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Paternó, Maria Pia *
Prof. Dr. Maria Pia Paternó, Ausserordentliche Professorin an der Universität von Camerino und Dozentin beim Studienkolleg für Doktoranden an der Universität La Sapienza / Rom (Italien)



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Diplomacy of Treatises and Political Balance between XVIII and XIX century

ISSN: 1867-9714

Gliederung:
1. Introduction
2. Political balance, reason of State, International law
3. Perpetual peace and political balance
4. Friedrich von Gentz’s system of counterbalances
5. National interest, right to intervention, concert of powers

Anmerkungen
Zitierempfehlung

Text:

1. Introduction

The 18th century is generally considered the golden age of the idea of political balance,[1]

See DUCHHARDT, Balance of Power 1997, 13 ff.
which along the century was repeatedly deployed, at a theoretical level and with quite different meanings, in the works of the most significant political writers. Moreover, it was also tangibly expressed at the level of the history of treatises, where it is possible to find numerous and detailed references to the concept of balance. The quite general and indefinite allusions characterizing the seventeenth-century treatises progressively gave way to more frequent and detailed references where – as for example in article 2 of the peace treaty between Anne of England and Philip V of Spain signed in Utrecht in 1713 – the notion of political balance became the regulating principle of international law and is explicitly conceived as an instrument of peace and concord among the European nations.[2]
Treaty of peace of Utrecht, (Friedensvertrag von Utrecht), Großbritannien, Spanien, 1713 VII 2-13, Article 2, p. 8, in: Heinz Duchhardt / Martin Peters, www.ieg-friedensvertraege.de (seen on 9 April 2009): »… cumque ad evellandam ex animis hominum sollicitudinem omnem, suspicionemque, de iustiusmodi conjunctione, et ad firmandam stabilendamque pacem ac tranquillitatem Christiani Orbis justo potentiae aequilibrio (quod optimum et maxime solidum mutuae amicitiae et duraturae concordiae fundamentum est)«.


Still, in the first decade of the 19th century the propulsive impulse of this concept seemed to have been all but exhausted. The international confusion characterizing the relationships among the European States after the French Revolution and the military successes of Napoleon’s expansionistic politics, was reminiscent of similarly tense and quarrelsome periods and made the identification of specific remedies not only an indispensable point of reference for intellectual speculation, but also immediately practical and expedient. Thus, once again, the concept of international political balance became highly popular in the context of a Europe torn by the experience of revolutionary and Napoleonic wars and desirous of returning, as almost two centuries before at the end of the Thirty Years’ War, to a less confused and controversial systematization of the international system. The Congress of Vienna, in the second decade of the century, would be called to perform an international pacifying function analogous to that carried out by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.[3]
Treaty of peace of 1648 X 24 (Westfälischer Frieden), Frankreich, Kaiser and Kaiser Schweden, in: Heinz Duchhardt / Martin Peters, www.ieg-friedensvertraege.de (seen on 9 April 2009).
This will be achieved by making use of a conceptual instrument – that of the political balance – already consolidated in 17th-century political theory and now combined, for the sake of providing better guarantees, with that of the concert of powers.

  1

The theoretical debate accompanying the post-revolutionary and post-Napoleonic international confusion was marked by the alternating emergence of the reasons of balance and those of an institutionalized peace within a system of stable and definite international rules. Just as between the 17th and 18th centuries the theorization of the balance was constantly accompanied by the denunciation of its groundlessness, in 1713, that is in the year when the peace of Utrecht was concluded, the Abbé Saint-Pierre published, together with his project for perpetual peace in Europe, a detailed critique of the system of political balance.[4]

SAINT-PIERRE, Projet pour rendre la paix 1981.
Thus a century later, between the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, the debate about the international aspects of politics witnessed the emergence of the opposing views of the theorists of European balance and those of the juridification of the international system of the States.

For the protagonists of those events, characterized by the highly ideological character of the armed conflicts between the European powers, the reference to the instruments for the containment of international conflicts that had been identified in the climate of the theological-religious confrontation of the Thirty Years’ War was an almost inevitable moment of the international political reflection. The insistence with which both the theme of peace and that of the limitation of armed conflicts emerged from the pages of the philosophical-political debate – a debate which culminated in 1795 with the publication of Kant’s essay On Perpetual Peace, but certainly not to be exhausted at that date – is ample evidence of the urgency with which the issue presented itself to the minds of Europeans.

Together with reconsiderations by some of the major protagonists of that cultural season such as Friedrich Schlegel, Johann Gottlieb Fichte e Joseph Görres,[5]
See BATSCHA, SAAGE, Friedensutopien 1979.
the aftermath of the highly intense confrontation on the issue of peace characterizing the late 1790s [6]
See DIETZE, Ewiger Friede 1989.
marked a significant shift in the attention over the issue of the balance of power. Witness, in 1803, the Tableaux des révolutions du système politique d’Europe by Friedrich Ancillon, in 1806, the Fragmente aus der neusten Geschichte des politischen Gleichgewicht in Europa by Friedrich von Gentz, in 1809 the Handbuch der Geschichte des europäischen Staatensystems by Arnold Ludwig Heeren, and, even before these dates, the essay Űber den Ewigen Frieden by Gentz, published in 1800 in the review »Historisches Journal«.

This discussion over the issue of the European balance shows elements of continuity with the rooted conceptual tradition of the previous century, for example with regard to its anti-despotic function as an opposition to any form of historically acquirable idea of universal monarchy. It also shows, however, elements of discontinuity and innovation, thus originating a complex game of references to the past and anticipations of solutions culminating in that original tangle of balance and concert of powers identified in Vienna as the solution to international conflicts in Europe.

  2

2. Political balance, reason of State, International law

Being completely centered on the themes of national interest and power, but also, and correlated to those, of limit and proportion, the idea of political balance is strictly connected to the horizon of the category of the reason of State, with which it shares, as in a kind of common central thread, the idea of a natural antagonism among the political actors that can be contained through a wise use of the art of negotiation and diplomacy. The connection between the two traditions of thought, already emphasized and highly criticized by the Abbé Saint-Pierre, has been quite recently reaffirmed also by Friedrich Meinecke, according to whom the doctrine of the European balance is nothing but, in the end, a fragment of the doctrine of the interests and of the reason of State.[7]

MEINECKE, Die Idee der Staaträson 1924.
Interest and power in fact, that is, the conceptual instruments typical of the reflection with which this school of thought is applied to international relations, are also among the constitutive elements of the theory of balance.

