Territory and commitment: The concert of Europe as self-enforcing equilibrium

Security Studies

Volumn 14, Issue 4, 2005, Pages 565-606

  Slantchev, Branislav L ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 30944454915     PISSN: 09636412     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09636410500468792     Document Type: Review

References (180)

1. Kenneth N. Waltz, "The Origins of War in Neorealist Theory," in The Origin and Prevention of Major Wars, ed. Robert I. Rotberg and Theodore K. Rabb (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
2. These, of course, are not mutually exclusive. For excellent histories of the period, see Charles K. Webster, The Congress of Vienna, 1814-1815 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1934);
3. Harold Nicolson, The Congress of Vienna: A Study in Allied Unity, 1812-1822 (London: Constable, 1946);
4. and Tim Chapman, The Congress of Vienna: Origins, Processes, and Results (London: Routledge, 1998).
5. Paul W. Schroeder, "The 19th-Century International System: Changes in the Structure," World Politics 39 (October 1986): 1-26, summarizes why the first half of the nineteenth century must rightfully be regarded as profoundly different in the scope of what the great powers managed to achieve compared to the eighteenth century.
6. Andrew Schotter, The Economic Theory of Social Institutions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981);
7. and Randall L. Calvert, "Rational Actors, Equilibrium, and Social Institutions," manuscript (University of Rochester, 1998), elaborate on the idea of self-enforcing equilibrium and actually define institutions with these special types of equilibria. In order to avoid confusion, I will eschew the term "institution" for the clunkier, but more expressive, "self-enforcing equilibrium."
8. This dichotomization is due to Robert Powell, "Guns, Butter, and Anarchy," American Political Science Review 87, no. 1 (March 1993): 115-32.
9. See David A. Lake, "Anarchy, Hierarchy, and the Variety of International Relations," International Organization 50, no. 1 (winter 1996): 1-33, for an argument about alternative security relations in the international system. The two features of anarchy used here apply for his hierarchical model as well, as long as we restrict interest to great powers.
10. Frank C. Zagare and D. Marc Kilgour, Perfect Deterrence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
11. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (New York: Vintage, 1989), 86.
12. Lake, "Anarchy-Hierarchy," offers an especially illuminating application of contracts to security.
13. See James D. Fearon, "Bargaining, Enforcement, and International Cooperation," International Organization 52, no. 2 (spring 1998): 269-305, on how anticipated benefits from an agreement affect the intensity of bargaining during its negotiation.
14. Robert Powell, "Stability and the Distribution of Power," World Politics 48 (January 1996): 239-67.
15. Since threats are never realized in equilibrium, they are off the equilibrium path. Expectations about such behavior are called "off-the-equilibrium-path beliefs." Their use in counterfactual reasoning can be very fruitful, as demonstrated by Barry R. Weingast, "Off-the-Path Behavior: A Game-Theoretic Approach to Counterfactuals and Its Implications for Political and Historical Analysis," in Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics: Logical, Methodological, and Psychological Perspectives, ed. Philip E. Tetlock and Aarno Belkin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996).
16. See David S. Landes, The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969);
17. and William H. McNeill, The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982).
18. Note especially pp. 203-4 in the former on the startling increase of coal output in the Ruhr. Prussia received territories in the west and was "immensely increased on the Rhine" when Russia forced the settlement in the east. Edward Vose Gulick, Europe's Classical Balance of Power: A Case History of the Theory and Practice of One of the Great Concepts of European Statecraft (New York: Norton, 1967), 257.
19. Matthew Rendall, "Russia, the Concert of Europe, and Greece, 1821-29: A Test of Hypotheses about the Vienna System," Security Studies 9, no. 4 (summer 2000): 52-90, observes that the great powers often disagreed whether the norms of the concert should even be applied to the Near East.
20. Enno E. Kraehe, "A Bipolar Balance of Power," American Historical Review 97, no. 3 (June 1992): 707-15, 712, emphasizes that the Anglo-Russian rivalry there was "real, keenly felt, and on Russia's side at any rate vigorously pressed." Alexander I himself ominously protested in 1821 that the "Ottoman dominions were not protected by the Vienna Treaty."
