The eighteenth century international system: Parity or primacy?

Review of International Studies

Volumn 27, Issue SPEC. ISS., 2001, Pages 147-163

  Sofka, James R ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 26844476909     PISSN: 02602105     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
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References (138)

1. The author wishes to thank the Center for Governmental Studies at the University of Virginia as well as the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation for their support of this research as well as the important comments and suggestions of Michael Cox, Stanley J. Michalak, and Katherine M. Martini.
2. See, for example, Michael Doyle, Ways of War and Peace (New York, 1997), ch. 5;
3. Paul Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics, 1763-1848 (Oxford, 1994), ch. 1;
4. Jeremy Black, The Rise of the European Powers 1679-1793 (London, 1990)
5. and British Foreign Policy in An Age of Revolutions, 1783-1793 (Cambridge, 1994), esp. ch. 11;
6. T.C.W. Blanning, The Origins of the French Revolutionary Wars (London, 1986).
7. Doyle, p. 175. M.S. Anderson offered a similar hypothesis in 1993, noting that 'the eighteenth century ... saw the balance of power more generally accepted as a guide to the conduct of states than ever before or since'. In an important qualification, however, he continues that 'Yet it was also an age during which the whole idea was subjected to often very hostile criticism'. The Rise of Modern Diplomacy, 1450-1919 (London, 1993), p. 176.
8. See also his earlier and extremely perceptive 'Eighteenth Century Theories of the Balance of Power' in R.M. Hatton and M.S. Anderson (eds.), Studies in Diplomatic History (London, 1970).
9. For an interesting brief counterpoint, see Black, 'The Theory of the Balance of Power in the First Half of the Eighteenth Century: A Note on Sources', Review of International Studies, 9 (1983), pp. 55-61.
10. On the persistence of the balance of power interpretation in general, see Schroeder, Transformation of European Politics, pp. 5-11;
11. Arthur Hassall, The Balance of Power 1715-1789 (London, 1907);
12. John Wolf, The Emergence of the Great Powers, 1685-1715 (New York, 1951), ch. 3;
13. Ludwig Dehio, The Precarious Balance (New York, 1962), chs. 2 and 3;
14. Inis L. Claude, Jr., Power and International Relations (New York, 1962);
15. Edward Gulick, Europe's Classical Balance of Power (New York, 1955).
16. In the political science literature this pattern of creating a post-1789 'Revolutionary' or 'Napoleonic' system distinct from the preceding period began with the pioneering and influential - but not extensively researched - work of Hans J. Morgenthau, who interpreted the French Revolution as a paradigmatic shift in international relations. See Politics Among Nations, 3rd. edn. (New York, 1961), ch. 14.
17. Black, British Foreign Policy, ch. 11;
18. Blanning, Origins of the French Revolutionary Wars, conclusion.
19. Most notably by Doyle, ch. 5; Gulick, Europe's Classical Balance of Power;
20. Dehio, The Precarious Balance;
21. Claude, Power and International Relations;
22. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York, 1979), ch. 6;
23. Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (New York, 1977), ch. 5;
24. Arnold Wolfers, 'The Balance of Power in Theory and Practice', in Discord and Collaboration, (Baltimore, MD, 1962).
25. An entire issue of The Review of International Studies (vol. 15) was devoted to the theory and practice of the balance of power in 1989 and should be consulted.
26. Inis Claude noted that 'the trouble with the balance of power is not that it has no meaning, but that it has too many meanings'. Power and International Relations, p. 13.
27. See Doyle, ch. 3; Glenn Snyder, Alliance Politics (Ithaca, NY, 1997), pp. 192-9.
28. Black has commented on this extensively: see 'The Theory of the Balance of Power'; and British Foreign Policy in the Age of Walpole (Edinburgh, 1985), ch. 8;
29. Rise of the European Powers, pp. 157-62.
30. See Anderson, Rise of Modern Diplomacy, pp. 166-70 and 'Eighteenth Century Theories of the Balance of Power'.
31. Frank Manuel, The Age of Reason (Ithaca, NY, 1951), p. 114;
32. Anderson, 'Eighteenth Century Theories', p. 185.
33. See Franz A.J. Szabo, 'Prince Kaunitz and the Balance of Power', International History Review, 1 (1979), pp. 399-408. Frederick II's 'Political Testament' (1768) is littered with balance of power language.
