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The old European States-system: Gentz versus Hauterive

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Murray Forsyth
Murray Forsyth
Affiliation:
Leicester University
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Extract

The contemporary international system is at once the continuation and the negation ofthe old European states-system. It is the continuation in the sense that the world is nowpeopled with the same kind of political bodies that were formerly concentrated within thearea of Europe alone, namely sovereign states. The overseas empires of Britain, France, Spain, and others, represented both the subordination of the rest of the world to Europe, and the media through which the state as a political structure was exported from Europe. The dissolution of these empires, foreshadowed by the independence of the United States and the emancipation of Spain's Latin American colonies, and accomplished definitively in the half-century following the Great War, signified the extension of inter-state relationships to the world in general, while it marked the end of the domination of the European states in particular.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , September 1980 , pp. 521 - 538
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

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References

1 One of the few scholars to examine the debate is Hinsley, F. H. (Power and the pursuit of peace, Cambridge, 1963, pp. 186–93). Hinsley relies however on Gentz’s summary of Hauterive’s argument, and the general framework of his discussion has been questioned by Martin Wight in his essay’Google Scholar‘The origins of our states-system: chronological limits’ in Systems of States (Leicester, 1977), pp. 129–52Google Scholar. Gollwitzer, Heinz also looks at both sides in his Europabild and Europagedanke (Munich, 1951), pp. 126, 158–65Google Scholar. Otto Brandt's essay, ‘Politisches Gleichgewicht and Völkerbund im Zeitalter Napoleons’, Preussische Jahrbücher, vol. CLXXVIII (1919), 385–97, is probably the fullest treatment of the debate that has been made hitherto. It is interesting because Brandt linked the issues with those of the Great War - though his tendency to identify Hauterive’s proposals with the contemporary (1919) ideaof a league of nations or Völkerbund was a misleading one.Google Scholar

2 Sweet, Paul R., Friedrich von Gentz, defender of the old order, (Madison, 1941), pp. 51–2Google Scholar. Haym, Rudolf, in his interesting article on Gentz in the Allgemeine Encyclopädie der Wissenschaften and Künste (Leipzig, 1818–89)Google Scholar, dates Gentz’s first receipt of English money even more precisely than Sweet. On 1 June 1800 Gentz received £500 from Lord Grenville, and he obtained a further £100 at the end of the year, when he entered into formal negotiations with Lord Carysfort.

3 Gentz, Friedrich von, Fragments upon the balance of power in Europe (London, 1806)Google Scholar, the book with which Gentz’s name is most often associated, was printed only once. Hauterive’s book was translated into English by Lewis Goldsmith, a warm enthusiast of the Revolution, in 1801, and was not reprinted.

4 Clarke, Thomas Brooke, An historical and political view of the disorganisation of Europe (London, 1803).Google Scholar

5 Haym, Gentz.

6 Montor, Artaud de, Histoire de la vie et des travaux politiques du Comte d’Hauterive (Paris, 1839), P.97.Google Scholar

7 It has to be remembered that between the publication of Hauterive’s work and Gentz’s reply, France compelled Austria to make peace at Lunéville (February, 1801), secured the left bank of the Rhine, and effectively isolated England.

8 The translation was published in 1793. Gentz appended some reflexions of his own.

9 The degree to which Gentz was a ‘disciple’ of Burke has aroused differing opinions (see Sweet, Gentz, pp. 23 f.) I do not wish to suggest here that Gentz ever became completely a ‘Burkean’. There were differences in the basic cast of the two men’s minds that were never totally extinguished. I do, however, wish to argue that there was a very pronounced convergence of their ideas over the period in question. The reflex of this convergence was the critical attitude that Gentz adopted first towards Kant’s ethical doctrine, in his essay on the relationship between theory and practice (1793), and then towards Kant’s doctrine of perpetual peace in his essay Über den ewigen Frieden (1800). I should add that the original German title of Gentz’s work on the war against the Revolution was Über den Ursprung and Charakter des Krieges gegen die französische Revolution (Berlin, 1801).Google Scholar