21. Charles K. Webster, The Foreign Policy of Castlereagh, 1815-1822 (London: G. Bell, 1958), 373.
22. Also see Edward Ingram, "Bellicism as Boomerang: The Eastern Question during the Vienna System," in "The Transformation of European Politics, 1763-1848": Episode or Model in Modern History? ed. Peter Krüger and Paul W. Schröder (Münster: Lit Verlag, 2002), 206. He charges that "the Vienna Settlement, which left out too much and put in too little, defined Europe too narrowly by leaving out the Ottoman Empire." I agree with his assessment that "the challenge from the periphery that transformed the European subsystem in the mid-nineteenth century was implicit in the map drawn at the Congress of Vienna." He seems to be stretching the point, however, by insisting that the European powers simply exported their bellicosity to the periphery, and hence that the European peace can be explained by warfare outside the system.
23. The list is too long to enumerate. Among the authoritative statements are Webster, Foreign Policy of Castlereagh;
24. Gulick, Op. Cit., Henry Kissinger, AWorld Restored (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1964);
25. and René Albrecht-Carrié, A Diplomatic History of Europe since the Congress of Vienna rev. ed. (New York: Harper & Row, 1973).
26. Robert Jervis, "From Balance to Concert: A Study of International Security Cooperation," World Politics 38, no. 1 (October 1985): 58-79.
27. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979), is the most eloquent statement of the autopilot version.
28. Paul W. Schroeder, "Did the Vienna Settlement Rest on a Balance of Power?" American Historical Review 97, no. 3 (June 1992): 683-706, seems to be using the theory common to historians, which requires explicit balancing.
29. Idem, 692.
30. Jervis, "From Balance to Concert," 60-61.
31. Ibid., 61.
32. Schroeder, "The 19th-Century International System."
33. Robert Jervis, "A Political Science Perspective on the Balance of Power and the Concert," American Historical Review 97, no. 3 (June 1992): 716-24, 719.
34. Also see Jervis, "From Balance to Concert," 61.
35. Jervis, "A Political Science Perspective," 723.
36. Ibid., 721.
37. Rendall, "Russia, the Concert of Europe";
38. and Korina Kagan, "The Myth of the European Concert: The Realist-Institutionalist Debate and Great Power Behavior in the Eastern Question, 1821-41," Security Studies 7, no. 2 (winter 1998): 1-57.
39. Dan Lindley, "Avoiding Tragedy in Power Politics: The Concert of Europe, Transparency, and Crisis Management," Security Studies, 13, no. 2 (winter 2004): 195-229.
40. Jervis, "A Political-Science Perspective," 722.
41. The most comprehensive treatment is Paul W. Schroeder, "The Transformation of European Politics, 1763-1848" (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994).
42. For his incisive, if some what controversial, critique of traditional historical interpretations, see Schroeder, "Did the Vienna-Settlement Rest";
43. and the responses to it: Kraehe, "Bipolar Balance," Wolf D. Gruner, "Was There a Reformed Balance of Power System or Cooperative Great Power-Hegemony?" American Historical Review 97, no. 3 (June 1992): 725-32:
44. and Jevis, "A Political Science Perspective";
45. Paul W. Schroeder, "A Mild Rejoinder, "American Historical Review 97, no. 3 (June 1992): 733-6, responds (sometimes less than convincingly) to these critics. The debate continues.
46. See the excellent collection in Krüger and Schröder, "Transformation of European Politics."
47. Charles P. Kindleberger, The World in Depression, 1929-39 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973)
48. and Robert Gilpin, The Political Economy of International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987).
49. Schroeder, "Did the Vienna Settlement Rest," 694. Russian normative self-restraint is central to Schroeder's thesis but can really only explain Alexander I's behavior, and not without some caveats.
50. Rendall, "Russia, the Concert of Europe", stresses the importance of the tsar's idiosyncratic personality.
51. For the limitations of the benevolent Russian self-restraint hypothesis, see Kagan, "Myth";
52. and Matthew Rendall, "Restraint or Self-Restraint of Russia: Nicholas I, the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, and the Vienna System, 1832-1841," International History Review 24, no. 1 (March 2002): 37-63.
53. Schroeder, Transformation.
54. Kraehe, "Bipolar Balance."
55. Schroeder, "Did the Vienna Settlement Rest," 701.
56. Ibid., 698.
57. Ibid., 702-3.
58. Kraehe, "Bipolar Balance" 710-11, presents a particularly disarming counter to Schroeder's version of events.
59. Jervis, "From Balance to Concert," 724, does wonder: "The system as described is vulnerable to a return to a more predatory stance on the part of one or more of the major states."
60. Charles Lipson, "Is the Future of Collective Security Like Its Past?" in Collective Security beyond the Cold War, ed. George W. Downs (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), 119.
