The Peace of Utrecht, the Balance of Power and the Law of Nations

Abstract

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 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. 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.