9 - Constructing an International Conspiracy

Summary

In recent historiography, the fear of a coordinated international conspiracy threatening the regimes established in the Vienna Settlement is depicted as a form of political paranoia, evoked to create an all-powerful police state. Instead, it is argued here that these fears were a rational response to an actual wave of revolutionary activity across Europe, but that there was widespread disagreement about the extent of international concertation of these various movements. In the attempts to corroborate suspicions of an international revolutionary conspiracy against the Restoration order, a variety of epistemic operations, practical routines and institutional forms of police cooperation were developed, which all contributed to the emergence of a European security culture. However, this culture was riddled with political tensions as a result of competing political interests in the fight against threats to the Restoration order.