legalist approach, arguing that the Greek insurrection was similar 74 75 76

77

‘Ibid., 19 March 1826’, in ibid., 204–5. For his spectacular career, see Costache, ‘At the End of Empire’, 77–101. Sweet, ‘Gentz and the Danubian Principalities’, 12–3; Costache, ‘At the End of Empire’, 101–2. A letter of Samurcaș, dated October 1822, is presented in D. Hîncu, ‘Documente inedite din arhivele vieneze. Intrigi și intriganți de la începutul veacului trecut’, Magazin istoric, new series, 28:10 (1994), 44–5. Sweet, ‘Gentz and the Danubian Principalities’, 12–3; Costache, ‘At the End of Empire’, 105–6.

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to any other revolt against legitimate authority. Samurcaș replied with another long text, and their debate continued in 1824 with Gentz supporting the Porte, and Samurcaș defending the Greek rebels. Samurcaș’s expose made Gentz exclaim that they shared completely opposite political views: ‘Ma politique est plus étroitement liée aux pouvoirs légalement établis, et à la stabilité, et la votre plus favorable à la liberté et aux changemens [sic].’78 Despite their divergent approaches, the two ultimately pursued the same goal: stability in Europe. Samurcaș was not a revolutionary, but he had a good point that a tottering Ottoman Empire would continue to threaten the international balance and the vital interests of all European powers. He backed the creation of a Greek state placed under Ottoman suzerainty and European protection, which was hardly acceptable at the time for the parties involved in the military and diplomatic conflict.79 The correspondence touched on other contemporary political issues in Europe, and Gentz, who really came to appreciate his new interlocutor, intervened to Istanbul, trying to facilitate his safe return to Bucharest, where Samurcaș could better look after his troubled health.80 Conclusions The relationship between Gentz and his Wallachian correspondents provides a good example of a practice that disseminated to Southeastern Europe a new political and security culture. It can be analysed along three dimensions as referred to in this essay: the correspondents, the content of the letters and their overall relevance for the early nineteenth-century security environment. The correspondence between one of the most vocal defenders of the post-1815 order and several princelings from a Russian–Ottoman–Austrian contact zone is extremely revealing in itself. When it started in 1812, Gentz was already a well-known publicist, familiar with the workings of European diplomacy. Metternich outsourced to him a new communication line with the Sublime Porte, via the hospodars in Bucharest, thus creating a public–private partnership or an intelligence and consulting agency that Gentz carefully developed during the following almost two decades. Gentz mixed business with diplomatic pleasure in this venture. He was well paid for his services, but his ‘job’ depended on the political stability of the Danubian principalities. He completed his tasks very well, and eventually came to appreciate his correspondents, with whom he stayed in touch after their resignations. As the Eastern Question remained a hot issue in European diplomacy, and Austria was directly interested in its peaceful resolution, Gentz also did great service to 78 79 80

Sweet, ‘Gentz and the Danubian Principalities’, 16. Costache, ‘At the End of Empire’, 106–10. ‘Gentz to Ottenfels, 19 June 1824’, in Gentz Digital.

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Austria’s (and Europe’s) security. Using his diplomatic connections in Vienna, Istanbul and Bucharest, Gentz managed to bring the principalities as close to Austria as was possible in that historical context. The hospodars, in their turn, learnt the dominant features of the post-1815 international realities. Caradja and Alexandros Soutzos were educated persons, with a well-defined political and diplomatic background nurtured in the multicultural milieu of Istanbul and familiar with the functioning of imperial and inter-imperial politics. The Phanariot habitus was completely absent from Ghica, a native boyar with almost no formal education, but with good intuition and an eagerness to learn. He proved malleable and showed great interest in his epistolary exchanges with Gentz, becoming the latter’s favourite prince by his professed seriousness and obedience to his maestro’s lessons. The correspondence acted as a ‘distance learning process’, allowing the hospodars access to two important components in a decision-making process: intelligence and consulting. Depending on circumstances, both proved equally vital. During the Napoleonic wars, Caradja treasured reliable information, which was a life-saver in itself and in relation to his obligations towards the Porte. Gentz furnished Caradja with more than mere details that were sooner or later published in the European press and communicated via other channels. He sent to Bucharest exclusive and confidential pieces, well-written reports and the knowledge of an expert familiar with the secrets of European politics. Gentz rendered excellent services for his fee. He filled his dispatches with a security vocabulary that privileged not only Austria’s interests, but also the idea that the European powers were committed to international cooperation in pursuit of order and peace. Gentz tried to teach his correspondents this new language of security, but he also insisted on norms, rules and procedures meant to familiarise his clients with Europe’s new grammar of stability. Gentz was often very critical of Russia’s imperial aims in Southeastern Europe, and insisted strongly on the post-Napoleonic collaborative efforts of Tsar Alexander, an example of self-restraint and adherence to the superior interest of Europe’s peace. Alexander’s taming was, of course, presented as an Austrian success, a clear proof of the beneficial effects of cooperation for a just cause. ‘Information brokers’ completely lacking diplomatic and military agency, reserved to their suzerain, the hospodars started to whisper messages in the backstage of Europe’s Concert. They were occupied with similar urgencies of securing order and tranquillity in small autonomous principalities troubled by national and anti-Ottoman movements, radical conspirators, cosmopolitan brigands or lawless janissaries. After the insurrections of 1821, the princes were confronted with occupation armies and an exiled elite that continuously petitioned the Russian and Austrian courts about the abuses of the hospodars and of their suzerain overlord. The princes replied to their tutor with feedback

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that depended on the larger international context. Caradja was not very communicative and confined himself to being a good ‘listener’. But Ghica was a diligent student who accumulated much from Gentz’s practical course in the new European collective security efforts. In fact, his messages to Vienna are to a great extent a mimesis of his mentor’s own European security view. The relevance of this epistolary relationship for Europe’s security changed significantly during the sixteen years that Gentz and the Danubian hospodars stayed in contact. The princes played a double function in an inter-imperial contact zone. Firstly, as relays on an alternative communication network with the Porte, they were carriers of messages to the Ottoman leadership during a period when it was in Europe’s best interest (as advocated by Austria and Great Britain) to integrate the Ottoman Empire into a system of European guarantees, a prerequisite to securing long-term peace on the continent. Later, during the long diplomatic conflict between Russia and the Porte (1816–26), when a host of ambassadorial conferences involving European representatives tried to resolve the problem, they fulfilled a similar relay function. Secondly, the princes were responsible for maintaining order and tranquillity in a sensitive territory, which could easily become the scene of a Russian–Ottoman war. Their situation clearly shows that domestic and international politics cannot be entirely divorced. Being privileged provinces of the Ottoman Empire where Russia had a right of intervention, tranquillity in Wallachia and Moldavia was not an entirely domestic issue, but an important European question. The princes were responsible for securing it, but they did not possess the means to do so. However, as was the case with Ghica, he imposed in his country measures meant to resolve conflicts and disputes in the shared interest of European security. Gentz’s contribution in convincing him to do so was crucial, as he insisted in his messages on the more peaceful habits of European courts. Gentz attempted, and to a great extent managed, to make Ghica believe and expect that peace could be maintained on the continent and that Russian– Ottoman disputes could be resolved diplomatically, through the mediation of other courts. However, it was not easy to teach cooperation in a Russian borderland, with the Tsar as the legal protector of Ottoman Christians, and with a quasi-general belief that a new war would soon follow. Political elites in the principalities feared Russia, which they secretly supported not from outright sympathy for its political aims, but from their realist belief that the Tsar would be the ultimate victor in his struggle against the Porte. It was in the early 1820s that the political elite in the principalities started to learn about alternative solutions to their Manichaean Russian–Ottoman perspective. This marked the beginning of a gradual turn towards Western Europe as a counterweight for the principalities’ tranquillity, which eventually led to the creation of modern Romania, a state that after 1856 was guaranteed for two decades by

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the Congress of European powers. After 1821 the question of the Danubian principalities led to a growing European interest in Wallachia and Moldavia, visible in newspaper articles, brochures or travelogues with references to their history, habits and culture. Similarly, local interest in the political decisions taken by European statesmen grew, as presented by the cases of Ghica and Samurcaș. The Prussian consul to Bucharest underscored this in late 1822 when he noted that the boyars’ attention was directed to the Congress of Verona, ‘et jamais le nom de cette ville . . . ne fut prononcé si fréquentent que depuis l’instant qu’on apprit qu’un congres devait s’y tenir’.81 We can thus conclude that as an institutionalised practice, the correspondence between Gentz and his Wallachian interlocutors greatly contributed to the dissemination of the European security culture to an Ottoman–Russian–Austrian borderland.

81

‘Kreuchely to Miltitz, 14 December 1822’, in Hurmuzaki, X, 198.

14

Diplomats as Power Brokers Mark Jarrett

In April 1814, while the allied leaders were still engaged in negotiating the terms of peace with France, the Prussian Chancellor, Prince Karl August von Hardenberg, presented them with an ambitious plan for the reorganization of Central Europe. Hardenberg proposed returning Salzburg, the Tyrol, Breisgau, and Southern Poland to Austria and awarding most of Napoleon’s Duchy of Warsaw to Russia. He further proposed that Prussia should be compensated for its territorial losses and its role in defeating France with acquisitions in Westphalia and the Rhineland to the west, with Polish territory up to the Warta River in the east, and with the whole of Saxony to the south. Acquiescence in Hardenberg’s demands would have created a strong and consolidated Prussian state.1 Hardenberg’s territorial demands provide a convenient starting point for examining the central tenet of this book – that a new ‘security culture’ was being forged in post-Napoleonic Europe. Taking a constructivist approach, the present collection follows the insight of Peter Katzenstein twenty years ago in his introduction to The Culture of National Security, ‘that security interests are defined by actors who respond to cultural factors’. Nonetheless, according to Katzenstein, this hardly meant ‘that power, conventionally understood as material capabilities, is unimportant for an analysis of national security’.2 Rather, those capabilities remained an important ingredient in the mix. Hence, as the editors of the present volume observe, ‘security culture’ should be defined broadly to include ‘the sum of mutually shared, and often conflicting, perceptions of vital interests and threats, as well as the institutions and practices through which different agents acted. . .’.

1

2

M. Jarrett, The Congress of Vienna and Its Legacy. War and Great Power Diplomacy after Napoleon (London: I.B. Tauris, 2013), 71–2. Historian Brendan Simms makes the claim that geopolitical concerns were uppermost in the minds of the Prussian policy-making elite. B. Simms, The Impact of Napoleon. Prussian High Politics, Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Executive, 1797–1806 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). P. Katzenstein (ed.), The Culture of National Security (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 2.

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Qu’est-ce que c’est le pouvoir? Social scientists have long debated the nature of power, and arguments among neorealists, neoliberals and constructivists over the definition and impact of power in international relations reflect this larger controversy.3 Is an individual, group or nation more powerful when it uses force to coerce others to act or when it successfully applies moral suasion? Simon Reich and Richard Ned Lebow distinguish between ‘power’ (i.e. material capabilities) and ‘influence’ (getting others to follow one’s suggestions), and point to what they view as one of the great paradoxes of the post-Cold War world – that the world’s greatest military power, whose military expenditures dwarf all others, frequently cannot persuade other nations to support its policies.4 Joseph Nye simply divides power into two types: hard and soft. For Nye, ‘hard power’ consists of a nation’s military and economic capabilities, while ‘soft power’ seems to resemble Reich and Lebow’s notion of influence in that it is based on persuasion and includes everything other than the instruments of hard power.5 This may be more than just a matter of semantics. By accepting the existence of both hard and soft power, Nye indicates that we can have our cake and eat it too. We can look at both the material and psychological components of power. We are not forced to choose one over the other. Pre-Congress Plans and Instructions as Gauges of Great Power Concerns Returning to Hardenberg and the diplomats of 1814–15, when they gathered at Vienna were they seeking power or influence? Were they mainly concerned with increasing their own territory and military capabilities, or with occupying the moral high ground? It may be, as stated above, that we should define the new ‘security culture’ in a way that includes a concern with the material capabilities of individual states – in effect, hard power – but that also

3

4

5

See R. Dahl, ‘The concept of power’, Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 2:3 (1957), 201–15. Dahl defined power in ‘relational terms’ as the ability of A to get B to do something that B ‘would not otherwise do’. More recently, Kira Peterson identified four types of power in international relations: coercive, bargaining, concerted and political. See K. Peterson, ‘The concept of power in international relations’, PhD diss., Harvard University (2011). S. Reich and R.N. Lebow, Good-Bye Hegemony! Power and Influence in the Global System (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), 3–4, 6 (‘Liberals come in as great a variety of hues as do realists. They share certain attributes with realists: a rationalist approach in which power and influence are conflated . . . Effective influence rests on persuasion; it convinces others that it is in their interest to do what you want. Persuasion depends on shared values and acceptable practices, and when it works, helps to build common identities that can make cooperation and persuasion more likely in the future.’). J.S. Nye, Jr., The Future of Power (New York: Public Affairs, 2011).

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incorporates a new postwar willingness to act cooperatively on behalf of the common good – a species of soft power. Hardenberg’s demands were in fact only one of several wish lists generated by the statesmen of the great powers prior to the Congress. The British Foreign Secretary, Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, had drafted instructions for his mission to the continent just four months earlier, when he even obtained Cabinet approval. Back in July 1813, Castlereagh had written to the British ambassador to Russia that when peace was finally achieved, Britain would not insist on retaining all its colonial conquests in the recent wars, ‘provided His Royal Highness can hope by their partial restitution the better to provide for the general security of Europe’.6 The Cabinet Instructions of 26 December 1813, intended to guide Castlereagh’s conduct, continued in much the same vein. Castlereagh was instructed to inform the allies that Britain might divest itself of some of its colonial conquests in ‘the general interest’ but only if certain material conditions were met: ‘the absolute exclusion of France from any naval establishment on the Scheldt, and especially at Antwerp’, the creation of a barrier to protect the security of the Netherlands, and the independence of Spain and Portugal from France. In addition, Castlereagh was to lend his support for the restoration of the King of Sardinia and the Pope in Italy. Thus we see, as we might expect, a focus on British security interests in the Low Countries and Iberian Peninsula in the narrow geopolitical sense. But the same instructions – drafted before the collapse of the Napoleonic empire – also included an expression of desire for continuing collaboration with the allies and stipulated that the treaty of alliance was ‘not to terminate with the war but to contain defensive engagements with mutual obligations to support the powers attacked by France with a certain extent of stipulated succours’.7 In sum, his instructions were to meet traditional British security concerns while also maintaining the goodwill of the allies. Just over a year later, on his return to England early in 1815, Castlereagh laid before the House of Commons the British response to the Russian overture for an alliance in 1805. This earlier document presciently anticipated many of the changes that were actually achieved in the First Peace of Paris and the Vienna Final Act, including the independence of the Netherlands and Switzerland, the restoration of the King of Sardinia, the evacuation of the French from Italy and Northern Germany, and the placing of Tuscany under Austrian control. William Pitt’s response to the Russians had further called on the allies ‘to form, at the restoration of peace, a general agreement and guarantee for the mutual protection and security of different powers, and for reestablishing 6 7

‘Castlereagh to Cathcart, Foreign Office, 13 June 1813’, in C.K. Webster, British Diplomacy, 1813–1815 (London: Bell and Sons, 1921), 13. ‘Memorandum of the Cabinet, 26 December 1813’, in ibid., 123–8.

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a general system of public law in Europe’.8 In laying this ten-year-old plan before Parliament, Castlereagh was making a deliberate statement to its members as eloquent as any speech: here were Britain’s longstanding territorial aspirations – judge for yourself how well we have fulfilled them.9 The French foreign minister, Prince Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, likewise drafted instructions for the Congress to impress his restored master, Louis XVIII. In addition to explicating his new doctrine of legitimacy, Talleyrand identified four specific objectives for France at the Congress, some of which were actuated by Bourbon dynastic interests and others by balance of power concerns: to prevent a Habsburg prince from ruling over Piedmont, to restore Louis XVIII’s cousin Ferdinand IV to the throne of Naples (in place of Napoleon’s brother-in-law, Joachim Murat), to prevent Russia from taking all of Poland, and to prevent Prussia from acquiring all of Saxony or Mainz.10 While Tsar Alexander I had no need to draft instructions for himself, his preCongress plans for the reconstruction of Europe were gradually unveiled to the other powers. As early as 5 May 1814, the Russians rejected Hardenberg’s plan for the territorial reorganization of Central Europe.11 Alexander agreed to the Prussian acquisition of Saxony, but he wished to incorporate all of Prussia’s former Polish territories into a resurrected Kingdom of Poland – a new, semi-autonomous state of which Alexander himself would be king. Historians of Poland differ on the magnanimity of the Tsar’s proposal.12 On the one hand, the Polish protectorate would serve as a new buffer state protecting Russia 8 9

10

‘Official Communication Made to the Russian Ambassador at London on 19 January 1805’ in ibid., Appendix I, 389–94. Castlereagh further told the House that ‘during the whole of the negotiations for the general peace, [. . .] the great object of the sovereigns of Europe was the re-establishment and the reorganization of those two great monarchies, which, to all practical purposes, had been destroyed during the war – Austria and Prussia. To do this it became necessary to establish a security for the flanks of those monarchies: a power between the north of Germany and France, and a power acting as a barrier between Italy and France, to prevent them from coming into contact. It was necessary also to maintain the independence of Switzerland, and to re-store the constitution of the German states.’ House of Commons Debates, vol.30 (20 March 1815), 289. G. Lacour-Gayet, Talleyrand, vol.2 (Paris: Payot, 1930), 425–7. The instructions stated: ‘Les points qui importent le plus à la France, classés suivant l’ordre de leur importance relative, sont ceux-ci: 1 Qu’il ne soit laissé à l’Autriche aucune chance de pouvoir faire tomber entre les mains d’un des princes de sa maison, c’est-à-dire entre les siennes, les États du roi de Sardaigne; 2 Que Naples soit restitué à Ferdinand IV; 3 Que la Pologne entire ne passe point, et ne puisse point passer sous la souveraineté de la Russie; 4 Que la Prusse n’acquière ni la royaume de Saxe, du moins en totalité, ni Mayence.’