61. Jervis, "From Balance to Concert," 724.
62. Kalevi J. Holsti, Peace and War: Armed Conflicts and International Order 1648-1989 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 85-87, lists thirty-four European conflicts between 1715 and 1814, of which twenty-three were fought over territory, with eight fights to undo previous settlements. Great powers fought among themselves twenty times. In contrast, during the Concert era European states fought thirteen times, with territorial claims involved in five of these disputes. Great powers went to war among themselves only once in 1853-56.
63. McNeill, Pursuit of Power, 144.
64. Michael Howard, War in European History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), 54.
65. Barry R. Posen, "Nationalism, the Mass Army, and Military Power," International Security 18, no. 2 (fall 1993): 80-124.
66. Kennedy, Rise and Fall, 85.
67. See Ibid., 99, table 4. It is instructive to note that in the middle of the century, the smallest of the great-power armies (Prussia's) was 60 percent of the size of the largest (France's and Russia's).
68. An example of all aspects of such behavior is the War of the Austrian Succession. As Reed Browning, The War of the Austrian Succession (New York: St. Martin's, 1993), 367-68, notes, the war might have ended in any of the years it lasted had it not been for the opportunism of the warring parties.
69. Kennedy, Rise and Fall, 90.
70. McNeill, Pursuit of Power, 148.
71. Holsti, Peace and War, 90.
72. Evan Luard, The Balance of Power: The System of International Relations, 1648-1815 (New York: St. Martin's, 1992), 202.
73. Arthur Hassall, Balance of Power, 1715-1789 (London: Macmillan, 1896), 5.
74. Quotations from various treaties refer to texts in Edward Hertslet, ed., The Map of Europe by Treaty (London: Harrison, 1875), unless otherwise noted.
75. Nicolson, Congress of Vienna, 137-47. The eight were the signatories to the 1814 Treaty of Paris, and included the Big Four, Sweden, Portugal, Spain, and, of course, France.
76. Richard B. Elrod, "The Concert of Europe: A Fresh Look at an International System," World Politics 28 (January 1976): 159-74, 6-7.
77. Palmerston stated that it was impossible to change the territorial order "in a manner inconsistent with the Treaty of Vienna without the concurrence of the other powers who were party to that Treaty."
78. Cited in F. R. Bridge and Roger Bullen, The Great Powers and the European States System, 1815-1914 (London: Longman, 1980), 4.
79. See Charles F. Doran, The Politics of Assimilation: Hegemony and Its Aftermath (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971), pt. 4, for an analysis that concentrates exclusively on containment of French revisionist tendencies. It seems to me that such a view is too limiting because, as this analysis shows, French aggression was by far not the only concern of the statesmen at Vienna.
80. Wellington argued that if France was stripped of too much territory, peace would last only until it found "a suitable opportunity of endeavoring to regain what she has lost; and . . . we shall find how little useful the cessions we have acquired will be against a national effort to regain them." Cited in Andreas Osiander, The States System of Europe, 1640-1990 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 202.
81. Gulick, Europe's Classical Balance, 200-4.
82. Quoted in Webster, Congress of Vienna, 120. Alexander's attitude was, "I have two hundred thousand men in the Duchy of Warsaw. Let them drive me out if they can . . . Your public law is nothing to me: I don't understand all that. What do you think are all your parchments and treaties to me?" Alexander to Talleyrand, from a letter to King Louis XVIII, in Duc de Broglie, Memoirs of the Prince de Talleyrand, 2 vols., trans. Raphael de Beaufort (New York: Putnam, 1891), vol. 2: 277
83. also quoted in Doran, Politics of Assimilation 166
84. and Lindley, "Avoiding Tragedy."
85. The Council of Five (the Big Four and France) was the most important body that made the crucial decisions, often with no more than token consultation with the smaller allies. Webster, Congress of Vienna, 203-4.
86. Nicolson, Congress of Vienna, 146.
87. See also Webster, Congress of Vienna, 207; and Gulick, Europe's Classical Balance 248-51. It must be noted that much of the alleged trafficking of souls did not occur at the Congress. It was Napoleon who did the initial reduction in numbers when he distributed all the ecclesiastical states and free cities to the secular princes in 1803 and abolished the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 after defeating Austria.
88. Idem, 242.
89. Eventually, the exiled king was deprived of half his kingdom, and when he became infuriated, he was told that "the three had come, not to have his opinion, but his consent." Osiander, States System, 245-46.
