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THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA, 1814–1815: DIPLOMACY, POLITICAL CULTURE, AND SOCIABILITY*

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Der Wiener Kongress: Die Neugestaltung Europas, 1814/15. By HeinzDuchhardt. Munich: C. H. Beck, 2013. Pp. 128. ISBN 978-3-406-653-81-0. £7·00.
Der Wiener Kongress – eine kirchenpolitische Zäsur? Ed. HeinzDuchhardt and JohannesWischmeyer. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2013. Pp. 313. ISBN 978-3-525-10123-0. £46·00.
Der Wiener Kongress, 1814/15. By Wolf D.Gruner. Stuttgart: Reclam, 2014. Pp. 261. ISBN 978-3-15-019252-8. £6·00.

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Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2017

JONATHAN KWAN
JONATHAN KWAN*
Affiliation:
University of Nottingham
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Extract

On 29 November 1814, the Austrian Emperor Francis, the Russian Tsar Alexander, and the Prussian King Frederick Wilhelm, along with 6,000 others, attended a concert in Vienna's Redouten Hall; Beethoven personally conducted three of his works: the Seventh symphony, the bombastic ‘Wellington's victory’, and a newly written cantata entitled ‘The glorious moment’. In this cantata, the figure of ‘Vienna’ sings the following words:

      Oh heaven, what delight!
      What spectacle greets my gaze!
      All that the earth holds in high honour
      Has assembled within my walls!
      My heart throbs! My tongue stammers!
      I am Europe – no longer one city.

Type
Review Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 60 , Issue 4 , December 2017 , pp. 1125 - 1146
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank R. J. W. Evans, Colin Heywood, David Laven, Matthew Rendall, and John Young for their comments and assistance. I would also like to thank the Austrian Cultural Centre (London) and the participants in the one-day conference ‘The Congress of Vienna – reconsidered’ held on 4 Sept. 2015.

References

1 Conferences included ‘The Congress of Vienna and its global dimension’ (Vienna, 18–22 Sept. 2014), ‘Vienna 1815: the making of a European security culture’ (Amsterdam, 5–7 Nov. 2014), ‘The Congress of Vienna 1814–1815. Making peace after global war’ (New York, 5–7 Feb. 2015), ‘Der Wiener Kongress 1814/15. Politische Kultur und internationale Politik’ (Vienna, 17–20 June 2015), and ‘The Congress of Vienna – reconsidered’ (London, 4 Sept. 2015). There was also a major exhibition at Vienna's Belvedere Palace entitled ‘Europa in Wien. Der Wiener Kongress 1814/15’ (Feb.–June 2015). A recent review essay covering some of the same books as this one is Aaslestad, Katherine, ‘Serious work for a new Europe: the Congress of Vienna after two hundred years’, Central European History, 48 (2015), pp. 225–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Schroeder, Paul, The transformation of European politics, 1763–1848 (Oxford, 1996), p. vGoogle Scholar.

3 Some examples of Schroeder's work providing the basis of further discussion are the various articles in forums at American Historical Review, 97 (1992), pp. 683–735 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and International History Review, 16 (1994), pp. 663–754 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Krüger, Peter and Schröder, Paul, eds., The transformation of European politics, 1763–1848: episode or model in modern history? (Münster, 2002)Google Scholar; Pyta, Wolfram, ed., Das europäische Mächtekonzert: Friedens- und Sicherheitspolitik vom Wiener Kongress 1815 bis zum Krimkrieg 1853 (Cologne, Weimar, and Vienna, 2009)Google Scholar; and, above all, Schulze, Matthias, Normen und Praxis: Das europäische Konzert der Grossmächte als Sicherheitsrat, 1815–1860 (Munich, 2009)Google Scholar.

