The 1713 Peace of Utrecht and Its Enduring Effects 9004351574, 9789004351578

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The 1713 Peace of Utrecht and Its Enduring Effects

Nova et Vetera Iuris Gentium Editor-​in-​Chief Cedric Ryngaert Editorial Board Ige Dekker Alex Oude Elferink Eric Myjer Otto Spijkers Seline Trevisanut

volume 31

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/​nvig

The 1713 Peace of Utrecht and Its Enduring Effects Edited by

Alfred H.A. Soons

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data Names: Soons, Alfred H. A., editor. Title: The 1713 peace of Utrecht and its enduring effects /​[edited by] Alfred H.A. Soons. Description: Boston : BRILL, 2019. | Series: Nova et vetera iuris gentium | Includes index. | Summary: “This volume contains the papers presented at a multi-​disciplinary conference, held at Utrecht University's Senate Hall on 19 September 2013, on the occasion of the tercentenary of the Peace of Utrecht. The conference intended to examine the enduring effects of the Peace Treaties concluded at Utrecht in 1713, from the perspectives of the disciplines of (international) law, history and international relations”–Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2019043815 | ISBN 9789004266407 (hardback) | ISBN 9789004351578 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Treaty of Utrecht (1713)–Congresses. |  Peace treaties–History–Congresses. | Pacific settlement of international disputes–History–Congresses. Classification: LCC KZ1334 .Z8 2013 | DDC 940.2/​526–dc23 LC record available at https://​lccn.loc.gov/​2019043815

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/​brill-​typeface. isbn 978-​9 0-​0 4-​2 6640-​7 (hardback) isbn 978-​9 0-​0 4-​3 5157-​8 (e-​book) Copyright 2019 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-​free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents Preface vii Notes on Contributors ix Behaviour of Negotiators 1 Paul Meerts and Peter Beeuwkes

Part 1 The Peace of Utrecht: the European Balance of Power 1

Balance of Power: Adversarial Pair of Scales or Associational Arch? 31 Jaap de Wilde

2 Envisioning Europe after Utrecht: Voltaire and the Historiography of the Balance of Power 45 Isaac Nakhimovsky 3 The Peace of Utrecht, the Balance of Power and the Law of Nations 67 Randall Lesaffer

Part 2 The Peace of Utrecht: Relationship to Colonial Regimes and Trade Monopolies 4 “The Long Peace”: Commercial Treaties and the Principles of Global Trade at the Peace of Utrecht 93 Koen Stapelbroek 5 The Social Origins of 18th Century British Grand Strategy: a Historical Sociology of the Peace of Utrecht 120 Benno Teschke 6 Public Debt, the Peace of Utrecht and the Rivalry between Company and State 156 Sundhya Pahuja

vi Contents

Part 3 The Peace of Utrecht: Ideas and Ideals; the Development of the International Legal Order 7 Peace of Utrecht (1713) and the “Crisis of European Conscience” 175 Martti Koskenniemi 8 In the Shadow of Utrecht: Perpetual Peace and International Order, 1713–​1815 192 Stella Ghervas Subject Index 225 Name Index 229

Preface This volume contains the papers presented at a multi-​disciplinary conference, held at Utrecht University’s Senate Hall on 19 September 2013, on the occasion of the tercentenary of the Peace of Utrecht. The conference intended to examine the enduring effects of the Peace Treaties concluded at Utrecht in 1713, from the perspectives of the disciplines of (international) law, history and international relations. Three themes were selected, which each would be addressed in contributions from those three disciplines: (1) The Peace of Utrecht: the European Balance of Power; (2) The Peace of Utrecht: Relationship to Colonial Regimes and Trade Monopolies; and (3) The Peace of Utrecht: Ideas and Ideals; the Development of the International Legal Order. On the third theme, the perspective from international relations unfortunately could not be presented. The papers presented at the conference and now included in this volume, in three Parts in the order of the themes as mentioned above, have been subsequently updated, and an additional general contribution has been added at the beginning of this volume, on the Behaviour of Negotiators at diplomatic conferences. The conference was part of a two-​day event taking place in Utrecht and The Hague under the overarching theme of “The Art of Peace Making”. 2013 was also the centenary of the inauguration of the Peace Palace, where on 20 September 2013 the second part of the event took place, a conference under the title “Contemporary Peace Cases: What Lessons to Learn?”.1 At the Utrecht conference, the objective was not just to look at the Peace Conference of 1712–​1713 and the resulting treaties, examining their significance, explaining what happened there and why, and how the settlements made there affected European international relations in the subsequent period, but the idea was to attempt to also look at the question if we can identify any traces in the current world that could be regarded as their possible ‘enduring effects’. What current situations or thoughts could we trace back to Utrecht 1713? Some are obvious, for example the territorial settlements that still determine or raise issues about boundaries in the world (e.g., Canada; Gibraltar); others may be less so clearly present, such as consequences of the slave trade or theories of international relations. This is what the authors of the nine chapters that follow have attempted to explore. 1 This conference resulted in the publication: “The Art of Making Peace: Lessons Learned from Peace Treaties”, edited by Steven van Hoogstraten, Nico Schrijver, Otto Spijkers and Anneleen de Jong, Brill 2017.

viii Preface The idea for this conference was developed with Martti Koskenniemi, during his stay in Utrecht in 2012 while he held the Belle van Zuylen visiting chair of humanities. I would like to thank him, as well as Duco Hellema and David Onnekink of the History Department of Utrecht University, for their help in preparing the conference. The Board of Utrecht University and the Faculties of Law and of Humanities provided the much-needed financial support, which is gratefully acknowledged. Finally I express my thanks to Ingeborg van der Laan of Brill Nijhoff Publishers for her patience and assistance in preparing this volume for publication. Alfred H.A. Soons Utrecht, June 2019

Notes on Contributors Peter Beeuwkes is a lawyer and legal advisor (ret.) to the Netherlands Ministry of Science and Education. Stella Ghervas is Professor of Russian History at Newcastle University and Associate of the Department of History 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, and in Russia’s intellectual and maritime history. 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, forthcoming from Harvard University Press in 2020, 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). She is currently working on a new book titled Calming the Waters? A New History of the Black Sea, 1774-​1920s and on an anthology of essential texts on peace from the Antiquity to the present day. Martti Koskenniemi is Professor of International Law at the University of Helsinki and Director of the Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights. His main publications include From Apology to Utopia; The Structure of International Legal Argument (1989/​2005), The Gentle Civilizer of Nations: The Rise and Fall of International Law 1870-​1960 (2001) and The Politics of International Law (2011). He is currently working on a history of international legal thought from the late medieval period to the 19th century. Randall Lesaffer (*Brugge, 1968) studied law as well as history at Ghent and Leuven. From the latter university, he obtained his PhD in 1998. He is professor of legal history at the KU Leuven (since 1998) and at Tilburg University (since 1999). From 2008 to 2012, he served as dean of Tilburg Law School. His publications include European Legal History (Cambridge UP). He is general editor of The Cambridge History of International Law, of Oxford Historical Treaties, and of Studies in the History of International Law (Brill/​Nijhoff).

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Paul Meerts is an analyst in international negotiation processes. He is a member of the Processes of International Negotiation (pin) Steering Committee at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (giga) in Hamburg and a member of the Advisory Board of the Journal of International Negotiation. He is the founder of the Program on International Negotiation Training (point). He obtained an MA and a PhD at Leiden University. The National University of Mongolia awarded him the title of Doctor Honoris Causa. Isaac Nakhimovsky is Associate Professor of History and Humanities at Yale University. His first book, The Closed Commercial State:  Perpetual Peace and Commercial Society from Rousseau to Fichte (Princeton, 2011), showed how, in the context of the French Revolution, the German philosopher J.G. Fichte came to undertake a systematic treatment of economic independence as an ideal, or the political theory of what John Maynard Keynes later termed “national self-​sufficiency.” He has also collaborated on an edition of Fichte’s Addresses to the German N ­ ation (Hackett, 2013), and two volumes of essays on eighteenth-​century political thought and its post-​revolutionary legacies: Commerce and Peace in the Enlightenment (Cambridge, 2017), and Markets, Morals, Politics: Jealousy of Trade and the History of Political Thought (Harvard, 2018). His next book, A World Reformed: Liberalism, the Holy Alliance, and the Problems of Global Order, is forthcoming from Princeton University Press. Sundhya Pahuja is Professor of Law and Director, Institute for International Law and the Humanities at Melbourne University. Her research centres on the history, theory and political economy of international law and institutions. Her publications include Decolonising International Law: Development, Economic Growth and the Politics of Universality (cup, 2011; asil Prize 2011, Woodward Medal 2014) and the anthologies, Events: The Force of International Law (2011, with Johns and Joyce) and Reading Modern Law: Critical Methodologies and Sovereign Formations (2012, with Buchanan and Motha). Alfred H.A. Soons (PhD Utrecht University 1982) is Emeritus professor of public international law at Utrecht University. He studied law at Utrecht University, followed by graduate studies in international law at the University of Washington (Seattle, usa) and Cambridge University (UK). He was a civil servant with the Netherlands government from 1976 until his appointment to the chair of international law

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in Utrecht in 1987. He was, inter alia, President of the Netherlands Society of International Law and Director of Studies of the International Law Association (1997-​2004) and is a member of the Institut de Droit International. Koen Stapelbroek is Associate Professor of History of Political Theory at Erasmus University Rotterdam and Academy of Finland Research Fellow at the University of Helsinki. He received his PhD from the University of Cambridge (2004), published Love, Self-​Deceit and Money:  Commerce and Morality in the Early Neapolitan Enlightenment (Toronto, 2008) and a range of articles and edited volumes on eighteenth-​century political thought. He is completing a monograph on European perceptions of the rise and fall of the Dutch trade republic. Benno Teschke is Professor in the Department of International Relations and Director of the Center for Advanced International Theory (cait) at the University of Sussex. He received his PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science (lse) and was an Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles (ucla). His research interests comprise IR Theory, International Historical Sociology, Marxism and the Philosophy of the Social Sciences. He is the author of The Myth of 1648: Class, Geopolitics and the Making of Modern International Relations, which was awarded the 2004 Isaac Deutscher Memorial Prize. Jaap de Wilde is professor in International Relations & Security Studies at the Department of International Relations & International Organization, and the Centre for International Relations Research, University of Groningen, since 2007. His publications include: “Anachronistic Research in International Relations and Security Studies”, In: E.D. Jacob, Ed., Rethinking Security in the Twenty-​First Century (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017: 29-​40). Anne Beaulieu, Jaap de Wilde & Jacquelien Scherpen, Eds., Smart Grids from a Global Perspective (Springer, 2016). Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver & Jaap de Wilde, Security:  A New Framework for Analysis (Rienner, 1998).

Behaviour of Negotiators Paul Meerts and Peter Beeuwkes Abstract After a short introduction this chapter describes the political context of the Peace of Utrecht. It then turns to the pre-​negotiation processes, after which the chapter analyzes the processes of negotiation themselves as well as the behaviour of the diplomats representing the main stakeholders. It then compares the Utrecht negotiations to those at Nijmegen and Ryswick, thereby putting the Peace of Utrecht in the broader perspective of preceding peace negotiations on Dutch soil. After this the chapter poses the question: what is the profile of the effective negotiator in the past and the present? Are there differences in the behaviour of negotiators in the eighteenth century and today? It then concludes by briefly putting the Utrecht negotiations in the broader context of diplomatic negotiation as it evolved from the beginning of the 18th century till the beginning of the 21st.

The Peace of Utrecht –​in fact a series of bilateral treaties –​put an end to the Spanish War of Succession from 1702–​1713, a war that affected nearly all of Western and Central Europe, as well as parts of Asia, Africa and the Americas through their European colonies.1,2 The Spanish War of Succession has even been labelled the first world war in history because of its spread over the world.3 It was also the ‘first peace settlement to include an express reference to the “balance of power” in treaties’.4 Others refer to it as a ‘replay of the Westphalian drama’.5 It is anyway a ‘series of compromises, a settlement without clear winners or losers, at least in the short term’.6 This chapter will analyze 1 Bruin, R. de „Introduction” in Peace was Made Here: The Treaties of Utrecht, Rastatt and Baden, 1713–​1714. eds Bruin, R. and Brinkman M. (Baden: Michael Imhoff, 2013),12–​15. 2 Onnekink, D. and Bruin, R. de „De vrede van Utrecht (1713).” (Hilversum, Verloren 2013). 3 Onnekink, D. and Bruin, R. de „De vrede van Utrecht (1713)” (Hilversum, Verloren 2013), 42. 4 Lesaffer, R. „The Peace of Utrecht: The European Balance of Power. A Comment from the Perspective of International law” in The Paper for the Conference in Utrecht, titled:100 Years Peace Palace and 300 Years Peace of Utrecht, 2013. 5 Holsti, K.J. „Peace and War:  Armed Conflicts and International Order, 1648–​1989”, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 72. 6 Ghervas, S. „Utrecht’s Legacy and the Plans of Perpetual Peace: An Ex-​post Historical Critique”. Speech given in Utrecht at Conference titled:  100 Years Peace Palace and 300 Years Peace of Utrecht, 2013.

 

  

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these negotiations, comparing them with other negotiations in the Netherlands around the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with a special eye to the behaviour of the diplomatic negotiators in comparison to those of the twenty-​first century. Furthermore, the ‘Utrecht’ negotiations will be compared to two other important negotiations on Dutch soil: those of Nijmegen; and Ryswick. 1

What Was It About

The essential purpose of a peace is to protect the independence of the dynastic sovereigns by limiting hegemonic designs and policies. The purpose of the Utrecht settlements was not so much to avoid future wars as to resolve the issue of hegemony –​a replay of the Westphalian drama.7 Holsti identifies the 1713 Peace of Utrecht as one of the five major peace settlements in Europe since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. Of these five (the remaining three –​as mentioned in Part One –​are Vienna, Versailles and San Francisco), he values Utrecht as the negotiation process with the feeblest outcome. He identifies eight prerequisites8 for a forward-​looking outcome,9 meaning a substantial agreement creating a regime for effective management of future conflicts:  governance; legitimacy; assimilation; deterrent; conflict resolution; war; peaceful change; and future issues. In Holsti’s view, Utrecht only satisfies the first two factors, but these are still of great importance, as governance and the assimilation of states into a common agreement are stepping stones in the direction of some kind of proto-​European regime that Westphalia hardly created. After all, while Westphalia changed the meaning of sovereignty in Europe, it did not clearly define it. Sovereignty in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is not as watertight as it is today,10 although developments at the end of the twentieth century indicate that sovereign rights are eroding, which might mean that we are –​in the long run –​heading towards the same unclear situation as 300  years ago. The condition of

7 8 9 10

Holsti, K.J. „Peace and War: Armed Conflicts and International Order, 1648–​1989”, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 72. Holsti, K.J. „Peace and War: Armed Conflicts and International Order, 1648–​1989”, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 340. Zartman, I.W. and Kremenyuk, V.A. (eds) „Peace versus Justice: Negotiating Forward –​and Backward-​looking Outcomes” (Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), 35–​71. Schrijver, N. „Begrensde soevereiniteit: 350 jaar na de vrede van Münster” in Transaktie, 27:2, 1998,141–​169/​174.

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sovereign rights 300 years ago was of great importance to the question of the behaviour of states and their negotiators, as ‘norms surrounding the institutions of diplomacy were very much tangled up with the issue of sovereignty and the status of the dynast’.11 This chapter views the Peace of Utrecht from the perspective of its contribution to a better organized Europe, where conflicts might be solved through peaceful means as much as possible. Peaceful contributions to the European equilibrium could only be made by ‘periodic consultation and negotiation among the great powers, and by some degree of willingness to allow every strong power at least a little scope for its ambition to add to its territories and its influence’.12 We look at the Peace of Utrecht here as a forerunner of present-​ day international negotiation processes, asking ourselves what they have in common and where they differ. Although Westphalia changed the relationships between the European states, making them all equal in principle, some remained more equal than others. This is, of course, still true today, but the problem is not so much the power differences, but the question of how to regulate them in such a way that the constellation of states and the positions of their rulers will not be in constant danger. This poses the issue of hegemony and how to manage it. The question of hegemony is a major problem in European history, especially after the breakdown of the medieval system whereby the Pope and the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire were the supreme sovereigns in Europe. As successors of the western Roman Empire, they were the spiritual and political hegemons. When they lost their religious and political legitimacy respectively, the scramble for dominance became the focal point of inter-​state relationships. Westphalia created religious peaceful coexistence; Utrecht had to do the same for the political arena, establishing some kind of regulatory regime. As pointed out in the previous chapter, Münster and Osnabrück produced an embryonic facility –​ the chambre mi-​partie –​appointing France and Sweden as guarantors of the agreement.13 With the peace negotiations in Utrecht during 1712 and 1713 putting an end to the Spanish War of Succession, dynasties and states tried to settle the issue of power balance on the continent and abroad, which

11 Holsti, K.J. „Taming the Sovereigns:  Institutional Change in International Politics” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 185. 12 Roberts, P. „The Quest for Security, 1715–​1740” (New York, NY: Harper, 1947), 3. 13 Meerts, P.W. „Turning Point Westphalia:  Negotiation Processes Establishing a New Political and Legal Order in Europe” in Peace versus Justice: Negotiating Forward –​ and Backward-​Looking Outcomes, eds Zartman, I.W. and Kremenyuk, V.A. (Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), 34–​35.

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does not mean that the Peace of Utrecht can be seen as a conscious attempt to create some kind of regime to settle differences.14 However, it was an important benchmark in a century of constant renversement (reversal) of alliances, making it hard to understand the diplomatic history of the eighteenth century.15 ‘The Utrecht settlements do provide insights into the problems of international relations in an environment of anarchy. Unlike the other multilateral conferences that preceded it, the diplomats […] were concerned with order and stability’.16 Moreover, Utrecht did work when the first serious threat to its integrity, the Spanish attempts to unite the crowns of France and Spain after the death of French King Louis xiv, was countered by the 1717 Triple Alliance of France, England and Holland.17 How, then, to settle the issue? Through war or negotiation? In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, war was the dominant mechanism in settling external disputes. This did not mean that negotiation had no role to play, but it is very much seen as being a sub-​tool of warfare. Louis xiv of France used peace negotiations in order to create pauses in his wars; he needed breaks to regroup, to prepare for the next war. Slowly and truly, however, the process of negotiation gained more respect, albeit in connection to the use of violence. The best way to peace is through war, the German emperor said, as the War of Spanish Succession raged through Europe.18 The hard-​fought last-​ditch French victory in this war, at Denain in July 1712, created a ‘mutual hurting stalemate’, thereby opening the road to Utrecht. Without this victory, the war might have dragged on and more damage would have been done before the states accepted the necessity of negotiating a final and lasting peace. Perhaps negotiation is war by other means, but the two are anyway interconnected in a symbiotic relationship19 and in 1712 it was up to the negotiators to take the heat. Meanwhile, the war did not come to a full stop. 14 15

16 17 18 19

Roberts, P. „The Quest for Security, 1715–​1740” (New York, NY: Harper, 1947), 240. Aalbers, J.  „De Republiek en de Vrede van Europa:  de buitenlandse politiek van de Republiek der Verenigde Nederlanden na de vrede van Utrecht (1713), voornamelijk gedurende de jaren 1720–​1733” (Groningen:  Wolter-​Noordhoff /​Bouma’s Boekhuis, 1980) 35. Holsti, K.J. „Peace and War:  Armed Conflicts and International Order, 1648–​1989” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 72. Veenendaal, A.J. „Het politieke leven in de 18e eeuw:  De Republiek voor het laatst als grote mogendheid, 1702–​1727” in Algemene Geschiedenis der Nederlanden-​Deel IX: Omwenteling, vereniging en scheiding, ed. Houtte, J.A. van (Zeist: De Haan, 1956), 29. Doesburg, J.J. „De wording van de vrede van Utrecht” (Utrecht:  J.  van Boekhoven, 1886), 120. Meerts, P.W. „Is Negotiation War by Other Means” in PINpoints Network Newsletter, Laxenburg: iiasa, 27, 2006, 13–​15.

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5

The Political Context

The big question in the early eighteenth century was: who will dominate Europe as the Habsburgs lose their grip on their lands and thereby on the surrounding states? The erosion of Spanish power and the gradual dissolution of the German empire created a power vacuum in Western Europe, with France in the wings to fill that gap. Stability and equilibrium on the continent was of great importance, not only to the continental dynasties, but also to the European sea powers: Britain; and the Republic of the United Netherlands. Britain was still struggling with itself in the second half of the seventeenth century, but came to the fore at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The Republic of the United Netherlands, which dominated trade and was a maritime world power –​was losing ground at the beginning of the eighteenth century, partly because of its outdated political system, which was a confederal system that supported the expansion of its commercial interests as long as no other power competed with it in a serious way. This became obsolete in a massive confrontation with France on the continent itself. France, which was regaining strength by suppressing the Huguenots and centralizing power in the hands of an absolute monarch, could now turn to the outside world. France could now radiate energy, which had been used for managing internal problems, into its international environment. As France began to expand its zone of influence and territory, the continental (German empire) and maritime balancers (the Republic of the United Netherlands and the British Kingdom) had to act again. This new counter-​offensive resulted in the War of Spanish Succession at the start of the eighteenth century, which cannot be understood without its immediate pre-​history, of course. One starting point could be the beginning of what some call the Forty Years’ French–​Dutch War (1672–​1712).20 However, as our time-​span should not be too wide and as this chapter deals with negotiators and their behaviour, we will begin with one of the two important international negotiations on Dutch soil: the Peace of Ryswick in 1697. The Peace of Ryswick was mediated by the Swedish diplomat Niels Eosander, Baron of Lilliënrot, and concluded the Nine Years’ War (1688–​1697). Several treaties were signed, but none of them had the same wording. However, all of them indicated that –​at least in a formal sense –​this peace should be seen as forward-​looking. Terms such as ‘fruitful

20

Deursen, A.T.  van „De Republiek der Zeven Verenigde Nederlanden (1588–​1780)” in Geschiedenis van de Nederlanden, eds Blom, J.C.M. and Lamberts, E. (Baarn: Hb Uitgevers, 2005), 163.

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and inviolable’, ‘religiously and sincerely observed’, and ‘universal and perpetual’21 indicated the political intention to go for peaceful relations between the sovereigns. François de Callières’, one of French King Louis xiv’s envoyés extraordinaires plénipotentiaires (special envoys), was impressed by the value of this negotiation process and wrote a book on lessons learned for other diplomats, including how to behave in an international conference like this and which techniques would help to conclude a good agreement, for example by putting the diplomats in quarantaine (quarantine).22 Notwithstanding the high-​brow phraseology of the Ryswick Treaties, however, the French were fighting again within four years. In hindsight, these negotiations were a tool in French warfare, and they provided breathing time. More importantly, provisions for dealing with future conflicts –​or at least diminishing the prospects of war  –​were lacking altogether. The French kept their forces on the same strength as during the war. Ryswick did not solve an important problem: the question of the Spanish Succession, which had been the focal point of French foreign policy ever since 1665, the year when the Spanish King, Philip iv of Habsburg, had died. He was succeeded by a four-​year old frail child, Charles ii. Numerous attempts were made to solve the Spanish question through negotiations, but to no avail. When Charles ii died in the year 1700, he left all of Spain and its oversees possessions to Philip of Anjou, a grandson of Louis xiv, King of France, the reason being that he did not want the ailing Spanish Empire to crumble further. The danger of Spain and France becoming united under kings of the same dynasty –​and perhaps under one crown in the future –​caused the War of Spanish Succession from 1701–​1714, defending the Austrian claims to the Spanish throne. The main continental and sea powers (the German empire, and Britain and the Netherlands, respectively) united in a new Great Alliance in 1701 to contain France within its borders. This was yet another step in the struggle for hegemony in Western Europe, a repetition of all the other wars with France and its direct neighbours, albeit with another label. The actual war –​with the German emperor, Britain, the Netherlands, Hanover, Prussia, Portugal and Savoy on one hand, and France, Spain, Bavaria and Cologne on the other –​only started in 1702 and would come to an end in 1713. Peace negotiations in Utrecht 21 22

Clark, G.  „From the Nine Years’ War to the War of Spanish Succession” in The New Cambridge Modern History-​Volume VI: The Rise of Great Britain and Russia 1688–​1715/​25, ed. Bromley, J.S. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 381. Lempereur, A.P. „Préface” in François Calliéres: De la manière de négocier avec les souverains-​ De l’utilité des négociations, du choix des ambassadeurs et des envoyés et des qualités nécessaires pour réussir dans ces emplois (1716), (Genève: Librairie Droz, 2002), 11.

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in 1713) and Rastatt in 1714) would conclude the conflict. Both sides had their victories and suffered their defeats, and at the very end not much had changed. Louis xiv did not succeed in expanding France, thanks to allied generals such as the Duke of Marlborough. But at the same time, France could not be decisively defeated. A  compromise on Spanish Succession was reached:  Philip remained king, but the thrones of Spain and France remained separated for eternity.23 This is not a surprising outcome. The first reason is that none of the belligerent parties outmatched the other in military strength. In general the French were stronger on land, and the British and Dutch at sea. Only when the sea powers upgraded their land forces to the extent that they –​together with the Austrians/​Germans –​outnumbered the French on the continent did the war come to a grinding halt. Exhausted parties started to look for peace in secret preliminaries. The second factor here is the mutual distrust of the allies. After the death in 1702 of William iii, King of England and Lord Governor of the Republic of the United Netherlands, old rivalries between the British and Dutch over trade came to the fore again. They had always been there, and they were the source of numerous Dutch–​British sea battles during the seventeenth century, but had been contained by the political framework under the House of Orange and the ‘French threat’. The Dutch were afraid of a separate peace between France and England, which indeed occurred, giving the British trade concessions on Spanish continental and colonial soil. The British wanted to keep Dutch power limited in order to keep competition at a low level. Meanwhile, the Habsburgs, having lost all of Spain, had an interest in keeping at least part of it:  the Southern Netherlands (today’s Belgium). The Southern Netherlands therefore shifted from Spanish to Austrian rule in 1701, while the Republic of the United Netherlands demanded a long-​promised substantial barrier of fortresses in that area .24 The French then tried to keep the balance of power between the sea powers intact, in order to prevent either one becoming the hegemon of the sea –​a wise policy, because after the waning of Dutch trade dominance at the start of the eighteenth century, Britain became France’s main competitor until the resurrection of Germany at the end of the nineteenth century. 23 24

Onnekink, D.  „The treaty of Utrecht” in Peace Was Made Here:  The Treaties of Utrecht, Rastatt and Baden, 1713–​1714, eds Bruin, R. de, and Brinkman, M. (Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2013), 60–​69. Onnekink, D.  „The treaty of Utrecht” in Peace Was Made Here:  The Treaties of Utrecht, Rastatt and Baden, 1713–​1714, eds Bruin, R. de, and Brinkman, M. (Petersberg: Michael Imhof Verlag, 2013), 60–​69.

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Pre-​Negotiations

Negotiations about the Spanish Succession had been ongoing since 1661, but gained momentum in November 1700 with the death of Spanish King Charles ii of Habsburg and the beginning of the Spanish War of Succession in its aftermath. Talks in 1700 between the States-​General (representatives of the seven sovereign united Dutch provinces) and Count d’Avaux,25 the ambassador of Louis xiv in The Hague, did not work out well26 and could not prevent the war from starting. Later, while the war raged on, both sides sent peace signals. In 1705, the French made some indirect peace proposals to the Dutch, with the aim of turning around those Dutch merchants who saw the war as a threat to their commerce and trade. The proposals were very advantageous to the Dutch.27 In reaction, the Dutch worked out a secret peace plan in 1705 to be discussed with the British, with the intention of sending it to the French if the British did not oppose these ideas. The war government in London despised the plan, however .28 The Dutch initiative by Willem Buys, who was the representative of the city of Amsterdam, raised suspicion among the British: were the Dutch, and especially the merchants of the powerful port of Amsterdam, heading towards unilateral peace with the French King Louis? The British were worried as the Dutch conditions were not very favourable for England, while they were quite mild on the French. After these failed negotiations, the French made a serious attempt to court the Dutch again in 1709, especially after the French defeat at Malplaquet at the hands of John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, a Tory who was in line with the war politics of the Whigs. Secret French–​Dutch negotiations ensued. The French seemed to be ready to accept all of the allies’ demands. The French envoy Antoine Louis Rouillé bargained in secret with the Dutch representatives Buys and van der Dussen in the Dutch town of Geertruidenberg. Interesting enough, they were instructed and mandated by the Dutch Raadspensionaris (prime minister) Antonius Heinsius, but not by the States-​General (supreme authority). In order to show their seriousness, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Colbert de Torcy, paid an incognito visit to Heinsius. Both the British

25 26 27 28

Tischer, A. „Claude de Mesmes, Count d’Avaux (1595–​1650): The Perfect Ambassador of the Early Seventeenth Century” in International Negotiation, 13:2 (2008), 197–​209. Doesburg, J.J. „De wording van de vrede van Utrecht” (Utrecht: J. van Boekhoven, 1886), 5. Doesburg, J.J. „De wording van de vrede van Utrecht” (Utrecht:  J.  van Boekhoven, 1886), 9–​11. Stork-​Penning, J.G. „Het grote Werk:  Vredesonderhandelingen gedurende de Spaanse Successie-​oorlog, 1705–​1710” (Groningen: J.B. Wolters, 1958), 40–​41.

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and the Austrians became involved in these negotiations and, together with the French ambassador, the allies worked out a peace agreement in 40 preliminary articles woensdag 12 november 2014.29 However, France’s King Louis xiv refused to agree to article 37: to convince his grandson Philip V –​if need be by force –​to hand over the throne to the Habsburgs. This created turmoil in the alliance. Those who had warned the negotiators about a French ploy to use bargaining time to win time for war preparations gained strength. At the same time, British suspicions of a Dutch Alleingang (going it alone) gained momentum again. This round of negotiations had started with a French–​Dutch à deux after all. The French and Dutch went on to negotiate bilaterally in 1710, trying to find a solution for the French ‘non’, but no outcome could be reached.30 A last attempt by the French, to have an armistice for France but to continue Spain’s war, was attractive to Prince Eugenius of Austria, but rejected by the British and Dutch. In the third important preliminary negotiation, it was the turn of the British to try back-​channel bargaining with the French. After the fall of Britain’s Whig government of Godolphin, the Tory minister St John Bolingbroke took the initiative for secret negotiations with France. This had to do with the ‘blind’ trust of Heinsius in the ‘paper promises’ of the Whig government in London31 and the absence of a permanent representation of the Republic of the United Netherlands in London after the death of Ambassador Marinas van Vrijbergen in 1711 –​a serious mistake, as the French and British made their deal in 1711 and nothing could change that anymore.32 Both the Dutch and the Austrians were outraged, as their options were now severely limited. They felt betrayed by the Perfide Albion (perfidious England). The outcome of the French –​British negotiations was very favourable to Britain, at the expense of its allies. The war continued, but now without the British. After the French victory at Denain, the Dutch gave up and joined the English in their armistice, though the Austrians

29 30 31 32

Veenendaal, A.J. „Het politieke leven in de 18e eeuw:  De Republiek voor het laatst als grote mogendheid, 1702–​1727” in Algemene Geschiedenis der Nederlanden-​Deel IX: Omwenteling, vereniging en scheiding, ed. Houtte, J.A. van (Zeist: De Haan, 1956), 24. Veenendaal, A.J. „Het politieke leven in de 18e eeuw:  De Republiek voor het laatst als grote mogendheid, 1702–​1727” in Algemene Geschiedenis der Nederlanden-​Deel IX: Omwenteling, vereniging en scheiding, ed. Houtte, J.A. van (Zeist: De Haan, 1956),16–​30. Stork-​Penning, J.G. „Het gedrag der staten in 1711” in Bijdragen voor de geschiedenis der Nederlanden, (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1946), 194–​197. Onnekink, D. „Een generale, goede en duyrsame vrede” in Tussen Münster en Aken: De Nederlandse Republiek als grote mogendheid, 1648–​1748, eds Groenveld, S. Eben, M. and Fagel, R. (Maastricht: Shaker Publishing, 2005), 53.

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did not yet yield. The German emperor continued his fight, but his general Prince Eugene of Savoy limited himself to skirmishes at the fringes. Open warfare was over. The French tactic finally worked: approach one of the allies, give them a good deal, and the war will be over, one reason being that a pact with the powerful British made more sense than an agreement with the weaker Dutch Republic. The stage for the Peace of Utrecht negotiations was set, as was the outline of the upcoming peace agreement. The conference could start, although it was only at Rastatt in 1714 that France and the Holy Roman Empire settled their differences. 4

Negotiations

The Congress of Utrecht attracted much attention, with people crowding into the city for amusement or profit. Utrecht’s City Council introduced regulations to protect the envoys against the townspeople, ordering the citizens not: […] to rail against, slander or abuse, by any word or deed whatsoever, the said Lords, the Public Ministers or those of their retinue; and all transgressing was to be punished arbitrarily and corporeally, according to the exigency of the case. Provisions and agreements were made to prevent rivalries and quarrels between the pages, coachmen and domestic servants of the respective representatives, who were prohibited from carrying sticks, swords and arms of any kind. The respective Plenipotentiaries were to come to the conferences in coach, with not over two horses and in a small retinue.33 The attending diplomats came from Great Britain, Austria, France and the Republic of the United Netherlands, as well as Hanover, Poland, Saxony, the German empire, Portugal, Prussia, the Papal States, Savoy, Sweden, the Swiss Confederation, Tuscany, Bavaria, Venice, Geneva, Lorraine, Cologne, the Palatinate, Modena, the Protestant Swiss Cantons, and many lesser principalities. A total number of 83 plenipotentiaries arrived in Utrecht. The chief negotiators were the Marquis d’Huxelles, the Abbé Polignac and the Chevalier de Mesnager for France; the Bishop of Bristol John Robinson and the Earl of

33

Gerard, J.W. „The Peace of Utrecht:  A Historical Review of the Great Treaty of 1713–​ 1714, and of the Principle Events of the War of Spanish Succession” (New York, NY and London: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1885), 227–​228.

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Strafford Thomas Wentworth for Britain; Buys, van der Dussen and the Count of Rechteren for the Republic of the United Netherlands; while the Count of Sinzendorf and Herr Consbruck from the German empire played a role behind the scenes.34 Many other personages attended the conference, representing their own interests or those of petty potentates.35 Protocol inside the conference hall was of even more importance than outside. In a ‘total make-​over’ the hall had been refurbished in such a way that no delegation could even give the impression of sitting in a place where they had preference over others. At the opening session on 29 January 1712, French and British negotiators were the first to enter the conference hall. As usual for the era, they entered at the same time and same speed, saluting each other in a great show and sitting down at the table at the same moment. The others followed suit. But it was clear who would dominate the conference, and indeed nothing could be decided upon without Anglo-​French consent. If there was not to be one hegemonic power in Western Europe, there were effectively two of them, pre-​cooking the conference results. The fifteen months of the Utrecht negotiations were part of an ongoing European negotiation process, with unclear beginnings and fuzzy endings: a process without a protecting regime, like in the European Union of today. Utrecht has been described as ‘a useful clearing-​house for the ratification of decisions arrived at by much more devious processes’.36 It confirmed the agreements made in London and Paris in 1711,37 but not right away, as the Dutch and Austrians were not willing to accept the outcomes of the secret French–​English negotiations at face value, meaning the continuation of warfare while the diplomats were negotiating.38 Until mid-​March 1712, a general session between France and the allies was held twice a week at 10 o’clock in the morning. In the nine months that followed, plenary sessions were hardly held any more.

34 35 36 37 38

Doesburg, J.J. „De wording van de vrede van Utrecht” (Utrecht:  J.  van Boekhoven, 1886), 99. Gerard, J.W. „The Peace of Utrecht:  A Historical Review of the Great Treaty of 1713–​ 1714, and of the Principle Events of the War of Spanish Succession” (New York, NY and London: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1885), 228–​229. Pitt, H.G. „The Pacification of Utrecht” in The New Cambridge Modern History-​Volume VI: The Rise of Great Britain and Russia 1688–​1715/​25, ed. Bromley, J.S. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), chapter xiv, 446–​479. Frey, L. and Frey, M.L. „The Treaties of the War of Spanish Succession: An Historical and Critical Dictionary” (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995). Veenendaal, A.J. „The war of Spanish Succession in Europe” in The New Cambridge Modern History-​Volume VI: The Rise of Great Britain and Russia 1688–​1715/​25, ed. Bromley, J.S. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 443.

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Intense bilateral negotiations dominated the scene, both between delegations in Utrecht itself, and between the conference negotiators and their capitals. The meetings were rocketed by external developments, such as the death of the French dauphin (crown prince) and his two potential successors within a few months of each other, as well as the failing health of Queen Anne of Great Britain, thus forcing the British to speed up the negotiations. Queen Anne’s Hanoverian successor, George I, was known as an enemy to France and his reign would thus have precluded any Utrecht Peace Agreement. There was so much time constraint at the end, and so much fatigue, that in the last stages French and British negotiators sometimes decided on the formulation of certain phrases by throwing a dice.39 Interestingly enough, Utrecht did not end with a formal signing session; the Treaties were just handed over to the Dutch secretariat of the Utrecht congress.40 There were festivities in several countries, however. In London a service was held in St Paul’s, under the tones of cantate by Georg Friedrich Händel that had been specifically written for the occasion of the conclusion of the Peace of Utrecht:  Utrecht Te Deum; and Jubileum.41 The informal ending of the congress stands in sharp contrast to the formalities seen in Münster, Osnabrück, Nijmegen and Ryswick, and seems to mark the beginning of the end of congresses as general assemblies. After Utrecht, there was a ‘growing tendency for congresses to break down, or to meet so sketchy a way as not to be congresses at all’.42 Including the Treaty of Rastatt in 1714, the ‘Pacification of Utrecht’ contained 23 treaties. The five main outcomes were the separate treaties between France on the one hand, and Britain, The Netherlands, Portugal, Prussia and Savoy on the other. In 1713, an additional series of treaties, which were connected to Utrecht, followed suit. Spain, which was represented by France, was absent in Utrecht, but it concluded treaties with Britain, The Netherlands and Portugal. Germany made an agreement with France and The Netherlands, and The Netherlands with Britain. Besides these outcomes, there were also minor treaties, as well as a ‘Memorial of the Protestants’, particularly for the relief of the Huguenots in France. However, 39 40 41 42

Gerard, J.W. „The Peace of Utrecht:  A Historical Review of the Great Treaty of 1713–​ 1714, and of the Principle Events of the War of Spanish Succession” (New York, NY and London: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1885), 283. Hamilton, K. and Langhorne, R. „The Practice of Diplomacy: Its Evolution, Theory and Administration” (London and New York, NY: Routledge, 1995), 80–​81. Weber, O.  „Die Friede von Utrecht:  Verhandlungen zwischen England, Frankreich, dem Kaiser und den Generalstaaten, 1710–​1713” (Gotha:  Friedrich Andreas Berthes, 1891), 399. Hamilton, K. and Langhorne, R. „The Practice of Diplomacy: Its Evolution, Theory and Administration” (London and New York, NY: Routledge, 1995), 80–​81.

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the Protestants were not happy with the substance of this memorial, and they filed a complaint with the magistrates of Utrecht about the unwillingness of the plenipotentiaries to act as mediators between them and French King Louis xiv. The treaties mainly dealt with land issues –​that is, which territory belonged to whom under which conditions –​such as the secession of Gibraltar and Minorca to Britain and the creation of a barrier of Dutch fortresses in the Austrian Netherlands against future French adventures. Yet they also settled commercial and other issues, such as the right of Britain to ‘supply the Spanish West Indies with negro slaves, for the space of thirty years, to the extent of 144,000 negroes, at the rate of 4,800 yearly’,43 or freeing Huguenots who were galley slaves in France, on the condition that they would not return to their home country. At the other end of the political spectrum, one of the Utrecht treaties brought about the international recognition of the King of Prussia. 5

Negotiators

The British were the most assertive negotiators. Moreover, they had a solid plan as they had to defend what they had gained in the Franco –​British agreement of 1711, while the Dutch were reluctant to negotiate because of what they saw as British betrayal. Notwithstanding the fact that the Dutch had tried to come to bilateral terms with France twice before, they felt no ownership of the political frame in which the Utrecht negotiations had to evolve. Moreover, they were irritated by British opportunism during the Congress of Utrecht itself: ‘St John [Bolingbroke, the Tory minister] hardly distinguished between the weapons of war and diplomacy, or between ally and enemy’.44 It was only at the end of the negotiations that British –​Dutch relations took a turn for the better. The Dutch were not the only ones who were critical of British negotiation behaviour. Two English historians once noted that the British had forsaken the Dutch, betrayed the Catalans, while the great loss of Britain was its loss of honour.45 Others

43 44 45

Gerard, J.W. „The Peace of Utrecht:  A Historical Review of the Great Treaty of 1713–​ 1714, and of the Principle Events of the War of Spanish Succession” (New York, NY and London: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1885), 292. Pitt, H.G. „The Pacification of Utrecht” in The New Cambridge Modern History-​Volume VI: The Rise of Great Britain and Russia 1688–​1715/​25, ed. Bromley, J.S. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 461/​chapter xiv, 446–​479. Gerard, J.W. „The Peace of Utrecht:  A Historical Review of the Great Treaty of 1713–​ 1714, and of the Principle Events of the War of Spanish Succession” (New York, NY and London: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1885), 309–​310.

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spoke of ‘Tory betrayal’46; and in sketching the behaviour of British politician Robert Harley, Alastair MacLachlan notes that his approach was not geared by ‘intended perfidy, but because his opportunism, his hypocrisy and his pragmatism seemed to be that to more exacting mentalities’.47 The Brits did not trust the Dutch either: ‘The Dutch are our Rivals in trade, and have Cheated us’.48 While the Republic of the United Netherlands had done most of the fighting, with the biggest army in the field, the British took the spoils at Utrecht, thus humiliating and finishing off the Dutch, and contributing to the decline of the republic as a world power,49 50 with the main cause being the decline of Dutch trade.51 Whether the British strategies and tactics were wise in the long run is another matter, as it endangered ‘Anglo–​Dutch friendship, the bulwark of the Protestant Succession [in England]’.52 This did not come as a surprise. The British and Dutch ambassadors, Strafford and Buys, had an enormous quarrel even before the negotiations started. It was clear that the Dutch had to fear their ally, not their enemy.53 Interestingly enough, however, the use of threats and blackmail could have positive effects on trustworthiness as well. The Duke of Marlborough, writing to Harley in 1706, disclosed that ‘Your letter to M. Buys has had its effect, for he is in extreme good humour and has really acted like an honest man to Her Majesty and England’.54

46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54

Aalbers, J. „Holland’s Financial Problems (1713–​1733) and the Wars against Louis XIV” in War and Society: Papers Delivered to the Sixth Anglo-​Dutch Historical Conference, ed. Duke, A.C. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1977), 80. MacLachlan, A.D. „The road to Peace, 1710–​1713” in Britain after the Glorious Revolution, 1689–​1714, ed. Holmes. G. (London: Macmillan and St. Martin’s Press, 1969), 213. Coomb, D. „The Conduct of the Dutch: British Opinion and the Dutch Alliance during the War of Spanish Succession” (The Hague and Achimota: Martinus Nijhoff, 1958), 376. Geyl, P. „Nederlandse staatkunde in de Spaanse Successieoorlog” in Geyl, P. Kernproblemen van onze geschiedenis: opstellen en voordrachten, 1925–​1936 (Utrecht: Oosthoek, 1937), 189–​190. Schutte, G.J. „De Republiek der Verenigde Nederlanden” in De Lage Landen van 1500 tot 1780, eds Schöffer, I., Wee, H.  van der, and Bornewasser, J.A. (Amsterdam and Brussels: Elsevier, 1978), 276. Israël, J.L. „Nederland als centrum van de wereldhandel, 1585–​1740” (Franeker: Uitgeverij van Wijnen, 1989), 374–​377. Hatton, R.  „John Drummond and the War of Spanish Succession:  A Merchant turned Diplomatic Agent” in Studies in Diplomatic History, eds Hatton, R.  and Anderson, M.S. (London: Longman, 1970), 93. Onnekink, D. „Een generale, goede en duyrsame vrede” in Tussen Münster en Aken: De Nederlandse Republiek als grote mogendheid, 1648–​1748, eds Groenveld, S. Eben, M. and Fagel, R. (Maastricht: Shaker Publishing, 2005), 59. Stork-​Penning, J.G. „Het grote Werk:  Vredesonderhandelingen gedurende de Spaanse Successie-​oorlog, 1705–​1710” (Groningen: J.B. Wolters, 1958), 63.

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The French, because of their alliance with England and their final military successes as a consequence of British abstention, had increased their diplomatic strength to the extent that they were seen as arrogant by their fellow negotiators. As representatives of an absolute monarch with permanent diplomatic positions in Paris, they were less dependent on the outcomes of the negotiations than their British colleagues, whose tenure in office was only linked to the duration of the peace negotiations. They tried, by the way, to extract more concessions from their English allies at the very last moments of the Utrecht negotiations, when the text was in fact finalized, which truly irritated the British. As British diplomat/​politician Bolingbroke wrote: ‘They act neither fairly, nor wisely […] they chicane with us, concerning the most essential article of our treaty’.55 The Dutch were stubborn and on the whole this lack of flexibility was contra-​productive .56 They were determined to stick to their guns. In a way they had done this for too long in the pre-​negotiation phase, thereby losing the opportunity to side with the British at the end of the secret French–​British preliminaries, but their inflexibility did sometimes pay off in the Utrecht negotiations. The French once attempted to bulldozer them, supported by English manoeuvres to outflank them by setting up the Prussians and the Hanoverians, but the Germans did not let the Dutch down, and the French bluff failed. The Dutch could also be arrogant at times, but when they threatened to quit the negotiations, the French called their bluff. One of the French envoys, the Abbé Polignac, spoke the (in)famous words –​still cited in Dutch history books today: ‘Messieurs, Les circonstances sont changées –​ il faut changer de ton. Nous traiterons chez vous –​ de vous –​ et sans vous’ (Sirs, the circumstances have changed –​it is necessary to change tone. We will deal with you  –​about you  –​and without you).57 Had inflexibility really been the main reason for Dutch negotiation ineffectiveness? David Onnekink is of the opinion that internal quarrels, bad assessments and denial of sound advice were the real reasons for its failure.58 55 56 57 58

Gerard, J.W. „The Peace of Utrecht:  A Historical Review of the Great Treaty of 1713–​ 1714, and of the Principle Events of the War of Spanish Succession” (New York, NY and London: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1885), 280. Geyl, P. „Nederlandse staatkunde in de Spaanse Successieoorlog,” in Geyl, P. Kernproblemen van onze geschiedenis:  opstellen en voordrachten, 1925–​ 1936, (Utrecht:  Oosthoek, 1937), 219. Gerard, J.W. „The Peace of Utrecht:  A Historical Review of the Great Treaty of 1713–​ 1714, and of the Principle Events of the War of Spanish Succession” (New York, NY and London: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1885), 275–​276. Onnekink, D. „Een generale, goede en duyrsame vrede” in Tussen Münster en Aken: De Nederlandse Republiek als grote mogendheid, 1648–​1748, eds Groenveld, S. Eben, M. and Fagel, R. (Maastricht: Shaker Publishing, 2005), 65.

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Interestingly enough, these are the same factors that caused the demise of the Dutch draft for a 1991 Maastricht Treaty.59 6

Other Congresses on Dutch Soil

Comparing Utrecht to the two major peace conferences on Dutch soil after Westphalia –​Nijmegen and Rijswijk –​is not something new. British and French diplomats studied the Nijmegen negotiations in order to be well prepared for Rijswijk and Utrecht.60 Comparisons showed the same kinds of negotiation procedures, process and behaviour. Procedures were tight, and fighting for precedence was a threat to the success of the negotiation. The Utrecht conference organizers thus learned how to prevent such clashes before they could even take place. In Nijmegen, the City Council had made a rule about the traffic of diplomatic carriages in the city streets; Ryswick kept the opponents apart by building two new bridges to cross the ditch leading to the conference hall; and Utrecht, as already discussed, tried to prevent clashes between the general public and the honourable envoys. Nijmegen was the first conference after Westphalia where Catholics and Protestants could sit together.61 Looking at the three processes, however, one gets the impression that procedures were less important in Utrecht than in Nijmegen and Ryswick. For sure, they were there at the beginning and at the end, but during the actual negotiations they did not really play a role. Utrecht, Ryswick and Nijmegen had their official meetings, but just like today, progress was made in the corridors. In Ryswick, the decisive step was taken completely outside the negotiations, and by the way, by diplomats of a military background. When the negotiations did not move forward, the French Marshall Boufflers and the Dutch envoy Bentinck (the Count of Portland) made the deal on which the negotiations could be finalized. This led to Boufflers’ remark ‘While the ambassadors wage war, the generals conclude peace’.62

59 60 61 62

Bos, B.R.A. van den „Mirakel en Debakel: De Nederlandse besluitvorming over de Politieke Unie in het Verdrag van Maastricht” (Assen: Van Gorcum, 2008). Hatton, R. „Nijmegen and the European Powers” in The Peace of Nijmegen, 1676–​1678/​79, ed. Bots, J.A.H. (Amsterdam: Holland University Press, 1980), 3–​4. Hatton, R. „Nijmegen and the European Powers” in The Peace of Nijmegen, 1676–​1678/​79, ed. Bots, J.A.H. (Amsterdam: Holland University Press, 1980), 7. Keens-​Soper, H.M.A. „De Diplomatieke Betekenis van de Vrede van Rijswijk” in Jaarboek 1997, (Rijswijk: Historische Vereniging van Rijswijk, 1997), 38.

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The processes were different in the sense that in Nijmegen and Ryswick, the preliminaries were much less substantial than in Utrecht. The consequence of this was extensive wheeling and dealing with the home front, which took time and energy. These negotiations with the constituencies distorted the negotiation process at the location, resulting in loss of time and procrastination. As Utrecht was a kind of formalization of the preceding bilateral agreements, the bargaining could gain and keep momentum much more easily. This might have been one of the reasons for the relative forward-​looking outlook of the Utrecht Treaties. The past was done with; the treaties had to regulate the relationships for the future. Yet there is a human dimension to this forward-​looking aspect as well. At Nijmegen, French King Louis xiv was at the height of his power, having invaded the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands, having built a strong alliance with the British and Germans, and occupying the city of Utrecht and celebrating mass in its cathedral, thus threatening the Dutch heartland itself: the province of Holland and the city of Amsterdam. In Ryswick, however, Louis had a hard time against an overwhelming alliance of Britain, Spain, The Netherlands, The Holy Roman Empire and others. In Utrecht, he was back in business, but exhausted at the same time. Moreover, he had become an old man. The end of his reign was in sight and Europe was preparing for that. Utrecht was thus a more inclusive peace process and inclusiveness tends to support forward-​looking aspects. Both Nijmegen and Ryswick had mediators, trying to help to create a smooth negotiation process: in Nijmegen these were –​as in Münster –​papal representatives, who were only allowed to transfer documents,63 at least officially; in Ryswick the role of mediator was with the Swedish chair.64 Utrecht had to do without –​at least official –​neutral intermediaries. Why could those peace negotiations do without mediation? After all, the number of actors in Utrecht was far larger than in Nijmegen or Ryswick, thereby creating more complexity. The main reason for the absence of mediators was the dominance of Britain and France over the Utrecht procedures. A mediator would have been an unwanted ‘stand-​in-​the-​way’. The negotiations were already more or less decided by the last Franco–​British preliminaries, meaning a quite clear-​cut framework for Utrecht, and although the absence of mediators might have attributed to the

63 64

Rietbergen, P.J. „Papal Diplomacy and Mediation at the Peace of Nijmegen” in The Peace of Nijmegen, 1676–​1678/​79, ed. Bots, J.A.H. (Amsterdam:  Holland University Press, 1980), 44. Huitsing, H.H. „De Negenjarige Oorlog en de Vrede van Rijswijk” in Jaarboek 1977, (Rijswijk: Historische Vereniging van Rijswijk, 1997), 16.

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rudeness of the Utrecht negotiations, it also prevented indirectness. Mediators such as the Italians in the Münster negotiations65 can also complicate matters. Direct negotiations can lead more easily to clashes, but they can also speed up the process, averting miscommunications, deliberate or not. Here we have an interesting connection between behaviour and procedure. The more brutal the behaviour, the more strict and formal procedural aspects we may find.66 It might have to do with something else as well: the connection between warfare and negotiation as tools in international relations. Both negotiation and warfare were seen as an art to be performed.67 To show off at the battlefield might help one side to win, as it could impress the opponent to such as extent that he might give up without much fighting. The same seems to be true for the bluff poker of the French in the Utrecht bargaining process and the harshness of the Dutch defence against this kind of behaviour. 7

The Peace of Utrecht in a Broader Perspective

In order to value the evolution of diplomatic negotiation in Western and Central Europe, we distinguish five factors influencing the process of international negotiation since the second half of the seventeenth and first half of the eighteenth centuries: the number of European states and their connectedness to each other and to the world; the rule of law and the respect for human rights; the societal–​political and professional cultures; the level of popular participation in policy-​making; and the level of welfare and technology. Do we have more or fewer states in Western/​Central European negotiations than three centuries ago? Are they more or less connected to each other and to the world? The numbers have not really changed. Europe had a multitude of sovereign or semi-​sovereign entities at the time of Utrecht, Ryswick and Nijmegen, as we have today. The difference is in the clarity of their status. Three centuries ago the status of countries was not always clear and the question of which dynasties owned those lands was a dominant factor in negotiations. It meant that lands

65

Meerts, P.W. „Turning Point Westphalia:  Negotiation Processes Establishing a New Political and Legal Order in Europe” in Peace versus Justice: Negotiating Forward –​ and Backward-​Looking Outcomes, eds Zartman, I.W. and Kremenyuk, V.A. (Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), 32. 66 Mastenbroek, W.G.F. „Negotiation as Emotion Management” (Heemstede:  Holland Business Publications, 2002). 67 Neveu, B. „Nimège ou l’art de négocier” in The Peace of Nijmegen, 1676–​1678/​79, ed. Bots, J.A.H. (Amsterdam: Holland University Press, 1980), 242.

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could easily be tossed around and traded off against other territories. Land was a commodity that could be traded. Having more trade-​offs available, negotiations were more easy-​going than today. Diplomats could package trade benefits and regions in the offering. During Utrecht, for example, the Italian lands were seed money to smooth the negotiation process. Trading colonies for colonies was another popular game, helping to make intra-​European bargaining easier. States were less dependent on each other, so could more easily use warfare in competition with negotiation. This diminished the value of the negotiation process as a tool in international relations compared with inter-​state relations nowadays. Actually, negotiation could be seen as a tool in warfare, while nowadays we tend to take the opposite viewpoint:  warfare might be a tool in a negotiation process. The lack of rule of law bedevilled the negotiations at the time. Procedures had to compensate for that, but could not manage. Managing an anarchical situation through a peaceful process like negotiation is a very difficult task. Negotiators were relatively helpless in this, with the effect that negotiation had a quite meaningless role in international politics at the time of the Utrecht negotiations. Diplomats and their rulers were aware of the negative effects of international lawlessness on international relations and give-​and-​ take processes. The dilemma was a chicken-​and-​egg problem, however. Trust could have helped in compensating for a lack of rules and regulations, but trust itself was problematic: ‘states are only willing to enter […] negotiations when they are able to trust their opponent to stick to an agreement’.68 Negotiators might trust each other, but ‘Trust is a most difficult condition to build’.69 Although negotiation regimes had to be created, as they were lacking, negotiation itself could not be seen as an effective methodology. Being aware of this, especially after the successful but incomplete Westphalia talks, countries tried to regulate their relations more and better through the Utrecht agreements, understanding that the quest for hegemony threatened the stability of Europe and thereby of its dynasties. There is, of course, an enormous difference in respect for human rights between now and then. On the one hand, this made negotiations smooth: people could just be traded for another ‘commodity’. Yet it also meant that negotiators did not really respect each other, notwithstanding the neat manners of the diplomatic noblemen, which led to a 68 69

Ghosn, F.  „Getting to the Table and Getting to Yes:  An Analysis of International Negociations” in International Studies Quarterley, 54, 2010, 1058. Faure, G.O. „Lessons for Theory and Lessons for Practice” in Unfinished Business:  Why International Negotiations Fail, ed. Faure, G.O. (Athens, GA and London:  University of Georgia Press, 2012), 371.

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kind of warlike negotiation process in which the important factor of trust was lacking. Moreover, the rule of law to compensate for this lack of trust was not yet around: the rule of power existed, but not much of law. Societal, political and professional cultures were less ‘civilized’ than today. Brutality distorted stable and trustworthy negotiation processes. The mob could threaten the envoy, envoys’ servants fought with each other on several occasions, and negotiators showed contempt to each other. None of this enhanced a fruitful atmosphere at and around the table. We have already remarked upon the Dutch angriness about Britain’s secretive attitude, but have also commented that the Dutch themselves came close to a separate peace agreement with France on two occasions. They were obviously not more reliable than the British, nor the French for that matter. Nevertheless, there was a diplomatic culture, which was synonymous with the culture of nobility. There were certain norms and values and a certain etiquette to help negotiators work with each other. There was also their lingua franca –​quite literally, as French was the dominant language at the conference table. Actually, many diplomats preferred to speak French among themselves, even if they were not from a francophone country. The Dutch diplomats, not being of noble birth, had French as their first foreign language, and had problems speaking, reading and writing English. This situation was quite normal until the middle of the twentieth century, and gave French diplomacy the advantageous position that the British (and Americans, etc.) have nowadays. Limited popular participation in politics  –​other than peasant revolutions –​made life easier on the negotiators, although there were remarkable differences between French absolutism on the one hand and English parliamentarism and Dutch particularism on the other. In Britain and the Republic of the United Netherlands, party elites and city council oligarchs respectively did intervene indirectly in the Utrecht peace negotiations, while the French elite had to hide behind the back of their absolutist ruler. The problem of constituency bargaining was quite non-​existent for the French delegation, as they had to obey the monarch’s direct orders, while the Dutch and British situation could be described as being more multiform: negotiators had to take into account the opinions of different elite factions. Still, however, in comparison with present-​day diplomatic bargaining, negotiations were seldom interrupted by political parties and parliament, let  alone by public opinion. Negotiators were quite dependent on monarchs and ruling elites, who could be extremely whimsical. Negotiators also lacked a protected position vis-​à-​vis their bosses, and as we have already seen, a more permanent position could translate into a more influential one.

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Nowadays diplomats can use public opinion as a tool to apply pressure on their opponents or as an excuse not to implement the agreement.70 Not having this weapon, not being able to play divide-​and-​rule between different internal power centres, being in a very dependent position, and sometime fearing for their lives, the legal position of individual diplomats was much weaker than today. This then affected the process of bargaining, as their insecurity and limited mandate hardly made creative solutions to negotiation problems feasible. On the other hand, the closeness of the negotiating elite made life easier sometimes, as there was much less control of the negotiator’s behaviour: In the eighteenth century, a member of the European nobility would have more in common with members of his own class in another country than with a different class in his own. Even when non-​nobles served as representatives, they accepted the aristocratic precepts of the ambassadorial corps and perpetuated the traditions with civilité.71 Yet at the same time it was difficult to be effective and to have substantial outcomes if you were so dependent on your ruler, your ruler’s character and his or her own private –​and thereby not always state –​interests. The limited room for manoeuvre and creativity stifled negotiation processes, as diplomats were extremely dependent on their sovereign’s instructions. The main statement of the famous book The Ambassador and his Functions, by Abraham de Wicquefort (1606–​1682), is that the diplomat of his time should have a wider mandate –​being more autonomous –​in order to be effective.72 Technology and welfare make an enormous difference for the diplomatic negotiator today and yesterday. The lack of efficient communications in the past meant a huge loss of time, creating a reservoir of misunderstandings and misinterpretations. In the meantime, the war raged on and every battle lost or won had its impact on the progress of the negotiation process. Wars were waged to get a better position at the table, leaving ample time for serious bargaining, unless parties became completely exhausted. Yet as long as they had resources, the combatants preferred weapons over words. Time was therefore, in general, not favourable to the negotiation process, especially not 70 71 72

Rosoux, V. „Secrecy and International Negotiation” in Journal of Information Ethics, 12:1 (2003), 45–​55. Frey, L. and Frey, M.L. „The History of Diplomatic Immunity” (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1999), 212. Keens-​Soper, H.M.A. „Preface” in Abraham de Wicquefort:  The Ambassador and his Functions (Leicester: Centre for the Study of Diplomacy, 1997).

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the summertime, as wars could then easily be fought. Negotiations came to a grinding halt, and then resumed in wintertime. As people’s well-​being was at a low level, wars over resources were abundant, and more wars meant more work for the negotiators and less possibilities to come to grips with the international situation. On the other hand, the exhaustion of resources gave negotiations a chance. Negotiators, by the way, spent lots of money to show off to other negotiators, and most became indebted to local shopkeepers, who could not sue them because of diplomatic immunity. 8

Past and Present: the Effective Negotiator

Another angle for comparison between the past and present has been offered by Bernard Bot, former Permanent Representative at the European Union and former Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, in a speech commemorating 300 years since the Peace of Ryswick.73 Bot described the features of the effective diplomatic negotiator: (1) The negotiator should have a trusting relationship with his or her constituency. This was probably even more important in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries than today, as ambassadors were acting in relative isolation on the basis of a direct mandate from their country’s sovereign. Apart from trust between the negotiator and the home front, we have the problem of trustworthiness between the negotiators. Treacherous behaviour caused the same uproar in the past as today, but seemed to be a much more common practice than in the twenty-​first century. (2)  The negotiator should feel empathy for the other party’s position. This seems to be more self-​ evident today than in the past. (3) The negotiator should know their dossier. This was important in both the past and present, with the additional remark that substance today is much more complicated in quality and quantity, requiring management skills that diplomatic negotiators of the past did not have or need. (4) The negotiator should maintain excellent networks. This is very important nowadays, even more important than in Utrecht, Ryswick and Nijmegen. Without the alternative means and sources that are provided by modern technology, personal relationships were the heart of diplomatic bargaining at the time. Paradoxically, the distributive negotiation mentality did not always help to create the understanding and trust that were needed to move forward. As we have already seen, treason was a commonly used tool, probably

73

Bot, B.  „De Diplomatieke Betekenis van de Vrede van Rijswijk” in Jaarboek 1997, (Rijswijk: Historische Vereniging Rijswijk, 1997), 51–​57.

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more than nowadays, as secrecy today is even more difficult to guarantee than yesterday. (5) The negotiator should have a good feel for the political context and the ability to see through political bluff. This is important now, and was even more important in the past, in a period when bluff and power-​play were more regular features of international negotiation than in present-​day life, in a much more insecure political environment. (6) The negotiator should prevent loss-​of-​face of his or her opponent. This was certainly much more important than in today’s Europe, as face played an overriding role in European bargaining. (7) The negotiator should be a stage actor. Again, this was very important in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, much more so than nowadays. (8) The negotiator should have endurance, a quality really needed in today’s marathon meetings in Brussels and New  York, but the pace of negotiations 300 years ago was much slower and endless general sessions hardly happened. (9) The negotiator should have a good sense of timing and knowing when to give in –​important then and now. The Dutch did not grab the opportunity to team up with the French and the British in the final pre-​negotiation phase of the Peace of Utrecht and it cost them dearly. Dutch stubbornness is a regular feature in Dutch negotiation behaviour, including today. (10) The negotiator should be true to him or herself and stick to their personal style. This seems to be of equal importance in both eras, then and now. Willem Mastenbroek is of the opinion that effective negotiation can be measured within four main dimensions: interests/​substance; power/​influence; climate/​relationships; and flexibility/​exploration.74 Comparisons between the seventeenth-​century Westphalia negotiations and those of the present, made on the basis of these four levels, indicate quite a few differences in the management of diplomatic negotiation processes in the seventeenth and twentieth centuries.75 Reframing the four paradoxes produced five conclusions concerning the similarities and disparities. More than today, negotiations at the time: (1) were a by-​product of warfare; (2) tended to be more competitive; (3)  seemed to be less value-​added; (4)  had outcomes of a more distributive and backward-​looking nature, sowing some seeds for future peace and stability and some for upcoming wars and volatility; and (5) were of a bilateral more than a multilateral nature, with ambassadors having stricter mandates and a more treacherous negotiation style than today.76 74 75 76

Mastenbroek, W.F.G. „Negotiate” (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989). Meerts, P.W. „Onderhandelen in Münster” in Europese Diplomatie:  In de schaduw van Westfalen, ed. Melissen, J. (Assen: Van Gorcum, 2000), 78–​84. Meerts, P.W. „Onderhandelen in Münster” in Europese Diplomatie:  In de schaduw van Westfalen, ed. Melissen, J. (Assen: Van Gorcum, 2000), 85.