Less evident, but not less solid, are the connections between this theory and the reflection on the ius gentium, with which it shares the idea that the international system, though showing some regularities – the latter making, indeed, a »system« of it – is essentially anarchical [8]
For a recent formulation of this concept, see BULL, Anarchical Society 1977, a work whose very title refers to the complex relation between order (implicit in the reference to the international system as a society) and disorder (the international society is characterized as anarchical) in the international relations.
and cannot be subjected to an integrally juridical regime. The relationship between the single unities of the international system – in other words, the States – cannot therefore be regulated according to the same principle that in the methodological approach of the theorists of the law of nature and nations allows for the overcoming of the condition of precariousness and absence of coerciveness of natural law within each of them. The impossibility to extend the contractual model from the intrastate level – providing that the individuals renounce their natural freedom – to the interstate one – where instead the States continue to keep full and legitimate claim to their sovereignty, implies that the reflection on the ius gentium renounce the possibility to evoke a juridification of the international law analogous to that operated by the theorists of the political balance.

  3

Therefore, these two currents of thought, extremely diversified within themselves, but also different from each other with regard to their conceptual organization and methodological approach, as well as to the different value acquired within them by politics and law as tools for the possibility to conceptualize order, have in common a double act of rejection: Both of them in fact do not conceive the sphere of international relations as an area of insecurity and precariousness as unbearable as the one pre-existing the institution of the State and do not prefigure the possibility of an integral juridifcation of interstate relations. What is possible instead is the weaving of political and juridical relations providing for the possibility of progressively extending the area of international pacification, but never excluding from its own horizon the hypothesis of actualization of armed conflicts, though sometimes with the final purpose of securing a more stable and peaceful order among the nations. The whole jusnaturalistic speculation on the right of war, ius in bello and ius ad bellum, is an effective demonstration of the relevance of this specific point of observation, as is demonstrated by the monumentality of the juridical-rational construction of the international relationships and the minute casuistry erected around the concept of just war.

Therefore, despite differences as to their methods of research and conceptual structuring, the historical-political reflection on the international balance has in common with the juridical-philosophical approach of the reflection on the ius gentium the objective of establishing the principle of the sovereignty of States on firm foundations, on the basis of the belief according to which an international order cannot prescind from the system of power relations among the States. Here we touch upon a point that is often not sufficiently highlighted, thus contributing to the impression that the system of political balance and that of ius gentium were presented as mutually exclusive hypotheses, based either on the natural law or on the diplomatic practice, and aiming at goals in international politics never referable to the same programmatic line of direction – that is, in the light of the reading proposed here, at the protection of the sovereignty of each single state reality.

  4

The compatibility of the doctrine of the interests of States with the jusnaturalistic theorization of the international system did not escape the observation of some of the keenest theorists of balance of the second half of the 18th century and emerges, to give just a few examples from different historical-political and cultural milieus, in the texts of the Italian jusnaturalist Vittorio Lampredi, as well as in the words of the historian of international law, Georg Friedrich Martens. According to the Italian jurist, the preservation of the power balance, though dealing with »the art of politics, should not be disapproved of among us who only expound the natural law«,[9]

LAMPREDI, Diritto pubblico universale 1828, vol. III, Part III, chapter IV, paragraph 4, entitled: Dell’equilibrio delle nazioni d’Europa, p. 208.
while Martens, acknowledging himself the essentially political character of the concept and its crucial historical role in the formation of the modern idea of Europe, concluded that he considered irrelevant »de savoir si le système de l’équilibre est fondé dans les principes de la loi naturelle, ou s’il ne l’est qu’en tant qu’il est établi par des conventions publiques«.[10]
MARTENS, Précis du droit 1858, Livre IV, cap. I, tomé II, p. 330.


The compound tradition of thought about the political balance, being in its different interpretations closer to or rather distant from the speculation on the law of nations or on perpetual peace, was constantly renewed in the linear simplicity of the model,[11]
»Es spricht einiges dafür, dass die Stärke des Begriffs wesentlich in seiner Unbestimmtheit gründet, in der Möglichkeit, ihn so oder so zu verstehen, aber auch in seiner Universalität im Sinne eines umfassenden Konzepts des Theoretisierens über Politik überhaupt… es ist wohl vor allem die Simplizität des Gleichgewichtsmodells gewesen, das für jedermann einsichtige Prinzip der mechanischen Physik, dass Kräfte sich ausgleichen und es dadurch zu einem Ruhestand kommt, dass den Siegeszug der Gleichgewichtmetapher auch in den politischen und zwischenstaatlichen Raum hinein so nachhaltig förderte« DUCHARDT, Balance of Power 1997, p. 11). Interesting insights in this topic can be found in: BAZZOLI, Il pensiero politico 1986, p. 131, where the author maintains that »the seventeenth-century discussions on the »systèmes en politique« and on the idea of balance constantly reveal preoccupations which are at the same time scientific and moral, ideological and pragmatical. Yet, the common propensity to believe that a »système politique raisonné« and »balancé« configure itself as a possible and practicable organization both in the domestic relations and in the relationships among states, allows to observe how the principle of equilibrium constitute both the common denominator and the ethical aspect of the political dynamics as such« (my translation).
as well as in the vague and undetermined character of the concept of balance itself, alternatively understood as a descriptive instrument or as a founding principle, and susceptible to serving, according to the contexts and the occasions, the resolution of scientific, ideological or even moral preoccupations.

  5

Therefore, the 18th-century Europe saw the affirmation of the reasons for an extremely vague and ambivalent theorization of balance, to the point that it acquired meanings as divergent as those subsumable in the opinion on balance held by Hume, Voltaire, Friedrich II, or Emmerich de Vattel. It also had to deal, in the course of the 18th century, with the outcomes, both practical and political, of the extremely diversified understandings of the natural law that had gained currency in Europe together with the multiplication of the jusnaturalistic interpretations of the State and, above all, with the compound outcomes of the criticism of the conception of the state of nature as a state of war, which was constantly pursued by Pufendorf [12]

By considering the natural state among men as a state of peace, rather than war, Pufendorf contested the whole conceptual and anthropological framework presented by Hobbes in »De Cive« and in »Leviathan«, particularly insisting on these aspects in paragraphs V-VIII of chapter II of Book II of his »De Jure naturae et gentium libri octo« of 1672.
and by the supporters of a radically anti-Hobbesian anthropology. The progressive rejection of the Pufendorfian idea of an equation between ius naturale and ius gentium implied the loss of faith in a natural juridical order capable of settling international controversies and preluded to the necessity of guaranteeing the interstate relations through a shift of attention toward the autonomy of States, as suggested by Vattel, or, on the contrary, toward positive forms of supranational juridification, as suggested by Christian Wolff.[13]
VATTEL, Le droit des gens 1758; C. WOLFF, Ius gentium 1749; Idem, Institutiones Juris Naturae 1750.


