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7 - Where Would We Be without the Fog Lifting in Austerlitz?

Ruminations on the Uses of History and Sociology in IR

from Part I - The Imperial Past and Present in International Politics and IR

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 June 2023

By
Mathias Albert
Edited by
Klaus Schlichte  and
Stephan Stetter
Klaus Schlichte
Affiliation:
Universität Bremen
Stephan Stetter
Affiliation:
Universität der Bundeswehr München
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Summary

The chapter looks at the long-term structural importance associated with Napoleon’s win in Austerlitz and the ensuing formal end of the Holy Roman Empire. It defines modes of transformation but rather as evolutionary dynamics that pave the way for historical trajectories in which new social forms – such as European global empires or even the notion of global empire – borrow from previous forms, such as the way of organizing political authority in the Holy Roman Empire. In doing so, it identifies two pertinent modes of historicity, namely the presence of several temporal layers in social and political phenomena (‘complex temporalities’), as well as an evolutionary account of non-linear change. In this sense, the chapter is not only about the presence of a specific past in the contemporary structures of the system of world politics, but also to provide a methodological input into contemporary debates about global historical sociology.

Keywords

Holy Roman EmpireNapoleonglobal expansionempiressystem of world politics
Type
Chapter
Information
The Historicity of International Politics
Imperialism and the Presence of the Past
 , pp. 138 - 156
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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