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Differences between the past and present are numerous. As noted in chapter 3, the relevance of the negotiation process has changed over time. While warfare was the preferred means in conflict resolution in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a slow transformation in the direction of bargaining evolved in the nineteenth and especially the twentieth century –​from negotiation as a tool in warfare to warfare as a tool in negotiation. What did not change is the interplay between the two instruments; the change is in their relative weight. This thesis notes the importance of technological changes and their impact on the balance between ‘words and war’. Technology upgrades the instruments of negotiation and warfare, but the effects are completely different. Technology has been an impetus to more effectiveness in non-​violent conflict resolution through mediation and negotiation, while technological evolution has equally created more disastrous outcomes of violent conflict resolution, thus enhancing the costs of warfare and the benefits of negotiation. Another issue mentioned in chapter 3 is the evolution of –​and the linkage between –​regime-​building and trust. As has been noted, the lack of regimes prevented actors from using organizational trust to compensate for a structural lack of trust. Trust has always been a problem, as are imperfect organizational constructions. Yet trust is more of a problem if parties cannot be contained by external factors like international organizations and substantial international law. Lack of trust also gives precedence to back-​channel over front-​channel bargaining. Less trust inspires less transparency, and less transparency plus less containment equals instability, for example in coalition-​building. A change of coalitions –​as occurred before the actual Utrecht conference as the British–​ Dutch (or actually Britain–​Holland) coalition gave way to a British–​French caucus –​has much more impact in a context where regimes are lacking. These coalitions throw their weight around, but the effect can hardly be corrected if other forces are of limited significance. The self-​evident and widely accepted constantly changing coalitions of today’s European Union, which creates a ‘natural’ equilibrium between contending parties, would have been unthinkable in the past. One could therefore hardly speak of a stable international system, although the Treaty of Utrecht is a tiny step in the direction of a more stable and transparent web of international political relationships. Chapter iii of this thesis also stated that power is another major factor of influence in the evolution of inter-​state negotiation processes. Power differences in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were less constrained by an international community, or by some state structures. Autocratic and plutocratic regimes dominated the scene 300 years ago; today they are balanced by polyarchic and democratic political systems in which negotiators are held responsible, through their political superiors, for their deeds towards representatives of

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their societies. This has an impact on their attitude and behaviour. On the one hand, negotiators are more protected in the sense that they, as professionals, have a fixed position in a bureaucratic bulwark and normally they do not fear for their lives. On the other hand, they lose flexibility. Negotiators representing dictatorships do not need to worry too much about the home front. On average, it is clear what the demands of their masters are, unless the dictator is an unpredictable ruler. The ‘democratic’ negotiator, meanwhile, has to struggle with the political forces and stakeholders back home. The outcome of internal negotiations is often unclear and when it finally materializes in a mandate, that instruction could be overhauled completely if elections overturn the government. The home front is therefore of more importance today than in the past. This distribution creates a more complex negotiation process, and more complexity often diminishes effectiveness. Another difference between the past and present has to do with the role of culture. Better communication might create better understanding, but it can also enhance civilization clashes. While the negotiators of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were often amateurs, they did share the culture of the nobility. This created strong bonds and limited the impact of cultural divides. However, the negotiations often suffered from the vanity of the negotiators.77 One could argue that today the professional diplomatic corps –​with its norms and values, and rules and regulations –​helps to soften cultural contradictions. This is true indeed, but we also see an influx of non-​diplomatic negotiators in today’s world, both from the political and the bureaucratic side, and the public and private sectors. The nature of the impact of culture on the negotiation process changed, but not in such a way that it has a more positive or negative influence on the process comparing the past and present. Limiting culture to language does not provide us with a different conclusion. After all, as English serves as the bargaining lingua franca today, French (and before that Latin) performed that role for the noble and upper-​class diplomats who negotiated the treaties of Europe between Westphalia and San Francisco. 9

In Conclusion

The process of inter-​state negotiation evolved over time, particularly in the last three centuries. This chapter has presented the Peace of Utrecht as a case study to 77

Stücheli, R.  „The European Treaty of Baden, 1714” in Peace was made here:  The Treaties of Utrecht, Rastatt and Baden, 1713–​1714, eds Bruin, R.  de and Brinkman, M. (Petersberg: Michael Imhoff Verlag, 2013), 80.

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shed light on the progress made, for example by comparing negotiation behaviour in the eighteenth and twenty-​first centuries. Daring to say that the bargaining process improved, the question remains of in what respect and why. Inter-​state negotiation does better today than at the time of Utrecht because of its output. Things that could then only be decided by warfare can now be solved through negotiation. In other words, the productivity of the negotiation process has risen substantially, as has the productivity of society. Does this mean that we can be satisfied about the evolution of diplomatic negotiation and its contribution to international relations? There is a counterbalancing factor that diminishes the optimistic picture just sketched, for with the growth of interconnectedness between states, the number of conflicts grew as well. Therefore, more negotiation effectiveness is indeed needed, but it remains difficult to cope with the mass of problems and actors –​including public opinion, parliament and lobby groups –​that we face today. Life at the time of the Utrecht negotiations was less complicated and easier to handle, even with the more primitive tools of the time. The instruments at the disposal of negotiators have been refined, but the quantity of the problems has multiplied. There are more conflicts to deal with, although we have more –​ and more effective –​negotiators available to tackle them. The characteristics of an effective negotiator in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were more or less the same as those of the twenty-​first century diplomatic bargainer, but there are variations. Seven out of ten effectiveness traits were of different importance in the past or present. Why did the negotiation process evolve as it did? We can think of several reasons. First, the development of regimes, international organizations, and a system of international rules and regulations embedded the negotiation process in such a way that processes became smoother and outcomes more assured.78 Second, the alternative tool in international relations –​violence –​ became too costly to be effective under all circumstances. This made negotiation more valuable. Third, the negotiators are professionals now, not noble amateurs, and are better educated and better managed people from much broader strata of society, more rooted in the country that they are representing. It should not be forgotten that many negotiators of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were a kind of mercenary working for whichever monarch was in need of them. Loyalty to their ruler prevailed, but they were not embedded in an organization supporting them in being effective negotiators. Fourth, peaceful relationships and communication are much more the norm

78

Meerts, P.W. „Order Through Negotiation” in International Negotiation, 11:2, 2006, 341–​352.

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today than in the past. As we have seen, waging war was seen as the best way to create peace. Such an attitude may have been standard at the time, but today it would cause a diplomatic scandal. This evolution helps negotiation to be effective and efficient, as it is the main tool of diplomacy, the blood of the international system. Finally, fifth, negotiation became integrated into society, making it a self-​evident tool to be used in cases of conflicts. Did the Treaty of Utrecht contribute to a less conflictual era thereafter? According to Charles Doran, it did: ‘From 1713 to 1740, Europe enjoyed a peace broken only by minor conflicts. This situation is generally said to have been an indication of the success of the Treaty of Utrecht’.79 79

Doran, C. „The politics of Assimilation, Hegemony and its Aftermath” (Baltimore, MD and London: Johns Hopkins Press, 1971), 109.

pa rt 1 The Peace of Utrecht: the European Balance of Power

∵

­c hapter 1

Balance of Power: Adversarial Pair of Scales or Associational Arch? Jaap de Wilde Abstract By looking at its intellectual history, this chapter addresses the problem that Balance of Power by most observers is treated one-​sidedly in adversarial terms, whereas a balance of power-​logic often requires cooperation. The Peace of Utrecht (1713) is an example where the balance can be better compared with an arch than with a pair of scales. Moreover, an adversarial Balance of Power has little to do with weighing power in imaginary scales: 1) there are no objective standards for measuring power, 2) means of power cannot predict outcomes of struggles; and 3) outcomes themselves are discursive tools rather than historic facts. Balance of Power has two specific political functions: the first is to structure an analysis of specific historic episodes; the second is to support specific political argumentations. Using the scales argument is likely to undermine the associational logic.

1

Introduction

The Peace of Utrecht confirmed a practice in European politics that had its first pinnacle in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. War-​wary or defeated Great Powers of the time gathered to negotiate a new political order. They arranged guarantees in which each Power promised to serve the collective interest in maintaining the new order. Time and again these balances failed, but the principle survived. Peace treaties tend to be conservative arrangements. They have a hard time facing new societal developments, such as shifts in the world economy, ideational developments, technological change, and lack of self-​ constraint of new military-​political leaders. Modern history shows a sequence of such authoritative new deals: 1648, 1713, 1815, 1885, 1919, 1945, 1990. Some of them more important and enduring than others.

 

  

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The order created at the Peace of Westphalia (1648) had to be guaranteed by France and Sweden, which failed due to misuse of the powers granted.1 In the wake of 1648, the Ancien Regime developed, in which aristocratic marriages of convenience and directed battles between ever more absolutist states dominated politics. However, during the Spanish Wars of Succession (1701–​1713/​14) this practice reached proportions that seriously threatened the Westphalian order. These wars culminated in the Peace of Utrecht (1713), where, for the second time in history, a new European political order was negotiated. The order created at the Peace of Utrecht (1713–​1715) triggered a specific role for Great Britain: it presented itself as the ‘balancer’. Additionally, the ‘New World’ was sort of divided between the major powers, which was repeated at the Berlin Conference of 1885. Britain’s balance of power policy boiled down to a ‘divide and rule’ policy towards the continental powers, most notably France. But France came out strongest, due to unforeseen domestic developments:  the French Revolution followed by the Napoleonic Era. The success was temporary: in 1815 a defeated France had to accept a new draft of the European map. A smart political move was to invite France one year later as a member in the Concert of Europe –​a forerunner of the contemporary United Nations Security Council, be it without any institutionalization. Communication was ad hoc by horseback and coaches. The Concert functioned for some decades, but failed to provide an answer to nationalism, nation-​state formation and accompanying social Darwinist thinking. For the first time in its history, Europe had become an international system –​moving away from the societal logic that characterized both the Middle Ages and especially the Ancien Regime. This culminated in the First World War, a prelude to the end of European world dominance. As a consequence of the social Darwinistic twist in the thinking about interstate relations, as a survival of the fittest, the victors in World War I, especially France, had forgotten the diplomatic wisdom of 1815, and dictated counterproductive conditions to Germany at the Peace of Versailles. Contemporaries, like Norman Angell who covered the peace negotiations as a journalist, already predicted that a new war would be inevitable.2 The Concert logic was not too strong in the League of Nations either. 1919 proved to be an interlude in what nowadays can be called the Thirty Years War of the 20th Century, 1914–​1945. The establishment of the United Nations organization proved more successful. It survived the Cold War, guided 1 Fritz Dickmann, Der Westfälische Frieden (Münster: Aschendorff, 1958, 6. Auflage, 1972). 2 Norman Angell, The Political Conditions of Allied Success. A Plea for the Protective Union of the Democracies (New York, London: Putnam & Sons, 1918).

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decolonisation, gained dominant political roles in the world economy, in the promotion of human rights and in debates about sustainable development. With projects like the Millennium Goals the UN system also tries to incorporate a dynamic element to the static peace arrangements of the past. Where it fails to do so –​in particular in the composition of the Security Council –​competing institutions emerge, such as the G8 and nowadays the G20. In 1990 the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (osce) provided a good forum for the peaceful settlement of the Cold War in Europe, allowing a new chapter in European history that initially also included Russia. The European order also survived the controversies between France and Germany during the early years of the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s. The latest test, about Ukraine’s struggle with democratization and independence, began in 2013, and is still unsettled. This time the usa is conducting a ‘divide and rule’ policy in Europe (in particular by nato enlargement encircling Russia), while the Russian Federation in response has returned to 19th-​Century geopolitics.3 This sequence of pinnacles in the global and European order reflect a balance of power based on cooperation rather than confrontation. Time and again great powers acknowledge their collective interest in military-​political stability, allowing them to develop in other issue areas, most notably economics, but also arts and humanities; in short providing a boundary condition for societal progress. Time and again, too, military clashes occur nevertheless, either out of political-​economic ambition, miscalculation, ideological frustration or tragic circumstances sought by no one. Most Balance of Power theories focus only on these political-​economic clashes:  balancing is needed to lower the chances of successful warfare; reducing the instrumental use of military means. Here, balancing is a means to frustrate Clausewitzian warfare: war as the continuation of politics, underlining diplomatic arguments with threats and violence. The reciprocal nature of a balance implies military frustration for all sides involved. This Chapter will contrast this dominant view of a balance as precarious scales with a view on the balance in an arch. The arch as a metaphor for an international order purposely designed by Great Powers, and cemented by International Law and, nowadays, International Organizations. The Peace of Utrecht was such an arch. It helped to establish a practice that still keeps the world politically together today.

3 Jaap de Wilde, “Anachronistic Research in International Relations and Security Studies,” In: Edwin Daniel Jacob, Ed., Rethinking Security in the Twenty-​First Century (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), pp. 29–​40.

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To this end, I will first reflect briefly on the intellectual roots of Balance of Power theory in International Relations (IR). This will cumulate in a conceptual discussion, based on the excellent work by the British IR-​scholar Richard Little. Subsequently, I will discuss the historical track record of particularly one type of Balance of Power, i.e. associational balances. Finally, I will conclude that at present traditional notions of Balance of Power have become anachronistic guidelines for understanding and conducting world politics. But there is a huge risk that widespread adherence to this misguided type of analysis will work as a self-​fulfilling prophecy, leading us back to late-​19th century practices. 2

500 Years Balance of Power Theory in IR

What is the nature of a Balance of Power? For positivists this question implies a hopeless search for characteristics of power that can be compared and weighed.4 For social constructivists life is easier. There is no choice but to acknowledge that Balance of Power is a fact of political discourse: manifest accounts of them are with us for at least 500 years, ever since Francesco Guiccardini tried to make sense of politics between the city states of Renaissance Italy. But Balance of Power has no concrete empirically testable meaning, and is a misnomer in that sense. It exists as a metaphorical interpretation of specific political circumstances. There are some situations in which adversarial balances appear to have a concrete physical appearance, but even then it remains a metaphor: a stalemate in military battle, like trench warfare at the western front during the First World War (1914–​1918), is close to reflecting a balance of power. But, even in that setting, the stalemate is an interpretation of the situation. Moreover, both sides refused to acknowledge the balance. They frequently chose the offense but were thrown back. Crucial for a Balance of Power is the interpretation of the situation, both as involved actor and as observer. Balance of Power is an argument about a specific type of political circumstance. It is about a perceived form of symmetrical confrontational interdependence; two sides caught in a stalemate, like two scorpions in a bottle.5 Balance of Power theories and policies are about underscoring these perceptions: what kind of military 4 See, e.g., Emerson M.S. Niou and Peter C. Ordeshook, “A Theory of the Balance of Power in International Systems,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 30, No. 4 (1986): 685–​715. 5 Jaap de Wilde, Saved from Oblivion: Interdependence Theory in the First Half of the 20th Century. A Study on the Causality between War and Complex Interdependence (Aldershot: Dartmouth, 1991).

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investment is needed to keep the balance? Associational balances are less well theorized.6 They follow a different logic, i.e. the logic of constructional interdependence: two can do more than one. This is seldom based on symmetry. But in both cases, adversarial and associational, it is about balancing arguments about interests, perceived sources of power, types of power, mutual perceptions, and perceived forms of interdependence. In 1713 Balance of Power had occupied a dominant position in thinking about foreign policy and international relations. The intellectual history of Balance of Power brings us back to the writings of Francesco Guicciardini (1483–​1540). Fourteen years younger than the illustrious Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–​1527) and generally less known, yet of great importance. In History of Italy (1537?) he analysed the politics of Italian city-​states at the end of the 15th Century in terms of a “system which is self-​ regulating owing to some balance-​of-​power mechanism.”7 Here I am quoting the Norwegian political scientist Torbjørn Knutsen, who has written one of the best intellectual histories of IR. Guicciardini writes particularly about the policies of Lorenzo de’ Medici of Florence, called The Magnificent (1448–​1492), as if Lorenzo applied a Balance of Power policy. Knutsen notes, however, that it is very unlikely that this was the case: “Lorenzo was guided by opportunism rather than planning.”8 Guicciardini, more so than Macchiavelli, builds his system theory of balancing on Thucycides’ reconstruction of the Peloponnesian War (431–​403bc). The Classics were rediscovered in the Renaissance, and also copied. Realists in IR of all feathers have continued to do so up to and including the American political scientist Kenneth Waltz. Waltz turned Balance of Power into a story about polarity in the international system.9 In his view balancing behaviour is encouraged by structural forces, and therefore to be expected in all times; whether we are talking about classical Athens versus Sparta, or East versus West in the Cold War. Polarity helps to explain the stability or instability of the system. Politicians who want to preserve the position of the state they serve have to observe the balance. Politicians who want to improve the position of 6 Feng Zhang, “Reconceiving the Balance of Power: A Review Essay,” Review of International Studies, Vol. 37 (2011): 641–​651. 7 Torbjørn L.  Knutsen, A History of International Relations Theory (Manchester:  Manchester University Press, 1997): 48. 8 Ibid., p. 49. 9 Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-​Wesley, 1979). See for typical updates:  Kenneth N.  Waltz, “The Emerging Structure of International Politics,” International Security, Vol. 18, No. 2 (1993): 44–​79. Kenneth N. Waltz, “Structural Realism after the Cold War,” International Security, Vol. 25, No. 1 (2000): 5–​41.

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their state have to obstruct the balance by exploiting the margins within the order or by attacking it. Yet, there has to be an observation about this system logic. Did Thucydides, as interpreted by Guicciardini, reveal a law of politics, like Isaac Newton (1642–​ 1727) had revealed the law of gravity in natural science? Or did he develop a metaphor that appeared extremely helpful in narrating diplomatic moves and power politics? From a post-​positivist perspective it is obvious that the latter is the case. However, when Hume and Rousseau developed the concept, the Zeitgeist of the Enlightenment was far away from that position. In the latter half of the 17th Century the scientific method emerged, secularization increased, politics were defined in terms of state interests. This was new. The medieval quest for peace in terms of St Augustine’s tranquilitas –​finding your proper place in God’s order –​was replaced by metaphors of geometry. The world was shaped by calculated interests in a godless order. Balance of Power moved from an interpretation of politics to a form of politics. In Knutsen’s definition: “A balance-​of-​power policy allows a state to throw its weight where it is most needed in order to safeguard its own independence.”10 The number of scholars who use the metaphor of a balance expanded widely, and, more important, also statesmen began to refer to it. Pinnacle of this development is the Peace of Utrecht in 1713–​14. The Renaissance writers discovered Balance of Power as the resting points in the dynamics of politics. They based their analyses on long-​forgotten insights. So they were new. The statesmen of that time were not disturbed by them. Two hundred years later, in the early 18th Century, however, every schooled prince knew about Balance of Power –​it was in their study books. This is why Balance of Power could be turned into a policy-​device, into a deliberate organizing principle. In 1648 at the Peace of Westphalia a bit of this consciousness had surfaced already. But in 1713 and during the preceding War of Spanish Succession Balance of Power had become common parlance. This does not imply any agreement on its meaning. Richard Little quotes the alleged champion on 18th Century Balance of Power politics Frederick the Great saying:  “that although ‘balance is a word that has subdued the whole world’ (emphasizing its general acceptance at that time) it has to be accepted that ‘in truth this same balance is no more than a bare word, an empty sound’.”11 Nevertheless, the metaphor of a balance had changed reality. It had

10 Knutsen, op.cit.: 112. 11 Richard Little, The Balance of Power in International Relations:  Metaphors, Myths and Models (Cambridge University Press, 2007): 9–​10.

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helped to structure analysis and debate. Empirically, that is to say as an observable metaphor in diplomacy, law and power politics, Balance of Power has never disappeared since, even though its appeal varies in time. So, what power does the metaphor have? Or isn’t it a metaphor after all? In a comprehensive project to test Balance of Power theory throughout history balancing behaviour is found from the earliest political structures (about 3000 bc) that can be interpreted in our contemporary language of ‘international systems’.12 The study, however, is like Guicciardini’s interpretation of Lorenzo the Magnificent, and confirms Frederic the Great’s scepticism: balance of power was no concept. It is possible to interpret politics in terms of ‘balancing’, like economists use ‘bargaining’. The study shows that balancing is not a systemic response to hegemony: “On the contrary, the ubiquity of hegemonic outcomes seems to support the contention of the English School … that some form of hegemony rather than balance is the norm in international history.”13 Unfortunately, the study of this remarkable team only focuses on one type of balance: the adversarial Balance of Power. The associational balance goes unnoticed. 3

Richard Little’s Ordering of Balance of Power

In 2007 Richard Little, who participated in the studies of Kaufman, et al., published a major contemporary work on Balance of Power: The Balance of Power in International Relations: Metaphors, Myths and Models. He analyses in detail how Hans Morgenthau (1904–​1980), Hedley Bull (1932–​1985), Kenneth Waltz (1924–​2013) and John Mearsheimer (b.1947) developed their views on the nature and functions of Balance of Power. More importantly, he provides clarity to the history of the concept and adds a highly interesting new interpretation, called composite Balance of Power. In that new interpretation Little manages to enrich the Realist literature on the topic by providing a convincing scheme to match the global chess board of power politics with world regional chess boards. As we all know, anarchy is

12

Reported in:  Stuart J.  Kaufman, Richard Little and William C.  Wohlforth, Eds., The Balance of Power in World History (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); and William C.  Wohlforth, Richard Little, Stuart J.  Kaufman, David Kang, Charles A.  Jones, Victoria Tin-​Borhui, Arthur Eckstein, Daniel Deudney, and William J. Brenner, “Testing Balance-​ of-​Power Theory in World History,” European Journal for International Relations,” Vol. 13, No. 2 (2007): 155–​185. 13 Kaufman, et al., op.cit.: 230.

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no longer perceived as an independent variable or a constant in international relations. It varies in time and place. Anarchy in Europe is not the same as anarchy in the Middle East, Africa, Latin America or East Asia. Discourses and expectations about conflict & cooperation, war & peace, disorder & order vary widely per world region. Anarchy at the global level, the system level as Realists like to call it, is different from what happens at lower echelons. But of course all levels are interlinked. An individual act of terror can upset the entire world, whether in 1914, with the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, or in 2001 with the (attempted) bombing of the symbols of US power: World Trade Centre, Pentagon and White House. The question is not if they are interlinked, but how. Still, Little has left some problems unsolved which I  like to address here. What I like most about Little’s analysis is that he clearly distinguishes adversarial Balance of Power from associational Balance of Power. There is a tendency to link Balance of Power first and foremost with conflict. We thank this to the very Realists he analysed, and also to 45 years of Cold War. When Balance of Power nowadays is discussed in newspapers and academic articles it is mainly because of China’s rise to power, and it is generally linked to global tension, and even more so to old-​fashioned territorial conflicts in East Asia. Also the debates about the (non-​)intervention in Syria’s civil war and the Middle East more generally often reflect on a presumed balance of influence between the usa and the Russian Federation, and between Sunnis and Shiites. Apparently, Libya ‘belongs’ to nato, Syria to the Russian Federation (although the rise of the Islamic State, late 2014, might change this). Our and our parents’ generations are used to think in terms of potential world wars –​so we keep doing this, even at the risk of a self-​fulfilling prophecy. Since our history books tend to focus on the rise and fall of great powers, there is a strong tendency to see balancing as an alignment by the weak against the lust for power by the strong. If you can’t block the powerful you are at their mercy. That’s the adversarial dimension: an image of a balance with two scales. Much is wrong with that image. The dominance of the usa since 1991 (that is already 28 years, more than one generation, and half as long as the entire Cold War) poses an anomaly from that point of view. Balance of Power theory has it that automatically weaker states would form an alliance against the hegemon, while the hegemon’s lust for power would constantly feed its imperialistic behaviour  –​just as Mearsheimer’s theory about offensive realism predicts. Over the past decades we have not seen this happen, except perhaps for the Iraq invasion in 2003, and widespread fear among experts for President Donald Trump’s foreign policies since January 2017. But there are three more fundamental problems.

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Firstly, the scales metaphor presupposes that power can be measured, like ounces of sugar or barrels of oil. Secondly, it presupposes that the alleged sources of power are good predictors of political outcomes. Thirdly, it assumes that politics indeed creates outcomes. This is all wrong. Power capabilities vary in time and place. Power depends on societal contexts. In an agricultural society power rests on different means than in an industrialized society or a micro-​electronic society. At present media performance and media control are key sources of power for politicians. Since the 2000s, social media have opened up new battlefields for power politics. It requires different and new skills to succeed in politics. While new sources of power may make the difference, it makes little sense to put the old sources, military equipment, in the scales of a balance, and pretend you can weigh them. On the eve of World War I all the calculations were in place. But in the test they had miscalculated the value of the machine gun and barbed wire; a misreading of time and space, leading to a 300 kilometre frontline in the heart of Europe for about four years long. The only things that are actually in the scales are arguments about power. And these can lead to a balance. Secondly, sources of power are poor predictors of political process. Statistically, Goliath would probably win 99 out of 100 times from David. But historically there was only one battle, won by David. So, to exert power on David, Goliath should have convinced him about statistics, deterring David to try him on. In the mid-​19th Century, Carl von Clausewitz rationalized David’s luck. He called it ‘friction’.14 However well an army prepares for war, in the moment of the battle it requires geniality to win. This shows that Balance of Power has no predictive value, only persuasive value. What’s in the balance are arguments about power. Thirdly, world politics has no beginning or end. It is an ongoing process. But to escape its complexity we have learned to break it up into events, periods, and long waves, such as the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Depending on the narrative the balances will look different. Balance of Power does not follow the course of history but sketches a course of history. Take the 20th Century. It began with a Great War, which later was called the First World War, because of a Second World War. But nowadays they are more and more taken together as the Thirty Years War of the 20th Century, sealing the end of European world domination. Should Balance of Power analysis focus on the day by day shifts

14

Carl von Clausewitz –​translated by Colonel J.J. Graham, On War (London: N. Trübner, 1873; translation of Vom Kriege book i, ii and iii, first published in 1832, 1833 en 1834).

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in the strategic positions of the belligerent countries? Should it focus on the Balance of Power at the beginning of the single wars and their peace treaties? Should it focus on the worldwide shift of power that took place between the division of Africa in Berlin 1885 and the decolonisation of Africa in the 1960s? In short, Balances of Power are products of arguments, not of forces unwillingly pulling and pushing in a specific direction in search of equilibrium or geometry. 4

Balancing Arches by International Law and International Organizations

The very image of scales blinds us for more nuanced views on Balance of Power. Note that within the adversarial logic smaller states have to align against the powerful states. How do they balance their reciprocal power? The Italian jurist Alberico Gentili (1552–​1608), author of a classic in International Law, De Jure Belli Libri Tres (1589), was not yet hindered by a Balance of Power discourse. Yet he made an important contribution, reported by Little: “Gentili identified Europe as an arch and argued that ‘if anyone should pluck out the keystone of an arch, on which all stones can lean, the rest would follow and fall with it’ … ”15 Balance of Power as an arch. Here, power is associational, based on an awareness of constructional interdependence. Here power is not in the balance but creates the balance. This type of balance has created far more inspiring narratives and histories than the adversarial type. It seems that we have forgotten them during the short 20th Century of world wars (1914–​1990). The commemoration of the Peace of Utrecht may help to refresh our memory. The deliberate construction of international orders should be analysed in terms of solidifying an associational balance of arguments about power. As far as Europe is concerned, the Peace of Utrecht (1713) fits a long series of such settlements that has started with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 and so far has ended with the Charter of Paris for a new Europe in 1990. Crucial in the historical record of these arches is the role of international law and of international public administration. Additionally, it is crucial to understand the changing meaning of military means in the pursuit of power. Law and administration form the cement in the associational balances formed by states. Their combination is crucial. The treaties of 1648, 1713, and 15 Little, op.cit.: 67.

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1815 existed merely as documents. That is a start, but not enough. The treaties of 1919/​1945, which should be interpreted together as one development related to the Thirty Years War of the 20th Century, were institutionalized to a much higher degree. The UN-​system has turned the occasional conferences into a permanent phenomenon. Both the Security Council and the General Assembly are in constant session. Partly, the same goes for military alliances. The endurance of nato lies in its institutionalization. nato’s internal relations can be seen as an associational balance of power; constantly negotiated and renegotiated by permanent representatives, who are highly paid to work out consensus all of the time. Obviously, a common enemy is a welcome friend in fostering such a consensus –​a role Putin’s Russia appears willing to play. The UN system is a more straightforward case of an arch: it can only work if its sovereign members want it to. But thanks to its own institutional dynamics, thousands of international civil servants constantly pressure them to do so in all areas of politics. The Australian Brit Hedley Bull comes close to this when he is theorizing the evolutionary role of International Law.16 He was too much a Realist, however, to value international public administration. In his analysis of international societies Balance of Power is a foundational institution, but only so in close connection to four other foundational institutions: war, diplomacy, great power management, and International Law. In fact, Bull is balancing these foundational institutions.17 He mentions three main functions of International Law: “The first and most critical function is to identify the existence of a society of sovereign states. The second function has been to identify the rules of co-​existence that govern relations among these units. The third function is to help mobilize compliance with both the rules of co-​existence and the rules of cooperation.”18 According to Little, International Law and Balance of Power “will not always prove to be mutually reinforcing because, paradoxically, to maintain the balance of power … it will sometimes be necessary to violate international law.”19 Bull claims that the need to maintain the balance comes first. International Law is in a serving position. 16 Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society:  A Study of Order in World Politics (London: Macmillan, 1977). 17 For an application of this approach, see:  Hedley Bull and Adam Watson, Eds., The Expansion of International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984). 18 Little, op.cit.: 151. 19 Ibid.

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Here I disagree with both Little and Bull. Despite their historical awareness they keep treating International Law, war, diplomacy, Balance of Power and great power management as constants. They should be treated, however, as variables. The role of International Law has changed substantially due to its institutionalization in Intergovernmental Organizations (igo s). International civil servants are working fulltime in service of the international order supported by the igo s. This has improved the stability of the present international society. It still has to compete with the nation-​state logic that has dominated IR and political science ever since they were formed as academic disciplines in the late 19th Century. But the qualitative change is substantial. The more so, because the political role of warfare has also changed fundamentally. In an agricultural world economy the conquest of land equalled increase in political power. In the industrialized world that direct linkage has disappeared. The British activist and prolific writer Sir Norman Angell (1872–​ 1967) tried to get that message across on the eve of World War I:  the idea that conquest does pay had become a great illusion.20 Yet, he clearly saw the need for balancing with military means: in 1918 he advocated the establishment of a permanent alliance of democratic states against autocracies.21 In 1938 he wrote two books against appeasement of Nazi Germany.22 Part of the reluctance to fight that war had to do with a negative cost/​benefit analysis indeed. The economic meaning of territoriality has changed (also in today’s resource wars), and even more so since the micro-​electronic revolution. The echoes of 19th Century power politics, however, have dominated world politics ­nevertheless. 5

Balance of Power Today

This brings me to the final question: Has Balance of Power become a dangerous anachronism in our times or is it still a foundational institution in international society? In general, Balance of Power interpreted as a law or an inevitable guiding principle of politics falls short in explaining centuries of world politics, e.g.,

20 21 22

Norman Angell, The Great Illusion: A Study of the Relation of Military Power to National Advantage (London: Heinemann, 1910). Angell, 1918, op.cit. Norman Angell, Peace with the Dictators? (London:  Hamish Hamilton, 1938); Norman Angell, The Great Illusion –​Now (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1938).

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long-​lasting empires, and Medieval Europe.23 There are too many instances where balancing behaviour was absent to warrant it universal and fixed importance. Hence it cannot be called a basic feature of politics. Balance of Power, even in Bull’s view of a foundational institution, is always an interpretation of politics in a society, a perceived ordering principle. Moreover Balance of Power literature shows a remarkable neglect of the changing meaning of power resources. Napoleon still was essentially a military general close to the battlefield; President Obama was a public performer shooting with words and drones; President Trump is notorious for his tweets. The media have opened up new terrain for power politics. International organizations have opened up new terrain for power politics. The micro-​electronic revolution has opened up new terrains for power politics. Meanwhile the liberal international economic order is at odds with adversarial Balance of Power politics, as has been tragically proven by the Thirty Years War of the 20th Century. Nevertheless journalists, think-​tanks, politicians and even academics often keep equating power with figures about military capabilities, weighed in imaginary scales. That image echoes the 18th and 19th century, and has become an anachronism. But, unfortunately, political structures can be built on such anachronisms, paradoxically recreating a past reality. Especially at the subsystem level of international society, this anachronistic logic is still alive, leading to strong adversarial arguments and policies. At the global chess board of power politics, the world shows a remarkable associational balance of arguments ever since the Cold War ended. The changes at the global level are symbolised by the shift from a bipolar world to a 1+4 structure, as identified by Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver,24 in my view a 1+5–​6 structure. At the global stage there is one superpower, the usa, who is always in play (either active or as a joker in the pack). Then there are four other actors (not all of them states) whose views can make a difference depending on the issues and regions at stake. These are: Japan and the EU/​France/​Germany/​(and still)Britain-​combination for mainly economic reasons, the Russian Federation for mainly its geopolitical location and its nuclear capabilities, and China for its growing score on the three most simple of perceived indicators of power,25 i.e. demographic size, military capabilities, and gross domestic product. India 23 24 25

For a related argument see: Emanuel Adler and Patricia Greve, “When Security Community Meets Balance of Power:  Overlapping Regional Mechanisms of Security Governance,” Review of International Studies, Vol. 35 (2009): 59–​84. Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver, Regions and Powers: The Structure of International Security (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001).

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abstained so far from expressing global ambitions, but potentially fits the same league. In face of the institutionalization of International Law also the United Nations should be added to that list. Its specialised agencies and other institutions and forums play decisive roles in large parts of the Third World. The Security Council is the pivot in debates about war and peace worldwide. Also the G-​20 is a forum of global importance. Irrespective of the precise count of global players there is a historically unique calm at the global level, although global trade wars and sanction regimes are testing its resilience. The threats to the stability of this arch are posed by potential spill-​overs from regional conflicts. Japanese-​Chinese relations and US-​Chinese relations are tense at the regional level, respectively about their common history and about Taiwan –​anachronistic conflicts, but very persistent. Even more problematic is regional stability in the greater Middle East, due to traditional interstate rivalry, traditional military security dilemmas, and weak state-​society relations. In other world regions, as well as within huge states such as India, Russia, Brazil, and the usa, instability comes from within. In general, state failure results in wide-​scale political and/​or criminal violence, economic breakdowns, lack of educational capacities, (massive) displacement and migration of people, and armed (sub-​)societies. Spill-​over into neighbouring countries can destabilise entire regions. This is particularly true for parts of Sub-​Sahara Africa, parts of Latin America, the Caucasus, the Middle East and, at a smaller scale, the no-​go areas in major cities the world over. All global players believe in the Liberal International Economic Order. Except for China, all players officially support ideals of democracy (although they are willing to betray grass root attempts to create it). There is fierce economic competition, but direct confrontational enmity is absent at the global level. There are no policies to align against the usa –​opposition is regional and local –​and the reason is obvious: the contemporary global balance is an arch constructed by arguments about power. Today’s world fits Gentili’s image of Europe: Take away a stone and the arch will collapse.

­c hapter 2

Envisioning Europe after Utrecht: Voltaire and the Historiography of the Balance of Power Isaac Nakhimovsky Abstract This chapter attempts to bring the historiography of the European balance of power in the eighteenth century into focus by examining the forms it took in the aftermath of the Peace of Utrecht in 1713, above all in the hands of the eminent philosopher François-​Marie Arouet de Voltaire (1694–​1778). Voltaire envisioned a post-​Utrecht Europe in which large monarchies like Britain and France were both locked into a system of diplomatic and commercial relations, thereby forming, in his words, “a kind of great republic divided into many states.” This vision of the balance of power and of the European states system proliferated widely and was discussed in many contexts. Though many challenges to this vision were expressed at the time, particularly in the wake of the Seven Years War, a version of it was also embedded into Emer de Vattel’s famous treatise on the law of nations, published in 1758. As Vattel’s status as a leading authority on international law throughout the nineteenth century suggests, this was a vision of the European balance of power with enduring appeal.

The Scottish philosopher David Hume began his essay “Of the Balance of Power,” first published in 1752, by asking whether the balance of power was a distinctively modern European practice or institution (“owing entirely to modern policy” as Hume put it), or whether it was just the term that was unique to modern Europe.1 As is well known, Hume went on to dismiss the idea that the concept of a balance of power was known only to modern Europe, and unknown to classical antiquity. However, Hume’s account of the history of the balance of power also emphasized that modern European politicians had failed to act according to this principle more reliably than before. Though the balance of power might have become more “generally known and acknowledged among

1 David Hume, “Of the Balance of Power,” in Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Eugene Miller (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1987), 332.

 

  

46 Nakhimovsky speculative reasoners,” Hume wrote, “it has not, in practice, an authority much more extensive among those who govern the world.”2 This feature of Hume’s approach to the history of the balance of power was an important element of his nuanced critique of the dominant view of Britain’s role in Europe: namely, ensuring that the balance of power was maintained against the threat of French hegemony.3 It also illustrates the more general point that the history of the balance of power can be told in different ways; that the primary object of investigation may be the history of a term, or a practice, or (as in Hume’s case) the relation between the two; and that these different historical perspectives can generate very different ways of understanding international politics. This essay attempts to bring the historiography of the European balance of power in the eighteenth century into focus by examining the forms it took in the aftermath of the Peace of Utrecht in 1713, above all in the hands of the eminent philosophe François-​Marie Arouet de Voltaire (1694–​1778). Voltaire was a prominent exponent of a historical perspective on the balance of power in which the Utrecht settlement represented the possibility of a more stable and cohesive European order. He was among those in the early eighteenth century who sought to develop an idea of Europe that transcended the confrontation between Louis xiv’s France and the Anglo-​Dutch led alliance: an opposition between a bid for continental hegemony on one side and a quest for maritime trading empire and control of the seas on the other. Rather, Voltaire envisioned a post-​Utrecht Europe in which large monarchies like Britain and France were both locked into a system of diplomatic and commercial relations, thereby forming, in his words, “a kind of great republic divided into many states.”4 This vision of the balance of power and of the European states system proliferated widely and was discussed in many contexts, including by Hume. Though many challenges to this vision were expressed at the time, particularly in the wake

2 Hume, “Of the Balance of Power,” 338. 3 John Robertson, “Universal Monarchy and the Liberties of Europe: David Hume’s Critique of an English Whig Doctrine,” in The Languages of Political Theory in Early-​Modern Europe, ed. Anthony Pagden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 349–​73. See also Frederick Whelan, “Robertson, Hume, and the Balance of Power,” Hume Studies 21 (1995): 315–​32; Istvan Hont, “The Rhapsody of Public Debt: David Hume and Voluntary State Bankruptcy,” in Political Discourse in Early Modern Britain, ed. Nicholas Phillipson and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 321–​348; Istvan Hont, “The ‘Rich Country—​Poor Country’ Debate in Scottish Classical Political Economy,” in Wealth and Virtue: The Shaping of Political Economy in the Scottish Enlightenment, ed. Michael Ignatieff and Istvan Hont (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 271–​316. 4 François Marie Arouet de Voltaire, Le Siècle de Louis XIV, in Oeuvres historiques, ed. René Pomeau (Paris: Gallimard, 1968), 620.

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of the Seven Years War, a version of it was also embedded into Emer de Vattel’s famous treatise on the law of nations, published in 1758.5 As Vattel’s status as a leading authority on international law throughout the nineteenth century suggests, this was a vision of the European balance of power with enduring appeal. The Utrecht settlement that brought an end to the War of the Spanish Succession has sometimes been regarded, particularly by international lawyers and historians of international law, as a key intermediary stage in the development of an international legal order in Europe.6 After Utrecht, from this perspective, it became possible to conceive of such a legal order in terms of a balance of power: it became a constituent feature of European international law that no one state be in a position to dominate all the others—​or, translated into an eighteenth-​ century idiom, that no state become a “universal monarchy” or become capable of “giving laws” to all the others.7 This perspective on the history of the balance of power, and the significance of the Utrecht settlement for the history of international law, has many critics. In some cases there is skepticism about whether eighteenth-​century references to the balance of power reflect any coherent concept at all: such references are sometimes dismissed as manifestations of naïve hopes and claims about providence—​in other words, they are subsumed into a rather unhelpful caricature of Enlightenment political thought.8 The question more worth pursuing is how far the balance of power could serve as a useful concept for understanding eighteenth-​century attempts to theorize an international legal order. Here too, considerable skepticism remains. For example, Jeremy Black has suggested that focusing on eighteenth-​century diplomats, as 5 Emer de Vattel, The Law of Nations, or, Principles of the Law of Nature, Applied to the Conduct and Affairs of Nations and Sovereigns, with Three Early Essays on the Origin and Nature of Natural Law and on Luxury, ed. Béla Kapossy and Richard Whatmore (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2008). 6 This tendency is discussed by Randall Lesaffer in this volume. 7 On “universal monarchy” and “giving laws” as important idioms in eighteenth-​century political thought see John Robertson, “Empire and Union: Two Concepts of the Early Modern Political Order,” in A Union for Empire: Political Thought and the British Union of 1707, ed. John Robertson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 3–​36; Steven Pincus, “The English Debate Over Universal Monarchy,” in Union for Empire, 37–​62; and Sophus A. Reinert, Translating empire: emulation and the origins of political economy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2011), 26–​28. 8 M.S. Anderson, “Eighteenth-​Century Theories of the Balance of Power,” in Studies in diplomatic history: essays in memory of David Bayne Horn, ed. R. Hatton and M.S. Anderson (Harlow: Longmans, 1970), 198. For a much improved introduction to eighteenth-​century political thought see Istvan Hont, Jealousy of Trade: International Competition and the Nation-​state in Historical Perspective (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005).

48 Nakhimovsky opposed to more speculative thinkers reveals that the balance of power served as a flexible tool for navigating changing political dynamics and forging alliances to prevent “universal monarchy.”9 This sharp distinction between diplomats and speculative thinkers is difficult to accept—​for example, Hume and many like him also served as diplomats, and many practicing diplomats also participated in more speculative discussions. Black’s underlying point is that the balance of power concept loses all coherence if it is extended beyond a narrowly delimited practical function. Historically, Black has further suggested, the balance of power did cease to serve as an effective conceptual tool for navigating the dynamics of international politics in the second half of the eighteenth century, after the Seven Years War and the partitions of Poland, when broadening and bifurcating maritime and continental spheres of competition made the concept incoherent, and caused it to lose its grip on political reality. A central feature of these accounts is that they approach the period of the Utrecht settlement, and the eighteenth century more generally, in terms of either a convergence or a divergence between thinking about the balance of power and contemporary diplomatic practice, or between theoretical usages of the term and the realities of international politics. An interesting variation on these tendencies appears in the work of Paul Schroeder.10 Like Black, Schroeder has forcefully claimed that the aim of creating a more coherent European order is not to be understood in terms of a balance of power. At the same time, however, Schroeder claimed that a major transformation of international politics did occur at the end of the long eighteenth century, a century after the Utrecht settlement, at the conclusion of the Napoleonic wars. In his view, the much more stable European order that was produced by the Vienna settlement of 1815 could no longer be understood in terms of a balance of power at all. Rather, what it realized was a form of “benign hegemony,” jointly exercised by Britain and Russia over Europe and on a smaller scale by Prussia and Austria over the German Confederation.11 This represented an important historical shift away from the eighteenth-​century balance of power because these states could not be 9

Jeremy Black, “The Theory of the Balance of Power in the First Half of the Eighteenth Century: A Note on Sources,” Review of International Studies 9, no. 1 (1983): 55–​61. 10 Paul W. Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics 1763–​1848 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994). For some of the extensive discussion that Schroeder’s argument has provoked see the responses to Paul W.  Schroeder, “Did the Vienna Settlement Rest on a Balance of Power?,” The American Historical Review 97, no. 3 (June 1992): 683–​706; and Peter Krüger and Paul W. Schroeder, eds., “The transformation of European politics, 1763–​ 1848”: episode or model in modern history? (Münster: lit, 2002). 11 Schroeder, Transformation of European Politics, 714; Schroeder, “Did the Vienna Settlement Rest on a Balance of Power?,” 694.

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balanced, but instead served as balancers to maintain stability: in other words, they had a free hand to intervene as they saw fit to maintain general order. This essay aims to contrast these accounts of the history of the balance of power in the eighteenth century with the rather different perspective that is embedded in many early-​eighteenth-​century discussions of the history of the balance of power and of the significance of the Utrecht settlement. These discussions were marked by complex attempts to mitigate the strong polarity between political ideals and political practices that structures accounts like Black’s. As a result, they produced anticipations of the sort of arrangement that Schroeder, discussing post-​Napoleonic Europe, saw as “benign hegemony.” The best account of this eighteenth-​century historiographical perspective in recent scholarship appears in John G.A. Pocock’s discussion of what he has termed the “Utrecht Enlightenment.”12 As Pocock has shown, writers like Voltaire were invested in a grand historical narrative that identified the Utrecht settlement with the triumph of modern European civilization over barbarism and religion.13 According to such “enlightened narratives,” eighteenth-​century Europe was finally overcoming the specter of papal and imperial domination and the horrors of religious warfare.14 Assessed from this standpoint, the balance of power established by the Utrecht settlement neither appeared as a preliminary step toward the development of a more coherent and cohesive European legal order, nor was it defined in opposition to aspirations for the theoretical articulation of such an order. As Pocock has pointed out, the historiography generated by the “Utrecht Enlightenment” may be considered to be the historical self-​perception of an ancien régime, but “we must realise also that the ancien régime considered itself to be modern.”15

…

12

J. G.  A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, vol. 1:  The Enlightenments of Edward Gibbon, 1737–​1764 (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1999). To some extent Pocock’s account may be regarded as a highly refined update of an earlier literature that had also linked the fate of the Enlightenment to the rise and fall of the balance of power. Cf. Heinz Gollwitzer, Europabild und Europagedanke: Beiträge zur deutschen Geistesgeschichte des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts (München: Beck, 1951). 13 J. G.  A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, vol. 2:  Narratives of Civil Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 14 On “enlightened narrative” see also Karen O’Brien,Narratives of Enlightenment: Cosmopolitan History from Voltaire to Gibbon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); and, more generally, Dan Edelstein, The Enlightenment: A Genealogy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010). 15 Pocock, Enlightenments of Edward Gibbon, 110.

50 Nakhimovsky In his Le Siècle de Louis xiv (1751), Voltaire described the balance of power as a central aspect of a political experience that was qualitatively different from both classical antiquity and pre-​modern or medieval Europe. Modern European states, Voltaire declared, were unanimous about the wise policy of preserving among themselves, as much as possible, an equal balance of power, incessantly employing negotiations, even in the midst of war, and reciprocally maintaining ambassadors, or less honorable spies, who can warn all the other courts of the designs of any one, give at once the alarm to Europe, and preserve the weaker from the invasions which the stronger are always ready to undertake.16 This consensus about maintaining the balance of power among European states—​a consensus grounded in a shared set of legal principles—​was a key part of what identified these states as members of a larger “grand republic.” The conception of the balance of power that Voltaire was invoking in this image of Europe is best approached by considering Voltaire as a critic and interpreter of another important early-​eighteenth-​century discussion of the European balance of power and of France’s position in Europe by the Archbishop Fénelon. Fénelon was a key figure in the opposition to Louis xiv, and an outspoken moral critic of his reign.17 His widely read and celebrated epic Télémaque (first published without permission in 1699, and then more fully in 1715)  did not merely deliver an attractive vision of moral politics; it also provided a blueprint for a comprehensive reform of the French monarchy. Fénelon had served as the tutor of the Duc de Bourgogne, Louis xiv’s grandson and the successor to French throne, and Télémaque had been composed to educate his pupil, in the hope that his reign would be nothing like his grandfather’s. However, Fénelon addressed the subject of a balance of power most directly and extensively in another essay addressed to the Duc de Bourgogne, the Supplément to his Examen de conscience sur les devoirs de la royauté, published posthumously in 1719 and translated into English.18 In this essay Fénelon distinguished between four

16 Voltaire, Le Siècle de Louis XIV, 621. 17 Lionel Rothkrug, Opposition to Louis XIV:  The Political and Social Origins of the French Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965). 18 For background on the Examen see Fénelon, Oeuvres, ed. Jacques Le Brun (Paris: Gallimard, 1983), 2:1664–​66. On William Grant, the English translator, see Iain McDaniel, Adam Ferguson in the Scottish Enlightenment (Cambridge, Mass.:  Harvard University Press, 2013), 111.

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different positions that a state might occupy in relation to the rest of Europe. The first position was to be the most powerful state, too great for all the others to resist even when their forces were combined. This was the image of ancient Rome, which had been revived briefly under the Habsburg Emperor Charles V. Fénelon did not judge such a “universal monarchy” to be a viable solution to the problem of international order because great risks and violent injustice would unavoidably accompany every stage of its rise and fall. The second and third possible positions to occupy were either to be a predominant state effectively countered by a defensive alliance of all the rest, or to belong to such an anti-​imperial alliance. The former position was occupied by Bourbon France, the latter by the Grand Alliance against France. Though the latter might suffer from significant disadvantages compared to their opponent, mostly due to the instability and inefficiency of alliances, Fénelon candidly judged that they were bound to prevail in the long run. In fact, it was a predominant power like France that was the “most wretched State of all,” Fénelon observed, because it was trapped between two unappealing alternatives. Either the defensive alliance formed to resist such a state would succeed in weakening it, or else it would mount a bid for universal monarchy; but since this could not provide a path to an enduring and stable order, it would sooner or later result in decline and violent collapse.19 Fénelon contrasted this analysis of France’s actual position in Europe at the turn of the eighteenth century with another possible condition, one that indicated the path to French recovery after Louis xiv’s reign. A state was “the wisest and happiest of all,” Fénelon claimed, when it had “a Force nearly equal to that of another neighbouring State, together with which it maintains all in Peace, by a kind of Balance, which it preserves without Ambition, and with exact Faith.”20 Fénelon’s distinction between these two types of balance of power depended on a distinction between different means of acquiring power, or a contrast between what Jean-​François Melon would later term the “spirit of conquest” and the “spirit of commerce.”21 Territorial expansion, Fénelon taught, was a self-​defeating strategy for gaining and maintaining power, because it imposed a necessity of resistance on others. Any modern European state attempting to pursue this strategy would find itself opposed to a 19 20 21

[François de Salignac de La Mothe-​Fénelon,] “Sentiments on the Ballance of Europe. Written by the late Archbishop of Cambray,” in Two essays on the ballance of Europe (London: John Darby, 1720), 22. Fénelon, “Sentiments on the Ballance of Europe,” 24. Jean-​François Melon, A Political Essay upon Commerce (Dublin:  Philip Crampton, 1738), 136.

52 Nakhimovsky defensive alliance of lesser powers, and as we have seen, Fénelon held that any victories over them would prove short-​lived. Even if territorial expansion was pursued through technically legal means, Fénelon claimed, it had to be judged unjust because it made international society impossible to sustain. However, Fénelon pointed out, a just policy of peaceful internal development was equally a means of aggrandizement, one with significant advantages over territorial expansion: there are different kinds of Superiority: One is External, and consists in Extent of Territorys, the number of fortified Places, and the Possession of Passes into the neighbouring Countrys, etc. This proves a Temptation to Enterprizes as fatal to the Possessor of it, as to his Neighbours; and excites against him Hatreds, Jealousys, and Confederacys. The other kind of Superiority is Inward and Substantial; it consists in a more numerous People, better disciplined, and more skilful in Agriculture and other necessary Arts. This kind of Superiority is generally the easiest attained, the surest, the least exposed to the Envy and Combinations of its inferiour Neighbours, and more proper than numerous Conquests, and fortified Places, to render a People invincible. A State cannot too diligently aspire to this Superiority, nor too carefully avoid the former, which has no other than a false Lustre.22 France, in other words, could restore its power without reigniting the disastrous wars of Louis xiv. Internal aggrandizement could serve as a much more peaceful and stable mechanism for maintaining the balance of power between states. The threat of external aggrandizement would only serve to impose the necessity of resistance on others, while the actual pursuit of territorial expansion would ultimately result in wars that inflicted tremendous damage on the constitution and economy of even a victorious state. Instead, Fénelon concluded, the best policy was to seek to maintain an equal balance of power militarily and territorially, while pursuing aggrandizement only through peaceful internal development. Voltaire was a prominent participant in debates unfolding the 1720s and 1730s about this Fénelonian vision. At issue in these debates was the nature of the political and economic arrangements that had to be in place, and the moral resources that had to be available, in order for the fourth scenario identified by Fénelon to be realized. Fénelon had envisioned a sweeping program of 22

Fénelon, “Sentiments on the Ballance of Europe,” 26–​27.

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political and economic reform whose central aim was to reverse the policy of encouraging trade in luxury and seeking to outcompete the Dutch and English. In Fénelon’s view this policy, associated above all with Louis xiv’s minister Jean-​Baptiste Colbert, had served only to fund unnecessary wars of conquest. In fact, in Fénelon’s estimation Colbert’s policy had only succeeded in impoverishing the state and damaging the moral character of its people. A heavy tax burden and the growth of the luxury trade had undermined the true foundations of the state’s power by distorting its economy, depopulating the countryside and crippling agricultural productivity. Fénelon attributed these self-​ defeating policies to Louis xiv’s misguided quest for glory through personal aggrandizement and imperial conquest—​a Machiavellian understanding of kingship that Fénelon condemned as the product of selfish pride, denying that it could serve as a principle of legitimate rule. Instead Fénelon linked his reform program to an alternative ideal of kingship and an alternative understanding of reason of state: A virtuous king, as he described in Télémaque, did not seek to overawe his people and conquer his neighbors, but rather to achieve true glory, and in fact much greater power, by earning their love.23 Fénelon’s anti-​ Machiavellian ideal of kingship reversed Machiavelli’s infamous precept that people were too self-​interested to be bound by love instead of fear.24 By following the compass of popular love rather than dissimulating personal ambition, Fénelon promised in a famous formula, a benevolent king would enjoy much greater power than Louis xiv: “He can do anything to the people; but the laws can do anything to him. He has an absolute power in doing good, but his hands are tied from doing wrong.”25 The essence of Voltaire’s critical point against Fénelon was that the possibility of such political agency, and the position it would enable France to assume in a stabilized European balance of power, was linked to some of the very developments that Fénelon had condemned as the essence of Louis xiv’s Machiavellianism. Voltaire’s infamous poem Le Mondain (1736) viciously satirized Fénelon’s condemnation of luxury, and mocked the austere reforms he

23

24 25

See A.T. Gable, “The Prince and the Mirror: Louis XIV, Fénelon, Royal Narcissism and the Legacy of Machiavelli,” Seventeenth-​Century French Studies 15 (1993): 243–​68; and Lucien Jaume, “Fénelon critique de la déraison d’Etat,” in Raison et déraison d’Etat: Théoriciens et théories de la raison d’Etat aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles, ed by. Yves Charles Zarka (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1994), 395–​422. Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, ed. Quentin Skinner and Russell Price (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 59. François de Salignac de La Mothe Fénelon, Telemachus, son of Ulysses, ed. Patrick Riley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 61.

54 Nakhimovsky had prescribed to restore France to power as well as moral health.26 Le Mondain argued against Fénelon that the pursuit and enjoyment of luxury was not necessarily equivalent to moral corruption and vice.27 Indeed, for Voltaire, it was the flourishing of the arts, a process inseparable from what Fénelon had condemned as luxury, that distinguished the “Age of Louis xiv” from the age of Attila the Hun. Attempting to reverse this development in order to return to a golden age of virtuous simplicity, as severe moralists like Fénelon proposed, would in fact cause a return to barbarism, and produce a society with Attila’s values or worse. So Voltaire celebrated the “Age of Louis xiv” as one of four ages in which “the arts have been perfected”: one which had sparked a Europe-​ wide transformation: there has been a general revolution in our arts, minds, and manners, as in our government, that ought to serve as an eternal mark of our the true glory of our country. This happy influence was not limited to France but extended into England, where it excited the emulation which that bold and thinking nation then needed; it carried taste into Germany, and the sciences into Russia; it even reanimated Italy, which was languishing; and Europe owed its politeness and spirit of society to the court of Louis xiv.28 For Voltaire, this achievement of Louis xiv’s reign had made it possible for France to secure its position within a stabilized European balance of power, as Fénelon had imagined. Voltaire accepted Fénelon’s basic argument about the instrumental as well as moral advantages of pursuing a strategy of internal growth and development rather than territorial expansion. However, he challenged Fénelon’s claim that pursuing the former strategy entailed the exclusion 26

François Marie Arouet de Voltaire, “Le Mondain,” ed. H.T. Mason, in Writings of 1736, Les oeuvres complètes de Voltaire 16 (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2003), 295–​303. 27 Though Le Mondain has often been discussed with reference to Bernard Mandeville, Voltaire’s poem was primarily directed against Fénelon’s Télémaque. See Istvan Hont, “The Luxury Debate in the Early Enlightenment,” in The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-​ Century Political Thought, ed by. M.  Goldie and R.  Wokler (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2006), 412–​18. See also Albert Cherel, Fénelon au XVIIIe siècle en France (1715–​1820): son prestige –​son influence (Paris: Hachette, 1917). On the kinds of arguments employed to explain how luxury contributed to economic development see also Michael Sonenscher, “Fashion’s empire: trade and power in early 18th-​century France,” in Luxury Trades and Consumerism in Ancien Régime Paris: Studies in the History of the Skilled Workforce, ed. Robert Fox and Anthony Turner (Aldershot:  Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 1998), 231–​54. 28 Voltaire, Le Siècle de Louis xiv, 617.

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of luxury and foreign trade from a monarchy and the imposition of an austere asceticism on its prince and subjects. Under Louis xiv, Voltaire claimed, France had become much more stable and wealthy and secure, thanks to the consolidation of royal authority, the expansion of a luxury-​based economy, and the development of much more effective military and diplomatic resources. For Voltaire, it was these developments that had made it increasingly possible for large modern European monarchies like Britain and France to avoid always resorting to the kinds of tactics that Machiavelli had recommended to Renaissance Italian principalities and republics. Voltaire warned that reversing these developments, as Fénelon had proposed, would not provide a means for escaping from a Machiavellian world, but rather would destroy what made such an escape possible. This is why, in his Lettres philosophiques (1734), Voltaire provocatively applied to England Fénelon’s concept of a constitution in which the king had an absolute power to do good, but none to do evil.29 This is also why the “Tableau of Europe from the Peace of Utrecht to 1750” which concluded the first volume of the 1751 edition of Le Siècle de Louis xiv described the Sun King not as a defeated aspirant for universal monarchy who had placed France in a perilous position in relation to the rest of Europe—​the third scenario in Fénelon’s analysis of the balance of power—​but as the figure who had created a new military basis for the European order. At the end of the War of the Austrian Succession, Voltaire explained, four decades after Louis xiv’s reign had come to an end, Christian Europe found itself divided into two great parties that checked each other, each of which maintained their side of that balance, the pretext of so many wars, that was supposed to assure an eternal peace. […] all these powers remained armed; and a durable calm was now hoped for, through the very fear which the two halves of Europe seemed to inspire in each other. Louis xiv was the first to maintain such numerous armies, which forced the other princes to make the same efforts; so that, after the peace of Aix-​la-​Chapelle, the Christian powers of Europe had about a million men at arms: and one flattered oneself that there would not be

29

“The English nation is the only one on earth which has managed to regulate the power of kings by resisting them; and who, by a series of efforts, have at last established that wise government where the prince is all-​powerful to do good, and, at the same time, has his hands bound from doing evil; where the nobles are great without insolence and without having vassals; and where the people share in the government without confusion.” François Marie Arouet de Voltaire, “Sur le Parlement,” in Lettres philosophiques, ed. René Pomeau (Paris: Garnier-​Flammarion, 1964), 55.

56 Nakhimovsky any aggressor for a long time, because all the states were armed to defend themselves.30 Voltaire’s historical analysis of the balance of power reflects his revision of Fénelon’s account of a stabilized European order. For Voltaire, Louis xiv’s reign represented the transition to a balance of power potentially operating more according to the logic of commerce than the logic of conquest. The balance of power was not the invention of the Protestant alliance that had safeguarded the liberty of Europe against Louis xiv’s attempt to follow in the footsteps of the Habsburg emperor Charles V by building a universal monarchy, as anti-​French war propaganda maintained. On the contrary, in Voltaire’s narrative, the balance of power was already a manifest feature of European international politics at the time of Charles V, when England and the Italian powers allied themselves with France “in order to balance the power of the Emperor.” Like Fénelon, then, Voltaire dismissed universal monarchy as a mirage, but he went even further than Fénelon in denying that even Charles V could be described in these terms: the Habsburg Emperor “always played the leading role in the theater of Europe; but he was always quite far from universal monarchy.”31 In terms of Fénelon’s typology of positions to occupy in relation to other European states, Voltaire equated Charles V with Fénelon’s second case rather than the first: like Bourbon France, after all, the Habsburg empire had found itself effectively countered by a defensive alliance of all the rest. “By a singular quirk of fate,” Voltaire observed, “the jealousy of nations” was “the sole reason why the new Roman empire has never been anything but a phantom.” Voltaire concluded that “the idea of a universal monarchy that is attributed to Charles V is therefore as false and chimerical as the one that has since been imputed to Louis xiv.”32

…

Voltaire’s revision of Fénelon’s analysis of the European balance of power, and France’s position within it, was part of a wider set of French debates unfolding in the 1720s and 1730s. Figures like Melon, Montesquieu, and the Abbé de

30

François Marie Arouet de Voltaire, Le siècle de Louis XIV, l’édition de 1751, ed. Ulla Kölving (Centre international d’étude du xviiie siècle, 2007), 1:487–​88, http://​c18.net/​vo/​vo_​ textes_​siecle.php?div1=23, last accessed 16 April 2014. 31 François Marie Arouet de Voltaire, Essai sur les mœurs:  et l’esprit des nations et sur les principaux faits de l’histoire depuis Charlemagne jusqu’à Louis XIII, ed. René Pomeau (Paris: Garnier, 1963), 2:190. 32 Voltaire, Essai sur les mœurs, 2:189–​90.

