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EDMUND BURKE, POLAND, AND THE COMMONWEALTH OF EUROPE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 May 2020

ANNA PLASSART Open the ORCID record for ANNA PLASSART [Opens in a new window]
ANNA PLASSART*
Affiliation:
The Open University
*
History Department, The Open University, Milton Keynesmk7 6aaanna.plassart@open.ac.uk
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Abstract

This article re-examines Burke's doctrine of intervention by analysing his decades-long interest in the ‘Polish question’. Contrary to the main thrust of existing scholarship, it argues that the French Revolution did not fundamentally transform Burke's assessment of the European state system. Rather, Burke's most famous and controversial 1790s positions on the topic were rehearsed in the previous decades through his practical engagement in long-running eighteenth-century discussions about the Polish state, which acted as a lightning rod for disagreements surrounding the nature and future of European politics. Burke was interested in the Polish state because it raised fundamental questions about the nature of European civilization, the rules of progress, and the conditions for long-lasting peace. The Polish crisis of 1772 led him to reflect on the relationship between internal and external politics, and crystallized his analysis of the Balance of Power as not only the guarantor of continental peace, but also as the very source of the unique ‘spirit’ of European civil society. It was this same framework of analysis that he applied to France in the 1790s, to argue that the expansionist ambitions inherent to democratic republicanism warranted intervention because they threatened the unique nature of European civilization.

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Article
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The Historical Journal , Volume 63 , Issue 4 , September 2020 , pp. 885 - 910
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

An early version of this article was delivered in February 2018 at the conference ‘Rousseau, Poland and Europe’ held at the College of Europe in Warsaw. My thanks to the organizers and participants, and especially to Graham Clure for prompting me to think about this topic. Thanks are also due to two anonymous reviewers for their useful comments.

References

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24 Burke, ‘A vindication of natural society (1756)’, pp. 158, 160.

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32 On this point, I am indebted to Graham Clure's forthcoming study of Rousseau's Considérations.

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34 For a reading of Rousseau's proposals in the Considérations as a response to Montesquieu, see Clure, forthcoming monograph.

35 Spector, ‘Who is the author of the Abstract of Monsieur l'Abbé de Saint-Pierre's “Plan for perpetual peace”?’.

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45 Ibid., pp. 23, 26. Lind also published French and German versions of the letters in early 1773.

46 The four letters were given short summary reviews in the December 1772 (the same month as Burke's only public intervention in parliament), January 1773, March 1773, and April 1773 issues of the Monthly Review.

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53 Burke to John Cruger, 16 Apr. 1773, The correspondence of Edmund Burke, ii, p. 429.

54 Ibid.

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58 Ibid.

59 Ibid., p. 4.

60 Ibid., pp. 2, 3.

61 Ibid., p. 3.

62 See Hampsher-Monk, ‘Edmund Burke's changing justification for intervention’, p. 66.

63 Annual register for the year 1772, p. 4.

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66 Burke to Adrian Heinrich von Borcke, Jan. 1774, Burke, The correspondence of Edmund Burke, ii, p. 514.

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71 Smith, An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations, ii, p. 606.

72 Ibid., p. 607.

73 O'Neill, The Burke–Wollstonecraft debate, p. 79; Pocock, ‘The political economy of Burke's analysis of the French Revolution’.

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77 Annual register for the year 1772, p. 2. The passage has been widely attributed to Burke since the early nineteenth century. See Simms, ‘“A false principle in the law of nations”’, p. 99; Vincitorio, ‘Edmund Burke and the First Partition of Poland’; Bourke, Empire and revolution, p. 909.

78 Edmund Burke, ‘Reflections on the Revolution in France’, in Mitchell and Todd, eds., The writings and speeches of Edmund Burke, viii, p. 273.

79 Atypically and rather intriguingly, the Annual register for 1791 did reference the Considérations, to note Rousseau's gradual approach to reform in Poland – although it is unclear whether Burke remained involved in the publication at that stage. The annual register, or, A view of the history, politics, and literature for the year 1791 (London, 1795), p. 207Google Scholar. For an argument that Burke still made occasional contributions in the early 1790s, see Copeland, ‘Edmund Burke's friend and the “Annual register”’.

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87 Comparison of the opinions of Mr. Burke and Mons. Rousseau, p. 39.

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92 Ibid., p. 464.

93 Ibid., p. 462. The same arguments and comparison with the French Revolution were later echoed in the Annual register for 1791 (published in 1795). Annual register for the year 1791, pp. 204–7.

94 Ibid., p. 462.

95 On Vaughan, see Richard Whatmore, ‘Benjamin Vaughan and the consequences of anonymity: an introduction to Carpenter's, Kenneth E. “Benjamin Vaughan's contributions unveiled: a bibliography”’, History of European Ideas, 44 (2018), pp. 292–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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100 Ibid., pp. 35, 40.

101 Ibid., pp. 31–2.

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104 Welsh, Edmund Burke and international relations, pp. 227, 155.

105 Bourke, ‘Edmund Burke and international conflict’.

106 Burke to Richard Burke, 29 July 1792, The correspondence of Edmund Burke, vii, p. 158.

107 Burke, ‘Observations on the conduct of the minority’, p. 423.

108 Debate on Mr Fox's motion, 17 June 1793. Cited in Vincitorio, ‘Edmund Burke and the First Partition of Poland’, p. 45.

109 Hampsher-Monk, ‘Edmund Burke's changing justification for intervention’, p. 93.

110 Hampsher-Monk recognizes that Burke had a conception of Europe as a ‘community of states’, but also identifies his use of the language of manners to ‘dispense with the constraints on intervention so firmly embedded in the principles of international law’ as a radically new argumentative strategy. Ibid., p. 97.

111 See for instance Millar, Letters of Crito; Brougham, ‘Appeal of the Poles’.

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113 Ibid., p. 88.

114 Ibid., p. 86.

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117 Hampsher-Monk points out Mackintosh's and Burke's similar conceptions of the international order, but interprets the ‘surprising’ similarities in terms of Mackintosh recanting previous views to rejoin Burke. Hampsher-Monk, ‘Edmund Burke's changing justification for intervention’, p. 99.

118 Bela Kapossy, Isaac Nakhimovsky, and Richard Whatmore, ‘Introduction: power, prosperity, and peace in Enlightenment thought’, in Kapossy, Nakhimovsky, and Whatmore, eds., Commerce and peace in the Enlightenment, pp. 4–6.

119 Ghervas, ‘Balance of power’, p. 417.