At the backdrop of this compound picture, of different theories of natural law, of original re-elaborations of the treatises on perpetual peace, of reconsiderations of the theory of the reason of state, the theory of political balance found, at the end of the century, an extremely gifted exponent in Friedrich von Gentz, who was able to fully exploit its intrinsic speculative ambivalence in order to conform it both to the new exigencies of the historical situation produced in Europe by the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars and to the changing conceptual framework which, with the Kantian speculation on perpetual peace, had moved the tradition of juridical pacifism to the ground of transcendental reflection.[14]
On the innovation represented, in this context, by Kant’s transcendental thought, see MORI, La pace e la ragione 2008.

  6

3. Perpetual peace and political balance

»In the natural state peoples live, as the single individuals, in a state of war. As the latter, with the institution of civil society, must move to a state of peace, thus the former must do the same through the institution of a Confederation of peoples, so that, on earth, peace be concluded not only provisionally, but peremptorily, and be not perpetual only in words, but in facts«.

With this quotation from Wilhelm Traugott Krug’s essay Aphorismen zur Philosophie des Rechts Gentz opens his essay on perpetual peace,[15]

GENTZ, Über den ewigen Frieden  1800, p. 711f.
which takes the form of an intense dialogue with the main and most recent speculations on the themes of war and peace elaborated by the declining century of Enlightenment. The shift onto a lesser polemical target, whose positions were elaborated five years after the publication of the essay Zum ewigen Frieden in the line of a very close continuity with the theses developed by Kant, does not entirely conceal the real interlocutor of the then still relatively unknown German publicist, who had been educated at the Kantian school of the University of Königsberg, but was quite skeptical of the way in which the relationship between theory and praxis was deployed there according to the teaching imparted on the basis of the assumptions of the Kantian philosophy.[16]
See Über Theorie und Praxis 1967.


The adherence of Krug’s theses to Kant’s is incontrovertible and emerges, first of all, in their common belief according to which the state of nature among men is all but a state of peace. Both maintain that, this being rather a state of war – though its hostilities are not always and at each given moment necessarily operative – the state of peace, being all but natural, must be instituted.[17]
»A state of peace among men living together is not the same as the state of nature, which is rather a state of war. For even if it does not involve active hostilities, it involves a constant threat of their breaking out. Thus the state of peace must be formally instituted, for a suspension of hostilities is not in itself a guarantee of peace« (KANT, Perpetual Peace 1991, p. 98)
It is thus made evident how they both participate in the line of thought that, originally opened by Hobbes, had progressively gained consensus in Europe with the decline of the Pufendorfian theses on the assimilation of the natural condition of men to the state of peace.

  7

Keeping his distance from the jusnaturalist way of proceeding and made aware via his careful reading of Burke’s works of the different implications of the concept of nature, Gentz however agrees with the initial formulation given to the issue of peace by that current of the school of natural law that proceeds from Hobbes to Kant and declares that »the state of nature is necessarily a state of war«.[18]

GENTZ, Über den ewigen Frieden 1800, cit., p. 772.
However, he does not derive from it, as a correlated consequence, the necessity to proceed to the institution of a state of peace, and rather argues that such a project, according to its being aimed at the constitution of a single world State, a Federation or Confederation of States, or rather providing for a formal renunciation to the use of force and the institution of an international arbitration, would turn out to be undesirable, impracticable, counterproductive, or self-destructive respectively.

Gentz develops his argument, both on the political plan (denouncing as chimerical the idea of an inclination of republican states toward pacifism)[19]
Ibid., p. 788.
and on the juridical and philosophical one, as an indisputable demonstration »that no plan for perpetual peace exists that, not even to mention the difficulties of its execution, would stand at least in theory«.[20]
Ibid., p. 767.
Subverting Kant’s formulation of the problem of the guarantees for peace, which the latter identifies, in the first appendix to Perpetual Peace, in »the great artist Nature herself (natura daedala rerum)«,[21]
KANT, Perpetual Peace 1991, p. 108.
Gentz evokes the concept of nature in order to deny its specific and progressive developmental quality: »Nature has proclaimed that perpetual peace is impossible to realize«.[22]
GENTZ, Über den ewigen Frieden 1800, pp. 717f.
Therefore, since between the claims of rationality and the possibilities of limited creatures, there can be an unbridgeable abyss, so that in the sphere of morality there could be aims whose achievement is hampered by the absence, in the sphere of reality, of adequate means to pursue them, thus, Gentz suggests, it will be necessary to plan peace starting from the awareness that perpetual peace, though being an everlasting ideal for reason, cannot in any case be nothing more than this.

  8

From this realization Gentz derives the need to rethink the problem of peace and war using political, rather than moral and juridical categories, approaching the vastness of the problems of humankind with a humble and moderate attitude that would have enabled him to better appreciate viable solutions to the problematic of civil life. Fascinating at first sight, but unsustainable when more closely examined, the idea of juridically guaranteed peace can in this spirit be substituted with a kind of »imperfect imitation«, which renounces the chimera of a totally juridical regulation of the relations among the States, but nevertheless leads the society of States to a higher degree of legality by means of the art of politics and its all but useless games. »If there were a science indicating the means for perpetual peace, that would be the highest of human sciences, but since it does not exist, we must then consider with the utmost respect that which establishes as durable a peace as possible«.[23]

Ibid., p. 763.


The art of establishing as durable a peace as possible is, according to Gentz, that of political balance. This system, he wrote at the end of the year 1800, had ruled the life of European states for 150 years, limiting through the art of diplomacy and the game of alliances the threat represented by the excessive prevalence of any of them. At the beginning of the 19th century, this system had suffered a moral discredit whose import could only be compared to that operated by the destruction of all political relationships among European nations. The old political constitution of Europe and the balance among the States upon which it was based had been wiped away, within a few years from the outbreak of the French Revolution, by the advance of the armies, making any pocession and law uncertain in a spiral of violence that had swept away any limit of ius in bello beside those of ius ad bellum. It is exactly this situation, however, that contributed to progressively actualizing the system of balance, as an instrument capable of limiting war and protecting the smaller States from the expansionistic ambitions of the stronger ones.

If this system had been destroyed in Europe by the convergence of concomitant causes, of which the system of divisions and the French Revolution represented the main factors, it was still necessary to go back to it, not only in Friedrich von Gentz’s opinion but also in that of Friedrich Ancillon and Ludwig von Heeren, in order to study the possibility to reconstitute that political structure in which, thanks to the close net of diplomatic relations and common interests, no nation was in a condition to exert absolute control and dominate over the others. The ultimate meaning of balance, according to these interpretations, then lies in its capacity to guarantee the existence and independence of a plurality of nations, each of them guarding their own specificity, but all of them traversed by several historical, political, cultural, and trade relationships.[24]
See VATTEL, Le droit des gens 1758, Livre III, cap. III, par. 47 and ff.; HEEREN, Handbuch 1809; ANCILLON, Tableau 1805, p. IV ff.