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Saint-​Pierre were all among those who pushed back against Fénelon’s moral strictures: they all insisted that luxury serve as the social and economic starting-​ point for theorizing the kind of anti-​Machiavellian politics that Fénelon had imagined as the alternative to Louis xiv’s reign.33 Of these figures the closest to Voltaire was perhaps the Abbé de Saint Pierre, who had attended the negotiations at Utrecht and who published his famous treatise on perpetual peace in 1713.34 Saint-​Pierre was far more bluntly critical of Louis xiv’s reign than Voltaire would have liked—​blunt enough to be expelled from the Academie Française for it—​and Voltaire’s penchant for mocking Saint-​Pierre as a naïve utopian dreamer is well attested.35 However, both shared the judgment that the moral theory underpinning Fénelon’s account of anti-​Machiavellian kingship was too austerely Augustinian; in its place they both sought to substitute a more moderate account of self-​interest, or a more worldly view of virtue, which held that a virtuous king’s preference for the common good over his personal interest could be motivated by a healthy form of the desire for esteem, rather than being entirely selfless.36 Moreover, Saint-​Pierre and Voltaire held similar views on the kind of monarchy that could participate in a stabilized European order, and the kind of political economy that was appropriate to such a monarchy, aligning them together against Montesquieu.37 The most salient difference between Voltaire and Saint-​Pierre, in fact, has to do more directly with their analysis of the balance of power itself, and with Saint-​Pierre’s claim that the development of a post-​imperial alternative to “universal monarchy” on the one hand presupposed the development of a post-​anti-​imperial form of politics as well. From this perspective, as Saint-​Pierre’s treatise on perpetual peace claimed, the Utrecht settlement remained unfinished.38 In terms of Fénelon’s typology, for its aims to be realized and for France to become a participant in a more stable balance of power operating primarily according to the “spirit of commerce,” the defensive alliance that William of Orange had constructed in 33 34

Hont, “The Luxury Debate in the Early Enlightenment.” Charles Irénée de Castel, Abbé de Saint-​Pierre, Projet pour rendre la paix perpetuelle en Europe (Utrecht: A. Schouten, 1713). 35 On Saint-​ Pierre and the Academy see the eulogy pronounced by d’Alembert in 1775:  “Eloge de Saint-​Pierre,” in Oeuvres de d’Alembert (Paris:  A. Belin, 1821), 3:250–​ 89. On Voltaire’s mockery of Saint-​Pierre see Patrick Riley, “The Abbé de St. Pierre and Voltaire on Perpetual Peace in Europe,” World Affairs 137, no. 3 (1975 1974): 186–​94. 36 Charles Irénée de Castel, Abbé de Saint-​Pierre, Annales politiques (s.l., 1758), 2:7–​9; Ouvrajes de morale et de politique (Rotterdam:  J.D. Beman, 1733–​41), 10:245, 10:263, 15:197–​212. 37 See Michael Sonenscher, Before the Deluge:  Public Debt, Inequality, and the Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), chap. 2. 38 Saint-​Pierre, Projet pour rendre la paix perpetuelle en Europe, xviii.

58 Nakhimovsky order to oppose Louis xiv’s designs also had to change. Instead of seeking to weaken the strongest in pursuit of the “chimera of equilibrium,” Saint-​Pierre demanded, the allies also had to learn to strengthen themselves from within.39 The further claim that set Saint-​Pierre apart from Voltaire (who, in this respect, remained closer to Montesquieu), then, was that following the path indicated by the Utrecht Settlement entailed developing a much expanded theory of federation. The idea of a defensive federation formed to resist a more powerful aggressor aiming at universal monarchy would have to be extended into a much more ambitious idea of a permanent and comprehensive federation of states, formed to deter aggression and ensure access to international markets. In Saint-​Pierre’s version, in other words, the image of Europe as a grand republic of states would become less like a metaphor and much more like an actual republic with a federal government. The new role that Saint-​Pierre defined for France after the Utrecht settlement was to do what, in his estimation, Louis xiv himself might have done himself, had he not been deceived by his power-​hungry war-​mongering ministers:  namely, bring about such a federation (which, in Saint-​Pierre’s proposal, would be headquartered in Utrecht). In fact, had Louis xiv devoted his reign to becoming “the conciliator of Europe” rather than its conqueror, Saint-​Pierre suggested, his reputation as a “wise, moderate and pacific prince” might even have permitted him to acquire the Spanish throne for his grandson without sparking a final disastrous war.40 The question of a “post-​anti-​imperial” politics, and whether a stabilized European balance of power after Utrecht could do without retheorizing the idea of an international alliance or federation along the lines that Saint-​Pierre had pursued, was also a feature of contemporaneous British debates about Britain’s position in the European balance of power, one which has been studied relatively extensively.41 In particular the Scottish republican Andrew Fletcher has drawn attention for his notably vivid criticisms of the sorts of views advanced by the English politician and political economist Charles Davenant.42 In a set of essays published in 1701, Davenant had described the prospect of a universal monarchy as a very real threat, one that Louis xiv had been posing 39 40 41 42

Saint-​Pierre, Projet pour rendre la paix perpetuelle en Europe, xix. Charles Irenée de Castel, Abbé de Saint-​Pierre, Discours sur la polysynodie: où l’on démontre que la polysynodie, ou pluralité des conseils, est la forme de ministère la plus avantageuse pour un roi, et pour son royaume (Amsterdam: Du Villard & Changuion, 1719), 51–​52. See, e.g., Robertson, Union for Empire; David Armitage, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Andrew C. Thompson, Britain, Hanover and the Protestant Interest, 1688–​1756 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2006). J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), chap. 13.

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much more effectively than the Spanish had previously. In order to combat this threat, Davenant maintained that England had to found a commercial empire. This alternative to universal monarchy invoked a different kind of opposition between conquest and commerce, one that was theorized in terms drawn from Machiavelli himself.43 To Fletcher’s eyes, however, a British commercial empire as Davenant conceived it merely constituted another countervailing (and perhaps even more dangerous) bid for universal monarchy. A true alternative, Fletcher made clear, presupposed a radical extension of the federative idea: Fletcher imagined the devolution of all European monarchies from competitors for universal monarchy into self-​contained federative republics.44 In Britain, one of the main protagonists in what John Robertson has described as the “ ‘softening’ of Davenant” was Viscount Bolingbroke, leader of the Tory opposition, who saw himself (and was seen by his enemies, who had him impeached from office for that reason) as having been largely responsible for negotiating the Peace of Utrecht.45 At the same time, Bolingbroke’s “softening” of Davenant’s position also takes its place among attempts (like Voltaire’s) to show how the European balance of power could be stabilized, or the behavior of the participants in it moderated, without resorting to theories of federation of the sort pursued by either Fletcher or the Abbé de Saint-​Pierre. Bolingbroke’s involvement in French intellectual circles during his periods of exile there is well known:  among other things he attended meetings of the Entresol, the discussion group of which the Abbé de Saint-​Pierre was a prominent member.46 His relationship with Voltaire was complex: Voltaire once referred to him as “one of the most brilliant geniuses and the most eloquent man of his age,” but their relations subsequently cooled.47 Nonetheless, many of 43 44

45

46 47

Istvan Hont, “Free Trade and the Economic Limits to National Politics: Neo-​Machiavellian Political Economy Reconsidered,” in The Economic Limits to Modern Politics, ed. John Dunn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 41–​120. Andrew Fletcher, Account of a Conversation concerning a Right Regulation of Governments for the Common Good of Mankind. In a Letter to the Marquiss of Montrose, the Earls of Rothes, Roxburg and Haddington, from London the first of December, 1703, in Political Works, ed. John Robertson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 175–​215. Robertson, “Universal Monarchy and the Liberties of Europe,” 368. See also Doohwan Ahn, “The Anglo-​French Treaty of Commerce of 1713:  Tory Trade Politics and the Question of Dutch Decline,” History of European Ideas 36, no.  2 (2010):  167–​80; and B. W. Hill, “Oxford, Bolingbroke, and the Peace of Utrecht,” The Historical Journal 16, no. 2 (1973): 241–​63. On the Entresol see Nick Childs, A Political Academy in Paris, 1724–​1731: The Entresol and Its Members (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2000). François Marie Arouet de Voltaire, Histoire de Charles XII, in Oeuvres historiques, 241. See also J.H. Brumfitt, Voltaire, Historian (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958), 40–​45; and

60 Nakhimovsky Bolingbroke’s ideas about monarchy and kingship parallel the re-​evaluation and development of Fénelon’s ideas that was undertaken by Voltaire. The historical perspective on the balance of power that emerges from Bolingbroke’s Letters on the Study and Use of History (1738) also displays many affinities with Voltaire.48 Not only did they both structure their accounts of modern European history around the development of the balance of power, but both traced it back to Charles V rather than Louis xiv. Bolingbroke too denied that the idea of a “universal monarchy” could really be attributed to either Charles V or Louis xiv: The design of aspiring to universal monarchy was imputed to Charles the fifth, as soon as he began to give proofs of his ambition and capacity. The same design was imputed to Lewis the fourteenth, as soon as he began to feel his own strength, and the weakness of his neighbors. Neither of these princes as induced, I believe, by the flattery of his courtiers, or the apprehension of his adversaries, to entertain so chimerical a design as this would have been, even in that false sense wherein the word universal is so often understood: and I mistake very much if either of them was of a character, or in circumstances, to undertake it.49 In other words, Bolingbroke concurred with Voltaire’s reclassification of both Charles V and Louis xiv in Fénelon’s typology of European relations. Though the opponents of both Charles and Louis were certainly wise and prudent to act on their apprehensions when the opportunity arose, and though he admitted that he himself had held too low an estimation of French power in the 1690s, Bolingbroke’s main point was that apprehensions of Louis xiv had been greatly exaggerated: When Charles the fifth was at the height of his power, and in the zenith of his glory, when a king of France and a pope were at once his prisoners; it must be allowed, that, his situation and that of his neighbours compared, they had as much at least to fear from him and from the house of Austria, as the neighbours of Louis the fourteenth had to fear from him and from

48 49

D.J. Fletcher, “The Fortunes of Bolingbroke in France in the Eighteenth Century,” Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 47 (1966): 207–​32. On Bolingbroke as historian see Philip Hicks, “Bolingbroke, Clarendon, and the Role of Classical Historian,” Eighteenth-​Century Studies 20, no. 4 (July 1, 1987): 445–​71. Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, Letters on the Study and Use of History (London: T. Cadell, 1779), 198.

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the house of Bourbon, when, after all his other success, one of his grandchildren was placed on the Spanish throne. And yet among all the conditions of the several leagues against Charles the fifth, I do not remember that it was ever stipulated, that ‘no peace should be made with him as long as he continued to be emperor and king of Spain; nor as long as any Austrian prince continued capable of uniting on his head the Imperial and Spanish crowns.’50 Bolingbroke charged that excessive thirst for war against France had inflicted grave damage on England’s economy, society, government, and international position. As Bolingbroke explained in his essay The Idea of a Patriot King (1738), England could help stabilize the European balance of power, and become an “arbitrator of differences” and “guardian of liberty” capable of aligning its own interests with the general interests of Europe (much like the role Saint-​Pierre envisioned for France), if it assumed a more circumscribed role in European affairs, more in keeping with the nature of its resources and interests: By a continual attention to improve her natural, that is her maritime strength, by collecting all her forces within herself, and reserving them to be laid out on great occasions, such as regard her immediate interests and her honour, or such as are truly important to the general system of power in Europe, she may be the arbitrator of differences, the guardian of liberty, and the preserver of that balance, which has been so much talked of, and so little understood.51 Bolingbroke identified this moderated role for Britain, and the image of Europe it presupposed, as the “principles of the grand alliance” assembled by William of Orange. The reason why the Utrecht settlement had ultimately failed to stabilize the balance of power in this way, Bolingbroke claimed, was that these principles had been betrayed by the Whigs, whose zeal for diminishing French power greatly exceeded England’s capacity for doing so.52 Restoring these principles, and thereby securing England’s place in a stabilized European order, was the task that Bolingbroke assigned to a “patriot king,” his term for the kind of reformer that Fénelon had depicted in his Télémaque as the alternative to Louis xiv. 50 Bolingbroke, Letters on the Study and Use of History, 291. 51 Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, “The Idea of a Patriot King,” in Political Writings, ed. David Armitage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 278. 52 Bolingbroke, Letters on the Study and Use of History, 302–​58.

62 Nakhimovsky Like Fénelon’s Télémaque, Bolingbroke’s The Idea of a Patriot King was originally intended to instruct an heir to the throne—​in this case, Frederick the Prince of Wales—​who opponents of the current regime (Walpole’s ministry) hoped would introduce sweeping reforms. However, like Voltaire, he was prepared to recognize Colbert as the one “who improved the wealth and consequently the power of France extremely, by the order he put into the finances, and by the encouragement he gave to trade and manufactures.”53 Like Voltaire, he sought to ground Fénelon’s account of anti-​Machiavellian kingship in a more moderate account of the relationship between self-​interest and morality. For Bolingbroke, as for Voltaire, the desire for esteem was not necessarily a deceptive veneer that concealed a true nature lacking in virtue. Patriotic rule in the interests of the people could be reconciled with the desire for popular esteem and indeed depended upon it, because virtue was inseparable from what Bolingbroke referred to as “decorum,” or the quality that made it inherently pleasurable and admirable to perceive.54 As Bolingbroke put it, “the prince and the people, take, in effect, a sort of engagement with one another: the prince to govern well, and the people to honour and obey him.”55 The esteem of the people would enable a patriotic prince to pursue the common good without opposition, yet without endangering or diminishing the various orders and institutions that served as bulwarks against arbitrary power: another English application, like Voltaire’s, of Fénelon’s image of a constitution in which the king had an absolute power to do good, but none to do evil.56

…

Hume’s “Of the Balance of Power” shares with Voltaire and Bolingbroke some characteristic historiographical elements of what Pocock has called the “Utrecht Enlightenment.” Hume’s concept of the “civilized European monarchy,” which he introduced in his essay “On Civil Liberty,” first published in 1741, recalls Voltaire’s arguments about the enhanced capabilities of post-​ Renaissance European monarchies and the space for political moderation that they had opened up.57 However, though Hume has sometimes been mistaken for a Tory, his views on Britain’s position were significantly more “cosmopolitan” 53 Bolingbroke, Letters on the Study and Use of History, 213. 54 Bolingbroke, “The Idea of a Patriot King,” 280–​81. 55 Bolingbroke, “The Idea of a Patriot King,” 237. 56 Bolingbroke, “The Idea of a Patriot King,” 233–​34. 57 David Hume, “Of Civil Liberty,” in Essays, 92–​94. The original title was “Of Liberty and Despotism”; it was changed beginning with the edition of 1758.

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in outlook than Bolingbroke’s “softening” of Davenant’s Whiggism; and his historiography (like his political thought more generally) was significantly more skeptical than Voltaire’s.58 Accordingly, in Hume’s view, France had not merely been the predominant power but had genuinely “menaced the general liberties of Europe,” and Louis xiv “had, during some years, a real prospect of attaining the monarchy of Europe, and of exceeding the empire of Charlemagne, perhaps equalling that of ancient Rome.”59 Hume was increasingly concerned to stress that this was no longer the case, and he famously ended his essay “Of the Jealousy of Trade” (1758) with a prayer for the flourishing of French commerce.60 Although “Of the Balance of Power” described England as playing the role of “guardian of the general liberties of Europe, and patron of mankind,” the thrust of the essay was to qualify this self-​identification.61 Hume’s essay introduced a key distinction between two modes of participation in a balance of power: though the political outcome, a defensive alliance, was the same either way, the underlying motive could be either “envy” or “prudence,” “jealous emulation” or “cautious politics.”62 In principle the former was ancient and Greek: since the demography and geography of the Greek world precluded any real threat of universal empire, their wars were about contesting honor rather than domination, much like the practice of ostracizing leading citizens within Greek cities. However Hume also identified instances of “cautious politics” as opposed to “jealous emulation” in antiquity, and of “ancient” jealousy in post-​ Renaissance Europe. In fact, Hume cited the Peace of Utrecht as one of the telling signs that Britain’s foreign policy remained ancient rather than modern in character, animated more by its animosity toward France than by prudent concern for its own safety and for that of Europe as a whole: In the first place, we seem to have been more possessed with the ancient Greek spirit of jealous emulation, than actuated by the prudent views of modern politics. Our wars with France have been begun with 58

59 60 61 62

Robertson, “Universal Monarchy and the Liberties of Europe,” 349. See also Duncan Forbes, Hume’s Philosophical Politics (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1975); Duncan Forbes, “Sceptical Whiggism, Commerce and Liberty,” in Essays on Adam Smith (Oxford:  Clarendon Press, 1975), 179–​202; Duncan Forbes, “The European, or Cosmopolitan, Dimension in Hume’s Science of Politics,” British Journal for Eighteenth-​ Century Studies 1 (1978): 57–​60. David Hume, The History of England: From the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688 (Indianapolis, Ind.: Liberty Classics, 1983), 6:218, 6:320. David Hume, “Of the Jealousy of Trade,” in Essays, 331. Hume, “Of the Balance of Power,” 635. Hume, “Of the Balance of Power,” 334.

64 Nakhimovsky justice, and even, perhaps, from necessity; but have always been too far pushed from obstinacy and passion. The same peace, which was afterwards made at Ryswick in 1697, was offered so early as the year ninety-​ two; that concluded at Utrecht in 1712 might have been finished on as good conditions at Gertruytenberg in the year eight; and we might have given at Frankfort, in 1743, the same terms, which we were glad to accept of at Aix-​l a-​C hapelle in the year forty-​eight. Here then we see, that above half of our wars with France, and all our public debts, are owing more to our own imprudent vehemence, than to the ambition of our neighbours.63 Hume’s great fear was that Britain’s jealous politics would put Britain on a financially unsustainable course and would ultimately provoke a constitutional crisis, possibly resulting in an isolationist backlash that could prove catastrophic should a genuine threat to the liberties of Europe subsequently emerge on the continent. In the wake of the Seven Years War, Hume revised subsequent editions of his essay, eliminating the suggestion that France continued to pose an active threat of universal monarchy, and excising his original reference to Britain’s role as guardian of Europe’s liberty.64 For Hume, then, in stark contrast to Voltaire, the Utrecht settlement represented not so much the possible dawn of a modern post-​ imperial (and post-​anti-​imperial) politics, as the ever present danger of a relapse or revival of ancient or neo-​ancient imperialism, with all its attendant instability. Hume’s fears underline Pocock’s observation that the premises of Voltaire’s historiography of “the Enlightened Europe of Utrecht” were dissolved by the Seven Years War.65 The image of a stabilized Europe in which monarchies could tame each other’s vast powers and enjoy the benefits of expanding trade was confronted with the inflammation of the Anglo-​French rivalry into a global struggle for commercial empire as well as continental dominance. Pocock observed that Voltaire remained an important figure in the subsequent emergence of a new form of Enlightenment historiography, one that “remained Eurocentric, but […] looked beyond Europe.”66 In particular, Pocock claimed, Voltaire’s History of Russia and Peter the Great, published beginning in 1760, reasserted the claims of his earlier “enlightened narrative” on a new global scale. It described how, thanks to the heroic efforts of Peter the Great, European civilization now extended across Asia: his signing of a treaty with China in 1689 63 Hume, “Of the Balance of Power,” 339. 64 Hume, “Of the Balance of Power,” 635. 65 Pocock, Enlightenments of Edward Gibbon, 111–​12. 66 Pocock, Enlightenments of Edward Gibbon, 130.

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seemed to mark its inclusion in the European ius gentium, thereby auguring a global civilizing mission.67 On the other hand, as Pocock has also stressed, fears that the pressures produced by Europe’s balance of power could not be safely contained also proliferated. As Hume’s compatriot Adam Ferguson mordantly observed in his Essay on Civil Society (1767), “In Europe, where mercenary and disciplined armies are every where formed, and ready to traverse the earth, where, like a flood pent up by slender banks, they are only restrained by political forms, or a temporary balance of power; if the sluices should break, what inundations may we not expect to behold?”68 Even Voltaire had made some striking concessions in this direction by the 1760s. His Précis du Siècle de Louis xv (1768) included a revised version of the account of the stabilized European balance of power several decades after Utrecht that had originally appeared at the end of the first volume of the 1751 edition of Le Siècle de Louis xiv. By now Voltaire was evidently less confident about the durable stability of that order. Where he had written that “a durable calm was now hoped for, through the very fear which the two halves of Europe seemed to inspire in each other,” he now added “to the detriment of the arts and the necessary professions, above all agriculture.” Where he had concluded “one flattered oneself that there would not be any aggressor for a long time, because all the states were armed to defend themselves,” he now added, “but the flattery was in vain.”69 Nonetheless, one striking sign of the potency of Voltaire’s historiography of the balance of power is its legal codification by Emer de Vattel in his 1758 treatise on the law of nations. Vattel’s Le droit des gens was an instant bestseller and remained a widely influential text in international law through the nineteenth century. At its heart was an image of the European balance of power as a republic of states very much like Voltaire’s: Europe forms a political system, an integral body, closely connected by the relations and different interests of the nations inhabiting this part of the world. It is not, as formerly, a confused heap of detached pieces, each of which thought herself very little concerned in the fate of the others, and seldom regarded things which did not immediately concern her. The continual attention of sovereigns to every occurrence, the constant residence of ministers, and the perpetual negotiations, make of modern 67 Pocock, Narratives of Civil Government, chap. 10. 68 Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society, ed. Fania Oz-​ Salzberger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 148. For a discussion of this apocalyptic strain in eighteenth-​century historiography see Sonenscher, Before the Deluge. 69 François Marie Arouet de Voltaire, Précis du Siècle de Louis XV, in Oeuvres historiques, 1475.

66 Nakhimovsky Europe a kind of republic, of which the members—​each independent, but all linked together by the ties of common interest—​unite for the maintenance of order and liberty. Hence arose that famous scheme of the political balance, or the equilibrium of power; by which is understood such a disposition of things, as that no one potentate be able absolutely to predominate, and prescribe laws to the others.70 Vattel’s treatise sought to guide European diplomatic practice, showing how it contained the resources for a system of independent states, preoccupied above all with preserving their independence against a potential aggressor, to function as an international society bound together by commerce.71 It promised that European states could avoid the fate of Louis xiv and his adversaries, and become participants in a stabilized balance of power that was compatible with the “spirit of commerce”—​though Vattel’s account of the economic conditions that might enable them to do so diverged rather sharply from Voltaire’s.72 This vision of the European balance of power became the target of sustained criticism from many directions in the latter half of the eighteenth century: most famously, Immanuel Kant’s 1795 essay on perpetual peace labeled Vattel one of the “sorry comforters” who had provided a deceptive veneer of legal respectability for the predatory behaviors of European states.73 However, Vattel’s treatise found many readers in the aftermath of the French Revolution: among other things, its account of the balance of power offered them a way of distinguishing between what Schroeder has called the “benign” form of hegemony, and the recidivist pursuit of “universal monarchy” by Napoleon.74 Viewed in this way, it represents the continuation of the “Utrecht Enlightenment” and its perspective on the balance of power. 70 Vattel, Law of Nations, 3.47. 71 Cf. Ian Hunter, “Kant and Vattel in Context: Cosmopolitan Philosophy and Diplomatic Casuistry,” History of European Ideas 39, no. 4 (2013): 477–​502. 72 Isaac Nakhimovsky, “Vattel’s theory of the international order: Commerce and the balance of power in the Law of Nations,” History of European Ideas 33 (2007): 157–​173. 73 Immanuel Kant, “Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch,” in Political Writings, ed. Hans Reiss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 103. 74 Isaac Nakhimovsky, “The ‘Ignominious Fall of the European Commonwealth’:  Gentz, Hauterive, and the Debate of 1800,” in Trade and War :  The Neutrality of Commerce in the Inter-​State System, by Koen Stapelbroek, Collegium: Studies across Disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences 10 (Helsinki: Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, 2011), 212–​28; Isaac Nakhimovsky, “Carl Schmitt’s Vattel and the ‘Law of Nations’ between Enlightenment and Revolution,” Grotiana 31 (2010): 141–​64.

­c hapter 3

The Peace of Utrecht, the Balance of Power and the Law of Nations Randall Lesaffer Abstract The Peace of Utrecht’s greatest claim to fame in the historiography of the law of nations is that it introduced the balance of power into the positive law of nations. This paper assesses what this inclusion signified to the treaty negotiators at Utrecht and what the balance of power meant to them both as a political principle and for its legal implications. In origins, the inclusion of the balance of power in the Utrecht Peace Treaties only held legal consequences in relation to the prevention of personal union between France and Spain. In the treaty practice of the next four decades, references to the balance as a basis for concrete legal rights and obligations gradually expanded to other succession issues. It is sometimes claimed that Utrecht marked the transition of a European order based on legitimate dynastic right to an order based on the common interest of peace and balance of power. While this claim has merit, it does not signify a complete overhauling of the old system. Over the 18th century, the legitimate claims of dynasties would remain foundational to the system of Europe. But progressively, they had to be balanced with the public interests of state, which at times were defended through an appeal to the balance of power.

1

Introduction

The biggest claim to fame the Peace of Utrecht holds in the historiography of the law of nations is that it was the first peace settlement to include an express reference to the balance of power in the treaties. According to some later international lawyers, thereby the balance of power became a principle of the (positive) law of nations.1 In his treatise on International Law, Lassa Oppenheim

1 Travers Twiss, The Law of Nations Considered as Independent Political Communities, on the Rights and Duties of Nations, in Time of Peace (2nd edn., Oxford: Clarendon, 1884), 187.

 

  

68 Lesaffer indicated the balance of power as a necessary precondition for the existence of international law.2 The Peace of Utrecht of 1713/​15 put an end to the War of the Spanish Succession that had commenced shortly after the dead of the last Habsburg King of Spain, Charles ii, in the year 1700. The Peace of Utrecht is actually a collective denominator for a series of separate, bilateral peace treaties that where signed at Utrecht between 11 April 1713 and 6 February 1715. On 11 April 1713, the envoys of Great Britain, Savoy, Portugal and Prussia signed their respective treaties with France. The envoys of the Dutch Republic tallied into the night so that their treaty, although backdated, was really signed on 12 April. The peace between Spain and Great Britain and between Spain and Savoy were signed on 13 July 1713. Later, treaties between Spain and the Republic (26 June 1714) and between Spain and Portugal (6 February 1715) concluded the peace process at Utrecht. The war between France and the emperor as well as the Holy Roman Empire was ended by the Treaties of Rastadt (6 March 1714) and Baden (7 September 1714), whereas the emperor and Spain would only make their peace over ten years later at Vienna (30 April/​1 May 1725).3 Of the different bilateral peace treaties which were signed at Utrecht in 1713, only the two Treaties of 13 July 1713, the one between Great Britain and Spain and the one between Savoy and Spain, included a direct reference to the balance of power. Article 2 of the Hispano-​British Peace Treaty stated that war had erupted (…) because of the great danger with threatened the liberty and safety of all Europe, from the too close conjunction of the kingdoms of Spain and France. And whereas, to take away all uneasiness and suspicion, concerning such conjunction, out of the minds of people, and to settle and establish peace and tranquillity of Christendom, by an equal balance of power4 (which is the best and most solid foundation of a mutual friendship, and of concord which will be lasting on all sides) as well the Catholic King, as the Most Christian King, have consented, that care should be taken by sufficient precautions, that the Kingdoms of Spain and France

2 Lassa Oppenheim, International Law. A  Treatise. Peace (2nd edn., London:  Longman and Green, 1912), vol. 1, 80. 3 For a full list of the treaties that make up the Utrecht peace settlement, including treaties of Friendship, Commerce and Navigation and the barrier treaties, see D. Onnekink and R. De Bruin, De Vrede van Utrecht (1713) (Hilversum: Verloren, 2013), 76. 4 In Latin: ‘justo potentiae aequilibrio’.

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should never come and be united under the same dominion, and the one and the same person should never become king of both kingdoms.5 Therefore, the article went on, the Spanish King had renounced his rights to the French throne for himself and his heirs and successors. The article then included the formal acts of renunciation by the Spanish King Philip V to the French throne, the formal renunciations of the dukes of Berry and Orleans, potential heirs to the French throne, of their rights to the Spanish throne as well as the letter patent of the French King Louis xiv accepting the renunciations and revoking his earlier letter patent of 1700 with which he had confirmed the right of succession to the French throne of his grandson Philip of Anjou upon his becoming King Philip v of Spain. According to Article 2, Philip’s renunciations had ‘the force of a general and fundamental law’. Article 3 of the Peace Treaty between Savoy and Spain also contained an express mention of the balance of power. This was part of a brief reference to the act of renunciation to the French throne by Philip V.6 Three of the five peace treaties between the allies and France, signed on 11 April 1713, contained an indirect reference to the balance of power. The main peace treaty, the one between Great Britain and France, included an article that materially said the same at Article 2 of the British-​Spanish Peace Treaty. It lacked an express reference to the balance of power but it did include the same acts of renunciation as well as the letter patent of Louis xiv. All these acts made an express reference to the balance of Europe. Instead of the more extensive introduction to the inclusion of these renunciations and letter from the Hispano-​British Treaty quoted above, this article briefly stated ‘that the Security and Liberty of Europe could by no means bear the Union of France and Spain under one and the same King’.7 Very similar articles as that from the Franco-​British Peace Treaty figured in the Peace Treaty between France and the Republic, but without the renunciations or the letter patent being included.8 The Peace Treaty between France and Savoy confirmed and included the renunciations by Berry and Orléans and their acceptance by Louis xiv’s letter patent.9

5 Clive Parry (ed.), The Consolidated Treaty Series (Dobbs Ferry: Oceana, 1969–​1981, hereafter cts), vol. 28, 295. 6 28 CTS 269. 7 27 CTS 475. 8 Art. 31, 28 CTS 37. 9 Art. 6, 28 CTS 123.

70 Lesaffer The purpose of this paper is to establish what the express introduction of the principle of the balance of power into the peace instruments of Utrecht meant at the time of the peace for the negotiators themselves. The next paragraph trails the sequence of texts and events leading to the peace searching for clues why and how the express reference to the balance of power found its way into the treaties and what it meant to the negotiators. Paragraph 3 contains a brief analysis of the meaning of balance of power as a political maxim for the treaty parties. The final paragraph questions the legal significance of the inclusion of the principle in the peace settlement. 2

Texts and Context

The War of the Spanish Succession, which disrupted peace over most of Western, Southern and Central Europe for over a decade, is aptly named as it indeed turned on the succession to the Spanish Empire after the extinction of the male line of the Spanish Habsburgs upon the death of Charles ii in 1700. Although the Spanish Empire by that time was no longer the leading power of Christianity, the Catholic King still ruled vast territories including Spain, Sicily, Naples, Sardinia, Milan, the Spanish presidios on the Tuscan seaboard, the Southern Netherlands as well as Spain’s possessions in the American Indies. The conflict over the Spanish succession had been in the making since the accession of Charles ii in 1665. As Charles ii was a sickly child, from his accession the general expectation at the courts of Europe was that the infant king would soon die. The demise of Charles ii without an heir had the potential of disrupting peace in Europe and causing a major, great power war. Not only would several princely dynasties promote their claims to the whole or parts of the Spanish Monarchy, but among them were the Austrian Habsburgs, and their family head, the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. This raised the spectre of the restoration of the old Habsburg Empire of Charles V (1519–​1558), thus setting the Habsburgs yet again upon the road to dominating Christian Europe, or universal monarchy as it was traditionally referred to. Against all expectations, Charles ii survived into adulthood thus gaining for himself the nickmane ‘l’éternel moribond’. But matters came to a head as his health went down and all hope of a direct heir receded. After the Peace of Ryswick (1697) had ended the Nine Years War (1688–​1697) that had opposed a ‘grand alliance’ of Great Britain, the Republic and the Austrian Habsburgs to the leading power of Europe, France under the expansionist Louis xiv (1643–​1715), the Spanish Succession stood high on the agenda of the two leading princes of Western Europe. Between 1698 and 1700, William iii, Stadtholder and Captain-​General

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of the Republic (1672–​1702) and since 1689 King of England, Scotland and Ireland tried to broker a compromise with Louis xiv. This led to the Partition Treaties of 1698 and 1700, which split up the Spanish Monarchy and distributed its portions between the main claimant dynasties, the Austrian Habsburgs, the French Bourbons and the electoral house of Bavaria. The First Partition Treaty of The Hague (1698) between France, Britain and the Republic stated that its first purpose was to ‘safeguard the general tranquillity of Europe’. It held that a new war would be inevitable if the French king, the emperor and the Bavarian elector would advance their or their descendants’ claims to the Spanish succession and that therefore a partition agreement was needed for the ‘public peace’ of Europe as a measure to prevent new war.10 The Second Partition Treaty, which had become necessary after the dead of the Bavarian claimant without issue, restated much the same in very similar wordings.11 But these efforts were rendered useless by the will of Charles ii, who supported by much of the Spanish establishment wanted to keep the different possessions of the Spanish Monarchy together. On 2 October 1700, Charles ii signed a new testament by which he bequeathed the entire Spanish Monarchy to Philip, Duke of Anjou, second son to the Dauphin and grandson to Louis xiv. If Philip would not accept the entirety of the inheritance, then it would devolve upon the Archduke Charles, second son of the Emperor Leopold I (1658–​1705).12 Faced with the dilemma of war or the spectre of the potential restoration of the empire of Charles V, Louis xiv had little choice but to accept the will for his grandson, thus making war with the emperor inevitable.13 This, and some more provocative

10 11

22 CTS 197. 22 CTS 471. Lucien Bély, Les relations internationales en Europe XVIIe-​XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1992), 375–​81; idem, La société des princes XVIe-​ XVIIIe siècle (Paris:  Presses Universitaires de France, 1999), 307–​29; Frederik Dhondt, ‘From Contract to Treaty. The Legal Transformation of the Spanish Succession 1659–​ 1713’, Journal of the History of International Law, 13 (2011) 347–​75; Klaus Malettke, Hegemonie –​ multipolares System –​ Gleichgewicht 1648/​1659–​1713/​1714 (Handbuch der Geschichte der internationalen Beziehungen 4; Paderborn etc.:  Ferdinand Schöningh, 2012), 461–​70; Derek McKay and H.M. Scott, The Rise of the Great Powers 1648–​1815 (London: Longman, 1983), 43–​58; François-​Auguste Mignet (ed.), Négociations relatives à la succession d’Espagne sous Louis XIV ou correspondence, mémoires et actes diplomatiques concernant les prétensions et l’avènement de la maison de Bourbon au trone d’Espagne (Paris; Imprimerie Royale, 1835–​1842); Brendan Simms, Europe. The Struggle for Supremacy, 1453 to the Present (London: Allen Lane, 2013), 42–​66. 12 Testament de Charles II Roy d’Espagne fait le 2. Octobre 1700 (Paris: Frédéric Léonard, 1700). 13 Bély, Société, 329–​32; Jean Bérenger, ‘Une décision de caractère stratégique: l’acceptation par Louis XIV du testament de Charles II d’Espagne’, Revue international d’histoire militaire, 82 (2002) 95–​111.

72 Lesaffer steps taken by the French king, chiefly among them the factual overtaking of the Spanish government by his agents, the attribution of the asiento by the new Spanish government to France and the occupation by French troops of the Southern Netherlands with the imprisonment and then eviction of the garrisons the Dutch Republic had in the so-​called barrier towns guarding against a French invasion, set Europe further upon the path of general war. Finally, the recognition in 1701 by Louis xiv of James iii (1688–​1766), the son of the deposed James ii Stuart (1685–​1688) as King of England, Scotland and Ireland, decided the British. On 7 September 1701, at The Hague the so-​called ‘Grand Alliance’ between Britain, the Republic and the emperor was signed. The Preamble to the treaty went into unusual detail stating the reasons for the alliance. Ignoring their earlier efforts to partition the Spanish Monarchy, the British and Dutch coalesced with Emperor Leopold I by recognising that the Spanish succession fell to his son the Archduke Charles, henceforth King Charles iii of Spain. The signatories took offence at Louis’ usurpation of the Spanish succession, his invasion of the Southern Netherlands and Milan, the sending of a fleet to the Spanish Indies and the ‘many other ways the kingdoms of France and Spain are so closely united and cemented, than as one and the same kingdom’. These actions would not only deprive the emperor from his claims for his son, but would also cause the Holy Roman Empire to lose its rights over the Southern Netherlands and Italy, would destroy the trade and navigation of the British and Dutch in the Mediterranean and the (Spanish) Indies and jeopardise the security of the Republic against France by taking away the buffer of the Spanish Netherlands and its barrier, the Dutch garrisons in some key towns there. And lastly, ‘(…) the French and the Spaniards, being thus united, will within a short time become so formidable to all, that they may easily assume to themselves the dominion over all Europe’. The Preamble further stated that ‘(…) France and Spain take advantage of this state of their affairs, to make stronger and firmer union between themselves, for oppressing the liberty of Europe, and take away the freedom of commerce’. Article 2 repeated much of this in the form of the aims of the alliance, and thus of the war the allies envisaged. According to Article 2, the allies desired nothing but ‘the peace and quiet of all Europe’, for which they deemed necessary, ‘(…) an equitable and reasonable satisfaction to his Imperial Majesty, for his pretension to the Spanish Succession, and that the King of Great Britain, and the States General, may obtain a particular and sufficient security for their Kingdoms, Provinces and Dominions, and for the Navigation and Commerce of their subjects’.14 14

Published in A General Collection of Treatys, Declarations of War, Manifestos, and Other Publick Papers, Relating to Peace and War, Among the Potentates of Europe, from 1648 to the Present Time (London, 1710–​1732), vol. 1, 415.

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These and other subsequent treaties laid out the main war aims of the three allies, with whom among others Portugal, Prussia and Savoy would join forces against France and Spain. The war aims of the alliance were multiple, diverse and sometimes mutually exclusive. For the Austrian Habsburgs, the principal war aim was the possession of the Spanish Monarchy by Charles iii, or at least as much of it as possible. For his allies from the Holy Roman Empire, which joined the Habsburg emperor in the war against France, there were territorial claims along the Rhineland and some religious issues.15 The Dutch Republic was and remained throughout the war most of all concerned, if not obsessed, with (re)gaining security from France. Therefore, it wanted to see the Southern Netherlands out of the hands of the Bourbon dynasty and into the hands of the Habsburgs or another, third power allowing the Republic to restore its barrier garrisons. This in turn would permit the Dutch to retain and strengthen their economic stranglehold on the Southern Netherlands.16 While being competitors, the British and Dutch shared concerns regarding commerce and navigation in the Mediterranean and the Spanish Indies. They –​rightly –​ feared that the accession of a Bourbon prince to Spain would allow French commercial and maritime interests to blossom and destroy theirs. This was not only a matter of protecting a cornerstone of their own wealth, but was also the expression of a fear that France, which was already the strongest continental power and a major contender overseas of the two ‘maritime powers’ would become the leading power in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. From the earlier years of the war, the merchant interest in England also cast its eye on the asiento, the treaty by which the Spanish granted the French the exclusive right of importing black slaves into the Spanish Indies.17 Lastly, the British demanded recognition from Louis xiv of the ‘Protestant Succession’ devolving from William (1689–​1702) and Mary (1689–​1694) over Mary’s sister Queen Anne (1702–​1714) to the electoral house of Hanover, as it had been established by the Act of Settlement (1701) as well as the eviction from France of the Pretender, James (iii) Stuart. To these, Portugal, Prussia and Savoy as well

15 16

17

Linda and Marsha Frey, A Question of Empire:  Leopold I  and the war of the Spanish Succession, 1701–​1705 (New York: East European Monographs, 1983). D. Coombs, The Conduct of the Dutch:  British Opinion and the Dutch Alliance during the War of the Spanish Succession (The Hague; Martinus Nijhoff, 1958); R.  Geikie and I.A. Montgomery, The Dutch Barrier 1705–​1719 (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1930). Andrea Weindl, ‘The Asiento de Negros and International Law’, Journal of the History of International Law, 10 (2008) 229–​58.

74 Lesaffer as some German princes added their claims, often of a territorial or dynastic nature.18 To these war aims, the aim of preventing and/​or destroying the close union between the French and Spanish crowns did not relate as just another aim. It was much more than that. It was the common aim of all allies, and it was considered fundamental to the whole alliance and the war effort. Although the different allies held different stakes in this common goal, they all acknowledged that their particular war aims could never be achieved if France and Spain were closely united. The reasoning behind this, as expressed in the Preamble of the Grand Alliance and as it was time and again repeated in many diplomatic texts was clear: a close dynastic union –​let alone a personal union –​between France and Spain would form a formidable combination, so powerful that it would allow to oppress ‘the liberty of Europe’ and threaten and destroy the security and main interests of all other European princes and powers. Therefore, is had to be opposed by war. Peace would only be possible if it destroyed this union and prevented it from re-​emerging ever again. In fact, almost every of the particular war aims of the different allies mentioned above was indeed quite directly threatened by the French hold on the Madrid government as it allowed it to oppose each of these aims with impressive power, and often even legitimacy. Without the destruction of this union, ‘the public peace’ and ‘the security and tranquillity’ of Europe could not be assured, as it was often repeated. The Grand Alliance and other texts promoted the prevention of a union between the French and Spanish monarchies to the leading maxim of its diplomacy, and thanks to its victory in the war, of the future peace fabric of Europe. It is only in this context that international legal instruments ever made an express reference to the ‘balance’ during the War of the Spanish Succession. The first, one of the very scarce as well as the major legal instrument to do so before the Peace Treaties of 13 July 1713 was the British declaration of war against France of 4/​15 May 1702. It referred to the grand alliance as a means ‘ (…) for preserving the Liberty and Balance of Europe and for reducing the exorbitant Power of France’ which had taken control over the Spanish Monarchy and annexed some of its parts. The declaration restated much of what the Grand Alliance had laid out, so that the term ‘balance’ in fact added little to the equation.19 The Dutch manifesto of war of 8 May 1702 used many similar phrases and terms, such as ‘liberty’, ‘peace and tranquillity’, ‘security’ and 18 Bély, Relations internationales, 386–​96; McKay and Scott, Rise of the Great Powers, 56–​8; William Roosen, ‘The Origins of the War of the Spanish Succession’, in Jeremy Black (ed.), The Origins of War in Early Modern Europe (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1987). 19 A General Collection, vol. 1, 421.

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followed yet again the same reasoning, but did not make a reference to ‘balance (of power)’.20 The peace negotiations that finally led to the Utrecht Peace were long, tedious and extremely complex, both in their form and organisation as in their substance. Roughly, one can subdivide the ‘grote werk’ of peacemaking into two major phases, the phases before and after the Tories took power in London at the end of 1710. After subsequent military defeats, by 1709, the French King Louis xiv was ready to make peace. The major negotiations took place during the first half of 1709 at The Hague, from where the Dutch Raadspensionaris Anthony Heinsius (1641–​1720) in close connection with the British and imperial commanders, John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough (1650–​1722) and Prince Eugene of Savoy (1663–​1736), coordinated and led the allied diplomacy. Whereas the French agreed to give up the Spanish Monarchy and were most concerned with keeping the French territory intact, the negotiations broke down over the refusal by Louis xiv to declare war upon his grandson Philip V of Spain (1700–​1746) if he would not give up his crown. A year later, negotiations, this time at Geertruidenberg in the very south of the Republic, failed as agreement on an alternative guarantee for the realisation of the alliance’s main war aim still proved unattainable.21 Near the end of 1710, the British government led by Sydney Godolphin (1645–​1712) and the Duke of Marlborough, which enjoyed the support of the pro-​war Whigh Junto, collapsed and fell from power. In its stead came a government which was far more partisan to the Tories. In the new government, Robert Harley (1661–​1724), later Earl Oxford, and Henry Saint-​John (1678–​ 1751), later Viscount Bolingbroke, became the leaders of British diplomacy. This change of government led to a fundamental shift in the war and peace policies of London. By the spring of 1711, the new government was holding secret, bilateral talks with France, leaving the allies in the dark. Apart from partisan reasons of a power political nature –​the destruction of the hero of Blenheim’s political position chief among them  –​and differences of opinion over the Protestant Succession as well maritime, commercial, tax and

20 21

A General Collection, vol. 1, 422. Lucien Bély, ‘Les larmes de M. de Torcy: la leçon diplomatique de l’échec, à propos des conférences de Gertruydenberg (mars-​juillet 1710)’, Histoire, économie et société (1983) 429–​ 56; Casimir Freschot, Histoire du Congrès et de la Paix d’Utrecht, comme aussi de celle de Rastadt et de Bade (1716), (Utrecht: Guillaume van Poolsum, 1716), 81–​203; A. Legrelle, La diplomatie française et la succession d’Espagne (Paris: F. Pichon, 1888–​1892), vol. 4, 459–​577; J.G. Stork-​Penning, Het Grote Werk. Vredesonderhandelingen gedurende de Spaanse Successie-​Oorlog 1705–​1710 (Groningen: Wolters, 1958).

76 Lesaffer security issues, a major event had precipitated this. The death of Emperor Josef I (1705–​1711) in April 1711 brought none other than Charles iii, the allies’ claimant to the Spanish succession onto the imperial throne as Charles vi (1711–​1740), thus virtually achieving the restoration of the old Habsburg Empire of Charles V. Meanwhile, the tides of war had changed in Spain over 1710, causing the allies to lose hope that they would be able to evict Philip V.22 The new government also wanted to wriggle out under the Treaty of Barrier and Succession which London and The Hague made in 1709 and which guaranteed a very extensive barrier in the Southern Netherlands to the Republic and gave it an extremely good position from which to control the Belgian economy, even to the detriment of the British.23 So by the start of any serious negotiations between Versailles and London halfway 1711, the British were prepared to leave Philip V on the throne of Spain under the condition that this would never lead to a personal union between the two Bourbon powers and that part of the Spanish monarchy, its Italian and Belgian possessions, would go to the Austrian Habsburgs and Savoy. The British further tabled the exclusion of special rights for France in the commerce and navigation in the Spanish Monarchy, the granting of special rights for themselves, particularly the asiento¸ French territorial concessions in Northern America, the cession of Menorca, Gibraltar and possibly some Spanish fortresses in the Spanish Indies, the destruction of the fortifications at Dunkirk and a series of demands for their Dutch, German, Savoyard and other allies, including a less extensive version of the barrier. By the end of 1711, negotiations had been taken far enough –​with the agreement on a preliminary treaty in October 1711 –​to force the reluctant Dutch to convene a general peace conference at Utrecht and press the allies to send their envoys there. From January 1712, the conference of Utrecht started its proceedings. The Spanish King Philip V, who was not yet recognised by the allies, was not allowed to send any envoys. The French King Louis xiv held powers from him and negotiated in his name. Only after the peace treaties of 11 April 1713 were signed were the Spanish envoys granted passports to come to the Republic, which explains the delay in the peace settlement between Spain and its enemies.24 22 23 24

John A. Lynn, The War of Louis XIV 1667–​1714 (London and New York: Longman, 1999), 339–​41. Brian W. Hill, ‘Oxford, Bolingbroke, and the Peace of Utrecht’, Historical Journal, 16 (1973) 241–​63; idem, Robert Harley: Speaker, Secretary of State, and Premier Minister (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1988), 159–​63. H.T. Dickinson, Bolingbroke (London:  Constable, 1970), 85–​108; Freschot, Congrès et le Paix d’Utrecht, 214–​34; E. Gregg, ‘The Protestant Succession in International Politics 1710–​1716’, in Karl Schweizer and Jeremy Black (eds.), Essays in European History in

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The actual negotiations at Utrecht were largely secondary to the real negotiations that were brokered before and during the conference between France and Britain from Versailles and London as well as between Spain and Britain from Madrid, Versailles and London. The outlines of the peace were laid out in these bilateral, secret negotiations. Only when all important issues were settled, the envoys at Utrecht were instructed to finalise the negotiations and the texts, and to sign them. To some extent, similar procedures were used by the lesser powers.25 During the first months of 1712, the peace process was gravely hampered by a few dramatic occurrences in the French royal family. In quick order, several of the male descendants of Louis xiv expired, leaving only one 2-​years old sickly great-​grandson, the future Louis xv (1715–​1774), between Philip V and the French throne. This threatened, as Louis and his foreign secretary, Jean-​Baptiste Torcy, Marquis of Torcy (1665–​1746) anticipated, the Franco-​British negotiations and led to new British demands for guarantees against a personal union between France and Spain.26 Whereas the French proposed that Philip would choose between the two thrones once he was called to succeed in France and that all signatories of the peace would guarantee this, the British rejected this as insufficient. According to Bolingbroke, this approach would not safeguard peace but would actually revive the cause of the war itself and endanger Europe to have to oppose the united power of France and Spain again. The British demanded that Philip V would choose immediately and renounce for himself and his successors either his rights to the French or the Spanish throne. The French princes in line to both successions after Philip V would have to make their renunciations as well.27 By the end of May 1712, Louis xiv had given in and forced his grandson to accept the solution and make his choice. Eventually in July 1712, to the chagrin of Louis xiv, Philip chose to remain in Spain. In the fall of 1712, he made his formal renunciation and had it confirmed by the Spanish Cortes. In France, Philip’s younger brother, Charles, Duke of Berry (1686–​1714) as well Louis xiv’s nephew, Philip, Duke of Orleans (1674–​1723), renounced their rights to the Spanish Monarchy. Their acts as well as the king’s letter were registered

25 26

27

Honour of Ragnhild Hatton (Lennoxville: Bishop’s University, 1985); Hill, Harley, 163–​73; Legrelle, Diplomatie française, vol. 4, 578–​637. For the proceedings and acts of the conference: Casimir Freschot (ed.), Actes, mémoires et autres pièces authentiques concernant la paix d’Utrecht (2nd edn., 4 vols., Utrecht: G. van de Water and G. van Poolsum, 1714–​1715). Letter of Torcy to Bolingbroke, 10 March 1712, in Letters and Correspondence, public and private, of the Right Honourable Henry St. John, Lord. Visc. Bolingbroke (London: Gilbert Parke, 1798), vol. 2, 204; Alfred Baudrillart, Philippe V et la Cour de France 1710–​1715 (Paris: Bureau de la Revue, 1890), vol. 1, 468. Letter of Bolingbroke to Torcy, 6 April 1712, in Letters and Correspondence,vol. 2, 249.

78 Lesaffer in the Parliament of Paris. Thus, the major issue of the war and the peace negotiations was settled to the contentment of the British and their main ally, the Dutch.28 Meanwhile, in June 1712, the British government had judged the negotiations with France sufficiently advanced for Queen Anne to address both Houses of Parliament and lay out the principal aspects of the agreement to be. In this speech, which she commenced by referring to the French acceptance of the proposal for double renunciations, she followed up by stating that thus the division of France and Spain was attained and that thereby, ‘ (…) il se trouvera une balance de pouvoir réellement établie en Europe’.29 This speech was the major official text emanating from the negotiation process that made such an express reference to the balance of power. The three months of Hispano-​British negotiations between the signing of the first peace treaties in April 1713 and the Spanish peace treaties of July 1713 did not turn about the Spanish succession, as this had been long agreed on and the renunciations had already been formalised. The negotiations were mostly taking up by Gibraltar and Menorca, the treatment of the Catalan allies of Britain, British commercial demands and above all, the somewhat excessive demand of the Maria Anne de La Trémouille, Princess of Ursins (1642–​1722), a power broker at the Spanish court, to a sovereign principality in the Southern Netherlands.30 Short of perusing all the archives relating to the negotiations process, it has remained impossible until now to pinpoint who actually decided to slip in the reference to the balance of power in Article 2 of the Hispano-​British Peace Treaty, nor where it was directly taken from. But some strong indications emanate from circumstantial evidence. First, it is clear that the reference in Article 2 of the Hispano-​British Peace Treaty has been inspired by Article 6 of the Franco-​British Peace Treaty of 11 April 1713. Both follow the same reasoning that the union of the French and Spanish crowns threatens the security and liberty of Europe and has caused the war; that therefore this union had to be prevented by all possible means and that this had been achieved by the double renunciations to the French, respectively Spanish crowns and the acceptance of these by Louis xiv, which were included in the article. Article 2 of the Hispano-​British Peace Treaty added only a few more explanatory lines to this, including the words ‘(…) establish Peace and Tranquillity of Christendom, by 28 Baudrillart, Philippe V, vol. 1, 467–​535; Bély, Société, 342–​9; Legrelle, Diplomatie française, vol. 4, 661–​95. 29 Speech of 6 June 1712, in Freschot, Actes, vol. 1, 525. 30 Legrelle, La diplomatie française, vol. 4, 738–​48.

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an equal Balance of Power’, but added nothing to the material substance of the article in the sense of legal implications or obligations. From this, second, it can be concluded that the inclusion of the reference to the balance of power was not of tremendous importance to the authors of the Hispano-​British Peace Treaty. During the war, references to the balance of power had become more and more frequent in –​particularly British –​pamphlets and political writings. By including the balance of power, the treaty thus made a reference which was by then familiar to many and which in the end did little else than restating the reasoning that had already been underlying the Grand Alliance. The strongest claim that can be made about it, is that it was included because it was an extra-​ argument to explain why Spain and France had to derogate from the normal rules of succession, which in France were considered to be among the ‘lois fondamentales du royaume’ which only God could divert from, by stressing the common interest of the ‘security and tranquillity of Christendom’ which needed a balance of power.31 In other words, the closer the issue came to the crux of the war, the rules of succession and the legitimate claims of a dynasty versus the common interest of European peace and security, the stronger the argument for the latter was made. But it could also just be a rather gratuitous if conscious addition of text. In any case, there is no indication in the sources that it was a contentious point and was actually much negotiated about. Third, the inclusion has been made by either a Spanish or a British negotiator, in London or Madrid, or even in Utrecht, and has certainly been agreed upon by the negotiators assembled in Utrecht. The likeliest candidates are, from the Spanish side Don Isidro Casado de Avezeda y Rosales, Marquis of Monteleon (from Madrid or at Utrecht), Don Isidro de la Cueva de Benavides, Marquis of Bedmar (1652–​1723) or Jan van Brouchoven, Count of Bergeyck (1644–​1725, both from Madrid), and from the British side, Bolingbroke (from London), Robert Sutton, Lord Lexington (1661–​1723, from London or Madrid) or Thomas Wentworth, Earl Strafford (1672–​1739, at Utrecht). Fourth, it is not unreasonable that the parliamentary speech by Queen Anne helped inspire the inclusion in the renunciations, the letter patent of Louis xiv as well as the Hispano-​British Peace Treaty as time and again, this speech was referred to during the negotiations and it was certainly well known and used by the French and Spanish government and its diplomats.32

31 32

Letter of Torcy to Bolingbroke, 10 March 1712, in Letters and Correspondence, vol. 2, 224. Linda and Marsha Frey (eds.), The Treaties of the War of the Spanish Succession. An Historical and Critical Dictionary (Westport, Ct. and London: Greenwood, 1995), for the diplomats involved in the negotiations of the Hispano-​British Treaty.

80 Lesaffer 3

The Balance of Power as a Political Principle

Over the past decades, various historians and theorists of international relations have tried to analyse and catalogue the different meanings the balance of power had to the writers and practitioners of diplomacy since the 16th century. Martin Wight distinguished no less than nine different meanings.33 In his classical study, Herbert Butterfield tried to unearth the growing sophistication of the theory of the balance of power in scholarly writing from the 16th century onwards.34 Most recently, Bruno Arcidiacono distinguished between three types of balance of power theories: (1) as a theory of security of powers balancing one another (équilibre sécuritaire) on a bilateral level, (2) as a leading principle within a system of States whereby no State may be suffered to become preponderant (équilibre anti-​hégémonique), and (3) as an organising and pacifying principle between multiple great powers forming part of a system of States (équilbre pacificateur).35 As the history of the War of the Spanish Succession indicates, the balance of power was clearly a common concern of all members of the anti-​Bourbon alliance and was in the end accepted by the Bourbon powers. Therefore, the meaning of balance of power in the Peace Treaties of 13 July 1713 was certainly not that of an équilibre sécuritaire at the bilateral level. The distinction between the two latter, relevant categories comes down to a distinction that also runs through the theories of Wight, Butterfield and others:  that of the balance of power as a negative principle, meaning the prevention of the domination of the international system by one power (which may be called the anti-​hegemonic principle) and that of the balance of power as a positive principle, as a leading principle for organising, managing and sustaining peace among a plurality of great, middle and smaller powers.36 33

Martin Wight, ‘The Balance of Power’, in Herbert Butterfield and Martin Wight (eds.), Diplomatic Investigations. Essays in the theory of international politics (London: Allen & Unwin, 1966), 149–​75. 34 Herbert Butterfield, ‘The Balance of Power’, in Butterfield and Wight, Diplomatic Investigations, 132–​48. 35 Bruno Arcidiacono, ‘De la balance politique et de ses rapports avec le droit des gens:  Vattel, la ‘guerre pour l’équilibre’ et le système européen’, in Vincent Chetail and Peter Haggenmacher (eds.), Vattel’s International in a XXIst Century Perspective/​Le droit international de Vattel vu du XXe siècle (Leiden and Boston:  Martinus Nijhoff, 2011), 77–​100. 36 Other important expositions with a historical intake include:  Myres S.  Anderson, ‘Eighteenth Century Theories of the Balance of Power’, in Ragnhild Hatton and Myres S.  Anderson (eds.), Studies in Diplomatic History (London:  Longman, 1970); Richard Little, The Balance of Power in International Relations. Metaphors, Myths and Models (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2007); Evan Luard, The Balance of Power.

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The consent in modern literature is that theories of the balance of power started seriously to be debated and developed in the second half of the 17th century. The consent also runs that, as the theory became more sophisticated over the 18th and 19th centuries, it slid from the negative to the positive perspective. This raises the question where the balance of power stood on this scale for the negotiators of Utrecht? From the analysis of the text of Article 2 of the Hispano-​British Peace Treaty of 13 July 1713, four conclusions can be drawn. First, the inclusion of the words ‘balance of power’ occurs in the article that makes the prevention of the personal union between France and Spain the main condition for peace as well as for the ‘liberty and safety’ of Europe. Second, the balance of power is at one and the same time the (desired) outcome of securing against such a union as well as a necessary condition for the peace and security of Europe. In other words, it forms a middle step in the reasoning that the prevention of the personal union between France and Spain is a necessary condition to the peace and security of Europe. The prevention of Franco-​Spanish union, the balance of power and the peace and security of Europe are inextricably wound up with one another. Third, as the prevention of Franco-​Spanish union and the balance of power are necessary to the peace and security of Europe, they are the common concern of all. Fourth, from these remarks the conclusion can be drawn that to the negotiators at Utrecht the balance of power has a negative, anti-​ hegemonic meaning. A comparison between Article 2 of the Hispano-​British Peace Treaty and Article 6 of the Franco-​British Peace Treaty, which its indirect reference to the balance of power, allows for a fifth conclusion. That is that the explicit reference to balance of power in the Treaties of 13 July 1713 does not add anything material to the underlying anti-​hegemonic principle or the legal implications of the article. In other words, the doctrine of the balance of power as an anti-​ hegemonic principle is as much present in other Utrecht treaties which stipulate the prevention of a personal union between France and Spain and which do not explicitly name it as in the two Treaties of 13 July 1713 which hold an explicit reference. The context of the war and peace negotiations corroborates these conclusions. First, any textual reference to the balance of power in treaties or declarations of war from the inception to the end of the war occurs in relation The System of International Relations, 1648–​1815 (London: Macmillan, 1992); Michael Sheenan, Balance of Power:  History and Theory (London:  Routledg, 1996); Arno Strohmeyer, Theorie der Interaktion. Das europäische Gleichgewicht der Kräfte in der frühen Neuzeit (Vienna and Cologne: Böhlau, 1994).

82 Lesaffer to the prevention of the union between France and Spain. Second, the scarce literal references to be found in fact add little, besides the use of the words themselves, to a common language and reasoning of legitimisation of a coalition and a peace order which was clearly anti-​hegemonic. Third, this anti-​ hegemonic reasoning stands in a long theoretical and diplomatic tradition on which it draws, that of the formation of coalitions to oppose the ambitions towards ‘universal monarchy’ of the predominant power. This notion first came to the fore in the early 16th century, when the immense power by the Habsburg Emperor Charles V threatened Europe and led to anti-​Habsburg coalitions even crossing the lines of religions between Catholics and Protestants. At that time and during the times of Spanish preponderance between 1550 and 1650, France became the central linchpin of these anti-​hegemonic coalitions and the great sponsor of its theories. After the French defeat of Spain and its consecration at the Peace of the Pyrenees (1659), France under Louis xiv itself became the leading power of Europe and through its expansionist politics threatened the liberty of the other powers of Europe. Its attack on the Spanish Netherlands in 1667 and on the Republic in 1672 and William iii of Orange’s take over of the British Isles in 1688–​1689 laid the basis for the anti-​ French coalitions that would fight France to a standstill and then defeat between 1688 and 1713 and would make The Hague and London the new centres of anti-​hegemonic diplomacy and theory.37 The War of the Spanish Succession which was fought by the allies in the name of stopping the perceived Bourbon bid for hegemony gave a boost the development of the doctrine of the balance of power in political literature and pamphlets. By the time of the Peace of Utrecht, the doctrine had not yet fully developed into a positive theory for managing a multi-​polar system, but some elements had been added to the mere anti-​hegemonic principle that set it well on the way thereto. As Butterfield already indicated, one of the most sophisticated expositions from before the end of the War was the one by François de Salignac de la Mothe-​Fénelon, Archbishop of Cambrai (1651–​1715).38 In the Supplement to his Examen de conscience sur les devoirs de la royauté (written before 1711), Fénelon stated that it was natural for a powerful State that was not held in check to dominate and subject other powers. Whereas before the anti-​hegemonic argument only appeared in the context of the fight against France, he raised the anti-​hegemonic argument to a higher level of abstraction and made it into a general principle that all powers should guard against 37 38

Franz Bosbach, Monarchia Universalis. Ein politischer Leitbegriff der frühen Neuzeit (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1986). Butterfield, ‘Balance of Power’, 139–​44.

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one power becoming preponderant. In this way, he set a necessary preliminary step towards a positive theory of the balance of power. Also, Fénelon made the balance of power into a paramount maxim of European order. Because the effective prevention of hegemony was necessary for the security of all, this prevention had precedence over otherwise legitimate claims or even positive rights, such as rights of succession. By consequence, States had a right to ally and, even offensively, to oppose a power on the rise. Finally, Fénelon pointed out that the prevention of hegemony was a common duty of all powers which were, after all, members of ‘a kind of general republic’, of what in modern terms would be called an international system or even an international society. Thereby, Fénelon’s theory already held all the elements necessary for a positive theory of the balance of power as an organising principle.39 The mere inclusion of a reference to balance of power into the Utrecht peace instruments does not allow for reading all these elements into the peace settlement. What is however clear is that Franco-​Spanish accession to the agreement about the Bourbon line of succession in France and Spain meant that they acknowledged that in the particular case of the union of the French and Spanish crowns the security of Europe through the prevention of hegemony –​the anti-​hegemonic argument –​prevailed over the internal laws and rules of succession. Also, the settlement fitted with the consideration that Europe functioned as an international society, la société des princes, a system of powers which shared certain common concerns, values and interests.40 Time and again, the ‘tranquillity and security’ and sometimes the ‘liberty’ of Europe were mentioned as the common and paramount goals, first of the coalition and then of the signatories to the peace treaties.41 In sum, one can conclude that the doctrine of the balance of power in the sense of the anti-​hegemonic principle formed one of the general principles on which the peace fabric of Utrecht rested. It implied that the prevention of hegemony was a common concern of all European powers, as it was necessary to the peace, security and liberty of all. It was a foundational principle of the Utrecht order. But in the treaties, the principle was only applied to the prevention of Franco-​Spanish union.

39 40 41

François de Salignac de la Mothe-​Fénelon, Supplément au Examen de conscience sur les devoirs de la royauté (before 1711; ed. Jacques Le Brun, Fénelon, Oeuvres, Paris: Gallimard, 1983–​1997), vol. 2, 1003–​9. Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society. A  Study of Order in World Politics (2nd edn., New York: Columbia University Press, 1995). E.g. letter from Torcy to Bolingbroke, March 1712, Letters and Correspondence, vol. 2, 244.

84 Lesaffer 4

The Legal Implications of the Balance of Power

This brings us to the question what legal implications where attached by the Peace of Utrecht to the balance of power? Few international lawyers have attempted to move beyond general statements like those of Twiss and Oppenheim and pinpoint the exact significance of the introduction of this political maxim into the positive law of nations through the Utrecht Peace Treaties. There are two different approaches to the matter. One is to look upon the balance of power as a legal principle binding upon politics; the other as a foundational political principle, underlying the law of nations and giving rise to concrete rights and obligations under that law. The first approach questions whether the inscription of the balance of power into the Utrecht peace settlement elevated it to a legally binding principle, a normative guideline for policy and diplomacy. This seems to be what Travers Twiss implied.42 This question has recently been convincingly dealt with by Frederik Dhondt. Through a detailed analysis of the French and British diplomatic practice from the three decades after 1713, Dhondt was able to establish that for these two powers, in the context of their objective common interest to uphold the Utrecht settlement, the safeguarding of the balance of power became a normative maxim which was also imposed and enforced upon other powers. Moreover, the balance of power principle transcended the original context of its introduction into the normative order of Europe –​the settlement of the French and Spanish succession –​as it was applied to different contexts, such as the settlement of Habsburg, Savoy and Spanish claims in Italy.43 The second approach departs from the assumption that the inscription of the balance of power in the Utrecht peace settlement made it into a foundational principle of Europe’s legal order and that, by consequence, the duty to uphold it gave rise to the creation of certain concrete rights and obligations under the law of nations. It is to this second, more technical-​legal questioning, that the remainder of this paper is devoted.