11 12

E. Kraehe, Metternich’s German Policy vol.II. The Congress of Vienna, 1814–1815 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 37. F.W. Thackery, for example, was critical in his Antecedents of Revolution. Alexander I and the Polish Kingdom (Boulder: Eastern European Monographs, 1980).

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from future invasion. On the other, the Tsar certainly developed his plan in consultation with his friend and advisor, the Polish Prince Adam Czartoryski, and the Tsar even met with leading Polish nobles in Czartoryski’s home town of Puławy on his way to Vienna. From Czartoryski’s private letters to his father, it is evident that the Prince saw the Tsar as Poland’s greatest friend at the Congress, while he judged Castlereagh – who led the opposition to the Tsar’s plans – as his nation’s greatest enemy.13 On the Austrian side, the pre-Congress plans of its foreign minister, Prince Klemens von Metternich, were constantly evolving. They may perhaps best be judged from his response to Hardenberg’s plan in Paris. On 9 May 1814, the Austrians submitted their own draft for the settlement of Europe, which became the basis for subsequent discussions with France. Metternich proposed that the German states remain independent but be ‘united by a federal bond’, that Italy be divided into independent states, that Ferdinand VII (another Bourbon) be restored in Spain, that the independence of Switzerland be guaranteed by the allied powers, and that the Netherlands receive an increase of territory.14 In analyzing Metternich’s views, historian Wolfram Siemann emphasizes the threat to Austrian security posed by the repeated French occupations of Vienna and especially by Napoleon’s appeal to Hungarians in 1809. According to Siemann, Metternich hoped to apply federative solutions to both Germany and Italy. At the same time, he hoped to foster Austria’s relative power by opposing Russia in Poland, France in Italy, and Prussia in Saxony and Mainz.15 Historian Enno Kraehe likewise emphasized that Metternich hoped to strengthen the European center by allying with Britain and opposing France and Russia. In support of this view, Kraehe cites Metternich’s correspondence with Prince Maximilian von Merveldt, the Austrian ambassador in London, in which the Austrian foreign minister stated: The principle of the conservation of order . . . should be the true maxim of state for the two monarchies [Austria and Britain] . . . Placed between the great monarchies of the east and west of Europe [that is, Russia and France], they are called on to hold the balance between these masses, which are drawn constantly toward the centre, to contain them within proper limits and to prevent a rapprochement between them such as has already threatened Europe with complete ruin by crushing the intermediate states.16 13

14 15

16

Jarrett, The Congress of Vienna and Its Legacy, 98–101; W.H. Zawadzki, A Man of Honour: Adam Czartoryski as a Statesman of Russia and Poland, 1795–1831 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 209–58; M.P. Rey, Alexandre I (Paris: Flammarion, 2009) 356–64; F. Ley, Alexandre Ier et sa Sainte-Alliance (Paris: Fischbacher, 1975), 45–85. Kraehe, Congress of Vienna, 43–4. W. Siemann, Metternich: Staatsmann zwischen Restauration und Moderne (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2010), 52–9; Ibid., Metternich: Stratege und Visionär: Ein Biografie (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2016), 490–506; see also, A. Sked, Metternich and Austria: An Evaluation (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2008), 64–5. ‘Metternich to Merveldt, 21 January 1814’, in Kraehe, Congress of Vienna, 5.

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Table 14.1 Measures of ‘Hard Power’ at the Time of the Vienna Congress17

Britain France Austria Russia Prussia

Population in 1815 (in millions)

Military Personnel in 1815

19.5 29.5 29.5 51.3 10.3

255,000 132,000 222,000 800,000 130,000

Military Expenditures in 1815 (in millions of British £) 16,942 10,554 6,815 10,582 3,516

Naval Power: No. of Ships of the Line in 1815–16 214 80 n/a 40 n/a

Iron and Steel Production in 1816 (in thousands of tonnes) 290 140 50 60 130

We can consider all of these pre-Congress plans and instructions as blueprints for what the powers hoped to achieve at Vienna. They make it clear that the powers remained obsessed with ‘security’ in a material sense. Each statesman looked to a favorable redistribution of territory as an important means of enhancing national security, while also looking to future allied cooperation as a secondary route towards the same goal. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that how well each of the great powers succeeded in fulfilling its pre-Congress aspirations was in large part a matter of hard power and the result of traditional balance-of-power diplomacy. Indeed, it might even be possible to construct a ‘parsimonious’ explanation of events at Vienna by comparing the indicia of military strength with the outcome of the settlement (see Table 14.1). Britain and Russia were clearly the most powerful actors at Vienna – historian Paul Schroeder even considers them quasi-hegemonic. Not surprisingly, both achieved their chief territorial demands – the union of Belgium and the Netherlands for Britain, and the acquisition of most of Poland by Russia. Austria was also quite successful, establishing control over Italy and leadership in Germany. France, a defeated power, and Prussia, a smaller one, were relatively less so. All of the great powers, however, fared better than the lesser states. But this does not fully explain the conduct of diplomacy in Paris and Vienna. Something else was clearly going on: Castlereagh returned some of Britain’s colonial conquests; the Tsar made concessions in Poland despite his original plan; Prussia made some gains in Poland and the Rhineland as well as acquiring a part of Saxony; and France actually kept some small gains, making it larger than it had been on the eve of the French Revolution.

17

Martha Finnemore, The Purpose of Intervention: Changing Beliefs about the Use of Force (Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press, 2003), 164–5.

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The Ambiguity of Diplomatic Discourse To the extent that the statesmen of 1814–15 adopted the language of cooperation and concert, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish whether this was based upon sincere belief or actuated by temporary expediency. Such ambiguity is simply in the nature of advocacy and diplomacy. Take the statements of Castlereagh on the King of Saxony. As is well known, in the first phase of the negotiations, Castlereagh and Metternich cooperated with Hardenberg. They offered Hardenberg all of Saxony if Prussia would cooperate with them in opposing the Tsar’s plan to annex all of the Duchy of Warsaw (and thus reuniting most of Poland under the Tsar’s aegis). Against the argument that the Prussian annexation of Saxony would disturb the rightful king, Castlereagh wrote a long memorandum that the King of Saxony had forfeited his rights by allying with Napoleon.18 Yet a few weeks later, Castlereagh argued almost the exact opposite once Prussia had abandoned its promise to side with Britain and Austria. Now it suddenly became important to respect the Saxon sovereign’s rights. Kraehe concluded that much of the language used at Vienna was largely rhetorical. In characterizing the statesmen’s arguments, Kraehe wrote: [O]n the highest plane of international politics, where no court existed to weigh competing briefs, so long as the mores of humanity were not flagrantly abused, all parties would be guided by interests, expecting legal arguments to provide only a veneer of civility to veil the strength of the victor and soften the blow to the ones who yielded. In this case, if Alexander tired before the Prussians did, as surely he must, his dignity would suffer less by acknowledging ostensibly superior logic and moral principles than by appearing to submit to force.19

In other words, Kraehe believed that the Vienna statesmen were guided by their own perceptions of state interests, but that they expressed their views in the language of universal principles to disguise and even soften the raw exercise of power and coercion. As Castlereagh revealingly remarked in describing Hardenberg’s change of course in a letter to Lord Liverpool: ‘I did not feel myself called upon to combat the reasoning, which was the mere vehicle on the part of P[rin]ce Hardenberg of disclosing this change of policy’ (emphasis added).20 Thus even Castlereagh did not always take the rhetoric too seriously, especially when it evidently provided a mere fig leaf covering interests. Accordingly, Castlereagh himself could argue with dexterity either for or against the rights of the King of Saxony. 18 19 20

‘Castlereagh to Hardenberg, 11 October 1814’, in Comte d’Angeberg (Leonard Chodzko), Le Congrès de Vienne et les Traités de 1815, vol.2 (Paris: Amyot, 1864), 274–8. Kraehe, Congress of Vienna, 289. ‘Castlereagh to Liverpool, 21 November 1814’, F.O. Congress 8, cited by E. Wawrzkowicz: Anglia a prawa polska (Kraków and Warsaw: Druk W.L. Anczyca i spólki, 1919), 450.

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On the other hand, the way in which such principles were expressed could sometimes take on a life of its own, restraining the actors and influencing the outcome. If the leading statesmen came to Vienna with specific territorial objectives in mind, it is equally true that they were men of peace, exhausted by two decades of relentless war and revolution. Each wanted to make territorial gains where they felt their states or monarchs had special interests, but they also genuinely wanted to cement their friendship through collaboration in order to secure future peace and stability. This might even mean sacrificing some interests – especially those of the lesser states – for the common good. In Parliament, Castlereagh defended the loss of traditional rights by the Genoese precisely on these grounds: The Allies had made war, not for the sake of subjugating any power, but for the sake of preserving the whole of Europe from subjugation; they had succeeded in their object; and they had endeavoured to give to the different powers of the European commonwealth a protection from that danger by which they had already been destroyed. When he stated the principle upon which the allies had acted, he had no hesitation in saying at the same time, that he was sorry that even the prejudices of the Genoese people could not on this occasion be attended to; for the prejudices of a people were entitled to attention when greater objects did not stand in the way [. . .] There were grave and solid reasons why they could not grant to Genoa what was demanded of them in behalf of that people, arising out of the very situation of Genoa, consistently with the security of Europe [. . .] That very state of Genoa had in a great degree contributed to the former weakness and overthrow of Europe; for it had first contributed to the overthrow of Sardinia, and thus been the means of enabling the French to achieve their conquests [. . .] The question was, whether the measure adopted [. . .] was the most likely to provide for the general security? [. . .] This measure was neither adopted for the sake of any of the allied powers, nor from any feeling for the king of Sardinia himself, but from a conviction that in so strengthening the king of Sardinia, they would best consult the interests of the general policy of Europe.21

On the question of the inclusion or exclusion of particular interests and groups from the new European ‘security culture’, posed by the editors in the introduction to this volume, it is clear that the custodians of this emerging culture were intended to be the great powers. They dominated the negotiations at Vienna and later constituted the members of the ‘Congress system’. Only these powers possessed the requisite strength to ensure the peace and stability that would redound to the benefit of every resident of Europe. The Continuing Relevance of Decision-Making Analysis There has been a welcome shift of interest by historians away from the ‘great men’ of history and towards a better understanding of the surrounding political

21

House of Commons Debates, vol.30 (20 March 1815), 295–6.

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culture – the milieu in which ambitions and strategies were born. However, while it would be wrong to believe that the statesmen were immune from outside influences or from the social atmosphere that prevailed at Vienna, it would be just as mistaken to see them as totally malleable to the vagaries of public opinion. Most of the allied statesmen were, in fact, disdainful of popular currents. By 1814, they had been in public life and foreign affairs long enough to possess their own core beliefs regarding their states’ security needs. For this reason, the decision-making perspective – also known as ‘foreign policy analysis’ – retains particular value for analyzing the events of 1814–15.22 The key decision-makers and their closest advisors – Metternich, Tsar Alexander, Castlereagh, Hardenberg, Talleyrand, King Friedrich Wilhelm III, Friedrich Gentz, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Czartoryski, Baron Johann von Wessenberg, and Baron Heinrich Friedrich Karl vom und zum Stein – served as the prisms through which all other forces and factors were refracted. By applying the decision-making approach, we are able to appreciate the ambitions and actions of these policy-makers as the products of multiple factors, including the influence of mass and elite publics. ‘By emphasizing decision-making as a central focus’, writes a founder of this method, ‘we have provided a way of organizing the determinants of action round those officials who act for the political society.’23 A rough attempt to create a ‘cognitive map’ showing these factors might yield something like the diagram at the top of page 280 (see Figure 14.1). In addition to studying the contemporary influences to which the statesmen were subject, it is therefore equally important to observe the evolution of their belief structures over time. As political scientist Robert Jervis points out, human beings possess a marked ‘propensity [. . .] to assimilate new information into their preexisting beliefs. Expectations and cognitive predispositions strongly influence the way evidence is interpreted.’24 This is especially true for two of the factors identified in the cognitive map below – each statesman’s understanding of the causes of war and revolution in the twenty

22

23 24

For a recent review of this literature, see especially V. Hudson, ‘Foreign policy analysis: actorspecific theory and the ground of international relations’, Foreign Policy Analysis, 1:1 (2005), 1–30. Hudson argues that: ‘All that occurs between nations and across nations is grounded in human decision makers acting singly or in groups . . . The single most important contribution of FPA [Foreign Policy Analysis] to IR theory is to identify the point of theoretical intersection between the primary determinants of state behavior: material and ideational factors. The point of intersection is not the state, it is human decision makers.’ R.C. Snyder, H.W. Brock and B. Sapin (eds.), Foreign Policy Decision-Making: An Approach to the Study of International Politics (New York: The Free Press, 1962), 85. R. Jervis, How Statesmen Think: The Psychology of International Politics (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2017), 224. Elsewhere Jervis writes: ‘The process of drawing inferences in light of logic and past experience that produces rational cognitive consistency also causes people to fit incoming information into pre-existing beliefs and to perceive what they expect to be there.’ R. Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 143.

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Figure 14.1 Factors influencing each key decision-maker, 1814–15

years preceding the Congress, and his perception of the security needs of his own state, based largely on geopolitical factors but also encompassing all of the broader concerns of the emerging ‘security culture’. To some extent, the task of explicating these belief systems has been the province of traditional biographers. It is clear, however, that the new emphasis on the political culture of 1814–15 should be supplemented by focused longitudinal studies – biographical or otherwise – tracing the evolution of the cognitive structures of individual statesman. Only such a combination of approaches can truly illuminate the emergence of the new ‘security culture‘ and the events of the Congress. Castlereagh on Security and War For the rest of this chapter, I offer the example of the British Foreign Secretary, Castlereagh, the statesman with whom I am most familiar and one with a notable impact on the events of the Congress. It is well worth examining his prior reflections on security and foreign policy to understand the baggage he brought with him to Vienna in the autumn of 1814. A similar investigation might be conducted with respect to any of the other statesmen – Metternich, the Tsar, Talleyrand, Hardenberg, Humboldt, or Gentz.

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As it turns out, Castlereagh had already been thinking about the nature of British security in material terms for decades – indeed, ever since his early twenties. In what may have been his first foray into foreign affairs, written sometime after the beginning of the French Revolution but before the outbreak of war between Britain and France in 1793, the young Castlereagh presented an able exposition of prevailing notions of the balance of power. He began his discussion with the assertion that ‘self-interest’ constitutes the ‘vital and controuling principle of Nations as well as individuals’. ‘Nations’ act according to rules governed by geographical necessity: ‘[i]t is an undeniable principle that Neighbouring Nations have almost in all cases immediate reason from their situation to distrust and fear each other; and that a Nation, apprehending danger, will naturally connect itself with one less form[ida]ble from being more remote, & which from its position perhaps is inimical to the power immediately dreaded.’25 This youthful realism was based on an almost Machiavellian cynicism regarding political behavior in the international sphere: Altho’ the terms of [. . .] treaties might render assistance due only in case of an unjust attack on one of the contracting parties, yet we know how futile all distinctions of justice or aggression are between rival Nations, that a War is consider’d offensive or defensive merely as it suits the views of the Cabinet who is to decide upon it; and that as self-interest leads Empires to ally themselves to each other, self-interest will determine the constructions the terms of their agreement shall receive [. . .] [I]n every negotiation, it should be recollected that treaties, like laws, should be framed with a view to prevent as well as remedy the evils which flow from the vice and injustice of Mankind.26

Paradoxically, it was this principle of the pursuit of self-interest that, in his mind, made Britain, in consequence of its isolated geographical situation, the power most genuinely committed to the preservation of peace in Europe: [W]e may take it as a basis to reason from that Gt. Britain is a maritime power; and that she should enter into continental connections solely with a view to preserve her insular importance and independence [. . .] I have laid it down as a first principle that a system of Peace should be the object of Gt. Britain; that she is to rise by Commerce not conquest; that her interference in the balance of power should be to guard against the ambitious projects of other States, particularly France; that she is to prevent the establishment of any overgrown power on the Continent which might immediately endanger the existence of other Sovereignties and ultimately risk the independence of her own.27

It is clear that Castlereagh believed, at least at this early stage, that Britain should help maintain peace on the Continent by acting as a balancer. 25 ‘ 26

Robert Stewart, n.d.’, Durham County Record Office, D/Lo/F 418(1), Londonderry Papers. 27 Ibid. Ibid.