34. Indeed Black notes that 'the idea of policies "natural" to each particular state was very common in the period. Each state was believed to possess only one policy, and any alteration from it was a distortion, a perversion of sound policy wrought by corruption or incompetence, the product of misguided monarchs and evil ministers ... such a mechanistic interpretation was in accord with and essential to the concept of the balance of power. A few brave spirits dismissed the balance of power as a childish and erroneous concept, but most saw it as essential to any correct operation of the international system'. Jeremy Black, The Collapse of the Anglo-French Alliance, 1727-1731 (New York, 1987), p. 87.
35. Gulick, pp. 37-42 develops the status quo aspect of balance theory with particular reference to the late eighteenth century. See also Wolfers, 'The Pole of Power and the Pole of Indifference', in Discord and Collaboration, op. cit. on this point.
36. See Waltz, Theory of International Politics, pp. 117-21;
37. Schroeder, Transformation of European Politics, pp. 5-11;
38. Doyle,Transformation of European Politics, pp. 161-74.
39. See Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge, 1981), ch. 1, esp. pp. 12-15.
40. Bull, Anarchical Society, ch. 5.
41. Dennis Showalter sums it up admirably: 'In diplomatic contexts the eighteenth century's principled commitment to balance of power politics must not be exaggerated. Major and middle-sized powers regularly contemplated and frequently attempted significant aggrandizement ... [Yet] pragmatically, even the best of the ancien régime's armed forces could not hope to dominate its adversaries enough to implement the diplomat's grand designs'. The Wars of Frederick the Great (London, 1996), p. 3.
42. On this point see Eric Robson, 'The Armed Forces and the Art of War', in J.O. Lindsay (ed.), The New Cambridge Modern History, vol. 7: The Old Regime, 1713-1763 (Cambridge, 1957);
43. M.S. Anderson, Europe in the Eighteenth Century, 1713-1783, 3rd. edn. (London, 1987), ch. 7;
44. Showalter, ch. 1; Black, European Warfare, 1660-1815 (New Haven, CT, 1994).
45. On the British debt issue and its relation to international politics, see John Brewer, The Sinews of Power. War, Money, and the English State, 1688-1783 (New York, 1989);
46. Nancy Koehn, The Power of Commerce: Economy and Governance in the First British Empire (Ithaca, NY, 1994), ch. 1;
47. Lawrence H. Gipson, The British Empire Before the American Revolution, vol. 9 (New York, 1965).
48. On France, J.C. Riley's The Seven Years' War and the Old Regime in France: The Economic and Financial Toll (Princeton, NJ, 1986) is definitive.
49. See also H.M. Scott, 'The Importance of Bourbon Naval Reconstruction to the Strategy of Choiseul After the Seven Years War', International History Review 1 (1979), pp. 17-35.
50. On the ends/means relationship of war to political objectives, see Blanning, Origins of the French Revolutionary Wars, ch. 1, Showalter, ch. 1;
51. Black, European Warfare, ch. 3;
52. Michael Howard, War in European History (Oxford, 1976), ch. 3.
53. See Orville Murphy, Charles Gravier, Comte de Vergennes: French Diplomacy in the Age of Revolution, 1719-1787 (Albany, 1982), ch. 20,
54. and Jonathan Dull, 'France and the American Revolution Seen as Tragedy', in Ronald Hoffman and Peter Albert (eds.), Diplomacy and Revolution: The Franco-American Alliance of 1778 (Charlottesville, VA, 1981) for a development of this argument.
55. Szabo, 'Kaunitz and the Balance of Power',
56. Anderson, Rise of Modern Diplomacy, p. 167. In doing so ancien regime governments inadvertently proved Morton Kaplan's legendary maxim that states will fight rather than forego potential gain.
57. System and Process in International Politics (New York, 1962), p. 23.
58. For a development of the market analogy to balance theory, see Gilpin, War and Change, ch. 3.
59. Cited in Black, Rise of the European Powers, p. 207.
60. A development which affirms Claude's perceptive conclusion that 'the balance of power works best when it is little needed'. 'The Balance of Power Revisited', Review of International Studies, 15 (1989), pp. 77-85, at p. 80.
