Transformation Of European Politics Research Articles

Fears of Revolution and International Cooperation:The Concert of Europe and the Transformation of European Politics

What explains the remarkable degree of great-power cooperation during the Concert of Europe? I focus on a period when there were regular congresses and argue that the transformation of the great powers’ respective domestic politics to where they had active revolutionary movements and feared upheavals at home played a key role in undergirding the transformation of European international politics into a more cooperative order. Fears of a common domestic ideological threat can cause states to bind together rather than exploit one another. The cooperation among the great powers was not just because they were constrained by the balance of power or satisfied with the territorial order or because the powers were meeting together. Their considerable cooperation was largely due to their preferences rather than those interactions.

TOWARDS A PROGRESSIVE AGENDA FOR THE EU?

The European Union is facing serious challenges that test its solidarity and unity in the age of insecurity and anxiety. The Eurozone debt crisis, the so-called “migration crisis” and recently the health crisis and economic downturn instigated by COVID-19 have posed the most formidable challenges to the European project and the EU member states. Given a series of crises and challenging questions facing the EU in less than a decade, it seems timely to discuss and evaluate a progressive vision for the future of the EU. This paper argues that the pandemic has shown the importance and urgency of the core progressive objectives and opened a window of opportunity for progressive politics to advance a new agenda for the EU based on social justice, inclusiveness, equality, and pluralism. This new agenda has the potential to rejuvenate European integration while also allowing the progressives to confront the rise of the radical right in Europe. The paper particularly seeks to address to what extent progressive politics could shift the political agenda away from migration and security issues, create a new movement based on new thinking and a narrative in the face of COVID-19 and take an active part in the transformation of European politics and the EU.

Madame de Staël and the Transformation of European Politics, 1812–17

What place do women have in international history? This article approaches the chronic uncertainty surrounding this question through an examination of the role of one woman, Germaine de Staël (1766–1817), in the processes of peace-making that Paul W. Schroeder has described in his landmark study The Transformation of European Politics as ‘the decisive turning point’ in the transformation of ‘the governing rules, norms, and practices of international politics’. The author argues that Staël's intellectual and personal involvement in these events give us cause to reconsider the presence of women in international history, as actors intruding on what is normatively a masculine landscape, and as the agents of the political ideas that informed the ‘transformational’ peace-making agenda in the period leading up to and after the celebrated Congress of Vienna. She argues that adding Staël to this history recasts the relevance of female élites to the shifting parameters of diplomacy and the rise of a new Europe-centred liberal internationalism in the early nineteenth century, while inviting larger questions about the intersecting trajectories of gender relations and international politics and power.

Napoleon's Wars: An International History 1803-1815 (review)

Reviewed by: Napoleon's Wars: An International History 1803-1815 Michael V. Leggiere Napoleon's Wars: An International History 1803-1815. By Charles Esdaile. London: Allen Lane, 2007. ISBN 978-0-713-99715-6. Maps. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp.622. $58.96. With the passing of David Chandler in 2004, the quill of the long-reigning dean of Napoleonic military history fell silent. By virtue of their various authoritative [End Page 637] works, Rory Muir, David Gates, and Frederick Schneid all can be considered worthy successors. However, Charles Esdaile has clearly emerged as the heir apparent. Esdaile's Napoleon's Wars: An International History 1803-1815 is his most recent addition to an impressive list of publications that includes The Peninsular War: A New History and Fighting Napoleon: Guerrillas, Bandits, and Adventurers in Spain, 1808-1814. As these two titles suggest, Esdaile first achieved prominence as a historian of the conflict in the Iberian Peninsula. With Napoleon's Wars, he sheds his identity as a specialist on the Peninsular War and establishes his reputation as the new authority on Napoleonic military and diplomatic history. In Napoleon's Wars, Esdaile strives to achieve several objectives. Most importantly, he intends to provide "a history of the Napoleonic Wars that reflects their pan-European dimension and is not francocentric." Second, he attempts to examine the Napoleonic Wars within the context of a Europe "whose international history was dominated by events, not in the West, but rather in the East. The focus of attention at the time was above all on Poland and the Ottoman Empire, and the maneuvering that centered on these states. . . . These foci did not alter either for the events of 1789 or for those of 1799" (pp. xiv-xv). Esdaile admits that this approach is not original, citing Paul Schroeder's 1995 "magisterial" work, The Transformation of European Politics, as his model. In addition to these objectives, Esdaile utilizes the study of international relations to answer the question of whether the history of Napoleon was the history of Europe. Finally, he drives home the point that Napoleonic France was not acting in a vacuum and that much of Napoleon's success was due to the fact that the other European powers continued to pursue traditional eighteenth-century strategic and diplomatic goals, all of which predated the French Revolution and its succeeding regimes. Esdaile attempts to achieve his objectives by combining the primary and secondary elements of the book's title: Napoleon's Wars and An International History 1803-1815. As for the former, he forcefully asserts that the wars of 1803-1815 did not stem from an ideological crusade against France, but from Napoleon's own aggression, egomania, and lust for power. Esdaile places blame for the wars of the period squarely on Napoleon. Yet he also argues that structural and systemic factors such as the decline of Sweden, Poland, and the Ottoman Empire, as well as the colonial and commercial conflict, cannot be ignored. Thus, Esdaile invites us to consider the Napoleonic Wars not "as a new type of conflict that foreshadowed the total wars of the twentieth-century," but "in terms of the dynastic wars of the eighteenth-century" (p. 6). At the root of these dynastic conflicts was a Napoleonic imperium "bent on nothing more than exploitation." Esdaile maintains that the other powers clearly recognized that they faced "complete subjugation to Paris" (p. 4). Even so, he concludes that by 1808 Napoleon could have achieved victory over Great Britain but failed and that to the very end the conflict with Russia that led to Napoleon's ill-fated invasion of 1812 could have been avoided, had the French emperor been willing to compromise with Tsar Alexander over at least one of the issues that divided the two states. [End Page 638] Space does not permit a recital of all of Esdaile's main points, but the author does indeed achieve his objectives in a grand style. That said, a few points do need to be made. While the book certainly is far from being francocentric, the reader may find the detailed accounts of British political history a bit taxing at times. Moreover, neo-Bonapartists and Francophiles...