10 Gentz, , Ausgewählte Schriften, ed. Weick, (Stuttgart, 1836–8), 1, 26.Google Scholar

11 Burke’s views are perhaps most concisely exposed at the start of the second of his Letters on a regicide peace. Here we can see in particular the inner affinity between his views and those of his arch-enemies. The Jacobins, he wrote, ‘ saw the thing right from the very beginning. Whatever were the first motives of the war among politicians, they saw that it is in its spirit, and for its objects, a civil war; and as such they pursued it. It is a war between the partizans of the ancient, civil, moral and political order of Europe against a sect of fanatical and ambitious atheists which means to change them all...’: Burke, , Select works, ed. Payne, (Oxford, 1904), iii, 104.Google Scholar

12 Ausgewählte Schriften, 11, 376 ff.

13 Only one biography of Hauterive seems to have been written (Artaud de Montor, Hauterive), and it takes the form more of an affectionate tribute than a serious investigation. The relevant entry in Michaud’s Biographic universelle (Paris, 1842–65) is useful.Google Scholar

14 Artaud de Montor, Hauterive, p. 88.

15 On this see particularly the chapter on Sieyès’ foreign policy in Clapham, J. H., The Abbé Sieyès (London, 1912), pp. 178–212Google Scholar. Marcelle Adler Bresse’s more recent study of Sieyès et le monde Allemand (2 vols., Lille, 1977) tends to exaggerate the idealistic component of Sieyès’ foreign policy.Google Scholar

16 Cited by Bastid, Paul, Sieyès et sa pensèe (Paris, 1970), p. 158.Google Scholar

17 This background is nowhere better presented than in the two classic texts of Seeley, J. R., The expansion of England, (London, 1883)Google Scholar, and Adolf Rein, Über die Bedeutung der überseeischen Ausdehnung für das europäische Staaten-System’, Historische Zeitschrift, cxxxviii (1928), 28–90Google Scholar. See also Kaeber, E., Die Idee des europäischen Gleichgewichts in der publizistischen Literatur vom 16. bis Zur Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 1907), pp. 124–37.Google Scholar

18 (Hauterive), De ľètat de la France à la fin de ľan VIII (Paris, Chez Henrics, Rue de la Loi, no. 288, Brumaire an 9), pp. 33–4.

19 Ibid. p. 256.

20 Ibid. p. 258.

21 Ibid. p. 262.

22 Ibid. p. 290.

23 Ibid. p. 289.

24 Sieyès, Emmanuel, Qu’est-ce que le Tiers état?, ed. Zapperi, (Geneva, 1970), p. 119.Google Scholar

25 De ľétat de la France, p. 38. The similarity here raises the question whether Sieyès played a part in drafting Hauterive’s book. There would seem to be no direct evidence that he did, though an anonymous memorandum ‘sur la nécessité de remplacer la Paix de Westphalie et d’établir un droit public français qui succède au droit public germanique, 10 thermidor an IX’ July, 1800), in the National Archives in Paris (Archives Sieyès: 284 A P 16) shows at least that Sieyès was interested in the historical dimension of the European problem.

26 Ibid. pp. 41–2.

27 Ibid. p. 18.

28 Ibid. p. 53.

29 Ibid. p. 59.

30 Ibid. pp. 59–60.

31 Ibid. p. 61.

32 Ibid. p. 63.

33 Ibid. pp. 131–2.

34 Ibid. p. 122.

35 Ibid. p. 141.

36 Ibid. p. 70.

37 Ibid. p. 169.

38 The first English version was published in London in 1802. It will be cited in the pages that follow according to the second edition of 1803.

39 On the state of Europe, p. 93.

40 Ibid. p. 199.

41 Ibid. p. 202.

42 Ibid. p. 214.

43 Ibid. pp. 220–1.

44 Ibid. pp. 255–6.

45 Ibid. p. 256.

46 Ibid. p. 231.

47 Ibid. p. 234.

48 Ibid. p. 260.

49 Brandt, Politisches Gleichgewicht, p. 393.

50 On the state of Europe, p. 292.

51 Ibid. p. 302.

52 Ibid. p. 353.

53 Von dem politischen Zustande von Europa vor and nach der französischen Revolution (Berlin, 1801), pp. 376 f.Google Scholar

54 Fragments upon the balance of power in Europe, pp. xxxv f.

55 The direct part played by England in the making of the Treaty of Vienna needs no elaboration; the indirect way she influenced its shape is succinctly described by Webster, C. K., The Congress of Vienna (Oxford, 1919), pp. 14 ff.Google Scholar