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Otherwise, Britain had no other territorial aims in Europe and only wanted to expand its peaceful commerce. France, as the second naval power in Europe, was ‘from the nature of things her rival and enemy’. Although Castlereagh referred to the revolution in France, he still treated that country as an ordinary partner in the European diplomatic minuet. Men and nations were viewed as rationally guided by their own self-interest, which, he believed, would ultimately redound to the common good. His memorandum therefore ended on a buoyant note. He argued that a new, more realistic assessment of the balance of power, based upon ‘opposing known propensities’ (in effect, balancing self-interests) and accompanied by the construction of a system of concrete checks, in which nations choose their friends and foes on the basis of geopolitical necessity, would be far more conducive to the maintenance of peace than the expression of pious hopes or ‘philosophical maxims’ had been in earlier epochs. Already, he observed, ‘the desire [for] conquest is [. . .] almost totally abandon’d, and the different Nations of Europe from experience taught to seek their aggrandizement rather in domestic improvement than in the extension of territory’. The next twenty years of war were to prove how disastrously wide he was of the mark.28 The Motives for War with Revolutionary France A short time later, war did finally break out between Britain, Ireland and Revolutionary France. We find Castlereagh almost alone in thinking that the reasons for Britain’s entering into the war should be explained to the wider public.29 What he thought those reasons were can be seen in the notes he made for his maiden speech at Westminster in 1795. Here, he reflected on the causes of the original rupture between Britain and France. Pointing to French perfidity in their dealings with the Belgians, Dutch, and British, his verdict was that the war was simultaneously one of defense against French efforts at hegemony and ideological in the sense of being a Burkean crusade against French subversion, which threatened the authority of all established governments: Causes of the War 1st – Her attack upon our allies After the taking of Antwerp, the Scheldt was enter’d, and its navigation declared to be free upon the Laws of Nature, in opposition to Treaty. Such were the Principles France acted upon, but affected to leave the matter to be settled with the Belgians after the consolidation of their liberty. What was that liberty? An incorporation with France.

28 29

Ibid. Castlereagh’s reasoning here to some degree resembles that of Immanuel Kant’s essay on ‘Perpetual Peace’. See J. Bew, Castlereagh: Enlightenment, War and Tyranny (London: Quercus, 2011), 70–1.

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The Executive Council disclaimed hostile views against Holland, at the same time that Hoche and Dumourie[z] were discussing whether the invasion of Holland or the driving the Austrians beyond the Rhine should take the lead. The Correspondence between Ld. Grenville and Chauvelin was full of insult. Naval preparations were first made by France and the War was declared whilst Dumourie[z] was affecting to negotiate with Ld Auckland. 2nd – Her views of ambition and aggrandizement Their project of aggrandizement was immense and was to be effected by the propagation of principles subversive of all Govts. The extent of this ambition was manifested in thus incorporating Savoy, Nice, Avignon, and the Netherlands into the Republick. Wherever they could obtain a vote of union by terror or money, the country was annex’d to France. It was an attempt to realize what Louis XIV aimed at, and what Danton avowed to have been decreed by nature, that the Ocean, the Rhine, the Alps, and the Pyrenees should be the boundaries of France. 3rd – Her interference in other Govts. But it also aimed at rendering their system universal in order to give what they called liberty to the rest of the world. With this view the Decrees of the 19th of Novr & the 19th of Decr were pass’d; the first for the plunder, the latter for the subversion of regular Govt. wherever established. They offer’d fraternity to all subjects in insurrection, declared the Constitution of every Country entered by their Generals virtually done away, the lands of the Church, Crown, & Privileg’d Orders to be seiz’d to the profit of the Republic. They receiv’d the disaffected from all Countries, particularly from ours, and the President of the Convention trusted the time was not far distant when they should transmit addresses to a National Convention in Gt. Britain.30

The new political system of France, far from allaying his earlier misgivings about France’s expansionist tendencies, had greatly intensified them: to the ancient French desire for continental hegemony was added a new fanaticism, giving birth to what Castlereagh saw as a danger unparalleled in modern history. He believed that the traditional tendency of France to expand and the new ideological thrust of the Revolution had equally to be opposed. A Brief Interlude of Peace: Defending the Treaty of Amiens Six years later, Castlereagh sat as a member of the Addington Cabinet. As such, he was obliged to defend the Peace of Amiens – a short-lived interruption to the continuous warfare that otherwise raged between Britain and France from 1793 to 1814. Castlereagh was in Ireland when he first learned about a

30

‘Castlereagh’s notes for his speech of October 1795’, Durham County Record Office, D/Lo/F 418(16).

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possible peace with France, of which he heartily approved.31 In the subsequent debate at Westminster over the preliminaries of peace, Castlereagh argued that since Britain was without a continental ally, it could not expect to win the war. The British should therefore accept the proposed terms of peace: He considered the war to have been entered into, on the part of Great Britain, purely for the purpose of defence, and though, in all respects, it had not answered to our wishes, yet Great Britain had the honour of having acted, through the whole of this eventful contest, in the most disinterested manner: she had not only poured forth her blood and treasure in defence of her own independence, but had offered to Europe the means of preservation. From causes which it was unnecessary to state, the confederacy of powers upon the Continent was dissolved, and therefore it became necessary for Great Britain, either to carry on the war alone against France, or to make peace with that state, if it could be done upon terms consistent with our safety and independence. In deciding upon the question of the safety of this country by the peace, it would be vain to deny that France had attained a degree of power, which could not but create uneasiness in the mind of every thinking man. It was absurd to contend that Great Britain, with a navy all-powerful as it was, could affect France on the Continent, unless assisted by a confederacy of continental states; we were therefore under the necessity of continuing the contest, without the hope of making any serious impression upon France, or of concluding a peace upon fair and equitable terms.32

The proposed terms, he concluded, ‘were as favourable as we could look for in the present state of Europe’.33 In May 1802, the final treaty – which had been signed at Amiens in late March – was at last debated in the House of Commons. The British ministers were greatly embarrassed, however, by Bonaparte’s recent election as President of Italy. Castlereagh contended that the House should nonetheless accept the proposed terms of peace. He argued that the acceptability of the treaty was to be judged by two criteria alone: how far the treaty provided for British ‘security’, and whether greater security could be achieved by further prosecution of the war. Castlereagh acknowledged that Bonaparte’s assumption of direct rule over Italy presented grave risks, but he did not think this offered sufficient grounds for a renewal of the war; rather, he advised his countrymen to remain on their guard and to watch carefully to see if France renewed its earlier policies of aggrandizement. At the same time, he felt that British acceptance of the treaty would send a positive signal to the French of the British desire for peace: 31 32 33

‘Castlereagh to [Camden], Belfast 9th [1801]’, Centre for Kentish Studies (Maidstone), Pratt Mss., U840/C98/10. The Parliamentary History of England from the Earliest Period to 1803, xxxvi, debate of 3 November 1801, cols.54–5. Ibid., col.55. In the same debate, Lord Hawkesbury (the future Earl of Liverpool) told the House that ‘“the revolution was a torrent so dreadful and violent in its origin and progress” that no men could check it, but the British had at least rendered its effects less dangerous.’

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‘[i]f future encroachments were attempted by France, no doubt the House would be prepared to pledge themselves in support of administration, and both Parliament and the country would cordially combine in arresting the progress of such a spirit, that must prove dangerous to our security and subversive of the independence of Europe.’34 Castlereagh continued to view the contest with France in ideological as well as balance of power terms, explaining to the House that one of the chief purposes of the war had been to protect Britain against Jacobinism. Castlereagh hoped that conditions in France under Napoleon had so stabilized that the French no longer posed a revolutionary threat to neighboring countries: The grand object that we had in view, Sir, in that contest, in which for nine years we were engaged, was the attainment of general security; and to see how far we have succeeded, I cannot do better than to refer to the three leading points on which this security was to be founded. It was by the abolition of Jacobin principles, by the enemy being placed in that situation in which they could no longer hope, with the same prospect of success, to press them against this country, or by such an alteration in their application that they could not excite any feeling of formidable danger. Sir, will any man now say that the danger from French principles exists to the same extent as at the commencement of the war? Whatever opinions may be entertained of the nature of the present government of France, it cannot be denied, that no particular spirit of malignity is now shown to this country. We hear no more of those wild schemes of subverting our independence as a nation, which former governments of France were so forward to avow. The French now look to this country as a country enjoying the advantages of liberty, and as possessing a constitution which is worthy of being considered as the model of a free government. They feel for us all that deference and respect which it was usual to entertain under their ancient government. With reference to the second ground of security, I contend, that even supposing the French principles to exist in their full force, it is impossible to entertain the same hope of establishing them in this country. At the time the war broke out, their principles were not understood; they were apt to mislead, from their novelty; they had not produced in France those miseries and crimes which have now rendered them the just objects of universal execration. Now, their real character and tendency are notorious to the world; the people of this country have for nine years had an opportunity of contemplating the enormities to which they have given birth, and to turn from the view of such disasters to the blessings of a free constitution. It would therefore, Sir, be impossible now, if these principles remained, to propagate them with any prospect of success [. . .] I am indeed ready to say, that the influence which France has acquired is for the Continent highly disastrous, and that the state in which the balance of power is left in the general system of Europe is extremely unsatisfactory. France, if she chooses to neglect the internal improvement of her territories, may undoubtedly carry desolation 34

Parliamentary History of England to 1803, xxxvi, debate of 14 May 1802, col.783.

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over the Continent to a degree still more extensive. Whether she will, for the purpose of gratifying an inordinate lust of dominion, incur the imputation of leaving her own people the prey of barbarism, we have yet to discover; but at present the extension of her territories, as far as the safety of this country is involved, excites in my mind no degree of apprehension.35

In this speech, we see Castlereagh’s concern with ‘general security’ and his understanding of this security as encompassing both the defeat of revolutionary principles and the maintenance of a stable balance of power in Europe. A close reading of the documents presented above suggests that Castlereagh had a well-developed sense of Britain’s chief security demands – especially the need to keep Belgium out of French hands – as well as a determination to oppose revolutionary ‘contagion’ emanating from France. Conclusion This is not to say that Castlereagh’s views on the balance of power, the international system and the nature of security did not further evolve, especially after his arrival on the continent at the beginning of 1814. But these examples demonstrate plainly enough that Castlereagh, like the other diplomatic power brokers of 1814–15, was no tabula rasa. It would be hard to conceive of Castlereagh, with his longstanding concerns over the balance of power, the security of the Low Countries, and the spread of Jacobin ideology, not giving a high priority to these considerations in the negotiations of 1814–15. And this is exactly what he did, from the moment of his arrival at Langres in January 1814 until his departure from Vienna thirteen months later. How all of the diplomats interpreted each other’s statements and actions, as well as how they judged expressions of outside public opinion, was similarly based on cognitive structures that had already developed. Studies of political culture at the Congress should therefore include consideration of the political socialization and intellectual development of the key decision-makers. It should come as no surprise that after twenty years of war these diplomatic power brokers were obsessed with the hard-power capabilities of states. Much as they valued the creation of new forms of collective security, they continued to rely on territorial changes to weaken France and to strengthen their own states’ military capabilities. At the same time, they were highly aware of the soft-power ideological dimension in the struggle with revolutionary and Napoleonic France. This provided an extra incentive for developing new forms of counter-revolutionary collective security.

35

Ibid., cols.783–5.

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In negotiating the First Peace of Paris and subsequently at Vienna, hardpower concerns often seem to have predominated. The statesmen wanted to achieve those minimal territorial objectives they had identified in their preCongress plans: Castlereagh wanted to keep the Scheldt out of French hands, Metternich to establish Austrian supremacy in Italy and the German Confederation, the Tsar to control the Duchy of Warsaw, Hardenberg to annex all of Saxony, and Talleyrand to topple Murat from the throne of Naples. The endurance of the Vienna settlement was due in part to the allied powers’ frank recognition of these geopolitical hard-power concerns. Britain, Austria and Russia – the three leading victors and the largest powers at the time – each secured its own ‘sphere of influence’ in the 1814–15 negotiations. The creation of an international commission to govern commercial traffic on the Rhine, an international declaration against the slave trade, cooperation against the Barbary pirates, an agreement to sign treaties in alphabetical order, and even the decision to place the signatures of all the parties on a single copy of the Vienna Final Act were all impressive achievements and indications of a new spirit, but not as important to these diplomatic power brokers as the re-partition of Poland, the organization of the German states, the future control of Italy, and the strengthening of the Low Countries. Yet there was no Kierkegaardian ‘either/or’ at Vienna. The statesmen did not choose between limited territorial aggrandizement, a European balance of power (or, as Paul Schroeder would have it, a ‘just equilibrium’), and a new ‘security culture’. They pursued all three goals simultaneously. There was a discernible shift in spirit after the return of Napoleon during the Hundred Days (March–June 1815). The territorial settlement was now a fait accompli. Having reached agreements among themselves, the leading powers became focused on combatting the revolutionary threat inspired by Napoleon’s return. It is remarkable that in February 1815 the diplomatic power brokers could not agree on the terms for a general treaty of guarantee, safeguarding the new territorial settlement. In this limited sense, Castlereagh failed to fulfill Pitt‘s legacy and left Vienna empty-handed. But after the final episode with Napoleon, the allied statesmen readily agreed to a system of continuing cooperation in the Quadruple Alliance of November 1815, known to later historians as the ‘Congress system’. The new European ‘security culture’ was now firmly in place.

15

Economic Insecurity, ‘Securities’ and a European Security Culture after the Napoleonic Wars Glenda Sluga*

Security. Latin, securus, safe, quiet, free from anxiety; securitas, safety assurance, confidence [. . .] A bond, document, or other instrument giving the holder a title. (1) to a sum of money, or (2) to certain specified goods, or (3) to property in land or buildings.1

Introduction Was there a European security culture after the Napoleonic wars? In this chapter I approach this question in the context of the congresses organised by the coalition of Russia, Prussia, Sweden, Britain and Austria to negotiate and keep the peace – from the first congress in Vienna, 1814, to the last in Verona, 1822. I argue that the challenges of both political and economic insecurity taken up at congress sites of diplomacy provoked diplomatic debates and practices that resonated the double meanings of ‘security’: physical safety and economic assurance. When we skew our analysis of peacemaking to the emotional timbre of economic concerns in particular, this same history prompts a view of historical actors rarely included in Congress narratives or in conventional security stories.2 We do not have to look far for evidence of these economic themes and economic actors. They are a striking presence in the secret police reports produced for the Austrian state as it eagerly defended its foreign policy concerns and security in Vienna in 1814. At that time, imperial Austria was * My thanks to the editors of this volume for their careful reading and advice, to Roderic Campbell for his tireless assistance; and to the Australian Research Council for their generous funding of my research project on the origins of international society, and the history of peacemaking at the end of the Napoleonic wars. 1 R. Bithell, A Counting-House Dictionary, 2nd edn. (London: Routledge, n.d.), 274. 2 See B.A. de Graaf and C. Zwierlein, ‘Special issue: Security and conspiracy in history, 16th to 21st century’, Historical Social Research, 38:1 (2013); M. Schulz, ‘The construction of a culture of peace in post-Napoleonic Europe: peace through equilibrium, law and new forms of communicative interaction’, Journal of Modern European History, 13 (2015), 464–74. In a more contemporary context, M. Gariup, European Security Culture: Language, Theory, Policy (London: Taylor & Francis, 2017).

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already infamous for the ardour of its surveillance, although state surveillance was standard practice. In the Congress’ context, we have not only the extant evidence of letters intercepted in the thick of diplomatic negotiations, but also Austrian police reports from the spies who listened in on conversations, and from paid informants.3 The reports were written for Baron François Hager, the director of the Oberste Polizei und Censur Hofstelle, and passed on to the Emperor Francis I, an avid reader of what was their often peculiar combination of rumour and eyewitness. From the perspective of security history, these sources resound with the repertoire of Austrian security fixations – what the editors of this volume refer to as ‘the black box of threat products’ – including independent sexually powerful women, foreign bankers and Jews, each with an economic inflection. Through all the peacemaking congresses intended to remake Europe after decades of continental wars, economic concerns were explicitly and conceptually linked to questions of political security. If we think back to how uncertain the sources of power and influence were in this changing political and economic climate, it comes as less of a surprise that individuals as well as states were drawn to the Congress’ discussions or that they were similarly motivated by security imperatives. At this critical turning point in the invention of international politics, the threat of economic sabotage, described by Talleyrand as ‘another method of conducting war’, was insinuated everywhere.4 The climate of economic as well as political insecurity provoked Congress attendees – whether diplomats, or bankers, or aristocratic and bourgeois women – to go in search of income or negotiate rights.5 In 1818, the concept of economic security took a distinctive form, as diplomats turned to selling ‘securities’ – in this case, French sovereign debt – as a material means of securing a European peace. Then we have the example of the British entrepreneur Robert Owen, who warned the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle of the impending political threat posed by economic inequality, if the European powers did not address the accumulating economic evils of ‘misdirected scientific power’.6

3

4 5

6

See A. Fournier, Die Geheimpolizei auf dem Wiener Kongreß. Eine Auswahl aus ihren Papieren (Vienna: F. Tempsky, 1913); M.H. Weil, Les Dessous du Congrès de Vienna d’après les documents originaux des archives du ministère impérial et royal de l’intérieur à Vienna, 2 vols. (Paris: Payot, 1917), https://archive.org/stream/lesdessousducong01weiluoft/lesdessousducong 01weiluoft_djvu.txt (accessed 19 September 2017). ‘Siber à Hager, 10 février 1815’, in Weil, Les Dessous, vol.2, 178–9. I discuss the importance of bankers in this international history more fully in G. Sluga, ‘“Who hold the balance of the world?”: Bankers at the Congress of Vienna and in international history’, American Historical Review, 122:5 (December 2017): 1403–30. R. Owen, Manifesto of R. Owen, Appendix (London: Effingham Wilson, 1840), 41, https:// books.google.nl/books?id=9DdpvgAACAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_ r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false (accessed 19 September 2017).

