‘Conquest from barbarism’: The Danube Commission, international order and the control of nature as a Standard of Civilization

Abstract

In recent years, International Relations scholarship has looked back to the 19th century as a watershed epoch for the formation of the current international order and the development of ‘Standards of Civilization’ to legitimate that order. However, limited attention has been paid to the role played by society’s relationship with the natural world in constructing these civilizational standards. This article argues that the control and exploitation of nature as a standard of civilization developed in the 19th century to constitute membership in a civilized European international society. The standard dictated that civilized polities must both demonstrate internal territorial control and uphold external obligations towards other actors. In examining 19th-century political contestations over the Danube River as a natural highway between Europe and the near periphery, I demonstrate that in the eyes of Western Europe, Russia failed to uphold the taming of nature as a civilizational standard, contributing to the delegitimization of its authority over the Danube. In its place, the Western powers following the Crimean War created an international commission to manage the Danube delta — a rational and scientific body to rectify the troublesome absence of civilized authority. These civilizational assumptions underpin the 1856 Danube Commission as an early international organization, and through its success, continue to have implications for today’s international order.