42 43

Martin Wight, International Theory: The Three Traditions (Leicester and London: Leicester University Press, 1991), 166–​7. Frederik Dhondt, Balance of Power and International Law. European Diplomacy and the Elaboration of International Order (18th Century and Post-​1945) (unpublished dissertation, Ghent, 2013, to be published in the Studies of the History of International Law 7; Leiden and Boston:  Martinus Nijhoff, 2015); idem, ‘Looking Beyond the Tip of the Iceberg; Diplomatic Praxis and Legal Culture in the History of Public International Law’, Rechtskultur. Zeitschrift für europäische Rechtsgeschichte, 2 (2013) 31–​42.

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Alfred and Detlev Vagts have made an attempt to classify the concrete legal consequences which have been attached to the balance of power through modern history. They discerned three. First, the balance of power supersedes certain legitimate rights of States. Second, the safeguarding of the balance of power forms a legitimate reason to resort to force, under the form of preventive self-​defence. Third, changes to the balance of power trigger the ‘clausula rebus sic stantibus’ and can therefore serve as an argument to free a treaty party from its obligations. The discussion below is limited to the two former questions.44 First, as a paramount principle of international order, the balance of power at times supersedes legitimate rights of States. The Peace Treaties of Utrecht clearly implied this in relation to one issue: the succession to the French and Spanish thrones with an eye on preventing the personal union between the two powers. Article 6 of the Franco-​British and Article 2 of the Hispano-​British Peace Treaties formed the backbone of the Utrecht settlement. In these articles, the Bourbon dynasty accepted a change to the natural order of succession in both monarchies so that the paramount goal of preventing a union between the two Bourbon powers was achieved. There was a clear understanding on the French side that this went against the rules of dynastic succession which were part of the ‘lois fondamentales’ of the realm and thus formed a serious infringement of France’s sovereignty. In his letter of 20 March 1712 to Bolingbroke, the Marquis of Torcy had still strongly pleaded against changing the order of succession in France through a immediate renunciation to the throne of France by Philip V for himself and his heirs because it went against ‘les lois fondamentales du royaume’ that followed from ‘le seul droit de naissance’ and thus was not for a prince to change.45 This and other references to the fundamental laws of the realm in the end only helped to stress the extent of France’s concession. With the Utrecht solution, the anti-​hegemonic principle was set. But its paramountcy was only applied to the Franco-​Spanish succession. All this does not allow for the conclusion that Spain –​or France, or any other power in their treaties –​acknowledged that the stipulations in the peace treaties regarding the French and Spanish succession introduced or recognised a general rule that the prevention of hegemony would henceforth prevail over succession rules in general, let alone over other legitimate rights. This, however, did not necessarily preclude them or other powers of reading and using it like that, of using it as a precedent, in later years. 44 45

Alfred and Detlev Vagts, ‘The Balance of Power in International Law: A History of an Idea’, American Journal of International Law, 73 (1979) 555–​80. Letters and Correspondence, vol. 2, 224.

86 Lesaffer The perusal of peace and alliance treaties of the 18th century can give a first indication whether this was indeed the case. In the treaty practice of the first half of 18th century, express references to the balance of power remained altogether rare.46 With one exception,47 the references –​eight in all –​occurred in the context of either, a confirmation of the Utrecht settlement regarding the Spanish and French thrones (in the 1710, 1720s and 1730s) or, as time progressed, other successions such as the Austrian Succession (in the 1730s). To this, two remarks must be added. First, the scarcity of express references to the balance of power does not imply that the principle itself receded from the agenda of European diplomacy or that it was not further developed. To the contrary, it lurked behind the systematic references in peace and alliance treaties to the ‘tranquillity and security of Europe’ as the underlying purpose of the signatories to the treaty.48 But second, it meant that its effective paramountcy as a principle with direct legal implications was limited to succession issues. Second, since the Early Modern Age, writers of the law of nations have sometimes claimed a right of preventive (self-​)defence for powers violently to oppose the emergence of a hegemonic power. During the 18th century, this was most famously done by Emer de Vattel (1714–​1767). But as most of his predecessors and followers, Vattel did not hold that the mere threat of a power becoming preponderant constituted a just cause for war. For a war to be just, the emerging power first had to commit or at least threaten a wrong.49 While this might not amount to much of a qualification of preventive war, it brought the theory in line with the demands of classical just war doctrine, as well as with State practice. The anti-​hegemonic principle and the balance of power doctrine were used by the members of the anti-​Bourbon coalition to justify the alliance and had 46 47

48 49

Heinz Duchhardt, ‘The Missing Balance’, Journal of the History of International Law, 2 (2000) 67–​72; Randall Lesaffer, ‘Paix et guerre dans les grandes traités du dix-​huitième siècle’, Journal of the History of International Law, 7 (2005) 25–​41, at 38. Treaty of Alliance of Herrenhausen of 3 September 1725, Art. 4. In the article, the treaty parties committed themselves not to enter in any alliance or other engagement that went against their mutual alliance, but to discuss any proposal with one another whether it promoted ‘(…) leurs Interêts communs, & proper maintenir l’Equilibre de l’Europe, qu’il est si nécessaire de conserver le bien de la Paix Générale’. This alliance between the kings of France, Great Britain and Prussia was made in the context of these powers commitment to the Utrecht peace settlement. 32 CTS 201. Randall Lesaffer, ‘The Grotian Tradition Revisited: Change and Continuity in the History of International Law’, British Yearbook of International Law, 73 (2002), 103–​39; at 133–​4; Lesaffer, ‘Guerre et paix’, 38–​40. Emer de Vattel, Le droit des gens ou principes de la loi naturelle (1758; Classics of International Law, Washington, Carnegie Institution, 1916), 3.3.42–​3.

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been used in their declarations of war. The danger of a Franco-​Spanish union was mentioned as a cause for war as much as its prevention for the future was a war aim and a preliminary condition for peace. But the allies did not argue that the mere threat or even achievement of union between France and Spain in itself justified war. Both the Grand Alliance of 1701 and the subsequent declarations of war did not only refer to the union of France and Spain through Philip’s accession to the Spanish throne, but elaborated on the different actions of France in Italy, the Netherlands and the Indies. Moreover, they implied that they considered the accession and French behaviour in the Spanish Monarchy illegitimate as it was opposed to the legitimate rights of the Austrian Habsburgs. Moreover, the texts stated that the union of the thrones threatened a series of more particular rights and interests of the allies, such as the claims of the Austrian Habsburgs to the Spanish Monarchy, the security of the Republic and the barrier and the commercial and maritime interests of the British Monarchy and the Republic. The protection and enforcement of these rights and interests also formed the material side of the war aims of the coalition. The allies of 1701 clearly remained within the confines of classical just war doctrine. Under this doctrine, a war cold only be just if the opposite side had committed a prior injury against a right or legitimate claim of the ‘just’ belligerent (causa justa or just cause) and if the war was necessary to enact restoration and to enforce that right for the future (recta intentio or righteous intention). The significance of the anti-​hegemonic argument was that Bourbon hegemony would prevent a sustainable peace because it would make the safeguarding of the legitimate claims and the rights of the allies impossible. In that sense, it gave a right to continue the war until a settlement which secured against hegemony was accepted by the enemy. It thus tied in with two other conditions which doctrine often set out for a war to be, or remain, just: necessity and proportionality.50 As it should be clear by now, the Peace Treaties of Utrecht implicated the same reasoning. One could argue from there that because the anti-​hegemonic principle of the balance of power was inscribed in the treaties and a breach of

50 Judith Gardam, Necessity, Proportionality and the Use of Force by States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Peter Haggenmacher, Grotius et la doctrine de la guerre juste (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1983); idem, ‘Self-​Defence as a General Principle of Law and its Relation to War’, in Arthur Eyffinger, Alan Stephens and Sam Muller (eds.), Self-​Defence as a Fundamental Principle (The Hague:  Hague Acacemic Press, 2009), 3–​49, at 36–​40; Stephen C.  Neff, War and the Law of Nations. A General History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Frederick C. Russell, The Just War in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975).

88 Lesaffer the treaties might form a casus belli (or just cause of war), all signatories now had a right to use force or resort to war to enforce the balance of power. From a legal standpoint, that would be stretching things too far although some statesmen seemed to imply this in later years. At the level of the strict legal implications of the peace treaties, the following remarks need to be made. First, the argument should be confined to stating that the treaties gave the signatories a right to use force or resort to war to react against a breach of treaty, possibly to pre-​empt an imminent threat of one, but not to prevent one in the more distant future. Second, such a breach could only occur against the material legal implications of the treaties, and only concern the parties or guarantors to the Utrecht peace settlement. This would thus mean a breach of the agreement regarding the French and Spanish succession. Any guarantee or right forcibly to intervene derived from the Utrecht peace settlement was thus restricted to a normal right of treaty signatories to enforce their claims under the treaty. In so far as these referred to the balance of power, they turned on the succession settlement to the French and Spanish thrones. These restrictions, however, do not exclude that the anti-​hegemonic principle of the Peace of Utrecht was used in the years and decades to follow to justify the resort to force. But in terms of former legal documents, its use was rare. As far as alliance treaties go, references to the balance of power were, in their particular applications, limited to matters of succession. This was no different for the so-​called Quadruple Alliance of 2 August 1718, often quoted as the example par excellence of guarantee treaties of the 18th century. In Article 2 of this treaty by which Britain, France, the emperor and the Republic promoted themselves to be the guarantors of the Utrecht settlement., reference to the balance of power, again, was only made in the context of the Spanish succession –​and its implications for the Austrian Habsburgs –​while the treaty’s aim also extended to this matter.51 In brief, there seems to be little indication at first sight that the Utrecht balance of power was invoked as the basis for concrete legal rights outside succession issues. 5

Conclusion

The Peace of Utrecht’s greatest claim to fame in the historiography of the law of nations is that it allegedly introduced the balance of power into the treaty lore of Europe and into the positive law of nations. This paper assessed what this 51

30 CTS 415.

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inclusion signified to the treaty negotiators at Utrecht and what the balance of power meant to them both as a political principle and for its legal implications. From a textual and contextual analysis of the treaty texts and the diplomatic process leading up to the peace settlement, a few conclusions can be drawn. First, the introduction of the balance of power into the treaties was nothing but the consecration in the treaty of the anti-​hegemonic principle that had been the bedrock and the glue of the anti-​Bourbon coalition in the War of the Spanish Succession. The treaties made that anti-​hegemonic principle into one of the paramount principles of the peace order of Europe. The Utrecht settlement led to a radical overhaul of the diplomatic system of Europe, breaking up the Anglo-​Dutch-​Habsburg Grand Alliance that had opposed France for a quarter century. In its stead came an uneasy but at times effective cooperation between the two leading Atlantic powers, France and Great Britain, to uphold the Utrecht compromise. Thanks to this diplomatic state of affairs, which would endure until 1740, the balance of power which in origins was only applied to the French and Spanish succession, transcended its source and grew into a more general maxim of European diplomacy, to which the leading powers would make an appeal as opportunity demanded. Its inclusion in the Utrecht Peace Treaties gave it normative power and thus made it into a useful argument of persuasion in the world of politics and diplomacy. Second, in origins, the inclusion of the principle of the balance of power in the Utrecht Peace Treaties only held legal consequences in relation to the prevention of personal union between France and Spain. In the treaty practice of the next four decades, references to the balance of power as a basis for concrete legal rights and obligations were restricted to the context of the Spanish and French succession, and with time to other succession issues. It has sometimes been claimed that the Peace of Utrecht marked the transition of a European order based on legitimate dynastic right to an order based on the common interest of peace and balance of power.52 While this claim certainly has merit, it does not signify a complete overhauling of the old system. Over the 18th century, the legitimate claims of dynasties would remain foundational to the system of Europe. But progressively, they had to work together and be balanced with the public –​territorial, security and commercial –​interests of state, which at times were defended through an appeal to the balance of power.

52

Dhondt, ‘From Contract to Treaty’; Andreas Osiander, The States System of Europe 1640–​ 1990. Peacemaking and the Conditions of International Stability (Oxford:  Clarendon, 1994), 90–​165.

pa rt 2 The Peace of Utrecht: Relationship to Colonial Regimes and Trade Monopolies

∵

­c hapter 4

“The Long Peace”: Commercial Treaties and the Principles of Global Trade at the Peace of Utrecht Koen Stapelbroek Abstract The Peace of Utrecht is famous for having allegedly instated the concept of the balance of power in modern politics. This chapter looks at how the balancing mechanism assumed to have been created at Utrecht was configured, so to speak, in commercial terms. It engages with the question what changed before, during and after the conclusion of Peace of Utrecht in how commercial treaties as ordering institutions were thought about, designed and subsequently negotiated in diplomatic circles. While discussion about the regulation of global trade in the years leading up to the peace talks initially took a novel form, the outcome of the commercial treaties of Utrecht confirmed Britain’s victory in the war. It is arguable, however, that the regime of commercial treaties instated at Utrecht was the first of its kind as an attempt to regulate international trade and thereby bring about a solid lasting peace.

1

Introduction

The Peace of Utrecht is famous across various academic disciplines for having allegedly instated the concept of the balance of power in modern politics. The aim of this chapter is not to engage with this notion of the balance of power directly, as will be done in other contributions to this volume, but to look at how the balancing mechanism assumed to have been created at Utrecht was configured, so to speak, in commercial terms. How was peace supposed to work with regard to global trade? This question concerns the relation between European peace and global commerce, as was imagined in the years before the conclusion of the Peace of Utrecht, Rastatt and Baden. Others in this volume approach the theme of global commerce informed by disciplinary insights

 

  

94 Stapelbroek from the study of International Law and International Relations. This chapter is written from a historical perspective.1 In what follows I will give some impressions of what changed before, during and after the conclusion of Peace of Utrecht in the way that the possible functions of institutions monitoring interstate trade and political relations were thought about, designed and subsequently negotiated in diplomatic circles as potential ordering instruments. The context for doing so will be formed by somewhat later expressed outlooks onto peace and trade from the second half of the eighteenth century, with a specific focus on commercial treaties. More precisely, my aim in this chapter is to consider the trade agreements that were concluded at Utrecht from this eighteenth-​century retrospective angle to come to some preliminary thoughts about the legacy of Utrecht on European commercial policy in the eighteenth century and possibly afterwards. The main point of my argument is the suggestion that the organisation of global trade at Utrecht took a very different form from how it had been designed by at least some diplomats of considerable standing during the War of the Spanish Succession and in the years leading up to the final peace negotiations. While traces of the original design were visible still, the way in which the actual peace in commercial terms could –​and did –​play out was radically different. If, which I think is arguable, the regime of commercial treaties instated at Utrecht was the first of its kind as an attempt to regulate international trade and thereby bring about a solid lasting peace, the contrast between the original design of global trade that appears to have been behind them and the reality created in 1713 gives the Peace of Utrecht a new salience. 2

The Balance of Power and the Requirements for a Lasting Peace

When David Hume discussed the balance of power in his essay with that title, he alluded to the negotiations that were held in Geertruydenberg a few 1 An early version of this chapter was presented under the same title at the duo-​conference “The Art of Peace Making:  Lessons learned from peace treaties” at Utrecht-​The Hague of 19–​20 September 2013, where it was the keynote talk in a panel entitled “The Peace of Utrecht: Relationship to colonial regimes and trade monopolies”. I am grateful to the participants of the conference for their comments. The research for this chapter is related to an ongoing joint research effort with Antonella Alimento on the impact of commercial treaties on international politics in the eighteenth century and the political thought about commercial treaties at the time and is also part of a research project funded by the Academy of Finland entitled “Historical instruments of European integration: The commercial configuration of the ‘Balance of Power’ ”.

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years before the final peace talks were started that ultimately were agreed upon and signed in 1713 and 1714. Compared with the conditions of Geertruydenberg, Hume argued, those fixed by the Peace of Utrecht represented the same degree of satisfaction, yet came with extra baggage. As Hume explained, “our wars with France have been begun with justice, and even, perhaps, from necessity; but have always been too far pushed from obstinacy and passion”.2 Whereas “the maxim of preserving the balance of power is founded so much on common sense and obvious reasoning, that it is impossible it could altogether have escaped antiquity”, then, as much as in the eighteenth century it had been impossible to adequately support that very maxim by maintaining the right national spirit and policies.3 Underlying the political principle of the balance of power, the “spirit of jealous emulation” held more sway in modern Britain than that of “prudent views of modern politics” and had caused national “excesses” that affected both Britain’s liberty and “the fate of Europe”.4 It would probably go too far to assert that Hume in these few pages argued that the balance of power could only be grounded on a balance of passions in human nature. Still, in the wider context of Hume’s Essays, his idea in his text Of the Balance of Power that Britain’s “national spirit” of “imprudent vehemence” and her “passionate ardour” called for “moderation” clearly pointed in this direction.5 While modern commercial monarchies, with France being the model, were the key to a future of peace and prosperity, their great imperfection lay in the fact that the logic of reciprocal trade and the foundations of commercial exchange required better political accommodation than they had been given thus far. In another essay, Of the Balance of Trade, Hume gave a clear example of commerce being badly accommodated by modern politics. Hume suggested that Britain had become the victim of its own commercial policies vis-​à-​vis France. Inspired by a jealousy of a more ‘modern’ and powerful rival, the commercial barriers that had been established against French hegemony had backfired and affected Britain’s own condition:

2 David Hume, ‘Of the Balance of Power’, in Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Eugene Miller (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1985), pp. 332–​341; 339. 3 Hume, ‘Of the Balance of Power’, p. 337. 4 Hume, ‘Of the Balance of Power’, pp. 339–​340. 5 Hume, ‘Of the Balance of Power’, pp. 338–​339; Istvan Hont, Jealousy of Trade. International Competition and the Nation-​State in Historical Perspective (Cambridge Ma.: Harvard University Press, 2005), p. 334 uses the term “national amour propre” in this respect.

96 Stapelbroek Our jealousy and our hatred of France are without bounds; and the former sentiment, at least, must be acknowledged reasonable and well-​ grounded. These passions have occasioned innumerable barriers and obstructions upon commerce, where we are accused of being commonly the aggressors. But what have we gained by the bargain?6 Thus it could be that the idea of the balance of power itself was of all times, according to Hume, but that the reliance upon commerce by modern states changed the theory of politics and gave this principle a new status. The commercial foundations of modern states made that “the aim of modern politics” required not all force to be “thrown into one hand”.7 Any political solution resembling universal empire certainly was no option if commerce was to flourish, and this was still to be properly recognised by British politics, which routinely tended to confuse the aim of political balance with that of hegemony. Likewise, extrapolating from Hume’s argument, for the balance of power to be a possible effective tool in settling inter-​state relations, its functioning would have to coincide with the principles of reciprocity and exchange. Hume’s idea of the effectiveness of the balance of power as relying upon certain conditions that would be hard to satisfy was shared by the abbé de Saint Pierre, who is famous for his proposal for a confederation of European states as the necessary political solution for creating a lasting peace. Throughout his political works, which were published towards the end of his life between 1733 and 1740, Saint-​Pierre distinguished two options for the organization of European affairs, “the system of an equilibrium between two superior powers, and the system of the European diet”.8 Next to the balance of power, which included a double hierarchy of allied states forming two military-​political sides, he identified his own system of a somehow unified European system in which the sovereign equality of smaller states was protected without the help of an in-​built hierarchy of protective power. Like Hume, Saint Pierre’s argument about the possible shape of inter-​state relations was grounded on his understanding of the importance of modern

6 Hume, ‘Of the Balance of Trade’, p. 315. 7 Hume, ‘Of the Balance of Power’, p. 337. 8 Charles-​Irénée Castel de Saint-​Pierre, ‘Observasions sur les derniéres paix’, Ouvrajes de politique (Rotterdam, 1737, vol. 11), pp.  317–​332; p.  321. See also ‘Comparaison entre le sistême de l’Equilibre des deux principals Puissances, & le sistême de la Diète Europaine’, Ouvrajes de politique (Rotterdam, 1735, vol. 10), pp. 260–​4; ‘Inconvénians du sistême de l’Equilibre & Avantages du sistême de la Diète Europaine’, Ouvrajes de politique (Rotterdam, 1734, vol. 8), pp. 156–​234.

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commercial relations. The occasion for his research, he declared in the preface of his main work, had been his personal experience in the early years of the War of the Spanish Succession of seeing the various everyday effects of warfare “on the interiour Commerce of the Kingdom” and the “unhappy Inhabitants of the Frontiers of Christian States” which triggered a desire to understood the root causes of the problem.9 As he argued time and again in his political works and particularly at the outset of his Projet pour rendre la paix perpétuelle en Europe, the present state of Europe, including the situation in which there was a balance of power between royal dynasties, provided insufficient guarantees against the constant outbreak of war and failed to preserve the commerce between states.10 Moreover, he explained, European politics was misleading itself about the effectiveness of the political instruments it had available: I found that all those Means consisted in making mutual Promises, either in Treaties of Commerce, of Truce, of Peace, wherein Limits of Dominion, and other reciprocal Pretentions are regulated; or else in Treaties of Guarantie, or of League offensive and defensive, to establish, to maintain, or to re-​establish the Equilibrium of Power between the Principal Houses; a System which hitherto seems to be the highest Degree of Prudence, that the Sovereigns of Europe, or their Ministers ever carried their Policy to.11 As if to emphasise the fine line between misguided attempts and deliberate failure, Saint-​Pierre used the terms “System of Equilibrium” and “System of War” synonymously. Beyond this rhetorical association, the idea that the “present System of War” was entirely the same as the quest for a “Chimerical Equilibrium”, however, had more structural properties.12 In opposition to the way in which European politics regulated itself, Saint-​Pierre provided a sketch of his own system which was characterised by the principle of “permanent society”. As the first pages that followed the author’s preface indicated, the idea of “permanent society” was not primarily a matter of fixing a unified political

9

10 11 12

Charles Irénée Castel de Saint-​Pierre, Projet pour render la paix perpetuelle en Europe (Utrecht, 1713–​1717, 3 vols.); translated (and abbreviated) as A project for settling an everlasting peace in Europe first proposed by Henry IV of France (London, 1714), references below are to both the 1714 English and 1713–​1717|French editions; quotations from the English, unless not part of the 1714 translation. Quotation from I:ii/​i-​ii [=French 1713–​1717/​English 1714]. Saint-​Pierre, Project for settling an everlasting peace, I:vi–​vii/​ iii–​iv and passim. Saint-​Pierre, Project for settling an everlasting peace, I iv–​v/​ ii–​iii. Saint-​Pierre, Project for settling an everlasting peace, I:xii, xix/​v, viii.

98 Stapelbroek structure to prevent warfare between states, but about securing the permanency of “the Advantages of Commerce” and doing justice to the way mankind had originally been created.13 Saint-​Pierre’s conclusion was indeed that the realisation of “permanent society” required a permanent political structure (which would have Utrecht as its “Ville de l’Assemblée”14) that transcended sovereign power, but it ought to be recognised that the reason why this political solution was necessary according to Saint-​Pierre lay in the fact that a ‘commercial’ problem needed to be resolved –​to the extent of a radical downscaling of the tariff system that existed in Europe.15 In the context in which Saint-​Pierre wrote, he felt that proper interest dictated that the territorial and commercial advantages of the “System of the Permanent Society of Europe” should be heeded by all powers. This applied to the Dutch and British Protestant “Allies of the House of Austria” in particular.16 It did not make any sense to Saint-​Pierre’s mind, and here he referred to “that which is now treating at Utrecht”, that these commercial powers would strive to create a political equilibrium and retain commerce subservient to power, rather than to push for a solution that was directly aimed at securing their commerce in the Mediterranean and the Americas.17 Saint-​Pierre’s work included some more (rather imprecise) suggestions concerning the European management of global commerce. With regard to the pacification of interstate relations on a global scale Saint-​Pierre first declared he could see a different version of his design in which states outside Europe took part in his unified “permanent society”. While he chose not to present this cosmopolitan version of his vision of the liberty of European commerce, already in the preface of his work he anticipated as an obvious and easily realisable by-​product of the creation of his European union the establishment of a “General Council” of European trade in the Indies that would pacify relations

13 14 15

16 17

Saint-​Pierre, Project for settling an everlasting peace, I:1–​22/​ pp. 1–​9. Saint-​Pierre, Project for settling an everlasting peace, I:359–​364; ii:  292–​293/​ pp. 134–​6; 151. Saint-​Pierre, Project for settling an everlasting peace, I:120–​121/​pp. 324–​5. The logic of Saint-​Pierre’s priority to avoid sacrificing commerce to the idea of a political equilibrium was fairly close to Hume’s perspective, yet Saint-​Pierre’s extreme solution to avert downscaling commerce for the sake of peace translated into the idea that all tariffs had to be abandoned and only subsidies or other national governmental encouragements were allowed. This system was to be overseen by Chambres de Commerce that were placed at the borders of existing nations and fell under a general European jurisdiction. Saint-​Pierre, Project for settling an everlasting peace, I:35–​6/​ p. 14. Saint-​Pierre, Project for settling an everlasting peace, I:xviii–​xix, pp. 27–​8/​ vii–​viii, p. 11.

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among European traders and between sovereigns in the Indies and make their trade more profitable and secure.18 To conclude this section, both Hume and Saint-​Pierre recognised that what had been decided upon in Utrecht was directly related to the major eighteenth-​ century European debate about commerce and the reform of interstate relations that intensified following the Peace of 1713. Among many writers who contributed to this debate, Hume’s Essays were published at the beginning of the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years’ War while Saint-​Pierre continued contrasting his own system with other outlooks onto interstate reform that gained ground in France until the early 1740s.19 Yet, there is a different reason for involving Saint-​Pierre in this argument that stems from the fact that he himself, as is well known, was not only commenting on the Peace of Utrecht from a later time, like Hume, but had been an eyewitness to the negotiations acting as a secretary to Cardinal Melchior de Polignac. Moreover, it is intriguing that Saint-​Pierre apparently started reflecting on his main work, which in its published version was a critique of the Peace of Utrecht, already in 170820 and presented it to Colbert de Torcy in September 1712 (when a copy of the text was immediately published in Cologne). This poses questions about the relation between practice and political theory. Throughout the eighteenth century the Peace of Utrecht and further settlements shaped various national predicaments that gave rise to institutional innovations (new practises at free ports, tariff systems, neutrality policies, commercial codes, etcetera) in response to the new situation. And whatever was discussed in practice was reflected on theoretically (and vice versa).21 The 18

19

20 21

Saint-​Pierre, Project for settling an everlasting peace, I:xx–​xxi, ii: 316–​9/​ ix, pp. 160–​1: the end of the discussion was a promise (which he appears never to have met) to explain how this Asiatic Union might function on its own apart from a European political confederacy: “and I may some time or other prove, in another Part, that it will be much more easily formed than the European Society” (ii: 319/​ p. 161). He published a review of Frederick the Great’s Anti-​Machiavel entitled L’Enigme Politique in the Dutch journal État Politique de l’Europe co-​edited by Jean Rousset de Missy in 1740 (vol. 6; pp. 385–​392); see also Charles-​Irénée Castel de Saint-​Pierre, ‘Reflexions sur l’Antimachiavel de 1740’, Ouvrajes de politique (Rotterdam, 1741, vol. 16), pp. 459–​539. Saint-​Pierre, Project for settling an everlasting peace, I ii/​ i–​ii. Visions of the history of Europe and scenarios for its future interacted with institutional and policy proposals developed within for instance Europe’s old trade republics, see Koen Stapelbroek and Antonio Trampus, ‘Commercial reform against the tide: Reapproaching the eighteenth-​century decline of the republics of Venice and the United Provinces’, History of European Ideas, 36 (2010), pp. 192–​202 and Koen Stapelbroek and Antonio Trampus, ‘Vattel’s Droit des gens und der Europäischen Handelsrepubliken im achtzehnten Jahrhundert’, Der moderne Staat und „le doux commerce” –​Staat, Ökonomie

100 Stapelbroek logical question here then is, was there anything in the development of the diplomatic negotiations in the course of the War of the Spanish Succession that fit with what was discussed by Saint-​Pierre, or was the Projet pour rendre la paix perpétuelle en Europe as eccentric a plan as his later reputation in eighteenth-​century Europe of a utopian dreamer suggests?22 3

The Lingering Problem of Spain’s Commerce

When peace was concluded in 1713, it was evaluated not only with an eye on the future but equally in light of the recent past. The Peace of Utrecht was supposed to provide a solution not only for a territorial-​dynastic succession dispute, but also for a more fundamental problem, much like Hume and Saint-​ Pierre understood it to have existed since the late seventeenth century. Peace in this somewhat abstract sense was not only about territorial balance, but also about installing an adequate mind-​set on aligning national interests that were more than ever determined by commercial aspects. But what were the concrete political and diplomatic challenges in this regard to be solved at the time of the War of the Spanish Succession? While the eighteenth century unfolded, the more abstract comparisons with the fate of Roman civilisation became more prominent in analyses of the political reality of the time that also featured the legacy of Utrecht. Not only the abbé de Saint-​Pierre would in his later publications look back upon Utrecht as a moment of missed opportunity. To name only one other example, the French publicist Jacob-​Nicolas Moreau, in his L’Observateur hollandais (1755–​1759) and the many volumes of his Memoires pour servir à l’histoire de notre tems (1757–​1761), alternately republished political treatises and provided diplomatic details about the ongoing conflict. According to this method Moreau explained the origins of the Seven Years’ War to lie in the British design of the Peace of Utrecht that created a situation in which underneath a formal political balance in reality there was a plan for commercial Empire. Within this design the combination of new British Mediterranean and South-​American possessions and the possibility to re-​open debate (and further military conflict) about the stipulation of the borders of Acadia tilted the balance of commerce in such a

22

und internationales System im politischen Denken der Aufklärung (ed. Olaf Asbach, Baden-​ Baden: Nomos Publ., 2014), pp. 181–​204. From Leibniz to Voltaire, Rousseau and Galiani, most eighteenth-​century writers made fun of Saint-​Pierre. An eighteenth-​century collection of his writings even bore the title Les rêves d’un home de bien, qui peuvent être réalisés (Paris, 1775, 3 vols.).

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way that the entire world had come to function as an instrument to increase British wealth and power, Moreau claimed. Britain’s new Rome had emerged through overwhelming its faithful Dutch ally in the early years of the century (the new Carthage, in Moreau’s account) and now was responsible for the chaos created in the German territories during the Seven Years’ War.23 Of course Moreau was a French-​paid propagandist, yet the degree to which he used the Peace of Utrecht in his explanation is significant. Moreover, the same suggestion that the history of humankind could have run a different course had international politics been organised differently following the War of the Spanish Succession is also present in earlier diplomatic sources. The Venetian delegate to the negotiations that were held at Utrecht Carlo Ruzzini reported back to the Senate in 1713 indicating that it had been clear already at the Peace of Ryswick that provisions were to be made regarding the Spanish succession to prevent a new war. The principles of Hans William Bentinck’s ‘peace plan’, as Ruzzini called the vision from which the original Spanish partition treaties stemmed, had been completely overturned in the negotiations leading up to Utrecht, particularly at Gertruydenberg which he labelled a “spectacle of secrecies” and considered a general diplomatic disaster. The centrality of Spain as the object of strive following a now finished period of Spanish commercial greatness (Ruzzini singled out the British possession of Minorca and power over Mediterranean trade) and the loyalty of the Dutch (who were eventually fobbed off with a commercial treaty, on Ruzzini’s account) to the alliance were identified by Ruzzini as the principles of the outcome of the Peace of Utrecht. Following Gertruydenberg and the signing of the preliminaries by Mesnager there had been no way back to prevent a situation which Ruzzini was clear about already in 1713 which saw Britain emerging as an aspiring global commercial hegemon.24 Other than identifying Britain as ultimately not the guardian but the usurper of European liberties, these few texts provide indications about a concrete problem that was at stake in the War of the Spanish Succession, which was the 23 24

See my forthcoming ‘Il sistema di Utrecht, il sistema di Vattel: attraverso L’Observateur hollandois di Jacob-​Nicolas Moreau’ in the Rivista Storica Italiana. Fondazione Querini Stampalia Venezia, Classe iv. Codice ccxcv (manuscript number 675). Ruzzini’s account may be read in conjunction with supplementary reports by Alvise V Antonio Mocenigo from Paris (Classe iv. Codice cccxxxv (manuscript number 921) and Alvise ii Giovanni Mocenigo from Madrid (Classe iv. Codice cclvii (manuscript number 673)) to partially reconstruct the Venetian understanding of the Peace of Utrecht. This outlook onto Utrecht fed into how some Venetians understood the Seven Years’ War (which was at times very close to Moreau’s perspective), see Fondazione Querini Stampalia Venezia, Classe iv. Codice ccxlv (manuscript number 499).

102 Stapelbroek future of Spain’s trade. It was a commonplace that Spain’s former commercial Empire had been hollowed out and that its overseas trade was actually conducted by merchants from other European states. Just like Spain’s territorial hold was overstretched, so its commercial structures were operated in large part from the town of Cadiz through British, Dutch, French and other foreign merchant houses.25 Held together loosely by a Spanish monopoly, the national South-​American trade operated from Seville and Cadiz by the Casa de la Contratación through a convoy system that differed from the later national trade companies established in Britain and the Dutch Republic. Internally the national character of the system was hollowed out by tacitly legitimised forms of fraud and foreign investments into Cadiz’s merchant houses that were represented on record by Spaniards. Externally, its monopoly was severely affected by an incapacity to respond to contraband. For as long as the existing territorial situation lasted this situation functioned reasonably well, yet with the Spanish dynastic succession and territorial possessions becoming the object of conflict, so the structuring of Spanish foreign trade became the object of reorganisation. Indeed, this it had become already when the Spanish Junta de Comercio confronted the question in 1704–​5 how to reorganise the Spanish colonial trade system. This very operation drew the involvement of French diplomats, including Mesnager, Amelot Gournay and Daubenton and seems to have led on to Mesnager’s later commercial proposals as a basis for peace.26 From a French mercantile point of view the question was how to respond to the project of de Junta de Comercio. What was most beneficial: participating in the convoy system as it existed, circumventing that same weak monopoly system and profiting from contraband or to assist in its large-​scale reform and participate in the outcome of an improved American trade set-​up? Different factions within the French political-​commercial lobbying circuit, attached to different trade cities, held different preferences on this question. Whatever choice was made had ramifications on a different, political, level, that of the structure of interstate 25

26

For an impression of Cadiz as approaching in some way an international trade centre despite the monopoly, initially based on study of the Dutch merchant community, see Ana Crespo Solana, Mercaderes atlánticos: Redes del comercio flamenco y holandés entre Europa y el Caribe (Córdoba: Universidad de Córdoba, 2009), Communidades transnacionales: Colonias de mercaderes extranjeros en el mundo atlántico, 1500–​1830 (Madrid: Doce Calles, 2010) and Entre Cádiz y los Países Bajos: una comunidad mercantil en la ciudad de la Ilustración (Cádiz, Fundación Municipal de Cultura, 2001). Stanley J.  Stein and Barbara H.  Stein, Silver, Trade, and War:  Spain and America in the Making of Early Modern Europe (Baltimore:  Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), pp. 124–​30.

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politics. Mesnager, who was clearly in favour of a structural reform of Spanish colonial trade, seems to have been the figure who was most adept at integrating these perspectives at the same time and transform them into concrete objects of diplomatic negotiation. As is well known, Louis xiv believed that the War of the Spanish Succession really was a conflict about the commerce of the Indies and likewise the Navy Minister, Jérôme de Pontchartrain, held that the Protestant powers’ fear of a commercial unity between Spain and France had been the actual cause of the war.27 The stipulation in the 1713 Peace Treaty between Britain and Spain that the connection between powers of France and Spain ought to be “not too close” would fit with this idea. Certainly, a key figure like Nicolas de Mesnager, one the later signatories at Utrecht and a major specialist on Spanish commerce, had these concerns prominently on his mind and threw out memoranda about the future of Spanish trade as essential to shaping peace.28 If the foreign commerce of Spain was already conducted by foreign merchants, the question was how to set up a commercial plan for the future of European peace parallel to the solution for the dynastic and territorial succession. This specific matter gave the general and abstract later eighteenth-​ century ideas of modern Europe going through a re-​run of ancient civilisation a very concrete form. In line with the concerns of Hume and Saint-​Pierre and everything that was back projected upon the Peace of Utrecht by writers like Moreau, the task to reorder Spain’s foreign commerce was a perfect representation of the political challenge that modern Europe was to meet at the end of the Spanish Succession War in order to create a durable peace. 4

The Commercial Treaties of Utrecht

Next to the future of Spain’s foreign trade as a global concern, regarding the commerce between European states Saint-​Pierre set great store by the generalised principle of the most-​favoured nation: “Tis the chief Point in Commerce, that no one Nation be preferred to another, and that all be equally free to come to sell and buy Merchandizes”.29 To render “permanent society” possible and along with a complete abandonment of internal tariffs Saint-​Pierre envisaged

27 28 29

Dale Miquelon, ‘Envisioning the French Empire: Utrecht, 1711–​1713’, French Historical Studies 24 (2001), pp. 653–​677; p. 653. On Mesnager role in the context of the 1707–​1708 negotiations see below. Saint-​Pierre, Project for settling an everlasting peace, I:323/​p. 120.

104 Stapelbroek a structure in which Chambers of Commerce monitored the reciprocity conditions of exchange between citizens of European states.30 This idea was not just ingrained in Saint-​Pierre’s idea of a general peace, but also seems to have been an original principle of the peace talks that were held towards the end of the War of the Spanish Succession and that actually made it in some form to the Peace of Utrecht. There, in 1713, simultaneous to the bilateral peace treaties of which the general peace was composed, a number of commercial treaties were drafted. The commercial treaties of Utrecht were signed on the same day or in the immediate aftermath of the general peace treaty, translating into practice the separate (often secret) provisions of the peace. Such commercial treaties were signed at Utrecht between France and Great Britain, France and the United Provinces, the United Provinces and Spain and between Great Britain and Spain. Yet, the final negotiations of these treaties were primarily held by French and British representatives –​who guaranteed the acceptance of these treaties by Spain and the United Provinces. If this might seem to imply that the great powers were contracting on behalf of smaller states that were loyal to them, that would fit with the earlier history of these instruments for organising international trade flows. In the seventeenth century such treaties were deliberately used by the great commercial powers of the time (France, England and the United Provinces) to fix preferential fiscal and other advantages and thereby establish economic ties with states that did not have large manufacturing sectors, but instead had colonies (Portugal and Spain) and were rich in gold. Commercial treaties in short were tools of economic rivalry among the main commercial powers. Compared with this traditional use of commercial treaties, those stipulated at Utrecht seemingly followed a different logic reinstating free trade among all the parties involved in the preceding conflict, thus creating an economic basis for a durable peace. All parties involved in the settlement mutually each other the most preferred nation, thus affirming in economic terms, the idea of political equality embodied by the peace treaty itself. In the advent of Utrecht and apparently influenced by a refusal on the part of the Dutch to negotiate independently of Britain things changed (and not just where it concerned the commercial treaties, as we will see in the next section). The commercial treaties of Utrecht still contain the language of reciprocity, but the fact, however, that Britain managed to obtain from Spain in

30

Saint-​Pierre, Project for settling an everlasting peace, I:320–​5/​pp. 119–​121; a fuller account was announced here for in the third volume, which however did not quite materialise.

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1713 the so-​called Asiento, as the exception to the rule of international equality, is a major factor that forces one to consider more attentively the logics underlying the stipulation of commercial treaties. Further sidesteps to the principle of reciprocity lay in the signing of a commercial treaty that expressed fiscal inequality (between France-​United Provinces) or in the inclusion of unequal commercial terms presented as if they were expressions of reciprocity (Great Britain-​Spain). It is tempting to believe that what happened was that commercial treaties were used, as in the preceding tradition, with eminent political objectives: to intensify commercial competition between dominant states and make weaker one ‘buy’ their security in the interstate system. If this was the case then the commercial treaties of Utrecht, despite their language and the aims of the negotiations that took place during the war, reverted to their default option of an institutional set-​up that subsumed smaller states hierarchically under a dominant state on either side of the balance instead of bringing about a different integration of national economies. In other words, the commercial treaties of Utrecht nominally subscribed to Saint-​Pierre’s system of peace, but in fact confirmed the logic of the balance of power and instead the so-​called “System of War”, as Saint-​Pierre had called it. With various underlying private commercial interests in protectionist barriers and nascent political visions about international trade reform already attaching themselves to the issue,31 the question whether commercial treaties could at all be function as institutions that pacified interstate commercial competition and promote Saint-​Pierre’s ideal of “permanent society” would recur throughout the eighteenth century both in practice, before and after the main wars of the time, and in theory.32 On the one hand there was the idea that the conclusion of new commercial treaties could prevent war, on the other a growing discontent with the idea that commercial treaties tended invariably to represent a political inequality between stronger and weaker states, promoted inequality within states, and, following any renegotiation of the existing situation would always reproduce new suboptimal arrangements.

31

32

Antonella Alimento, ‘Commercial treaties and the harmonisation of national interests: The Anglo-​French case (1667–​1713)’, War, Trade and Neutrality. Europe and the Mediterranean in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (ed. Antonella Alimento, Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2011), pp. 107–​28. This recurrent feature within eighteenth-​century politics is the object of research and a publication project coordinated together with Antonella Alimento.

106 Stapelbroek In this way, Emer de Vattel’s Droit des Gens, of 1757, proposed a system of European equilibrium that would “make of modern Europe a kind of republic, of which the members –​each independent, but all linked together by the ties of common interest –​unite for the maintenance of order and liberty”.33 Within Vattel’s design commercial treaties could be used as political tools to correct any disbalance that might appear between different sides and thereby maintain international peace in the absence of a civitatis maximæ.34 Among others, the Neapolitan Ferdinando Galiani, questioned this overall perspective. Since commerce was founded on the basic human predicament of having to satisfy needs and desires, treaties of commerce at best were a simple confirmation of humanity and could have no further positive content than the ritual of jointly smoking a peace pipe. It was for this reason that contractual agreements of this nature never emerged in antiquity, Galiani argued.35 The commercial treaties that were concluded following a war tended to be not a celebration of human familiarity and natural commerce, but the creation of a degree of enslavement of one people to another. It was a cause of “embarrassment”, Galiani argued, to still see these contracts being concluded in Europe. Rejecting the commercial arrangements proposed by France and Spain that made Naples a vassal state in the Bourbon family pact and a subsidiary state within the balance of power, Galiani later supported the formation of a League of Armed Neutrality as a more viable long-​term road to realising a genuine common interest among European states.36

33 Emer de Vattel, The Law of Nations (Béla Kapossy & Richard Whatmore eds; Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2008), book 3, ­chapter 3, § 47. 34 Isaac Nakhimovsky, ‘Vattel’s theory of the international order:  Commerce and the balance of power in the Law of Nations’, History of European Ideas 33 (2007), pp.  157–​173, Stapelbroek and Trampus, ‘Vattel’s Droit des gens und der Europäischen Handelsrepubliken im achtzehnten Jahrhundert’ and Stapelbroek, ‘Il sistema di Utrecht, il sistema di Vattel’. 35 Ferdinando Galiani, “Dalle Considerazioni sul trattato di commercio tra il re el il re cristianissimo”, in Scritti di politica economica (ed. F.  Cesarano, Lanciano:  Rocco Carabba, 1999), p. 100; Ferdinando Galiani, Dei doveri dei principi neutrali verso i principi guerreggianti, e di questo verso i neutrali, libri due (ed. G.M. Monti, Bologna: Zanichelli, 1942), pp. 12, 120 where the same argument is made and the Family Pact also is mentioned. 36 Koen Stapelbroek, ‘The progress of humankind in Galiani’s Dei Doveri dei Principi Neutrali:  Natural law, Neapolitan trade and Catherine the Great’, Trade and War:  The Neutrality of Commerce in the Inter-​State System, ed. Koen Stapelbroek, special issue of COLLeGIUM: Studies Across Disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences published by the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced studies (Helsinki: Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, 2011), 161–​183.

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107

A Joint Company and a Free Port

The commercial parallel to the idea of general European peace that was developed during the War of the Spanish Succession did not just envisage the creation of a web of bilateral commercial treaties including the most-​favoured nation clause (a watered down version in a sense of Saint-​Pierre’s design that pushed for an abandonment of fiscal barriers). The major trading states of the time all had a great interest in the fiercely competitive American and Asian company trade. By transforming the existing monopolies into a unified structure that benefited all involved, Europe’s foreign trade somehow might be turned into a common interest on the part of European politics vis-​à-​vis the rest of the world. To make the Peace of Utrecht stable, solid, perpetual, as were the adjectives Saint-​Pierre used, a key principle was to “fix” not only the territorial status quo within Europe, but also outside Europe and make economic and political development separate from conquest. The commercial parallel to this was, already mentioned above, the idea of a “General Council” of European trade in the Indies that would depoliticise trade relations. In the final addition to his main work, published in 1717, he also described various aspects of the transition from a model of European national trade companies to a general Asiatic monopoly system of European commerce.37 Saint-​Pierre highlighted the advantages of this general Company structure that would have its own armies and garrisons and would ultimately be more profitable than the present national Companies, whose profits at present also heavily relied on unjustified state investments that kept them afloat.38 In reality, the early eighteenth-​century did see the design of a plan that in some measure approached Saint-​Pierre’s commercial vision. While certainly not unknown, it is commonly overlooked in standard accounts of the end of the War of the Spanish Succession and the Peace of Utrecht and may be more significant than has hitherto been recognised.39 Behind the commercial outcome of the final rounds of talks at Utrecht lay an intriguing history of diplomats representing certain strands within French and Spanish politics in particular who crossed borders from 1704 onwards and particularly between 1707 and 1709 in order to negotiate a new set-​up of European colonial trade relations. The political idea of the Bourbon powers was to 37 38 39

Saint-​Pierre, Project for settling an everlasting peace, iii: 264–​70. Saint-​Pierre, Project for settling an everlasting peace, iii: 266–​8. To be sure, the secondary literature has often made mention of the plan (some of the standard references are included below), but never given it great significance.

108 Stapelbroek detach the United Provinces from the British alliance by giving them a strong position in the South America trade and to make the principle of reciprocity a leading one in the drawing up of new commercial treaties between these European states. The Dutch negotiators being faithful allies (or alternatively fearful allies, both concerned with Britain’s reaction and with their fragile position in Dutch politics40), however, rejected all offers for a peace structured along this principle, even after Britain concluded the Treaty of Barcelona in 1707 claiming extensive privileges for itself. It was following that event, when British negotiators were seen to cross the lines of the Grand alliance to politically appropriate trade, that a remarkable new plan was proposed that oscillated between France, Spain and the United Provinces. To start with it was a scheme of Franco-​Spanish commercial unification that exploited the Dutch discontent with their double-​dealing British allies. The occasion for such a plan was the above outlined condition of the Spanish Indies trade that was due for some form of reorganisation and it started with the idea that traders from other countries would be allowed to use Spanish ships from Cadiz to trade directly with Spanish territories.41 As its political functions diversified, in its most radical institutional version (as proposed by Bergeyck, see note 51), the object of the plan was the creation of a joint trade company that would either be based in Cadiz or Seville on the basis of a free port status (only paying an annual sum to Spain for rent of the land) or whose seat would rotate between the member states of the company and would alternatively be located in Brest, Amsterdam or London. The company would be financed according to the issuing of stock divided equally among citizens of the various participating states that would then be left free, would pay no taxes to any state and would enjoy extreme neutral rights in wartime. The company would also hold the Asiento and thus the key to establishing a colonial stronghold in South America. It would have its own navy and consular network, while states would appoint their own directors in the colonial territories. The countries envisioned to be partaking in the enterprise differed at various points, including and excluding France or Britain sometimes, while

40 41

J.G. Stork-​Penning, Het grote werk, vredesonderhandelingen gedurende de Spaanse successie-​oorlog 1705–​1710 (Groningen: Wolters, 1958). E. W. Dahlgren, Les relations commerciales et maritimes entre la France et les côtes de l’Océan Pacifique: Le commerce de la Mer du Sud jusqu’à la Paix d’Utrecht (Paris: Champion, 1909), pp. 323–​46; Lucien Bély, Espions et ambassadeurs au temps de Louis XIV (Paris: Fayard, 1990), pp. 579–​580. See also Lucien Bély, ‘Les négociations franco-​espagnoles pendant la Guerre de Succession d’Espagne’, Cuadernos de Historia Moderna 12 (2013), pp. 61–​76, which partially revolves around Cadiz.

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Spain might offer the United Provinces additional territorial, fiscal and commercial advantages.42 Among the expected effects of this plan was the dissolution of national trade companies by reducing them to remnants of a past dominated by national jealousies and particular interests. The general society of trade would be more efficient, have lower management costs and tax burdens and in the end investments would be supremely profitable to those in existing company funds. The idea underlying the creation of a general entrepôt, in other words, seems to have been to lift European colonial trade from its national company contexts, eliminate its fiercely competitive side and float it as a joint European enterprise. Whether the general company (and free port, as it was envisaged fairly late in the process in 1708) was intended to function alongside the construction of a system of commercial treaties as a kind of shell around a system of European exchange and how exactly the plan came about it as yet uncertain. It is beyond doubt that Nicolas de Mesnager was one of the initiators, if not the mastermind of the original design of the joint Franco-​Spanish company operated through enlisting the Dutch. Between 1704 and 1706 (and later in the summer of 170843) he discussed the reform of the Spanish Indies trade in Madrid and in December 1707 he travelled to the United Provinces with the physician Jean-​Adrien Engelhart Helvétius who was of Dutch origins and had previously in 1705 acted as a French diplomat (and who was also the grandfather of the philosopher who wrote De l’Esprit and allegedly a member of the Club de l’Entresol,44 of which Saint-​Pierre was one of the founders and which was visited also by Torcy).45 While the French negotiators had difficulty finding 42

Glimpses of the different streams and moments of negotiations are in Dahlgren, Les relations commerciales, pp. 498–​524; Bély, Espions et ambassadeurs, pp. 576–​95; Arsène Legrelle, La diplomatie française et la succession d’Espagne, (4  vols., Gand:  Dullé-​Plus, 1888–​1892), iv:  451–​8; Key archival sources are Archives du Ministère des Affaires étrangères, Corréspondance politique, Hollande, 211, 212, 213, 214; Espagne 147, 148, 149, 217; Angleterre 233. 43 Dahlgren, Les relations commerciales, pp. 498–​515. 44 Torcy, Saint-​Pierre and others were involved in the Entresol, but if any of the Helvétius’s were (which needs to be checked), it feels unlikely to have been the author of De l’esprit who would have been eight or nine years old when the Club, which was disbanded in 1731, was founded. 45 General impressions of Mesnager’s career and fuller reconstructions of Mesnager’s mission to the United Provinces are in Stewart Saunders ‘Mesnager, Nicolas’, The Treaties of the War of the Spanish Succession: An Historical and Critical Dictionary (eds. Linda Frey and Marsha Frey, Greenwood Press:  Westport Conn., 1995), pp.  283–​287; Legrelle, La diplomatie française et la succession d’Espagne, iv:  451–​8; Dahlgren, Les relations commerciales, pp.  498–​524; Bély, Espions et ambassadeurs, pp.  551–​595; Frederik Dhondt, Nec pluribus impar? De campagnes en onderhandelingen van Lodewijk XIV in de Zuidelijke

110 Stapelbroek out whom to address, Helvétius identified Bruno van der Dussen as the person possibly most understanding and favourable to Mesnager’s ouvertures.46 Targeting van der Dussen by explaining to him the logic of the new organisation of the Spanish Indies trade, Mesnager never quite must have felt that his ideas took hold and reached the right persons. Indeed, it remains uncertain to what extent the idea of the joint trade company was taken seriously. Confronted with the option of enjoying a share in a Franco-​Spanish venture, the Dutch idea was that securing a dependency of France trade was preferable and owning was better than sharing (even if the potential prospect of the Brits owning it still worse –​if this was even considered). This attitude led to the Dutch demand, expressed by Duivenvoorde, for control, over the port of Cadiz.47 It being clear that the Dutch would only leave the British alliance if they received extreme commercial privileges and were not inclined to consider an arrangement of joint privileges, Mesnager left and with that “ended, a period of multiple and confused negotiations”.48 From Mesnager’s perspective as a trade specialist it must have been a relatively small step in thought from the reality of Cadiz that was well-​known to him to the idea of the creation of a formalised joint trade company that held the Asiento and that was also based in Cadiz. Yet, the bigger conceptual step was to start thinking politically about reordering trade. Analogous to the challenge of possibly dividing Spain and fixing its dynastic status, European peace required that the South-​America trade was to be reorganised to create an acceptable structure of European trade relations. Mesnager believed that French reliance upon Dutch trade was dangerous. The maxims of the Dutch trade Republic functioned in such a way that the French interest was susceptible to being hollowed out by the Dutch.49 Yet, France on its own could not shoulder the trade of the French monarchy, let alone of Bourbon Spain as well, Mesnager believed. The solution of the common

Nederlanden, 1707–​1708 (Ma thesis, University of Ghent, 2008), pp.  307–​24; Lucien Bély, ‘Les négociations franco-​espagnoles’, pp. 68–​70. Unfortunately, Nationaal Archief, Den Haag, Familie Van Wassenaer van Duvenvoorde, nummer toegang 3.20.87, inventarisnummer 167 (‘Briefwisseling met H. Aubin, Helvétius, F. de Meulemeester, N.N. de l’Hermitage, de graaf van Portland (Bentinck), N.N. Herxelles en N.N. Mesnager’) went lost. 46 Murk van der Bijl, ‘De Franse politieke agent Helvétius over de situatie in de Nederlandse Republiek in het jaar 1706’, Bijdragen en Mededelingen van het Historisch Genootschap 80 (1966), pp. 159–​94. 47 “Bizarelly”, as put by Legrelle, La diplomatie française et la succession d’Espagne, iv: 457. 48 Legrelle, La diplomatie française et la succession d’Espagne, iv: 457. 49 Bély, Espions et ambassadeurs, pp. 553–​4, 571–​5, 587.

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trade institution that depoliticized European colonial trade relations answered both concerns.50 Interestingly, later in 1708 the Flemish statesman Count Bergeyck attempted again, on the part of Philip V, but after tense deliberation with statesmen in Paris, to engage the United Provinces in negotiating the conditions for a joint trade company, but met with the same mixture of apparent indifference and excessive claims.51 At which point the idea would recur only once more, in July 1711 when Mesnager proposed a European trade company directly to his British counterparts but his interlocutors opted for what effectively was a separate peace in October 1711. Faced with a number of claims with great commercial significance (Minorca, the Asiento, Gibraltar, Newfoundland, Hudson Bay) and the initial secrecy towards the Dutch allies, Mesnager had run out of options, agreed with what was offered, and the preparations for the talks at Utrecht could be arranged.52 The notion of the balance of power as a system of international relations and the idea of Britain as the guarantor of European liberty had triumphed on this occasion and any system of common joint commerce was no longer on the cards. Yet, in hindsight it is still possible to recognize its contours as a complete system of international trade organization that never was realised, but that was discussed at the highest diplomatic levels and also in some ways was meaningfully similar to how Saint-​Pierre approached foreign trade and peace.53

50

Antonella Alimento, ‘Tra vere e false bilance del commercio: il mercantilismo alla luce del trattato di commercio di Utrecht del 1713 tra Francia e Gran Bretagna’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome –​Italie et Méditerranée modernes et contemporaines (forthcoming) includes a thorough comparison of rival French outlooks on Dutch trade in the early years of the War of the Spanish Succession and leads to a fuller understanding of Mesnager’s perspective. 51 For Bergeyck’s role in the complicated negotiation process and the evolution of his distrust towards Mesnager and van der Dussen see Dhondt, Nec pluribus impar?, pp. 321–​ 4. Additional documents at the Nationaal Archief, Den Haag, Anthonie Heinsius, Raadpensionaris van Holland en West-​ Friesland, nummer toegang 3.01.19, inventarisnummer 2242 (‘Stukken over de voorstellen van de graaf van Bergeyck. 1708–​1709’) show the specifics of Bergeyck’s own proposals  –​which at one point included Spain, Britain and the Republic, but excluded France. 52 Dahlgren, Les relations commerciales, pp. 629–​34; Legrelle, La diplomatie française et la succession d’Espagne, iv: 599; Bély, Espions et ambassadeurs, p. 588. 53 For this claim to be made more precise the relevant archive sources are to be researched in finer detail and put in a wider disciplinary and intellectual context.

112 Stapelbroek 6

The Ambiguity of the “Long Peace” of Utrecht

Saint-​Pierre’s political proposal gained a reputation for being unrealistic, yet elements of the commercial plan of Saint-​Pierre that also resembled Mesnager’s would recur later in the century. In the year 1771, the Amsterdam financier and political writer Isaac de Pinto published the Traité de la circulation et du crédit, which had in appendix a sizeable Lettre sur la Jalousie du commerce, où l’on prouve que l’interêt des puissances commerçantes ne se croise point.54 The Lettre contained a plan for stabilising commercial competition that is best understood through some of Pinto’s other writings. From his Tribut Patriotique written in the late 1740s to the time of the War of the American Independence the foundation of Pinto’s economic perspective had been the idea that from the seventeenth century onwards, the connection between the American gold and silver mining and the Asian company trade in spices and other goods had unlocked a new pattern of global trade circulation that European states had successfully tapped in order to develop domestic wealth through other forms of (manufacturing) production.55 A similar ‘theoretical’ outlook on the relation between the Spanish mining of South-​ American precious metals and the mechanisms that kept the wheels of global trade in motion was adopted by Mesnager (and later by Jean-​François Melon in book 1 of his Essay politique sur le commerce).56 While Europe’s commercial states enjoyed ‘modern wealth’ coming their way, the manner in which they managed it policy-​wise still needed major improvement. Next to the development of domestic policies that fit with the new kind of societies that had emerged, most urgently, from Pinto’s point of view, eighteenth-​century European states had to develop a proper understanding of the international politics of ‘modern wealth’ and dissolve what he saw as the main problem of modern politics. In a pamphlet, written following the 54

Pinto, Isaac de, Traité De La Circulation Et Du Crédit:  […] & Suivi D’une Lettre Sur La Jalousie Du Commerce, Où L’on Prouve Que L’interêt Des Puissances Commerçantes Ne Se Croise Point (Amsterdam, 1771). References are to the English translation Isaac de Pinto, An essay on circulation and credit: in four parts; and a letter on the jealousy of commerce (London, 1774). 55 Isaac de Pinto, “Tribut patriotique”, at the Nationaal Archief (NA), The Hague, Gogel collection, inv. no. 165; Isaac de Pinto, Letters on the American Troubles Translated from the French (London, 1776), pp. 44, 63–​64, 73, 80–​89. 56 Bély, Espions et ambassadeurs, pp. 582–​3, Bély, ‘Les négociations franco-​espagnoles’, p. 63. For Melon, see Istvan Hont, The Early Enlightenment Debate on Commerce and Luxury’, in The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-​Century Political Thought, eds. Mark Goldie and Robert Wokler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2006), pp. 379–​418.

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outbreak of a new war in 1776, Pinto explained that Europe seemed to be caught up in a “paradox” of modern politics. The paradox was that even while over the past half a century trade had created a situation in which “each European power enjoys more or less the possessions of its neighbours” –​effectively there was a joint European trading system that extended to the entire world –​ , still it was the case that “chimerical commercial jealousies”, as Pinto called them, prevailed in the attitude towards one another and caused war in quick succession.57 In jointly political and economic terms, Pinto held that “the essential interests of commercial powers, rivals and neighbours far from clashing, are a reciprocal support to each other” and that it was “possible to reconcile the separate interests of every nation with the common and reciprocal advantage of them all. From that moment the system of the Abbé de St. Pierre would cease to be considered as the dream of an honest man”.58 In fact, Saint-​Pierre himself had already come to a similar diagnosis to Pinto’s “paradox” at the end of the second volume of his Projet when he declared that European states lived in a state of a “terrible dependence” upon one another.59 Although “Arts & Commerce” had brought European societies “all the certainty, security, conveniences and enjoyments of life”, still “their happiness would increase at the same rate within twenty years, as would the happiness of a family of savages in the same space of time were they transported from the soil of a Canadian forest and put in some rich and well administered European city”.60 The difference was that Saint-​Pierre called for a political-​institutional solution to create a “permanent society”, while Pinto somewhat enigmatically judged that the thing that could “in time establish a solid and durable peace in Europe and secure the happiness of mankind” was peace itself.61 This was not mere rhetoric. Pinto believed that the systematic division of privileges and global monopolies that had been established at the Peace of Utrecht was beneficial to all states involved.62

57 Pinto, Letters on the American Troubles, pp. 40–​1. 58 Pinto, Letter on the Jealousy of Commerce, p. 189. 59 Saint-​Pierre, Project for settling an everlasting peace, ii:362 (part of the Récapitulation). 60 Saint-​Pierre, Project for settling an everlasting peace, ii:361–​2, See also iii:63 where Saint-​ Pierre cynically compares the current hypocritical complaints by the maritime powers of the commercial losses of ten years of war in support of Austria to the commercial gains that hundred years of peace would bring them in support of their true interest. 61 Pinto, Letter on the Jealousy of Commerce, pp. 228–​9. 62 Pinto, Letter on the Jealousy of Commerce, pp. 221–​2; also pp. 191–​2.

114 Stapelbroek If the harmony of the political picture of commercial Europe be attended to, it will be found, that it is no way incompatible with the common interest of all parties, that the mines of Peru should belong to Spain, those of Brazil to Portugal, the spice trade and herring fishery to Holland; the sugars, indigo, and other produce of St. Domingo, Martinique, and Guadeloupe, as well as a share in the great fisheries, to France; and that England, at the same time, may and ought to preserve a universal command over all the commence of which North America, Jamaica, and the Great Indies (except the Moluccas and Ceylon) are the basis.63 Even if the exact division was not entirely optimal, any jealous war to alter it always cost more than it could ever win and here Pinto cited the manifestos of modern politics that were Voltaire’s Siècle de Louis xiv and Rousseau’s Jugement du Projet de paix perpétuelle in support of his position.64 One had better leave intact the current “balance of Europe, purchased with the blood of our ancestors [that] is now so well established”, since any attempt to conquer “commerce [,]‌the apple of discord” would involve the “destruction of trade” itself.65 This did not mean Pinto adhered to the principle itself: Every age has its system of politics, as well as philosophy. The new discoveries in Asia and America succeeded to the crusades; then came the wars of religion; and afterwards the pretended system of equilibrium, or balance of power.66 The real weight-​bearing element in modern politics was commercial reciprocity, not the balance of power and overseas possessions. Engaging in global trade was not even a prerequisite for profiting from it, Pinto held. France did not need a great navy for its preservation, nor for its economic development. It could easily develop its wealth without too many overseas possessions and a merchant fleet, as long as it could exchange its domestically produced goods in peace with other states: “France, within her own bosom, has a lucrative and superior commerce […]. The vineyards are a real Peru to that country”.67 Once this attitude took hold it should reinforce itself:

63 Pinto, Letter on the Jealousy of Commerce, p. 221. 64 Pinto, Letter on the Jealousy of Commerce, p. 223. 65 Pinto, Letter on the Jealousy of Commerce, p. 228. 66 Pinto, Letter on the Jealousy of Commerce, p. 235. 67 Pinto, Letter on the Jealousy of Commerce, pp. 228–​236; p. 235.