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In what follows I survey the economic practices and thinking of state and ‘non-state’ actors in Congress settings as they sought to secure political and economic safety either for themselves, their states, or for a self-consciously ‘European’ society. As I show, this broadened framing of insecurity projects a longer history of the relevance of the defining themes of ‘human security’, with its privileging of the safety of the individual rather than the state, and security as freedom from fear and want. Although the term ‘human security’ originated in the late twentieth century, it offers a useful paradigm for historicising the early nineteenth-century invocations of the relevance of equal economic opportunity if a Europe-wide peace was to be secured.7 Insecurity In 1814, at the Congress of Vienna, security concerns were as likely to centre on the threat posed by independent women – whether because they were viewed as economically or sexually powerful, or vulnerable – as on the activities of state actors, or even the prospect of another war.8 Austrian secret police spies were important purveyors of this stereotype and one of their favourite scapegoats was the Russian Princess Catharine Bagration. At thirty-three years old and as a well-practised salonnière, Bagration was suspected of attempting to influence Austrian sovereigns and statesmen on behalf of Russian interests through her involvement ‘in political and amorous intrigues’.9 This was despite the fact that Bagration had lived intermittently in Vienna for nearly a decade, and her salon had wide appeal. In 1807, the Baltic-German Charles de Nesselrode wrote from Vienna to his father (also a Russian empire diplomat) that, of the many Russians in that town, he most often visited the ‘aimable’ Princess Bagration, whose house was the most lively.10 There he could meet statesmen from all over Europe, including the Austrians Count Stadion, Prince Lobkowitz, the Prince de Ligne, and a

7

8

9 10

See B.E. Vick, The Congress of Vienna: Power and Politics after Napoleon (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2014); and P.W. Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics, 1763–1848 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994). For more on the threat posed by women at the Congress, see G. Sluga, ‘Madame de Staël and the transformation of European politics, 1812–1817’, International History Review, 37:1 (2015), 142–66; G. Sluga,‘On the historical significance of the presence and absence of women from the Congress of Vienna, 1812–1822’, L’Homme, 25:2 (2014), 49–62; G. Sluga, ‘Women, Diplomacy, and International Politics before and after the Congress of Vienna’, in C. James and G. Sluga (eds.), Women, Diplomacy and International Politics since 1500 (London: Routledge, 2015). M.H. Weil, ‘Autour du Congrès de Vienne: la princesse Bagration, la duchesse de Sagan, et la police secrète de l’Autriche’, Revue de Paris, T.3, pts I–II (mai–juin), 1913. ‘Le comte Charles de Nesselrode à son père, Viènne, 27 mai 1807’, in C. de Nesselrode, Lettres et Papiers, vol.3 (Paris: A. Lahure, 1904), 180.

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‘second class’, namely local Jewish bankers.11 At the time, Bagration was known for influencing the ‘young and old’ who ‘gathered around [her] skirts’ and took up her anti-Napoleon message.12 By 1814, as Congress assembled, Bagration’s salon remained a draw for Russians, and there were few Congress statesmen and diplomats who were not inclined to join the gatherings in her apartments. For that same reason the extent of her power was also closely monitored by the spies of a government wary of Russia’s leadership at the Congress and its claims over neighbouring territories, including a resuscitated Poland. Secret police reports focused not just on the discussions that took place in her apartments or the connections being made there, but on the influence Bagration herself might wield over Russian policy, on behalf of her own interests and those of third parties. In assessing the risk of any individual, spies turned to the detail of private life, and Bagration gave them lots to fixate on. There was her history with the Austrian Foreign Minister Klemens von Metternich, a former lover who fathered her illegitimate daughter, Klementina. Then there was the fact that her apartments in the Palais Palm were only a short distance from the Austrian Chancellery, where Metternich worked, and next to those of another politically dubious aristocratic woman, the Baltic-born Duchess of Sagan.13 Like Bagration, Sagan was suspect because of her independence, her salon, and her complicated personal history with Metternich; at the Congress, Sagan was the object of Metternich’s persistent attentions. On the view of some observers, this made Metternich personally susceptible to Sagan’s influence and ulterior motives, even as Sagan was currying favour with the Tsar to help her gain custody of her own illegitimate daughter. Both women’s difficult relationships with Metternich and proximity to the Tsar reinforced rumours that they each practised ‘amorous intrigues’ ‘at the service of their political intrigues’. At a time when a woman’s independence could in, and of itself be suspect, in the context of the Congress, the widow Bagration’s and divorcée Sagan’s alleged ‘debauch’ fed accounts of their activities as ‘instruments in the service of politics’.14 The evidence for the women’s intriguing and its impact on Austria’s ambiguous status at the peace was not uncomplicated. In Bagration’s case, for example, there was the space of the salon – opulent and therefore wellattended – where it is clear that a kind of ‘influence politics’ beyond the intentions of Austrian statesmen was exerted through discussion.15 We know 11 12 13 14 15

Ibid., 175. V. du Bled, ‘La Societé russe: Les salons de Pétersbourg et de Moscou’, La Revue hebdomadaire, 49:4 (1905), 72–91, 80, 86. See Sluga, ‘On the historical significance’. ‘[xx] à Hager, Vienne, 2 janvier 1815’, in Weil, ‘Autour du Congrès de Vienne’, pt II.837. Vick, The Congress of Vienna, 7.

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too that some of Bagration’s guests tried to influence Tsar Alexander on Polish and other affairs.16 Spies also focused on the scope that Alexander’s nocturnal visits gave her to turn his opinion – they assumed he had venereal disease, which the Princess was curing with special lotions or cataplasmes and pansements.17 But it was Bagration’s need for money that was often the basis of allegations against her. The lavish entertainment that had given Bagration’s salon its reputation – as ‘le paradis de Mahomet ’ – had drained her resources to the extent that the Princess was thought to be on the verge of insolvency, and thus presumed to be for sale.18 Spies in turn reasoned that it was Bagration’s financial vulnerability that exposed her to the entreaties of foreign governments to spy on their behalf, and proved her willingness to deploy her feminine wiles against Austria.19 Bagration did indeed need money, and she sought it from a wide range of the bankers present – as did all the official delegates and representatives. Ironically, in her case, like that of Sagan, financial vulnerability accentuated representations of female sexual power. Early in the formal proceedings of the Congress, the ubiquitous informer known as ‘Nota’ could not resist adding in his reports: ‘This is not the first time that the intrigues of women have influenced the politics of States. That’s men for you!’20 The Austrian men who policed the Congress, and their spies, sniffed out economically-motivated sabotage on their own understanding that political influence might be exerted in informal and unpredictable ways. Similarly, bankers and their wives could attract the state’s attention because it was assumed that sabotage might be economic in method.21 One rumour disseminated through the secret police reports alleged the Tsar was paying a St Petersburg banker, M. Schwarz, to manipulate the rate of exchange through speculation. In this case, when the Danish delegation noticed Schwarz’s presence in Vienna with his wife (also reputed to be one of Tsar Alexander’s many mistresses) they tipped off the Austrians. The Danes believed that the previous year the Schwarzes had been paid by the Russians to attack the

16 17 18 19 20

21

Ibid., 283. ‘Rapport à Hager, Vienne, 2 octobre 1814’, in Weil, ‘Autour du Congrès de Vienne’, ptII.830. Cf. N. Rosenkrantz, Journal du Congrès de Vienne (Copenhagen: Gad, 1953), 72, 98, 105. Mme la Comtesse de Bassanville, Les Salons d’Autrefois: Souvenirs intimes (Paris: Victorion, 1862), T.II, 122. See, for example, the various reports to Hager, especially those of Nota, February–June 1815, cited in Weil, ‘Autour du Congrès de Vienne’, ptII.841–56. ‘Nota à Hager, Vienne 2 octobre 1814’, in Weil, ‘Autour du Congrès de Vienne’, ptI.614. In a similar vein, we might insist that Bagration was not the first or only woman relegated by historians to the margins of our understanding of the Congress, usually on the basis that intrigue, sex and emotion are invalid topics for political history. See the following, in Weil, Les Dessous, vol.2; ‘J. . .à Hager, 27 janvier, 1815’, 89–90; ‘Br. . .à Hager, 29 janvier, 1815’, 108–9; ‘Hager à l’Empereur, 30 janvier, 1815’, 106.

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Danish economy, and suspected that the Russians were planning a similar act of sabotage in Vienna.22 The Danish King had gone so far as to instruct his Chamberlain to cultivate Mme Schwarz at the Congress, ‘at whatever cost’. Spies for the Austrian government reported that the irresistible combination of the Chamberlain’s reputed ‘dashing figure’ and the expensive gifts he lavished on his mark enabled him ‘to pump [the banker’s wife] about Alexander’s conversation with her, the latter visiting her at least twice a week and possibly giving her secret missions’.23 Ultimately, a later report acknowledged that there was no evidence to prove the Russians had commissioned Schwarz to influence the exchange rate. Instead it was more likely that the French Foreign Minister Talleyrand had abetted the rumour of a Russian conspiracy in order to undermine the Tsar’s status with the other allies.24 That this rumour was enough to confirm Austrian suspicions of the Russian Tsar’s motive suggests both distrust of Russia and a pervasive susceptibility to economic anxiety. In 1814, with fiscal uncertainty thick in the postwar air, it was no coincidence that economic threats loomed. Only three years earlier, the Austrian government’s resort to ‘unconvertible paper money’ in place of the use of declining gold reserves had led to the collapse of imperial currency resulting in state bankruptcy, and, according to Austrian historians, ‘one of the most disastrous experiences of their own or their fathers’ [sic] lives’.25 (Russia had experienced a similar financial disaster in 1810.) In 1814, when the Austrian government decided to meet the expense of the visiting rulers by printing promissory notes on the guarantee of future rather than existing revenues, few could help but see a familiar destructive pattern. The largesse indulged in by the Austrian state and famously on show in the Congress’ governmentsponsored spectacles helped spread apprehension at ‘all levels of the Viennese public’ of debt and currency devaluation.26 Spies reported back to the police 22

23 24 25

26

In 1813, Danish currency went into dramatic decline against Swedish currency, thanks in part to its dependence on ‘courant bank notes’. See H. Lobell, ‘Foreign exchange rates 1804–1914’, in R. Edvinsson, T. Jacobson and D. Waldenström (eds.), Exchange Rates, Prices and Wages, 1277–2008 (Stockholm: Sveriges Riksbank, 2010), 295–96. H. Spiel, The Congress of Vienna: An Eyewitness Account (New York: Chilton Book Co., 1968), 272. See ‘Siber à Hager, 10 février 1815’, in Weil, Les Dessous, vol.2, 178–9. C.A. Macartney, ‘The Austrian Monarchy, 1792–1847’, in C.W. Crawley (ed.), War and Peace in an Age of Upheaval, vol.IX (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965), 401–2; Spiel, The Congress of Vienna, 276; E. Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution (London: Vintage, 1962), 95. Küster quoted in H. Spiel (trans. C. Shuttleworth), Fanny von Arnstein: A Daughter of the Enlightenment 1758–1818 (New York/Oxford: Berg, 1991), 24. On the expense of the congress, see ‘Talleyrand to Louis XVIII, Vienna 6 November, 1814’, in F. Freksa (trans. H. Hansen), A Peace Congress of Intrigue (Vienna, 1815) (New York: Century Co., 1919), 315. For more on the diversity of paper money, see J. Siegel, Modernity and Bourgeois Life: Society, Politics and Culture in England, France and Germany since 1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 273.

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‘the opinion that this paper money system must sooner or later come to an end, necessitating a second finance reform; that these armies are bound to utterly ruin our finances, our credit etc. etc!’.27 The mid-level Prussian diplomat Karl Varnhagen von Ense described the prevalent mood to his Berlinbased Jewish brother-in-law as ‘images of collapsing conditions and violent awakening forces’.28 Against this background, even ennobled Jewish bankers were familiar surveillance targets. As with women, existing prejudices made them particularly vulnerable.29 Austrian Jews were forbidden to intermarry, own land in the imperial dominions, take positions in the imperial administration, as lawyers or teachers, or higher posts in the army, or political office, and were forced to pay a special tax. Foreign Jews were particularly singled out and were only allowed to visit the Austrian empire for short periods. It was Austria’s reputation for anti-Semitism that had convinced the London, Paris and Frankfurt-based Rothschilds to not go to Vienna for the Congress, despite their official business there.30 As it turned out, local habits of surveillance at the Congress confirmed the Rothschilds’ suspicions – police spies reported on the local banker Herz, for example, as ‘the most unscrupulous of brokers,’ and under Metternich’s protection only because the Prince was literally in Herz’s debt.31 Some of the suspicion of local Jewish bankers was the result of their involvement in the Jewish question under discussion at the Congress. It was known that they were offering payments to sway members of the Congress’ German Committee deciding whether Jews in the German lands and towns formerly under French occupation, such as Frankfurt, could keep their shortlived rights. Prince Hardenberg (the Prussian Foreign Minister), Metternich and Gentz, all eagerly accepted the money and gifts.32 For all the accepted 27 28 29

30

31

32

‘Confidential Agent, 31 October 1814’, in Weil, Les Dessous, 7; Macartney, ‘The Austrian Monarchy’, 403. ‘Karl Varnhagen to Marcus Theodor, 20 January 1815’, in R.L. Varnhagen (ed. R.B.M. Barovero), Familienbriefe (Munich: Beck, 2009), 483–5. See ‘Hager à La Roze, Vienne 1 juillet 1814’, in Weil, Les Dessous, vol.1:11; Count E.C. Corti (trans. B. & B. Lunn), The Rise of the House of Rothschild (New York: J.J. Little and Ives Company, 1928), 172; Spiel, Fanny von Arnstein, 70. Corti, The Rise of the House of Rothschild, 167, 208. The Rothschilds, who had branches at this time in London, Paris and Frankfurt, provided the Coalition campaign with critical transnational financial services such as the delivery of subsidies, currencies, and information; at the Congress they preferred to pursue their business through proxies, see Sluga, ‘Who hold the balance of the world?’. Herz’s connections to the British government went back to late 1813, when he was among the contractors to win responsibility for the distribution and winding up of British subsidies to Austria in the aftermath of the Battle of Leipzig; Herz has been described as ‘a suave, easygoing person who was welcome at all aristocratic gambling tables’, Spiel, Fanny von Arnstein, 238. Herz and Simon von Lämel, an ennobled Prague-based banker, visited most of the peace delegates and functionaries on the relevant Committee, and the Congress Secretary, the obliging

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practice of paying for rights, there is some evidence that this tactic aroused discomfort because it reflected a growing Jewish influence on politics, and only more rarely because it undermined the diplomatic procedures in place. The Tsar, for example, was able to exploit that consternation to stop Prussia from siding with Austria, and against Russia, on the fate of Poland, by complaining to the Prussian King that Wilhelm von Humboldt (the key Prussian architect of the pro-Austria policy) had been ‘bribed by the Jews’ and, on those grounds, was not to be trusted.33 The irony was that even though the Prussian Foreign Minister had accepted gifts in return for support of Jewish rights, Humboldt, who like Hardenberg was a known supporter of those rights, had refused the money offered by the bankers on the grounds of not taking ‘private advantage for things which are done for the good of the whole’.34 Once again, a false accusation of fiscal mischief was put to useful strategic effect, although in this case it was the Tsar doing the manoeuvring, weakening Humboldt’s status in the Prussian court and shifting the Prussian position on Poland towards Russia’s own policy.35 Of course if we look at the history of Jewish bankers and Jewish rights at the congresses from the perspective of the individuals who advocated for Jewish rights, it can be read as an explicit example of non-state actors seeking to guarantee security (often of other Jews rather than themselves) through civil, political and economic rights. Jewish bankers were also able to leverage their accruing status as crucial sources of public credit and financial networks and information, to those same ends. When the well-paid Metternich and Hardenberg wrote to the local governments of Frankfurt and other towns to remind them that the Congress supported ‘general civil rights’ for Jews, they emphasised that the ‘Jewish houses’ provided ‘the system of credit and commerce of the various German states, which cannot escape the notice of the Congress’.36 Given that the networks of ennobled local Jewish bankers such as Baron von Arnstein and his brother-in-law Baron von Eskeles extended to the foreign potentates and diplomats who entrusted them with

33 34 35

36

Friedrich von Gentz; Spiel, Fanny von Arnstein, 302; M.J. Kohler, Jewish Rights at the Congresses of Vienna (1814–1815) and Aix-La-Chapelle (1818) (New York: American Jewish Committee, 1918), 14. See G.A. Craig, ‘Wilhelm von Humboldt as Diplomat’, in K. Bourne and D.C. Watt (eds.), Studies in International History (London: Longmans, 1967), 98. ‘Humboldt to Caroline Humboldt [letter], Vienna, 30 April 1815’, cited in Freksa, A Peace Congress of Intrigue, 204. When the Berlin-born sisters Fanny and Cecilia née Itzig, wives, respectively of the Viennese bankers Baron Nathan von Arnstein and Baron Bernhard von Eskeles, began to openly plead to ‘high-ranking personages’ in order to ‘influence opinion in favour of Prussia’, spies accused them of ‘scandalous’ behaviour. Original in French: ‘[xx] à Hager, Vienne, 18 December, 1814’ in Weil, Les Dessous, vol.1, 695; Spiel, Fanny von Arnstein, 284, 300. Kohler, Jewish Rights, 11, 12, 30.

