The invention of the international order: a reorganization of Europe after Napoleon
By Glenda Servant
Princeton University Press2021
The Concert of Europe and the continental peace it produced remain one of the touchstones – and battlefields – of international relations. Was peace based on a ‘material’ balance of power? The ideas and ideologies of the diplomats and the regimes they represented? Or a new way to conduct international politics? Drawing on the work of the late historian Paul Schroeder (1994) but forging their own courage, international relations scholars have recently argued that elite-led innovations in great power politics secured the era’s continental peace (Rendall 2000 ; Mitzen 2013; Raymond 2019; Lascurettes 2020).
Glenda Slugas The invention of the international order enters into battle not as a new theoretical explanation of the Concert, but as a work of international history, inspired by a theoretical sensibility. While the focus of most IR treatments of the concert is on the ‘what’ – the balance of power and the management of great power – Sluga concentrates on the ‘who’: ‘who was allowed to ‘do politics’ and ‘be political’ ” (p. .9). Rather than examining the structural features of the order, Sluga focuses our attention on the ground level of the order (or beautiful floor): the “social, economic and political dimensions of the new international order” (p.1). As she puts it in her introduction, the book examines the post-Napoleonic moment
… as a moment that revived new ways of doing politics between states, when women as well as men, bourgeois as well as aristocratic, non-state and state “actors” took on new political possibilities in unprecedented ways, for diverse purposes (p.3) .
Sluga takes on this task by ‘adding’ different classes of ‘non-state actors’ to our narrative of the concert – aristocratic salonnières and civil bankers, For example. Here, Sluga shows us in detail how the modernization of diplomacy was not a linear path of progress. Instead, it empowered certain actors but excluded others, particularly those operating in the informal diplomatic structures of the immediate post-Napoleonic era. The Congress of Vienna, the great conference that began the concert period, blurred the “boundaries between masculine methods of diplomacy and the feminine work of conviviality” (p. 148). But the modernization of diplomacy that followed the “Congress position”[ed] the workings of the feminine salon as the antithesis of the workings of the male state” (p.42). More than deepening our image of just the concert, The invention of the international order contributes to our general understanding of how the state, diplomacy, and the modern international system that depends on them came into being.
The book is divided into sixteen chapters that function as segments or vignettes of the book’s themes. The chapters proceed roughly chronologically: we begin in the salons of private palaces as the Sixth Coalition meets against Napoleon, and we end in the imposing French Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the congress that settles the Crimean War. Sluga’s topics reflect those of the period and are wide-ranging: relationships between salons and more formal places of diplomacy (a focus of the first few chapters); the “Oriental Question” (a focus of chapters eleven and fifteen); the various innovative committees or commissions on topics ranging from statistics to river navigation to slavery (highlighted in Chapter Eight); Jewish and religious rights (highlighted in chapter nine); the concert’s interventions in Greece and against Barbary pirates (chapter fourteen); and the complex banking system set up to finance both the parties of Congress and the postwar settlement that those present created (chapters ten and thirteen).
Sluga makes us reconsider the received narrative of the concert, with its exclusive focus on the actions of the Five Powers. Some of Sluga’s most important figures are known to scholars of international relations: Metternich, Talleyrand, Castlereagh, Alexander I, the Humboldts, the funny Prince de Ligne. As these men enter and leave her scenes, Sluga draws our attention to a lesser-known cast: Rahel Levin, Fanny von Arnstein, Princess Catharine Bagration, Baroness von Krüdener, Dorothea Lieven, Robert Owen, Jean-Gabriel Eynard, the Duchess of Sagan, and the permanent living room of the work, the protean Madame Germaine de Staël – to name just a few. Some of these figures appeared in Sluga’s (2014) earlier work on women in the Congress of Vienna; here Sluga uses the generosity of detail that a book-length treatment provides to deepen and broaden her analysis, nesting her subjects within the vast web of social and political connections among Europe’s cosmopolitan political elite. The details of these interconnections can be mind-boggling (see, for example, Baroness von Krüdener’s description, a focus of chapter twelve, on page 196). But their inclusion demonstrates the truly interconnected, cosmopolitan nature of Europe’s ruling classes, a form of networked, complex interdependence before the letter.