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When the present picture of Europe shall be well understood, every power may find its preservation and prosperity therein, provided they do not thwart each other for imaginary interests. Every commercial power has employment for at least twenty years, to re-​establish and improve its internal administration, and that commerce which lies, within the sphere of its strength. Until all these objects are accomplished, and every possible advantage made of them, distant objects, which by their extent go beyond the sphere of strength, are foreign and hurtful to commerce, and to the real interest of nations; this is a truth demonstrated by the event of almost all our wars.68 All this, however, did not make Pinto a believer in the system that had been established in 1713. It should be sufficient still, Pinto argued, when he published his text in 1771 to look back on the beneficial commercial effects of the Peace of Utrecht to prevent war breaking out again: Since all the powers of Europe aspire to the advantages of commerce, I conjure them to consider how much the long peace, which succeeded the war occasioned by the Spanish succession, was beneficial to them all, and how prejudicial war has been to population, and to various branches of commerce, even in that nation [he meant Britain], whose astonishing successes have discovered to her the secret of her strength. If prodigious successes are scarce sufficient to compensate the mischief done by war, why should we so often run the risque of it? Of the three scourges to which nature has exposed us, war is the only one that providence has left in our own hands, and it recurs the oftenest. What would become of us, if we were at liberty to introduce pestilence and famine?69 But apparently passions and prejudices were stronger then interests when it came to trade, and peace all too easily gave way to war. To counteract these mechanisms Pinto proposed a scheme that prominently involved the Dutch Republic. Although Pinto lived in the Republic his appraisal of the Dutch as a nation of merchants came from a cosmopolitan financier perspective. In the same way that Saint-​Pierre had made much of the character of the Dutch as particularly well-​disposed towards the logic of his system (both commercially –​as

68 Pinto, Letter on the Jealousy of Commerce, p. 237. 69 Pinto, Letter on the Jealousy of Commerce, pp. 231–​2.

116 Stapelbroek merchants –​and politically –​as republicans),70 so Pinto could see a privileged role in his system of peace for the Dutch. The Dutch state had played a key role in discovering the mechanisms that led to the present system of global trade and would never aspire to territorial expansion. It would also be very cost-​efficient for European states if the Dutch were given a privileged status as a carrying nation, since their frugality and other moral and cultural traits allowed them to transport goods cheaper than other nations. Besides, should the present company trade system of global exchange of precious metals and spices ever reach its expiry date, the Dutch capital market played a key role in the alternative scenario according to which European economies could prevent collapse.71 Pinto was profoundly ambiguous about the present state of Europe and the balance of power, which in theory should guarantee peace and general prosperity, but in practice still defaulted into warfare. Analysing at which level practice should be corrected, Pinto drew parallels between the vulnerability of the Dutch Republic and the profound dependence of the modern European balance of power upon commerce, which few people truly understood. Just like commerce needed to be sheltered from “imaginary interests”72 so the Dutch Republic was in need of “the support and assistance of her neighbours”.73 For these reasons, Pinto advocated a semi-​political solution to the enduring problem of jealousy of commerce (the topic and title of his text) by which Europe’s main commercial states might dismantle the “paradox” of modern politics. It was true, Pinto argued, that the most secure solution to war destroying commerce was a political confederacy: There is a system, or rather a plan of geometrical politicks, which would make the happiness of Europe, if the powers the most interested in it would adopt it. This plan appears to me founded on incontestable principles. This is its outlines. 1st. Amongst all the nations of Europe Spain, England, Portugal, of France, and Holland have the largest possessions, and the most considerable and valuable establishments in America, Asia, and Africa. 2d. I think I have demonstrated elsewhere that these powers reciprocally participate more or less in the advantages of the possessions 70

Saint-​Pierre, Project for settling an everlasting peace, I: 261–​780/​pp. 97–​103; See also Bély, Espions et ambassadeurs, pp. 723–​4. 71 Pinto, Letters on the American Troubles, pp.  41–​45 and Pinto, Letter on the Jealousy of Commerce, pp. 197–​214; 220–​1. 72 Pinto, Letter on the Jealousy of Commerce, p. 237. 73 Pinto, Letter on the Jealousy of Commerce, p. 203; also stated very clearly on p. 192.

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of their neighbours; that the jealousies and rivalry betwixt them are detrimental, because ill understood; and that their real interests do not clash so much as it is imagined. 3d. I  believe, likewise, that means might be found to settle things on all sides, in such a manner as to render the truth of these principles palpable; they might still be rendered more solid and more manifest by small exchanges and certain conventions betwixt these powers, for their reciprocal interests. 4th. If then these five powers were to form a confederacy, mutually to protect their possessions, they would be rendered solid, durable, and permanent, as long as least as the human eye can penetrate into the gloom of futurity –​this security would be reciprocal –​all Europe would feel the good effects of it.74 Yet, this confederacy would be hard to establish as Pinto admitted “I very much fear that this will never happen. […] At present there are too many prejudices to overcome, and too many passions the fermentation of which must be evaporated by time and experience”.75 The next best alternative was to fix the commercial system that existed and let the forces of peace do their work over time. An intimate alliance with the commercial powers, a solemn and mutual guarantee of colonies, possessions, and commercial privileges, founded upon common interest and the general good, might establish confidence, and erect a new system, which would be the happiness of mankind, and the glory of the age. These powers acting always in concert, and with good faith to each other, might contribute to appease, or prevent a rupture among the rest. Twenty years peace would be sufficient to make every nation happy.76 The ideas here was to provide a context that promoted commerce and the breaking down of established monopolies and private interests that affected the common interest of Europe.77 Once the existing system including all the commercial privileges was bracketed, the “reciprocal reverberation of mutual interest” as Pinto called it would drive out “misguided covetousness [that] defeats its own purpose”.78 74 Pinto, Letters on the American Troubles, pp. 52–​3. 75 Pinto, Letters on the American Troubles, p. 53. 76 Pinto, Letter on the Jealousy of Commerce, p. 237. 77 Pinto, Letter on the Jealousy of Commerce, pp. 189, 191. 78 Pinto, Letter on the Jealousy of Commerce, p. 196. In this system it was essential that the Dutch privileges of the herring fishery, the spice trade and the carrying trade were protected (pp. 220–​1).

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Conclusion

The general logic and aims of Pinto’s vision resembled both Saint-​Pierre’s and Mesnager’s earlier proposals. Pinto and Saint-​Pierre both distinguished between the creation of a semi-​political plan for commercial integration and of a full-​blown European confederacy. And both judged that the latter might be harder to realise than the former on its own. Pinto even believed that a “long peace” such as the one followed by the Peace of Utrecht, combined with a ‘light’ European commercial confederation could bring perpetual peace, at least for the foreseeable future. Considering its aims and principles (perhaps not institutionally as Pinto did not advocate a European free port), the idea of a joint European trade company such as was developed and actually proposed at the highest diplomatic level by Nicolas de Mesnager fits the same mould and ought to be recognised as an important aspect within the history of the War of the Spanish Succession (and as such merits further research). Mesnager’s vision represented a rival outlook on how to fix the international order and neutralise commercial competition to the eventual solution that was put into place and that is now commonly associated with the notion of the balance of power. In a way, precisely its absence from the treaties that were drawn up and ratified as part of the Peace of Utrecht makes that vision relevant for our understanding of the Peace in relation to the balance of power and the organisation of international commerce. Moving forward from 1713, responding to or solving the paradox that Pinto presumed held back modern commercial Europe became the project that a great many of eighteenth-​century writers were engaged in and led to a wild variety of visions, proposals and political campaigns that would spread internationally and sometimes inspire new kinds of trade policies or the establishment of for instance free ports or fiscal reforms. The political, economic and intellectual horizons of the commercial regimes discussed before and at Utrecht triggered the development of new theoretical insights, conceptual vocabularies or techniques such as the use of early statistics. While Saint-​Pierre’s project provided a standard negative reference point within these developments throughout the eighteenth century, contextualising Saint-​Pierre’s project and associating it with the diplomacy about trade monopolies that was developed by figures like Mesnager and Torcy gives further insight into the nature of the Project for Perpetual Peace and properly connects that text to all of these debates. Finally, whenever it is argued that the end of the War of the Spanish Succession cast a long shadow over the eighteenth century or that certain lessons might be learned from the Peace of Utrecht, such claims tend to be as hard

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to prove as they are to refute. More interesting than to look for these kinds of conclusions is the exercise of, for instance, reading sources from the later eighteenth century about commercial treaties and the “paradox” of modern politics and relating them back to the time of the peace of Utrecht. Such a contextual comparison offers one a close and instructive understanding of the historical strictures to European political and economic integration and various ways of dealing with them. For such purposes the Peace of Utrecht still remains an excellent subject.

­c hapter 5

The Social Origins of 18th Century British Grand Strategy: a Historical Sociology of the Peace of Utrecht Benno Teschke Abstract This chapter provides a new interpretation of early 18th Century British grand strategy formation, its institutionalisation in the Peace of Utrecht (1713), and its impact on post-​conflict 18th C international order from within the discipline of International Relations. The historical argument is that ‘Utrecht’ codified a new and unique type of British grand strategy  –​the dual ‘blue-​water policy’  –​for the geopolitical management of European international relations and beyond. It cleaved into a defensive policy towards the Continent, involving the ‘rationalisation’, i.e. de-​ideologisation, de-​ confessionalisation, and de-​territorialisation of Britain’s continental objectives, plus the invention and active manipulation of power balancing towards continental rivals; and an offensive policy overseas, expressed in the unilateral pursuit of oceanic mercantile primacy. This strategy was grounded in an altered institutional foreign policy context –​the post-​1688 ‘revolution in foreign affairs’ –​subsequent to constitutional changes in the British polity during the 17th C Revolution. The British peace plan, enacted at Utrecht, constitutes a sui generis phenomenon that cannot be exhaustively captured with prevailing IR concepts, including hegemony, formal or informal imperialism, automatic power-​balancing, international society, collective security, or hierarchy. Theoretically, the chapter adopts a historicist method to re-​craft attempts within critical International Historical Sociology in the direction of a Historical Sociology of International Politics to escape the structuralist-​functionalist trap.

1

Introduction: a Great Turning Point

For Carl Schmitt and Joseph Schumpeter the issue was settled.1 The Peace Treaty of Utrecht was a decisive turning point in the nature of international 1 I would like to thank Can Cemgil, Pedro Dutra Salgado, Julian Germann, Clemens Hoffmann, Sebastian Hoppe, Samuel Knafo, Patricia Owens, Maia Pal, Gonzalo Pozo-​Martin, Jan Selby,

 

  

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order, constituting the first international expression and codification of Britain’s inexorable rise to European and, later, global pre-​eminence. How was this to be explained? While neither focussed narrowly on the negotiation tactics of the plenipotentiaries and multilateral diplomacy, Schmitt grounded his argument in a geo-​mythological register, invoking Britain’s insularity and 17th Century “turn towards the seas”. For him, the Peace of Utrecht connotes “the time when the European state system was consolidating. From then on, the war fleets of the maritime powers were capable of effectively controlling the seas. It was also then that England’s new domination of the world, based on the sea element, started to affirm itself.”2 And the decisive novum, Schmitt suggested, was Britain’s “amphibian” geopolitical position between the land and the seas, which predestined her to assume the role of the balancer of the European powers: England thereby became the representative of the universal maritime sphere of a Eurocentric global order, the guardian of the other side of the ius publicum Europaeum, the sovereign of the balance of land and sea –​of an equilibrium comprising the spatially ordered thinking of this international law. The English island remained a part or rather the center of this European planetary order, but simultaneously distanced herself from the European continent and assumed the world-​historical, intermediary position that for more than three centuries made her ‘of Europe, but not in Europe’.3 Schumpeter, in his famous 1919 essay The Sociology of Imperialism, advanced a much richer explanation, this time sociological, which traced the divergent attitudes towards war between early modern European powers, notably France and Britain, to their respective social structures. Rather than pursuing an “arbitrary military absolutism” that “led to continual wars of aggression”, Schumpeter argued that the constitutional settlement of 1688, “the defeat of the king and his party represent so decisive a juncture for our subject (the subject being imperialism, B.T.), a break in continuity” that it “turned foreign policy into something altogether different from what it was on the Continent.”4 Henceforth, British foreign policy was bound to the people, public opinion and Parliament and pursued, driven by the Industrial Revolution, an essentially

Kees van der Pijl, Lauri von Pfaler, Frido Wenten, Steffan Wyn-​Jones and the wider Sussex PM Research Group for valuable comments. 2 Carl Schmitt, Land and Sea (Corvallis, Or.: Plutarch Press, [1944] 1997), 21. 3 Carl Schmitt, The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the Ius Publicum Europaeum (New York: Telos Press, [1950] 2003), 173. 4 Joseph Schumpeter, “The Sociology of Imperialism,” in J. Schumpeter, Social Classes & Imperialism: Two Essays (Cleveland and New York: Meridian Books [1919] 1955), 15, 16.

122 Teschke anti-​imperialist foreign policy. And Schumpeter was not shy to spell out the secret behind this novel post-​absolutist foreign policy orientation, which he explicitly grounded in the nature of capitalism: Throughout the world of capitalism, and specifically among the elements formed by capitalism in modern social life, there has arisen a fundamental opposition to war, expansion, cabinet diplomacy, armaments, and socially entrenched professional armies. This opposition had its origins in the country that first turned capitalist –​England –​and arose coincidentally with that country’s capitalist development.5 Things were not so in pre-​capitalist absolutist France. Here, according to Schumpeter, “the belligerence and war policy of the autocratic state are explained from the necessities of its social structure, from the inherited dispositions of its ruling class, rather than from the immediate advantages to be derived by conquests”. And he proceeded to ground this belligerent disposition in a class analysis of the relations between the French nobility and the monarchy, concluding that the king’s personal regime in foreign policy, including its whims and idiosyncrasies, “may have been no more than individual manifestations of a social situation, social data processed through an individual temperament.”6 And this social situation was portrayed by Schumpeter in form of a pre-​capitalist absolutist polity, structurally and objectively geared towards war. 2

Nihil Novi Sub Sole? Utrecht in the Mirror of the Discipline of International Relations

In the light of Schmitt’s more geopolitical or geo-​elementary insistence on 1713 as a decisive turning point in the history of international relations and Schumpeter’s sociological analysis of post-​1688 British foreign policy as discontinuous with continental absolutist practices, the conventional Anglo-​American International Relations (IR) literature on the Peace Treaty of Utrecht appears curiously coy. Serious treatments of the standing of Utrecht in the wider development of the inter-​state system are few and far between, and what there is in terms of literature does not share Schmitt’s and Schumpeter’s dramatic assessments. In fact, Utrecht seems to fall through the cracks between its much more illustrious predecessors and successors –​Westphalia (1648) and Vienna (1815)

5 Schumpeter, “The Sociology of Imperialism,” 70. 6 Schumpeter, “The Sociology of Imperialism,” 59, 61.

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respectively. Emblematically, the tercentenary of the Peace Accords seems to have been missed by the discipline of IR altogether. Standard IR texts on the subject de-​emphasise Utrecht’s radical innovations, as detailed below, and approach the issue, classically, from the point of view of abstract ordering principles for international relations on a spectrum from inter-​state anarchy to hierarchy. Here, Utrecht is often regarded as a “replay of the Westphalian drama”, as the settlement represented au fond “a victory for the principle of anarchy against hegemonial designs”, but not “a victory for peace.”7 What had changed in the passage from Westphalia to Utrecht was not the institutionalisation of new peace principles and the growth of the droit public de l’Europe for the regulation of international politics, but merely the replacement of one settlement-​directing power, France, by another, England. Both countries secured, in 1648 as in 1713, the constitution of Europe as a geopolitical pluriverse of independent polities against the threats of universal monarchy or empire, precariously stabilised by a ubiquitous balance of power. After Louis xiv’s expansionary conquests and the Spanish War of Succession, restoration rather than innovation was the ordre du jour in line with basic (Neo-​ )Realist reasoning. Within Neo-​Realist IR theory, the entire episode is reduced to a confirmation of the “scientific” supra-​historical generalisation of automatic power-​balancing –​in this case against French hegemony –​causally derived from the systemic pressures of inter-​state anarchy and the generic axioms of “self-​help” and “power politics.”8 Neo-​Realism reduces alterations in international systems to the changing, but unaccounted for, material distributions of power among the systems-​constituting actors and remains thus restricted in its explanatory intent to grasping the changing polarities across multi-​polar international orders. These re-​equilibrate more geometrico by the invisible hand of the balance of power, whether consciously inscribed in treaties or not.9 Systems operate like clockwork. Utrecht re-​exemplifies a timeless logic. More recently, these thin conceptions of recurrence and repetition in anarchical inter-​state orders have been challenged within IR –​both from English School and Constructivist perspectives. Andreas Osiander’s study emphasises 7 Kalevi Holsti, Peace and War:  Armed Conflicts and International Order, 1648–​1989 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 72, 82. 8 Christopher Layne, “The Unipolar Illusion: Why New Great Powers Will Rise”, International Security 17, no. 4 (1993): 5–​51. 9 Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, MA.:  McGraw-​Hill, 1979). For a searing critique of Neorealism by a historian with reference to the War of the Spanish Succession see Paul W. Schroeder, “Historical Reality vs. Neo-​Realist Theory”, International Security 19, no.1 (1994): 108–​148; see also James Sofka, “The Eighteenth Century International System: Parity or Primacy?” Review of International Studies 27, no. 5 (2001): 147–​163.

124 Teschke the construction of shared norms at Utrecht as preconditions for international stability, visible in a “consensus agenda” and “consensus principles” that characterise the structure of any international order.10 The reconstruction of the shared self-​understandings among key international actors for order and stability in Europe leads Osiander to identify the principles of equality, autonomy, security, and the balance of power as the new Utrecht international consensus agenda. Here, the Settlement is regarded as a stepping-​stone in the gradual construction of those international norms that enabled the consolidation of an “international society” –​anarchic, but not anomic. Similarly, Paul W. Schroeder pursues this constructivist theme on the sources of systemic change in international relations. “Change in the international system involves above all changes in the reigning assumptions, dominant understandings and conceptions, and collective mentalities of political leaders.” By emphasising the political cultures that define historically specific contexts whose norms govern the purposive conduct, rather than mere behaviour, of policy-​makers, Schroeder concludes that “systems change when the reigning ideas about the system change fundamentally and durably.”11 Pursuing this constructivist theme, Christian Reus-​Smit, in turn suggests that historically varying “fundamental institutions” provide the framework for understanding the historicity of international co-​operation and conflict in international societies. These elementary institutions derive from “intersubjective beliefs about legitimate statehood and rightful state action”, which are referred to as “constitutive meta-​values that comprise the normative foundations of international society.”12 Hegemonic beliefs about the moral purpose of the state are regarded as the central meta-​values, which justify respective forms of rule and procedural justice, which inform state actions. By moving the ideological self-​legitimations of diverse forms of sovereignty center-​stage, early modern Europe’s meta-​value of divine right, bound only by natural and divine law, is regarded the corner-​stone of early modern international politics.13 As 10 Andreas Osiander, The States System of Europe, 1640–​1990:  Peacemaking and the Conditions of International Stability (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 90–​165. 11 Paul W.  Schroeder, “The Cold War and Its Ending in “Long-​Duration” International History”, in P.  Schroeder, Systems, Stability, and Statecraft:  Essays on the International History of Modern Europe (London: Palgrave, 2004), 249. 12 Christian Reus-​Smit, The Moral Purpose of the State:  Culture, Social Identity, and Institutional Rationality in International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 6. 13 Similarly, Ian Clark also reads Utrecht in terms of a re-​affirmation of the legitimacy of dynastic states as the rightful members of international society, whose standing was only modified through some constraints imposed on succession rights. Ian Clark, Legitimacy in International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 71–​84.

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divine right implied the preservation of a divinely ordained and rigidly hierarchical social order, procedural law was authoritative, rather than deliberative, conceiving of law as command to define rightful social conduct. This disabled any notion of sovereign equality, undermined the development of contractual and positive international law and inhibited extensive multilateralism. Sovereign inequality, old diplomacy –​referred to as “incidental, bilateral, secretive, and hierarchical” –​and naturalist international law constituted the fundamental institutions of absolutist international practices.14 Consequently, Utrecht remained overwhelmingly tied to these Old Regime meta-​values, as the obligation to accept the Settlement did not derive from a contract between juridically equal states, but from the will of God. While the principle of divine right remained un-​reformed at Utrecht, the circumscription of succession rights meant that it was no longer a legitimate basis for the geographical accumulation of power and authority. Secret diplomacy and the bilateral nature of the separate peace treaties that composed the Treaty of Utrecht aborted any general move towards multilateralism, contractualism, or even an institutionalised Congress system. Utrecht remained a decidedly pre-​modern event with its own generative grammar. Inspired by a combination of English School reasoning and Neo-​Weberian accounts of the military origins of states, Philip Bobbitt pursues these more dynamic and evolutionary perspectives by situating Utrecht within a grand five-​century long trajectory of the mutual co-​development between strategic-​ military innovations, epochal wars, and subsequent constitutional changes in political communities. Building on the widely-​held, if techno-​determinist, view among early modern historians that revolutions in military affairs engendered isomorphic processes of state-​formation due to the need for more efficient institutional mechanisms of revenue procurement, centralised taxation, and administration to finance ever-​more costly military apparatuses, Bobbitt suggests that constitutional legitimacy  –​state legitimacy  –​is an idea sensitive to strategic events. Success or defeat in epochal wars leads to successive rounds of “profound changes in the constitutional order of states through a process of innovation and mimicry as some states are compelled to innovate, strategically and constitutionally, in order to survive, and as other states copy these innovations when they prove decisive in resolving the epochal conflicts of an era.”15 International law is here less conceived as a supra-​state construction, but seen as referring to the practices of the society of states, arising from 14 15

Reus-​Smit, Moral Purpose of the State, 107. Philip Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace and the Course of History (London: Allen Lane, 2002), xxviii.

126 Teschke constitutional law. Epochal wars, driven by strategic-​technical innovations, reconfigure the constitutional basis of the society of states so that comprehensive peace settlements codify a new international law regime, largely based on the constitutional principles of the victorious power(s). This establishes the new legal-​institutional matrix for the resumption of international politics and war in a qualitatively altered society of states. For Bobbitt, the key international legal innovations agreed at Utrecht revolve around the transition from a society of kingly states to a society of territorial states, the acceptance of the balance-​of-​power as a “constitutional structure for collective security”, and the renunciation of the principle of territorial aggrandizement. In sum, the new society of territorial states implied “the downgrading of the dynastic principle; the willingness to subordinate the rights of sovereigns to the interests of the states involved; and the use of collective security guarantees to ensure the balance of power itself.”16 These perspectives provide correctives to the bare (Neo-​)Realist assumptions of essentialised logics of international relations that hold independently of time and space. Still, they tend to omit a sense of the socially-​constituted and dissimilar political purposes between the peace parties and their power-​asymmetries. The analytical evacuation of the differential socio-​political constituencies of the signatories from the explanatory remit of English School and Constructivist theories implies that questions of political legitimacy and strategic-​military superiority remain de-​coupled from their socially constructed and contested nature. By extension, diplomatic processes in the development of collective norms are not re-​anchored in the very diverse socio-​political foreign policy purposes and power-​resources of the contracting participants. Fundamentally, they fail to answer the question why ideas and norms change by analytically divorcing these changes from questions of power and interests –​ in particular the power that Britain deployed to enforce its specific peace plan on the co-​signatories. Here, the focus on shared assumptions gathered from the correspondences and memoirs of the plenipotentiaries, politicians and advisors restricts the analytical grasp to the isomorphic self-​understandings of political elites and abstracts from the qualitatively dissimilar socio-​political constituencies they had to serve and whose interest they purposefully articulated in a diplomatic field of negotiation. Furthermore, the attempt to historicise and specify the link between law and strategy –​domestic and international –​fails to capture the social sources in the construction of the specific British constitutional order, which led to a radically new set of institutions in British 16 Bobbitt, Shield of Achilles, 525.

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foreign policy making, a very distinct grand strategy towards the Settlement, and a series of rather unique empirical outcomes that contradict Bobbitt’s conclusions. In sum, extant IR accounts are under-​socialised and not sufficiently grounded in a synchronic comparative perspective of the peace parties’ diverging socio-​political trajectories and power resources, which came to be internationally deployed, multilaterally negotiated and settled in very specific ways. It is surprising, then, how the older non-​IR literatures diverge from the more contemporary IR texts. Schmitt’s and Schumpeter’s emphasis on Utrecht as a turning point, revolving around the exceptionality of Britain, contrasts sharply with the conventional Realist perspective on 1713 as yet another instantiation of the timeless drama of the recurrence of power politics. The classical authors also break with ideas of a collective and system-​wide normative-​legal gradualism, premised on ‘Old Regime’ state legitimacy and shared values, in the construction of and accession to a consensual “international society”. And while the more contemporary IR texts –​English School and Constructivist –​ pinpoint some Utrecht innovations in the key principles of international law and order, they fail to sufficiently lay bare the settlement-​directing authorship of Britain and its specific socio-​political and geopolitical project, which clarifies Utrecht’s historical significance in the early 18th Century context. This failure, it will be argued, is ultimately grounded in the analytical suppression of the dissimilar socio-​political constituencies of the peace parties –​notably Britain’s –​their considerable power-​asymmetries, and their diverging foreign policy orientations that came to be multilaterally settled in sui generis ways. These remain essential for understanding the nature, distinctiveness, and purpose of the Utrecht Peace Accords. 3

A Historical Sociology of the International Politics of the Peace Treaty

This chapter suggests that mainstream IR Theory –​(Neo-​)Realism, the English School, Constructivism –​fails to capture the qualitative novelty in the management of international affairs agreed at Utrecht. These readings underplay the specificity of the socio-​political and geopolitical position of post-​1688 England in the nascent interstate system, the uniqueness of its institutional basis for foreign policy formation, and the innovative character of its foreign policy towards Europe and beyond that informed its distinct peace plan. It argues that the Utrecht Settlement and the series of smaller successor settlements –​ Treaties of Rastatt (1714), Baden (1714), Madrid (1715), and The Hague (1720) –​ that concluded the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–​1714) re-​shaped the

128 Teschke geopolitics of Europe’s “long 18th Century” (1688–​1815) decisively and with lasting consequences. Overall, they codified Britain’s ascendancy and uniqueness as a capitalist and system-​directing great power whose newly articulated grand strategy –​the blue-​water strategy –​re-​configured European international relations and political geography in novel ways. Utrecht, much more so than Westphalia, signals the beginning of a qualitative shift in the nature of European interstate relations –​for reasons akin to but also different from Schumpeter’s –​ without inaugurating a pan-​European transformation of the dynastic principle of early modern geopolitical order. The following re-​interpretation is situated within the framework of a historical sociology of international relations that incorporates and privileges international politics. Yet, extant attempts to theorise international relations through the recovery of the differential domestic composition of social and authority relations of polities that constitute international orders ultimately tend to relapse into functional explanations of international politics that suppress the efficacy of foreign policy making and multilateral diplomatic agency.17 This raises an acute analytical question for IR theory. What theoretical adjustments are necessary to incorporate foreign policy making into structural theories of IR or International Historical Sociology that either externalise foreign policy from the remit of explanation or reduce it to functions of wider structural or systemic properties? How should International Historical Sociology be re-​adjusted to escape the functionalist-​structuralist trap for purposes of framing our object of study –​a specific event? This chapter adopts a radical historicist approach to capture and valorise the efficacy of foreign policy, diplomacy and international politics in the construction of the early modern international order. Rather than deducing strategies and decisions from a series of antecedent causes, whether domestic, international or both, this shifts the explanatory burden away from external imperatives and antecedent causes to the creative responses developed by agents to such contextual pressures, the inter-​subjectively contested and negotiated resolution of these multiple agentic strategies, and their intended and unintended consequences. Deploying a

17

This problem pertains also to my earlier work and to other attempts to fashion an International Historical Sociology. Benno Teschke, The Myth of 1648: Class, Geopolitics and the Making of Modern International Relations (London:  Verso, 2003); Justin Rosenberg, “Why is there no International Historical Sociology?”, European Journal of International Relations 12, no.  3 (2006), 307–​340. For a critical engagement with universal and nomothetic theories of International Historical Sociology see Benno Teschke, “IR Theory, Historical Materialism, and the False Promise of International Historical Sociology,” Spectrum: Journal of Global Studies 6, no. 1 (2014), 1–​66.

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historicist framework of analysis that centers contextualised agency requires a trade-​off between generalising, nomological, and reifying theories that operate at levels of abstraction that abandon the concreteness of international politics while subsuming history under pre-​conceived concepts, and retrieving and activating the situated consciousness and decisions of contextualised agents to account for historical specificity. Failing that, decisions are not taken by foreign policy agents, but reduced to outcomes of antecedent pressures. This re-​sociologisation of the Peace Treaties seeks to understand how fundamental socio-​political and constitutional change in the Settlement’s directing power, Britain, enabled the creative formulation of a new grand strategy, which was militarily tested in the War of the Spanish Succession and diplomatically enacted at Utrecht.18 This requires, in a first step, a theoretical re-​orientation away from the restrictive fixation on the exclusive spheres of diplomacy, high politics and international law towards the specification of variations in the domestic social relations of sovereignty amongst the signatories, ultimately grounded in regionally differential social property and authority relations. These, in turn, emerged from spatio-​temporally specific long-​term resolutions of socio-​political struggles in the respective trajectories of state-​formation, which we will exemplify in relation to early modern Britain and France. Once these elementary differences in state sovereignty are established, we identify, in a second step, the different institutional contexts for foreign policy formation in both countries: the parliamentarisation of foreign policy in post-​1688 England/​Great Britain, and the persistence of royal-​executive foreign policy making in Old Regime France. This allows us, in a third step, to re-​embed statecraft, foreign policy, and diplomacy in dense institutional contexts and conceive them as situated inter-​subjective practices, which innovate policies in non-​derivative ways. This procedure requires that we abandon, à la Schumpeter, a generic understanding of capitalism –​or any other macro-​sociological 18

Mindful of the developing semantics of these concepts in the 18th Century, I conceive of diplomacy as the non-​coercive resolution of international conflicts, and define grand strategy as the articulation of essential long-​term security interests and objectives that are coercively and non-​coercively pursued through the co-​ordination of multiple policy areas. According to Hamish Scott, “by the closing years of the eighteenth century the word ‘diplomacy’ had assumed its more familiar sense, that of the peaceful and continuous management of relations between states.” Hamish Scott, “Diplomatic Culture in Old Regime Europe”, in Cultures of Power in Europe during the Long Eighteenth Century, ed. Hamish Scott and Brendan Simms (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 58–​ 59. Equally, Brendan Simms suggests that the term strategy was a “nineteenth-​century borrowing from the French”. Brendan Simms, ““Ministers of Europe”:  British Strategic Culture, 1714–​1760”, in Cultures of Power in Europe, 113.

130 Teschke category –​as a purely theoretical concept from which foreign policy can be logically and abstractly deduced, and reconceive it as a historical process category: as a contested social relation, whose international “effects” cannot be logically extrapolated, but require radical contextualisation and historicisation.19 This re-​invites political and diplomatic history for capitalist pressures are never translated one-​to-​one or functionally into a determinate foreign policy, but are domestically articulated and become inter-​subjectively constructed as international relations in wider geopolitical contexts. Diplomatic history can neither be detached from, nor causally reduced to, the specific socio-​political trajectories and divergent constitutional forms of the Settlement’s constitutive powers. It is the efficacy of specific agents that explains specific outcomes. While these outcomes are retrospectively intelligible, other courses of action –​ a full-​scale “European commitment” or “isolationist navalism”  –​remained a distinct possibility. The emphasis on contextualised and relational agency rejects thus deterministic modes of reasoning. These contexts are however not exhausted by the shared norms and self-​understandings captured by the concept of political cultures and normative meta-​values. What were these outcomes? Utrecht, I  suggest, did not simply register a shift in the identity of the key peace-​determining power  –​from France to England, both subscribing to the management of an otherwise static international anarchy –​but expressed the first institutionalisation of a novel and dynamic approach to the management of European and international order executed by the first capitalist-​parliamentarian state, post-​1688/​1707 Britain. This rested on a revolution in foreign affairs precipitated by post-​ revolutionary England and was encapsulated in the transition from dynasticism towards the co-​articulation of foreign policy by Parliament. The new institutional basis of foreign policy making meant that “social interests” came to influence public policy, including foreign policy formation. This generated a commitment, however contested between Whigs and Tories, towards the blue-​water strategy –​a concept developed by Daniel Baugh.20 While the 19

20

On the history of the concept of ‘capitalism’ in the social sciences and political economy, see Benno Teschke and Frido Wenten, “Capitalism”, in Concepts in World Politics, ed. Felix Berenskoetter (London: Sage, 2016), 157–​179; on the problem of foreign policy and Marxism, see Benno Teschke and Steffan Wyn-​Jones, “Marxism in Foreign Policy”, ed. Cameron Thies, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). Daniel Baugh, “Great Britain’s “Blue-​Water” Policy, 1689–​1815”, International History Review, 10, no. 1 (1988): 33–​58. Baugh notes that contrary to its connotations, blue-​water policy is not synonymous with a purely maritime strategy, but captures maritime and continental objectives. It refers to a joint-​up strategic approach in which “continental

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concept is widely discussed and used in the historiographical literature, it is absent in the IR canon.21 This grand strategy envisaged the “rationalisation”, i.e. the de-​ideologisation, the de-​confessionalisation and de-​territorialisation of British ambitions on the Continent, the invention and active manipulation of the balance of power, and the pursuit of oceanic commercial hegemony, premised on the new principle of the “national interest”. These new principles rested on a sober calculus of the secular interests of the “political nation”, as opposed to the whims and imponderabilia of dynastic interests. Utrecht manifested the first international institutionalisation of British blue-​water strategy. To recap: early 18th Century British foreign policy designs cannot be captured with pre-​conceived IR concepts. It is misleading to conceive of 1713 as a further instantiation of the automatic workings of the systemic logic of anti-​ French power balancing that re-​equilibrated a temporarily uni-​polar international order through collective multi-​lateral action. Blue-​water policy was not identical with the notion of hegemony, defined in Realist Hegemonic Stability Theory terms as providing public goods, along with rules and norms, for the stabilisation and operation of the states-​system as a whole.22 The British-​led Settlement was neither simply a further entrenchment of international anarchy in a geopolitical pluriverse, nor does it suffice to speak of the normative acceptance of an international consensus agenda agreed by and collectively beneficial to all peace parties that constituted “international society”. British grand strategy is also not to be confused with the Neo-​Gramscian or world-​ systems notion of hegemony, defined as providing leadership of the system

21

22

strategy” was not an alternative to but an “extension” of “maritime strategy”. See also Daniel Baugh, “Maritime Strength and Atlantic Commerce: The Uses of “A Grand Marine Empire””, in An Imperial State at War:  Britain from 1689–​1815, ed. Lawrence Stone (London: Routledge, 1994), 185–​223. On blue water policy see John Brewer (1989), The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688–​1783 (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1989), 168–​172, 257; Jeremy Black, A System of Ambition? British Foreign Policy, 1660–​1793 (London & New York: Longman, 1991); Cain, P. J & A.G. Hopkins, British Imperialism: Innovation and Expansion, 1688–​ 1914, (London:  Longman, 1993), 86–​88; William S.  Maltby, “The Origins of a Global Strategy:  England from 1558 to 1713”, in The Making of Strategy:  Rulers, States, and War, ed. Williamson Murray, Macgregor Knox, Alvin Bernstein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 151–​177; Simms, “Ministers of Europe”; Steve Pincus, 1688: The First Modern Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 353–​363. Patrick O’Brien, “The Myth of Anglophone Succession: From British Primacy to American Hegemony,” New Left Review, 2nd series, 24 (2003): 113–​134.

132 Teschke of states by articulating and enforcing rules for inter-​state conflict and co-​ operation and by actively universalising the specific state/​society complex of the hegemon.23 There is no evidence to suggest that post-​1713 British foreign policy actively projected Britain’s specific capitalist-​parliamentarian social and constitutional relations across the rest of Europe, either through the force of example or mimicry, or by means of the power of persuasion and the offering of concessions to subaltern states through their consensual involvement in international institutions, or more directly through regime-​changing military interventions. There is also little evidence to substantiate Bobbitt’s claim that the loosing peace parties started to innovate strategically and constitutionally to emulate Britain’s victorious legal-​political-​military complex, as the rigidities associated with institutionally entrenched path-​dependencies in various polities rendered the very few reform attempts –​militarily or constitutionally –​ prone to failure. The British peace plan constitutes a sui generis phenomenon. British grand strategy, the blue-​water strategy, had a much more specific dual sense: defensive and concerned with security interests versus the Continent and offensive and concerned with commercial interests overseas. It secured Britain’s three main strategic objectives: the prevention of invasion by maintaining naval control of the Channel, the development of overseas trade and colonies, and the prevention of the rise of a continental hegemon, or an anti-​British European alliance. “All were interrelated and all were present in the thinking of the Elizabethans, but they did not coalesce into a workable strategic system until the War of the Spanish Succession.”24 Blue water represented the first conscious attempt to develop a secular and comprehensive strategy for rationalising geopolitical and geo-​economic space in line with the British “national interest”, even if Britain never intended or was capable to conclusively “settle” the international affairs of Europe and its overseas colonies. But this innovation was deeply rooted in the British revolution in foreign affairs, the constitutional settlement of 1688, and the prior reorganisation of British political and social relations as a result of the rise of agrarian capitalism in the countryside. We retrace the relations between these aspects in reverse order.

23 24

Giovanni Arrighi, The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power, and the Origins of Our Times (London: Verso, 1994). Maltby, “Origins of a Global Strategy”, 151.

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The Spanish War of Succession and the British Peace Plan: Institutionalising Blue-​Water Policy

In principle, it makes good sense to start an analysis of international peace accords with a review of how the military outcomes of the preceding conflict affected the post-​bellum bargaining positions of the contracting peace parties. In a second step, we could proceed towards a reading of the settlement’s material provisions understood as the more nuanced and determinate diplomatic results of the peace negotiations at the intersection of the articulation and accommodation of the competing foreign policy orientations and interests of its participants. This general approach should also prima facie and intuitively apply to the case of Utrecht, whose post-​war parties comprised, inter alia, capitalist-​parliamentarian Britain, the mercantile Dutch Republic, and the French, Spanish and Austrian Old Regimes. The following interpretation, partly for reasons of space, but more importantly for substantive reasons, adapts this generic interpretative template to the historically specific character of the Utrecht situation to better frame the object of analysis.25 For while the Utrecht Accords were formally the result of inter-​polity negotiations, the exclusive focus on official Congress diplomacy overplays the power symmetries between the peace parties, neglects the decisive pre-​Utrecht Anglo-​French politics of secret diplomacy, which diminished the significance of the negotiations in situ, and downgrades the overriding role played by Britain in the Settlement’s design and implementation. This is not to argue for an exclusively “internalist” or “intra-​state” explanation of the peace agreement, but to properly weigh and calibrate the Utrecht context realiter within the power-​politically asymmetric post-​war constellation of “inter-​national” politics, singularly orchestrated by Britain. For it is widely noticed in the literature that only the British had, in effect, an actual peace plan, masterminded by Foreign Minister Viscount Bolingbroke.26 This formed the blue-​print for a wider settlement that went beyond the short-​ term accommodation of the conflicting narrow, selfish, and ad hoc individual interests –​“old diplomacy” –​of the diverse peace parties by providing a draft

25 The analysis of the Dutch, Austrian, and Spanish cases cannot be covered in this chapter. 26 Heinz Duchhardt, Gleichgewicht der Kräfte, Convenance, Europäisches Konzert: Friedenskongresse und Friedensschlüsse vom Zeitalter Ludwigs XIV. bis zu Wiener Kongress (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1976), 41–​48; Derek McKay and Hamish M.  Scott, The Rise of the Great Powers, 1648–​1815 (London:  Longman, 1983)  63–​ 66; Heinz Duchhardt, Balance of Power und Pentarchie:  Internationale Beziehungen, 1700–​1785 (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1997), 259.

134 Teschke nominally designed in the “public interest” of Europe as a whole. Nevertheless, even though the Bolingbroke Plan was wider in scope and ambitions than the peace aims of the co-​signatories, its provisions never amounted to a comprehensive multilateral settlement, nor did they advocate a peace system or even a system of collective security. Technically, the term “Utrecht” refers to a cluster of eleven bilateral treaties that were concluded between 1713 and 1715, comprising also the Treaties of Rastatt (1714), Baden (1714), and Madrid (1715), stretching possibly to the Treaty of The Hague (1720). This geographical and chronological pattern indicated the fragmented nature of the peace process and the often un-​coordinated, mainly bilateral, negotiations, which were also occasionally interrupted by the resumption of hostilities. In this context, how did the British succeed in dominating the peace agenda? And how did the conclusion of the War of Spanish Succession pre-​figure British diplomatic success? The casus belli for England’s entry into the war –​a classic example of Old Regime Wars occasioned by the death in 1700 of the childless King Charles ii of Spain –​derived from the complex inheritance claims to the Spanish dominions that were contested by Louis xiv of France and the Austrian Emperor Leopold I.  The take-​over of Spain by either the Bourbons or the Habsburgs augured the possibility of “universal monarchy”. As the French invaded the Spanish Netherlands in 1701, Marlborough concluded in September 1701 the Treaty of the Grand Alliance in The Hague with the Dutch Republic, and the Austrian Emperor “for the Preservation of the Liberties of Europe, the Property and Peace of England, and for reducing the Exorbitant Power of France.”27 War was declared by the Grand Alliance in May 1702. As the fortunes of war swung decisively after the battle of Höchstädt (“Blenheim”) (1704) in the direction of the anti-​French Grand Alliance and as the French repeatedly sued for peace at The Hague (1709) and, again, at Geertruidenberg (1710), the 1710 British parliamentary elections brought the Tories to power. The incoming Tory Government undermined and recalibrated the Alliance’s war aims by switching from the objective of French defeat and partition to the more prudent idea of preventing the rise of any continental hegemon. The spectre of a renewed reunion of the Habsburg lands under the new Emperor Charles vi, combining Austria and Spain, came to replace the spectre of the union of the Bourbon lands, combining Spain and France. In this altered context, Britain defected from the anti-​French alliance, originally established in the League of Augsburg (1686), renewed in the Grand Alliance (1701), and 27

John B. Hattendorf, “Alliance, Encirclement, and Attrition: British Grand Strategy in the War of the Spanish Succession, 1702–​1713”, in Grand Strategies in War and Peace, ed. Paul Kennedy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), 16.

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now comprising also Savoy, Portugal, Prussia and most of the German principalities with the notable exception of Wittelsbach Bavaria. Britain entered into secret diplomacy with the French. Without the consultation of Britain’s war-​time allies, a plan was hammered out bilaterally between Bolingbroke and the French foreign minister Torcy in the London Preliminaries (1711). This joint Anglo-​French preliminary peace plan was presented at Utrecht in 1712. The overriding rationale of the plan was to ensure that France, much to the dismay of the Dutch and the Habsburgs, would be re-​admitted as a full, if diminished, member into the Settlement as the exclusion of the Bourbon monarchy from the field of international politics would have generated a power vacuum that Austria would have amply filled. Militarily weakened, as Britain withdrew from military action during the course of 1712, strategically out-​flanked and diplomatically out-​manoeuvred, the Dutch, the Emperor, and the Spanish had to accede as junior partners to the table. A militarily and financially exhausted France accepted the more lenient terms of the British over the more Carthaginian ambitions of the Dutch and the Empire. The Peace Treaty of Utrecht largely ratified the essentials of Bolingbroke’s preliminary peace plan. Utrecht’s “material results were already agreed upon by secret diplomacy before the congress.” 28 How was British blue-​water policy converted into the terms of the Treaty? Overall, blue-​water policy divided into a geopolitical and a geo-​economic aspect, the first geared towards the Continent, the second geared towards overseas. Geopolitically, it implied a policy of “rationalising” political geography through the redistribution of power in terms of territoriality, the prevailing currency of power in pre-​capitalist polities –​trimming the size of France, rather than pressing for its partition, blocking the personal unions between Spain and France and between Spain and Austria, creating a buffer zone in the newly-​created Austrian Netherlands against French expansion, while curtailing the size of the Dutch Republic, making territorial adjustments to the Habsburg Empire in the Mediterranean, and safeguarding the independence of smaller powers like Portugal, Prussia, the Dutch Republic, Savoy, and various German and Italian polities. The British gains looked prima facie innocuous, reduced to securing political control over strategically important naval bases in the Mediterranean (Gibraltar and Minorca), the destruction of the French naval base at Dunkirk, the acquisition of a few formerly French possessions in Canada (Hudson Bay, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland) and in the West Indies, and the 28

Heinz Duchhardt, “Peace Treaties from Westphalia to the Revolutionary Era,” in Peace Treaties and International Law in European History: From the Late Middle Ages to World War One, ed. Randall Lesaffer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 52.

136 Teschke transfer of the asiento from Spain –​the monopoly of the slave trade with the Spanish colonies –​to the British South Sea Company. This redistribution of space established the presupposition for the principle of the balance of power, designed to guarantee the post-​Utrecht political geography of Europe. It was for the first time in the history of European peace congresses codified in the Settlement. This, as shown above, is widely noticed in the IR literature. Yet, the balance of power was not conceived as a timeless and automatic self-​equilibrating and self-​adjusting mechanism, enforcing a subjectless and systemic gravitational pull across the spectrum to prevent uni-​ polarity or hegemony, as much of Neo-​Realist IR theory suggests. It was rather contrived as a conscious strategy by Britain to hold the balance in its hands.29 It became the key policy for the achievement, maintenance, and enhancement of British primacy, but not hegemony. The balance of power was a political construct  –​a foreign policy practice  –​routinely invoked and re-​affirmed in the annual Mutiny Acts of the British Parliament, which fixed the essential strategic aims of the British army and navy. It was already successfully tested in the War of the Spanish Succession itself.30 Substantively, it meant subsidising smaller powers, primarily financially but also through the hiring of mercenaries, orchestrating alliance-​formation against any potential would-​be hegemon, dispatching smaller British expeditionary forces, and considering intervention and war as the ultima ratio if everything else failed. This went hand in hand with a clear commitment to the de-​territorialisation of British claims to continental possessions  –​the Hannoverian stemlands being a constant source of irritation for Parliament  –​while jealously guarding control over strategic naval bases. The overriding issue here was security interests, which trumped narrower economic interests, which Britain may have entertained vis-​à-​vis the Continent. This was essentially a defensive policy, controlling continental territorial might “on the cheap” and by “remote control” through the active manipulation of the balance of power and its associated sub-​policies.31 It was a strategy of containing the belligerent aggressions of primarily absolutist powers by making wars militarily and financially risky and unattractive –​a policy

29

This is widely noted by classical realists, but largely explained in terms of Britain’s geographical position plus William of Orange’s individual genius. Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), 70–​71; see also Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 6th ed. (New York: Knopf, 1985), 199. 30 Hattendorf, “Alliance, Encirclement, and Attrition.”. 31 Teschke, Myth of 1648, 258–​262. This roughly coheres with the definition of “off-​shore-​ balancing” in more contemporary Realist parlance. John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: Norton, 2001).

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of deterrence and encirclement, plus financial attrition, plus, if needed, direct intervention. “The real British definition of a “balance of power” then becomes a system enabling Britain to enjoy hegemony and pass its costs to others.”32 But this innovation could not and did not lead to the general acceptance of the balance of power as a new international principle on a cross-​country and system-​wide basis, which stabilised the territorial distribution of power and the inter-​state system. For the British practice of balancing co-​existed, often uneasily, with the older notion of the dynastic idea of equilibrium and the compensatory convenance system.33 This implied that “a gain, especially of a territorial kind made by one state, had to be matched by corresponding gains by others.”34 As control over Land und Leute (land and people) constituted a natural monopoly in finite supply for polities that reproduced themselves primarily through the extraction and taxation of agrarian surpluses, territory was less a matter of prestige than a basic precondition for wealth and state power. Throughout the 18th Century, this convenance system led to the progressive elimination of smaller polities. Its compensatory and eliminatory dynamic was not significantly halted or reversed by British post-​Utrecht power balancing, as the overriding strategic aim was not to freeze a specific territorial status quo “in perpetuity”. Rather, the objective was to flexibly maintain a sufficient number of polities of roughly equal size, while preventing any anti-​British coalition amongst them or the formation of a continental hegemon that could single-​handedly challenge British supremacy. Power balancing became an un-​ principled principle. The British deployment of power-​balancing and its geographical realisation in the Peace of Utrecht led thus to a series of territorial swaps, adjustments, and personal unions, which yoked very disparate regions under the umbrella of one nominal ruler, while supporting the recognition and independence of middling powers like Prussia, Portugal, and Savoy. The overriding aim of the balance of power as a policy for the geopolitical management of space was thus never the protection of the independence and freedom of each and every political community in the “society of states”. It was never intended to guarantee peace or secure the status quo.35 Its core rationale consisted in the pragmatic

32 33

Schroeder, “Historical Reality vs. Neo-​Realist Theory,” 142. Benno Teschke, “Theorising the Westphalian System of States:  International Relations from Absolutism to Capitalism,” European Journal of International Relations 8, No. 1 (2002), 5–​48. 34 Evan Luard, The Balance of Power:  The System of International Relations, 1648–​1815, Houndmills: Macmillan Press, 1992), 201; see also Duchhardt, Gleichgewicht der Kräfte. 35 Duchhardt, Balance of Power und Pentarchie, 17.

138 Teschke handling of a numerically ever-​dwindling group of states in the interest of British power and security through the flexible formation of rapidly changing alliances in which individual smaller polities were promoted or abandoned as pawns of the game. “Albion” became “perfidious.”36 This preference for pragmatic adjustments to the realities of power shifts in a dynamic mixed-​actor (but numerically predominantly dynastic) inter-​state order, rhetorically pursued in the name of equity and harmony on behalf of the “public interest” and the “liberty of Europe”, came to form a long-​term strategy of the British state into the 20th Century: divide et impera! Whereas Britain upheld a commitment to power balancing from 1713 onwards as a grand strategy translating into support for Kleinstaaterei (mini-​state proliferation) on the Continent, it imperiously established itself as the colonial master of the seas, ruling the waves. Geo-​economically, blue-​water strategy meant widening the oceanic and Mediterranean sphere of trading monopolies for British commerce against Dutch, Spanish and French mercantilist competition. It is in this context that Britain’s Utrecht gains become significant. For the curtailing and confiscation of French colonies and trading posts in the Americas, the transfer of the potentially lucrative right of the slave contract, the asiento, from the Spanish Crown, and the cession of Gibraltar and Minorca turned not only the Mediterranean into a British lake to access the riches of the Levante trade, but strengthened British pre-​eminence in the Atlantic and the wider global world of sea-​borne commerce.37 Blue-​water strategy implied lessening the dependence of British trade on the continental mainland, circumventing the recurring threats of Dutch or French trading blockades, re-​directing export and import market shares away from Europe to overseas trade, while pursuing an uncompromising and aggressive policy of commercial and imperial expansion across the globe.38 This policy should therefore not be conceived as a capitalist foreign policy per se, measured against a generic abstractum of a logically pure and idealised conception of capitalist rationality, as Schumpeter implied. It should rather be seen as a historically specific construction for the ordering and management of geography by the first capitalist state, intelligible within a historically specific domestic and geopolitical context. Blue-​water strategy did not spread capitalist principles across the Continent, nor did it introduce capitalist social property relations overseas, but served nevertheless capitalist interests in safeguarding the domestic “liberties”, i.e. the parliamentary prerogative over 36 37 38

Ludwig Dehio, The Precarious Balance:  The Politics of Power in Europe, 1494–​1945 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1963), 84. Maltby, “Origins of a Global Strategy”, 168–​175. Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism, 84–​101.

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the constitutional settlement which guaranteed domestic private property, the self-​organisation of the “political nation”, i.e. the propertied classes in Parliament, and the nascent liberalisation of the British home market and, to some degree, intra-​imperial British trade. Utrecht established a British “maritime-​ imperial” system.39 These British gains are referred to as geo-​economic, since they had little to do with an ideal-​typical capitalist policy of multilaterally liberalising international trade. They were more informed by the strategic calculations of geo-​ commercial rivalry, particularly in the crucial triangulation between Britain, France, and the Dutch Republic. Articles 5 to 13 of the Anglo-​French Treaty signed at Utrecht contained far-​reaching commitments to a bilateral free-​trade agreement. Bolingbroke’s rationale for a separate Anglo-​French commercial treaty rested on the conviction that Dutch, rather than French, commercial power posed a greater threat to British commercial interests on the mainland and, a fortiori, overseas.40 By opening the French domestic market for British goods and by blocking a similar Anglo-​Dutch commercial treaty, Dutch commerce could be counter-​balanced by entering into free trade with a supposedly commercially weaker France. Ultimately, the Anglo-​French Commercial Treaty of 1713, which translated the Utrecht provisions into a parliamentary bill, was never ratified in the House of Commons due to Whig opposition. The entire episode ended in failure, while persisting high-​tariff regimes reduced Anglo-​French trade to low levels. In the wider context, multilateral trade liberalisation was not to be had in an international and trans-​continental commercial economy, which still operated on the old mercantilist principles of “buying cheap and selling dear”. Profits were primarily made in the sphere of circulation by transactions in non-​ integrated markets, premised on the political-​military exclusion of economic competition. International commerce relied on the policy of armed trading.41 These trading circuits flourished because merchants, normally organised in 39

40 41

Baugh observes that “the most pervasive cause of historical misunderstanding (…) has been the founding text of modern economic science, Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776). The book’s whole approach  –​on which its analytical purity depends  –​is grounded in an economic idealism that presupposes an eternally peaceful world featuring unfettered and harmonious marketing.” Baugh, “Maritime Strength and Atlantic Commerce,” 187. Doowhan Ahn, “The Anglo-​French Treaty of Commerce of 1713: Tory Trade Politics and the Question of Dutch Decline,” History of European Ideas 36, No. 2 (2010), 167–​180. Chaudhuri, K. N. (1991), “Reflections on the Organizing Principle of Premodern Trade”, in The Political Economy of Merchant Empires, ed. James Tracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 421–​442.

140 Teschke state-​backed and chartered trading companies, relied on politically constituted trade privileges granted by rulers. These established monopolies for specific trades and sectors linking territorially separate centers of production and exchange and creating profits through the exploitation of existing price differentials.42 The monopoly-​character of sea-​borne trade implied the politicisation and militarisation of trans-​continental commerce. However, while international trade remained mercantilist, intra-​British Empire trade was opened up to domestic competition, as the monopoly rights of the big chartered British companies were progressively abolished after 1688.43 For the 17th Century revolutionary changes in the composition of the British commercial community had given rise to a new class of “interloping” traders, which contested the state-​backed monopoly rights of the older chartered company merchant elite. “Traders with the West Indies and North America had from the start operated under free-​trade conditions, and (…) were intent on pulling down all barriers to the expansion of their commerce.”44 Still, the partial liberalisation of British intra-​imperial trade did not translate into a policy of institutionalising international free trade, but rather informed a policy designed to expand the sphere of exclusive British maritime and naval commerce, protected by the Navy.45 “Nevertheless, in retrospect the broad thrust of British fiscal and financial policies combined with naval mercantilism can be represented as effective support for the endeavors of private capitalist enterprise carrying the economy through a process of Smithian growth into a transition for the technological breakthroughs for a first industrial revolution.”46 While the mechanisms for growth were arguably not Smithian, premised on a quantitatively growing division of labour, expanding markets, competition and specialisation, but rather capitalist, premised on a qualitative transformation of social property relations between capital and labour, British capitalism developed within a fundamentally re-​organised state. This new type of state protected and promoted the deepening and expansion 42

Eric Wolf, Europe and the People without History (Berkeley, CA.: University of California Press, 1983). 43 Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution:  Commercial Change, Political Conflict, and London’s Overseas Traders, 1550–​1653 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 715. 44 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 712. 45 Donald Winch and Patrick O’Brien, eds., The Political Economy of British Historical Experience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). 46 Patrick O’Brien, “The Formation of States and Transitions to Modern Economies: England, Europe, and Asia Compared”, in The Cambridge History of Capitalism. Vol. 1:  The Rise of Capitalism:  from Ancient Origins to 1848, eds. L.  Nealand and J.  G. Williamson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 373.

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of capitalist practices within a hostile mercantilist world of geopolitically competing pre-​capitalist states. Throughout the 18th Century, this extra-​British world could only be geopolitically managed and contained, but not constitutionally or economically transformed. There was a final constitutional element to the British peace aims, as Britain managed to secure protective clauses for the Protestant Succession and Parliament’s right, codified in the 1701 Act of Settlement, to establish constitutional control over the succession. This meant insulating issues of the British succession –​and thus the principle of the constitutional monarchy –​from international dynastic entanglements. Whereas throughout much of the Continent, the doctrine of the divine right of kings in absolutist states precluded the assent to rules of succession by representative assemblies, including parliaments and estates, so that the divine right of monarchs could not be seriously dislodged as a constitutional principle, post-​1688 Britain sought to systematically enshrine unqualified foreign acceptance of parliamentary control over succession into international treaties. The Grand Alliance Treaty included an additional clause that declared the recognition of the Protestant Succession a principal war aim of the allies. The two Anglo-​Dutch treaties of 1709 and 1713 secured Dutch commitment to the Act of Settlement in return for British commitment to a barrier in the southern Netherlands. The same pledge was extracted from all peace parties to the Treaty of Utrecht and renewed in the Triple Alliance of 1717, the Quadruple Alliance of 1718, and finally in the Treaty of Aix-​la-​Chapelle of 1748.47 This amounted to the systematic pursuit by the British to secure international guarantees for its domestic constitutional monarchy –​a significant departure from earlier international peace settlements. The country’s succession was now subject to international guarantees to suppress the Jacobite cause, and divorced from the biological accidents of international dynastic family inheritance conflicts and the wider customary marital strategies of inter-​dynastic aggrandisement. While continental states equally engaged in a series of bilateral and multilateral treaties to secure international guarantees for existing rules of succession, these were routinely broken precisely because the social relations of sovereignty –​the composition of social classes that constituted these polities –​had never succeeded in overturning the fundamental principle of divine right to monarchical sovereignty. Here, genealogical accidents and dynastic practices of inter-​marriage continued to plague and de-​stabilise the territorial order of much of continental Europe right into the 19th Century. While the 47 Luard, Balance of Power, 158, 169.

142 Teschke enshrinement of British succession arrangements into the Utrecht Settlement was thus indeed an innovation, their historical realisation remained geographically confined to the exceptionality of the British constitutional and, as we will argue, social arrangements. 5

1688: a Revolution in Foreign Affairs

How is this new grand strategy to be explained? What accounts for Britain’s success to imprint its designs on the Settlement? Surely, its growing power –​ commercial-​maritime and financial-​military –​played a dominant role, as did the institutional reconfiguration of the British state in the late 17th and early 18th Centuries. This is widely recognised in the literature with reference to the concept of the rise of the “fiscal-​military” state.48 While this concept has been usefully deployed in the Neo-​Weberan and Neo-​Hintzean literature on state-​formation, it suffers from the assumption of an quasi-​isomorphic interpretative template generalised across very diverse processes of state-​formation and obscures the qualitatively different social sources and outcomes of state-​ formation in early modern Europe.49 Furthermore, by accepting the bellicose nature of early modern inter-​state relations as a given pan-​European explanatory mechanism, it fails to account for the very belligerent disposition of early modern, specifically absolutist, polities. Accounting for the specific British foreign policy success of its Hannoverian “fiscal-​military” state requires therefore not only attention to prior fundamental institutional changes in the British polity, it requires equally attention to the prior social pre-​conditions that powered these constitutional changes. For post-​revolutionary Britain came to express a new set of class relations generated by Britain’s revolutionary 17th Century, rooted in the rise of agrarian capitalism.50 This led not only to the 48 Brewer, Sinews of Power. Brewer’s significant intervention dovetails with the older Neo-​ Weberian state-​building literature, captured in Charles Tilly’s pithy, but circular, formula that “war makes states and states make war.” Charles Tilly, ed., The Formation of National States in Western Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975). For a critical discussion of the Tilly-​Thesis see Benno Teschke, “Revisiting the “War-​Makes-​States” Thesis: War, Taxation and Social Property Relations in Early Modern Europe”, in War, the State and International Law in Seventeenth-​Century Europe, ed. Olaf Asbach and Peter Schröder (London: Ashgate, 2010), 35–​59. 49 Christopher Storrs, ed., The Fiscal-​Military State in the Eighteenth Century:  Essays in Honour of P.G.M Dickson (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009). 50 Robert Brenner, “The Agrarian Roots of European Capitalism”, in The Brenner Debate: Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-​Industrial Europe, eds. T.H. Aston & C.H.E. Philpin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 213–​327.

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growth of a new type of state power, which was uniquely able to absorb the rising levels of war-​driven taxation and national debts, but also to a qualitative transformation in the character of the projection and deployment of power beyond the shores of the British Isles. It led to a revolution in foreign affairs as part of the new constitutional settlement achieved in the Glorious Revolution of 1688.51 This set Britain fundamentally apart, not only from the continental absolutist powers, but also from the mercantilist Dutch Republic. What was the British revolution in foreign affairs? By 1688, sovereignty lay no longer with the King, but with Parliament. The constitutional settlement had curbed the traditional prerogatives of the Crown, including foreign policy making. Parliamentary sovereignty was gained in a series of royal concessions, increasingly accepted as statutory law. This included the 1689 Bill of Rights, the 1689 Mutiny Act, which made the army and the defense budget responsible to Parliament, the 1694 Triennial Act, and the 1701 Settlement Act. The new character of British sovereignty was captured by the formula “the King-​ in-​Parliament”. Britain, no longer England after the 1707 Act of Union with Scotland, had become a constitutional monarchy. After these changes, British foreign policy was no longer exclusively conducted on the basis of dynastic interests as formulated in Kabinettpolitik, but increasingly on the basis of the “national interest” as formulated by the propertied classes in Parliament.52 One immediate consequence was that while the Crown continued to enjoy certain prerogatives, “the authority of ministers rested on their ability to maintain the support of the majority in the House of Commons.”53 Foreign policy was made accountable to a permanent elected assembly, which represented social and private interests and which converted these social interests into public policy. With the Glorious Revolution control over the budget also passed to Parliament  –​a shift from the extraordinary taxation levied by the King on the people, especially during times of war, to taxation as a national affair, subject to deliberation and co-​determination in Parliament, particularly with regard to military expenses and the setting of revenue-​levels. This amounted to the self-​taxation of the “political nation”, now in form of either the land tax or the

51 Jeremy Black, Parliament and Foreign Policy in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2004); Pincus, 1688:  The First Modern Revolution, 305–​365. 52 Ellen Meiksins Wood, The Pristine Culture of Capitalism: A Historical Essay on Old Regimes and Modern States (London: Verso, 1991); Brenner, Merchants and Revolutions, 713–​716. 53 Philip Harling, The Modern British State:  An Historical Introduction (Cambridge:  Polity Press, 2001), 21–​22.