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their finances and private correspondence, Austrian spies were as likely to regard them as reliable sources of information as political threats.37 The public who had access to the salons run by Arnstein’s and Eskeles’ wives, Fanny and Cecilia respectively, were also inclined to seek out the bankers for their opinions on the state of the economy and sources of financial security.38 Arnstein, whose home attracted a regular throng of Congress visitors thanks to Fanny’s extremely popular salon, would expound to those assembled on the folly of printing promissory notes and the parlous state of the Austrian economy. The Rothschilds, who had kept away from Vienna in 1814, were four years later at the Congress of Aix la Chapelle openly mingling with statesmen and diplomats; by Verona, they were covering the costs of the Congress and the Austrian Foreign Minister’s personal expenses.39 Insecurity and security were ineluctable pairings: even as the figure of ‘the Jew’ was perceived as enough of a threat in towns such as Frankfurt to provoke riots and inhibit any absolute resolution of the question of Jewish rights, the Rothschilds were able to use political networks developed at the Congresses of Aix-la-Chapelle, Laibach, Troppau and Verona, to expand their Prussian and Austrian government business, and to use their economic indispensibility to insist on Jewish rights. Securities Economic insecurity was an important motivation for the interest and engagement of individuals of the ‘second class’ and bourgeoisie in the political affairs under Congress negotiation, drawing them into the Arnstein salon, and in search of information more often privileged to bankers and statesmen. Here the story of Varnhagen’s wife Rahel, née Levin, at the Congress of Vienna is instructive. The daughter of a Berlin Jewish banking family, in the last decade of the eighteenth century Levin had run a modest intellectual salon from the unglamorous confines of a tiny mansard that drew many of the political elite who ended up at the Congress, including Humboldt and Gentz. After her parents’ death, she was left financially reliant on her brothers; as a lowly Prussian diplomat her husband Varnhagen was in no better financial circumstances.40 At the Congress of Vienna Levin’s personal circumstances

37

38 39 40

Arnstein and Eskeles were among the few Jewish bankers, along with their relative Salomon Herz, ennobled by Francis II – the last of the Holy Roman (Austrian) Emperors – for ‘zealous services rendered’. Spiel, Fanny von Arnstein, 24, 149, 287; D. Hertz, Jewish High Society in Old Regime Berlin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), 84. For more on the importance of the salon, see Vick, The Congress of Vienna. ‘Private Correspondence, Aix-la-Chapelle October 14’, The Times, 19 October 1818. H. Arendt, Rahel Varnhagen: The Life of a Jewess (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1997).

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inclined her to grab at economic opportunities.41 Although rarely noticed by the surveillance apparatus, Levin left an extensive Congress correspondence which featured the challenges of economic insecurity, and her keen sense of the imbricated psychological and economic consequences of peacemaking decisions. In 1814, the Jewish, forty-three-year-old Levin had converted to Christianity in order to be allowed to marry the much younger Varnhagen, and accompany him to the Congress. Housed in a one-room ‘bourgeois’ apartment, she occasionally entertained figures such as Eric Bollmann, a Philadelphia-based Hanoverian expatriate said to be representing the Baring banking house of London, but as likely to be networking in favour of his own business ventures and banking ideas.42 Although a hypochondriac, Levin occasionally ventured out to her old friends the Arnsteins and Eskeles, or a diplomatic dinner on the rare invitation from Humboldt or Gentz, who she also knew from their time on postings in Berlin. As the Vienna Congress continued into the new year of 1815, Levin attempted to consolidate her personal security by sending on to her brothers news she could garner from these networks of likely political decisions, or the local currency exchange rates and their impact on her limited Prussian income. In late March 1815, as Napoleon’s infamous escape from exile and return to Paris disrupted the Congress, Levin noticed that the Austrian exchange rate opened high in the morning and closed nearly 10 per cent lower, ‘where it is now’.43 At the same time, she was also taking advantage of insider information regarding the possible expansion of Prussian territory into Saxony, the Rhine, and Westphalia, and the fate of Poland.44 When rumours began to circulate that the peacemakers might make a decision in favour of a Russian version of a new Kingdom of Poland and at the expense of Austria’s Galician northern border region, the result was a mass dumping of Austrian paper money, or das Papier, which Levin reported to her brother Moritz: I don’t know what the exchange rate is, either das Papier has risen a little more, or it has stayed the same, the previous fall is apparently due to the opinion in Poland that they will cease to be Austrians, so they sold die Papiere à tout prix. It was the same in the provinces, as in Prague and other towns earlier, cheaper than here. Such positions and shocks will happen more frequently.45

41 42

43 44

‘Rahel and Moritz to Marcus Theodor, Berlin, 20 November 1814’, in Varnhagen, Familienbriefe, 456–7. Ibid. On Bollmann, see F. Redlich, ‘Eric Bollmann adventurer, businessman, and economic writer’, in N.a., Essays in American Economic History: Eric Bollmann and Studies in Banking (New York: G.E. Stechert, 1944). ‘Rahel to Marcus Theodor, Berlin, 30–31 March 1815’, in Varnhagen, Familienbriefe, 554–5. 45 Ibid. ‘Rahel to Moritz in Berlin, 8 February 1815’, in ibid., 501–2.

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For Levin, political information could be as useful as the occasional published currency reports for determining economic certainty and financial gain. When the Austrian Finance Minister Count Stadion told her about the establishment of a national bank, she passed on the knowledge to her brother, predicting that the national bank would remove the destabilising Papier from circulation, repair the fragile monetary system, and eventually raise the price of the paper money.46 By 1818, individuals such as Levin, on the margins of both economic and financial networks, had new means of exploiting the transformations taking place about them. The story of France’s war indemnity returns us to substantial ways in which the double meaning of security, as political safety and the idea of economic assurance, were important to the history of the new European order. The indemnity was the amount charged to the postwar French government by the victorious Allied governments for the cost of the war and the expense of the (ongoing) occupation of France, equivalent to 18 per cent of France’s national GDP. Historians have noted that the extent of the fiscal burden was akin to the reparations levied on Germany after World War I. But, unlike the situation a century later, which has often been blamed for the collapse of peace in Europe, the French were able to pay out their debt. Indeed, they did so within three years, by 1818. The result was an early end to the military occupation that fed a continuing rancour between the French population and the Allied forces. Key to the success of the indemnity payment was the transnational public loan organised with the assistance of the British government. As the French ran out of local credit sources, the London-based Barings contracted the loan for the outstanding debt.47 For the French government the sale of ‘securities’ effectively allowed Britain and the other allies to be reimbursed, and their territorial sovereignty restored. For our historical purposes, the methods of these loans link the Congress to the acceleration of the sovereign debt market sold as ‘securities’ or bonds in the interest of state-building. The details of the ‘indemnity loan’ that are relevant here include the political status that bankers of all religious stripes accrued in the process of devising the loan scheme, and the interest generated among a larger public in the fiscal promise of investment in sovereign debt – recognised by business historians as the origin of the international bond market. The first indemnity loan for 100 million francs was sold on by Barings in 1817 with great fanfare to an interested European public, and to the statesmen themselves who were equally

46 47

‘Rahel to Moritz and Ernestine, Berlin, Wien, 15–16 January 1815’, in ibid., 481. D.C.M. Platt, Foreign Finance in Continental Europe and the United States 1815–1870: Quantities, Origins, Functions, and Distribution (London/Boston: G. Allen & Unwin, 1984), 8–9.

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aware of the potential for personal gain.48 (Other bankers, including the Rothschilds, were given subcontracts for small fractions of the total loan.) The agreement also satisfied the statesmen of the so-called Holy Alliance, who were able to recall their occupation troops and, ultimately, along with other private speculators, recoup their investment. The French loans’ success helped convince European investors too that government-issued bonds were a good bet, to the extent of establishing a new vogue for these foreign bonds. By 1825, less propitiously, that same fashion created a sovereign debt bubble in Europe, wreaking considerable havoc on business, banks and private lives.49 These same economic developments eventually impacted on the security ambitions of the Alliance that constituted the broadened political agenda of peacemaking, namely the unprecedented address of humanitarian questions, and more specifically Greek independence. It is in the context of the transformation of the Greek question into a humanitarian cause that ‘securities’ of the sovereign debt kind also came to define, for some, the securitisation of European peace. In 1814, as Congress committees contemplated Jewish rights and the abolition of the slave trade, the fate of Orthodox Christian Greeks in the Ottoman empire was of less concern, even though it was a cause that some wanted on the Congress’ agenda. Amongst its supporters in Vienna were the prominent Russian (Corfu-born) diplomat Ioannes Capodistria – later the first president of an independent Greece – and others who were part of capodistria’s Congress circle, including Jean-Gabriel Eynard. A Genevan Protestant banker, Eynard was at the Congress of Vienna in the capacity of secretary for the Genevan delegation and as the representative of Marie-Louise, the Spanish Bourbon former Regent Queen of Etruria.50 Even as Capodistria and Eynard continued to agitate for recognition of the oppression of Greeks in the Ottoman 48

49 50

E.N. White, ‘Making the French pay: the costs and consequences of the Napoleonic reparations’, European Review of Economic History, 5:3 (2001), 337–65, 341; ‘James, 18 October 1817’, Rothschild Archives, XI/109/8/1/65. Metternich, Hardenberg, Charles Stewart (Castlereagh’s half-brother and British Ambassador to Vienna), and Russian diplomats Nesselrode and Pozzo di Borgo, also speculated on the rentes. N. Ferguson, The House of Rothschild (New York: Penguin, 2000), 153, 161; P.E. Austin, Baring Brothers and the Birth of Modern Finance (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2007), 14. See also Chapter 7 by De Graaf in this volume. See M. Flandreau and J.H. Flores, ‘Bonds and brands: foundations of sovereign debt markets, 1820–1830’, The Journal of Economic History, 69:3 (2009), 646–84, 646. W. St Clair, That Greece Might Still Be Free: The Philhellenes in the War of Independence (London/New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), 222; C.W. Crawley, The Question of Greek Independence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1930); A. de Watteville, Anna Eynard-Lullin et l’époque des congrès et des révolutions (Lausanne, 1955), 30; É. Chapuisat, Jean-Gabriel Eynard et son temps, 1775–1863 (Genève: A. Julien, 1952). Eynard knew Capodistria through the latter’s role as the Tsar’s emissary to Geneva, reporting to the Allies on the question of Swiss federation. C.M. Woodhouse, Capodistria: the Founder of Greek Independence (London/New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), 104. Capodistria had spent time in Geneva in the latter stages of the Napoleonic wars on a mission for the allies to consider the fate of Switzerland in the postwar.

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lands, it was only at the 1822 Verona Congress that the European allies explicitly addressed the Greek question, in response to the success of proGreek military incursions against the Ottoman government. Until then, the statesmen had resisted the Greek problem because it threatened to undo the ‘spirit of the alliance’ and ‘spirit of harmony’ pledged to by Britain, Prussia, Austria, and Russia, and in 1818, even a reconciled France.51 From the Russians’ perspective, the Greek question played into longstanding ambitions for southward expansion; on those same grounds, the Tsar was aware that any Russian intervention could be interpreted as a hostile act against the interest of the other Allies, particularly Austria and Britain, each of which had trading arrangements with Turkish rulers. As a result, even in 1822, the Tsar resisted the call to support their fellow Orthodox Greeks, insisting that the maintenance of the alliance was his priority. In the absence of state-level intervention, Eynard decided to take matters into his own hands. First, he established a network of philhellenic committees in France and Switzerland; second, he turned to the expanding sovereign debt market and its transnational possibilities as the means of financing Greek statebuilding aspirations.52 Eynard regularly travelled to Paris and London to meet with diplomats and statesmen he now knew well from the congresses, reaching out to Jewish and Christian bankers and financiers.53 Eynard, who thought of Greek independence as ‘la cause de l’humanité ’, was regularly to be found at the Paris Bourse in the company of ‘rich capitalists’ trying to alter facts on the ground by attracting investment in Greek independence.54 In 1825, he raised Greek bonds to the value of fifteen million francs through the French stock market.55 He was aware that investment in the Greek cause was not always considered a humanitarian or European imperative. Rather, ‘everyone played at lending to government because they believed they offered the best chances of gain’.56

51 52

53 54 55 56

‘Private Correspondence, Aix-la-Chapelle’, The Times, 16 October 1818. The most comprehensive account of these bonds is M.C. Chatziioannou, ‘War, crisis and sovereign loans: the Greek War of Independence and British economic expansion in the 1820s’, The Historical Review, Institute of Historical Research/NHRF, 10 (2013), 33–56. See also Woodhouse, Capodistria, 346, 392; ‘Copie des lettres de Mme Eynard pendant son séjour en Angleterre, Londres, ce 12 juillet 1827’, Bibliothèque de Genève, PE, Ms Suppl 1961, f.3; D. Barau, ‘La mobilisation des philhellènes en faveur de la Grèce, 1821–1829’, in L. Cambrézy and V. Lassailly-Jacob (eds), Populations réfugiées: de l’exil au retour (Paris: Institut de recherche pour le développement, 2001), 47. M. Jarrett, The Congress of Vienna and Its Legacy: War and Great Power Diplomacy after Napoleon (London/New York: I.B. Tauris, 2013), 336–7. ‘Paris, 13 avril à 11 heures (soir) cf. note Paris, 3 février 1825’, PE, Ms Suppl 1871, f.7. ‘Paris, 5 février 1825’, PE, Ms Suppl 1871, f.17, letter 3. For more on this history see, Sluga, “Who hold the balance of the world?”; ‘Paris, 23 mars 1825’, PE, Ms Suppl 1871, f.157–8, my translation; Chapuisat, Jean-Gabriel Eynard, 118.

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Eynard’s activities as a ‘non-state actor’ – resorting to speculation for a political cause that was being fought through military means – points to the variety of ways in which security questions were tackled in this period. It was not only what statesmen or congresses agreed that mattered; their decisions could be influenced by factors beyond the diplomatic meeting table or ministerial cabinet. Of course, a similar insight about the informal forms of influence had fed anxious representations of women’s independence and sexual power, and, at times, of Jews’ monetary suasion, and even of the statesmen who might succumb – and builds a picture of Austria as a paranoid security state, in which everyone was potentially suspect. This was the same context, too, in which Christian and Jewish bankers assumed important roles in constituting the world of diplomacy and politics, knitting together security questions and the Congress’ peacemaking agenda. Or as Eynard put it, rendering the financial position of Europe ‘an obligation of peace’.57 Prosperity and Peace As events unfolded, the climate of insecurity and suspicion confirmed most of the anxieties that we can read in between the lines of the secret reports, more explicitly in personal correspondence, and in newspaper records and documentary publications from the period. Economic security, presented in the language of prosperity and peace, was an important intellectual theme in the conceptualisation of Europe-wide security at the end of the Napoleonic wars. At various points, the influence of economic policies on politics was brought to the attention of congress statesmen in policy forms. It was not only Eynard who linked Europe’s prosperity with the capacity for peace. When Baron von Arnstein expounded to a keen audience in Vienna on the prospects for Europe’s future, his recipe for economic security was a ‘return to peaceful conditions that do away with the fear of war, a reduction in the armed forces’.58 The banker also advised his audiences that if Austria recalled the promissory notes, it would ‘without recourse to any other financial manipulations, greatly improve the monetary situation and bring back prosperity’. On Arnstein’s view, peace was a prerequisite for economic security, and economic conditions had a critical influence on the possibilities for peace. These same themes reverberated in contemporary texts such as the French liberal thinker Benjamin Constant’s Spirit of Conquest and Usurpation (1814), which aimed to bring to the attention of peacemakers the primacy of European

57 58

‘Notes écrits à Paris du 15 avril 1822 à 12 juin 1822’, Paris, 23 March 1825’, PE, Ms Suppl 1871 f.123; Chapuisat, Jean-Gabriel Eynard, 200. Spiel, Fanny von Arnstein, 24.