4 See the interesting general observations in Wolfram Pyta, ‘Kulturgeschichtliche Annäherungen an das europäische Mächtekonzert’, in idem, ed., Das europäische Mächtekonzert, pp. 1–24, and for an overview of the process without in-depth discussion of individuals or the collective, see Schulze, Normen und Praxis, pp. 35–72. Recent biographies of some of the main protagonists have not directly engaged with this thesis of a ‘learning process’ from the end of the Napoleonic wars through to the post-war settlements. There are suggestive comments in Siemann, Wolfram, Metternich: Stratege und Visionär: Eine Biographie (Munich, 2016), pp. 435–7Google Scholar. Alan Sked in his recent study of Metternich vigorously opposes Schroeder's interpretations. See Sked, Alan, Metternich and Austria: an evaluation (Basingstoke, 2008), pp. 54–63 Google Scholar. In relation to Metternich, James Sofka places the stress on Kant, the late Enlightenment, and Metternich's education for his conception of ‘political equilibrium’. Sofka, James, ‘Metternich's theory of european order: a political agenda for “perpetual peace”’, Review of Politics, 60 (1998), pp. 115–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This stress on formative development in the ancien régime is also highlighted more generally in Sven Externbrink, ‘Kulturtransfer, Internationale Beziehungen und die “Generation Metternich” zwischen Französischer Revolution, Restauration und Revolution von 1848’, in Pyta, ed., Das europäische Mächtekonzert, pp. 59–78. Recent biographies of significant figures include Bew, John, Castlereagh: enlightenment, war and tyranny (London, 2011)Google Scholar; and Gall, Lothar, Wilhelm von Humboldt: Ein Preusse von Welt (Berlin, 2011)Google Scholar.

5 Schroeder also uses the term ‘the game of international politics’. Schroeder, The transformation of European politics, p. x. See the suggestive comments about international politics as ‘distinctive “codes”, rhetorics, and sets of rules…plus social insertion’, in Osterhammel, Jürgen, The transformation of the world: a global history of the nineteenth century (Princeton, NJ, 2014), pp. 393–4Google Scholar. See also Aaslestad, Katherine and Hagemann, Karen, ‘1806 and is aftermath: revisiting the period of the Napoleonic wars in German Central European historiography’, Central European History, 39 (2006), p. 555 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 See, amongst many examples, the essays in Finney, Patrick, ed., Palgrave advances in international history (Basingstoke, 2005)Google Scholar; Jackson, Peter, ‘Pierre Bourdieu, the “cultural turn” and the practice of international history’, Review of International Studies, 34 (2008), pp. 55–81 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and more specifically Pyta, ‘Kulturgeschichtliche Annäherungen an das europäische Mächtekonzert’, pp. 1–24. Some recent books taking a cultural approach to diplomatic history are Heyer, Martin and Paulmann, Johannes, eds., The mechanics of internationalism: culture, society, and politics from the 1840s to the First World War (Oxford, 2001)Google Scholar; Mösslang, Markus and Riotte, Torsten, eds., The diplomats’ world: a cultural history of diplomacy, 1815–1914 (Oxford, 2008)Google Scholar; and Mori, Jennifer, The culture of diplomacy: Britain in Europe, c. 1750–1830 (Manchester, 2010)Google Scholar. For a ‘culture of peace’, see Schulze, Normen und Praxis, pp. 4–20, and, most recently, idem, ‘The construction of a culture of peace in post-Napoleonic Europe: peace through equilibrium, law and new forms of communicative interaction’, Journal of Modern European History, 13 (2015), pp. 464–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For ‘security culture’ and emotion, see de Graaf, Beatrice, ‘Bringing sense and sensibility to the continent: Vienna 1815 revisited’, Journal of Modern European History, 13 (2015), pp. 447–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the links between emotion, patriotism, and nationalism, see Sluga, Glenda, ‘Passions, patriotism and nationalism, and Germaine de Stael’, Nations and Nationalism, 15 (2009), pp. 299–318 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an overall framework focusing on France, see Reddy, William, The navigation of feeling: a framework for the history of emotions (Cambridge, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Quoted in Webster, Charles, The Congress of Vienna (London, 1963; orig. 1919), p. 176 Google Scholar.

8 For example, C. A. Bayly uses the title ‘the modern world in genesis’ for the period from the early to mid-nineteenth century. Bayly, C. A., The birth of the modern world, 1780–1914: global connections and comparisons (Oxford, 2004)Google Scholar. See also Johnson, Paul, The birth of the modern: world society, 1815–1830 (London, 1991)Google Scholar. Jürgen Osterhammel in his recent book utilizes Reinhart Koselleck's concept of ‘Sattelzeit’ (saddle period) for the time of transition to modernity, roughly 1750–1850 (or sometimes 1770–1830). Osterhammel, The transformation of the world, pp. 58–63.

9 Kissinger, Henry, A world restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the problems of peace, 1812–1822 (London, 2000; orig. 1957), pp. 172–4Google Scholar; idem, ‘The Congress of Vienna: a reappraisal’, World Politics, 8 (1956), pp. 264–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar (where he is more forceful in his arguments); and Schroeder, The transformation of European politics, pp. 575–82.

