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3 - The Congress of Vienna as a Missed Opportunity

Conservative Visions of a New European Order after Napoleon

from Part I - Conceptualisations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2019

By
Matthijs Lok
Edited by
Beatrice de Graaf ,
Ido de Haan  and
Brian Vick
Beatrice de Graaf
Affiliation:
Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands
Ido de Haan
Affiliation:
Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands
Brian Vick
Affiliation:
Emory University, Atlanta
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Summary

The European order created at the Congress of Vienna has often been characterised as an attempt to repress the revolutionary spirit inspired by a conservative ‘philosophy of fear’. This chapter presents an alternative vision of post-revolutionary conservative Europeanism, not asa local or national reaction to the universalism of Enlightenment and Revolution, but as a ‘counter-revolutionary international’ of ‘conservative cosmopolitanism’, embodiedby anti-revolutionary émigrés, and those who contributed to an international coalition against Napoleon. More than longing for an imagined Ancien Régime or a distant medieval past, conservative Europeanism was inspired by ideas of spiritual as well as moral regeneration of a Christian European civilisation in decay, similar to notions of renewal proposedby progressive authors in the ‘European moment’ after 1814.

Keywords

ChristianityConservatismcosmopolitanismémigrésEuropean civilisationEuropeanismspiritual renewal,
Type
Chapter
Information
Securing Europe after Napoleon
1815 and the New European Security Culture
 , pp. 56 - 72
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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