90. Kennedy, Rise and Fall, 154, table 8. Although the enormous number of Russian troops belied their military preparedness, the gap was overwhelming. Britain was also not nearly as close to Austria as the numbers suggest, primarily due to the former's naval preponderance.
91. Most historians acknowledge the importance of the renewal of the Chaumont Treaty in 1815. See, for example, Webster, Congress of Vienna, 162-63
92. Gulick, Europe's Classical Balance, 209
93. and Holsti, Peace and War, 129.
94. For a dissenting (as usual) view see A.J.P. Taylor, The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, 1848-1918 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954), 1-2.
95. Friedrich von Gentz, for example, professed bewilderment over Castlereagh's "neutral attitude . . . being in the position to become the arbiter of Europe, he only afforded her weak and partial assistance." He could not understand why Britain would fail to profit from its successes and the part it had played in the coalition. Cited by Nicolson, Congress of Vienna, 128.
96. Webster, Congress of Vienna, 200.
97. Chapman, Congress of Vienna, 51-53.
98. Gulick, Europe's Classical Balance, 252.
99. Nicolson, Congress of Vienna, 205.
100. Schroeder, Transformation, 537. It could not have been otherwise for, as he notes later, "balance-of-power tactics, like God, favour the beati possidentes and the big battalions." This episode also undermines in part his thesis that Russia was willing to restrain itself. Rendall offers a more detailed assessment of the expectations of the various sides about the desirability of war against Russia over Poland and reaches the same conclusion.
101. See Matthew Rendall, "Between Power and Preferences: Realism, Idealism and the Concert of Europe," Manuscript, School of Politics, University of Nottingham (2005).
102. See Gulick, Europe's Classical Balance, 258-59
103. Roger Bullen, "France and Europe, 1815-48: The Problems of Defeat and Recovery," in Europe's Balance of Power, 1815-1848, ed. Alan Sked (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1979), 123
104. and Schroeder, Transformation, 556. The destabilizing impact of the loss of the buffer states in the low countries, Germany, and Italy between 1859 and 1871 is discussed at length in Paul W. Schroeder, "The Lost Intermediaries: The Impact of 1870 on the European System," International History Review 6 (February 1984): 1-27.
105. This is not meant to suggest that these states were unequivocally beneficial for the system. The wars of the 1860s (in Italy and against Denmark) arose, in part, from machinations of Sardinia and the German Confederation. See F. R. Bridge, "Transformations of the European States System, 1856-1914," in Krüger and Schröder "Transformation of European Politics, 1763-1848."
106. Robert A. Kann, A History of the Habsburg Empire, 1526-1918 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974).
107. A. J. P. Taylor, The Course of German History (New York: Capricorn, 1946), 47.
108. W. H. Koch, A History of Prussia (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1978).
109. James J. Sheehan, German History, 1770-1866 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989), 401.
110. Nicolson, Congress of Vienna, 196-99, faults Metternich for "almost total ignorance of, and indifference to, economic factors," which prevented him from foreseeing "the immense economic domination which Prussia would acquire through her control of roads, waterways and markets." Although this assessment is doubtless correct, it is equally correct to note that at that time the Prussians themselves had no idea that this would happen. From the vantage point of 1815, Prussia was somewhat of a loser as much as it turned out to have been a winner fifty years later.
111. Taylor, Course of German History, 51-52.
112. A.J.P. Taylor, The Habsburg Monarchy, 1809-1918 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), 34-35.
113. Sheehan, German History, 410.
114. See Nicolson, Congress of Vienna, 154-55, for Talleyrand's distinction between an equilibrium based on "absolute equality of power between all the States," which he correctly said could never exist, and a partial equilibrium, "which is artificial and precarious and which can only last so long as certain large States are animated by a spirit of moderation and justice."
115. The document is in Webster, Congress of Vienna, appdx. 8 (emphasis added).
116. Charles A. Kupchan and Clifford A. Kupchan, "Concerts, Collective Security, and the Future of Europe," International Security 16, no. 1 (summer 1991): 114-61.
117. Jervis, "From Balance to Concert," 78.
118. Many others see the Concert as a type of collective security system with membership restricted to the great powers. For example, Elrod, "Concert of Europe" Andrew Bennett and Joseph Lepgold, "Reinventing Collective Security after the Cold War and Gulf Conflict," Political Science Quarterly, 108, no. 2 (summer 1993) 213-37
119. and Lipson, "Future," all share this view.
120. For a harsher view of the period and the scarcity of great power cooperation on the eastern question, see Kagan, "Myth." The British position quoted earlier also supports an ad hoc principle rather than grand collective design.
