Mark Mazower. Governing the World. The History of an Idea

Abstract

Mark Mazower provides us with a very readable and highly stimulating intellectual history of Western starting with the Vienna Congress in 1815 and ending in 2012 with the ongoing Syrian civil war. The historical analysis focuses not only on the philosophical and political currents at the heart of 19th and 20th century but also on how Anglo-Saxon politicians and high ranking civil servants viewed and shaped international institutions during these two centuries; all of this is full of interesting biographical findings, illustrative contemporary quotations, and insightful historical judgement. The book falls into two parts. The first part is on the Era of Internationalism and covers developments from 1815 until 1939; the second part is entitled Governing the World the American Way and deals mainly with the UN in the post-World War II era until today. Mazower traces four influential currents of internationalism in the 19th century, which are all four portrayed as intellectual and political movements arising as a counter-reaction to the holy alliance of European great powers and the associated restorative anti-liberal policies orchestrated by Metternich: Mazzini's Young Europe nationalism, Richard Cobden's free trade ideology, Marx and organized socialism, and, even though politically less influential, the Anglo-American peace movement. All of these currents are presented by Mazower through short biographical portraits of their inventors who - in the case of Mazzini and Marx as emigres - lived in London in the mid-19th century. Particularly rewarding is the description of the often tension-filled biographical and intellectual links between them. In one of the last chapters of the first part of the book Mazower introduces international law and science as a 19th century semantics of internationalism. His main focus in the chapter on international law is on the founders of the Institut de Droit International and on the rise