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security through the formula of commerce, trade and peace. Some peacemakers were already convinced of the relevance of economic policies to the new Europe. As Chair of the Navigation of Rivers Committee, in Vienna in 1814, Wilhelm von Humboldt made the equation of commerce, trade and peace the rationale for his vision of the future of the Rhine river, and for extending ‘the Rhine’s provisions to other rivers, which, in their navigable course, separate or traverse different states’. Under Humboldt’s influence, the committee contemplated an international waterway that would function to regulate the duties ‘to be raised by the states bordering on the Rhine’, ‘in the mode the most impartial, and the most favorable to the commerce of all nations’. For Humboldt, this was an opportunity to invent institutions and structures that would complement principles ‘so general’ that the free movement of commerce would not ‘be affected by local diverse circumstances, or by war’. The point of the waterways, he argued to his fellow committee members, was that they would actually foster security by facilitating ‘communications between nations [. . .] to render them less strangers to each other’.59 In 1818, Robert Owen personally delivered two memorials to the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle which insisted on the threat posed by economic circumstances, if they were not managed appropriately. Owen arrived at Aix-laChapelle not with the reputation of ‘Utopian Socialist’, as we identify him now, but as the manager and owner of New Lanark cotton mill town development, near Glasgow, where he had put into practice his ideals of communitarian living. He had travelled via Frankfurt bearing a letter of introduction from the London Rothschilds and a brash confidence in the appeal of his ideas. He had good reason, given that the Tsar’s brother, the Russian Grand Duke Nicholas, had visited New Lanark, and the Tsar’s sister, Grand Duchess Catherine, had expressed interest in transporting the New Lanark model to a Russian context. In 1818, in the company of bankers and diplomats discussing the sudden crisis in the payout of the French indemnity, Owen put forward his ideas. He claimed to have spent thirty years studying and practising ‘political economy’, and declared his desire to share his knowledge with ‘those who govern the civilized world and to the public’, and without prejudice against ‘any class, sect, party, or country’.60 Informed by his practical experience of industrialisation in the British factory system, Owen’s memorials stated that ‘the overwhelming effects of 59

60

‘Baron Humboldt’s Project for the Regulation of the Congress, Vienna, September 1814’, in Great Britain Foreign Office, Peace Handbooks, no.153, (London: H.M. Stationery Office, 1920), Appendix IV. To these ends, Humboldt imagined a policing force and a centralising commission akin to diplomatic agents negotiating complaints and acting in concert to reinforce the aims of free navigation. On Saint Simon at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, see ‘Private Correspondent’, The Times, 26 October 1818. See also The Times, 19 October 1818.

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new scientific power’ – the steam engine and the factory system – were diminishing the exchangeable value of manual labour as the source of individual wealth. Drawing on the forecasting made possible by the new science of statistics, Owen described a European future in which everyone’s wants could be satisfied, but if the existing system of distribution were maintained only one person out of every thousand would benefit.61 In what he understood to be a new industrial age of capital generation, the challenge, he maintained, was not ‘how a sufficiency of wealth for all may be produced’, but ‘how the excess of riches . . . may be generally distributed throughout society advantageously for all ranks without prematurely disturbing the existing institutions in any country’.62 If the changing circumstances of labour and production were not managed, he warned, they would result in premature upheaval and violence.63 Evoking Europe and its Christian virtues, Owen insisted that the ideal of recurring diplomatic reunions offered a unique opportunity ‘to establish a permanent system of peace, conservation and charity in its true sense throughout Christendom and effectually to supersede the system of war and of almost every evil arising from uncharitable notions among men, produced solely by the circumstances of birth’.64 Another antidote, on Owen’s view, lay in a concerted effort to address inequality through education ‘to esteem, to love, and to aid each other’.65 He invited the Congress to create a commission that would come to New Lanark to study how that education worked there, and to take from that example the kinds of multilateral intervention that would foster a more communitarian European consciousness and ward off future revolution. The London Times was impressed enough to reproduce the ‘memorials’ addressed ‘to the Governments of Europe and America’, on behalf of the working classes, describing them as a ‘new plan for the regeneration of the world’. Owen’s assessment of the implications of industrial modernity for the economic future, and the promise of the Congress system for addressing what he called ‘the grand question’ of economic inequality, was hatched across the manoeuvring of diplomatic meetings and outcomes.66 There is no evidence that any statesman or diplomat at Aix-la-Chapelle took Owen seriously. For our purposes, however, Owen’s message was significant because it rehearsed 61 62

63 64 65 66

A.T. Volwiler, ‘Robert Owen and the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1818’, Scottish Historical Review, 19:74 (1922), 96–105. ‘R. Owen, Memorandum, Aix-la-Chapelle, 21 October 1818’, in his, Manifesto of R. Owen, Appendix, 35. Between 1818 and 1858, the memoranda were printed five times in five different forms in London alone. ‘Memorandum Aix-la-Chapelle October 22’, cited by ‘Private Correspondent, 26 October 1818’, The Times. ‘R. Owen, Memorandum, Aix-la-Chapelle 22 October 1818’. Owen, Memorandum, Frankfurt 20 September 1818’. On Owen, see The Times, 19 October 1818.

304

Agents and Practices

an economic vision of security – the threat of economic inequality to peace – that was revisited at moments of multilateral peacemaking, and global crisis, through the twentieth century. We need only think of the establishment of the International Labour Organization in 1919; or rationales for the United Nations’ technical assistance program in the mid-1940s; the impetus for a New International Economic Order in 1975; and the post-Cold War concept of Human Security.67 Owen’s memorials fit into a genealogy of not just ‘Utopian Socialism’, but also the idea that multilateral, even international, addressing of economic inequality was the key to permanent peace. Conclusion Once we start to unpack the concept of a security culture, probing the layers of significance which gave security meaning in the decade of the Congress, we find a more capacious definition in use. As I have tried to show, in the early nineteenth century, in the context of the historically-specific threats that economic and political change posed to the modus vivendi of individuals and states, a European security culture was built from economic insecurities, and invocations of conventional stereotypes of alterity – the independent woman, the Jewish financier, the foreign banker. A history of the importance of insecurity in the constitution of a European security culture also expands our understanding of the transformation of European politics taking place: the new circumstances of shifting industrialisation and class relations, the reinvention of gender and religious difference, and the new fiscal possibilities for state-building and peacemaking. It even points to the possibility that the historiography of the Congress has some responsibility for the shift away from the individual as the focus of security-thinking, to the privileging of the state, that took place in the early nineteenth century, and where security has been focused ever since.68 Against these structural transformations, we can set the efforts of Europeans, male and female, Jewish and Christian, state and non-state actors, to clutch at opportunities in the processes of peacemaking and reconstruction for securing their individual safety. We can hardly claim that their interventions were always successful, or even under their control. They occurred in the context of the determinism of not only money, but of cultural norms that influenced the perception of threats; the counterpoint to the promise of Jewish rights, and success of Jewish bankers in this story, was the escalation in anti-Semitic riots in the German towns that disrupted the peace of local communities, and threatened the safety of Jews. 67 68

G. Sluga, ‘Anfänge und Ende(n) der Weltordnung’, Geschichtskolumne Merkur, 816 (2017), 72–81. See E. Rothschild, ‘What is security?’, Daedalus, 124:3 (1995), 53–98.

Economic Insecurity, ‘Securities’ and a European Security Culture

305

This was the context in which Jewish and some Christian bankers persisted with the requests for the rights that could offer Jews a specific guarantee for their personal economic and political security. For all her networks and contacts, Levin, a Jewish woman who had converted to Christianity, continued to exist on the precarious margins of economic and social respectability thanks to the combined impact of her legal status as a woman, and her ineluctable Jewishness in the eyes of men such as Humboldt.69 In practice, too, Eynard’s financial support of the Greek cause through the sale of securities inevitably provided logistical support for military operations against the Ottoman government, making it difficult to reconcile a commitment to peace and the security of Christian Greeks through independence from Ottoman rule. Pursued in this manner, the Eastern Question brought the multilateral security thinking of the so-called Concert of Europe onto the side of state-building, and fostered war.70 What I have tried to highlight in this history of economic insecurity is the extent to which security questions were understood to involve more than the physical determination of borders. We can hear in the emphasis on multilateral agreement and action, on the significance of economic prosperity and opportunity, and even inequality, the echoes not only of liberal internationalism, but of the late-twentieth century motifs of ‘Human Security’, freedom from fear and want. Despite the relatively neglected status of these motifs, when we read them back into a longue durée intellectual history, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that this strand of Congress history was as woven into the security culture of the early nineteenth century as ‘balance of power’ doctrines, or the innovation of congressing itself.

69

70

For all his support of Jewish rights, Humboldt, who she knew well, reacted negatively to the ‘mixed’ marriage, and the idea that it might earn Rahel normative status as ‘eine Gesandtenfrau und Exzellenz’, P.R. Sweet, Wilhelm von Humboldt: A Biography, vol.II (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1980), 207–8. ‘Paris 16 mars 1825’, PE, Ms Suppl 1871, f.104; M. Flandreau and J.H. Flores, ‘The peaceful conspiracy: bond markets and international relations during the Pax Britannica’, International Organization, 66:2 (2012), 211–41; Chapuisat, Jean-Gabriel Eynard, 122. Things did not turn out too well for investors either. Eynard’s Greek loan, like others issued at this time, ended up on a long list of public loans issued for aspiring or newly independent (post-colonial) states through this period, including Columbia, Mexico, Peru, and Central America, all of which lost money for their investors, and threatened the same European political stability that he believed in as an ‘obligation’. C.P. Kindleberger, A Financial History of Western Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 221; St Clair, That Greece Might Still Be Free, 222; Ferguson, House of Rothschild, 132.

Index

A’Court, William, 237 abolition of the slave trade, 12, 14, 114–29, 195, 201, 236–48, 287, 299 in Britain, 116, 123, 127, 242, 247 in Spain, 117–18, 237 Vienna declaration on the [1815], 115, 117, 120, 125, 127 Abulafia, David, 234 Adelfi, 183 Agha, Omar, Dey of Algiers, 232, 235, 241, 243–5 Alexander I, Tsar of Russia, 11, 66, 95–111, 119, 121–2, 127, 132, 135, 145–7, 176, 236, 259, 261, 265, 268, 274, 279, 291–3 Algiers, 231, 235, 237, 240, 243–5 ‘Bona massacre’, May 1816, 245 (Barbary) Regency of, 127, 232–6, 242 bombardment of (August 1816), 122, 127, 231–4, 242, 246–8 corsairs of, 120 Dutch expedition to 1815, 242 French occupation of, 129, 234, 247 Ali Pasha (of Ioannina), 253 Allies, Allied Central Administration, 134 Conference, 12, 140, 143–6, 148 machine, 134 occupation army, 135–7 occupation of France, 130 power(s), 12, 23, 64, 87, 96–102, 134–7, 157, 191, 275, 278, 287 ambassadorial conference, 11, 26, 114, 118–20, 124, 146–8, 225, 253, 262, 269 Allied council of Ambassadors (or Allied council of Ministers, Ministerial conference), 48, 131, 134–9, 146–8 in London [1816–1823], 6, 12, 46, 115, 118–29, 247 in Paris [1815–1818], 23, 114–16, 136–42, 146 in Rome [1831], 226–7 Amis de la Patrie, Les, 175

306

Amsterdam, 89, 145, 258 Board of Levantine Trade, 234 ancien régime, 16, 57–9, 105, 130, 138, 165, 172, 185 Ancillon, Johann Friedrich, 64 Ancona, French occupation of (1832–8), 218, 227–9 Andryane, Alexandre, 183–8 Anglo-Dutch expedition. See Algiers, bombardment of Angoulême, Louis-Antoine d’Artois, Duke of, 218 Antwerp, 79, 89, 273, 282 arbitration, 8, 15, 32, 263 border, 181, 305 Arnstein, Baron Nathan Adam von, 295–7, 301 Arnstein, Baroness Fanny von (née Itzig), 296 assassination (attempt), 190, 194, 199–200, 210–11 Austria, 25, 30, 33, 41, 47–9, 89, 99, 104, 119–21, 160, 165, 174–5, 178, 192, 201–8, 214–19, 223–30, 251–4, 256–61, 264, 288–98 Austrian Netherlands, 78, 188 Baden, 90–2, 162, 201, 220 Bagration, Princess Catharine, 290–2 balance of power, 4, 28, 42, 54, 56, 63–5, 88, 93, 97, 101, 106, 111, 127, 141, 160, 274, 281, 285, 305 definitions of, 98 discussion on, 54, 102, 108, 131–4, 154, 163, 266, 282 older conceptions of, 47, 57, 95 Balkans, 27, 253 bankers, 16, 176, 288–305 banking. See financial instruments Banti, Alberto Mario, 216 Barbary corsairs. See corsairs Baring Brothers (Bank), 145, 297–8 Basel, 24, 134, 208 Bathurst, Henry, Earl of, 138

Index Bavaria, 24, 153, 160–4, 201–4, 220 Belgium, 28, 87, 102, 128, 166, 204, 210, 276, 282, 286 Belgian Question, 45 Belissa, Marc, 60 belligerent rights, 243 Bellio, Constantin Stefan (Belu), 254–6 Bentham, Jeremy, 132 Beobachtungs-Anstalt in Milan, 185 Berckheim, Karl Christian, Baron von, 92 Berlin, 104, 182, 185, 191, 226, 296–7 Bern, 24, 205 Bernadotte, Jean, King of Sweden (Charles XIV), 138 Berry, Charles Ferdinand d’Artois, Duke of, 175, 181, 199 Binder, Franz, Freiherr von Krieglstein, 189 Bismarck, Otto von, 52–3, 152 Black Sea, 89 Blanc, Louis Jean Joseph Charles, 176 Blücher, Gebhard Leberecht von, 138, 145 Bologna, 183 bomb vessel, 242 Bonald, Louis Gabriel Ambroise, Viscount de, 56, 66, 71 Bonaparte, Louis Napoleon. See Napoleon Bonaparte Bonapartism, Bonapartists, 15, 140, 146, 175, 188, 195 Bouvet, Francisque, 151 boyars, 262–6, 270 Brașov. See Kronstadt Brazil, 117 Bremen, 121–3, 237 Brice, Joseph-Nicolas, 190 Britain or Great Britain, or United Kingdom, 16, 27, 31–4, 40, 42, 47–53, 79, 90, 97–103, 108, 111–12, 116–29, 144, 156, 161, 175, 199–200, 204, 207, 210, 218–19, 227–30, 236–9, 241–8, 273–7, 281–6, 288, 298 British State Paper, 50 Brougham, Henry, 244 Brussels, 139–42, 188, 190, 208 Bucharest, 15, 251–70 Bukovina, 263 Bunsen, Baron Christian Charles Josias von, 226–7 Bunsen, Baroness Frances (née Waddington), 226 Burke, Edmund, 60 Burschenschaften, 175, 183, 195, 201 Cabinet Noir, 185 Calderari, 176, 181, 183

307 Callimachi, Scarlat, 256 Cambrai, 141 Capellen, Admiral Theodorus Frederik van, 127, 232 Capodistria, Ioannes Antonios, Count, 105, 136, 260, 299 Carabinieri Pontifici. See forza politica Caradja, John George, 254–61, 264, 268 Carbonari, 173–6, 179–84 Carlsbad Decrees, 175, 199–200 Carnot, Count Lazare Nicolas Marguerite, 188, 191 Castlereagh, Henry Robert Stewart, Viscount, 7, 15, 40, 43, 48–51, 54, 87, 105, 115, 117–23, 130–4, 138, 141, 145–8, 157–9, 237–8, 241–5, 272–87 Catholicism, 70, 221 in Prussia, 156, 220–2 recusants in England, 221, 229 recusants in Scotland, 221 Russian persecution of, See Nicholas I significance for European rulers, 57, 66, 223 Cato Street Conspiracy [1820], 199 Cavendish-Bentinck, Lord William Henry, 174, 216 Cecil, Robert, 53 censorship, 96, 140, 175, 200–2, 206–9, 217 Central Commission for the Navigation of the Rhine (CCNR). See Rhine Central Investigating Agency (Frankfurt), 203 Central Investigating Commission (Mainz), 185–7, 205 Central Octroi Administration (Mainz), 82–7 Chamberlain, Austen, 40 Chambre Introuvable, 139, 143 charbonniers. See Carbonari Charles X, King of France, 138 Chateaubriand, Francois-René, Viscount de, 61–2, 69 Chévaliers de la liberté, Les, 175 China, 5, 26, 33–4, 38 Christian ‘slavery’, 125, 211, 232–4, 242–7 Christianity, 61, 66, 106, 297, 305 Clancarty, Richard le Poer Trench, Earl of, 83–6, 89 Clarkson, Thomas, 127 Clausewitz, Carl von, 135 cognitive map, 279–80 Cold War, 35–8, 43 paradoxes of, 272 post-, 37, 272, 304 Cologne, 82–3, 90, 144 colonisation, colonies, 23, 31, 232, 253