144 Teschke older expedients of customs and excise.54 Taxation and war-​related expenditures became subject to a rational and secular calculus and accountable to public debate and scrutiny. This was most clearly evidenced in the creation of the Treasury Board, which made all government departments’ expenses and receipts accountable to its oversight, and the Public Accounts commissions of the House of Commons, set up to eradicate waste and corruption during wartime spending. The growth in taxes to finance ever-​more costly wars was removed from the divisive and arbitrary acts of the Crown and subjected to the authority of an elected assembly. The British experience of parliamentary control over the budget –​indeed, the use of the technical term “budget” to record and quantify public revenues and expenditures –​contrasted sharply with contemporaneous French practices. Here, in spite of repeated requests by finance ministers like Colbert to the King, exemplified in his 1670 “Memoir to the King on the Finances”, to subject war-​declarations to a prior economic calculus on their financial sustainability, “budgets (…) were not yet established as a part of domestic government” until the late 18th Century.55 Additionally, public finance was now put on a new and secure footing through the creation of the National Bank of England in 1694.56 The public debt was no longer the King’s debt, liable to fraud and defaults, but precisely the National Debt, generating lower but more secure interest rates, and uniting the lending classes behind the war-​efforts. This enabled “the state to borrow on comparatively favourable terms by providing a parliamentary guarantee for the swift repayment of interests.”57 The revolution in foreign affairs was thus supplemented by a revolution in fiscal and financial affairs. The British state’s financial and fiscal capacity for war-​making was now premised on a new set of institutional arrangements. This underpinned Britain’s rise to Europe’s pre-​ eminent power during “the long 18th Century”. But the parliamentarisation of foreign policy, taxation, and defense spending had even deeper ramifications that reverberated throughout British society at large. For as the Tory-​Whig rivalry over the direction of public policy, including foreign policy, came to inform public debate amongst an ever-​expanding 54

Richard Bonney, ed., Economic Systems and State Finance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995); Richard Bonney, ed., The Rise of the Fiscal State in Europe, c. 1200–​1815 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Maltby, “Origins of a Global Strategy,” 158. 55 Hamish Scott, “The Fiscal-​Military State and International Rivalry during the Long Eighteenth Century,” in Storrs, ed., Fiscal-​Military State, p.25. 56 Peter G. M. Dickson, The Financial Revolution in England: A Study in the Development of Public Credit, 1688–​1756 (London:  Ashgate [1967], 1993); Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism, 60–​71. 57 Harling, Modern British State, 3.

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electorate (the franchise was qualified by relatively low property requirements), the three elections of 1710, 1715 and 1722 drew large numbers of voters into the deliberation and, ultimately, indirect co-​determination of foreign policy formation.58 Thus, in sharp contrast to the prevailing conception of foreign policy in continental absolutist states as an exclusive executive prerogative of the ruler’s arcana imperii, foreign policy formation in Britain became not only parliamentarised, but also “nationalised” as a subject of interest, debate, and engagement in an expanding wider public sphere. This also meant that there was, henceforth, a partisan character to the formulation of foreign policy. Whigs and Tories represented different constituencies, roughly speaking the division between commercial and landed wealth. This also informed their differences in foreign policy orientation, but this time based on interests and pragmatics, rather than ideology, religion, or dynasticism.59 As the “national interest” is never something generically given, but defined and re-​defined through domestic politics, the question of the extent of Britain’s commitment to continental warfare and the consequent tax burdens became a key issue in the controversy between Whigs and Tories. As a rule and under the mounting costs of the Nine Years’s War (1688–​97) and the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–​13), the post-​revolutionary foreign policy of the Tories was committed to the containment of France –​rather than defeat –​and content to protecting the Constitutional Settlement of the British Isles, preventing continental hegemony, and expanding overseas. Geo-​politics and geo-​economics trumped ideology and religion. The Whigs, in turn, while first favouring a full-​scale invasion of France and a pro-​European policy, driven by their commitments to anti-​absolutism and anti-​Catholicism, scaled back their war-​aims and were content to assemble a multi-​confessional and multi-​ ideological alliance against the French. While the Tories masterminded the Utrecht peace plan under Bolingbroke, Utrecht partly accommodated Whiggish interests by maintaining a territorially much-​reduced absolutist France on the Continent, curbing its possessions overseas, and increasing the number of independent polities –​absolutist and Republican alike –​on the Continent as fodder for the balance-​of-​power. The Whig commitment to the liberty of Europe was therefore not a call for the substantive constitutional liberty of European polities –​the internationalisation of the English Revolution –​but reduced to support for their numerical plurality. The dualistic outcome of these opposing but increasingly narrowing partisan commitments was formalised

58 Maltby, “Origins of a Global Strategy”, 162–​163; Harling, Modern British State, 24–​25. 59 Pincus, 1688: The First Modern Revolution, 350–​365.

146 Teschke in the blue-​water policy –​a new system of national security, which included minimal continental commitment based on power-​balancing in the European theatre, plus unlimited overseas expansion based on naval power and maritime supremacy: Despite their emphasis on various options, the English did slowly develop a consensus that ultimately formed the basis of their demands at the Congress of Utrecht, a consensus born of trial and error and held together in the end by the glue of economics. As a host of widely disparate initiatives succeeded on land and sea, it became apparent that “Whig” and “Tory” strategies were not necessarily incompatible and that England –​Britain after 1707 –​was strong enough to afford both.60 There was, in short, a new “reason of state”, different from the “reason of princes”, which translated into a new type of international ordering, with Britain as the two-​faced pivot –​the regulator of the system. 6

Social Property Relations, Fiscal-​Military Performance, State Variations and Geopolitics: France and England

Why did class conflict and geopolitics lead in France to an absolutist property regime, an “inefficient” pre-​modern polity, and the relative decline of France’s international position, whereas they led in England/​Britain to a capitalist property regime, an “efficient” and modern state, and Britain’s rise to global primacy? France: from Feudalism to Absolutism 6.1 A full reconstruction of the French trajectory has to start with the outcome of the “feudal revolution” around the year 1000 that left a territorially fragmented social property regime (the multiplicity of banal lords) that was slowly and gradually centralised by the Capetian and, later, Valois monarchies.61 Here, in contrast to England, competition between regional lords and royal power 60

Maltby, “Origins of a Global Strategy”, 165; “A blue water strategy made sense to almost all members of commercial society and to those, including many taxpayers and country gentlemen, who preferred their wars to be cost-​effective if not downright cheap. And the policy had a political as well as economic dimension. For it had the additional advantage of avoiding any increase in the size of the army. It therefore could not contribute, however obliquely, to the creation of a military force likely to threaten Englishmen’s liberties.” Brewer, Sinews of Power, 168–​9. 61 Jean-​ Pierre Poly and Eric Bournazel, The Feudal Transformation:  900–​1200 (New York: Holmes and Meier Publishers, 1991).

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created room for a policy of peasant protection. In the course of the crisis beginning in the fourteenth century, the feudal rent-​regime between lords and bonded peasants was undermined and finally replaced, after the seventeenth-​ century crisis, by an absolutist tax-​regime between the king and free peasants in possession of their lands, creating wide-​spread peasant small-​holding.62 Peasant communities had benefited from competition between the monarchy and local nobles with respect to their surplus, gaining freedom in the process and establishing inheritable tenures that owed fixed dues that subsequently lost value with inflation. In this process, the old sword-​carrying and independent nobility lost many of its feudal powers and became either impoverished or absorbed into the court society of the Old Regime through office venality and other channels of privilege. Simultaneously, the monarchy actively promoted the creation of a new “office nobility” that started to administer public power (taxation, justice and war). In this process, the demilitarisation of the old feudal nobility and the loss of their autonomous feudal powers of domination and appropriation implied their domestication and their need to re-​organise their privileges and powers of extraction in relation to the royal state. The class-​distinctions between the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy had become blurred, as members of both classes made the most of their wealth from landholdings and lucrative state offices. But the income from these landholdings was generated through pre-​capitalist sharecropping and not from asserting direct control over production. Additionally, both classes reproduced themselves from fees collected in their capacity as office-​holders, investment in state loans and royal largesse. Agrarian capitalism did not develop in France since neither peasants, who formed subsistence communities based on unmediated access to their means of reproduction, nor the upper classes (noble and bourgeois), which reproduced themselves through land-​rents and the spoils of political offices, were subject to capitalist imperatives. By the mid-​17th Century, the demise of independent feudal centres of power finally meant that territoriality became internally more consolidated, since the French polity was no longer a fragmented ensemble of lordships that defined the parcellised sovereignty of the medieval polity, but a kingdom in which the Crown claimed sovereignty. It would be a fundamental mistake, however, to confound “absolutist” with modern sovereignty, for the relations of exploitation remained politically constituted, if now in the form of the “tax/​ office state” (the Steuer –​ und Ämterstaat).63 This meant that the process of 62 63

Brenner, “Agrarian Roots of European Capitalism.”. Heide Gerstenberger, Impersonal Power: History and Theory of the Bourgeois State (Leiden and Boston: Brill Publishers, 2007).

148 Teschke political accumulation continued to rest on practices of domination, revolving round the personalised sovereignty of the ruling dynasty: L’État, c’est moi. In the context of this social property regime, a separation of public and private realms, of the political and the economic, could not be carried through. As the king regarded the realm as his patrimonial property, raison d’État meant raison de roi. “Divine kingship” became the dominant mode of legitimation rather than a secularised discourse and praxis of “popular sovereignty” or “the national interest”. But “absolutism”, as the revisionist literature has confirmed, never implied unlimited or unchecked executive royal power, but rather institutionalised a new and ultimately unstable modus vivendi between king and privileged groups, most notably the sword and office nobility and the higher clergy.64 The relations of exploitation between the Crown and the nobility and between the ruling class and the peasantry remained governed throughout the ancien régime by political conflicts over access to and distribution of the total peasant-​produced output. Consequently, taxation became the key arena of domestic conflict. In this context, every war tested and re-​negotiated the balance of power between Crown and nobility, as the monarchy tried to meet its financial needs by higher taxes, the artificial creation and selling of venal offices, or by loans advanced by private financiers who were often themselves tax-​farmers. The nobility was, as a rule, exempted from taxation and therefore not represented in a national forum (the Estates General met for the last time before the French Revolution in 1614).65 This required the search for alternative sources of royal income. Therefore, the monarchy’s reliance on the nobility for financial support translated into an entrenchment of its position in the venal “bureaucracy” in the provincial estates and other regional corporate bodies, and into a flowering of indirect and informal deals that individual financiers struck in the clientelistic system of the court at Versailles. To remain financially afloat and pacify the office nobility, French monarchs sold and auctioned 64 William Beik, Absolutism and Society in Seventeenth-​ Century France:  State Power and Provincial Aristocracy in Languedoc (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1985); David Parker, Class and State in Ancien Régime France:  The Road to Modernity? (London:  Routledge, 1996); William Beik, “The Absolutism of Louis XIV as Social Collaboration”, Past & Present 188 (2005): 195–​224. 65 There were some successful, but always intermittent, attempts to tax the privileged through, for example, the capitation (head tax) and the dixième (income tax). “The serious fiscal pressure of the last years of the War of the Spanish Succession was bitterly resented by the privileged classes, who made it clear that their consent to the dixième had been for the duration of the war only: the regent conceded its withdrawal in 1717.” Richard Bonney, “The Eighteenth Century. II. The Struggle for Great Power Status and the End of the Old Fiscal Regime”, in Bonney, Economic Systems and State Finance, 325.

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off public offices in ever-​greater numbers. Over time, venal offices were held in perpetuity and heredity and so became a privatised source of income for office-​holders and an unreliable and inefficient mechanism for state-​revenues. The Crown thus lost control over its fiscal and financial administration. It failed to establish a central bank or secure lines of credit, while being forced to borrow on short-​term loans at high interest rates from a class of wealthy financiers, who were themselves often tax-​farmers. Especially the recourse under Louis xiv to office venality persistently strengthened the private property rights of office holders. In this way, the pretension to absolutism was belied by the progressive loss of control by the monarchy over the state apparatus as it was re-​privatised by an office nobility of heterogeneous (including bourgeois) social origins. While war thus increased the absolutist claims of French monarchs over their subjects, it simultaneously paralysed their long-​term financial and administrative capacity to rule. In short, there was a direct correlation between the intensification of warfare and office proliferation, the pursuit of international geopolitical accumulation and the domestic hollowing out of state power. Caught between spiralling military expenditures, its inability of radical administrative reform due to deeply entrenched vested interests, and the excessive and punitive taxation of the peasantry that further undermined relatively low rates of productivity, pre-​capitalist France underwent a series of fiscal crises. This downward spiral, precipitated by the rising costs of warfare, royal debt-​accumulation, office creation and sub-​letting, over-​taxation and inability to repay loans, contributed to the increasing dissatisfaction of a class of private financiers and office-​holders. This led ultimately, exacerbated by continuous Anglo-​French military rivalry culminating in the Seven Years’ War, to a general crisis within the ruling class over the form of the state, exploding at last in the French Revolution.66 The class dynamics and geopolitics of the ancien régime could not and did not lead to a rationalised, efficient, and “modern” bureaucratic state. In fact, military rivalry reinforced and intensified rather than resolved the pre-​capitalist class tensions that structured Old Regime France. In a reversal of Charles Tilly’s dictum that “war-​made-​states-​and-​states-​made-​ war”, it seems more plausible to argue that pre-​capitalist states made war –​and that war unmade these states. These domestic dynamics had their correlate in early modern “international” relations. The replication of similar, though by no means identical, processes of

66

George C.  Comninel, Rethinking the French Revolution:  Marxism and the Revisionist Challenge (London: Verso, 1987).

150 Teschke “absolutist” state-​formation across most regions of the Continent gave rise, mutatis mutandis, to a European system of polities in which dynastic rulers acted as gigantic (geo-​)political accumulators. It was this pre-​capitalist complexion that gave the early modern continental system of “states” its over-​militarised, bellicose, and crisis-​ridden character, both in its quantitative sense regarding the frequency of war and its qualitative sense regarding the catastrophic ratio between war expenditures and fiscal income  –​the economic sustainability of war. Although the 17th Century saw the rise of a territorially more sharply defined inter-​state system (even though territoriality remained a fluid and exchangeable appendix of dynastic property rights of domination), this system still consisted of pre-​capitalist polities, in which sovereignty continued to be personalised and tied to dynastic houses, rather than to a de-​personalised abstract notion of statehood. The inter-​dynastic system remained defined by very specific foreign policy practices : the war-​driven accumulation of territories; the predatory and compensatory logic of dynastic equilibrium (convenance rather than power-​balancing); control over exclusive and monopolistic trading-​routes secured by politico-​military means; the elaborate dynastic strategies of territorial aggrandisement through marital policies; the resulting dynastic unions and composite monarchies and their flip-​side, the endemic wars of succession, including a general drive towards territorial empire-​building. In short, it was these very specific patterns of conflict and co-​operation that characterised the dynamics of “Westphalian Geopolitics”. This interpretation relegates the Peace Treaty of Westphalia, consistently regarded in the discipline of IR as the founding moment of the modern inter-​state system, to a pre-​modern compact between pre-​dominantly Old Regime polities, irrespective of the special status of the Holy Roman Empire and the independence achieved by the Netherlands and Switzerland. England: from Feudalism to Capitalism 6.2 If continental patterns of property relations, state-​development and warfare failed to generate a breakthrough to capitalist development or to modern state-​formation, why and how did the English trajectory so radically diverge? How did the rise of capitalist property relations in the agrarian economy affect the institutional changes in the British polity, and how did these changes re-​ position Britain in the international system? Returning to the millennium and the Norman Conquest, a tight feudal hierarchy of Crown magnates and lords was carried over after 1066 from ducal Normandy, in which the King retained the royal ban. This enabled a form of close, though not of course conflict-​free, intra-​ruling class co-​operation that led to the enserfment of large sections of the English peasantry (a portion of the

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peasantry remained free-​holders), while ruling out the complete geographical fragmentation of power that plagued 11th Century France, characterised by the multiplicity of banal lords. Correlatively, this tight feudal hierarchy reduced inter-​lordly competition over peasant surplus, so that the French pattern of royal support for peasant freedom and peasant property in order to turn lordly rents into royal taxes failed to develop. Instead, while English serfs were able to achieve personal freedom during the feudal crisis of the 14th Century, they failed to secure property rights to their lands in striking contrast to their counterparts in France. Backed by royal justice, English lords transformed relatively secure copyholds (the customary form of peasant land use that was inscribed into manorial rolls) into competitive leaseholds for which they charged market rents while levying high entry fines.67 In the process, the regulation of land use through customary law was replaced by Common Law. This resulted in the gradual dispossession of the peasantry, the consolidation of larger estates and the market-​driven need by capitalist tenant-​farmers to raise productivity in order to maintain their leases in a competitive land market. By the early seventeenth century, we see the large-​scale emergence of peasant wage-​labour, capitalist tenant-​farmers and a socio-​politically homogeneous class of entrepreneurial landlords  –​the overall consolidation of agrarian capitalism. This process was accompanied and intensified by the enclosure movement. The English transition to agrarian capitalism led to a class-​constellation in which an entrepreneurial aristocracy, supported by the new “interloping merchants”, entered into a period of conflict with the monarchy, the old colonial merchant class and surviving feudal magnates over the form and control of the English state.68 While the Stuarts tried to establish absolute authority, the capitalist aristocracy sought to construct a state that was responsive to the needs of private property protection, limited taxation and capital accumulation, encapsulated in the programmatic call for “political liberties”. This conflict between “court” and “country” culminated in the Glorious Revolution and the new notion of the “King-​in-​Parliament”  –​a formula that essentially codified the Crown’s concession of crucial powers to Parliament, which became the locus of British sovereignty. Between 1688 and 1715, the parliamentary classes consolidated their power by passing a series of fundamental constitutional acts –​the Triennial Act, the Bill of Rights, etc. Agrarian capitalism had generated a social property regime in which the political conflicts amongst the members of the 67

Brenner, “Agrarian Roots of European Capitalism”; George Comninel, “English Feudalism and the Origins of Capitalism,” Journal of Peasant Studies 27, No. 4 (2000): 1–​53; Spencer Dimmock, The Origin of Capitalism in England, 1400–​1600 (Leiden: Brill, 2014). 68 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution.

152 Teschke ruling class over the distribution and terms of the rights of political accumulation were increasingly replaced by private forms of economic exploitation in the sphere of production. Market and state, private and public, came to be increasingly differentiated, yet mediated through Parliament’s translation of social interests into public policy.69 This new form of sovereignty, no longer personal-​dynastic, but abstract-​ national sovereignty, drove the concomitant revolution in public administration –​the Fiscal Revolution, the Financial Revolution, and the Military Revolution in particular. Core departments of government –​the Treasury, the Excise and the Navy –​turned from patrimonial to modern bureaucracies, while public finance was drastically modernised through the establishment of the Bank of England and the public debt.70 This combination of revolutionary institutional innovations –​Britain’s naval superiority and exceptional fiscal-​financial responsiveness in the face of external military pressure on the basis of a self-​ sustaining capitalist economy –​gave the Hanoverian state the decisive comparative economic, fiscal, financial, military and administrative advantage over its continental competitors. This consolidated British exceptionalism. It seems therefore insufficient to derive the character of the post-​1688/​1707 British state as a “fiscal-​military” machine from the exigencies of geopolitical rivalry, as John Brewer has suggested, without reconnecting state-​development with domestic social dynamics and, in particular, social property relations. The post-​1688 British state responded to military competition as vigorously and successfully as it did only on the back of a capitalist economy that generated the public institutions and resources to finance war without the constant threat of bankruptcy and royal defaulting on debts, which was so characteristic of France. And the unique fiscal responsiveness of the British polity was secured through the self-​ taxation of the capitalist aristocracy and merchants, which passed laws in Parliament that made tax-​levels not only sustainable and tax-​collection effective, but also made both socio-​politically far less divisive compared with absolutist France. In short, the transformations in property and class relations throughout the 16th Century shaped the socio-​political conflicts during the revolutionary 17th Century between the British monarchy and the new capitalist agrarian aristocracy, leading to a transformation in public power, sealed in the Glorious Revolution. The events of 1688 and the period immediately following can be seen therefore to represent the victory of a program quite similar to that of 1641 and the

69 Wood, Pristine Culture of Capitalism. 70 Brewer, Sinews of Power, 58.

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establishment in power of an alliance of forces behind the program quite analogous to that of 1641  –​on the one hand, an anti-​absolutist, Protestant, and agrarian capitalist aristocracy favoring a strong state for international military and commercial power and for defense against the Catholic powers, and on the other hand, a dynamic maturing entrepreneurial merchant class, oriented toward making the most of the growing opportunities that could be derived from the long-​distance trades and an expanding colonial empire, as well as from war finance. One witnesses a revolution in foreign policy leading directly to war with France and, in turn, a resolution of many of the central conflicts that had agitated the polity for more than a century.71 The revolutionary conflicts had changed the position of Britain in the interstate system, forcing it to redefine and adapt its role to the wider strategic context. Blue-​water strategy, to recapitulate, was premised on a shift from dynastic to parliamentary foreign policy-​making and based, on the one hand, on power-​ balancing versus its rivals on the continent, a policy driven first and foremost by British security interests, and, on the other hand, on unlimited commercial and colonial expansion overseas. The Peace Treaties of Utrecht constituted the first international institutionalisation of Britain’s new grand strategy. Power balancing, with Britannia holding in her hand the scales, implied the disengagement from the continental dynastic game of territorial geopolitics with its endless wars of succession, political marriages and dynastic unions. With the Peace Treaty of Utrecht, Britain largely withdrew from direct territorial aspirations on the Continent and started to regulate the states-​system by means of rapidly changing alliances, with its monetary subsidies and mercenary expedition corps to smaller powers always ready to counter any emergent continental hegemony, usually, of course, French. Britain started to “drop out” of the practices of continental “Westphalian” geopolitics while steering it from offshore. Simultaneously, it built up its colonial empire overseas and rose to global hegemony by the end of the Seven Years’ War, a position fortified for another century by Waterloo and sealed by the Vienna Settlement. 7

Conclusion: from Peace to Grand Strategy

IR Theory, especially in its dominant (Neo-​)Realist variants, has long been characterised by a reluctance to systematically incorporate social and domestic determinations into its conceptualisations of the history of international 71 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 713.

154 Teschke relations. It keeps insisting on the sphere of inter-​state relations as a discrete and distinct object of inquiry, subject to its own systemic, repetitive, and timeless logic. These structuralist theoretical commitments render it profoundly a-​historical. This attitude even pertains to such phenomena as general peace congresses, which not only enacted reconfigured power-​political polarities of inter-​state orders, but also introduced new substantive principles for the conduct of international politics. Nonetheless, the Peace Treaties of Utrecht are read as yet another validation of Neo-​Realism’s retrodictive axiom that the anti-​French Grand Alliance merely restored an equilibrium, which Louis xiv’s expansionary policies had temporarily rendered out of kilter. Apart from that, nothing much had changed according to Neorealist reasoning. This materialistic interpretation, premised on merely quantitative power capacities and de-​socialised power politics as self-​evident truths, has generated its own idealistic responses, which restrict the analysis to the significance of norms and the self-​understandings of historically situated actors in the construction of historically specific rules of the game for the conduct of international politics. While this allows for a better historicisation of the significance of Utrecht in the development of the European international order, the English School and Constructivist interpretations largely abstract from the differentially constituted nature of the peace-​parties, their dissimilar power-​capacities, and their diverging foreign policy interests. Mainstream IR Theory aligns Utrecht with the recurring struggle for power in an anarchical interstate system, and norm-​ oriented interpretations stress the converging meta-​values and political cultures, which informed a consensus-​agenda at Utrecht, governed by law and institutions. These norms reflected the meta-​values of Old Regime Europe and while they were thus qualitatively distinct, they remained largely backward looking. In contrast, Schmitt and Schumpeter rightly insisted on emphasising Utrecht as a decisive relay point in the history of European inter-​state relations, even though Schmitt over-​simplified its rationale by grounding it in England’s unique geo-​elementary position, while Schumpeter’s expectations of capitalism’s generic pacific and anti-​imperialist foreign policy implications were wide off the mark.72

72

For a discussion of Schmitt’s wider international thought see Benno Teschke, “Fatal Attraction:  A Critique of Carl Schmitt’s International Political and Legal Theory”, International Theory, 3, no.  2 (2011):  179–​ 227; Benno Teschke, “Decisions and Indecisions:  Political and Intellectual Receptions of Carl Schmitt”, New Left Review, 67 (2011): 61–​95; Benno Teschke, “The Fetish of Geopolitics: Reply to Gopal Balakrishnan”, New Left Review, 69 (2011): 81–​100.

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This historical sociology of the origins of Britain’s new grand strategy understands the Peace Treaty of Utrecht  –​and the series of associated bilateral treaties  –​differently. The Peace Accords, after a victorious war and the Alliance-​undermining campaign of Bolingbroke’s pro-​French secret diplomacy, successfully enjoined socio-​politically and institutionally transformed British interests on the competing foreign policy orientations of qualitatively differentiated, but militarily and diplomatically weakened, actors: the mercantile Dutch Republic, and the French, Spanish and Austrian Old Regimes. The Settlement codified Britain’s rise to European pre-​eminence, institutionalised British blue-​water policy and power balancing, sealed the decline of Holland’s “Golden Age”, the dismemberment of Spain, the trimming to size of absolutist France, and the territorial adjustments of Habsburg Austria. The peace provisions also established a pro-​British commercial, maritime and colonial regime. 1713 enacted the foreign policy ambitions of an ascending capitalist-​ parliamentarian power, which came to geopolitically manage Continental Europe in sui generis ways without, until 1789, intentionally or un-​intentionally transforming the predominantly Old Regime constitutions of Europe’s major powers. Yet, even though British foreign policy making benefitted from an altered and privileged domestic structural context, it still required the skilful articulation and military-​diplomatic implementation of a grand strategy to translate structural conditions into determinate effects. This reveals Utrecht not so much as a peace treaty, but as part of a wider and specifically British strategic project for the novel management of geopolitical space and international politics –​the first in a series, which altered European political geography and international relations in qualitatively distinctive ways.

­c hapter 6

Public Debt, the Peace of Utrecht and the Rivalry between Company and State Sundhya Pahuja Abstract This chapter draws on the idiom of jurisdictional thinking to re-​describe the Peace of Utrecht, and the events leading up to it, in terms of the rivalry in the late 17th and early 18th centuries in England, between the sovereign-​territorial arrangements we now call the state, and commercial-​political groupings of merchants associated in the juridical form of the joint-​stock company. It suggests that in the context of this rivalry over public authority, the Peace of Utrecht marks a moment in which the practices of contest and relation between those rival actors, and their rival forms of associational life, can be seen to have been shaped and conducted through the new instrumentality of public debt. More precisely, it will suggest that the particular treaties of the Peace of Utrecht were, at least in one dimension, instruments by which borrower and creditor were brought together, or joined, and which shaped the way that relation –​and contest –​ travelled, and particularly moved ‘Southward’ for both Company and State.

1

Introduction

From the disciplinary perspective of international law, one way of approaching the Peace of Utrecht would be to locate it within a progressivist account of international law in which each successive Treaty of Peace over the last several hundred years may be understood as a step in the ongoing forward march of international law, and a peg in the map of its territorial expansion.1 Were we to tell the story that way, the Peace of Utrecht would be a bookend to the Peace of Westphalia, a secondary foundational moment in the formation of the modern international order. In that story, particular significance would reside in the 1 Professor of Law, University of Melbourne, Research Professor in Law, soas, University of London. I wish to thank Shaun McVeigh for his insightful feedback on the ideas contained within this chapter, in both substance and form, Jeremy Baskin for several clarifying conversations and Cait Storr for thorough research assistance.

 

  

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way the Peace of Utrecht could be said to have consolidated the religious settlement of 1648 and to have translated it into state territorial form. In methodological terms, such an account would tend to rehearse what Barkawi and Laffey have called ‘the archetypal gesture of Eurocentrism in the social sciences’, which is to identify a transition from the medieval to the modern state, and make it consciously or unconsciously, more or less a teleology for everywhere else.2 This is a gesture often rehearsed in disciplinary uses of history in international law which rely, either implicitly or explicitly, on a myth of origin and a narrative of progress in order to ground international law’s authority.3 This gesture was likely inaugurated in the late 19th century when self-​conscious ‘histories of international law’ emerged,4 along with notions of progress and universal history, particularly ‘the use of the idea of singular historical time to reorganise the dispersed geographies of modernity into stages of Europe’s past.’5 In jurisprudential terms, it is a move that tends to erase the law-​full quality of a plurality of encounters and replace them with a story of sociality –​whether subordinated or dominant –​and the emergence of (positive) legality, narrowly understood.6

2 3

4 5 6

See generally Tarak Barkawi and Mark Laffey, “The Postcolonial Moment in Security Studies,” Review of International Studies 32 (2006): 329–​352. See for example Antonio Cassesse, International Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 19–​45; and James Crawford (ed.) Brownlie’s Principles of International Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 8th ed, 2012), 2–​6. For a critical account of this gesture in relation to human rights, see Samuel Moyn, The Last Utopia:  Human Rights in History (usa: Presidents and Fellows of Harvard College, 2010). On alternative forms of historiography, see ‘Introduction’ in David Owen, Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morality (Montreal: McGill Queens University Press, 2007). Matthew Craven, “The Invention of a Tradition: Westlake, The Berlin Conference and the Historicisation of International Law” in Constructing International Law: The Birth of a Discipline, ed. L. Nuzzo and M. Vec, (Frankfurt am Main: Klosterman, 2012), 363–​403. For masterful account of the emergence of a singular historical time and its relationship to space, see Timothy Mitchell, “The Stage of Modernity” in Questions of Modernity, ed. Timothy Mitchell, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 1–​34, especially 9. J. Fisch, “Law as a Means and as an End. Some Remarks on the Function of European and Non-​European Law in the Process of European Expansion” in European Expansion and Law: The Encounter of European and Indigenous Law in 19th –​ and 20th-​Century Africa and Asia, ed. WJ Mommsen and JA de Moor (Oxford: Berg, 1991). Also Lauren Benton, Law and Colonial Cultures: Legal Regimes in World History 1400 -​1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Both texts cited in Koen Stapelbroek, “Trade, Chartered Companies and Mercantile Associations” in The Oxford Handbook on the History of International Law, ed. Bardo Fassbender and Anne Peters (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 338–​358. Also Francesco Maiolo, Medieval Sovereignty: Marsilius of Padua and Bartolus of Saxoferrato (Delft: Eburon, 2007); Sundhya Pahuja, “Laws of Encounter: a Jurisdictional Account of

158 Pahuja But offering an account of the Peace of Utrecht in the terms of a Eurocentric historiography of origins, in fact underplays its proper importance, and obscures its legacy for international law. In a slightly different register, the Peace of Utrecht may be understood as a key moment of encounter, not so much between rival monarchs vying for the Spanish crown and the global trading routes for which it was an avatar, but between what we may describe as the rival ‘jurisdictional forms’ of Company and State and a contest between them over the bases of a movement ‘Southward’, a rivalry which continues in some senses, to the present day. Looking at the Peace of Utrecht in this way draws it out of the shadow of Westphalia and offers a different kind of story about the work international law does in the world. It also invites us to reflect on the implications of the way we tell histories of international law for how we understand our inheritance as international lawyers.7 In this chapter, I  will draw on the idiom of jurisdictional thinking to re-​ describe the Peace of Utrecht, and the events leading up to it, in terms of the rivalry in the late 17th and early 18th centuries in England, between the sovereign-​territorial arrangements we now call the state, and commercial-​ political groupings of merchants associated in the juridical form of the joint-​ stock company. This rivalry is more complicated than one between two pre-​ existing entities called ‘company’ and ‘state’, or between an anachronistic designation of ‘public’ and ‘private’. Indeed, it may be understood as a rivalry in terms of the exercise of public authority.8 I will suggest that in the context of this rivalry over public authority, the Peace of Utrecht marks a moment in which the practices of contest and relation between those rival actors, and their rival forms of associational life, can be seen to have been shaped and conducted through the new instrumentality of public debt. More precisely, I will suggest that the particular treaties of the Peace of Utrecht were, at least in one dimension, instruments by which borrower and creditor were brought together, or joined, 9 and which shaped the way that relation –​and contest –​ travelled, and particularly moved ‘Southward’ for both Company and State.

7 8 9

International Law,” London Review of International Law 1(1) (2013): 63 -​98; and Rose Parfitt, “The Spectre of Sources,” European Journal of International Law 25(1) (2014): 297–​306. On the question of the inheritance in the context of international law, see Adil Khan, “The Task of Inheritance in International Law” (paper presented at the Harvard Institute for Global Law and Policy Workshop, Doha, Qatar, January 2014, copy on file with author). Shaunnagh Dorsett and Shaun McVeigh, ‘Matters of Public Consequence:  Jurisdiction and Forms of Authority’ (paper presented at “Law As… III” Legal History Symposium, UC Irvine, February 2014, copy on file with the author). To paraphrase Braddick, in the story of state formation in early modern England, the fate of government was closely connected with the development of private finance, in both the instruments of public credit and the institutional means for bringing borrower and

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159

Orienting Ourselves by Jurisdiction10

‘Jurisdictional thinking’ is an orientation toward jurisprudence which invites us to attend to the question of authority and its exercise as a matter of practice, rather than as a question of legitimacy. Etymologically, ‘authority’ invokes invention, origination and authorship, as well as power, expertise and right. In approaching authority as a practical matter, we need to pay attention to the speaking of the law, juris-​dictio, not only as the articulation of authoritative pronouncements, or statements of ‘law’, but as a practice which simultaneously implies, invokes or relies on a right to decide what the basis of that authority –​ or ‘law’ –​ is. Thus, although ‘juris-​diction’ does idiomatically suggest speaking the law, ‘…it is not so much a discourse, not so much a statement of the law, but a site or space of enunciation. It refers first and foremost to the power and authority to speak in the name of law and only subsequently to the fact that the law is stated –​and stated to be something or someone.’11 As Goodrich succinctly puts it, ‘(j)urisdiction precedes the law’.12 To orient oneself through jurisdiction is therefore to give primacy to how the authorisation of lawful relations takes place. The ‘how’ directs our attention to what people do, or in other words, to the practices, or practical question of authority. In approaching the Peace of Utrecht in this way, the story is slowed down to invite us to linger in the ‘site or space of enunciation’ in which authority takes shape and is set into motion. In moving slowly, we can pay attention to how lawful relations take place: or put more formally, to the manner and mode of the authorisation of lawful or legal relations, and to the technical forms, idioms and institutions through which something is produced13 (such as the company, currency, or the state) and through which relations in particular terms are both created and conducted. For international lawyers, jurisdictional thinking alters the usual way of thinking about law. In the technical idiom of international law, jurisdiction

10 11 12 13

creditor together. Michael J.  Braddick, State Formation in Early Modern England c. 1550 -​ 1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 268. This section is based on an earlier piece which also tries to orient itself by thinking jurisdictionally, in relation to a conflict between local communities, mining companies and the state in north-​eastern India. See Pahuja, “Laws of Encounter”, 63–​98. Peter Rush, “An Altered Jurisdiction:  Corporeal Traces of Law,” Griffith Law Review 6 (1998): 150. Peter Goodrich, “Visive Powers:  Colours, Trees and Genres of Jurisdiction,” Law and Humanities 2 (2008): 227. Shaunnagh Dorsett and Shaun McVeigh, Jurisdiction (Oxford: Routledge, 2012), 4–​6.

160 Pahuja is an exercise of sovereignty, and sovereignty is an attribute of the state.14 In doctrinal terms, territory comes first in the form of the state, then comes sovereignty, which is said to flow from statehood,15 and then comes jurisdiction, understood as the rightful authority to speak the law. For most international lawyers, jurisdiction is therefore a technical question concerned with whether a particular sovereign-​state, or any judicial or quasi-​judicial body constituted according to international law, can exercise legal authority over a territory, dispute, person or issue. In this kind of approach, jurisdiction comes after sovereignty, and both territory and population are givens. But from another point of view, sovereignty is a practice of jurisdiction. In this way of thinking, jurisdiction comes before sovereignty. Sovereignty is demystified, and understood as an historically specific collection of practices through which authority is exercised, and in which the categories of ‘territory’ and ‘population’ are particular forms into which life is shaped through techniques of administration. In both ways of thinking, jurisdiction is concerned with law’s enunciation –​or the authority to speak the law. But thinking which places sovereignty first is concerned with rightful or legitimate authority, whereas jurisdictional thinking allows us to be agnostic about the normative basis on which the claim to authority rests. Its primary concern is with how –​ the ways in which, the practices by which, and the technical means by which –​ that authority is exercised and lawful relations are conducted. These include the practices of authorisation and assertion themselves, or the ways in which authority is claimed. It also includes the idioms of law, the forms through which things are organised and the way relations are shaped or instituted in terrains that are usually uneven, already full of other people’s claims of belonging, ownership, authority and law. Practice is of primary importance in this formulation. Because, ‘although we have become used to the representation of the authority of the sovereign, and of law, as abstract and virtual, […] as a matter of right represented as rule or principle’,16 that authority requires actualisation in material form. A seemingly abstract sovereignty is materialised through the craft of law and the practices of jurisdiction which  –​‘through institutions, actively work to produce

14

15 16

James Crawford, “Uses of ‘Sovereignty’ in the Law” in The Cambridge Companion to International Law, ed. James Crawford and Martti Koskenniemi (with Surabhi Ranganathan) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 117; also James Crawford, The Creation of States in International Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2nd ed., 2006), 32. James Crawford, “Uses of ‘Sovereignty’ in the Law”, 118. Dorsett and McVeigh, Jurisdiction, 5.

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something’.17 Seeing sovereignty in this light invites us to ask questions about how state is actualised, and how rival forms and accounts of political authority and ways of belonging to law are enacted and performed over the same people and the same places at the same time. In historical terms, in order to look back without presupposing legal forms, such as statehood or sovereignty, we need to hold onto such questions, of practice, technique and the way life is given shape, or authored, through such practices. The question of practices of authority allows us to be agnostic about the claim of one law rightfully to be ‘law’, attending to the writing of law and the writing of history at the same time and to the encounters between rival traditions of law and lawfulness. In contrast, approaching authority as a question of legitimacy confines us to the normativity of one tradition or family of traditions, inviting a consideration of the history of a ‘law’ whose meaning is assured. To paraphrase Benton and Ross, the study of jurisdictional practices does not depend on a general definition of law. Nor does it demand delineations in terms of state and non-​state law. The jurisdictional claims of a wide range of authorities can be studied, ‘without their being defined neatly as public or private.’ This is an approach which ‘invites historical analysis because it becomes possible to analyze structural shifts propelled’ by the practices of authority and authorization of jurisdictional rivals, as well as of ‘parties to jurisdictional conflicts.’18 The Peace of Utrecht is a moment which repays such analysis. 3

The Peace of Utrecht

The ‘Peace of Utrecht’ refers to a series of agreements that concluded the Spanish Wars of Succession: twenty-​three treaties in all, signed between January 1713 and February 1715, as well as the treaty between Austria and Spain in 1725.19 Their complexity was succinctly encapsulated by Charles Mordaunt, earl of Peterborough, who remarked at the time that the Peace of Utrecht

17 18 19

Dorsett and McVeigh, Jurisdiction, 5. See also Robert Cover, “Violence and the Word,” Yale Law Journal 95 (1986): 1601. Lauren Benton and Richard J.  Ross (eds.) Legal Pluralism and Empires, 1500–​1850 (New York and London: New York University Press, 2013), 6. See the annotated index of archival and secondary sources at Oxford University Press Bibliographies, available at http://​www.oxfordbibliographies.com/​view/​document/​obo-​ 9780199743292/​obo-​9780199743292-​0101.xml.

162 Pahuja was ‘like the Peace of God, beyond human understanding.’20 The treaties were concluded between multiple rulers, and include treaties of Peace and Friendship and Navigation and Commerce, as well as the Barrier treaty,21 treaties of Alliance and ‘Peace’ treaties tout court.22 The twenty-​three treaties usually included in the list are not the only treaties made during the relevant period which related to the issues at play, and there are many overlapping treaties of commerce for example, both between the parties to the Peace (in relation to specific goods for instance), as well as between, for example, Spain and the East India Company.23 At the time of the Peace of Utrecht, the state was not well formed. It was one of several forms of associational life each of which linked authority, community and place in different ways. Other forms of associational life (and law) included city-​leagues and city states, the Church, Pirates, Companies of Merchants, Borough Corporations like the City of London, Guilds, Communities of Belief, Guilds and so on.24 It is clear that the state was a body of people united in some way, or a ‘corporate form’, and one which came later than many others. Collinson has described these self-​governing political cultures in early modern England as ‘republics’, though ‘always in quotes’; the village republics, the gentry republics, and the Borough corporations for example.25 Among these forms were also ‘joint stock’ companies, entities owned by shareholders. From an English perspective, the Peace of Utrecht and the wars which preceded it had a special relationship to the three most important joint-​stock 20

Charles Mordaunt, third Earl of Peterborough, quoted in A. D. Machlachan, “The Road to Peace” in Britain after the Glorious Revolution, 1689–​1714, ed. Geoffrey Holmes (London: Macmillan, 1969), as cited in Linda Frey and Marsha Frey, Treaties of the War of the Spanish Succession: An Historical and Critical Dictionary (usa:  Greenwood Press, 1995), xiii. 21 The Barrier treaty between Great Britain, the Holy Roman Empire and the Netherlands was signed in Antwerp on 15 November 1715 and, like previous versions, was an ultimately ineffectual attempt to provide Holland with a defensible barrier against France. See John Earl I  Russell, Memoirs of the Affairs of Europe from the Peace of Utrecht (London: John Murray, 1826), 457. 22 Frey and Frey, Treaties of the War of the Spanish Succession, 501–​508. 23 Frey and Frey, Treaties of the War of the Spanish Succession, 506. 24 Hendrick Spruyt, The Sovereign State and its Competitors (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), especially 153–​154. 25 Patrick Collinson, De Republica Anglorum; or, History with the Politics Put Back (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1990)  as quoted in Phil Withington, “Public Discourse, Corporate Citizenship, and State Formation in Early Modern England,” The American Historical Review 112(4) (2007):  1025. See also Catherine Patterson, “Quo Warranto and Borough Corporations in Early Stuart England: Royal Prerogative and Local Privileges in the Central Courts,” English Historical Review 120(488) (2005): 879–​906.

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companies of early 18th century England: the (English) East India Company, the South Sea Company and the Bank of England, as well as with the Hudson Bay Company, which governed ‘Rupert’s Land’, a territory which comprises part of present day Canada and some of the United States.26 Although it is common to assume from the vantage point of the present day, that early modern companies were creatures of state law, that assumption would be difficult to sustain. Far from being children of the state, companies of various kinds pre-​date the state.27 As forms of associational life,28 they were commercial, political and personal29 and overlapped with other self-​governing communities. Although almost invariably read retrospectively as describing either fact or extant law, contemporary theorists of the period as well as those coming later who asserted that companies were creatures of positive law, were engaged in a polemical project conducted in the context of a rivalrous engagement. Essentially they were writing normative theory to justify, or retrospectively explain state authority.30 As the state emerged, various techniques were engaged to explain its authority as resting above that of its progenitors, even when the historical facts revealed otherwise. Examples include the doctrine of ‘tacit’ consent, by which the king could be said to have ‘consented’ to customs and laws about which he knew nothing, in order to preserve the fiction that custom gained force from the authority of the Prince.31 These devices approached and managed the historical fact of a plurality of jurisdictions through a posture of pluralism, a normative orientation toward that plurality.32

26

27

28 29 30 31 32

Rupert’s Land covered what we now call Manitoba (all of it), most of Saskatchewan, southern Alberta, southern Nunavut, and northern parts of Ontario and Quebec (all in Canada), as well as parts of Minnesota and North Dakota and very small parts of Montana and South Dakota (in the US). ‘(E)ven Bodin recognized that different forms of corporation predated the state and was never quite clear on how or why the sovereign came to be superior to them.’ From Phillip J. Stern, “ ‘Bundles of Hyphens’: Corporations as Legal Communities in the Early Modern British Empire” in Benton and Ross, Legal Pluralism and Empires, 24. See generally David Runciman and Magnus Ryan (eds.), Maitland:  State, Trust and Corporation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). See generally Antony Black (ed.), Otto von Gierke:  Community in Historical Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). Stern, “ ‘Bundles of Hyphens’ ”, 115. Also Black, Otto von Gierke, cf Johannes Althusius, Politica, trans. Frederick S. Carney (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2010). See discussion of Francisco Suárez in Stern, “ ‘Bundles of Hyphens’ ”, 117–​118. A similar observation about plurality and pluralism is made by Paul D. Halliday in “Laws’ Histories:  Pluralisms, Pluralities, Diversity” in Benton and Ross, Legal Pluralism and Empires, 262–​263.

164 Pahuja Of the various kinds of company, the joint-​stock company likely descended from the Medieval Guilds.33 ‘Joint-​stock’ meant that investors had grouped together and contributed capital to the ventures of the company in varying proportions, which proportions were reflected in their ‘share’ of the ownership of the company and which were discrete economic assets.34 Company shares could be traded freely on the early ‘stock’ exchanges.35 Although merchants could, and did, band together as a company without external authorization, in order to be ‘incorporated’, the company needed a charter. At the time, there were no general laws of incorporation, so in order to be ‘incorporated’, a company needed a distinct political act performed in its favour by either the monarch or legislature. Chartered companies enjoyed special rights and powers, and in return, provided loans and other kinds of support –​including political support –​to the nascent state.36 Contrary to accounts which describe charters as bringing companies into being, or creating them it would probably be more accurate to describe the Charters as a way of joining existent associations of merchants to monarch and state through the grant of status, and certain protections, or ‘rights’. These included monopoly rights which purported to keep out ‘poorer, badly connected traders so as to restrict the numbers participating in the trade; it was, especially, to prevent entry into the overseas commerce by the City’s shopkeepers, small producers and ships captains, whatever their wealth.’ Depending on the Crown in this way ‘united the generality of company merchants in defense of privilege, and, all else being equal, in support of the royal government, which was, of course, the guarantor of their protected status.’37 Such grants of status, and of rights such as monopoly rights, were not uncontroversial. Indeed, they were heavily contested including contestation around whether it was in the King’s prerogative to grant a trading monopoly, whether it should rather be King and Parliament, or indeed, whether such purported grants were valid at all.38 33 34

Stern, “ ‘Bundles of Hyphens’ ”, 23. Bruce G.  Carruthers, City of Capital:  Political and Markets in the English Financial Revolution (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 138; and K. N. Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilization in the Indian Ocean (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 95. 35 Carruthers, City of Capital, 137. 36 See generally, Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution:  Commercial Change, Political Conflict, and London’s Overseas Traders, 1550–​1653 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). 37 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 83. 38 See for example the case of East India Company v Sandys (1682), which became known as the ‘Great Case of Monopolies’. The East India Company brought a case against Thomas Sandys, an independent trader who had prepared a ship for commercial trade in the East Indies. The Company argued that its monopoly on East Indies trade as granted by royal

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The time of the Peace of Utrecht was also the time of the emergence in England of the political party.39 Since the “glorious revolution” of 1688, the King had shared power with a Parliament and by the end of the 1670’s, two groupings of members  –​or political ‘parties’  –​had emerged, the ‘Whigs’ and the ‘Tories’. The Whigs and the Tories were generally allied respectively with two different branches of the English elite. The Tories were the traditional ‘landed’ elite, while the Whigs were the new and growing ‘monied’ elite.40 Competition between the Whigs and the Tories accordingly mirrored the conflict between the landed and Mercantile elites. 41 In the context of the wars of Spanish Succession, William of Orange was struggling to bring this relatively new institution of Parliament around to his views on something like what we would now think of as ‘Foreign Policy’, and in particular the need to contain the French threat. The landed elites especially, had been taxed heavily on their lands to fund the Nine Years War from 1688–​97. After the Treaty of Ryswick in 1698, they insisted on disbanding the standing army,42 and the appetite for another conflict was low. Thus, because expenditures exceeded the tax revenues which could be generated by the King, borrowing was needed to fill the breach.43 The old style prerogative was necessary for reasons of state to effectively manage the risks posed by long distance maritime commerce. Sandys argued against the Company’s monopoly citing, inter alia, the ‘high seas principle’ of liberty to trade –​a principle the Company itself had previously used against the Dutch and the Portuguese, and that the Parliament had endorsed in various anti-​monopoly statutes. The King’s Bench decided in favour of the East India Company. See also Thomas Poole, “Reason of State:  Whose Reason? Which Reason?”, lse Law, Society and Economy Working Papers 1/​2013, available at http://​ www.lse.ac.uk/​collections/​law/​wps/​WPS2013-​01_​Poole.pdf. 39 See Brendan Simms, Three Victories and a Defeat:  The Rise and Fall of the First British Empire (London: Penguin, 2007) especially 44–​76. 40 Carruthers, City of Capital, 10. 41 Carruthers, City of Capital, 10. There is obviously a religious layer to this story, and most of the people in the companies were dissenters and non-​conformists (meaning protestant but not supportive of the Church of England). This is a dimension of the story not dealt with in this chapter. 42 The landed elites also believed that a large military on a permanent footing posed the danger of accentuating the tendency of despotism of the executive. 43 As Braudel indicates, expenditure exceeded tax revenue because of ongoing military adventure, the changing nature of warfare and the increasing activity of the state around pre-​existing social structures. Fernand Braudel, Civilisation and Commerce in the 15th –​ 18th Century, Volume 2: The Wheels of Commerce (New York, Harper & Row, 1983), 519. As Spruyt cautions, the significance of warfare as an historiographical variable can be overstated, noting that changes in institutional and administrative structure also played a determinative role during this period of European history. See Spruyt, The Sovereign State and its Competitors, 155–​158.

166 Pahuja of short term lending from the goldsmith-​bankers (for example) was not sufficient to satisfy the government’s growing need for money, and on a bigger scale and longer term, which became particularly evident in the conduct of the Nine Years War (which ended in 1697).44 The landed elites were increasingly hostile to further (land based) taxation to fund the prosecution of wars, the merits of which they were not always convinced. And so in around 1694, a group of wealthy merchants got together and proposed a joint-​stock company which would attract subscriptions from the public and lend the money raised to the government for a longish term, at a reasonable rate of interest. The two principal innovations of the structure of the arrangement were first, that the debt was to be owed by the state, and not personally by the King, and secondly, that it was to be secured against certain tax revenues.45 These innovations mark what we may call the birth of ‘public finance’, a moment which scholars have described as the birth of finance itself, in that the invention of finance is the invention of public finance. This company was called The Bank of England. The merchants who formed this company were distinctly ‘Whiggish’ and although the Bank was established by Parliamentary Act in 169446 it was surrounded by controversy on all sides. Because Parliament feared what might happen if the King could access a separate source of money, the Act was amended in the Commons to prevent the new Bank from lending money to the Crown without parliamentary consent. The Tories opposed it on the grounds that banks ‘were only suitable for republics’, and would undermine royal authority.47 The land-​ owning elites were also worried that the establishment of a bank would monopolize capital and make it harder to obtain mortgages for landowners. The controversy surrounding the establishment of the Bank also included earlier rivalry between the nascent Bank, and the (English) East India Company, which had itself tried to lend six hundred thousand pounds to the government –​free of interest –​in order to obtain a parliamentary charter, which it hoped would put an end to challenges to the authoritativeness of the chartered monopoly it had received from the King.48 But that offer was rejected by 44 Carruthers, City of Capital, 68–​70; also John Clapham, The Bank of England: A History, Volume I  1694–​1797 (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1970), 210–​213; and Richard Roberts and David Kynaston (eds.), The Bank of England:  Money Power and Influence 1694–​1994 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 9–​11. 45 Michael J.  Braddick (2000) State Formation in Early Modern England c.  1550 -​1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 266–​267. 46 Bank of England Act 1694, 5 & 6 Will and Mar, c 20. 47 Carruthers, City of Capital, 140. 48 See East India Company v Sandys (1682), as discussed in Thomas Poole, “Reason of State”, 11–​13.

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the Commons because the East India Company’s opponents said they could raise even more money –​through the Bank of England. The initial offering of the Bank stock sold well, and the Bank was successfully established in 1694. And yet opposition –​and rivalry –​continued. The Goldsmith bankers tried to undermine the bank, first by refusing to accept its notes, and then by organizing a run, and the Tories tried –​unsuccessfully –​to set up a rival ‘Land Bank’, which although it did receive an enabling act, failed, for various reasons, to attract subscriptions from the public. By 1697, the Bank of England had absorbed a number of short-​term government obligations in exchange for monopoly privileges.49 Its old Tory rival, the (Old) eic also organized a run on the Bank in 1701, which the Bank successfully defended. And so even by the time of the War of Spanish Succession, which began in 1702 (by which time Queen Anne was on the throne) the distinctly Whiggish Bank of England was still under attack from its rivals. The contest came to something of a head when Queen Anne reconfigured her ministry from Whigs to Tories in 1710, while the war was still going on.50 The attitude to the conduct of the war and the perception of its proper purposes shifted from the Whiggish strategy focused on Europe and centred on limiting the French pretensions to Universal Monarchy, to the Tory strategy of overseas expansion, naval activism, and securing the North American colonies. But a Tory ministry did not sit comfortably with a Whiggish bank, and in 1711, a rival financial company was created to raise funds for what we now think of as ‘public debt.’ Created by promoting the exchange of the once again proliferating short term debts for shares in the company (effectively a debt for equity swap), the South Sea Company, and its banker, the misleadingly named Hollow Blade Sword Company, became the rival financier to the government. Because it was described as a trading company, and set up to be a finance company, the South Sea Company was the target of objection from both the East India Company and the Bank of England. Both companies successfully fought for limitation clauses to be inserted into the charter of the South Sea company, (which were granted to avoid antagonizing the ‘monied interest’), but the Charter specified that the directors of the company were to be appointed by the Queen (in effect, her ministry) to make sure that the Whigs could not take control of the new company. When the Peace of Utrecht gave to Britain the Asiento –​including the monopoly right to provide slaves to the Spanish

49 Carruthers, City of Capital, 142. 50 Simms, Three Victories and a Defeat, 58.

168 Pahuja colonies in South America –​it was awarded by Queen Anne to the South Sea Company. But despite this monopoly right, the conversion of the national debt, and the legislation initiated by the South Sea Company and introduced into the House of Commons to limit alternative outlets for investment51 the South Sea Company was ultimately unprofitable and could not wrest from the Bank of England, the capacity to finance public debt, nor defeat the Whiggish dominance of finance. What remains interesting from the point of view of practices of jurisdiction –​practices which both state the law and claim the authority to decide what ‘law’ is –​is the way in which the treaties of the Peace of Utrecht may be seen to have functioned as the technical means by which Company and State were brought into a particular kind of relation. The treaty is therefore a complementary technology to debt ‘at home’, which together crafted and authorized the manner in which Company and State travelled ‘Southward’ together. A similar phenomenon can be observed, and characterization offered, in relation to the Hudson Bay Company which was also the subject of treaties at the Peace of Utrecht.52 So, when we revisit The Peace of Utrecht and its preceding wars, what emerges according to one way of looking at things is part of a progressivist account of state formation, albeit a corrective to the standard story. What we see in particular is the possibility that the market of financial capital was key to the emergence and consolidation of the state because of the way it bound elites –​ and rivalrous elites at that –​to the emerging entity of the state through the mutually vested interest of creditor and debtor. In other words, it starts to look as though (not only does the market need the state (as Marx and Polanyi knew well, and the institutional economists discovered again some while later), but that historically, the financial capital market and the state were mutually constitutive. In this story, the British state which ‘emerged’ from the Peace and its preceding wars was ‘the state ready for commerce and war’ as Britain at the beginning of the 18th century is often described. According to this story, both 51

52

This last was the purpose of the often misunderstood Bubble Act of 1720. Often explained in terms of a cautionary, but too late reaction to the investment bubble created by South Sea company shares, the Act was in fact passed before the bubble and initiated by the Company itself to limit the possibilities for others to form joint stock companies. See Ron Harris, “The Bubble Act: Its Passage and Its Effects on Business Organisation,” The Journal of Economic History 54(3) (1994): 610–​627. See generally E.E. Rich, “The Hudson’s Bay Company and the Treaty of Utrecht,” The Cambridge Historical Journal 11(2) (1954): 183–​203. Also Edward Cavanagh, “A Company with Sovereignty and Subjects of Its Own? The Case of the Hudson’s Bay Company 1670–​ 1763,” Canadian Journal of Law and Society 26(1) (2011): 25–​50.

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before, but increasingly after the Battle of Plassey in 1757 when the East India Company took over from the Mughal empire, the Diwani, or right to collect taxes, companies abroad were ‘sovereign agents’ of the emerging state. When the company exercised political authority, they were said to be exercising something like ‘sovereignty’. Together, company and state are seen as united in an ever intensifying project of imperialism, and the movement South of the sovereign territorial state, a form which then becomes absolutely dominant in the story of both imperialism, and its twentieth century heir, development. But at another level, that story doesn’t tell us enough about authority, the way authorization happens, and the world that is both authored and authorized in the name of law, because it looks back and presupposes legal form. Another way of understanding the story is to see rivalries of authority, including practices of public authority, in which the forms of contest are created and conducted by and through indebtedness and shaped through instruments of public debt. These are rivalries which in important senses, have never really settled down, or ended. If we look at the story with this slightly different emphasis –​an emphasis on legal form and practices of authorization in the name of law –​things may be highlighted which are missed by seeing the story simply as one of state formation. In terms of the imperialism which follows, for example, what we see is not so much the inexorable movement of the sovereign territorial state, and its legal extraversion, public international law, but different groups of people moving South in different ways, for different reasons, and with different justifications for their own authority. In this movement, questions of legal and juridical form are engaged at all points. In this way, the South is not one place, and nor is the North. And international law may be experienced not only a particular law with universal pretensions, but as an honorable law of encounter, obviously from a particular tradition, but by which different people can lawfully meet. 4

Conclusion: Reflections on Reading Slowly

At least since the declaration of the ‘End of History’,53 it has become a commonplace that understanding international law requires an appreciation of its history, and both legal scholars and historians have developed a welcome 53

I refer here of course to the thesis popularised by Fukuyama, that the West ‘won’ the Cold War, and that the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the putative victory of liberal capitalism brought an end to ‘history’ in the (rough) sense of the dialectical struggle between competing ideologies. See Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (London: Penguin, 1993). It is a question as yet unexplored, as to whether it is just

170 Pahuja appetite for critically rethinking the history of international law.54 In keeping with disciplinary developments (in history more than law), work at the vanguard is not the usual ‘transitional’ history which describes a linear progression toward an ever more perfect future, but the critical or unofficial history which is attentive to power, as well as to the production of historical knowledge as it tries to understand the past.55 But those at the critical vanguard of scholarship on international law and history are yet divided along at least one methodological line of significance. The division lies in how the category of ‘law’, international or otherwise, is understood and treated in methodological terms. One approach works within the inheritance of occidental modernity, and modern law, and accepts a definition for law that relies broadly on traditions of (legal) positivism. Although from the perspective of legal theory positivism is highly variegated, such conceptions of law implicitly accept for law and legality a particular meaning, defined by validity and traceable back to the state in some way. Another approach starts from a position agnostic to the normative claim of positive (state based) law rightfully to be ‘law’, and instead treats that law, both domestic and international, as a parochial rather than universal practice of authorization, specific to places, practices and people. This practice of authorization may be called ‘jurisdiction’ because it claims not only to speak the law, but also to decide what ‘law’ is.56 There are various reasons, conscious or unconscious, as to why a person would take as given, a positivist account of law. It is the necessary posture of the doctrinal lawyer, policy maker, practitioner, and a common one for legal theorists. This often remains true even when ‘law’ is the subject of critique, or is ‘pluralised’ by being depicted as rubbing shoulders with other normative regimes.57 But in the context of histories of (international) law, the ‘given-​ness’,

54 55 56 57

a matter of coincidence that the end of the Cold War coincided with a marked turn to (critical) history in the discipline of international law. For just one survey of the literature, though characteristically masterful, see Martti Koskeniemmi “Histories of International Law:  Significance and Problems for a Critical Review,” Temple International and Comparative Law Journal 27(2) (2013), 215–​240. Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). Rush, “An Altered Jurisdiction”, 150; and generally Dorsett and McVeigh, Jurisdiction. I am drawing a distinction here between pluralism and plurality, which was mentioned above. For an essay which engages with the question of the difference between critical histories which are yet implicitly positivistic and critical histories which are agnostic to the normative claims of positive law, see Halliday, “Laws’ Histories”, 261–​277. See also a meditation to this effect in ‘Introduction’ to Benton and Ross, from 4.

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or non-​problematisation of a particular definition for law means either that its normativity is accepted as a matter of choice, or is understood implicitly as having been formed or ‘fixed’ at some point outside the time or place of the history being told. Once the question of the rightful meaning of law is fixed outside the time-​space of the particular ‘legal history’ being told, and that rightful law is state law (in its internal or external aspect), the normative and descriptive aspects of occidental legality collapse into one, and a progressivist historiography is smuggled into jurisprudence.58 In this way, international law appears as the law of humanity, and the history of state formation tends to become a teleology for the rest of the world. On the other hand, approaches to law and history which we may think of as ‘jurisdictional’, regard modern law as a set of practices of authorization which are not fixed, final or settled, but ongoing, and always encountering other –​ often rival –​practices of authorization.59 Paying attention to legal or juridical form –​or to what we should properly call ‘jurisdictional’ form to denote practices of authority which both speak the law and claim to decide what law ‘is’ –​allows us to take up a position agnostic to the normative claim of positive (state based) law rightfully to be ‘law’, and treats that law (both domestic and international) instead as a parochial (rather than universal) practice of authorization, specific to places, practices and people. Such approaches ‘allow the possibility for lawfulness to exist independently from legality narrowly understood.’60 Putting a wedge between lawfulness in general, and ‘legality’, or state law in particular, enables us to see state formation as an ongoing and contested project, and better to resist its tendency to become a teleology for the rest of the world.61 We may need to continue to think in this second way if we seek to avoid historically anachronistic understandings of law and lawfulness which work within the inheritance of occidental modernity, and modern law, and accept a definition for law that relies broadly on traditions of positivism, which although highly variegated, always takes us back to the state in some way. A jurisdictional orientation also allows us to ‘provincialise’ international law,62 and to see it not as a ‘universal’ law fixed forever, either at the moment of Empire 58

See also Sundhya Pahuja, Decolonising International Law: Development, Economic Growth and the Politics of Universality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), especially 176–​185. 59 Pahuja, “Laws of Encounter”, 63–​98. 60 Maiolo, Medieval Sovereignty, 36. This is a different move to the acknowledgment of international law’s ‘Eurocentrism’ which can sometimes reveal yet repeat it through an acceptance of international law’s claim to legality. 61 Barkawi and Laffey, “The Postcolonial Turn in Security Studies”. 62 Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe.

172 Pahuja or its end, but instead as a particular or parochial law of encounter, which displaces other laws of encounter and relation as it moves.63 The practices of contest, relation and movement made visible when we slow down our reading of the Peace of Utrecht, are an important part of the story of the ongoing encounters that we tend now to subsume under the blanket of international law, and that we fold into the political/​moral categories of North and South. Gaining a sense of those rival forms of authority, the techniques by which they were arranged, the means by which Company and State were joined together as creditor and debtor in the exercise of public authority, and the way in which the treaties of the Peace of Utrecht shaped a movement of that relation Southward, may encourage us to slow down our understandings of certain aspects of international law in the present day. Re-​describing the Peace of Utrecht in this way invites us to reflect upon treaties, for example, as neither contractual agreements between sovereign equals, nor constitutions for a universal humanity. By paying close attention to legal form, we may perhaps make visible, their quality as instruments through which people (including associations of people like corporations and states) are joined in particular ways, and through which particular kinds of conduct are initiated and authorized both to take place, and to travel (as ‘foreign investment’, for example). Slowing down our thinking in this regard seems to have implications for three distinctly pressing questions today. Those questions include how we are to understand the modern corporation and its troubled relationship to state authority, how we are to think of investment treaties and the rights accorded to foreign corporations vis à vis something we call ‘sovereignty’, and what work debt may do in shaping international relations. My point has not been to suggest that there are any unbroken lines of continuity between early modern practices and the present day, nor in this chapter to offer a genealogy of public debt, foreign investment or the history of the Company in international law.64 Instead, my goal here has been simply to consider what we may understand differently when we pay close attention to how people lawfully meet, the techniques by which they are joined or brought into relation, and the practices through which things are initiated, authorized, shaped and travel. 63 See generally Pahuja, “Laws of Encounter”, 63–​98; and Dorsett and McVeigh, Jurisdiction. 64 David Owen,  ‘Genealogy’ in Encyclopaedia of Political Theory, ed.  Mark Bevir (London: Sage, 2010), 549–​551.

pa rt 3 The Peace of Utrecht: Ideas and Ideals; the Development of the International Legal Order

∵

­c hapter 7

Peace of Utrecht (1713) and the “Crisis of European Conscience” Martti Koskenniemi Abstract This chapter examines some of the contradictions and conflicts in 18th century international politics and political thought. It opposes the Christian pacifism of Fénelon with the Hobbersian realism of the Abbé de Saint-​Pierre and the ideologies behind the pragmatic comprise that was the balance of power. It contrasts the development of the Public Law of Europe with the commercial spirit and the spread of ideas of “liberty” in the (British) colonies with expanding slave trade across the Atlantic Ocean. Overcoming the “crisis of European conscience” meant learning to live with belief in contradictory things.