10 Stella Ghervas has addressed the issue of domestic disorder and the effect on international peace, stating that ‘establishing the conditions of peace through effective self-rule of the people and popular representation, economic prosperity, as well as the eradication of the most glaring social injustices, could be more effective than military interventions against insurgents’. Ghervas, Stella, ‘The long shadow of the Congress of Vienna: from international peace to domestic disorders’, Journal of Modern European History, 13 (2015), pp. 458–63, at pp. 462–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See the suggestive comments in Laven, David and Riall, Lucy, ‘Restoration government and the legacy of Napoleon’, in idem and idem, eds., Napoleon's legacy: problems of government in Restoration Europe (Oxford and New York, NY, 2000), p. 19 Google Scholar. Recent work on constitutions demonstrates one possible direction for addressing questions of democratic participation, legitimacy, authority, power, political struggle, and state-building. Prutsch, Markus, Making sense of constitutional monarchism in post-Napoleonic France and Germany (Basingstoke, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Grotke, Kelly and Prutsch, Markus, eds., Constitutionalism, legitimacy and power: nineteenth-century experiences (Oxford, 2014)Google Scholar.

11 This traditional mixing of the political and social into an overarching narrative is also used in other recent books, mostly with a general audience in mind. King, David, Vienna 1814: how the conquerors of Napoleon made love, war, and peace at the Congress of Vienna (New York, NY, 2008)Google Scholar; Ehrlich, Anna and Bauer, Christa, Der Wiener Kongress: Diplomaten, Intrigen und Skandale (Vienna, 2014)Google Scholar; and Strauss, Eberhard, Der Wiener Kongress: Das grosse Fest und die Neuordnung Europas (Stuttgart, 2014)Google Scholar.

12 Often the roles of women and of salons are discussed together. For example Kale, Steven, ‘Women's intellectual agency in the history of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French salons’, in Curtis-Wendlandt, Lisa, Gibbard, Paul, and Green, Karen, eds., Political ideas of Enlightenment women: virtue and citizenship (Farnham, 2013), pp. 123–38Google Scholar; Sluga, Glenda, ‘Madame de Stael and the transformation of European politics, 1812–1817’, International History Review, 37 (2015), pp. 142–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and idem, ‘Women, diplomacy and international politics, before and after the Congress of Vienna’, in idem and James, Carolyn, eds., Women, diplomacy and international politics since 1500 (London, 2015), pp. 120–36Google Scholar. Other perspectives for a slightly earlier period can be found in Hagemann, Karen, Revisiting Prussia's wars against Napoleo: history, culture and memory (Cambridge, 2015), pp. 75–171 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘“Be proud and firm, citizens of Austria!” Patriotism and masculinity in texts of the “political romantics” written during Austria's anti-Napoleonic wars’, German Studies Review, 29 (2006), pp. 41–62 Google Scholar; and idem, ‘“Heroic virgins” and “bellicose amazons”: armed women, the gender order and the German public during and after the anti-Napoleonic wars’, European History Quarterly, 37 (2007), pp. 507–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Vick is more forthright in a recent article asserting that civil society did affect the Congress's political outcomes. Vick, Brian, ‘The Vienna Congress as an event in Austrian history: civil society and politics in the Habsburg Empire at the end of the wars against Napoleon’, Austrian History Yearbook, 46 (2015), pp. 109–33, at p. 132CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 For a more systematic treatment in relation to Vienna and the Habsburg monarchy, see ibid., pp. 109–33.

15 Perhaps that was the case in the wider world but there has been considerable debate about hegemony in the European system. Paul Schroeder has described the immediate post-1815 world as consisting of two hegemons flanking Europe: Britain and Russia. Schroeder, Paul, ‘Did the Vienna settlement rest on a balance of power’, American Historical Review, 97 (1992), pp. 683–706 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This has led to much discussion, some arguing for the traditional view of a ‘balance of power’. Sked, Metternich and Austria, pp. 54–63; idem, ‘Introduction’, in idem, ed., Europe's balance of power, 1815–1848 (London, 1979), pp. 1–13 Google Scholar; and for British policy, T. G. Otte, ‘A Janus-like power: Great Britain and the European concert, 1814–1815’, in Pyta, ed., Das europäische Mächtekonzert, pp. 125–53. Others portray the European political landscape as nuanced, multi-level, and multi-lateral. Gruner, Wolf, ‘Was there a reformed balance of power system or cooperative Great Power hegemony?’, American Historical Review, 97 (1992), pp. 725–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar. There are many other nuanced viewpoints; see the discussion at Schulze, Normen und Praxis, pp. 21–4, 48–53. Lentz does not mention these competing viewpoints.

