The Congress Era, 1815-1823

Abstract

Abstract The axiom ‘Whatever ceases to grow starts to rot’ has often been used in power politics, where it does not really fit. It does not correspond to the facts; durable success in power politics, as Napoleon’s career illustrates, depends less on expanding one’s power than on knowing where and how to stop and consolidate it. The maxim also suggests a mistaken notion of what power is and how it works. Except in the crudest sense, state power in international politics is not a thing, a definable and measurable entity, which at any particular time must be either growing, declining, or levelling off. It is not even a combination of factors (military capability, industrial capacity, wealth, territory, population, etc.) which add up to such a measurable entity. A state’s power in international politics involves above all a relationship between its international needs and goals, its capacity to meet them, and the costs of doing so. The sources of that power or capacity, moreover, lie in a complex network of interwoven factors (domestic-political, foreign-political, economic, social, even cultural and psychological) subject to constant change in different ways at different rates.