  9

4. Friedrich von Gentz’s system of counterbalances

The system of political balance elaborated by Friedrich von Gentz gradually developed in the course of the experience of the Napoleonic wars, occasioning the publication of the essay Fragmente aus der neusten Geschichte des politischen Gleichgewichts in Europa, written between September and October 1805, after the renewal of hostilities following the defeat of the second coalition and the conclusion of the Peace of Luneville, whose details Gentz thoroughly discussed in his writing. The aim of the work Gentz published after the routs suffered by the third coalition at Trafalgar and Austerlitz was that of showing that the federative system that had ruled in Europe over the previous two centuries had been totally cancelled by the events that convulsively followed one another starting from the lacerating experience of the French Revolution. Yet it was necessary to go back to and start working again just on that system with a deeper understanding of the characteristics and instruments provided by politics, in order to create the conditions for a new and more vigorous pacification of Europe.

Although the concept of political balance, in its solid anti-despotic interpretation, perfectly served the aim of blaming the French predominance over the continent as an attempt to gain a kind of political-cultural hegemony of which numerous historical examples had already been witnessed – the universalistic ambition of Charles V, Philip II, and Louis XIV, as well as that connected to modern England maritime and commercial expansionism – Gentz used it in a way that went beyond the necessities, whose presence he however acknowledged, of contingent political polemics. The latter was certainly fuelled by the argumentation, recurring in all treatises about the balance at the time, according to which the specificity of a system based on this principle lay in the safeguard it offered against the hegemonic efforts of the major powers, thanks to mechanisms such as alliances, negotiations, and diplomatic treatises, that allowed for the containment of disproportionate and unilateral increases in power: »The aim of this system has never been – as it was erroneously maintained – that of making all States more or less equally powerful, but rather that of protecting, as far as possible, the weaker ones from the enterprises of the more resourceful through their alliance with the more powerful ones«.[25]

GENTZ, Über den ewigen Frieden 1800, pp. 757f.

  10

Though being a politically effective one in the context of a bitter perception of the irresistibility of Napoleonic hegemony, this argumentation did not exhaust Gentz’s reflection about the issue of political balance, since he also contributed some quite original considerations upon the matter. In fact, he identified the system of balance as a tool for the regulation of interstate relationships based on conceptual categories that had not traditionally been – all of them and always – part of the historical and speculative tradition of political balance. In his interpretation, in fact, the balance is presented as an element for the control of excess through the means of flexibility and moderation, which includes both conflict and its regulation and rejects any linear logic of equality to express through complex and dynamic formulae both permanent and transitory contents of the national interest of individual States.

Thus, in his essay on perpetual peace Gentz pointed out first of all how the system of balance is, philosophically and conceptually, characterized by its being rooted in the concepts of limit, control, moderation, and discretion. Far from representing an instrument for the increase of power, it must be intended as the context of a regulated coexistence among entities unequal with respect to power, extension, and influence, a context characterized by a dynamic balance of factors that considers historical events and guarantees, with ample expectation of success, each State in its own possessions. »The theory, the true theory of political balance is totally based on ideas of moderation, mutual limitation, control, and preservation; it is totally devoted to the supremacy of a well cultivated reason over brute force, of refined and calm talents over the more violent and impetuous ones, of the intelligence of governments over that of armies.[26]

Ibid., p. 760.
This balance was intended by Gentz as a dynamic instrument, capable of adjustments and re-modulations that make it absolutely impermeable to the charges of rigidity and immobility, which it had received in some earlier formulations. It showed to be irreproachable in the light of Saint-Pierre’s judgement,[27]
For Gentz’s opinion about Saint-Pierre see ibid., p. 752 ff.
which had identified its intrinsic nature in the essential precariousness of its stability, just like Kant comparing it, almost a century later, to »Swift’s story of the house which the builder had constructed in so perfect harmony with all the laws of equilibrium that it collapsed as soon as a sparrow alighted on it«.[28]
Kant, On the Common Saying 1991, p 92.

  11

The political balance, in Gentz's discourse at the beginning of the 19th century, followed a different logic from that of the tradition, the latter interpreting balance as something static and rigid, the former representing it rather as a system of counterweight or, according to the terminology proposed by Friedrich Ancillon in those same years, as a system of counterpoises.[29]

ANCILLON, Tableau 1805, vol. III, pp. VIII-IX. According to Gentz, few authors had represented the history of modernity with deeper acumen and competence than Ancillon; see GENTZ, Fragmente 1967, p. 11 footnote.
Accordingly, in his Fragmente Gentz argued that it should rather be called a system of counterweights than a system of balance. »Since even at its best it will never be a real balance, but rather a perpetual, mutual oscillation that, regulated by counterweights, cannot however go beyond clearly predetermined limits«. »What is generally defined as political balance«, Gentz further specified, »is that system of states coexisting next to each other and more or less closely connected to each other, through which none of them can attack the independence or the fundamental rights of another without incurring effective resistance and thus meeting with great risks.[30]
GENTZ, Fragmente 1967, quotations on page 8-9 respectively, footnote, and page 1.
«

Yet the dynamic and minimalist interpretation of the system of balance elaborated by Gentz met with a difficulty related to the empirical experience of contemporary historical events. If the system of balance in fact found, as in Gentz’s proposed reading, its raison d’être in its capacity to guarantee the coexistence of States of different sizes and cultures, regulating their relationships with flexibility so as to allow each of them to develop according to its own pace and ways, how to reconcile this perspective with the historical experience of the divisions of Poland?