308

Index

commerce, 67, 79–93, 121, 125–6, 236, 241, 247, 281, 295, 302 communication, 45, 50, 77, 81, 84–6, 119, 173, 177–9, 183–7, 194, 198, 205, 253–6, 265, 267, 302 culture, 23, 37 network, 256, 269 Concert of Europe, 3, 9, 18, 24–6, 110, 128, 199, 212, 305 discussion on, 29 Concert of Powers, 252 Concistoriali, 183 Concordat [1801], 220 Conference of Berlin [1885], 28 Conference of Carlsbad [1819], 200 Conference of Dresden [1851], 207 Conference of Monaco [1914], 211 Conference of Rome [1898], 211 Conference of St Petersburg [1904], 211 Conference of Vienna [1923], 212 conference(s) of ambassadors. See ambassadorial conference ‘cultural practices’ within, 26, 44 disputes on, 32–9, 76–84 forms of, 53, 75, 119, 198, 208–9 Congress Commission for the Freedom of River Navigation, 83 Congress of Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle) [1818], 44, 123, 126, 143, 146, 149, 200, 289, 296, 302 Congress of Berlin [1878], 28 Congress of Laibach (Ljubljana) [1821], 44, 49, 114, 262, 296 Congress of Troppau (Opava) [1819], 44, 49, 114, 200, 296 Congress of Verona [1822], 44, 49, 114, 128, 201, 262, 270, 288, 296, 300 Congress of Vienna [1814–15], 67, 85, 120–1, 155, 199, 217, 232, 290 Final Act of, 84, 92, 102, 104, 112, 117, 120, 157, 159, 193, 231 innovations at, 22, 44, 53, 77, 110, 115, 118, 213 picnic at the Augarten, 236, 246 system established at, 23, 40, 59, 70, 95, 97, 127, 137, 150, 160, 193, 212, 214, 234, 246 territorial settlements, 103, 220 Congress system, 3, 47, 69, 76, 102–3, 108–13, 208, 278, 287, 303 Consalvi, Cardinal Ercole, 121, 222 conservatism, conservative(s), 9, 57–61, 68, 70, 106, 218, 223–5 conspiracy, conspiracies, 13, 145, 171–92, 195, 199–200, 212, 293

Constant de Rebecque, Henri-Benjamin, 301 Constantinople. See Istanbul Constitution of Cadiz [1812], 174 constructivism, 271 contact zone, 253–4, 267–70 Continental System, 82, 103 Convention of Akkerman, 265 Copenhagen, 208, 242 Copenhagen School, 49–50 corruption, 57–9, 71, 80, 110, 189 corsairs, 7, 115–16, 120–9, 235–40, 247 Corsini, Prince of Tuscany, 237 counter revolution, 12, 28, 44–50, 56, 59, 62, 68–70, 106, 116, 128–9, 171–6, 184, 187, 191, 218, 223, 262, 286–7 Cousin, Victor, 186 crime cross-border, 193–207, 212 international, 193–8, 208, 211–12 political, 195, 201–3 Crimean War, 28, 55, 102 Crucquembourg, Henri de Fourneau, Count of, 190 Cugnet, Claude-François, 176 Czartoryski, Prince Adam Jerzy, 109, 275, 279 Czernowitz, 263 Dalberg, Emmerich Joseph, Duke of, 91 Danube, 89, 257 Danubian principalities, 15, 251–63, 270 David, Jacques-Louis, 188 decennio francese, 216 Delavau, Guy, 178 democracy, 22, 34, 39, 54 Denmark, 26, 89, 141, 161, 204, 219 despotism, 60, 65, 257 deterrence, deterrent(s), 21–3, 36–8, 104, 113, 144, 206 Deutsche Bundesakte. See German Federal Act Deutscher Bund. See German Confederation Deutscher Zollverein. See German Customs Union Dickens, Charles, 214 diplomacy bilateral, 3, 76, 124, 127 classical, 4 cooperative, 4 discourse, 30 eighteenth-century characteristics of, 111 face-to-face, 7, 10, 114, 119–20, 125 imperial, 28 innovations in, 30 multilateral, 102, 116, 128 new protocols for, 25, 97

Index summit, 123 traditional, 3, 103, 276 diplomatic activity agreements arising from, 47, 118 banking practice and, 296 changing aspects of, 1, 9, 116 international meetings for, 11, 15, 96, 119, 148, 303 women’s influence on, 289–92 diplomats networks of, 6, 57, 296 dispute settlement, 33, 38 Dresden, 100, 208 Duplay, Simon Emmanuel, 187 Dupuis, Charles, 152 Eastern Question, 15, 107, 166, 251–3, 267, 305 economic sabotage, 289, 292 Eichhoff, Johann Joseph, 87 Elbe, 2, 89, 159 émigrés, 16, 59, 153, 175, 210 Emsley, Clive, 171 Encyclopædia Britannica, 134 England. See Britain or Great Britain, or United Kingdom Enlightenment, moderate, 107 Épingle noire, 175 equilibrium, political. See balance of power Eskeles, Bernhard von, Baron, 295 Esterhazy, Prince Paul Anton, 125 Europe, European Christian, 57–9, 62, 66, 107, 240 cooperation, 67, 75, 233 expeditions to Syria and Lebanon, 5 reconstruction of, 48, 65, 70, 150, 155–8, 274, 304 security culture, 36, 45–53 settlement of, 275 strength of Catholicism in, 57, 61, 106, 219–20 exchange rate movements, 293, 297 Exmouth, Admiral Sir Edward Pellew, Baron of, 121, 127, 232, 243–6 extradition, extradition treaties, 10, 188–9, 196–8, 205, 209–11 Eynard, Anna (née Lullin), 299 Eynard, Jean-Gabriel, 299–301, 305 Fagel, Hendrik, 240–1 Falck, Anton Reinhard, 189 Federati, 183 federative nation, 150–1 Ferdinand I, King of Naples, 128, 174 Ferdinand VII, King of Spain, 174, 275 Ferrero, Guglielmo, 171

309 financial conditions bankruptcy and, 293 control of, 137 effects of, 30, 146, 251 internationalization of, 67, 145 loans and, 145, 298 market activity and, 77, 80, 256 opportunities created by, 290, 305 peace dependent on, 88 reform of, 294 speculation and, 292, 299 financial instruments bonds, 104, 144, 240, 298–300 debt, 30, 87, 142–6, 294, 298 indemnity payments and, 298 loans and, 292 money market movements and, 22, 77, 300 rentes and, 299 securities, 143, 145 sovereign debt and, 289, 298–300 speculation and, 292, 299 Finland, 109, 239 First World War. See World War I fortification(s), 136–7, 141, 148, 246 forza politica, 185 Fouché, Joseph, 189 Fox, Charles James, 221 France, French Empire, 96, 99, 103–4 occupation of, 12, 23, 114, 120, 126, 130–7, 141, 298 post-Napoleonic, 40 Revolution [1789], 26, 46, 57, 60, 78, 81, 86, 105, 171, 182, 194, 276, 281 revolutionary, 23, 60, 78, 282 transformation of, 24, 57, 90, 109, 137, 146 Franchet d’Esperey, François, 178, 187 Frankfurter Wachensturm [1833], 202 Frantz, Konstantin, 52 Franz I, Emperor of Austria, 121, 228 Frederik VI, King of Denmark, 236 free navigation, principle of, 76–94 Freemasonry, 190 Fremantle, Admiral Sir Thomas, 127 Friedrich Wilhelm III, King of Prussia, 7, 100, 147, 175, 236, 279 Gagarin, Prince Grigorii Ivanovich, 226 Gagern, Freiherr Hans Christoph von, 1 Gallie, Walter Bryce, 46 General Directorate of Police Paris, 179–88 Geneva, 24, 34 Genoa, 239, 278 Gentz, Friedrich von, 15, 45, 54, 57, 64, 68, 70, 133, 251–70, 279–80, 294–7

310

Index

George III, King of the United Kingdom, of Great Britain and of Ireland, 220 German Confederation, 12, 24, 41, 67, 125, 133, 150–67, 193–213, 218, 220, 226, 287 (Federal) Diet of the, 205 Art. 13 (estate-based constitutions), 162, 165 Art. 19 (trade, traffic, customs), 162, 165 Federal Act [8 June 1815], 159, 161–2, 165 hybrid nature and collective State, 163 Military Constitution of the German Confederation [1821–1822], 151 Plenum of the Diet, 163 Special Council, 163 German Customs Union (Deutscher Zollverein), 165 German Empire, 28, 41–2, 52, 150, 211 German Federal Act (Deutsche Bundesakte), 193, 200, 207 German Police Association (Polizeiverein), 196–7, 207–13 Germany [1871–] student riots in, 109 unification of, 28 Weimar Republic of, 30 Ghica, Gregory, 253–4, 262–6 Gibraltar, 246 Ginsborg, Paul, 215 Gneisenau, August Neidhardt von, 136, 145 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 148 Goldberg, Johannes, 90 Goltz, Karl Friedrich Heinrich von der, 136, 144, 147 Gorchakov, Alexander, 38 Graham, Sir James, 229 Great Britain. See Britain or Great Britain, or United Kingdom Great Depression [1929], 30 Great War [1914–18]. See World War I Greece, 26–8, 32, 45, 172 Greek Question, 299–300 philhellenist activity and, 300 revolt in, 115, 128, 199, 266 struggle for independence, 299–300 Gregory XVI, Pope, 112, 221–6 Grellet, Stephen, 178 Griewank, Karl, 42 Groen van Prinsterer, Guillaume, 58, 70 Grotius, Hugo, 79 Gruner, Karl Justus von, 138 Guizot, François, 228 Habsburg Empire. See Austria Hach, Senator Johann Friedrich, 237 Hager von Allentsteig, Franz, Baron von, 289

Hakenau, Fleischhackel von, 255–6, 263, 265 Hamburg, 181, 210 Hamidou, Raïs, 241 Hanover, 24, 159–61, 185, 201, 208, 244 Hardenberg, Karl August von, 87, 101, 271–80, 287, 294–5 Harpe, Frédéric-César de la, 180 harvest failures [1820s], 162, 223 Hatzfeldt, Franz Ludwig von, Prince of, 191 Heeren, Arnold Hermann Ludwig, 154, 164 hegemony, hegemonic, 23, 28, 55, 99, 130, 157, 163, 216–19, 229, 282–3 Henry IV, King of France, 64, 67 Herz, Leopold Edler von, 294 Hessen, 201, 203 Hinckeldey, Karl Ludwig Friedrich, 208 Hodgkin, Thomas, 181 Hoegner, Wilhelm, 153 Holy Alliance, 11, 40–1, 66–7, 102–13, 122, 177, 259, 299 discussion on, 105–9 Holy Roman Empire, 63, 82, 106, 150, 153, 155–8, 197 Hope & Co, 145 hospodar(s), 251–70 House of Bourbon, 99, 109, 118, 135–8, 217 House of Commons, 218, 244, 273, 284 House of Savoy, 217 humanitarian discourse and politics, 299–300 humanitarian intervention(s), 27, 115 humanitarianism, 12, 33, 115, 121–6 Humboldt, Baron Wilhelm von, 91, 125, 136, 148, 163, 279–80, 294–7, 302, 305 Hume, David, 99 Hundred Days. See Napoleon Bonaparte Hungary, Hungarian, 31–2, 207 Ibell, Karl Friedrich Emil von, 199 Illuminati, 174 Immediat-Untersuchungs-Kommission (Berlin), 185 imperial expansion, 233 imperialism, 16 Age of, 28 indemnity payments, 130, 137, 298, 302 industrialisation, 16, 302 informants, 180, 184–6, 192, 258, 289 information sharing, 114, 120 inner empire, 6 institution(s), institutionalisation building, 27 cooperative, 75, 78 multilateral, 17 intelligence network, 15, 203, 229, 257, 288–94 intergovernmental organisation, 92

Index international governance, 23, 30, 76, 120 law, 22, 40, 52, 89, 96, 115, 117, 125, 163, 227 norms, 12, 37, 115 practices, 12, 115 relation(s), 114–19 relations (IR), 21, 29, 40, 75–7, 93, 98, 107, 127, 132, 272 rights movement, 4 international cooperation, 75–7, 92, 184, 233, 268 naval, 89 international courts of mixed commission, 124 international state system, 9, 131 international system, 22, 31, 41, 44–5, 65, 69, 157, 286 European, 22 governance, 38 innovations in, 26, 29, 57, 116 modernisations of, 23 requirements for, 22 International Telegraphic Union, 77 internationalism, internationalisation, 16, 37, 53, 76, 166, 172, 305 Ionian Islands, 239, 244 Ireland, 161, 282–4 Iron Chancellor. See Bismarck, Otto von Islam crusade against, 241 Muslim-Christian relations, 115, 241 Istanbul, 110, 128, 240, 243–6, 252, 254–68 Italian Confederation, mooted, 219 Italy, 13, 25–6, 31–3, 133, 140, 157, 160, 174–88, 199, 201, 226–9, 237, 273–6, 284–7 ius ad bellum, 28 Jacobinism, Jacobins, 140, 145, 174–5, 188, 285–6 Jassy, 253, 256–7 Jervis, Robert, 279 Jews and banking, 16, 288–301, 304–5 antisemitism and, 223, 294–6, 304 influence of, 295 restrictions on, 294 rights for, 295–6, 299, 304 standing of, 289 Justi, Johann Heinrich Gottlob von, 133 justice, 1, 27, 31, 37–8, 80, 88, 126, 142, 261, 281 Kant, Immanuel, 64, 76, 81, 86, 113 Katzenstein, Peter J., 271 Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia, 179, 216, 224

311 Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, 25, 174, 222 Kingdom of Westphalia [1807–1813], 159 Kissinger, Henry, 43–4, 97 Knights Liberators of the Slaves in Africa, 236, 239, 247 Kotzebue, August Friedrich Ferdinand von, 175, 199–200 Kraehe, Enno E., 153, 275, 277 Krause, Karl Christian Friedrich, 65 Kronstadt, 266 Krüdener, Barbara Juliane von, 105 Küster, Johann Emanuel von, 293 Labrador, Marquis Pedro-Gómez de, 121–3, 237 Laffitte, Jacques, 224 Laibach (Ljubljana), 114, 262 Lamennais, Hugues-Félicité Robert de, 223 law criminal, 196, 198, 202, 206, 212 European (ius publicum europaeum), 8, 15, 47, 67, 76 extradition, 206 natural, 78–9, 89, 92, 282 penal, 199 sedition, 199–203, 207, 212 League of Nations bodies of the, 30–1 characteristics of the, 29, 108, 152 Covenant of the, 30 dilemmas for the, 9, 30, 33 Pact of the, 32 Ledoulx, Consul Charles, 257 Légion de la Liberté Européenne, ordre du Soleil, 177 legitimacy, 24, 31, 34, 50, 93, 109, 112, 130, 163, 188, 192, 232, 245, 274 Leipzig, 100 Battle of [October 1813], 83, 97, 104, 130, 258 Lemberg (L’viv, Lwów), 264 Lemkin, Raphael, 38 Leo XII, Pope, 66, 222–3 Leopold, Prince of Sicily, 236 Liesching, Samuel Gottlieb, 178 Lieven, Count Christoph von, 125 Ligne, Charles Joseph, Prince de, 290 Liverpool, Robert Banks Jenkinson, Earl of. 118, 277 Ljubljana, See Laibach loans political outcomes of, 145 Lombardy, 25, 215

312

Index

London ambassadorial conferences. See ambassadorial conference Metropolitan Police, 208 Louis XIV, King of France, 64, 283 Louis XVIII, King of France, 58, 136–9, 146, 172, 185, 191, 274 Louvel, Louis Pierre, 181 Louvre, the, 144 Lübeck, 121, 237 Lützen, 258 Lützow, Rudolf von, 225, 227 Mahmud II, sultan of the Ottoman Empire, 259, 265 Mainz, 82–4, 142, 160, 175, 274–5 Mainzer Central-Untersuchungs-Commission. See Central Investigating Commission (Mainz) Mainzer Informationsbüro. See Central Investigating Commission (Mainz) Maistre, Joseph de, 66–71 Malta, 221, 239 Order of St John, 239 Manchester, 199 maritime police, 116–19 Maroncelli, Pietro, 179 Masonic Lodge L’Espérance, 190 Mavros, Nicholas, 266 Mazzini, Giuseppe, 211, 229–30 Mediterranean Sea, 120–8, 233–5 Mediterranean squadron, 245 Merveldt, Maximilian, Count von, 275 Metternich, Clemens Prince von, 7, 41–3, 48, 68, 104, 119, 133, 162, 185, 203, 251, 275, 291 Meuse, 78 Middle Ages, medieval, 57–9, 62, 106 military power(s), 39, 100, 111, 113, 272 Minciaki, Matei, 263, 265 Ministerial-Untersuchungs-Kommission, Berlin, 185 Mitzen, Jennifer, 93, 114 moderation, 28, 95, 101, 133, 261 Moldavia, 251–64, 269–70 Monaco, 211 monarchia amministrativa, 217 money. See financial instruments lending and, 145 manipulation and, 295 paper vs specie, 293, 298 stability of, 102 Montesquieu, Charles de, 81 Mounier, Baron Claude-Philibert-Édouard, 179–86

