The Rise of Modern Diplomacy 1450 - 1919

331 Pages·1993·7.588 MB·English

by  M.S. Anderson

THE RISE OF MODERN DIPLOMACY
Also available from Longman by M.S. Anderson
The Ascendancy of Europe 1815-1914 (second edition 1985)
Europe in the Eighteenth Century 1713-1783, (third edition 1987)
THE RIS,E OF
MODERN
DIPLOMACY
1450 -1919
M.S. Anderson
Pirst published 1993 by Longman Group Limited
Published 2013 by Routledge
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ISBN 13: 978-0-582-21237-4 (pbk)
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A cataloguc record for this book is
available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Dilta
Anderson, M. S. (Matthew Smith)
Thc rise ofmodern diplomacy, 1450-1919/ M.S. Anderson.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical referenccs and index.
ISBN 0-582-21232-4 (cased). -- ISBN 0-582-21237-5 (paper)
1. Diplomacy--History. 2. International relations--History.
1. Tide.
]X1635.A53 1993
327.2'09--dc20 92-34237
CIP
Sct by 7B in 10/12pt Bembo
Contents
Priface VII
Introduction
VIII
1. The 'New Diplomacy' of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth 11.
Centuries
The new diplomatie world takes shape 1.
Praetiealities and arehaisms 20
2. Old Regime Diplomacy at its Height, c. 1600-1789 41
The legaey of the past 41
Change and developmcnt 69
Divisions and unities: frontiers and language 96
3. Coming to Terms with aChanging World, 1789-1919 103
The strugglc to modcrnise 103
New tasks and widcning scope 128
4. The Balance ofPower 149
The origins: to the age of Louis XIV 149
Thc golden age: thc cighteenth eentury 163
Thc nineteenth eentury: ehallenge and survival 181
5. The Quest for International Peace 204
Thc first aspirations: to the end of thc scvcntccth eentury 204
The eightccnth eentury: eseapc from thc state of nature? 219
Thc nincteenth ecntury: hopes and realitics 236
Conclusion 291
Sugs;estions for FlIrther Reading 294
Index 300
Thispageintentionallyleftblank
PreJace
This book, which is based in part on many years of teaching at the
London School of Economics, attempts to supplement in some significant
ways conventional histories of international relations for the period which
it covers. It does this by concentrating on some aspects of the subject
which tend in the normal undergraduate course to receive relatively little
attention and to be forced to the periphery of what is discussed. It deals
therefore with a number of topics which collectively cover a large area of
historical ground and which are somewhat varied. Each has its own
interest and importance: each has been written about extensively over this
long period. I have attempted to use this large body of historical writing
to paint a coherent picture, both of the developing framework of
diplomacy which more and more bound the states of Europe together
throughout much of the continent's modern history and of the parallel
discussion of the meaning of these links and of the objectives to which
they might or should be directed. Inevitably, given the length of the
period and the many-faceted nature of the subject, the picture has been
painted with a fairly broad brush. I hope, however, that what may have
been lost in terms of the finer details has been counterbalanced by gains in
scope and breadth.
A book such as this is impossible to write without access to rich library
resources. It is a pleasure to acknowledge the indispensable help, with this
and much other writing, which I have received over many years from the
British Library, the London Library and, in my own college, the British
Library ofPolitical and Economic Science.
M.S. ANDERSON
London
Vll
Introduction
Any group of independent states with interests and ambitions of their
own, living side by side and united by some basic community of oudook
and traditions, must have some degree of formal and organised contact
with one another. What has distinguished the states of Europe in this
respect throughout modern history has been the increasingly dose and
wide-ranging nature of this contact, the growth of a network of
institutions through which it has been carried on, and the way in which it
has come to transcend, from the middle of the nineteenth century
onwards, the merely governmental sphere and to spill over into a wide
range of others, technical, intellectual and economic. During the middle
ages the mlers of Europe could not avoid maintaining relations with one
another, even though these often had a large element of symbolism and
conspicuous displayas much as of genuine political content. But there was
then litde or nothing in the way of institutions concerned solely or even
mainly with the formulation and conduct of foreign poliey. Professional
diplomats and any idea of diplomacy as a career with a distinct nature and
demands of its own did not exist. The ideal of some effeetive unity of
Christendom against an alien and generally hostile outside world retained
genuine power and popular appeal, however unreal it might now be
beeoming in praetice; but beyond this there was litde which eould be
ealled international theory. Respeet for the papaey as a potential arbiter in
disputes between secular mlers, and perhaps for the Holy Roman
Emperor as a monarch in some sense superior to others, were not enough
to justify the use of such a term; and otherwise there was litde rationale
for the relations between states apart from the endless eonflicting dynastie
and other claims of individual monarehs. With the world outside Europe,
Vlll
Introduction
indeed outside western and eentral Europe, relations were slight in the
extreme, diplomatie eontacts rare and usually marked by mutual suspieion
and misunderstanding. Until at least the end of the sixteenth eentury an
embassy even to Russia was a eonsiderable and possibly dangerous
adventure and one to the sultan in Constantinople or the shah of Persia
even more so.
By the beginning of the twentieth eentury, as the generations whieh
saw the formation of the modern Europe-shaped and Europe-dominated
world drew to a dose, all this had ehanged. Foreign poliey was now a
major preoceupation of every European government. Often, in a politieal
environment marked by growing eompetition between states and by
teehnological developments which made any confliet between them mueh
more potentially destructive, it was their main preoeeupation. The major
states of the middle ages, in which power was normally diffused widely
among the subordinate struetures - provincial or noble assemblies,
self-governing cities, corporate bodies of all kinds - which made them up,
had the vitality and powers of survival of so many primitive and
undeveloped organisms. Though they might suffer defeat on the battlefield
they were diffieult or impossible to eonquer in any lasting sense. The
mueh more sophistieated and centralised ones of the deeades before 1914
were more vulnerable beeause they were so mueh more advaneed. They
were therefore foreed to give more, and more continuous, attention to
the activities and possible intentions of their neighbours. Diplomacy,
moreover, was now, and had for generations been beeoming, at least a
kind of profession. Everywhere foreign offices, now rapidly beeoming
larger, more complex in their organisation and, with some reluctanee,
wider in their view of what eonstituted international relations, executed
and sometimes planned foreign poliey. A network of institutions whieh
had grown up over a long period in response to practical necessities now
provided the foundation for unpreeedentedly dose and eontinuous
relations between the states. Moreover, this institutional framework was
now being extended beyond Europe and beginning to embrace not
merely her great independent offshoot in North Ameriea but the few
other non.,.European states, notably Japan, whieh already eonducted
signifieant foreign policies of their own. The process whieh would soon
extend this European system to the world in general was now under way.
The four eenturies or more between the end of the middle ages and
the First W orld War also saw the development of a body of generally
aeeepted rules whieh defined and safeguarded the position and status of
diplomats. At the same time their aetivities came increasingly to be seen in
terms of ideas and ideals whieh gave unity and so me underlying
intellectual strueture (if that is not too elevated a term) to the growmg
IX