The system of divisions, inaugurated in 1772 with the first division of Poland [31]
I refer the reader to the maps (Digitaler Kartensatz zum Teilungsvertrag von St. Petersburg, Preußen, Russland, 1772 VII 25_VIII 5, bearbeitet von Andrea Schmidt-Rösler, Martin Peters, Natalia Schreiner) available on the website: Heinz Duchhardt / Martin Peters (Hrsg.), www.ieg-friedensvertraege.de, (seen on 9 April 2009).
among Prussia, Austria, and Russia, and repeated again in 1793 and 1795,[32]
This list of dates needs to be complemented with those of the so called fourth division that was started by the resolutions of the Congress of Vienna in 1815 with regard to the Duchy of Warsaw and was consolidated by the further divisions of Polish territories between 1832 and 1846.
was considered by Gentz as one of the most fatal and execrable inventions of the 18th century. He interpreted it as a destructive distortion of the system of balance that, being incompatible with any possible interpretation of international law, turns a valuable and convenient political principle into an instrument of injustice, distorting its sense and direction.[33]
The issue is treated by GENTZ, Über den ewigen Frieden 1800, p. 47. See also the more elaborated analysis in his: De l’État de l’Europe 1802, p. 81 footnote and pp. 128-129 and the chapter devoted to this subject in: Fragmente 1967, pp.16-35.
In no way, however, did it amount to a demonstration of the impracticability of the system of political balance, nor did it configure its obsolescence. On the contrary, Gentz maintained that the system of divisions, though irremediably detestable, unjust, and illegitimate, was itself evidence, albeit indirectly, of the solidity of the principles inspiring the historical and conceptual evolution of the idea of political balance and could indeed be interpreted as an indication of the presence of the theoretical conditions for its consolidation. In fact, it shows the scarce propensity to weapons in 18th-century European nations, which opted for the instrument of treaty rather than war in order to settle international questions, and can be politically read – taking the moral condemnation for granted – as a demonstration of their awareness with regard to the high degree of interrelation among the States that established as necessary other forms of agreement and accord.

  12

5. National interest, right to intervention, concert of powers

It could probably be said, with a broad interpretation of the reflection on the substance of the concept of national interest, that the European powers, proceeding to the three successive divisions of Poland, had misjudged the consistence of their own specific interests, sacrificing to an immediate profit – territorial increase – a greater and more durable benefit, that of collective security. The theory of political balance—in its modern formulation dating back to the reflections of the theorists of the reason of State between the 16th and the 17th century – presupposes the absolute sovereignty of the States and their independence, as well as the existence of their own specific interests, be they constant or transitory. Their identification, however, does not prescind from the subjectivity of judgement and answers to different historical sensibilities and to diverse perceptions of priority. In the writings on the equilibrium of the incipient 19th century, it includes a balanced assessment of the role of public opinion and an insightful perception of the non-material and commercial aspects of the national interest: for instance, the preservation of the international order and the promotion of cultural exchanges, but also the defense of political principles and shared values. This is the ground on which Europe was engaged during the Restoration, promoting a new understanding of the system of balance, and thus sanctioning the right of intervention and making the recourse to it plausible through he institution of a concert of powers capable of opposing any revolutionary temptation and of operating effectively in defense of the principle of monarchical legitimacy.

The question arises here as to both the interpretation of this new philosophy of international relations and the evaluation of whether, with its institutionalization of interstate relationships through the system of the Concert of Europe and its unbalanced distribution of power, the order restored through the Congress of Vienna can be legitimately included into the category of the experience of political balance and the praxis of the balance of power. The question, already debated several times in the historiography on the subject,[34]

On the European system of the States during the Restoration, beside the classical study by GRIEWANK, Wiener Kongress 1954, see the more recent debate promoted by the »American History Review« starting with the contribution by SCHROEDER, Vienna Settlement 1992. See also, by the same author, Transformation of European Politics 1994 and the debate that followed it in: KRÜGER, SCHRÖDER, The Transformation of European Politics. 1763-1848: Episode or Model 2002.
has been resolved with uneven results, according to the more or less marked propensity to emphasize the declarations contained in the official acts, the actual mechanisms through which the system worked, or the way in which the latter was perceived by the main protagonists Talleyrand, Castelreagh, and Metternich. The difficulty probably lies in the fact that, promoting a sensible understanding of politics as a flexible tool for the connection between the tangible existing reality and the results that were intended, they worked with an empirical approach, elaborating continuously evolving projects that had their own internal logic, but were almost infinitely remoldable according to the factual needs of the historical contingent reality.

  13

An interesting insight in this context could be suggested by a relatively untrodden path in the works of the theorists of international relations. It is the one offered by the history of the ideas that inspired politicians in their actual government action, through a historical-conceptual study aiming at tracing the sense of some ideas and their specific constants through a shift in attention. In other words, it is a matter of embracing areas not comprised within the limits of immediacy and accident and carrying out checks getting at the root of the numerous and contingent official declarations, since the latter always obey incidental logic and thus give voice to transitory and circumscribed goals and intentions. The political-diplomatic activity of Friedrich von Gentz lends itself perfectly to this type of investigation, since it is inaugurated in a phase of the German publicist’s life when he had already had the chance to pursue a serious and prolonged reflection on the contents of politics and the role exerted in it by the action of the men who make history. Besides public records, official statements and the intense correspondence – comprising letters and reports addressed to Metternich, to the Hospodar of Walachia and other numerous but less regular interlocutors – the political thought of this protagonist of the Restoration can be traced in his numerous political and historical writings, many among them devoted to the question of international relations between the European States. In the years preceding the Congress of Vienna, the Essay on Perpetual Peace (1800), the Considerations on the state of Europe before and after the French Revolution (1802), and the Fragments on Political Balance (1806) constitute a rich corpus of writings focusing on the theme of peace and international balance. From the subjective, partial point of view of what he thought of realizing, there is no doubt that Gentz elaborated his political project on the basis of reasoning inspired by the principles of political balance. Yet, as we have seen, the latter did not always and consistently direct his policy. A passage from Gentz’s correspondence with the Hospodar of Walachia is often quoted to confirm the existence of a gap – which is both appreciable and demonstrable – between his elaborations as a publicist and his activity as a politician. Here, explicitly denying the interpretation of the international order inaugurated in Vienna as a regime based on political balance and partially revising his positive judgement on it, he stated: »The political system established in Europe from 1814-1815 is a phenomenon unheard of in the world. The principle of balance, or better, of counterweights, formed by bilateral alliances; a principle that has ruled, and too often bloodied Europe for three centuries, has been replaced by the principle of a general order, convening the States in a federal compact… Europe seems to form in the end nothing else than a big political family«.[35]

GENTZ, Considerations 1877. On the specific content of these considerations see VON HASE, F. Gentz 1970. See also DUCHHARDT, Gleichgewicht 1976.