1

There is something of a discrepancy between the consciousness of European intellectuals, thinking and writing about peace and public order in the century opened by the Wars of Spanish Succession (1701–​1713) –​and the globalization of the system of political and economic relations that came to enshrine European predominance over the rest of the world. It is as if the legal and political vocabularies of 1713 would have been unable to give expression of some change in the conditions in which peace, war and economic and social progress would henceforth take place. European diplomats and jurists spoke peace –​and there would be war throughout the century. They celebrated the balance of power –​just while the greatest commercial-​military empire since Rome was being formed. They were deliberating what they called the Droit public de l’Europe –​European public law –​while events of the greatest significance concerned not Europe but the colonies. And they spoke endlessly of liberty –​while the century saw over 6 Million Africans taken to slavery across the Atlantic. No doubt the Belgian historian Paul Hazard was right to characterize the turn of the eighteenth century in terms of a “crisis of European

 

  

176 Koskenniemi conscience”.1 This was visible in the discrepancy –​decalage –​between the way Europeans were speaking and perhaps also thinking, and what was going on in the world. Peace and war, balance and empire, Europe and the colonies; liberty and slavery. From now on, they would be incapable of breaching the gap between the world of their imagination and the conditions of their existence.

2

During the War of Spanish Succession France was on the brink of collapse. The countryside had been abandoned and bad harvests had created widespread famine in the countryside while the emergence of an anti-​French coalition contributed to fear and dissatisfaction in Paris. A  privileged observer, Archbishop Fénelon (1651–​1715), the preceptor of the royal princes at Versailles, was desperate about his king’s indifference towards the suffering of the population, the uses of glory and vengeance as motives of war: “une guerre injuste n’en est pas moins injuste pour être heureuse”.2 Fénelon suggested to his royal students adherence to “common rules of justice and humanity”, faithfulness and modesty in public and private life and the prohibition of morally dangerous trade of “luxuries”.3 In his most famous work, The Adventures of Telemachus, Son of Ulysses (1699) Fénelon celebrated ancient virtues as the proper directions to govern France, moral strength, modesty, love of truth and justice, keeping one’s word even to one’s enemies and following the laws of war and humanity.4 He completely rejected the separation of private and public morality that had accompanied the doctrine of arcana imperii.5 What was needed was moral leadership under a king that would educate the country in peacefulness and virtue; economic resources, for example, ought to be oriented towards flourishing agriculture and not wasted in superfluities.6 A State that would grow prosperous 1 Paul Hazard, Le crise de la conscience europeenne1680–​1715 (Paris, Livre de Poche, 1994 [1935]). 2 Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-​Fénelon, ‘Lettre à Louis XIV’, in Lettre à Louis XIV et autres écrits politiques (Paris, Bartillat 2011), 49. 3 Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-​Fénelon, ‘Examen de conscience sur les devoirs de royauté. Mémoire pour le duc de Bourgogne’ (c. 1708–​9), in Lettre à Louis XIV, 75, 80–​85. 4 Id. 101. 5 See further Martti Koskenniemi, ‘International law and Raison d’État. Rethinking the Prehistory of International Law’, in Benedict Kingsbury & Benjamin Strumann (eds), The Roman Foundations of the Law of Nations. Alberico Gentili and the Justice of Empire (Oxford University Press 2011), 308–​310. 6 Istvan Hont, Jealousy of Trade. International Competition and the Nation-​State in Historical Perspective (Harvard University Press 2006), 25–​27.

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by relying on domestic resources, he argued, would have no need for militarism.7 During the War of Spanish Succession, Fénelon composed a series of memoranda for friends in the court to speak against the war.8 He lamented the slowness of the peace talks and proposed to include in the delegations men of “substantive reputation” who would be alien to the kinds of scheming that he assumed would take place in regular peace talks.9 It was not to be so. The French minister Colbert de Torcy (1665–​1746) used seasoned courtiers whom he could trust to outmanoeuvre their opposite numbers in the best tradition of ancien regime diplomacy. The negotiations lasted for many years and involved precisely the kind of secret bargaining that Fénelon wished to exorcise from virtuous policymaking.10 The Peace did not come a moment too early for France. But it was not Fénelon’s peace. It was a traditional one. Alongside settlement of dynastic issues, it contained provision on Anglo-​French colonial and territorial settlement –​but it did that by provisions that left the limits of the territories in the colonial world obscure in a way that would soon open the door for further crisis and military conflict, as between Britain and France in the American mainland.11 And it decided the fate of the asiento –​the transfer of the monopoly of Atlantic slave trade to the English South Sea Company.12 It was anything but virtuous. The Peace Treaties of 1713–​1714 laid out their objective as the “tranquillity and security of Europe”.13 They suggested that there was a joint “European” interest in peace that was not too different from the justifications they invoked for domestic absolutism. If to govern “rationally” meant the subordination of private interest to an imaginary public order at home, why could it not be applied at a European scale, too? The treaties used the expression “European public law”, Droit public de l’Europe, to describe this. At its heart was the principle

7

For a comment, see Michael Sonenscher, Before the Deluge. Public Debt, Inequality, and the Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution (Princeton University Press 2007), 110. 8 For the Memoranda, see Oevres de Fénelon, Achevêque de Cambrai. (Tôme 3, Paris, Lefevre, 1835), 410–​441. 9 See Lucien Bély, L’art de la paix en Europe. Naissance de la diplomatie moderne xvie –​ xviii siècle (Paris, puf 2007), 433, 452. 10 Bély, L’art de la paix, 503–​524. A good account of the conduct of the peace talks from the French perspective is in Dale Miquelon, ‘Envisioning the French Empire: Utrecht 1711–​ 1713’, 24 French Historical Studies (1991), 653–​677. 11 Eliga H.  Gould, ‘Zones of law, Zones of Violence:  The Legal Geography of the British Atlantic, circa 1772, 60 William & Mary Quarterly (2003), 481–​485. 12 The point about the centrality of the trade aspects of the treaty arrangements especially for France is made in Miquelon, ‘Envisioning the French Empire’, 654–​655. 13 In the Grewe, Epochs, 292.

178 Koskenniemi of the “balance of power”,14 a notion taken over from writings on the diplomacy of 15th century northern Italy. It was used in two slightly differing ways. One was strategic and referred to the diplomatic and military operations a nation needed to conduct so as to stave off actual or foreseeable danger. Already Francis Bacon had understood war to prevent a neighbour from “overgrowing” as intrinsically just.15 The second meaning was formal-​theoretical and emanated from an effort to understand European politics in a systemic fashion. The notion of European “equilibrium” could easily be associated with Newtonian principles so as to suggest that the political world might be amenable to treatment by techniques resembling those of natural science. It allowed the emergence of “international politics” as a realm of theoretical reflection with the view of developing “laws” for its rational government. 16 Already Fénelon had advocated the need for European powers to ally against the hegemonic designs of the strongest. Such leagues, he wrote, would serve the role that laws and magistrates played in domestic contexts. To seek equilibrium was to work “à la liberté, à la tranquillité, et salut public”. It was to operate a kind of “loi naturelle de la sûreté de…nations”.17 But could self-​loving and glory-​seeking monarchs possibly commit themselves to something so abstract? One of the aspects of the “crisis of European conscience” was declining faith in virtue, especially the virtue of the rulers. In the old world, the search for peace and security had been aligned with an effort to make human beings good and punishing those who were evil. The source of evil lay in “passions” such as ambition and glory. Humans were to be pushed back from that road by teaching them virtue and goodness. This had been the point of the natural law tradition and the scholastic ethics taught at European universities and Grotius’ famous idea of natural sociability constituted one way to express it. But now faith in virtue had been loosening. Who knew what was virtue and what not? Moral education was not sufficient to check the power of passions. Something new had to be found. This was the idea of countervailing passions. As suggested by Spinoza “An affect cannot be restrained or taken away except by an affect opposite to, and stronger than, the affect to be restrained”.18 In the early 18th 14 15 16 17 18

See Marc Bélissa, Fraternité universelle et intérêt national (1713–​1795). Les cosmopolitiques du droit des gens (Paris, Kimé 1998), 85–​86. See Francis Bacon, ‘Of Empire’, in The Essays (Harmondsworth, Penguin 1985), 116–​117. See further, Michael Sheehan, The Balance of Power. History and Theory (London, Routledge 1996), 76–​96. Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-​Fénelon, ‘Sur la necessité des former des alliances, tant offensives que defensives contre une puissance étrangère qui aspire manifestement à la monarchie universelle’, in Œuvres De Fénelon, 3, 360–​363, 361a–​b. Benedict de Spinoza, Ethics, (Harmondsworth, Penguin 1996), 120.

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century, it was increasingly held that passions were an ineradicable aspect of human life; they could not be uprooted once and for all. Instead, passionate energy could be directed for virtuous purposes by supporting the constructive passions against the wicked ones. Even as passions may prompt humans to wickedness, as Montesquieu once quipped, they still have be an interest in not being so.19 One of the men who thought like this was the Abbé de Saint-​Pierre (1658–​ 1743) who produced in the context of the negotiations to the Treaty of Utrecht the most widely read proposal in the 18th century concerning the establishment of perpetual peace.20 Despite his reputation as an idealist and a pacifist, the plan of the good Abbé was actually based on a realist, even Hobbesian premises. He did not rely on virtue or an intrinsic desire for peace. Instead, he tried to convince his readers –​princes and courtiers –​that they had a genuine interest in peace, that peace, rather than war, was best for the security and well-​being of monarchic absolutism itself. 21 Saint-​Pierre had been educated in Jesuit colleges in Rouen and Caen but soon gave up the plan to join the clergy. Instead he moved to Paris where he participated in the life of fashionable society, receiving powerful mentors close to the court of Louis xiv. He devoted his early Paris years to science. In 1702 he received a position that he intended to use to acquaint himself with the techniques of ruling. With this experience he began writing his famous plan for European reorganisation and peace. As a literary achievement, the Projet pour rendre la paix perpetuelle en Europe was not impressive. It consisted of three volumes of poorly organised arguments in defence of a permanent organisation in Europe to guarantee the peace and security among European sovereigns. Its seven “discourses” were written in a wholly political realist vein, stressing the interest that European sovereigns themselves had in such organisation: this would free them from fear of external attack and internal rebellion. It would enable the peaceful growth of trade and industry whose profits could be used to further support welfare of the nation. “Among European States”, the Abbé wrote, “there it not one for which it would not be more advantageous 19 20

21

For the quote and the argument in general, the classic remains Albert O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests. Political Arguments for Capitalism before its Triumph (Twentieth Anniversary Edition, Princeton University press 1997). Charles Castel de Saint-​Pierre, Projet pour rendre la paix perpetuelle entre les Souverains Chretiens, (Utrecht, Schouten 1717). The version usually referred to, and on which Rousseau, for example, based his “Extract” and “Judgment”, is the shortened version, Abregé du projet de paix perpetuelle (Rotterdam, Beman 1729). See Merle J. Perkins, The Moral and Political Philosophy of the Abbé de Saint-​Pierre (Geneva, Droz 1959).

180 Koskenniemi to sign the treaty for the establishment of this society than not to sign”.22 The traditional techniques were inefficient. Mutual promises among sovereigns, truces, commercial treaties, guarantees and alliances were, history had shown, fragile and easy to set aside in preparation for war. The balance of power  –​ that famous watchword “in the mouth of every barber” –​was precarious and dependent on the whims of princes and changes of national fortune. Or as the Abbé summarised at the beginning of the Second discourse: Il est impossble de que le Système de l’Équilibre rende la paix durable en Europe; qu’ainsi les malheurs de la Guerre se renouvelleront incessamant & dureront tant qu’il n’y aura pas entre les Souverainetez Chrétiennes une Société permanente qui leur donne sûreté suffisante de l’execution des promesses fairtes dans les Traitez…23 With these, war will always be coming.24 To replace this, the Abbé proposed the establishment of a permanent institution, a Union européenne with 18 or 24 sovereign members (the number varied in different parts of the plan) all of which would be Christian, European States. In later versions one of the tasks of the Union was to oppose any attack on Turkey’s side. The draft Treaty consisted of five main points: 25 First, members would agree to preserve the existing territorial and dynastic status quo in Europe and never to challenge it by arms. With this, the dynasties would have “sûreté suffisante” for their perpetuation. The Union was not to intervene in its members’ affairs for any other reason than for implementing these guarantees. Peaceful changes were not excluded, however, and border or succession disputes would be resolved through arbitration. Second was the permanent institution that was to be set up after the model of the Holy Roman Empire. The sovereigns would be permanently represented in a Senate that would meet at some “free city”. The 12 fundamental articles could be amended only by unanimous vote while the 8 “important” ones by three quarters’ majority. Thirdly, the Senate was to organise European commerce so that everyone could draw optimal benefit from it. There would be a generalised most-​favoured nation clause and a Chamber of Commerce in each major town would have alternate jurisdiction to adjudicate trade disputes. Fourthly, there was a system of arbitration and its enforcement by war if necessary. And finally 22 23 24 25

Projet, Troisième discours, 153. Projet, Deuxième disocurs, 73. Projet, Primière discours. Projet, Quatrième discours, 271–​366.

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a joint military force would protect the Union against Turks as well as its rulers against internal rebellion and civil war. The costs of the army, like all costs of the operation of the Union would be based on the contributions of each member in accordance with their relative fortunes at the beginning as decided my a majority vote and thereafter by a majority of three fourths. The Projet was widely circulated among European elites who regarded it as hopelessly inadequate. As Voltaire saw it, it was as likely that peace could be maintained among European sovereigns “as the peace between elephants and rhinoceros, wolves and dogs. Carnivorous animals will tear each other apart at the first occasion”.26 Many accused the plan of being self-​defeating. It was based on the assumption that Europe would be ruled by monarchical absolutists. This, Rousseau observed, presumed that absolute monarchs really were rational egoists and able to see their real interests and oppose them to their short-​term passions. But this, history showed, was not the case. Within monarchical absolutism, indeed, as Rousseau claimed, within a system of states tout court, perpetual peace would be an impossibility. It would first be necessary to change the constitution –​as Kant would famously argue in Perpetual Peace –​ and make a republican revolution. And that was not coming anytime soon. During the half-​century after the delegations had left Utrecht the great powers would find themselves in new wars of succession (Polish succession 1733–​38 and Austrian succession 1740–​1748) and colonial wars expanding finally into a global scale (England and Spain 1727–​29, 1739 and the Seven years’ war 1756–​ 1763). Looking back at the end of the century on practically incessant European warfare Kant would condemn the practices of secret reservations to treaties of peace, making wars on conflicts of dynastic inheritance, cultivating standing military forces and concluding debts for foreign policy purposes. Only the generalization of republican constitutions and the formation of federation of free states could prevent the continuation of European traditions of aggression and war. Yet getting there would take time. 27

3

And so most political and legal thinkers were content to rely on the balance of power. Through the balance, it was assumed, three objectives might be gained. 26

Quoted in Jean-​Pierre Bois, L’Europe à l’époque moderne:  origines, utopies et réalités de l’idée d’Europe (Paris, Colin 1999), 211. 27 Immanuel Kant, ‘Perpetual Peace:  A Sketch’, in Political Writings,(Hans Reiss ed,. Cambridge University Press 1991), 93–​130.

182 Koskenniemi First, each state would be able to live securely with its neighbours once it was convinced that that it was entitled to take action if that neighbour’s per had increased and it had shown aggressive intentions. Secondly, this was the way also to persuade all European powers join to prevent the emergence of an ambitious nation carrying designs of “universal monarchy”. And third, even if there were no such overly ambitious monarchs –​everybody was thinking of Charles V and Louis xiv–​the principle of the balance would remain as a general principle of order that would restrain violence between European powers and thus operate as the general guarantee of the Droit public de l’Europe. 28 To the extent that the balance of power appeared like a scientific law, it fitted very well with the empirical-​historical orientation in the study of the law of nature and of nations in most advanced German law schools, those of Halle and Göttingen. In an essay written at the outset of the seven years’ war, Nikolaus Hieronymus Gundling (1671–​1729) from Halle defended vigorously the view that states had the right to take military action whenever a neighbour had become so powerful as to have developed the capacity of victory. Grotius, he wrote, allowed preventive action only once there was positive evidence of upcoming aggression. This was too strict. Pre-​emptive action was not only necessary but it was to be understood as defensive just war; only by striking first would peace be kept.29 For those who worried over such endorsement of violence Gundling responded by asking rhetorically whether they had ever heard of a ruler who would have refrained from attempting conquest whenever he was convinced of his superior power. Although rulers spoke the language of religion and virtue they were in truth driven by the desire of conquest. Moreover, unlike private individuals, they were not free to set themselves under the power of stronger ones. If they did, they would allow their population to be enslaved: their morality had to be different from that of ordinary individuals. “One cannot rule the world with Pater nosters or destroy one’s enemies by Ave Marias”.30 Could State power be measured so that the existence of an equilibrium, or a threat to it, could be credibly ascertained? What did it take to achieve a balance, or to maintain it? Would it be permissible to act even before any aggression

28

See e.g. Bruno Arcidiacono, De la balance politique et de ses rapports avec le droit des gens:  Vattel, la ‘guerre pour l’équilibre’ et le système européen,in Vincent Chetail (ed), Vattel’s International Law from a xxi Century Perspective (Leiden, Brill 2012). 29 Nicolaus Hieronymus Gundling, Erörterung der Frage: ob wegen der anwächsenden Macht der Nachbarn man Degen entblösössen könne? (Frankfurt & Leipzig 1757), § 4–​6, 8, 24 (4–​6, 19). 30 Gundling, Erörterung der Frage, § 29 (23).

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had taken place, merely on the basis of a mere suspicion of another’s aggressive intent –​and if it was, could misuse of such authorization be prevented? If Gundling vindicated Gentili over Grotius, he did not seem overly concerned about the status of the right to strike. Was it a natural law permission or a maxim of political statecraft? For all practical purposes, the two collapsed together, leaving, as Gundling wrote, “Catheder-​Herren in der Hof-​Schule” cry out in vain for “justice”. Only a bad ruler would put such abstractions ahead of the concrete interest of one’s state. The ambitions of nations such as France must be hedged and nothing did this better than the sight of 100.000 soldiers in the field.31 There was no relevant difference between justice and the interest of State in the matter of the balance. In this respect he differed from the position by the Göttingen Professor Ludewig Martin Kahle (1712–​1775) in the latter’s widely read 1740 essay that identified the principle of the balance as a rule of natural law pure and simple. Kahle’s concern lay in the effort to prevent the French designs but he generalized the principle of the balance as a rule of natural law, derived from the security and welfare of the nations and the nature of their relations. If there was no natural enmity between nations at least there was a propensity for such. Past practice and considerations of principle all pointed in Kahle’s view to a “natural obligation” on princes to seek to preserve the equilibrium –​the “foremost norm of the law of peace and war”.32 Both German scholars as well as Emer de Vattel (1714–​1767) writing in a Neuchâtel, ruled by Prussia at the time, stressed that a nation’s power was not at all only military strength. On the contrary, from its very inception the Ragion di stato tradition had envisaged State power in terms of the relative the wealth of states –​the size and industriousness of their population, their natural resources and their ability purchase goods from abroad. A whole genre or literature, later called mercantilisim, had come to argue about jealousy of trade –​about commerce as a political instrument. This is precisely why Vattel was prepared to support the use of military force to redress the case where one state had increased its power so as to become a threat to the European balance. But Vattel also believed that what he called Europe’s “political system” was a legitimate object for defence, by military force if necessary.33 In a famous passage he drew 31 Gundling, Erörterung der Frage, § 29 (23–​24). 32 “esse belli & pacis praecipuam normam”, Ludewig Kahle, Commentatio juris publici de trutina Europeae (Göttingen, Schmidt, 1740), § xiv (58). 33 The extent to which this part of the work  –​perhaps its most famous part  –​was also inspired by Vattel’s Swiss perspective on the international world may be conjectured. A loose federation of independent entities, Switzerland worried over the rise of commercial empires, France and England. On Vattel’s “Swiss” perspective, see. Béla Kapossy &

184 Koskenniemi attention to the “continuous attention” European states paid to each others’ doings, “the constant residence of ministers, and the perpetual negotiations” between them. Hence arose that famous scheme of the political balance, of the equilibrium of power; by which is understood such a disposition of things, as that no potentate be able absolutely to predominate, and prescribe laws to the others. 34 For Vattel, the balance was not an alternative to law but its necessary adjunct. The defensive or offensive nature of the operation was not essential; the simple objective to prevent the disturbance of the equilibrium made the action just.35 Any state, even one that was not itself immediately threatened, was entitled to take action to defend the “system”. However, the most far-​sighted but ultimately paradoxical contrubution to these debates was that by Johann Heinrich Gottlob Justi (1717–​1771), the famous cameralist and adviser to the governments of Austria, Denmark and Prussia in his “Chimera of the Balance of Power”, published during the seven-​years’ war (1758). 36 Choosing Kahle’s defence of pre-​emptive strikes as his target, he argued that wars always caused untold destruction and suffering. Every nation had the right to seek its happiness, but war brought about the contrary to happiness.37 The causes of war lay with the many bad properties of human nature that were reflected in poor government. Was it not strange, Justi asked, with slightly veiled reference to Frederick ii, that honourable rulers who in their private lives follow virtue and reason, in their relations with foreign states lost all good sense?38 After a brief history of the balance as a an instrument against Richard Whatmore, ‘Mélanges de literature’, in Emer de Vattel, Law of Nations (ed. By B Kapossy & R Whatmore, Indianapolis, Liberty Fund, 2008 [1758]), 79. 34 Vattel, Law of Nations Bk iii 3 § 47 (496). 35 For a useful dissection of the various scenarios covered by Vattel’s discussion of the balance, see Arcidiacono, ‘De la balance politique’, 90–​100. 36 His well-​published insistence on letting justice take its course, for example, might have been seen to illustrate quite an unprecedented commitment to the rule of law by the king had it not been undermined by his occasional populist interventions in on-​going legal process. The dark side of his system of rule became visible in Frederick’s aggressive foreign policy that was manifested above all in Rationalization and aggression were closely tied together however. The Prussian state under the Hohenzollerns was a military machine. 37 Johann Heinrich Gottlob Justi, Die Chimäre des Gleichgewichts der Europa (Altona, Iversen 1758), Vorrede, 2. 38 Justi, Die Chimäre, 6.

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the outdated danger of universal monarchy Justi attacked the foundations of balance-​thinking by aiming to show that it had become impossible to calculate the relative power of states in a reliable way. Neither extensive territory, large population, massive military force or the wealth of the rulers provided an adequate criterion. If a nation’s power lay in its industry and commercial relations, as everyone now believed, then it was also clear that such power was in constant flux. The true power of a state lay in the perfection and wisdom of its government. This, again, meant that the government governed according to a plan that was logically related to the Staatszweck, that the administration was under the ruler’s control, that public officials were competent and that the state was administered in an orderly fashion (“mit der genauesten Ordnung geführdet und ausgerichtet”).39 Because the power of a state coincided with the wisdom of its government, operating in a fluctuating world of economic success and decline, organizing the security of European nations by the policy of the balance was pure chimera. The very suggestion that the powers of states should be fixed was unjust and frankly nonsensical because it implied that skilful and well-​ordered governments should refrain from optimizing the use of their resources. The fact that some governments were skilful in this whereas others were not was a fact of life that could not be interfered by some artificial criterion. In fact, Justi thought, the policy of balance had been born out of the envy that some states felt towards their successful neighbours. Instead of restraining violence it had actually provided an excuse for endless “bloodshed, despair and unhappiness in Europe”.40 Justi was able to strengthen these arguments during the seven years’ war as he took upon himself to oppose the French effort to rally European States to oppose English hegemony by reference to the need for a balance of trade. After the famous Renversement des alliances, Prussia had allied itself with England while France had joined with its old arch-​enemy Habsburg Austria. In the course of the war, England had used its maritime superiority to disturb French trade from the colonies and it was to this what the French Minister Maubert de Gouveste had reacted by proposing that balance of trade ought to be seen as a principle of European public law. In the Chimera of the Balance of Power in Commerce and Shipping (1759), Justi emphasized the impossibility, irrationality and injustice of such a suggestion. In a sense, the argument from “balance of trade” was a logical extension of the view that state power was above all commercial power. But it also highlighted all the difficulties and

39 Justi, Die Chimäre, 47. 40 Justi, Die Chimäre, 3.

186 Koskenniemi injustices in the balance of power. It was the nature of commerce to be free, Justi insisted. Every nation tried to export as much of its excess product as it could and to buy what it needed from whomsoever was willing to sell at the lowest price.41 Success in international commerce depended on the industry and skilfulness (“Arbeitsamkeit und Geschicklihckeit”) of the population and expansion of influence followed naturally from every nation’s perfectly lawful search for happiness. It would be unnatural and really laughable to try to limit the way in which nations pursued their happiness through trade.42 The effort by the French minister to rally European nations against England under the principle of the balance was merely a hypocritical effort to dress France’s military interests in the form a principle of European public law. Justi’s arguments against the balance of power may have underwritten the policies of Frederick ii but they were above all a celebration of the rising global empire of Britain. What Justi was saying was that the principles of the market ought also to govern the relations between states. Nothing should be said against the obvious justice that states with the most skilful government and the most industrious and resourceful populations gain the upper hand and ultimately come to rule the world. This was Britain of course. Justi may have had no idea that his discourse of peace and order was an argument for empire, a commercial global empire. But that is what it was.

4

In his extensive account of the history Falklands dispute, Julius Goebel has written: “The Treaties making up the Peace of Utrecht were the new foundation of the public law of Europe”.43 Many have agreed. Yet another discrepancy is that between the Peace of Utrecht as foundational to the “Droit public de l’Europe”, and its key role in assisting in the formation of the world-​wide seaborne British empire. While European rulers may have been thinking about the relations of their nations and dynasties, Britain was gradually creating the greatest maritime empire the world had seen. As the negotiations began to end the war of Spanish Succession, the British set their most important war as (1) “the destruction of the Spanish colonial legal order”, as the British negotiator 41 Johann Heinrich Gottlob Justi, Die Chimäre des Gleichgewichts der Handlung und Schiffahrt, (Altona 1759), 11–​21. 42 Justi, Handlung und Schiffahrt, 27. 43 Julius Goebel, The Struggle for the Falkland Islands. A  Study in Legal and Diplomatic History (Yale University press 1927), 171.

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Lexington told the British ministers; (2) the removal of France from the Atlantic and (3) gaining access to trade with the Spanish territories in the Indies. 44 Parts of the final treaties removed France from parts of North America. It lost Newfoundland, Acadia and Hudson’s Bay but retained the Cape Breton coast and French fishermen received the right to fish off the coast of Newfoundland. The exact content of the territorial delimitations was, however, left so vague that, as many historians have pointed out, the peace actually fed endless Franco-​British warfare in northern America.45 In the south, a secret treaty made behind the back of Britain’s allies –​notably Netherlands –​foresaw in 1707 a joint trading company with Spain and the transfer of the Asiento –​ the monopoly for slave trade –​to the English. Although this treaty was never put in effect, its content was transposed into the Utrecht arrangements. 18th century European political thinkers celebrated liberty as a principal value of the moment they were living. Vattel, for example, claimed that Europe itself has been transformed into a kind of large republic whose members were united “for the maintenance of order and liberty”.46 Those who spoke most of liberty were the English, or, like Vattel, those who most admired the English political traditions, personal rights and system of law. Not the least important of that group were the English who had chosen to settle across the Atlantic where their political communities would be meticulously designed so as to protect the “ancient liberties of Englishmen”.47 Even as the common law did not as such follow the settlers to the American provinces, at least if we are to believe Blackstone, two types of rights were still regarded as valid in the colonies as well.48 These were the right of personal liberty in the sense of an entitlement to a trial by jury, and political liberty in the sense of being ruled by representative governments. The colonists, Elizabeth Mancke has written, “established institutions of self-​government, with a particular emphasis on their rights to assemblies and rule by law”.49 It is in fact quite striking how rapidly and how completely the American provinces, whether formally ruled by companies, 44 Goebel, Struggle for Falklands Islands, 168. 45 Eliga Gould, ‘Zones of Law, Zones of Violence. The Legal Geography of the British Atlantic, circa 1772’, 60 William and Mary Quarterly (2003), 482–​485; Catharine Armstrong & Laura M Chmielewski, The Atlantic Experience (New York, Macmillan 2013), 176. 46 Vattel, The Law of Nations, Bk iii § 47 (). 47 See e.g. Jack Greene (ed), Exclusionary Empire. English Liberty Overseas 1600–​1900 (Cambridge University Press 2010). 48 The locus classicus is William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, Vol I: Of the Rights of Persons (Chicago, 1979), 104–​105. 49 Elizabeth Mancke, ‘The Languages of Liberty in British North America, 160+7–​1776’, in Greene, Exclusionary Empire, 25.

188 Koskenniemi individual proprietors or the crown, were able to make a reality of their right of self-​government. When the restoration government sought to take back some of the provincial autonomy, this was met by fierce resistance; rights of taxation would remain with the colonies and efforts to control their trade policies were generally a failure. The colonies had of course been established without a coordinated policy and through individual initiative. The rights of occupation and jurisdiction had been received from the crown by contract. This set the pattern, early in the 17th century, for the relentless emphasis on individualism and liberty in the Anglo-​Atlantic world. As a leading historian of the colonies has written: The beliefs that every individual should be free to seek his own interest and that both the crown and the government of the individual plantations were obligated to contract to protect him in that search was integral to English colonial life.50 Much of the interest-​seeking that engaged wealthy individuals in London and the colonies in the 18th century was directed towards using the principle of the freedom of trade to the best effect. The Utrecht treaties themselves had, after all, declared that “liberté de la navigation et la commerce” would apply in principle across the Atlantic. Like any liberty, this, too, worked in favour of the strongest, that is to say Britain. Liberty had of course not always been a part of England’s foreign policy, none of its limitations having been of greater consequence than the navigation acts of 1651 with their successive extensions. The limitation of all carrying trade to and from England and its colonies to English vessels played a huge role in supporting English shipping industries especially against the Dutch and lay the basis for English superiority in the conditions of relatively greater liberty in the oceans in the 18th century. In the 1740s Englishmen began to address the British possessions in the Atlantic world in terms of a nationalist ideology of empire.51 Though this was born in the colonies, it was supported in the British popular feeling by the wars against Spain and France that also provided occasion to articulate the idea of a “blue water empire” policed by a navy that had no match with European rivals. It was an empire, too, that occasionally worried over the consequences of 50 51

Jack Greene, ‘Metropolis and Colonies: Changing Patterns of Constitutional Conflict in the early Modern British Empire 1607–​1673’, in: Negotiated Authorities: Essays in Colonial Political and Constitutional History (University Press of Virginia 1994), 44. See David Armitage, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2000), 171–​181.

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imperial policy for the “liberties” of Englishmen. But what it failed to notice until much later was that all this talk about liberty took place simultaneously with the most wide-​ranging racially motivated enslavement of whole populations the world had ever seen.52 Until its capture of Jamaica in the 1650s Britain had not been a great slave-​ trading nation. With the setting up of the Royal African Company by private funds (with the King as one investor) in 1672, the matters changed, however, so that the company managed to transport some 350.000 slaves to the Caribbean by 1713. 53 The Utrecht treaties transferred the Asiento, the monopoly of slave importation to Spanish colonies, to Britain that then contracted it to the South Sea Company. Under the Asiento, the British were entitled to import 144.00 black Africans to the Spanish Indies in the space of 30 years, or 4800 souls per year and could be delivered against a small duty. 54 Even as the British rights were limited under the Utrecht regime, the Assientists constantly broke against those limits. This was anything but an abnormality. It may be said (and has been said) that British primacy on the Atlantic in the 18th century emerged from a pattern of illegality  –​privateering and piracy, contraband trade and smuggling. Spain may have succeeded in preventing Britain from receiving permanent territorial bases in the southern hemisphere. By combining clandestine operations with legitimate trade, however, the British agencies became, Georges Scelle has written, “genuine storehouses of merchandise” delivered to the Spanish provinces so that as a result, “[t]‌he entire trade of America lay in the hands of the English nation”.55 At the turn of the century began the process that led from monopoly companies to free trade in slaves across the Atlantic. English legislation from 1698 already opened the trade for individual entrepreneurs and “produced a craze for independent slave trading in the capital”.56 In 1712 a full deregulation took place –​although of course the Asiento reserved the right to import slaves to the 52

53 54 55 56

Slavery was of course an old institution in which many, perhaps most societies had engaged at some point. Mostly it was however small scale, and slaves worked in domestic households. The main exception –​Rome –​did have a massive slavery “system” but it was not racially based. Herbert S.  Klein, The Atlantic Slave Trade (New Edition, Cambridge University Press 2010), 81. See e.g. Eric Williams, ‘The Golden Age of the Slave System for Britain’, 25 The Journal of Negro History (1940), 64. Georges Scelle, ‘The Slave-​Trade in the Spanish Colonies of America: The Assiento’, 4 ajil (1910) 657. William Pettigrew, Freedom’s Debt. The Royal African Company and the Politics of the African Slave Trade 1672–​1752 (University opf North Carolina Press 2013), 13.

190 Koskenniemi South Sea company, working in collaboration with the Royal Africa Company until 1739. This did not prevent the free trade in slaving from exploding across the Atlantic. As a result, during the 18th century, more than 6 million Africans were forcibly transported across the Atlantic to plantations in the West Indies and the American mainland. Of these approximately 40 per cent (2,5 million) were transported to the British colonies. According to one report, in one three-​ year period altogether 42.000 blacks were imported to the British Caribbean. Between 1703 and 1776 almost half a million slaves were brought to Jamaica only. 57 As part of its imperial ascent, solidified by the Utrecht treaties, Britain became the most important slave trading nation.58 There is no great disagreement that slave trading was, despite criticisms and competition, lucrative activity: profits from British slave trading were in the range of 6–​10 per cent of the investment.59 The plantations set up first in the Caribbean and then on the American mainland became a backbone of British trade in the first half-​century after Utrecht, with slave-​owners a major lobby in Westminster.60 There is some disagreement about the precise importance of slaves for the British economy at this time, and especially to the rapid process of industrialization. Eric Williams argued in the 1940s that “much of the money which financed the industrial revolution came…in the last analysis, from slave labor”.61 Yet the effects may not have been that straight-​forward. No doubt sugar production in the plantations had important local repercussions. Liverpool, Bristol and London thrived on it. Slave-​produced sugar would feed the British but it would also find its way elsewhere into Europe and beyond so that “[b]‌y the middle of the eighteenth century, half of all Britain’s overseas trade consisted of shipments of sugar and tobacco; sugar and coffee comprised more than half of all French overseas commerce”.62 Clearly, the two rival European empires benefitted in an extraordinary way of slave-​generated products. In a careful recent analysis, Robin Blackburn has concluded that “the triangular trade could have furnished anything from 20.9 per cent to 55 per cent of Britain’s gross fixed capital formation in 1770”.63 When all allowance is made to the distribution of these resources between several industries and the needs 57 Williams, ‘Golden Age’, 66. 58 Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery (London, Verso 2010), 383–​385. 59 Blackburn, Making of New World Slavery, 38; Klein, Atlantic Slave Trade, 99–​100. 60 Christopher Brown, ‘The Politics of Slavery’, in Armitage & Braddock, The British Atlantic World 1500–​1800 (London, Palgrave 2002), 225–​226. 61 Eric Williams, ‘The Golden Age of the Slave System in Britain.’ 25 Journal of Negro History 25 (1940), 78. 62 Blackburn, Making of New World Slavery, 396. 63 Blackburn, Making of New World Slavery, 542.

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of state administration and almost incessant warfare, he concludes carefully that “exchanges with the slave plantations helped British capitalism to make a breakthrough to industrialism and global hegemony ahead of its rivals”.64

5

The Peace of Utrecht marked a significant moment in the history of European politics and consciousness, one in which the practices of the old regime collided with increasingly new ways to think about political community, society and economics. Ideals of military glory and the defence of rights of dynastic succession would come to open conflict with interest in the value of peacefulness and commerce in the creation of national wealth and power. From now on reasonable egoists would believe that peace, rather than military conflict, would offer the most valuable fruit. And yet, as Rousseau and others pointed out, the truth of this insight would remain hidden from a world ruled by despotic monarchs whose reasonableness could not be taken for granted. If the balance of power seemed the only way to constrain their “passions”, it did not function as a systemic guarantee of a European order based on the equality of its members. It merely liberated the most ambitious among them to expand their influence in the colonies by a suave combination of political, economic and ultimately military constraint. The language of liberty cultivated by the most progressive thinkers of new century did nothing to prevent the massive forced transport and enslavement of Africans in the plantations of the New World. A  moment of discrepancy between word and action, language and power, Utrecht would prepare European elites for new world where ideals of public law, equality and peace would thrive alongside the unscrupulous search for private interest. 64 Blackburn, Making of New World Slavery, 572.

­c hapter 8

In the Shadow of Utrecht: Perpetual Peace and International Order, 1713–​1815 Stella Ghervas Abstract This chapter examines the legacy of the conceptions of the European order that emerged in the aftermath of the Peace of Utrecht (1713) as an alternative to the traditional paradigm of universal monarchy. One option was the balance of power, which evolved in England as a doctrine of foreign policy, before being incorporated as a legal principle into the Treaty of Utrecht. The second was a controversial counter-​proposal in the form of a league of European states, outlined by Abbé de Saint-​Pierre in his Plan of Perpetual Peace. Despite the fact that the balance of power had its heyday in the eighteenth century and proved a flexible tool to maintain some equilibrium in Europe, it was eventually Saint-​Pierre’s paradigm (albeit in altered form) that found its way into the Congress System of the post-​Napoleonic era. This chapter reconnects the two post-​ war orders of Utrecht and Vienna, showing that part of the theoretical reflection of the eighteenth century actually influenced the later diplomatic practices of the great powers.

In early 1713, delegations from the greater states of Europe streamed to Utrecht in the Dutch Republic, a few hours’ ride from Amsterdam*. The host of foreigners who arrived at the little walled city upset its orderly routine. They had, among other things, to be lodged, fed and entertained, not to mention the highly sensitive issues of precedence that cannot fail to arise when considerable persons share a cramped space. While the local residents certainly witnessed the greatest show of their lifetimes, the gathering constituted a congress similar to several that had already occurred in Europe after a war, especially since

* This chapter develops and extends material published in Stella 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-​425. I am particularly grateful to Laurent Franceschetti, David Armitage, Mark Jarrett, and William Graham for their precious comments.

 

  

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the peace negotiations of Westphalia in 1648, and similar to many that would occur later. The congregated powers needed to settle a political issue that had, in their own eyes, threatened to destabilize the whole political order of Europe. This was not unusual, however, since the time-​honoured function of wars –​and the succeeding treaties –​had always been to settle disputes that could not be resolved otherwise. Yet this event had something quite unique about it. To begin with, there were no triumphant victors imposing their will on defeated and humbled losers, as was so often the case. The War of the Spanish Succession (1701–​ 1714) had been a stalemate and the tired belligerents simply wished to move on to more profitable occupations. The novelty was in the solution they adopted. It is not only the invocation of a topos to state that the Treaty of Utrecht sought to re-​establish the balance of power that had been disrupted by the France of Louis xiv. In fact, it was the first time that the term appeared in a treaty, and expressis verbis, as the key principle that governed the search for a settlement among the powers.1 All in all, it initiated what J.  G. A.  Pocock termed the “Utrecht Enlightenment”, founded on the force of treaties and guaranteeing a European order indifferent to the confessional colouring of states.2 From thence derived a string of consequences that spanned the eighteenth century and reached at least as far as the Congress of Vienna a century later. In order to delineate the succession of direct and indirect effects, this paper will start upstream from the Peace of Utrecht (by examining the political context and contemporary ideas about it) to the treaty itself, and proceed downstream to its material legacy in the eighteenth century (that is, to how the new order of Europe actually operated) and even beyond. It is worth noting that the paradigm of the balance of power almost immediately met with criticism. An alternative school of thought on European order emerged, which advocated instead the creation of a “European Society” of states.3 One of its chief proponents, the Abbé de Saint-​Pierre, published

1 The Treaty of Utrecht aimed “to confirm the peace and tranquility of the Christian world through a just equilibrium of power (which is the best and most secure foundation of mutual friendship and lasting agreement in every quarter)”, as quoted by Hamish Scott, The birth of a great power system 1740–​1815 (Harlow: Pearson/​Longman, 2006), 139. See also infra: “Vis et Virtus: War as a Procedure for Dispute Resolution”. 2 J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, Vol. 2 Narratives of Civil Government (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 137–​52, 170–​72. 3 On the several definitions of the word “order” in international relations see G. John Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major

194 Ghervas a Plan of Perpetual Peace while the ink was barely dry on the treaties. While the reception of Saint-​Pierre’s Plan was far from enthusiastic at first, it is nevertheless fruitful to take a dialectical approach by comparing the political system of the balance of power adopted at Utrecht in 1713 with its contemporary alternative. How did the first model, that of the balance of power, fare in practice? While the second one, Saint-​Pierre’s “system of peace”, remained theoretical for several decades, can we assess how rational it was, and how it might have functioned at the time, had it been implemented? Finally, we will examine briefly how several key aspects of the “school of perpetual peace” actually found their way into application at the time of the next reorganization of European order in the early nineteenth century, in the years immediately following the fall of Napoleon, with the Treaty of the Holy Alliance (1815) and the Congress System –​somewhat vindicating Saint-​Pierre from the disregard that the monarchs of the Enlightenment had had for him. And since the order established by the Congress of Vienna largely laid down the foundations of international relations in today’s world, it is indeed towards the Peace of Utrecht and its controversy that we should turn, in order better to understand their rationale. 1

The European Political Backdrop

At the turn of the eighteenth century, “Europe” was a partially well-​defined geographical space, strictly delimited by water: the Atlantic Ocean in the west, the Baltic and North Seas in the north, and the Mediterranean in the south. By contrast, its land borders were unclear: three vast political formations, the Kingdom of Sweden in the north, the Tsardom of Muscovy in the east, and the Ottoman Sublime Porte in the south-​east, played the role of frontiers for it. In particular, it was still debated whether Muscovy was actually in Europe (Saint Petersburg was founded only in 1703). The Russian geographer Vasily N. Tatishchev had yet to propose the Ural Mountains as the notional border for Europe in 1721, the same year that the Russian Empire was finally born.4

Wars (Princeton:  Princeton University Press, 2001), 3–​20; Stanley Hoffmann, World Disorders: Troubled Peace in the Post-​Cold War Era (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998). 4 The Russian geographer Vasily N. Tatishchev (1686–​1750) is credited with the novel idea that the Urals mountain range would be more appropriate than a river as a border for Europe: see Obščee geografičeskoe opisanie vseja Sibiri [General Geographical Description of all of Siberia], 1736, in Vasily N. Tatishchev, Izbrannye trudy po geografii [Selected Geographical Works] (Moscow: Geografgiz, 1950). That choice of course followed an ideological agenda: since Tsar

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As for the players, the majority of the most powerful states (the so-​called “powers”), namely France, Austria, Spain, England, Prussia, Russia and Sweden, were monarchies whose succession went in principle through the hereditary line; two notable exceptions to this general rule were Poland and the Dutch Republic (as well as the Holy Roman Empire, though it was arguably not a “power” per se). Hence dynastic issues had long played a central role in the relations between states, through marriages, successions and occasional wars.5 Among these, the historical opposition between the House of France and the House of Austria was of paramount importance. Since the early sixteenth century, the Habsburg family had been ruling vast territories in Europe, although Spain and Austria had been made legally separate to reassure the German princes of the Holy Roman Empire. In 1521 the Habsburg sovereigns had split into two branches (the Houses of Spain and Austria).6 They nevertheless continued to entertain the ambition of achieving complete hegemony on the continent, a grand scheme called universal monarchy (monarchia universalis) –​or at least this is what their detractors were asserting.7 This traditional idea, which traced back to Charlemagne and even beyond to ancient Rome, rested on the belief that a single sovereign would be capable of imposing peace and prosperity through his own rule over the whole of Europe (and ideally the world), in the same way Roman emperors had in ancient times (the pax romana).8 As one historian aptly wrote: “Antiquity had bequeathed to the Middle Ages the idea

5 6 7

8

Peter the Great wanted to affirm that Russia was part of Europe and should take part in its political order, there was great advantage in stating that its most populous lands belonged to that space, and that vast Asia was only the periphery of it. See Mark Bassin, “Russia between Europe and Asia: The Ideological Construction of Geographical Space”, Slavic Review 50, no. 1 (1991): 6. See for example Lucien Bély, L’art de la paix en Europe. Naissance de la diplomatie moderne, XVIe-​XVIIIe siècle (Paris: puf, 2007), 103–​130. The Habsburg Emperor Charles V bequeathed his Austrian lands to his brother Ferdinand I, making the Austrian branch of the family the “minor” one. See Franz Bosbach, Monarchia Universalis: Ein politischer Leitbegriff der frühen Neuzeit (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1988); Franz Bosbach, “The European Debate on Universal Monarchy”, in David Armitage (ed.), Theories of Empire, 1450–​1800 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), 81–​98; Steven Pincus, “The English debate over universal monarchy”, in A Union for Empire: Political Thought and the Union of 1707, ed. John Robertson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 37–​62; John Robertson, “Empire and union:  two concepts of the early modern European political order”, in John Robertson (ed.), A Union for Empire, 3–​36; Françoise Crémoux and Jean-​Louis Fournel, eds, Idées d’Empire en Italie et en Espagne, XIV-​ XVIIe siècle (Mont-​Saint-​Aignan: Publications des universités de Rouen et du Havre, 2010). On the same subject, Paul Valéry wrote that Rome bequeathed to posterity “the eternal paragon of stable and organized power”: Paul Valéry, Oeuvres (Paris: Gallimard, 1957), t. 1, 1008.

196 Ghervas of an ecumenical civil entity, and that of a permanent peace achievable down here on Earth, the second being equated with the first”.9 This was, however, a tall order because no ruler (with the exception of Charlemagne in the ninth century) had ever been in a position to control a majority of Western Europe. On the contrary, Europe had evolved since the end of the Middle Ages into a constellation of territorial states, larger on average than before, but still disparate –​a situation that was recognized as a distinctive trait, particularly in contrast to the empires of Asia. Nevertheless, in a Western Christian world that considered itself governed by divine rule there was the institution of the Holy Roman Empire, whose emperor derived his legitimacy from a coronation by the Pope of Rome. In that view, the universal religion of states and subjects could not conceivably be anything but Roman Catholic. There was a manifest discrepancy between the expected order of things and reality which the Habsburgs attempted to rectify. Needless to say, Spain and Austria were automatically allied in that endeavour. This idea was not, however, unanimously received, and between the plan and its achievement lay considerable challenges. First, there was an unlucky geographical obstacle to the unity of the hereditary lands of the Habsburgs, because the monarchic state of France was placed squarely on the land routes between Spain and Austria, and between Spain and Italy. French kings, despite being hailed as “Very Catholic”, fought with their last breath to defend their own freedom against this universal monarchy. This was the problem that Emperor Charles V had tried to solve back in the sixteenth century, coming up against the fierce opposition of Francis I.  The French kingdom nearly collapsed during the Wars of Religion (1562–​1598), but in the end held fast and was eventually restored to its former grandeur by the Bourbon Henri iv. Worse, from the Habsburg perspective, it resumed its obstinate expansion towards Flanders in the north-​east, and set its sights again on Savoy and northern Italy. A second obstacle to the grand design of universal monarchy was the division of Western Christianity into Catholic and Reformed blocs: states with a Protestant ruling class (such as England, several German principalities and soon the Dutch Republic) rejected the political and religious authority of the Pope as a matter of principle, and thus found yet another reason for radically opposing universal monarchy. Thirdly, on the high seas (the oceans and the Mediterranean), Spain had not one European competitor

9 Bruno Arcidiacono, Cinq types de paix:  Une histoire des plans de pacification perpétuelle, XVIIe-​XXe siècles (Paris: puf, 2011), 5.

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but four:  the Portuguese, the British, the French and the Dutch, not to mention the still respectable Ottoman fleet, as well as scores of smugglers, ­pirates and corsairs. A fourth factor impeding the realization of universal monarchy was the political structure of the Holy Roman Empire itself. Supposedly the preserve of the Habsburgs, it was a sui generis institution, a loose confederation of mostly Germanic states whose prestige was largely symbolic. When it was capable of vigorous action, it was through its most prominent members  –​ first and foremost Austria. Furthermore, the imperial succession followed an elective process, in stark contrast to other monarchic states of the time, so that even the House of Austria did not enjoy a stable title to its throne. All in all, while the Habsburgs were a formidable force that could easily threaten any European rival they cared to fight, they were never in a position to prevail. In retrospect, their concept of a universal monarchy appears contrived and fragile.10 The result of these clashes of political interest and ambition was that the European continent was comprised of many states, of different sizes (from city-​ states to large territorial formations), religious faiths (Catholic, Protestant) and forms of political organization (from absolute and parliamentary monarchies to republics). A period of intense and murderous wars between Catholic and Protestant states in the seventeenth century led to the defeat of the Habsburgs and a weakening of their power. Partly to blame was the fact that the military superiority of the Spaniards in Europe had come to an end as a result of changes in the techniques of warfare. As a further blow to the hopes of the Habsburgs and the Holy See, the ensuing Peace of Westphalia (1648) confirmed the territorial sovereignty of states within the Holy Roman Empire.11 It also reconfirmed a principle already 10 11

On this aspect see Stella Ghervas and David Armitage, “Introduction: From Westphalia to Enlightened Peace, 1648–​1815”, in A Cultural History of Peace in the Age of Enlightenment, 1648–​1815, ed. Stella Ghervas and David Armitage (London: Bloomsbury, 2020), 3–​20. The Peace of Westphalia was comprised of four items: (a) the Peace of Münster, between the Dutch Republic and the Kingdom of Spain, signed on 30 January and ratified in Műnster on 15 May; (b) the Treaty of Münster of 24 October between the Holy Roman Empire, France and their respective allies; (c)  the Treaty of Osnabruck of 24 October between the Holy Roman Empire, Sweden and their respective allies; (d) two conventions in July 1648 in Nuremberg (respectively the Holy Roman Empire and France, and the Holy Roman Empire and Sweden) on the execution of the peace. See on this subject the classic work of Fritz Dickmann, Der Westfälische Friede, 1st ed. 1959 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1998). Among recent works see Klaus Bussmann and Heinz Schilling, 1648: Krieg und Frieden in Europa, Europaratsausstellung zum 350. Jahrestag des Westfälischen Friedens, 3  vols. (Műnchen:  Bruckmann, 1998); 350e anniversaire des Traités de Westphalie,

198 Ghervas defined in the Peace of Augsburg (1555) that rulers were entitled to choose their own religion, with their subjects following suit (cuius regio, eius religio). As if this were not enough, the Dutch Republic and the Swiss Confederation left the Empire.12 The resulting configuration was not felt as the birth of a new “order” but as a comparatively peaceful “anarchy of states” whose Catholic or Protestant rulers were considered equally legitimate. As one historian has noted, “Westphalia did not lay the foundation for the modern law of nations. It did, however, put an end to the long religious and political crisis within and among the great powers”.13 By thwarting the Habsburg dream of universal monarchy and preventing their continuous interference in the affairs of other states, it removed a severe impediment to political stability in Europe. There was a tabula rasa, a bedrock from which it was now possible to evolve a European order regulated by an autonomous body of law. For these reasons, Westphalia marked the close of an era.14 The birth of a new European order would have to wait. The following years marked a “transitional period” plagued with many issues, particularly dynastic, that had been left without a solution. At the turn of the eighteenth century, a general war broke out again in Europe, aptly named the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–​1714). It was indirectly provoked by Louis xiv, the absolute king of France: his grandson Philip had inherited the Kingdom of Spain after

12

13

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1648–​1998:  une genèse de l’Europe, une société à reconstruire (Strasbourg:  Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, 1999); L’Europe des traités de Westphalie. Esprit de la diplomatie et diplomatie de l’esprit, ed. Lucien Bély (Paris:  puf, 2000); Klaus Malettke, “Les traités de paix de Westphalie et l’organisation politique du Saint Empire romain germanique”, Dix-​Septième Siècle 210, no. 1 (2001): 113–​44; Arnaud Blin, 1648: La Paix de Westphalie ou la naissance de l’Europe politique moderne (Paris: Complexe, 2006). More accurately, the Swiss delegation to Osnabrück and Münster obtained confirmation of the “full freedom and exemption from the Empire”. See Peter Stadler, “Der Westfälische Friede und die Eidgenossenschaft”, in 1648: Die Schweiz und Europa. Aussenpolitik zur Zeit des Westfälischen Friedens, ed. Marco Jorio (Zürich: Chronos-​Verlag, 1999), 57–​77. Randall Lesaffer, European Legal History: A Cultural and Political Perspective, transl. Jan Arriens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 308. See also Randall Lesaffer, “The Westphalian Peace Treaties and the Development of the Tradition of Great European Peace Settlements prior to 1648”, Grotiana 18, no. 1 (1997): 71–​95. These are not exactly the same reasons generally invoked by the literature criticizing the “Westphalian myth”, notably Benno Teschke, The Myth of 1648:  Class, Geopolitics and the Making of Modern International Relations (London:  Verso, 2003); Andreas Osiander, “Sovereignty, International Relations, and the Westphalian Myth”, International Organization 55, no. 2 (2001): 251–​87; Pärtel Piirimäe, “The Westphalian myth and the idea of external sovereignty”, in Sovereignty in Fragments: The Past, Present and Future of a Contested Concept, ed. Hent Kalmo and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2011), 64–​80.

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the sickly Charles ii, the last Habsburg sovereign, had died without sons.15 By an extraordinary twist in the history of Europe, the potential reunion of Spain and its global empire with the dominions of its arch-​rival, the French house of Bourbon, resuscitated the spectre of a universal monarchy –​both European and colonial. As France itself was undergoing rapid expansion (territorial, demographic, economic and military), the King of France would theoretically wield enough power to control both a sizeable part of continental Europe and a vast colonial empire. In truth, he did not attempt to unite the two crowns of France and Spain any more than the Habsburgs had earlier been able to keep Spain and Austria united. Yet the menace was sufficiently disconcerting to prompt the formation of a military coalition of the other European powers, notably England, Austria, Prussia, Savoy and the Dutch Republic, thus igniting the war. Beside the question of Spanish succession, the United Kingdom of England and Scotland had its own dynastic issue.16 There had been contention between the House of Stuart (Scottish and Catholic) and that of Hanover (German and Protestant). The Act of Settlement of 1701, passed by the English Parliament, had determined that Queen Anne, a Stuart, would be succeeded by a Hanoverian –​on the sole condition that the heir would not be a Catholic or marry a Catholic. Quite logically, Louis xiv had all along been supporting the Catholic pretender, James Stuart (1688–​1766), who had been living at the French court –​ as did the King of Spain and the Pope. James Stuart made three attempts to win his crown in 1701, 1708 and in 1715.17 That issue, while not a sufficient cause for a war against France, was a thorn in the side of the British and an aggravating factor.18

15

16

17 18

On 3 October 1700, the last Spanish king of Habsburg lineage, weak of health and without descent, had bequeathed his kingdom to Philip of Anjou, a member of the Bourbon family and a grandson of Louis xiv –​hence a potential heir to the throne of France (though by no means first in the line of succession). For the text of the will see “Testamento de Carlos II”, in Historia General de España, ed. Juan de Mariana José Sabau y Blanco (Madrid: D. Leonardo Nunes de Varga), t. 19, 401. The formal union of the crowns of England and Scotland occurred in 1707. See David Armitage, “The Scottish Vision of Empire: Intellectual Origins of the Darien Venture”, in A Union for Empire: Political Thought and the British Union of 1707, ed. John Robertson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 97–​118. His son Charles Edward made the last attempt at Stuart restoration in 1745–​1746. See notably John B. Hattendorf, England in the War of the Spanish Succession (New York and London: Garland Publishing Inc., 1987), 53–​75; Kalevi J. Holsti, Peace and War: Armed Conflicts and International Order 1648–​1989 (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1991), 73–​82; Andrew C.  Thompson, “Balancing Europe:  ideas and interests in British

200 Ghervas The crux of the dispute, on the other hand, lay with the Dutch Republic. A  prosperous maritime power with world ambitions but in relative decline, it had survived for a long time with Spanish troops on its doorstep in Flanders. Unfortunately, it had been waging an unhappy war with France in what some historians call the long French-​Dutch war (1672–​1712).19 It was a saving grace that it had received the support of Spain in that matter (regardless of the old grudges), since the Habsburgs were equally threatened by the territorial ambitions of Louis xiv. The situation, however, grew desperate in 1701, when the French and the Spaniards moved from foes to allies in Flanders: the loose confederate institutions of the Dutch Republic were no match on land against the combined might of those two powers. In order to rescue the Dutch from assured defeat and occupation, the British and several allied German Princes were prompted to organize a joint military intervention. 2

A Dynamic View of the Balance of Power

The main purpose of the War of the Spanish Succession was to re-​establish the balance of power between France and other states, though what this phrase really meant at the time for different actors needs some explanation.20 An essay by Charles Davenant in 1701 indicates how this phrase was understood in England.21

19 20

21

foreign policy (c. 1700 –​c. 1720)”, in Ideology and Foreign Policy in Early Modern Europe (1650–​1750), ed. David Onnekink and Gijs Rommelse (Aldershot:  Ashgate, 2011), 267–​82. Arie T. van Deursen, “De Republiek der Zeven Verenigde Nederlanden (1588–​1780)”, in Geschiedenis van de Nederlanden, ed. J.C.H. Blom and E. Lamberts (Baarn: Hbuitgevers, 2005), 163. The origin is ancient (akin to the divide et impera of the Romans or kill with a borrowed sword of the Chinese), but as a systemic concept it took form in the Italy of the sixteenth century. For its evolution see Edward Vose Gulick, Europe’s Classical Balance of Power (New  York:  W.W.Norton, 1955); Georges Livet, L’équilibre européen de la fin du XVe siècle à la fin du XVIIIe siècle (Paris:  puf, 1976); Michael Sheehan, The Balance of Power. History and Theory (London & New York: Routledge, 1996); Klaus Malettke, “L’équilibre européen face à la monarchia universalis: les réactions européennes aux ambitions hégémoniques”, in Imaginer l’Europe, ed. Klaus Malettke, transl. D.-​A. Canal (Paris: Belin & De Boeck, 2000), 117–​24; Bruno Bernardi, “L’idée d’équilibre européen dans le jus gentium des modernes”, Discussions 4 (2010): 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, 16 May 2008). Charles Davenant (1656–​1714), An Essay upon the Balance of Power, in The Political and Commercial Works of Charles Davenant LL D., ed. Charles Whitworth, 5 vols. (London: R. Horsfield, 1771), vol. 3, 299–​430.

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Though by no means the only existing text,22 it has the merit of expressing, with those three words, the logic of English political alliances in Europe, as well as the rationale for the war against France that was about to be declared.23 Davenant’s own political situation and argumentation also exemplify how these issues were more subtle and profound than they might seem at first: in particular, they show the considerable distance between what we would retrospectively consider “modern” and what was actually considered so at the time. Davenant was a recently elected representative of the monarchist and traditionalist Tory Party in the House of Commons. His analysis was that in a world in which no power was able to extend undisputed domination over others, a sensible way of maintaining a balance would be to maintain two opposite configurations of alliances that would cancel each other out, like the two pans of a scale. In this scenario, England had to play the role of regulator: when one alliance threatened to overcome the other, England would have to throw its weight in with the other one, so as to restore the equilibrium.24 The post of England, he repeatedly insisted, was to hold the balance of power in Europe. Davenant’s balance scale belonged to a metaphorical field of mechanics.25 It was part of a conception of the European political order as a mechanical system in a state of dynamic equilibrium, where changes of alliances, conceived as shifts of mass from one side to the other, were routine. This recourse to a form of mechanism, the doctrine that “natural phenomena are explicable by material causes and mechanical principles”, was the product of a member of an English ruling class adept at natural philosophy, which had already had a decade to absorb and ponder the remarkable simplicity of Isaac Newton’s laws of motion.26 22

For other works on the balance of power at that time see: John Toland, Anglia Libera, or The Limitation and Succession of the Crown of England (London: Bernard Lintott, 1701), in particular Chs. 17 and 18; Jonathan Swift, A Discourse of the Contests and Dissensions Between the Nobles and the Commons in Athens and Rome, 1st ed. London (1701), ed. F.H. Ellis (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), 83–​91; Daniel Defoe, The Balance of Europe; or, an Enquiry into the Respective Dangers of Giving the Spanish Monarchy to the Emperor as well as to King Philip (London: John Baker, 1711). See also Theory and Practice of the Balance of Power, 1486–​1914. Selected European Writings, ed. Moorhead Wright (London: Dent, 1975); Michael Sheehan, The Balance of Power, 97–​120; Bruno Arcidiacono, Cinq types de paix, 109–​112. 23 See Kustaa Multamäki, Towards Great Britain: Commerce & Conquest in the Thought of Algernon Sidney and Charles Davenant (Tuusula: Finish Academy of Science and Letters, 1999), 149–​85. 24 Charles Davenant, An Essay upon the Balance of Power, 302–​305. 25 See “Organic and Mechanical Metaphors in Late Eighteenth-​Century American Political Thought”, Harvard Law Review 110, no. 8 (1997): 1832–​49. 26 The Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica of Isaac Newton were published in London in 1687.

202 Ghervas Yet Davenant was not attempting to act as a scientist or even a philosophical pioneer. He was following an immediate political end, in an exposé aimed at the English ruling class: he wanted to justify a reversal of policy against allied France, even though the latter had not committed aggression against England. What he advocated was preventive war. His use of the metaphor of the scales aimed to justify the legitimacy of his proposal, even though it blatantly violated the legal maxim of pacta sunt servanda (agreements are to be respected). How did he solve this contradiction? It would be misguided to think that his was an exercise in political immorality, or a cold observance of Machiavelli’s principles of prudence, which a casual observer might perhaps be inclined to ascribe to “perfidious Albion”. Quite the contrary, Davenant was bitterly blaming both the English court aristocracy and the business circles for their lack of morality. He saw them as self-​interested, to the point that they would gladly sacrifice the interests and liberties of England for their own financial profit.27 His essay was clearly a moral exhortation, in the ancient stoical tradition (in the vein of Cicero), to selflessness, frugality, unity and resolute action, in order to confront both the internal menace of corruption and the foreign threat to the sovereignty of the state. Regardless of how paradoxical this may seem to a reader of the twenty-​first century, he justified this momentous change of policy for England with the classical argument used by the Ancients in their famous quarrel against the Moderns. Davenant’s vibrant call to his fellow MPs in the Commons (particularly to his opponents in the Whig party, the partisans of the freedom of commerce) to give up their penchant for promoting their own interests to the detriment of the Crown fell on deaf ears –​after all, this had been a raison d’être of the British parliamentary system since the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, his opinion about the necessity of a naval intervention to protect English commerce struck a chord with Parliament and the ministries –​at least judging by the resolute

27

“The busy Men of the Town, they, who talk and appear most about, have a different Interest from that of their Country. They neither mind Peace nor War, but as their Bank, New or Old East India Stock, may thereby be affected; the interest of Europe weighs nothing with them, in comparison of the Interest upon their Tallies; they think a high Discompt upon Exchequer Bills, Bank Notes, Malt or Lottery Tickets, would be of worse Consequence, than the King of Spain’s Will”:  Charles Davenant, An Essay upon the Balance of Power, in Essays (London: James Knapton, 1701), 4. See especially Istvan Hont, “Free Trade and the Economic Limits to National Politics:  Neo-​Machiavellian Political Economy Reconsidered”, in The Economic Limits to Modern Politics, ed. John Dunn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 41–​120; David Armitage, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 141–​44.