16 See the discussion in Schulze, Normen und Praxis, pp. 25–9, 642–6. Schulze dates the end of the concert to the rise in power of nation-states, especially the unifications of Italy and Germany, in the 1860s and early 1870s. The historical outlines can be traced in Rich, Norman, Great Power diplomacy, 1814–1914 (Boston, MA, 1992)Google Scholar; and Bridge, F. R. and Bullen, Roger, The Great Powers and the European states system, 1814–1914 (Harlow, 2005)Google Scholar. See also Elrod, Richard, ‘The concert of Europe: a fresh look at an international system’, World Politics, 28 (1976), pp. 159–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jervis, Robert, ‘From balance to concert: a study of international security cooperation’, World Politics, 38 (1985), pp. 58–79 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Schroeder, Paul, ‘The nineteenth-century international system: changes in structure’, World Politics, 39 (1986), pp. 1–26 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 See, for example, comments in Conze, Eckhart, ‘Konziertierte Sicherheit: Wahrnehmung und Wirkung des Wiener Kongresses im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert’, Journal of Modern European History, 13 (2015), pp. 443–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and de Graaf, ‘Bringing sense and sensibility to the continent: Vienna 1815 revisited’, pp. 447–57. There is a research project directed by Beatrice de Graaf (Utrecht) with the title ‘Securing Europe, fighting its enemies: the making of a security culture in Europe and beyond, 1815–1914’. A conference entitled ‘Vienna 1815: the making of a European security culture’ was held in Amsterdam, 5–7 Nov. 2014, and a subsequent publication is forthcoming.

18 A tighter focus could have been to follow Koselleck's comments on the Sattelzeit and to investigate the political-social language and concepts around 1814–15. Koselleck, Reinhart, ‘Einleitung’, in Brunner, Otto, Conze, Werner, and Koselleck, Reinhart, eds., Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe: Historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland, i: A–D (Stuttgart, 1972), pp. xv–xviii Google Scholar.

19 A point made by Ouvrard, Le congrès de Vienne, p. 11; Lentz, Le congrès de Vienne, p. 7; Gruner, Der Wiener Kongress, p. 7; and Duchhardt, Der Wiener Kongress, p. 62.

20 Vick also covers the slave trade in admirable depth. Vick, The Congress of Vienna, pp. 195–212.

21 The three projects specifically related to the edited collection are Der Wiener Kongress und die Presse – Zeitungen als Medien politischer Kommunikation (Brigitte Mazohl – Innsbruck), Der Wiener Kongress und sein europäisches Friedenssystem (Reinhard Stauber – Klagenfurt), and Die Privatbibliothek Kaiser Franz I von Österreich (Hans Petschar – Austrian National Library).

22 Eva Maria Werner, ‘Von Reform zu Reform – Österreichs Zensur und politische Presse in den Jahren vor dem Wiener Kongress’, in Stauber, Mächtepolitik und Friedenssicherung, p. 75, uses a slightly edited version of the quote. Interestingly, Henry Kissinger also prominently used this quote: Kissinger, A world restored, pp. 16–17.

23 For an example of how this can contribute to our understanding of international politics, see the systematic investigation of meetings between monarchs throughout the nineteenth century. Paulmann, Johannes, Pomp und Politik: Monarchenbegegnungen in Europa zwischen Ancien Régime und Erstem Weltkrieg (Paderborn, 2000)Google Scholar.

24 The work on Napoleonic Europe gives some indications of the many possibilities. See, for example, the everyday experiences of economic changes in Aaslestad, Katherine, ‘War without battles: civilian experiences of economic warfare during the Napoleonic era in Hamburg’, in Forrest, Alan, Hagemann, Karen, and Rendall, Jane, eds., Soldiers, citizens and civilians: experiences and perceptions of the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, 1790–1820 (Basingstoke, 2009), pp. 118–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar, or state finances and tax policies in Grab, Alexander, ‘The politics of finance in Napoleon's Italy (1802–1814)’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 3 (1998), pp. 127–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 Quoted in Jarrett, Mark, ‘No sleepwalkers – the men of 1814/15’, Journal of Modern European History, 13 (2015), pp. 429–38, at p. 438CrossRefGoogle Scholar.