  14

Apparently, judging from the statement quoted above, Gentz seems to have adhered to a new political praxis, based on the concert of powers, implicitly retracting his previous theories on the principle of the balance, which, moreover, was here presented to the interlocutor with the suggestion that it was an ineffective principle, unable to preserve peace and prevent recurrent bloodshed among the nations that conformed to it. Yet, reading on from Gentz’s correspondence beyond the passage quoted above, it becomes obvious how he considered such a regulation of international relations as transitory and exceptional, a state of things held together by an extraordinary cluster of historical-political circumstances and destined to be reabsorbed even in the short term by a return to normality implying the restoration of political balance in Europe: »The most divergent interests, the utterly opposite tendencies, the claims, the views, the most contradictory secret thoughts have been absorbed and submerged, for the time being, in the common action of a league resembling much less a true alliance based on permanent and separate interests than a coalition created for an exceptional reason. Exceptional circumstances were needed to bring forth such league, it would be against the nature of man and things for it to replace for long that state of opposition and conflict to which the difference in positions, interests, and opinions will always lead the mass of independent powers, each of them with its own character and peculiar system«. There is no doubt that the theory of political balance had changed some of its most traditional forms, adjusting to the reality of the new historical circumstances and thus perfectly realizing its own empirical and plastic character. While its subversive and revolutionary potential was apprehensively evaluated by its own promoters at the beginning of the 19th century, it is structured as an apparatus for the preservation of order and international legality, and is supplied with instruments that were unusual in a tradition of thought that had uncompromisingly insisted on the principle of the States’ sovereignty and their independence from each other.[36]

Notice, however, the objection made by Justi in the mid 1700s, when, already opposing the theory of balance before the era of European revolutions, he had identified in them a kind of prologue to the formulation of a right to intervention. See JUSTI, Die Chimäre 1758.
In fact, though in general and theoretical terms the philosophy of political balance should imply the impossibility for one State to interfere in the affairs of another, yet in the light of the phenomenon of increasing interdependence of European States, joint reactions to the domestic disorders of each of them, or to the risk of an exportation of anarchical and revolutionary stirrings, start to be considered as legitimate and lawful. Even aggressive warfare, when rightful and necessary –that is, when aimed at restoring the balance infringed by attempts to gain hegemony – is thus justified in the same way as the principle of the right to intervention: Both are redesigned and redefined as instruments serving a principle of self-protection of the entire European system of States.[37]
See GENTZ, De l’État de l’Europe 1802 pp. 191f.

  15

The outcome of this political and conceptual re-elaboration of balance is a keener observation of the role of masses and opinion that had played so important a part in the revolutionary events, and a new emphasis on the relevance of the common and shared elements in the notion of interest. Although he did not present a complex case study and did not dwell for too long, as Samuel Pufendorf had done before him, on the distinction between imaginary and actual interests and, among the latter, between the temporary and the permanent ones,[38]

PUFENDORF, Einleitung 1682. Idem, De Iure naturae et gentium libri octo 1672, VII, 2, 2.
Gentz thought about the simultaneously national and communitarian element in a well-interpreted conception of interest. Through this line of thought, he tried to demonstrate that the hegemonic efforts of the stronger powers did not correspond, in the truest and deepest sense, to the most significant nucleus of their national interest since, by provoking the certain reaction of the other States, they could only end up with a defeat – thus contradicting their own ends – and a political-military decline of their protagonists. Moreover, in order to better categorize the notion of interest within a network of multilateral relations, Gentz combined the »national« version of this concept with a »communitarian« conception of it,[39]
GENTZ, De l’État de l’Europe 1802, pp. xvi-xvii. See also idem, Fragmente 1967, p. 10, where Gentz talks about a »correct conception of the interest of a community of States« (my translation); other references to the right to intervention are on page 50 and 55.
where he imagined the European nations as forces united by the same real and powerful interest in preserving a kind of configuration of federative construction, indifferently designated as European political system or federative constitution,[40]
GENTZ, De l’État de 1802, p. 5.
of the type that had been introduced through the experience of the Peace of Westphalia, however, in a provisional and partial way constantly undergoing rearrangements in 18th- and 19th-century Europe. The undertaking of the powers gathered in Vienna emerged in this specific perspective as comprising a multiplicity of responsibilities, involving the national dimension of the interest of each individual participant of the congress, but extending to the identification of the common and collective parameters of the international configuration of the political order. The aim of the redistribution of thrones, peoples, territories can thus be recognized in a multiplicity of objectives whose main purpose, rather than in the creation of a balance of power, lay in the need for achieving a balance between different political and juridical claims. The logic of this operation can thus be interpreted as an attempt »to reconcile claims among different states, to fulfill promises, to balance conflicting demands and requirements, to meet specific felt needs, to protect the independence and security of all states, and thereby to achieve a general equilibrium in which all the members of the European family of states would share in certain balanced advantages and duties«.[41]
SCHROEDER, Vienna Settlement 1992, quoted on page 698, where the argument is thus conluded: »The process involved adjudication, mediation, and reconciliation more than weighing power; the balance sought in redistributing forces was mainly a balance of rights, that is, a balance between conflicting claims based on various rights. The Vienna equilibrium ideally represented a balance between what each state needed or claimed to need in order to fulfil its proper role and function within the European family and what that family as a whole considered necessary and proper«.

  16

This European system of the States, based on their relative lack of homogeneity and on the coexistence of power inequalities – which however, thanks to the system of counterweights, should have created effective countermeasures to the emergence of disproportional [42]

GENTZ, Fragmente, pp. 1-9.
differences, detrimental to the right to independence of each international actor – necessitated a reconstitution capable of accounting for different conditions following the revolutionary experience of 1789. Therefore it had to consider the reality of the international balance of forces as well as the psychological and structural changes which occurred within state societies. It was equipped, both in the version offered by Friedrich Gentz and in that proposed by the Prince of Metternich, with two complementary typologies of anchorage, situated in the two different areas of physical forces – to be balanced according to the principles of the distribution of power – and ethical values—to be supported through the principles of a public European law.[43]
For an interpretation of the system of the Concert of Europe as based on a double balance, physical and ethical, see KISSINGER, Diplomacy 1994 and, more specifically, idem, A World Restored 1957.


Metternich argued that, in taking account of the combined effect of both the institutionalization of political and diplomatic relations and the progressive intensification of trade and cultural relations among nations, the action of government leaders therefore had to be aimed at identifying the suitable mechanisms, in order to translate the principles of solidarity and balance among the States into practice and give a new, though always necessarily precarious opportunity to that large and shared social body that constitutes – after a centuries-old process of transformations – a vital characteristics of 19th-century Europe. It was not a matter of finding political precepts with unchanging and unquestionable contents, but rather of constantly adjusting the art of politics to the manifold and transient configuration of reality, guided by a wider view of interest as a general and common notion that, within the specificity of the historical context, seemed to be identified, above all, as a need for order and stability.

In the words of Prince Metternich: »Politics is the science of the vital interests of states. Since, however, an isolated state no longer exists, and is found only in the annals of the heathen world, or in the abstractions of so-called philosophers, we must always view the society of nations as the essential condition of the present world. Thus, then, each state, besides its separate interests, has also those, which are common to it with other states. The great axioms of political science proceed from the knowledge of the true political interests of all states. In these general interests lies the guarantee of their existence, while individual interests … possess only a relative and secondary value«.[44]
METTERNICH, Autobiographical memoir 1880, p. 36.

  17

ANCILLON, F.: Tableau des revolutions du système politique de l’Europe depuis la fin du quinzième siècle, Leipzig 1805.