121. Cited inWebster, Castlereagh, 384.
122. See Rendall, Op. Cit. for an in-depth look at the policies pursued by the various participants.
123. Schroeder, Transformation, 617-19
124. and Kissinger, A World Restored, 287-89. Austria threatened to withhold moral support and Britain threatened to remain neutral, not exactly the best way to go about coercing the Russians.
125. Later on, the great powers even refused to meet with the Greek representative in Verona in 1824 and declared the uprising a "rash and criminal enterprise," cited in Chapman, Congress of Vienna, 73.
126. See Rendall, "Between Power and Preferences," for an internal memorandum to Nicholas I detailing why Alexander chose to exercise restraint.
127. Significantly, the great powers agreed not to "seek, in these arrangements, any augmentation of territory, any exclusive influence, or any commercial advantage." Text of the treaty and the additional article that contains the ultimatum are in René Albrecht-Carrié, ed., The Concert of Europe (New York: Walker, 1968), 107-10.
128. Hertslet, Map of Europe, 820-21.
129. Paragraph 8 of Protocol No. 1 of the London Conference, February, 3 1830, reprinted in Albrecht-Carrié, Concert of Europe, 115-19.
130. Rendall, "Russia, the Concert of Europe, 84-85
131. Rendall, "Between Power and Preferences";
132. and Schroeder, Transformation, 658-59.
133. As the French ambassador reported in 1832, "[at the Prussian Cabinet], all the advantages derived from the status quo are fully appreciated and will not be forfeited."
134. Cited in Rendall, "Between Power and Preferences," which also notes the important influence of domestic politics but still makes a strong case for deterrence. At any rate, it is not clear just how committed to war over Belgium the Russians were. The tsar's main grievance was really about Louis-Philippe's July Monarchy.
135. For the Russian designs and the consequences of the Polish revolt, see Clive H. Church, Europe in 1830: Revolution and Political Change (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1983);
136. and H.A.C. Collingham, The July Monarchy: A Political History of France, 1830-1848 (London: Longman, 1988). This can only have made the Prussians more careful.
137. Schroeder, Transformation, 677.
138. Bullen, "France and Europe," 140, also notes Talleyrand's expectation that a French unilateral action in Belgium would precipitate a war with the other powers.
139. Church, Europe in 1830, 35, 42-51
140. and Collingham, July Monarchy, 186-98.
141. Documents 11 and 12 in Albrecht-Carrié, Concert of Europe, 70-79. The great powers committed "not to seek in the arrangements relative to Belgium, under whatever circumstances that may present themselves, any augmentation of territory, any exclusive influence, - any isolated advantages." Article 5 of Protocol 11 of the conference. Protocol 19 also stated that "treaties do not lose their force, whatever changes may take place in the internal organization of nations."
142. Collingham, July Monarchy, 192.
143. Bullen, "France and Europe," 131. He further notes (p. 140) how fears of Austrian intervention (along with the inevitable Prussian and Russian assistance) made France especially cautious in northern Italy.
144. Also see Taylor, Struggle for Mastery, 3. The Prussian army on the Rhine was an especially effective deterrent, as evidenced by Polignac's 1828 arguments that France should reconcile to its permanent loss.
145. See Collingham, July Monarchy, 222-38, for a fuller account of the Syrian crisis from the French perspective;
146. Charles K. Webster, The Foreign Policy of Palmerston, 1830-1841 (New York: Humanities, 1969), chap. 8, for the British side;
147. and Rendall, Op. Cit. for the sources of the Russian policy.
148. Schroeder, Transformation, 743-44.
149. Webster, Palmerston, 699-70.
150. "Nothing in the world will force me into it; I would abdicate a thousand times rather than consent to it." Cited in Collingham, July Monarchy, 233.
151. See also Rendall, "Between-Power and Preferences" on the disagreements between Thiers and the king.
152. As Schroeder, Transformation, notes on p. 746, the army was also timorous, for it knew it stood no chance against Russia.
153. The note specifically renounced seeking any advantages through the Oriental affair and affirmed the desire not to provoke the other powers. Text in Albrecht-Carrie, Concert of Europe, 142.
154. Collingham, July Monarchy, 235.
155. Frederick B. Artz, Reaction and Revolution, 1814-1832 (New York: Harper and Row, 1934, 136-42.
156. In 1818, Friedrich von Gentz provided a very thoughtful analysis of the political situation in post-1815 Europe, and many of his conclusions were borne out by history. Among his insights was the recognition that Austro-Prussian cooperation was essential for the stability of the system. The text is reprinted in Mack Walker, ed., Metternich's Europe (New York: Walker 1968), 71-84.