61. David B. Horn, Great Britain and Europe in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1967), pp. 382; 44-5.
62. Cited in Walter Dorn, Competition for Empire, 1740-1763 (New York, 1940), p. 9.
63. On mercantilism and its relationship to international politics in this period, Eli Heckscher's Mercantilism, 2 vols. (London, 1935) remains standard.
64. See also Richard Pares, War and Trade in the West Indies, 1739-1763 (Oxford, 1936);
65. E. Lipson, The Economic History of England, vol. 3: The Age of Mercantilism (London, 1943);
66. Klaus Knorr, British Colonial Theories, 1570-1850 (Toronto, 1944), chs. 3-4;
67. Charles Andrews, The Colonial Period of American History, vol. 4 (New Haven, CT, 1964);
68. Jacob Viner, 'Power Versus Plenty as Objectives of Foreign Policy in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century', World Politics, 1 (1948), pp. 1-30;
69. Charles Cole, Colbert and a Century of French Mercantilism (New York, 1939);
70. Jeremy Black, Natural and Necessary Enemies: Anglo-French Relations in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1986), ch. 5.
71. David Hume, 'Of the Balance of Trade' (1752) Eugene Miller (ed.), Essays Moral, Political, and Literary (Indianapolis, 1987).
72. As Dorn succintly noted, 'power politics and economic policy became interchangeable terms'. Dorn, Competition for Empire, p. 9.
73. A strategy brilliantly dissected by Pares in 'American versus Continental Warfare, 1739-1763', English Historical Review, 51 (1936), pp. 429-65.
74. Pares, 'American versus Continental Warfare', p. 433.
75. Black, Natural and Necessary Enemies, p. 33.
76. See also the excellent study by Arthur Wilson, French Foreign Policy During the Administration of Cardinal Fleury, 1726-1743 (Cambridge, MA, 1936), esp. ch. 11.
77. Richard Lodge notes that the pact 'is quite as deserving to be called a diplomatic revolution as the Austro-French alliance of 1756, to which the term is usually applied'. The Anglo-French Alliance, 1716-1731', in A. Coville and H.V.W. Temperley (eds.), Studies in Anglo-French History (Cambridge, 1935), p. 3.
78. The best study of the issue is Black's The Collapse of the Anglo-French Alliance, 1727-1731 (New York, 1987). He notes that 'the efforts in the late 1710s and early 1720s to preserve the Utrecht settlement and to prevent any major change in international relations can be seen as an important attempt to use a system of collective security to maintain peace and a given international order'.
79. Rise of the European Powers, p. 163.
80. Horn, Great Britain and Europe, p. 45.
81. Shirley to the Duke of Bedford, May 10, 1749; cited in Max Savelle, The Origins of American Diplomacy: The International History of Angloamerica, 1492-1763 (New York, 1967), p. 550. This important work should be consulted in relation to developing the thesis of 'inevitability' of conflict in Anglo-French relations after 1748. See esp. ch. 18.
82. Vaudreuil to the Duc de Orléans, February 1716. cited in Savelle, Origins of American Diplomacy, p. 233.
83. See Pares, Colonial Blockade and Neutral Rights, 1739-1763, (Oxford, 1938),
84. and Isabel de Madariaga, Britain, Russia, and the Armed Neutrality of 1780 (New Haven, CT, 1962), chs. 1-3.
85. In an interesting epitaph Lodge termed it 'perhaps the nearest approach in history to that "peace without victory" that President Wilson at one moment seemed to regard as the ideal ending of a war. It cannot be said that this particular peace gives much support to the President's view. The war in its erratic course had raised a number of problems, but the treaty settled none of them'. Richard Lodge, Studies in Eighteenth Century Diplomacy, 1740-1748 (London, 1930).
86. Basil Williams, The Whig Supremacy, 1714-1760 (Oxford, 1939), p. 251.
87. Sec Richard Middleton, The Bells of Victory: The Pitt-Newcastle Ministry and the Conduct of the Seven Years' War, 1757-1762 (Cambridge, 1985), chs. 2-3. Much of this expense went to Berlin in the form of subsidies, thus adding some weight to Pitt's famous assertion that 'America was conquered in Germany'.