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entry of the English fleet into the struggle in the Atlantic Ocean in order to hamper enemy trade and to capture convoys of precious metals from America, as well as to secure strategic bases in the Mediterranean Sea (by the capture of Gibraltar in 1702, and later Minorca in 1707). Beyond the opposing interests of England and France in foreign policy, there was also a divergence of views about internal order, both politically and socially. Catholic absolute monarchy had subdued the parliaments of Spain and France, and it could well obliterate in turn two of the great parliamentary systems of Europe: England and the United Provinces, two northern maritime powers that had humbled their kings to safeguard their own freedoms and kept their Protestant religion against all odds. According to Davenant, the object of balance-​of-​power policy was two-​ fold: against hegemony (to prevent the union of France and Spain) and for internal security (to preserve England’s freedoms and prosperity).28 But was it truly aimed at peace? The answer was ultimately yes:  peace, a precious commodity, was the goal. Nevertheless, he contended that morality and law were now on the side of a war, which he predicted would be both long and costly.29 In summary, while the concept of a “balance” of power (the mechanical metaphor of balance scales, which likened Europe to a dynamic system) had flourished in England at the turn of the century, it referred to a reality that had existed for decades. It was often used with respect to sixteenth-​century Italy (and to authors like Machiavelli and Guicciardini).30 As such, it was an implicit, “natural” phenomenon governing human relations. As Davenant conceived it, however, the balance of power had a second side, explicit and prescriptive, as a maxim of political prudence: if the scale was tipping to one side, England should deliberately shift its weight to the other side –​as it was indeed to do in 1702 against France.

28

29 30

For the three possible uses of balance of power (to ensure security, to prevent hegemony, or to pacify) see Bruno Arcidiacono, “De la balance politique et de ses rapports avec le droit des gens: Vattel, la ‘guerre pour l’équilibre’ et le système européen”, in Vattel’s International Law in a 21st Century Perspective. Le droit international de Vattel vu du XXIe siècle, ed. Vincent Chetail and Peter Haggenmacher (Leiden, Boston:  Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2011), 77–​100. Charles Davenant, An Essay upon the Balance of Power, 351–​52. See Herbert Butterfield, “The Balance of Power”, in Diplomatic Investigations. Essays in the Theory of International Politics, ed. Herbert Butterfield and Martin Wight (London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1966), 132–​48; Bruno Arcidiacono, Cinq types de paix, 91–​100.

204 Ghervas 3

A Legal Interpretation of the Balance of Power: the Treaty of Utrecht The war that this peace must quench was ignited mainly because the security and freedom of Europe could absolutely not allow that the crowns of France and Spain be united on the same head. Treaty of Utrecht between France and Great Britain31

The resulting War of the Spanish Succession was a continental conflict, with a variety of theatres in Flanders, Germany, the Atlantic Ocean and Western Mediterranean. Unlike in the previous century, both camps experienced successes and setbacks in turn, so that neither was able to prevail decisively over the other. The result was a military stalemate. The Peace of Utrecht concluded this conflict in 1713, when France and Great Britain signed on 11 April, and Spain and Great Britain on 13 July.32 Yet it was in fact only a series of compromises without winners or losers. The treaties covered three aspects: dynastic, territorial, and commercial.33 Since a dispute over dynastic rights had been the main cause of the war, primary attention was given to that aspect in the first treaty between France and England. Philip V, the grandson of Louis xiv, kept the throne of Spain, but he had formally to renounce his 31

32

33

“[…] la guerre, que la présente paix doit éteindre, a été allumée principalement, parce que la seureté et la liberté de l’Europe ne pouvaient absolument souffrir que les couronnes de France et d’Espagne fussent réunies sur une même teste”, “Traité de paix et d’amitié conclu à Utrecht, le 13 mars –​11 avril 1713, entre la France et la Grande-​Bretagne” [Treaty between France and Great Britain, 13 March –​11 April 1713], in Recueil des traités de la France, ed. M. de Clercq (Paris: Amyot, 1864), vol. 1, Article 6. What is called the “Peace of Utrecht” is in reality a series of bilateral treaties between France and Great Britain, Portugal, Prussia, Savoy, and the Netherlands (Utrecht, 11 April 1713), Spain and France, Savoy, the Netherlands (Utrecht, 13 July 1713), Spain and Austria (Rastatt, 26 March 1714), France and the Holy Roman Empire (Rastatt, 26 May 1714 and Baden, 7 September 1714), Spain and Portugal (6 February 1715). One authentically multilateral treaty is the so-​called “Barrier Treaty” between Great Britain, the Holy Roman Empire and the Netherlands, which conferred the formerly Spanish Netherlands on Austria, and provided for garrisons to be kept there by Austria and the Dutch as a “barrier” against any future French expansion (Antwerp, 15 November 1715). For the collection of treaties see in particular: Les grands traités du règne de Louis XIV, ed. Henri Vast (Paris: A. Picard, 1899), vol. 3; A collection of treaties between Great Britain and other powers, ed. George Chalmers (London: J. Stockdale, 1790), vol. 1 and 2. See also The Treaties of the War of the Spanish Succession. A Historical and Critical Dictionary, ed. Linda Frey and Marsha Frey (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1995). Paul Meerts and Peter Beeuwkes, “The Utrecht Negotiations in Perspective: The Hope of Happiness for the World”, International Negotiation 13, no. 2 (2008): 159.

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claims to the crown of France, even though that meant violating the laws of that kingdom.34 But even before that, another dynastic concern had to be settled: the Stuart claim to succession in the Kingdom of Great Britain, which had been a card in the hands of the French.35 The acknowledgement by France of the Protestant succession eventually contributed to closing a very long period of dynastic and religious contention in England, thereby initiating a long-​sought period of political stability favourable to the rise of British power.36 As a sign of the times, Frederick William, the ruler of Prussia, was pragmatically acknowledged in the treaties as King of Prussia, a title that he had bestowed on himself in 1701. Not only was it a departure from the principle that there should be no royalty in the Holy Roman Empire other than the elected Emperor. It was a further blow to the aspirations to precedence of the Habsburgs of Austria, who were mere hereditary Archdukes! As for territories, the Kingdom of Spain lost its European dominions, first and foremost its Italian territories, which were temporarily transferred to Austria.37 The united Kingdom of Great Britain, which had become a great trading power, kept its control over Gibraltar and Minorca (two strategic naval bases in the Western Mediterranean wrested from Spain) as well as Newfoundland and Acadia38 (two key locations in Canada captured from France). A key commercial settlement was that Great Britain secured access to Spanish colonial trade (including the asiento, the bleak monopoly on the slave trade), partly replacing French influence in those territories. Yet what especially contributed to making the Peace of Utrecht significant for the political history of Europe was a meaningful statement by the King of Spain, annexed to the first treaty concluded between France and Great Britain: One of the main principles of the peace treaties to be concluded between the Spanish and French Crowns on the one hand, and that of England on the other, in order to cement (peace) and make it strong and permanent, and to attain general peace, [is] to ensure forever the universal good and rest for Europe, and to establish an equilibrium between the powers so that

34 35 36 37 38

“Traité de paix et d’amitié conclu à Utrecht”, Article 6. “Traité de paix et d’amitié conclu à Utrecht”, Articles 4 and 5. Not without a failed attempt in 1715 to reinstate the Stuart, after the death of Queen Anne in 1714. Ottokar Weber, Der Friede von Utrecht, 1710–​1713 (Gotha:  F.A. Perthes, 1891), 334–​ 411; Jonathan Israel, The Dutch Republic:  Its Rise, Greatness and Fall, 1477–​1806 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 968–​85. Renamed Nova Scotia.

206 Ghervas it could never happen that several being joined into only one, the balance of equality that is to be established swings over to the benefit of one of these powers, to the risk and detriment of the others.39 Here was, expressis verbis, the English metaphor of the scale. Unfortunately, there happened a fateful quid pro quo between two languages and cultures. In French, the word that first appeared was équilibre des puissances, which, strictly speaking, means “equilibrium” (equal weight) between the powers. It was that phrase that made it into French usage. This oddly left out the second phrase, balance de l’égalité, which in that context had indeed the unequivocal meaning of a weighing scale with two pans. In the French language the phrase had thus lost some of the essential significance of a dynamic change of alliances, which had been at the core of the English view; to make it worse, a translation of the English word “balance” into French could also be interpreted to mean “equilibrium”!40 Similarly, the French word puissance mainly meant the capacity to wield political or legal authority, the might of a state, hence a powerful state or “power” itself (puissance). In French, the mechanistic sense, the “force available to move mass in a stated time”, was a specialized scientific usage, not at all as commonplace as the English “power”. In short, something was lost in translation: the linguistic phenomenon of false friends left the legal phrase équilibre des puissances to be reduced to a static equality of political might among two blocs of states and little more. This was a far cry from the original English mechanistic idea of original forces that should be occasionally rearranged to cancel each other out.41 39

40 41

“[…] L’un des principaux fondements des traités de paix à faire entre la Couronne d’Espagne et celle de France d’une part; et celle d’Angleterre de l’autre, pour la cimenter et la rendre ferme et permanente, et pour parvenir à la paix générale, [est] d’assurer pour toujours le bien universel et le repos de l’Europe, et d’établir un équilibre entre les puissances, en sorte qu’il ne puisse pas arriver que plusieurs étant réunies en une seule, la balance de l’égalité qu’on veut assurer penche à l’avantage de l’une de ces Puissances, au risque et dommage des autres”. (The corresponding Spanish version is equally clear: “asegurar con perpetuidad el universal bien y quietud de la Europa en un equilibrio de Potencias, defuerte que unidas muchas in una, no declinase la valanza de la deseada igualdad, en ventaja de una, apeligro y recelo de la demas”.):  Renunciation of the King of Spain of 5 November 1712 included in article X of the Treaty of 11 April between France and Great Britain, in Suite des actes, mémoires et autres pieces autentiques concernant la paix d’Utrecht, ed. [Casimir Freschot?], 6 vols. (Utrecht: Guillaume van der Water and Jacques van Poolsum, 1713–​1715), vol. 2, 219–​41. For further discussion of the British and French interpretations of the Balance of Power and their implications after the Treaty of Utrecht see: Bruno Bernardi, “L’idée d’équilibre européen”, 28–​29; Stella Ghervas, “Balance of Power vs. Perpetual Peace”, 404–​425. Stella Ghervas, “Balance of Power vs. Perpetual Peace”, 407–​409.

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Furthermore, it was to be expected that the Treaty of Utrecht would try to ensure a more static, if not an immutable, state of affairs: it was easier to write a treaty for the “here and now” than for hypothetical evolutions that no one could predict. Hence the way the legal definition of équilibre in Utrecht was formulated, in the renunciation letters to the throne of France or Spain, was in the form of two pans of the scale that would have to stand still: a status quo ante. The principle that emerges is that the traditionally acknowledged right of succession, namely the French law that would have granted the throne of France to Philip V, had to give way to the principle of the equilibrium of the balance of power, preventing the French House of Bourbon from collecting enough power in its hands to subjugate the whole continent. More generally, the new “balance of power” also reconfirmed a fragmented Europe, organized in two blocs. The Holy Roman (Germanic) Empire returned to a more placid role, similar to that before Charles V: as a durable but loose confederation of states, a stabilizing factor in Europe precisely because of its inertia. Notwithstanding, the Habsburg Charles vi, who had just acceded to power in 1711, sought briefly to reclaim the crown of Spain, which was an impractical ­proposition. Another important outcome of Utrecht was to cut short the seemingly unending process of territorial annexations initiated by the House of France: if we except Savoy and a few secondary territories, the contours of the map of France were to remain largely unchanged up to modern days. The Utrecht agreements, following an English plan, created a “belt” of bulwark states to contain any further expansion of France to the east: from north to south a reinstated Spanish Flanders (reduced and mitigated by Dutch garrisons in key cities, the so-​called barrières), German states behind the Rhine border, Switzerland and the Alps, and Savoy (now a kingdom by virtue of its acquisition of Sicily). As for Great Britain, while history textbooks generally state that it was ultimately the winner in the Utrecht settlement, things were not necessarily seen in that fashion at the time. Despite new territorial acquisitions and commercial advantages, many members of the English political and mercantile class were not satisfied with the not unfavourable conditions granted to France. The English Parliament was angered particularly against one of the key authors of the Treaty of Utrecht, Henry Saint John (created Viscount Bolingbroke in 1712), whom they accused of having been too lenient at the negotiating table.42 42

As further proof that things were more complicated than one would imagine at first, one of Bolingbroke’s further “faults” was to be a Jacobite, a supporter of the Stuart pretenders to the throne of England, and consequently a good friend of France. Things came to such a head that Bolingbroke supported James’ abortive attempt to regain power in England in 1715, and had to flee in disgrace to France.

208 Ghervas 4

Vis et Virtus: War as a Procedure for Dispute Resolution

In retrospect, how realistic was the concept of the balance of power, as defined in Utrecht in the eighteenth century? There are four aspects to be considered here: two legal and two practical ones. In the first place, the legal notion that there could be an “immutable equilibrium of power” in Europe was flimsy. One could presume, however, that diplomats did not fall for it: that statement in the treaties was more likely than not perceived as a rhetorical device, just as peace is always perpetual, and friendship eternal. The second aspect –​the fact that the internal law of a state was to be subordinated to the “external” ius gentium of Europe –​was much more consequential. Admittedly, there is little indication in the abstract that the Peace of Utrecht expressed a conscious intent to establish the balance of power in the abstract, as a principle overruling dynastic rights. On the contrary, it was formulated so as to solve the specific issue that had caused the War of the Spanish Succession. Yet there was a precedent, a significant shift from a purely patrimonial view of the European states, where dynastic interests reigned supreme, to a concept of a loose society of states, with a set of agreed-​upon rules based on communal interest. The third, enduring aspect of Utrecht’s balance of power was that it was acknowledging an objective reality: a politically fractured continent. In the eighteenth century, no European power was ever in a position militarily to overrule all others. In those conditions, a balance of power was the normal outcome. With the two houses of France (Bourbon) and Austria (Habsburg) historically opposed and busy collecting allies, it followed almost mechanically that the outcome would again be a configuration in two blocs. In the past, there had often been a clear winner and a clear loser, as in the Thirty Years War –​in that case, the loser was the House of Austria. At the Congress of Westphalia, the diplomats and lawyers had written down the reasons dictated by the winners, applying the principle that might makes right (not unlike what would happen in Vienna in 1815, in Versailles in 1919, or at Yalta in 1945).43 But since it was not so in Utrecht, there was considerable room for balanced discussion and the resulting agreements could be fairly equitable. The balance of power, in that sense, was a state of affairs of which the actors did not necessarily need to be aware. As such, it could be regarded as an implicit, “natural law”. 43

Stella Ghervas, “Who is In and Who is Out? Inclusion and Exclusion in Conference Diplomacy, 1815–​2015”, in Conference Diplomacy and International Order:  From the Congress of Vienna to the G7/​8, ed. Christopher Daase and Wolfgang Seibel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).

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The fourth and last aspect of the balance of power in the eighteenth century was the emergence of a new political doctrine, according to which the role of Britain was to hold the balance in the scales of European politics. There was an obvious assumption that awareness of the ins and outs of that phenomenon would allow Great Britain to use this instrument with profit, to foster the interests of the kingdom –​not unlike the way in which knowledge of the laws of gravity would help men to build better machines. The central “knack” there (neither intuitive or obvious) was that Great Britain should act as a balancing factor by switching sides if its own bloc threatened to overcome the other. While not always effective in practice, or morally palatable to us, this doctrine certainly proved durable and adaptable to the evolving circumstances. In 1849, the British Prime Minister Lord Palmerston would say:  “We have no eternal allies and no perpetual enemies. Our interests are perpetual and eternal, and those interests it is our duty to follow”.44 As already pointed out, the doctrine according to which the balance of power should rank higher than pre-​existing agreements and alliances had a chink in its armour, because it contradicted the maxim pacta sunt servanda, arguably the single most important axiom underpinning the Law of Nations. Hence it was liable to be considered plain treachery, unless all parties agreed in advance that if one power were to get into a position of hegemony, it could be a valid cause for terminating an alliance. In a way, the Treaty of Utrecht did just that: it contributed to legitimizing the British doctrine, as far as Western Europe was concerned. The continental, “legalist” version of the balance of power, équilibre des puissances (to be used henceforth in treaties and political texts), lacked some of the eminently dynamic character of its British counterpart, since it was understood as a preservation of the status quo ante –​but it was still adaptable. The Peace of Utrecht marked progress: first, it defined the rights and duties of the different monarchs; second, it reduced the risk of a universal monarchy. It was, however, still somewhat barbaric because war remained an intrinsic part of it: its role was as a safety valve, a means to settle disputes that could not be resolved through ordinary diplomatic procedures.45 It follows that the Peace of Utrecht, even in its civilized form as the foundation of a legal order, silently acknowledged war as a legitimate instrument to solve disputes between states whenever diplomacy had failed. In fact, if the implicit function of war in European history had always been to serve as a kind 44 45

J. Ewing Ritchie, The Life and Times of Viscount Palmerston, 2  vols. (London and New York: The London Printing and Publishing Company, 1866–​1867), vol. 2, 767. Stella Ghervas, “Balance of Power vs. Perpetual Peace”, 410.

210 Ghervas of legal procedure, albeit more primitive than the procedure of law: the fundamental axiom being that “might makes right”, i.e. that the party that prevailed on the field was considered to have won the case.46 Drawing from a pre-​ Christian tradition that seems to parallel the Germanic judicial duels between individuals, right was adjudicated through force rather than the soundness of intellectual argument. This could be rationalized by an underlying conviction that the Heavens favour the arms of the virtuous. In summary, the main achievement of the Treaty of Utrecht was to provide a safeguard against the rise of a universal monarchy of the Bourbons, while it also settled a number of practical issues. While the new European order certainly had peace as its ultimate purpose, it did not seek to ban war: on the contrary, war was harnessed as a mechanism for resolving disputes, so as to restore the continent to a state of rest. The balance of power provided, so to speak, a doctrinal justification to the Roman maxim si vis pacem, para bellum: the European states were to prepare for war (and occasionally wage it) in order to maintain the peace and their own freedoms. 5

The Plans for Perpetual Peace and Their Legacy

Nevertheless, a good question remains: if such prolonged negotiations had to take place after the long War of the Spanish Succession only to arrive at a result so little different from the situation before the conflict, what had been the point of fighting in the first place? Was there any justification at all for the conflict and all its destructiveness? It is precisely because of his concern about the hazards of unresolved differences between the states of Europe, and the resulting wars that the French abbot Charles-​Irénée Castel de Saint-​Pierre (1658–​1743) wrote a Projet pour rendre la paix perpétuelle en Europe, published in 1713.47 His 46 47

On this aspect see James Q. Whitman, The Verdict of Battle: The Law of Victory and the Making of Modern War (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012). Abbé de Saint-​Pierre, Projet pour rendre la paix perpétuelle en Europe (1st ed. Utrecht: A. Schouten, 1713–​1717, 3 vols); the edition quoted in this article is that of Tours (1986). It is worth noting that the French word projet, as Saint-​Pierre or Rousseau understood it, is a “false friend” that cannot be translated into English as project. According to Dictionnaire de l’Académie française, (1st ed. 1694) projet is “the intention that has been conceived to do something in future (which also includes the arrangement of the means” [“le dessein que l’on a formé de faire quelque chose (ce qui comprend aussi l’arrangement des moyens)”]. Projet, in an etymological sense, consists only of projecting oneself into the future. By contrast, the English project is often understood to include the practical steps taken in order to achieve the stated aims. This is the reason why modern translations prefer the phrase Plan for Perpetual Peace.

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fundamental objection to the system of the balance of power (which he also called system of war) was based on two key propositions: 1) “Any peace underwritten under those conditions is merely an armed truce between powers in a situation of near-​equality, exhausted and weary, leading to almost continual wars.48 2) In particular, that the balance of the two great powers of the time (the Houses of France and Austria) will fail to maintain that peace”.49 The most radical aspect of his argument was that he rejected war as the standard procedure used by sovereign states to solve their issues. A  hegemonic peace was in any case impossible in Europe, he argued, because of the balance of power; as evidence of this, Louis xiv had failed in his attempt.50 It was not even desirable, because no sovereign would willingly accept the supremacy of another, which would inevitably lead to the opposite effect: that of war. What was Saint-​Pierre’s diagnosis for this state of affairs? His forma mentis (which was still that of feudal aristocracy, attached to the land) led him to conclude that territorial disputes, born out of unsatisfied ambitions or the appetite for new acquisitions, were the cause of wars.51 Quite clearly, the land-​property of the sovereign was the main bone of contention. Conversely, he reckoned, if the European states established a status quo ante, by virtue of which every monarch was confirmed in his possessions “with sufficient guarantee”, the source of most conflicts would be avoided. What was required, in his view, was a free association of sovereign states that could forward such issues to an arbitration court. In the event that a recalcitrant state refused to apply its rulings, then a common army would reduce it to reason. War was still part of his system but, as the ultima ratio, a police instrument against offending states. This league Saint-​Pierre variously called European Society, European Union, European body, or even Great alliance. It

48 49 50

51

“Toute paix signée dans ces conditions n’est jamais qu’une trêve armée, entre des armées en situation de presque égalité, épuisées et lassées, conduisant à des guerres presque continuelles”. (Saint-​Pierre, Projet pour rendre la paix perpétuelle, “Premier discours”, 22). “En particulier, l’équilibre entre les deux grandes puissances continentales (les Maisons de France et d’Autriche) ne suffira pas à maintenir la paix en Europe”. (Saint-​Pierre, Projet pour rendre la paix perpétuelle, “Premier discours”, 37). For the historical context of Saint-​Pierre’s thought see Maria-​Grazia Bottaro-​Palumbo, Ch.-​I. Castel de Saint-​Pierre e la monarchia di Luigi XIV (Genoa:  Ecig, 1983); Thomas E. Kaiser, “The Abbé de Saint-​Pierre, Public Opinion, and the Reconstitution of the French Monarchy”, Journal of Modern History 55, no. 4 (1983): 618–​43; Simone Goyard-​Fabre, La construction de la paix ou le Travail de Sisyphe (Paris: Vrin, 1994), 121–​29. Abbé de Saint-​Pierre, Abrégé du Projet de paix perpétuelle, 1728 (Rotterdam: J.D. Beman, 1729), 12–​13.

212 Ghervas would have to be based on an irrevocable treaty, endowed with an arbitral court that would settle disputes between member-​states (hence the name system of peace, as opposed to the system of war of the balance of power). In other words, Saint-​Pierre was seeking to establish a republic of European states, complete with laws, judges, and an enforcement agency.52 On Saint-​Pierre’s Diagnosis 5.1 Saint-​Pierre’s plan drew much criticism when it was published –​mostly on the ground that it appeared too utopian.53 Retrospectively, was this discredit deserved? Admittedly, one of its flaws, still evident today, is formal: its disordered lengthiness, its repetitions and variations. Saint-​Pierre evidently had some difficulty in structuring his thoughts in a meaningful and convincing way for his readers. Yet if we take the trouble to follow him through the development of his ideas, how valid were they? To answer that question, we must address the accuracy of his diagnosis. In retrospect, there is little arguing against his two propositions above. Concerning the first, viz., that there was a state of perpetual war between equal powers in Europe, it could be explained today with a metaphor of the evolution of species. Ambitious monarchies (France, Spain, Austria, Prussia, England, Sweden and Russia) had carved out vast territories since the end of the Middle Ages at the expense of their neighbours –​mostly a myriad of city-​states or of small to middle-​sized states. As long as there had been many of these lesser states in Europe, there had been an ongoing process of “territorial consolidation” for the profit of the larger predatory states. Since the hunting ground was, however, not unlimited, it was inevitable that the great powers would eventually fight one another as soon as they set their sights on the same prey. At the same time, those great powers had gone beyond the size where they could themselves be eaten. In the eighteenth century, wars among the European powers could no longer have the purpose of annihilating each other (as Spain had earlier hoped to do with England or France), but solely to snatch territory or commercial advantage from one another.54 52 53

54

For a general review of the subject see Martti Koskenniemi, “The Public Law of Europe. Reflections on a French 18th Century Debate”, in Erzählungen vom Konstitutionalismus, ed. Helena Lindemann and al., (Baden-​Baden: Nomos, 2012), 43–​73. Voltaire called him “Utopian Saint-​Pierre” in his essay Rescrit de l’Empereur de la Chine à l’occasion du projet de paix perpétuelle (1761): text reproduced in L’année 1796: Sur la paix perpétuelle, de Leibniz aux héritiers de Kant, ed. Jean Ferrari and Simone Goyard-​Fabre (Paris: Vrin, 1998), 200. See also Patrick Riley, “The Abbé de St. Pierre and Voltaire on Perpetual Peace in Europe”, World Affairs 137, no. 3 (1974–​1975), 186–​94. See Kalevi J. Holsti, Peace and War, 46–​70, 83–​113.

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In fact, Saint-​Pierre’s prediction that war would erupt again on the first occasion was almost immediately fulfilled. Overshadowed by his grandfather Louis xiv, and having had peace foisted on him by both France and Great Britain, the King of Spain was unhappy with his lot, particularly the loss of Italian territories and his exclusion from the French succession (Louis xiv had died in 1715). With the support of his wife, Elisabeth Farnese, he sought to reacquire both. A Quadruple Alliance formed of Great Britain, the Holy Roman Empire (Austria), the Dutch Republic and France, went to war to bring him to reason in what was called the War of the Quadruple Alliance (1718–​1720).55 That at least proved that the other signatories of the Peace of Utrecht found enough common interest in enforcing its agreed-​upon terms to engage in a joint war effort against the maverick. This concord, however, was short-​lived: France and Great Britain were still at odds about unresolved colonial affairs. In particular, the Three Years War in the north-​east of America (1722–​1725) between the British and an Indian confederacy backed by France was clearly a repercussion of the Treaty of Utrecht –​ no American Indian representatives had been invited to discuss the ownership of the lands (Acadia/​Nova Scotia) transferred from France to Britain.56 In addition, Utrecht brought peace only to the west of Europe; the Great Northern War was still raging in the east between Russia and Sweden (1700–​1721), in which the British were also involved.57 As far as Saint-​Pierre’s second proposition goes, the titanic struggle between those two Habsburg houses (Austria and Spain) and the Valois/​Bourbons of France had been an exceptionally important factor in European history from the sixteenth century onwards. This contest largely influenced all the major wars in Flanders, Germany and Italy, even when it did not directly cause them. Later events also confirmed Saint-​Pierre’s observation:  the Peace of Utrecht and the balance of power failed to prevent the War of Austrian Succession in 1740, twenty-​seven years later. More accurately, the war was precipitated by a dip in the scale: the Habsburg Charles vi died without a male heir, leaving a daughter, Maria-​Theresa, whose candidacy was contested on the ground that

55 56 57

See James Breck Perkins, France under the Regency, with a review of the Administration of Louis XIV (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1892), 397–​427. See for example John G.  Reid, “Political Definitions:  Creating Maine and Acadia”, in American Beginnings: Exploration, Culture, and Cartography in the Land of Norumbega, ed. Emerson W. Baker et al. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994), 173–​190. See Ivan I. Rostunov, Istorija Severnoj Vojny 1700–​1721 gg. [The History of the Northern War, 1700–​1721] (Moscow: Nauka, 1987); Lucien Bély, La société des princes, XVIe-​XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Fayard, 1999), 363–​368.

214 Ghervas she was a woman. Once again, a dynastic dispute managed to inflame a large part of Europe. On this occasion, Prussia and France allied against Austria and Great Britain. On the other hand, this second proposition of Saint-​Pierre (as perhaps could be expected from such a particular proposition) had limited validity with respect to time:  after an Anglo-​Prussian Alliance in 1756 unexpectedly tipped the balance of power, Austria and France joined hands against Great Britain in the Seven Years’ War (1756–​1763). In yet another twist of history called the “Diplomatic Revolution”, it seems that continental Europeans had finally taken a cue from the British act.58 It follows that both Saint-​Pierre’s propositions were largely correct: his diagnosis was not at issue.59 We might add in retrospect that the system of dynastic succession, often seen as a factor promoting political stability, proved more than once to be a major cause of wars in the eighteenth century, when a monarch died childless or without a male heir. Such was the case of the Spanish succession, the British succession, and the Austrian one. The first two were settled by war and the Peace of Utrecht. Perhaps Saint-​Pierre’s peace system would have brought the Austrian dispute in front of an arbitral court, thus saving the expense of a war. It was not to be. The main criticism against Saint-​Pierre’s plan was not levelled at this point, however, but at the fact that there was apparently no way such a “European Society” could ever be instituted. Leibniz pointedly summarized this in a letter to Saint-​Pierre: “Men are only lacking the will to deliver themselves from an infinity of evils”.60 Similarly Jean-​Jacques Rousseau in his Jugement sur la paix perpétuelle (“Judgment of the Plan for Perpetual Peace”), written at the time of the Seven Years’ War, argued that patrimonial monarchs were in essence human beings subject to greed, jealousy and ambition. No amount of rational argument would entice them to do what was best in the general interest. From this assumption derived the belief (particularly expressed by Kant in the late eighteenth century) that if only representative governments could be instituted in all European countries, popular wisdom would bring peace, since

58 59

60

Charles W.  Ingrao, The Habsburg Monarchy (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2000), 157–​77. For more on this topic see Stella Ghervas, “La paix par le droit, ciment de la civilization en Europe? La perspective du Siècle des Lumières”, in Commerce, Civilisation, Empire. Penser l’Europe au XVIIIe siècle, ed. Antoine Lilti and Céline Spector (Oxford:  Voltaire Foundation, 2014), 47–​70. Letter from Leibniz to Saint-​Pierre (7 February 1715), as well as “Observations sur le projet d’une paix perpétuelle de M. l’abbé de Saint-​Pierre”, in G.W. Leibniz, œuvres (Paris: F. Didot, 1862), vol. 4 (Histoire et politique), 325–​36.

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ordinary people would not desire war.61 Later developments in European history would unfortunately prove that this was not sufficient to bring peace.62 On the other hand, Leibniz had remarkable intuition in his aforementioned letter to Saint-​Pierre: “But to bring wars to an end, another Henry iv, together with some great princes of his time, would have to welcome your great project. The problem is that it is difficult to get great princes to listen to it”. Jean-​Jacques Rousseau expanded on this theme: he imagined that peace could be achieved, for only a moment without the need of representative governments.63 Then he listed those conditions that might coalesce in a Pan-​European league: 1) An impending menace of doom, like the universal monarchy of Spain in the early seventeenth century; 2) A protracted and costly war on the European continent. 3) A providential individual like the French King Henri iv, who allegedly proposed a plan to restore peace in Europe. Rousseau presented this idea only to dismiss it, concluding that it would be both improbable and undesirable. All in all, he considered Saint-​Pierre’s plan to be a “folly of reason”. In case, any assessment of its feasibility would have been speculation in the eighteenth century, since it failed to materialize. Yet, Leibniz and Rousseau had stumbled upon a set of conditions that could allow the realization of a “Plan of Perpetual Peace” –​a pattern of events that was actually to occur later in European history. If they did not see it as likely, it was undoubtedly because they lived under the political order ushered in by the

61

62

63

“[…] If (as must be the case in such a constitution) the agreement of the citizens is required to decide whether or not one ought to wage war, then nothing is more natural than that they would consider very carefully whether to enter into such a terrible game, since they would have to resolve to bring the hardships of war upon themselves (which would include: themselves fighting, paying the costs of the war from their own possessions, meagerly repairing the ravages that war leaves behind, and, finally, on top of all such malady, assuming a burden of debt that embitters the peace and will never be repaid [due to imminent, constantly impending wars]”: Immanuel Kant, “First Definitive Article of Perpetual Peace”, Toward Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch, in “Toward Perpetual Peace” and Other Writings on Politics, Peace, and History, ed. Pauline Kleingeld, transl. David L. Colclasure (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006), 75. Getting rid of despots was arguably a step forward, but was far from sufficient, as Jürgen Habermas remarked in his essay on Kant’s Perpetual Peace: see Jürgen Habermas, “Kant’s Idea of Perpetual Peace, with the Benefit of Two Hundred Years’ Hindsight”, in Perpetual Peace:  Essays on Kant’s Cosmopolitan Ideal, ed. James Bohman and Matthias Lutz-​ Bachmann (Cambridge MA: The mit Press, 1997), 113–​53. Jean-​Jacques Rousseau, Jugement sur la paix perpétuelle, in Rousseau, Principes du droit de la guerre. Ecrits sur la paix perpétuelle, ed. Blaise Bachofen, Céline Spector and al. (Paris: Vrin, 2008), 122–​26.

216 Ghervas Peace of Utrecht. In their horizon of experience, it was hard to imagine that the balance of power could ever be overturned completely. Intermezzo: Napoleon Bonaparte and the Temporary Resurrection of Universal Monarchy The change of circumstances is to be ascribed to an unexpected singularity, namely Napoleon I  and his empire. In order to explain the transition from the balanced order of the eighteenth century to the hegemonic order that the French emperor established, it is important to identify the key factor that made it different. Certainly, the Revolution in France provided commotion enough and was a matter of serious concern for the other European Powers. Several alliances made sure that this would remain a phenomenon confined to that country. Things took a completely different turn in 1805–​1806. A few months after Bonaparte was crowned Emperor of the French, he led a series of breathtaking military campaigns that crushed Austria (Battle of Austerlitz) and Prussia (Battle of Jena), leading to the occupation of their capitals; this was a Blitzkrieg before there was a name for it. After those victories, Napoleon was routinely able to muster armies of over one hundred thousand men, military formations five to ten times larger than the average ones of the War of the Spanish Succession.64 When the dust settled, only two independent powers were left standing: Britain in the west, which had resisted thanks to its isolation as an island and its naval superiority, and Russia in the east, because of its geographical position and its immense territory. The promoters of both the balance of power and plans of perpetual peace during the Enlightenment would have been equally shaken in their beliefs by the rapid accession of France to a position of absolute military power, by the sheer changes in the scale of the war (never before had such movements of men and equipment occurred in European history), and the number of casualties. Worse still, the one thing that the Peace of Utrecht had wanted to avoid at all costs had actually occurred: Europe had unexpectedly fallen into the hands of the most formidable universal monarch since Charlemagne. That remarkable state of affairs became temporarily possible in the early eighteenth century because a great power led by an ambitious and cunning monarch had been able to make full use of technical advances before the others. Not unlike the Roman Empire of ancient times, Napoleon’s mobile army –​in its organization, weaponry and tactics –​had such superiority that no 5.2

64

On this aspect see David A. Bell, The First Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Modern Warfare (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2007).

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coalition of powers had a chance successfully to oppose its invasion. The oscillations of the two pans of the balance had suddenly become so wide that the pieces never had a chance to redistribute in order to restore the equilibrium. The balance of power was temporarily jammed. One enduring consequence of the decisive French victory was that, after Napoleon established the Confederation of the Rhine in 1806, the Habsburg Francis ii, the head of the Holy Roman Empire, was forced into liquidation. This took place by his publishing his abdication as Emperor and King of the Romans, effectively dissolving the German political entity. The Holy Roman Empire had been an offspring of the Graeco-​Roman oikoumene  –​the civilized universe, which had evolved in the West into Latin Christianity. The sacred union of the Throne (the Emperor) and the Altar (the Catholic Pope) had thus been a keystone of the mental geography of Western Europe. In hindsight, this neglected abdication document is a symbolic watershed in European history. Yet before proceeding, Francis had taken the precaution of unilaterally correcting the slight inflicted on his family a century earlier, when the Prussian Hohenzollern Elector had unilaterally become a King within the Holy Roman Empire, a fait accompli ratified by the Peace of Utrecht. From Archduke, the Austrian monarch had already promoted himself to Hereditary Emperor of Austria on 11 August 1804 (even before dissolving the Holy Roman Empire). With that sleight of hand, he both remained the equal of Napoleon and preserved his future position as the highest-​ranking prince in German lands. A new European order was established in the first years of the nineteenth century, which was certainly novel, but which was also the quintessence of what political leaders and diplomats, on the one hand, and Enlightenment philosophers, on the other, had always sought to avoid at all costs. The Pax Napoleonica, even though initially imbued with the liberating ideals of the French Revolution, was perceived by the Allied powers as a detestable repetition of the paradigm of universal monarchy, an apocalyptic experience that should not be repeated at any cost.65 The order created by Napoleon had gone against the tenets of the ius gentium of the Peace of Utrecht. It was thus seen as an illegal attempt by a maverick outlaw. This went so far that after Napoleon’s return during the Cent-​Jours and his final defeat, Austria, Prussia and Russia

65

See in particular Adam Zamoyski, Rites of Peace. The Fall of Napoleon & the Congress of Vienna (London: Harper Press, 2007), 15–​63; Stella Ghervas, “From the Balance of Power to a Balance of Diplomacy? Peace and Security in the Vienna Settlement”, in Securing Europe after Napoleon: 1815 and the New European Security Culture, ed. Beatrice de Graaf, Ido de Haan, and Brian Vick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 95–​113.

218 Ghervas briefly considered the idea of erasing the French state from the European map, as they had done with Poland only twenty years before.66 The Congress System as a Test of the Plans of Perpetual Peace 5.3 It is all the more astonishing (or perhaps logical, after all) that the fall of Napoleon’s dream of European hegemony opened the door to experimentation around Saint-​Pierre’s earlier plan. In the turbulent context of the final defeat of Napoleon, Tsar Alexander I of Russia coaxed the sovereigns of Austria and Prussia into signing the Holy Alliance on 26 September 1815 in Paris.67 This document stands out because it is not a traditional peace treaty after a war, mainly focused on territorial arrangements, as was the Final Act of the Vienna Congress of 9 June 1815 or the Treaty of Paris of 20 November 1815. Nor was it a military alliance created to defend the new order, as was the Quadruple Alliance, also signed in Paris on 20 November. Though formulated as a mere letter of intent, the Holy Alliance was quite possibly the first conscious attempt at establishing an organized political order in Europe, based on multilateral cooperation.68 The pact initially achieved a remarkable consensus, since all the states of Europe, great and small, with the exception of Britain and the Holy See, ratified the alliance between 1815 and 1817. Together with these other treaties, the Holy Alliance ushered in what was later to be called the Concert of Europe.69 There is documentary evidence that the Holy Alliance indeed took some inspiration from Saint-​Pierre’s plan, though it did not blindly follow it.70 Not 66

67

68

69 70

An idea that Tsar Alexander nevertheless rejected:  see Mark Jarrett, The Congress of Vienna and Its Legacy:  War and Great Power Diplomacy after Napoleon (London:  I. B. Tauris, 2013), 98–​119; Stella Ghervas, “Three Lessons of Peace: From the Congress of Vienna to the Ukraine Crisis”, UN Chronicle, LI, no. 3 (2014), 9–​11. “Traité de la sainte Alliance entre les Empereurs de Russie et d’Autriche et le Roi de Prusse, signé à Paris le 14/​26 septembre 1815”, in Comte d’Angeberg (Léonard Chodźko), Le Congrès de Vienne et les traités de 1815, 4  vols. (Paris:  Amyot, 1863–​1864), vol. 4, 1547–​49. Stella Ghervas, Réinventer la tradition. Alexadre Stourdza et l’Europe de la Sainte-​Alliance (Paris:  Honoré Champion, 2008). An English translation is forthcoming at Cambridge University Press, under the title Enlightenment and Tradition in Post-​ Napoleonic Europe: The Worlds of Alexander Sturdza. See Jacques-​Alain de Sédouy, Le concert européen, Aux origines de l’Europe, 1814–​1914 (Paris: Fayard, 2009). As early as in September 1804, the Tsar had issued Secret Instructions (finalized by Adam Czartoryski) to his minister Nikolai Novossiltsev that required him to forge an alliance with Britain; and beyond, a European federation that would be founded on the law of nations. These instructions referred explicitly to Saint-​Pierre, even if they distanced themselves from his ideas: see the first-​hand account of Adam Czartoryski, Essai sur la diplomatie, manuscrit d’un philhellène (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1830). The text of the Instructions

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only that, but in those years reconnecting the two became a topos of pacificist rhetoric.71 Should that be surprising? After all, the three monarchs who signed it were descendants of the same enlightened despots who had welcomed philosophers to their courts in St. Petersburg, Vienna and Berlin; Tsar Alexander was himself a somewhat “un-​Russian” product of a Western enlightened education.72 As for the form, the word “Europe” did appear in the preamble to that text as a geographical term.73 Austria, Prussia and Russia, the three continental powers that had defeated Napoleon, were described as belonging to one and the same family “under the denomination of Christian nation”, despite their religious differences (the first being Catholic, the second Protestant and the third Orthodox). Following the principle of Christian charity, their respective sovereigns were expected to engage in fraternal relations, peaceful and harmonious.74 On the surface this might be interpreted, as has often been the case, as a naive form of pacificist mysticism. There is, however, a more profound meaning, because this declaration had two politico-​legal consequences. The first

71

72

73 74

secrètes is reproduced in Vnešnjaja Politika Rossii XIX i načala XX-​go veka [The Foreign Policy of Russia in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries] (Moscow: Politizdat, 1961), Series I, vol. 2:  138–​51. For a more detailed analysis of the influence of Saint-​Pierre’s plan on the vision of Tsar Alexander I  see Stella Ghervas, “Antidotes to Empire:  From the Congress System to the European Union”, in EUtROPEs. The Paradox of European Empire (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 49–​81 (Parisian Notebooks, 7). See also Constantin de Grunwald, Trois siècles de diplomatie russe (Paris:  Calmann-​Lévy, 1945), 146–​59; Andrei 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 eighteenth century to the first third of the nineteenth century] (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2001), 305–​315; Marie-​Pierre Rey, Alexandre Ier (Paris:  Flammarion, 2009), 131–​170; Stella Ghervas, Réinventer la tradtition, 180–​183. On this subject see Stella Ghervas, “La paix par le droit, ciment de la civilization en Europe?”, 47–​70. We are using here the pacificist/​pacifist distinction proposed by A.J.P. Taylor and developed by Martin Ceadel, Thinking about Peace and War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). Alexander I, son of Tsar Paul I  and grandson of Catherine the Great, was born in St. Petersburg in 1777. He was influenced by the principles of the spirit of the Enlightenment, which were inculcated into him by his tutor, the Swiss Frédéric-​César de La Harpe, an admirer of Rousseau. “[…] Par suite des grands événements qui ont signalé en Europe le cours des trois dernières années”. (“Traité de la Sainte-​Alliance”, 1547). The Russian secretary Alexander Sturdza, who wrote up the draft of the treaty from the Tsar’s handwritten notes, later provided a detailed explanation of the meaning of the text: see Stella Ghervas, Réinventer la tradition, 183–​86.

220 Ghervas was that it liquidated the last remnant of the millenary order dominated by the Catholic Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor, ten years after the abolition of the Holy Roman Empire. The second was that it excluded de facto the Muslim Sultan of the Ottoman Empire from the European order, leaving his territories in an ambiguous no man’s land; this was to open the pernicious Eastern Question.75 This treaty had another consequence: the monarchs promised to give each other “assistance, help and support”, considering themselves as “family fathers for their subjects and armies”. This implicitly opened the door to requesting military support from each other, not only in case of external threat, but also in case their subjects would rebel –​as Saint-​Pierre had unsurprisingly recommended.76 This they did, between 1818 and 1825, when Russian, Prussian and Austrian armies intervened left and right in Europe to suppress popular uprisings. As for Saint-​Pierre’s principle of status quo ante and the guarantee of territories, it was a core tenet of the treaty, which derived from the principle of divine legitimacy. Hence, as surprising as it might seem to us, this much-​ detested aspect of the Holy Alliance was a principle rooted in the early Enlightenment. While Tsar Alexander undoubtedly did put a measure of sincerity into this pact, it is more than likely that his Prussian and Austrian allies (and particularly Prince Metternich) saw the pact mostly as an opportunity to extend their grip on their subject populations. It should at once be added that the “Congress System” never had the supra-​state character of Saint-​Pierre’s plan, nor did it establish a formal court; it was not to evolve beyond the initial declaration of intentions.77 To use the metaphor already proposed by Saint-​Pierre of the Holy Roman Empire and its Diet, Europe was still in a peripatetic phase of multilateral diplomacy, with its congresses taking place in several cities.78 The sedentary form advocated by

75 76

77 78

On these facets of “Realpolitik” behind the Holy Alliance see Stella Ghervas, “Antidotes to Empire”, 72–​75. That is, in fact, the “Fourth advantage” that he advocated in favour of his Plan: “But in the system of peace, the subjects of that sovereign will not only have to abandon any hope of help in their revolts; but on the contrary, they will have to fear the assistance that the European Society will always keep ready to help their Sovereign to punish them”. (“Mais dans le Système de la Paix, les Sujets de ce Souverain non seulement n’auront nul secours à espérer dans leurs révoltes; mais au contraire ils auront à craindre le secours que la Société Européenne tiendra toujours tout prêt pour aider leur Souverain à les punir”): Abbé de Saint-​Pierre, Projet pour rendre la paix perpétuelle, 124. Jacques-​Alain de Sédouy, Le concert européen, 48–​68. The Congress System is generally considered to have been instituted with the Treaty of Paris in November 1815: the Congresses of Vienna (1814–​1815), Aix-​la-​Chapelle (1818),

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Saint-​Pierre (he proposed Utrecht as the permanent meeting point) would not be implemented until 1919, when Geneva was selected as the headquarters of the League of Nations. Furthermore, since the Congress System was promoting mainly the interests of a directorate of three powers, it was oligarchic.79 Nevertheless, as Albert Sorel put it, Europe was under a true “collective contract of general peace” and principles to which most countries adhered, more or less sincerely.80 Hence, and contrary to what has often been declared,81 the Congress System was a far cry from being a repetition of the paradigm of the balance of power of Utrecht.82 Technically speaking, it established a directorial system of peace requiring the great powers of the continent actively to ensure the resolution of any disputes by cooperative effort, and common military enforcement.83 6

The Flaw of Saint-​Pierre’s System Moreover, that which, in the middle of the last century was considered only as the dream of a good man, perpetual peace, became the conception of one of the most powerful sovereigns of the continent. The Holy Alliance seemed to have every right to this title; it was concluded in the name of the holy and eternal laws that establish the nexus of mankind and shape its universal society. But diplomacy

79 80 81

82

83

Troppau/​Opava (1820), Laibach/​Ljubljana (1821), and Verona (1822). Among recent works see Mark Jarrett, The Congress of Vienna and Its Legacy:  War and Great Power Diplomacy after Napoleon (London: I. B. Tauris, 2013). Bruno Arcidiacono, Cinq types de paix, 403–​408; Stella Ghervas, “Peace perpetually reconsidered”, Books & Ideas, 12 November 2012: http://​www.booksandideas.net/​Peace-​ perpetuallyreconsidered.html. Albert Sorel, L’Europe et la Révolution française. 8, La coalition, les traités de 1815 (Paris: Plon, 1904), 501. See notably Henry A. Kissinger, A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace 1812–​1822 (Boston:  Houghton Mifflin, 1957); Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New  York and London:  Simon & Schuster, 1994), 78–​102; Europe’s Balance of Power, 1815–​1848, ed. Alan Sked (London: Macmillan, 1979), especially the essays by Douglas Dakin and F. Roy Bridge. See Paul W. Schroeder, “The Nineteenth Century System: Balance of Power or Political Equilibrium?” in Review of International Studies 15, special issue no. 2 (1989): 135–​53; Paul W. Schroeder, “Did the Vienna Settlement Rest on a Balance of Power”, The American Historical Review 97, no.  3 (1992):  683–​706; Paul W.  Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics 1763–​1848 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). Stella Ghervas, “The Long Shadow of the Congress of Vienna: From International Peace to Domestic Disorders”, Journal of Modern European History, 13, no. 4 (2015): 458–​464.

222 Ghervas corrupted this benign inclination and turned what should have its been safekeeping virtue into venom. adam czartoryski (former Chairman of the Council of Ministers and Foreign Minister under Tsar Alexander I, 1804–​1806)84

From the Peace of Utrecht to the Congress System, the two ends of a loose thread were thus reconnected. A century after the Peace of Utrecht, the Holy Alliance accidentally answered the main objection of philosophers against Saint-​Pierre’s plan, namely that it could not be established because no ruler would willingly adhere to a “system of peace”. In the aftermath of Napoleon’s threat of universal monarchy, fear and immediate necessity were the trigger. All European princes, having barely escaped obliteration, felt they had to band together in one military coalition after another against France. It was also necessity that threw them together in the ensuing peacetime, in search of a durable solution that would prevent France from rearming and a similar disaster from occurring again. The “providential man” was Tsar Alexander I, backed by a Russian army that had borne the brunt of the shock from the Napoleonic Empire and was the most powerful on the continent. Hence a plausible explanation of why Saint-​Pierre’s system of peace was not implemented in the eighteenth century can be stated as there had been no necessity for it because the balance of power (the “system of war”) had provided a workable regulating mechanism, from the Peace of Utrecht down through the crises leading to the War of Austrian Succession and the Seven Years’ War. With no power in a position to completely overrun the others, the balance of power provided the legal and practical foundation for the European order, as a path of least resistance. In contrast, with Napoleon’s spectacular rise to dominance in the early nineteenth century and the changes in the scale of war, the balance of power was momentarily upset. After Napoleon’s fall there appeared to be an objective necessity for the powers to find a tighter form of European order than the Utrecht system had provided; one that would provide regular and active cooperation. If we look more closely at Leibniz and Rousseau’s objections, they did not argue

84

“Bien plus, ce qui, dans le milieu du siècle passé, n’avait été considéré que comme le rêve d’un homme de bien, la paix perpétuelle, devint la conception d’un des souverains les plus puissans du continent. La Sainte-​Alliance semblait avoir tous les droits à cette dénomination; elle fut conclue au nom des saintes et éternelles lois qui établissent le lien du genre humain et constituent sa société universelle. Mais la Diplomatie dénatura cette tendance bienfaisante et changea en venin ce qui devait être son préservatif”: Adam Czartoryski, Essai sur la diplomatie, 277.

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that this was impossible; they merely stated –​quite correctly –​that for a new political order to win over the inertia of an older one, there had to be a strong political incentive. That incentive had been absent in the eighteenth century, and it was there in 1815: thanks to the Holy Alliance, the charge against plans for perpetual peace of being mildly utopian was ipso facto rebutted.85 To be fair, we should add that neither the Holy Alliance nor the Congress System produced decisive evidence that Perpetual Peace was attainable. As a mechanical device, the construction of this first prototype was a crucial step, full of flaws, posing as many new challenges as it solved. In the first place, it strikingly failed to answer questions about political legitimacy: the assertion of the divine right of monarchs obviously did not convince their subjects, who increasingly demanded that political sovereignty should be transferred to the people. As Czartoryski had remarked, the Holy Alliance, from its beginnings as a high-​minded alliance to protect the new order against the external threat of war, became instead a syndicate of rulers assisting each other to keep their own subjects under control. In other words, from an instrument to establish peace (absence of war) among states, the Holy Alliance soon drifted into being a policing instrument to enforce the peace (law and order) within states. Nevertheless, this flaw was not sufficient to break the bonds among the great powers, regardless of how oppressive and distasteful this aspect of their cooperation appeared to liberal spirits. Quite to the contrary, they banded together again against the Revolutions of 1848 and managed to crush them decisively. The fatal flaw of Saint-​Pierre’s “system” turned out to be in the mode of external relations between the powers: it was too rigid. The European political landscape remained an evolving reality, with some states (Britain, France and Prussia) rising to greater prominence in the course of the nineteenth century, while others (Russia, Austria and the Ottoman Empire) were comparatively falling behind. By necessity, any international order trying to enforce a status quo ante had to shatter sooner or later, because of the mere pressure of these long-​term movements. This was indeed what happened to the Concert of Europe: the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the re-​opening of the Eastern Question created an imbalance among the European great powers with which the directorial system of peace was no longer able to cope. The Russian Empire tried to exploit this vacuum, prompting an intervention from the other powers. Ultimately, the Crimean War (1853–​56), fought on the soil of a peninsula jutting out into the

85

See Dominic Lieven, Russia against Napoleon:  The Battle for Europe, 1807 to 1814 (London: Allen Lane, 2009), 285–​328; Stella Ghervas, Réinventer la tradition, 180–​183.

224 Ghervas Black Sea, pitted the allies of yesteryear against each other over the fate of Constantinople, giving conclusive proof that this static system had reached its final limit. In this new context, the “natural” competition between great powers had finally reclaimed its rights, ushering in a new period of opposing blocs.86 The balance of power of the eighteenth century had given birth to an adaptable, though imperfect, legal system of international relations in Europe, wherein war served as a safety valve. Its effects were stabilizing and therefore enduring. It reclaimed its rights in the second half of the nineteenth century. That is not to say that an institutionalized “system of peace”, banning war as a remedy to disputes, would necessarily have been unworkable. But it would have required a greater element of flexibility in order to accommodate the ever-​changing political landscape of Europe. As the French saying goes, il n’y a que le provisoire qui dure.87 86 87

For more see Stella Ghervas, Conquering Peace: From the Enlightenment to the European Union (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020), Ch. 2. “Only temporary things last”.

Subject Index Abstract-​national sovereignty 152 Agrarian capitalism 142, 147, 151 Alliance 4, 9, 15, 17, 38, 48 of democratic states 42 Altered Jurisdiction 170n56 Altered Jurisdiction: Corporeal Traces of Law 159n11 Anarchy 4, 37–​38 inter-​state 123 static international 130 Anglo-​Prussian Alliance 214 Anti-​Bourbon alliance 80 Anti-​British European alliance 132 Anti-​French alliance 134 Anti-​French Grand Alliance 154 Anti-​French power balancing 131 Anti-​hegemonic principle 80–​89 Asiatic monopoly system of European commerce 107 Associated bilateral treaties 155 Automatic power balancing 123 Balance of Power 1, 200–​203, 203n30 adversarial 38 associational 38, 41 International Law and International Organizations 40–​42 international societies 41 legal implications of 84–​88 legal interpretation of 204–​207 political principle 80–​83 as political principle 80–​83 politics 43 and requirements for lasting peace  94–​100 Richard Little’s ordering of 37–​40 system of war 222 theory in International Relations 34–​37 Utrecht’s 208, 221 voltaire and historiography of 45–​66 Bank of England 46, 152, 163, 166, 166nn44, 167, 168 Big chartered British companies 140 Bilateral agreements 17

Bilateral commercial treaties 107 Bilateral free-​trade agreement 139 Bilateral peace treaties 68, 104 Bilateral treaties 1 Blue-​water policy 120, 130n20, 131 British 135, 155 institutionalising 133–​142 British alliance 108, 110 British blue-​water policy 135 British capitalism 140 British grand strategy  Utrecht in International Relations  122–​127 British parliamentary elections 134 British post-​Utrecht power balancing 137 British South Sea Company 136 British sovereignty 143 Brussels, marathon meetings in 23 Capitalism 122, 154 agrarian 142, 147, 151 British 140, 191 concept of 130n19 feudalism to 150–​153 Pristine Culture of 143 Chartered companies 164 Chartered trading companies 140 Class Analysis 122 Commercial Empire 59, 64, 100, 102, 183n33 Commercial treaties of Utrecht 103–​107 Concert of Europe 32, 218, 223 Congresses on Dutch soil 16–​18 Congress of Vienna 193, 194 Congress System 125, 192, 194 as test of plans of perpetual peace  218–​221, 222–​223 Crown sovereignty 147 Defensive alliance 51–​52, 57, 63 Defensive federation 58 Democratic negotiator 25 Democratic political systems 24 Diplomatic carriages 16 Diplomatic culture 20

226  Diplomatic history 4 for capitalist pressures 130 studies in 14n52, 47n8, 80n36 Diplomatic immunity 22 Diplomatic negotiation 1–​2, 20, 23, 26, 100, 103, 126 in Western and Central Europe 18 Diplomatic noblemen 19–​20 Diplomatic relations 45 Diplomatic Revolution 214 Diplomatic system of Europe 89 Dispute Resolution 208–​210 Droit public de l’Europe 123, 175, 177, 182, 186 Dynasticism 130, 145 Dynastic right 67, 89, 204, 208 Dynastic succession 85, 100, 102, 191, 214 East India Company 162–​163, 166, 167, 169 Elections 25 British parliamentary 134 Elections 145 Emer de Vattel 45, 47, 65, 86, 106, 183 English political Alliance 201 English South Sea Company 177 Eurocentrism 157, 171n61 European Great power 223, 224 European jurisdiction 98n15 European national trade companies 107 European political backdrop 194–​200 Evolution  of diplomatic negotiation 18, 26 of inter-​state negotiation 24 of regime-​building and trust 24 role of International Law 41 Federation 58, 181 Fiscal-​military performance  England: from feudalism to capitalism 150–​153 France: from feudalism to absolutism 146–​150 Foreign affairs, revolution in 142–​146 Free port 109, 118 joint company and 107–​111 plan for turning Cadiz into a European 108 Glorious Revolution 138, 140, 146–​153 Grand alliance 51, 72, 74, 79, 87, 134, 141 principles of 61

Subject Index Great power 33, 38, 41, 42, 70, 80, 104, 128, 181, 192, 198, 211, 212, 216, 221 European 223 Great power principle 3 war-​wary or defeated 31 Hegemony 2, 3, 6, 19, 37, 46, 48, 66, 82–​87, 95, 96, 120, 123, 131, 136, 137, 145, 153, 155, 191, 195, 203, 209, 218 Historical Sociology of International Politics 120 Historicist Approach 128 Holy Alliance 218–​223 Institutionalising blue-​water policy 133–​142 Intense bilateral negotiations 12, 77 International alliance 58 International Law (IL)  balancing arches by 40–​42 contractual and positive 125 histories of 157 legacy for 158 organizations and substantial 24 provincialise 171 International organization 24, 26, 33 balancing arches by 40–​42, 43, 198n14 International Politics of Peace Treaty  127–​132 International Relations (IR) 40–​42, 43, 198n14 Balance of Power theory in 34, 36n11 English School 37, 123, 125, 126, 127, 154 foundations of 194 historians and theorists of 80 independent variable or constant in 38 international lawlessness on 19 legal system of 224 problems of 4 warfare and negotiation tools in 18–​19 Inter-​state anarchy 123 Joint stock companies 162, 168n51 Jurisdiction 159–​161 and Forms of Authority 158n8 law 171 orienting ourselves by 159–​161 practice of authorization 170 Jurisdictional Account of International Law 157–​158n6 Jurisdictional forms 157–​158n6

227

Subject Index League of Nations 32, 221 Lingering problem of Spain’s commerce 100–​103 Long 18th Century 128, 144 Long Peace of Utrecht 112–​117

Preventive self-​defence 85 Pristine Culture of capitalism 143 Protestant alliance 56

Mediators 13, 17–​18 Medieval Sovereignty 171n60 Military Alliance 218 Military alliance 41 Multilateral treaties 141

Renunciation 69, 77–​79, 85, 126, 206n39, 207 Revolution in Foreign Affairs 120, 130, 132, 142–​146 Revolution, in foreign affairs 142–​146 Rhapsody of Public Debt 46n3, 57n37, 64, 144, 152 Rule of law 18–​20 Russian Federation 33, 38, 43 Ryswick 1, 2, 12, 16, 17, 18, 22

National Bank of England 144 National trade companies 102, 109 Negotiate Bilateral 9 Negotiators, behaviour of  congresses on Dutch soil 16–​18 negotiations 10–​13 Peace of Utrecht 18–​22 political context 5–​7 pre-​negotiations 8–​10 NewYork, marathon meetings in 23 Nijmegen 1, 2, 12, 16, 17, 18, 22 Non-​diplomatic negotiators 25 Parcellised sovereignty 147 Parliamentary sovereignty 143 Peace of Utrecht 18–​22, 161–​169, 175–​191 Peace of Westphalia 2, 31–​32, 36, 40, 156, 197, 197n11 Perpetual peace  congress system as test of the plans of 218–​221 intermezzo 216–​218 On Saint-​Pierre’s diagnosis 212–​216 Political context 5–​7 Political sovereignty 223 Popular sovereignty 148 Postcolonial Moment in Security Studies 157n2 Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference 170n55 Postcolonial Turn in Security Studies 171n61 Power balancing 120 automatic 123 Power balancing  anti-​French 131 British post-​Utrecht 137 commitment to 138 Pre-​negotiations 8–​10

Quadruple alliance 88, 141, 213, 218

Secret Diplomacy 125, 133, 135, 155 Seven Years’ War 99–​101, 149, 153, 181, 182, 184, 185, 214, 222 Slavery 175, 176, 189n52 Slave trade 136, 175, 187, 205 Social property relations 138, 140 England: from feudalism to capitalism 150–​153 France: from feudalism to absolutism 146–​150 South Sea Company 163, 167–​168, 189–​190 Sovereignty  International Relations, and the Westphalian Myth 198n14 Sovereignty  abstract-​national 152 British 143, 151 center-​stage 124 Crown 147 parcellised 147 parliamentary 143 political 223 popular 148 social relations of 141 Spanish war of succession 133–​142 State-​backed companies 140 Static international anarchy 130 Studies in Diplomatic History 14n52, 47n8, 80n36 Territorial sovereignty 197 Trade, Chartered Companies and Mercantile Associations 157n6

228 

Subject Index

Trade company, joint European 108, 110, 111 Trade off 19, 129 Triple Alliance 4, 141

Value added 23 Visive Powers: Colours, Trees and Genres of Jurisdiction 159n12 Voltaire of Balance of Power 45–​66

United Nations (UN) 32, 44 Universal monarchy 58–​70, 82, 95, 123, 134, 167, 182, 185, 192, 196–​215 napoleon bonaparte and the temporary resurrection of 216–​218 Uses of ‘Sovereignty’ in the Law 160n14

War of the Spanish Succession 47, 68, 70, 74, 80, 82, 89, 94, 97, 100, 101, 103, 104, 107, 118, 127, 129, 132, 136, 145, 193, 198, 200, 204, 208, 210, 216 Westphalian Geopolitics 150, 153 World War i 32, 39, 42

Name Index Abbé de Saint-​Pierre 36, 57n34, 58n40, 59, 100, 175, 179, 179n21, 192, 193, 210n47, 211n50–​51, 214n60, 220n76 Alexander i 72, 218, 219n70, 222 Angell, Norman 32, 42 Bolingbroke 9, 13, 15, 59, 60–​63, 75, 76n23, 77, 79, 85, 133, 135, 139, 145, 155, 207 Bull, Hedley 37, 41, 83n40 Buzan, Barry 43 Carl Schmitt 66n74, 120, 121n2, 154n72 Charles ii (of Spain) 6, 8, 68, 70, 71, 134, 199 Charles v 51, 56, 60, 70, 71, 82, 134, 182, 195n6 Clausewitz, Carl von 33, 39

Joseph Schumpeter 120, 121n4 Kant, Immanuel 66, 181, 214, 215n61 Louis xiv 4–​17, 46, 50–​82, 103, 114, 123, 134, 149, 154, 179, 182, 193, 198–​213 Machiavelli, Niccolò 54–​62, 202–​203 Mearsheimer, John 37, 38 Napoleon 43, 66, 194, 216–​218, 222 Pinto, Isaac de 112–​118 Pocock 49, 62–​65, 193

de’ Medici, Lorenzo 35

Richard, Little 34–​37 Rousseau 36, 100n22, 114, 179n20, 181, 191, 210n47, 214–​222

Fénelon 50, 53–​62, 82, 83 Frederick the Great 36, 99n19

Saint-​Pierre 57, 59, 61, 96–​118, 179, 192, 210–​223

Gentili, Alberico 40, 44, 176n5, 183 Guiccardini, Francesco 34

Torbjørn, Knutsen 35, 36

Hume, David 36, 45–​48, 63–​65, 94–​103

Waltz, Kenneth 35, 37, 123n9 Wæver, Ole 43