157. William L. Langer, Political and Social Upheaval, 1832-1852 (New York: Harper and Row 1969), 410-20.
158. Castlereagh called the original "a piece of sublime mysticism and nonsense" but was sufficiently alarmed at the Russian proposal for Alliance Solidaire, unveiled at Aix-la-Chapelle, which he regarded as an attempt to give teeth to the innocuous treaty. France also acceded to the Holy Alliance, as did all other states except Britain, on constitutional grounds, and the Papal States, the pope presumably in no need to proclaim adherence to Christian norms in a corporeal document (the sultan was, of course, a heathen).
159. Cited in Elrod, Concert of Europe, fn. 35. Taylor, Struggle for Mastery, 57, also notes that "once the Eastern Question was raised, the Holy Alliance was a ghost, no more."
160. This position is well expressed in the Circular Despatch to British Missions at Foreign Courts, January 19, 1821. The text, reprinted in Hertslet, Map of Europe, 664-66, contains a de-facto sanction of Austrian intervention provided that it give assurance that such action would not be directed "to purposes of aggrandisement subversive of the Territorial System of Europe, as established by the late Treaties."
161. Cited in E. Lipson, Europe in the Nineteenth Century (London: Black, 1916), 166.
162. See the report by Prince Lieven, Russian ambassador into Britain, of an interview with Castlereagh, reprinted in Walker, Mettenich's Europe, 132-36.
163. Webster, Castlereagh, 247-49.
164. Britain had fought the War of Spanish Succession (1702-13) precisely to prevent the union of France and Spain under Bourbon rule. No such threat existed in 1823, as Canning noted in his famous speech on December, 12 1826, Walker, Metternich's Europe, 139-43.
165. Lindley, "Avoiding Tragedy," 223-24.
166. Jervis, "Political Science Perspective, 721.
167. See notes, 81 and 88, above. The Troppau Protocol also had a similar assertion.
168. As Gentz observed about the emperor, "Whatever he dreams of at night he can carry out in the morning." As noted before (note 92) von Gentz was remarkably perceptive - he also predicted that if Russia was the aggressor in a war against the Porte, "the present European system would move inevitably toward catastrophe." See Walker, Matternich's Europe, 74-80.
169. Russia intervened in Transylvania at the behest of the Austrian government, which had trouble dealing with the Hungarians, who had proclaimed a republic. The Russians withdrew after defeating the Hungarians in accordance with their agreement with the Austrians. See Albrecht-Carrié, Diplomatic History, 71-75.
170. It must be noted that British withdrawal should not be taken to imply that Britain had been practicing some sort of balancing on the continent before that. As Schroeder persuasively argued, there was never any British balancing in Europe to begin with: "More than once in the nineteenth century, continental statesmen had to exert themselves strenuously to save the balance from British attempts to maintain it." Paul W. Schroeder, Austria, Great Britain, and the Crimean War: The Destruction of the European Concert (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972), 401-3.
171. Useless because it did not halt Russian expansion or eliminate its capacity for aggression. Unnecessary because it accomplished nothing that could not have been achieved by diplomatic means. The monograph by Norman Rich, Why the Crimean War? A Cautionary Tale (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1985), is an even-handed description of the diplomatic history of the war.
172. Schroeder, Op. Cit. provides an account that is highly critical of Britain but that also calls Austria's policy "the most hateful thing of all" (p. 416).
173. Rich, Why the Crimean War, 206.
174. Bridge and Bullen, Great Powers, 83-87.
175. Schroeder, Why the Crimean War, 201-7.
176. For details about the complicated problem with the duchies and their relationship to Denmark, to Germany, and between themselves, see Lawrence D. Steefel, The Schleswig-Holstein Question (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1932), an account which is particularly strong in the second phase of the question
177. and William Carr, Schleswig-Holstein, 1815-48: A Study in National Conflict (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1963), which concentrates on the first phase.
178. Rich, Why the Crimean War, 206.
179. Lipson, "Future", 178-79.
180. The demise of the Concert also highlights the limitation of any arrangement that excludes zones of potential conflict between its most powerful signatories. Although it is frequently impossible to bring in such considerations (for example, the Ottoman Empire could not be partitioned in 1815), one must at least recognize the potentially debilitating impact of a subsequent clash that may turn a pillar of the system into a revisionist.