88. See Lodge, Great Britain and Prussia in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1923)
89. and the important study by Carl Eldon, England's Subsidy Policy Towards the Continent During the Seven Years' War (Philadelphia, 1938).
90. The cost of this struggle for primacy was enormous. Koehn notes that 'between 1689 and 1793, England fought five major wars with France. The two powers spent 36 of these 94 years in expensive combat. During the war years, the British government devoted an average of 67 per cent of its total expenditures to military purposes. If we include debt service charges, the proportion of total public outlay committed to war costs rises to between 75 and 85 per cent in each of the 36 years'. Power of Commerce, p. 4.
91. On French policy in general, see Frank Brecher, Losing a Comment: France's North American Policy. 1753-1763 (Westport, CT, 1998).
92. For a gifted analysis of England's approach to the international system after 1763, see Scott, British Foreign Policy in the Age of the American Revolution (Oxford, 1990), ch. 3.
93. See Blanning, Origins of the French Revolutionary Wars, ch.1;
94. Scott, 'Bourbon Naval Reconstruction',
95. R.E. Abarca, 'Classical Diplomacy and Bourbon Revanche Strategy, 1763-1770', Review of Politics, 32 (1970), pp. 313-37,
96. and John F. Ramsey, Anglo-French Relations 1763-1770: A Study of Choiseul's Foreign Policy (Berkeley, 1939).
97. One British author noted in 1723 that 'France and Great Britain are as natural enemies, as old Rome and Carthage were, and the power of the former can never be increased with safety to the latter'. Cited in Black, Natural and Necessary Enemies, p. 99. This logic animates popular characterizations of the eighteenth century as a period of a second Hundred Years' War between the two powers.
98. One British author noted in 1744 that 'the pretence [for war with France] is the Balance of Power. What this Balance of Power is no Parliament ever yet has explained nor one member ever yet once mentioned it in the House of Commons though it has cost the nation above 300 millions'. Cited in Black, Rise of the European Powers, p. 161.
99. Anderson notes that 'the growth of Austro-Prussian antagonism, of "dualism" in Germany, was the most important development in the politics of eighteenth century Europe apart from the emergence of Russia'. Eighteenth Century Europe, p. 306.
100. For a general overview of this dynamic, see Schroeder, Transformation of European Politics, pp. 12-52;
101. Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great, chs. 12-15; McKay and Scott, ch. 8;
102. Scott, British Foreign Policy in the Age of the American Revolution, ch. 7;
103. Black, Rise of the European Powers, ch. 3;
104. Blanning, French Revolutionary Wars, ch. 2.
105. On Kaunitz's 'reversal of alliances' and its motives, see the brilliant analysis by Horn, 'The Diplomatic Revolution', in J.O. Lindsay (ed.), The New Cambridge Modern History, vol. 7: The Old Regime, 1713-1763 (Cambridge, 1957).
106. See also Doyle, ch. 5 and the older - yet still perceptive - study of the alliance by Richard Waddinston, Louis XV et le renversement des alliances, 1756 (Paris, 1896).
107. A development which, as Schroeder correctly notes, 'had nothing to do with the moderate aims of the belligerents'. Transformation of European Politics, p. 29.
108. On Teschen, see Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great, pp. 380-92;
109. Scott, British Foreign Policy, pp. 300-4.
110. Cited in Wolfgang Michael, 'Great Britain under William Pitt the Elder', in A.W. Ward, et al. (eds.), The Cambridge Modern History, vol. 6: The Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1934), p. 398.
111. Cited in Black, Rise of the European Powers, p. 130. In a masterful summary Otto Hötzsch argued that Catherine's diplomacy was based on 'the consistent assertion of the strength of Russia in the interests of Russia; nor was it devoid of a Machiavellian note. Catherine never allowed her country to be taken in tow by another Power. To her, alliances and understandings were, simply and solely, means for increasing the strength of Russia with a view to securing for it the status of a really European power. And herein she was so successful, that, apart from the acquisition of territory, which in itself furthered her aims, she almost attained to the position of arbitress in the affairs of central Europe. She was able to avail herself of the strong antagonism between Prussia and Austria, siding now with one and now with the other, and thus dependent on neither. In ... 1778, both Powers sought her help at the same time; so that she could announce her intention to stand surely for the Consititution of Germany, thus assuming a role hitherto played by France...an indication of the change in the European status of Russia, even as compared with that reached under Peter. It was at Teschen that Catherine laid the foundation of the political influence exercised by Russia in Germany, and more importantly in Prussia, which lasted far into the nineteenth century'. 'Catherine II', in Ward (ed.), op. cit., p. 676-7. On Catherine's general policy after 1763,
112. see Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine, ch. 12.
113. Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine, chs 12-15;
114. Schroeder, Transformation, pp. 20-3; Both projects appealed to different constituencies in St. Petersburg, and Catherine sought to placate both camps.
115. See D.M. Griffiths, 'The Rise and Fall of the Northern System: Court Politics and Foreign Policy in the First Half of Catherine II's Reign', Canadian American Slavic Studies, 4 (1970), pp. 547-69.
116. He wrote to his brother Prince Henry in 1769 that 'Russia is a terrible Power which in half a century will make all of Europe tremble'. Cited in Albert Sorel, The Eastern Question in the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1969), p. 40.
117. Indeed Elizabeth I's Foreign Minister, Count Bestuzhev, anticipated as early as 1755 that Prussia was an obstruction in Russia's designs for Eastern Europe, similar to Sweden in the 1710s. McKay and Scott, pp. 185-6.
118. Scott, 'Frederick II, the Ottoman Empire, and the Origins of the Russian-Prussian Alliance of April 1764', European Studies Review, 7 (1977), pp. 153-75; Sorel, chs. 1-2;
119. Schroeder, Transformation, pp. 11-18;
120. Herbert Kaplan, The First Partition of Poland (New York, 1962), pp. 20-2.
121. Schroeder, Transformation, pp. 12-12. As he notes, 'partition ... came about mainly as a by-product of events, a means to other ends'.
122. Madariaga, pp. 221-5; Schroeder, Transformation, p. 12: 'Catherine and her advisers would have preferred to maintain Poland outwardly intact under Russian domination'.
123. Scott, British Foreign Policy, p. 192. On the 1787 Austro-Russian agreement,
124. see Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine, chs. 24-25.
125. In a controversial conclusion, Kaplan argues that the partition was in some respects a 'failure' for Catherine given the strong Austro-Prussian pressure applied against her in Central Europe. First Partition of Poland, p. 189.
126. Indeed, Anderson suggests that the Swedish coup was the only serious defeat Catherine suffered in international politics throughout her 34 year reign, a verdict that is difficult to challenge. Eighteenth Century Europe, p. 268.
127. Cited in Black, Rise of the European Powers, p. 125. On French and British reaction to the First Partition, and to eastern developments generally, see Blanning, French Revolutionary Wars, ch. 2;
128. Scott, British Foreign Policy, chs. 7-8;
129. Black, British Foreign Policy in an Age of Revolutions, 1783-1793 (Cambridge, 1994), chs. 2 and 4;
130. Murphy, Vergennes, chs. 10-11.
131. Cited in McKay and Scott, p. 211.
132. A development which culminated in the Pillnitz Declaration of 1791. Blanning notes, however, that 'the Austro-Prussian rapprochement was not an instinctive reaction to the collapse of the old regime in France', pp. 80-9.
133. Showalter, Wars of Frederick the Great, pp. 341-52.
134. Schroeder, Transformation, p. 19.
135. Black, British Foreign Policy in an Age of Revolutions, p. 542. He further argues that 'However radical the speeches made by revolutionary orators, many of the presuppositions underlying government policy were usually to a large extent traditional'. Blanning concurs with this judgment, noting that after 1792 'the old European alignments reasserted themselves in a manner that would not have seemed strange to Europe before 1756: France allied to Spain versus Great Britain and Austria plus, occasionally, Russia. The old firms were back in business again'.
136. Blanning, French Revolutionary Wars, p. 207.
137. Andrews, Colonial Period of American History, vol. 4, p. 8.
138. 'Theory and Practice', in Hans Reiss (ed.), Kant's Political Writings, 2nd. edn. (Cambridge, 1991), p. 92.