BATSCHA, Z.; SAAGE, R. (Hrsg.): Friedensutopien. Kant, Fichte, Schlegel, Görres, Frankfurt a. M. 1979.

BAZZOLI, M.: Il pensiero politico dell’assolutismo illuminato, Firenze 1986.

BULL, H., The Anarchical Society. A Study of Order in World Politics, London 1977.

DIETZE, A. and W. (Hrsg.): Ewiger Friede? Dokumente einer deutschen Diskussion um 1800, München 1989.

DUCHHARDT, Heinz: Gleichgewicht der Kräfte, Convenance, Europäisches Konzert, Darmstadt 1976.

DUCHHARDT, Heinz: Balance of Power und Pentarchie, München 1997.

GENTZ, Friedrich: Über den ewigen Frieden, in: Historisches Journal, (Dezember 1800), pp. 711-790.

GENTZ, Friedrich: De l’État de l’Europe avant et après la révolution française, Londres 1802.

GENTZ, Friedrich: Considerations sur le système politique actuellement etabli en Europe, in: Dépeches inédites aux hospodars de Valachie, Paris 1877, vol. I, pp. 354-355.

GENTZ, Friedrich: Fragmente aus der neusten Geschichte des politischen Gleichgewichts in Europa, Neudruck der 2. Auflage, Osnabrück 1967.

GRIEWANK, K.: Der Wiener Kongress und die europäische Restauration. 1814-1815, 2. ed. Leipzig 1954.

HASE, A. von: F. Gentz: vom Übergang nach Wien zu den »Fragmenten«, in: Historische Zeitschrift 211 (1970), pp. 589-615.

HEEREN, A. H. L.: Handbuch der Geschichte des europäischen Staatensystems und seiner Kolonien, Göttingen 1809.

JUSTI, I. H. G.: Die Chimäre des Gleichgewichts von Europa, Altona 1758.

KANT, Immanuel: On the Common Saying: ‘This May be True in Theory, but it does not Apply in Practice, in: Idem: Political Writings, ed. by H. Reiss, Cambridge 1991.

KANT, Immanuel: Perpetual Peace. A Philosophical Sketch [dt. 1795], in: Idem: Political Writings, ed. by H. Reiss, Cambridge 1991.

KISSINGER, Henry: A World Restored. Metternich, Castelreagh and the Problems of Peace, Cambridge 1957.

KISSINGER, Henry: Diplomacy, New York 1994.

LAMPREDI, G. M.: Diritto pubblico universale o sia diritto di natura e delle genti [1776-1778], vol. III, 2. ed., Milano 1828.

MARTENS, Georg Friedrich von: Précis du droit des gens moderne de l’Europe fondé sur les traités et l’usage [1831], Paris 1858.

MEINECKE, F.: Die Idee der Staaträson in der neuren Geschichte, München 1924.

METTERNICH, C. von: Autobiographical memoir, in: Memoirs of prince Metternich 1773-1816, edited by Prince Richard Metternich, vol. I, London 1880.

MORI, M: La pace e la ragione. Kant e le relazioni internazionali: diritto, politica, storia, Bologna 2008.

PUFENDORF, Samuel: De Jure naturae et gentium libri Octo, Lund 1672.

PUFENDORF, Samuel: Einleitung zu der Historie der vornehmsten Reiche und Staaten, so itziger Zeit in Europa sich befinden, Frankfurt 1682.

SAINT-PIERRE, Abbé de: Projet pour rendre la paix perpetuelle en Europe [1713], Reprint hrsg. von S. Goyard-Fabre, Paris, 1981.

SCHROEDER, P. W.: Did the Vienna Settlement Rest on a Balance of Power?, in: American History Review 97 (1992/3), pp. 683-706.

SCHROEDER, P. W.: The Transformation of European Politics. 1763-1848, Oxford 1994. KRÜGER, Peter; SCHROEDER, Paul (ed.): The Transformation of European Politics. 1763-1848: Episode or Model in Modern History?, Münster 2002.
Über Theorie und Praxis, Kant, Gentz, Rehberg. Einl. von D. Henrich, Frankfurt a. M. 1967.

VATTEL, E. de: Le droit des gens ou principes de la loi naturelle appliqué à la conduite et aux affaires des nations et des souverains, London 1758.

WOLFF, C.: Ius gentium methodo scientifica pertractatum, Halle 1749.

WOLFF, C: Institutiones Juris Naturae et Gentium, Halle 1750.



ANMERKUNGEN

[*] Prof. Dr. Maria Pia Paternó, Ausserordentliche Professorin an der Universität von Camerino und Dozentin beim Studienkolleg für Doktoranden an der Universität La Sapienza / Rom (Italien)

[1] See DUCHHARDT, Balance of Power 1997, 13 ff.

[2] Treaty of peace of Utrecht, (Friedensvertrag von Utrecht), Großbritannien, Spanien, 1713 VII 2-13, Article 2, p. 8, in: Heinz Duchhardt / Martin Peters, www.ieg-friedensvertraege.de (seen on 9 April 2009): »… cumque ad evellandam ex animis hominum sollicitudinem omnem, suspicionemque, de iustiusmodi conjunctione, et ad firmandam stabilendamque pacem ac tranquillitatem Christiani Orbis justo potentiae aequilibrio (quod optimum et maxime solidum mutuae amicitiae et duraturae concordiae fundamentum est)«.

[3] Treaty of peace of 1648 X 24 (Westfälischer Frieden), Frankreich, Kaiser and Kaiser Schweden, in: Heinz Duchhardt / Martin Peters, www.ieg-friedensvertraege.de (seen on 9 April 2009).

[4] SAINT-PIERRE, Projet pour rendre la paix 1981.

[5] See BATSCHA, SAAGE, Friedensutopien 1979.

[6] See DIETZE, Ewiger Friede 1989.

[7] MEINECKE, Die Idee der Staaträson 1924.

[8] For a recent formulation of this concept, see BULL, Anarchical Society 1977, a work whose very title refers to the complex relation between order (implicit in the reference to the international system as a society) and disorder (the international society is characterized as anarchical) in the international relations.

[9] LAMPREDI, Diritto pubblico universale 1828, vol. III, Part III, chapter IV, paragraph 4, entitled: Dell’equilibrio delle nazioni d’Europa, p. 208.

[10] MARTENS, Précis du droit 1858, Livre IV, cap. I, tomé II, p. 330.