When Right Makes Might: How Prussia Overturned the European Balance of Power

From 1864 to 1871, Prussia mounted a series of wars that fundamentally altered the balance of power in Europe. Yet no coalition emerged to check Prussia's rise. Rather than balance against Prussian expansion, the great powers sat on the sidelines and allowed the transformation of European politics. Traditionally, scholars have emphasized structural variables, such as mulitpolarity, or domestic politics as the cause of this “underbalancing.” It was Prussia's legitimation strategies, however—the way Prussia justified its expansion—that undermined a potential balancing coalition. As Prussia expanded, it appealed to shared rules and norms, strategically choosing rhetoric that would resonate with each of the great powers. These legitimation strategies undermined balancing coalitions through three mechanisms: by signaling constraint, laying rhetorical traps (i.e., framing territorial expansion in a way that deprived others states grounds on which to resist), and increasing ontological security (i.e., demonstrating its need to secure its identity in international politics), Prussia effectively expanded without opposition. An analysis of Prussia's expansion in 1864 demonstrates how legitimation strategies prevented the creation of a balancing coalition.

‘The Transformation of European Politics, 1763–1848’: Episode or Model in Modern History?

‘The Transformation of European Politics, 1763–1848’: Episode or Model in Modern History?

History and International Relations Theory: Not Use or Abuse, but Fit or Misfit

July 01 1997 History and International Relations Theory: Not Use or Abuse, but Fit or Misfit Paul W. Schroeder Paul W. Schroeder Paul W. Schroeder is Professor of History and Political Science at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of numerous works on European international politics and the international system. His most recent book is The Transformation of European Politics, 1763-1848 (Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press, 1994). Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Paul W. Schroeder Paul W. Schroeder is Professor of History and Political Science at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of numerous works on European international politics and the international system. His most recent book is The Transformation of European Politics, 1763-1848 (Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press, 1994). Online ISSN: 1531-4804 Print ISSN: 0162-2889 © 1997 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.1997 International Security (1997) 22 (1): 64–74. https://doi.org/10.1162/isec.22.1.64 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Search Site Citation Paul W. Schroeder; History and International Relations Theory: Not Use or Abuse, but Fit or Misfit. International Security 1997; 22 (1): 64–74. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/isec.22.1.64 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAll JournalsInternational Security Search Advanced Search This content is only available as a PDF. © 1997 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.1997 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Empire and Enlightenment in Edward Gibbon's Treatment of International Relations

the reception of Paul W. Schroeder's The Transformation of European Politics, 1763-1848 (1994) has recently underlined, the nature of international relations in the closing decades of the ancien regime is a matter of controversy, not least because of the question of how best to understand the concept of the balance of power.1 One of the most important discussions of the concept, however, occurred in a work not commonly considered for its discussion of international relations, Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-88). This article will consider Gibbon's treatment of the subject and will particularly assess his position with reference both to Enlightenment views on international relations and Britain's position in the eighteenth century. For Gibbon, the notion of the balance of power was central to the position of western Europe in the eighteenth century. He argued that a system of states operating in a competitive system of civilized politics was necessary to progress. In his 'General Observations on the Fall of the Roman Empire in the West', an essay set within Decline and Fall, Gibbon contrasted the centralized government of imperial Rome, with its susceptibility to autocratic abuse, with the multiple statehood of the eighteenth century:

The transformation of European politics, 1763-1848

The transformation of European politics, 1763-1848