The invention of the international order shines when it focuses on these interconnections. Sluga shows how the salon brought diplomats together and pushed them to work together and compromise when they otherwise might not have done so. Figures like Staël played an important but mostly overlooked role in the proceedings by establishing proximity to the statesmen and helping to shape and shift the terms of their debate. Sluga’s account also reminds us that what we see as an outdated period of privilege may have been intellectually richer and more daring than ours today. Monarchist, republican, secular, Christian, cosmopolitan, nationalist, and liberal visions of order all competed for adherents. We might also wonder whether our corridors are really less elitist than theirs.
If there is any criticism to be made of this, it is that the general contours of the book are sometimes overshadowed by its specifics. The work is structured chronologically, using the conferences and treaties around Vienna, such as Chaumont and Verona, as guideposts. However, readers unfamiliar with this history may feel lost given all the details surrounding them. The presentation of some key figures in the story, such as Metternich, is compelling but probably too partial for readers without prior knowledge of the Concert’s statesmen. Sluga’s book may therefore be better suited to readers who have a basic knowledge of the period, rather than to readers looking for an introductory or general overview of the concert.
International relations scholars in particular may long for more theoretical discussion or development. Sluga uses “influence politics” and “soft power diplomacy” (p.148) to describe the importance of her focus. She also suggests that the complexity of individuals can complicate our understanding of the past (p.228). Many of her examples show individuals using their power – and creativity – to shape, open or exclude choices, subtly shaping future international relations. Although informed by these and other theoretical sensitivities, The invention of the international order has no formal framework or theory for understanding the congress, the concert, or the role of non-state actors therein. Apart from a brief discussion of the role of historians and theorists in international relations (p.10), the work does not substantially engage with international relations theoretical debates over the concert or diplomacy.
But Sluga has written what is explicitly a work of international history, not international theory. The “past is a complex place” (p.176). The strength of the book lies in the fact that the figures and their contradictions speak for themselves. Certainly, the Concerto’s textures are illuminated by intellectual concerns, especially with actors who remain on the margins. But the presentation is not completely dominated by them. A more theoretical approach could have undermined the Concerto’s multiplicity – its remarkable combination of grandeur and benchmark, caution and radicalism.
The invention of the international order thus suggests further research for the international relations theorist: into, for example, the networking power of informal spaces and the creative role of individuals. Sluga’s focus on the power of individuals runs counter to trends in international relations theory and the social sciences. Following the critique of Kenneth Waltz (1959), international relations theory has focused on structural or “third view” explanations of world politics at the expense of individuals (the “first view”). Individuals and their personalities play only a small role in world politics: it is the structure (cultural, material, etc.) that ultimately matters, shaping and pushing actors toward outcomes. Some scholars are pushing back against this criticism and have turned their attention to the “microfoundations” of international relations to argue that individuals matter in many contexts (e.g. Saunders 2017). Sluga’s presentation goes even further by suggesting that individuals can shape and shift structure, not the other way around.
Other elements of Sluga’s book – on networks and on historiography – are also in line with recent trends in international relations research. To our field, The invention of the international order happens to say: Here are individuals who use their networks to shape the history of international relations. Sluga’s achievement in international relations thus lies in showing us that there is still much to discover in this crucial period.
References
Graaf, Beatrice de, Ido de Haan, and Brian Vick, eds. 2019. Securing Europe after Napoleon: 1815 and the new European security culture. Cambridge University Press.
Lascurettes, Kyle M. 2020. Orders of Exclusion: Great Powers and the Strategic Sources of Fundamental Rules in International Relations. Oxford University Newspaper.
Mitzen, Jennifer. 2013. Power in Concert: The Nineteenth-Century Origins of Global Governance. The University of Chicago Press.
Raymond, Mark. 2019. Social practices of rule making in world politics. Oxford University Newspaper.
Rendall, Matthew. 2000. “Russia, the Concert of Europe and Greece, 1821–29: A Test of Hypotheses on the Viennese System.” Safety studies 9(4):52–90.
Saunders, Elizabeth N. 2017. “No Substitute for Experience: Presidents, Advisors, and Information in Group Decision Making.” International organization 71(S1):S219–47.
Schroeder, Paul W. 1994. The transformation of European politics, 1763-1848. Clarendon: Oxford University Press.
Sluga, Glenda. 2014. “On the Historical Significance of the Presence and Absence of Women at the Congress of Vienna, 1814–1815.” L’Homme. Journal of Feminist History 25(2):49–62.
Vick, Brian E. 2014. The Congress of Vienna: Power and Politics after Napoleon. Harvard University Press.
Waltz, Kenneth N. 1959. Man, the state and war: a theoretical analysis. Columbia University Press.
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