[11] »Es spricht einiges dafür, dass die Stärke des Begriffs wesentlich in seiner Unbestimmtheit gründet, in der Möglichkeit, ihn so oder so zu verstehen, aber auch in seiner Universalität im Sinne eines umfassenden Konzepts des Theoretisierens über Politik überhaupt… es ist wohl vor allem die Simplizität des Gleichgewichtsmodells gewesen, das für jedermann einsichtige Prinzip der mechanischen Physik, dass Kräfte sich ausgleichen und es dadurch zu einem Ruhestand kommt, dass den Siegeszug der Gleichgewichtmetapher auch in den politischen und zwischenstaatlichen Raum hinein so nachhaltig förderte« DUCHARDT, Balance of Power 1997, p. 11). Interesting insights in this topic can be found in: BAZZOLI, Il pensiero politico 1986, p. 131, where the author maintains that »the seventeenth-century discussions on the »systèmes en politique« and on the idea of balance constantly reveal preoccupations which are at the same time scientific and moral, ideological and pragmatical. Yet, the common propensity to believe that a »système politique raisonné« and »balancé« configure itself as a possible and practicable organization both in the domestic relations and in the relationships among states, allows to observe how the principle of equilibrium constitute both the common denominator and the ethical aspect of the political dynamics as such« (my translation).

[12] By considering the natural state among men as a state of peace, rather than war, Pufendorf contested the whole conceptual and anthropological framework presented by Hobbes in »De Cive« and in »Leviathan«, particularly insisting on these aspects in paragraphs V-VIII of chapter II of Book II of his »De Jure naturae et gentium libri octo« of 1672.

[13] VATTEL, Le droit des gens 1758; C. WOLFF, Ius gentium 1749; Idem, Institutiones Juris Naturae 1750.

[14] On the innovation represented, in this context, by Kant’s transcendental thought, see MORI, La pace e la ragione 2008.

[15] GENTZ, Über den ewigen Frieden  1800, p. 711f.

[16] See Über Theorie und Praxis 1967.

[17] »A state of peace among men living together is not the same as the state of nature, which is rather a state of war. For even if it does not involve active hostilities, it involves a constant threat of their breaking out. Thus the state of peace must be formally instituted, for a suspension of hostilities is not in itself a guarantee of peace« (KANT, Perpetual Peace 1991, p. 98)

[18] GENTZ, Über den ewigen Frieden 1800, cit., p. 772.

[19] Ibid., p. 788.

[20] Ibid., p. 767.

[21] KANT, Perpetual Peace 1991, p. 108.

[22] GENTZ, Über den ewigen Frieden 1800, pp. 717f.

[23] Ibid., p. 763.

[24] See VATTEL, Le droit des gens 1758, Livre III, cap. III, par. 47 and ff.; HEEREN, Handbuch 1809; ANCILLON, Tableau 1805, p. IV ff.

[25] GENTZ, Über den ewigen Frieden 1800, pp. 757f.

[26] Ibid., p. 760.

[27] For Gentz’s opinion about Saint-Pierre see ibid., p. 752 ff.

[28] Kant, On the Common Saying 1991, p 92.

[29] ANCILLON, Tableau 1805, vol. III, pp. VIII-IX. According to Gentz, few authors had represented the history of modernity with deeper acumen and competence than Ancillon; see GENTZ, Fragmente 1967, p. 11 footnote.

[30] GENTZ, Fragmente 1967, quotations on page 8-9 respectively, footnote, and page 1.

[31] I refer the reader to the maps (Digitaler Kartensatz zum Teilungsvertrag von St. Petersburg, Preußen, Russland, 1772 VII 25_VIII 5, bearbeitet von Andrea Schmidt-Rösler, Martin Peters, Natalia Schreiner) available on the website: Heinz Duchhardt / Martin Peters (Hrsg.), www.ieg-friedensvertraege.de, (seen on 9 April 2009).

[32] This list of dates needs to be complemented with those of the so called fourth division that was started by the resolutions of the Congress of Vienna in 1815 with regard to the Duchy of Warsaw and was consolidated by the further divisions of Polish territories between 1832 and 1846.

[33] The issue is treated by GENTZ, Über den ewigen Frieden 1800, p. 47. See also the more elaborated analysis in his: De l’État de l’Europe 1802, p. 81 footnote and pp. 128-129 and the chapter devoted to this subject in: Fragmente 1967, pp.16-35.

[34] On the European system of the States during the Restoration, beside the classical study by GRIEWANK, Wiener Kongress 1954, see the more recent debate promoted by the »American History Review« starting with the contribution by SCHROEDER, Vienna Settlement 1992. See also, by the same author, Transformation of European Politics 1994 and the debate that followed it in: KRÜGER, SCHRÖDER, The Transformation of European Politics. 1763-1848: Episode or Model 2002.

[35] GENTZ, Considerations 1877. On the specific content of these considerations see VON HASE, F. Gentz 1970. See also DUCHHARDT, Gleichgewicht 1976.

[36] Notice, however, the objection made by Justi in the mid 1700s, when, already opposing the theory of balance before the era of European revolutions, he had identified in them a kind of prologue to the formulation of a right to intervention. See JUSTI, Die Chimäre 1758.

[37] See GENTZ, De l’État de l’Europe 1802 pp. 191f.

[38] PUFENDORF, Einleitung 1682. Idem, De Iure naturae et gentium libri octo 1672, VII, 2, 2.

[39] GENTZ, De l’État de l’Europe 1802, pp. xvi-xvii. See also idem, Fragmente 1967, p. 10, where Gentz talks about a »correct conception of the interest of a community of States« (my translation); other references to the right to intervention are on page 50 and 55.

[40] GENTZ, De l’État de 1802, p. 5.

[41] SCHROEDER, Vienna Settlement 1992, quoted on page 698, where the argument is thus conluded: »The process involved adjudication, mediation, and reconciliation more than weighing power; the balance sought in redistributing forces was mainly a balance of rights, that is, a balance between conflicting claims based on various rights. The Vienna equilibrium ideally represented a balance between what each state needed or claimed to need in order to fulfil its proper role and function within the European family and what that family as a whole considered necessary and proper«.

[42] GENTZ, Fragmente, pp. 1-9.

[43] For an interpretation of the system of the Concert of Europe as based on a double balance, physical and ethical, see KISSINGER, Diplomacy 1994 and, more specifically, idem, A World Restored 1957.

[44] METTERNICH, Autobiographical memoir 1880, p. 36.



ZITIEREMPFEHLUNG

Paternó, Maria Pia , Diplomacy of Treatises and Political Balance between XVIII and XIX century, in: Publikationsportal Europäische Friedensverträge, hrsg. vom Institut für Europäische Geschichte, Mainz 2009-07-27, Abschnitt 1–17.
URL: <https://www.ieg-friedensvertraege.de/publikationsportal/paterno-maria-pia-diplomacy-2009>.
URN: <urn:nbn:de:0159-2009091850>.

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