Müffling, Karl von, 144, 147 multilateralism, 29 Murat, Joachim, King of Naples, 174, 216, 274, 287 mysticism, 66, 105–7, 134, 183 Nagell, Baron Anne Willem Carel, 189, 235, 243 Nain Jaune Réfugié, Le, 188 Naples, Kingdom of, 27, 48, 50, 128, 175, 179, 191, 242, 287 Napoleon Bonaparte and the Hundred Days, 102, 105, 175, 184, 287 annexation of the Papal States, 220 anticlerical policies, 216, 220 conduct of war in Russia, 254 conduct of war in Spain, 174 uses of international agression to resolve domestic problems, 224 Napoleon III, 209–11 Napoleonic Empire, 56, 59, 64–9, 273 Napoleonic occupation, 6 Napoleonic Wars, 99, 130–3, 217, 235, 237, 251, 268, 288, 301 Nassau, 199–201 national movements, 28, 98 nationalism, 162, 215–18, 229 naval technology, 11 navigation, 10, 75, 80, 82, 84, 89, 93, 126, 282 Nawiasky, Hans, 153 Nelson, Vice-Admiral Horatio, 239 Nesselrode, Karl Robert von, Count of, 100, 136, 237–9, 264, 290 Netherlands, Kingdom of the, 1, 14, 24, 45, 63, 65, 79, 82, 85–90, 124–9, 136, 140–3, 157, 160, 188–91, 204, 220, 235, 247, 273–6, 283 navy of the, 231, 242 New York, 209 Nicholas I, Tsar of Russia and King of Poland, 176, 221 Nicolson, Harold, 43 Niebuhr, Barthold Georg, 226 Noé, Karl Gustav, 203 North Africa, consuls in, 231, 237 North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), 35 nuclear weapons, 38 Nye, Joseph, 272 Occupation Allied, 130 of France, 23, 114, 120, 126, 134, 298

Index Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), 116 Oriental Crisis [1839 onward], 45 Orsini, Felice, 211 Ottenfels-Gschwind, Baron François Xavier de, 263–5 Ottoman Empire, 26, 107, 110, 115, 240, 253, 261, 265–70, 299 Owen, Robert, 289, 302–4 Paine, Thomas, 81, 86–8 Palatinate, 25, 160 Palm, Johannes van der, 65 Palmerston, Henry John Temple, Viscount of, 227 Papacy, 62, 65, 69, 106, 220 and temporal powers, 214, 222 Papal States, 25, 121, 128, 179, 183–5, 219–27 Lazio, 224 Papal legations, 224, 227 Rome, 185, 220–7 Papists Act [1778], 221 Paris capitulation of, 132 occupation of, 88, 97 Paris Commune, 173 Paris Peace Conference [1919], 41 Parma, Duchy of, 216 parti de résistance, 218 parti du mouvement, 224 Pasquier, Étienne Denis, Baron, 57, 176, 181–2 passport(s), 180–2, 204, 209–10 peace of Amiens [1802], 283 (collective) European system of, 108, 111, 281, 303 culture of, 9, 21, 25 democratic, 55 discussion on, 11 distinctions with security culture, 21 perpetual, 64–5, 110 of Utrecht [1713], 6, 98, 108 Peel, Sir Robert, 230 Pellico, Silvio, 179, 192 Peninsular War [1807–14] (or Spanish Campaign), 190 Périer, Casimir, 218, 224, 227 Peterloo massacre [1819], 199 Philip II, King of Spain, 64 Phillimore Report [1918], 53 piracy, threat perception of, 201, 234, 243, 245 Pitt, William (the Younger), 157, 160, 221, 273, 287 Pitt-plan [1805], 133

313 Pius VII, Pope, 106, 220, 222 Pius VIII, Pope, 223 Poland, 31–2, 95, 100–2, 109, 160, 204, 207, 210, 221, 271, 274–7, 291 1830 Revolution, 221 partition of, 100, 111, 274–7, 295–7 police federal agencies, 203–13 policing, 35, 39, 82–4, 113, 140, 173, 179, 181, 184–91, 195–8, 205–11 political, 48, 196–213 political dissidents, 201, 205, 210 political subversives/subversion, 13, 105, 116, 140, 171, 178, 188, 190, 193–213 polylateralism, 116 Pombal, Sebastião de Melo, Marquis of, 219 Porte Sublime, 251–70 Portugal, 25, 48, 273 and the slave trade, 117 Congress delegates of, 118, 238 Pozzo di Borgo, Count Carlo Andrea, 136 Pozzo, Ferdinando dal, 219 press, the, 51, 109, 113, 121–3, 140, 190, 208–9, 219, 229, 268 Prince Regent (later King George IV) of the United Kingdom, of Great Britain and of Ireland, 199 privateering captures, 240 relation to piracy, 240 procedures (judicial), 124, 227 professional agent(s), 15, 17, 88, 147 Prussia, 2, 24, 40, 87–94, 134–49, 160, 271–7, 294–8 and Catholics. See Catholicism and Kulturkampf, 222 public opinion, 61, 116, 121, 143–5, 187, 209, 222, 225, 238, 279, 286 Pufendorf, Samuel, 132 Quadruple Alliance, 24–6, 44, 47, 103, 108, 112, 146, 287 Quebec Act [1774], 221 Quebeckers, 221 Rasty, Nicolas, 256 Rawlinson Vyvyan, Sir Richard, 218 reaction(ary), 12, 57–9, 96–8, 106–13, 174, 217, 222 realism, 4, 269, 281 Realpolitik, 106 Reform Act [1832], 202 reform conservatism, 57 Reformateur Gaulois, 180

314

Index

Reformation, 56, 62, 71 refugees, 33, 188–92, 201–10 Regencies, 120–7, 231–47 regicides, 61, 140, 188–90 regime judicial, 5 Mutasarrifiate, 5 post-1815, 6, 252, 267 Rhine, 78, 83, 90 security. See security culture registration, 181 religion, 56–62, 69, 87, 236 reparation(s), payment of, 298 Restoration, 65–9, 128, 138, 171–4, 177, 183, 185, 191, 214–23 revisionism, 23, 31–3, 38, 41, 166 revolt(s), 172–6, 187, 197, 235 Revolution of 1789, 26, 46, 57–61, 78–82, 86, 105, 171–3, 181–2, 191, 194, 224, 276, 281–2 of 1830, 45, 49, 128, 192, 202, 223 of 1848, 55, 110, 207, 212, 215 revolutionary networks, 187 Rheinische Merkur, 145 Rhine Central Commission for Navigation on the (CCNR), 1, 11, 75–8, 83–5, 93 Confederation of the, 151, 156 International Commission for Navigation on the [1816–1831], 25 Octroi Convention, 82–5 regime, 78, 83, 90 shipping, 84 tolls, 83, 87 Richelieu, Armand de Vignerot du Plessis, Duke of, 136, 139, 144–7 Riego y Nuñez, Rafael di, 174 rights, rights talk, 10, 22, 25, 29, 37, 46, 79, 115, 162, 182, 207, 228, 277, 289 Risorgimento [1815–1861], 28, 175 Robespierre, Maximilien, 188 Roman Catholic Relief Act [1791], 221 Roman Catholic Relief Act [1829], 221 Rome, 185, 214, 220–7 Rothschilds, 299 acceptance of, 294 Jewish rights and, 296 personal networks of, 302 transnational reach of, 296 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 99, 183 Royal Navy (Britain), 124, 232, 239, 242, 247 Rumpler, Helmut, 154 Russia, 15, 25, 28, 38, 47–50, 69, 78, 96–105, 110–12, 119, 122–9, 132, 144, 172, 175–6, 189, 217, 221, 251–76, 288–95, 300, 302

Russian campaign [1812], 217, 254, 257 Russian–Ottoman war, 176, 256, 262, 264, 269 Sagan, Wilhelmine, Duchess of, 291–2 Saint-Aulaire, Louis-Clair de Beaupoil, Count of, 225 Saint-Pierre, Abbé de, 99, 108–13 Saint-Simon, Claude Henri de Rouvroy, Count of, 65 Sakelario family, 256, 266 salons and cultivation of influence, 190, 296 as loci of sociability, 296–7 Salvotti, Antonio, 179 Samurcas, Constantin, 266–7, 270 Sand, Karl Ludwig, 175, 200 Sanfedisti, 183 Sant’Antioco, Tunisian raid of, 120, 240 Sardinia, Kingdom of, 24, 244, 248, 273, 278 Savoy, 68, 103, 283 Saxon–Polish crisis, 100–4 Saxony, 100–2, 160, 186, 208, 211, 271, 274–7, 287, 297 Scheldt, 78, 87–90, 273, 282, 287 Decree, 78–9 Schladen, Friedrich Heinrich Leopold von, 260 Schroeder, Paul W., 98, 127, 154, 276, 287 Schwarzenberg, Karl Philipp zu, 136 Scott, Sir Walter, 148 Sébastiani de La Porta, Horace François, 225 secret police, 191, 209, 229, 288–94 secret societies, 171–8, 182–8, 191 secularism, 66, 69, 106–7, 158 securitisation, 49, 194, 202, 212 security agenda, 132, 234, 247 arrangements, 36 blacklisting, 177 collective, 3, 22, 26, 30, 35, 43, 78, 93, 114, 125, 131, 146, 188, 215–19, 223–9, 269, 286 of commerce, 125, 242, 247 conceptions of, 9 concerns on, 29, 115, 251, 273, 290 cooperation, 76, 116, 126, 242 definitions of, 46 dilemma, 21, 38, 251 discussion on, 39, 213, 289 European system of, 47, 52, 67, 78, 86, 94, 116–18, 128–9, 154, 157, 159, 167 financial, 16, 251, 296 historicise, historicising, 8, 46, 234 human, 16, 36, 290, 303–5 in- and exclusion, 14, 27, 30, 36, 242, 248, 273, 278 interests, 78, 94, 193, 211, 271 international, 11, 25–7, 36, 113, 233, 248

Index languages of, 12, 14, 268 logics of, 3, 11, 17, 39 management of, 2, 7, 13, 39, 132 on the Mediterranean, 12, 120, 128, 234, 239, 241 multilateral, 5, 305 national, 51, 115, 147, 271, 276 of navigation, 10, 125, 237–9, 241, 247 object(s) of, 14, 152, 285 police, 16 practice(s), 11, 17–18, 194 regime, 8, 11, 13, 17, 193, 196 regulations, 14, 84 risk, 142, 189 silenced voices, 17 structures, 9, 196 studies, 8, 16–17, 49 system, 9, 12, 160 threats, 7, 128, 194–8 trade, 80, 90, 93 transnational, 15, 17, 194, 212 United Nations Council, 34, 38 water, 77 security culture, 9, 28–9, 45, 115, 192, 246, 253, 267 conceptualisation of, 2, 21–3, 29, 36–9, 45–7, 54, 194, 234, 271, 280, 304 humanitarian concerns in, 34, 118 influences on, 18, 52 internationalized, 21 investment in, 112 parameters of, 8, 37, 55, 233, 278 religion’s role in, 69 surveillance and, 192 transnational reach of, 6, 53–4, 142, 193, 196, 241, 248, 253 security, economic, 289, 301 anxieties over, 302 commerce and, 302 debt leveraged for, 301 effects of, 302 industrialisation and, 303 plans for, 301–2 prerequisites for, 301 speculation impacts on, 303 wealth distribution and, 303 Sedlnitzky, Count Josef von, 185, 200 self-determination Mazzinian, 215, 229 Wilsonian, 31, 35, 215 settlement of borders, 23 Shaler, William, 231 Sicily, 174, 244, 248 Siemann, Wolfram, 275 Sieyès, Emmanuel-Joseph, (Abbé Sieyès), 188

315 Six Acts [1819], 199 Skinner, Quentin, 46 slave trade. See abolition of the slave trade ‘white slave trade’. See Christian ‘slavery’ Smidt, Johann, 122 Smith, Adam, 76, 79–81, 93 Smith, Admiral Sir Sidney, 121–3, 236–7, 240–2 social learning mechanisms, 15, 17–18 Société des Sublimes Maîtres Parfaits, 183, 187 Société Teutonique, 183 Society of the Black Pin, 183 Sond, 89 South America, 110 Soutzos, Alexander, 253, 261, 268 Soutzos, Michael, 256 sovereign debt, 289, 298–300 sovereignty, 21, 47–8, 52, 67, 89, 92–3, 119, 126, 156–8, 162, 196, 212, 298 Soviet Union, USSR, 30, 33–6 Spa Fields Riots [1816], 199 Spaen von Voorstonden, Gerrit Karel Baron, 237 Spain colonies, 253 Spanish Road, 217 Spencer, Robert, 153 sphere of influence, 36, 287 Spitzer, Alan, 173 Srbik, Heinrich Ritter von, 41 St Petersburg, 105, 122, 242, 260–1, 292 Staatspolizeiliche Ministerialkommission, Berlin, 185 Stadion, Johann Philipp, Count von Warthausen, 290, 298 Staël, Madame Germaine de, 148 statehood, 165 Stein, Heinrich Friedrich Karl vom und zu, 87, 134–6, 279 Stites, Richard Thomas, 172 Stourdza, Alexander, 262 Strangford, Percy Smythe VI, Viscount, 262 Strasbourg, 205 Stresemann, Gustav, 40 Stroganov, Count Sergei Grigoryevich, 259–61 Stuart, Sir Charles, 136, 140, 147 summit(s), summitry, 3, 17, 114, 123, 128, 147–9 surveillance, monitoring, 10, 175–92, 197, 202–13, 289, 294, 297 Sweden, Kingdom of, 25, 288 Switzerland, 24–6, 103, 109, 120, 141, 153, 157, 180–4, 204, 210, 273–5, 300 civil war, 182

316

Index

Talleyrand-Périgord, Charles Maurice de, 145, 192, 236, 258, 274, 279–80, 287, 289, 293 Tambora eruption [1815], 24 Taylor, Alan J.P., 217 Taylor, Sir Brook, 225 terra nullius, (legal doctrine), 28 territorial arrangements, 25, 31, 160 Terror Red, 16 White, 16, 116, 175 The Independent Whig, 244 Thiers, Adolphe, 228 third Germany, 156–8 Tonnelier, Achille Le, Count of Breteuil, 180 tranquillity, 56, 67, 79, 109, 131, 152, 190, 248, 253, 257, 263–4, 268–70 transparency, 7, 11, 29, 34, 114, 125, 264 Transylvania, 261, 266 Treaty, treaties of Alcalá [1816], 125, 242 of Chaumont [1814], 86–7, 99, 111, 132, 135, 157, 161 of the Holy Alliance [1815], 97, 101, 112 of Locarno [1925], 40 of London [1852], 167 of Paris, First [1814], 83, 86, 93 of Paris, Second [1815], 137, 141 Quintuple treaty [1841], 129 of Versailles [1919], 31, 41 Treitschke, Heinrich Gotthard von, 41, 150 Triple Alliance, 258 Tripoli, 120, 127, 232, 235, 240, 243–4 Tron, Andrea (alias ‘el paron’), 220 Tunis, 120, 127, 232, 235, 240, 243–4 Turnbull, Peter Evan, 228 Tuscany, Grand Duchy of, 216, 220, 237, 273 ultra-royalists, ultra-royalism, 58, 106, 112, 139 United Kingdom. See Britain or Great Britain, or United Kingdom United Nations, 29 characteristics of, 34, 152–3 Charter of, 34 decision-making within, 35 Human Rights Commission of, 35 Secretary-General of, 34, 37 Security Council of, 34–9, 108 United States of America, 32, 34–8, 53, 67, 116, 204 war with Algiers, 241 Universal Post Union, 77 uprising(s), 5, 174–5, 191

Varnhagen von Ense, Karl August, 294, 296 Varnhagen, Rahel (née Levin), 296–7, 305 Vatican, the. See Papal States Vattel, Emerich (Emer) de, 132 Vendée (1793 civil war), 180, 220 Versailles Order, 41 veterans, 172, 180, 189 Vienna Order, 40–55, 59, 68, 149, 231 Settlement, 98, 239 spirit of, 96, 287 Vincent, Karl Freiherr von, 136, 147, 174 Waal, 89 Wallachia, 251–7 Wallachian insurrection, 256, 262, 266 Warsaw Pact, 35 Wartburg festival [1817], 195, 199 Waterloo, Battle of, 23, 114, 120, 175 Webster, Charles K., 41 Wellington Barrier, 143 Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, Duke of, 132, 134–48, 175, 189–91, 199 Weser, 89 Wessenberg-Ampringen, Baron Johann von, 279 Westphalian peace [1648], 56 Westphalian system, 40 Wilhelm II, emperor of Germany, 52 William I, King of the Netherlands, 1, 16, 66, 140, 166, 188, 235, 241 Wilson, Woodrow, 31, 53–5, 106 Witt von Döring, Ferdinand Johann, 186 Wolff, Christian Freiherr von, 132 women diplomatic activity and, 289 economic agency of, 290 financial support of, 292 influence exercised by, 290, 292 political agency of, 290 sexual power of, 289, 301 World Anti-Slavery Convention [London 1840], 129 World War I, 33, 36, 45, 52–3, 59, 144, 215, 298 Württemberg, 161–2, 203, 210–11, 220 Ypsilanti, Alexander, 176, 262 Zelanti, 222 Zentraluntersuchungsbehörde Frankfurt. See Central Investigating Agency (Frankfurt)