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1789 and the liberal theory of international society

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

James Mayall
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Extract

Contemporaries who witnessed the fall of the Bastille did not doubt that an event of shocking significance had occurred. On 19 July 1789 the Ambassador of Saxony reported that so important and extraordinary a revolution ‘cannot fail to bring about a considerable change in the political system of France’. The Portuguese Ambassador wrote that if he had not witnessed it himself ‘he would not dare to describe it, for fear the truth should be considered a fable… A king of France in an army coach, surrounded by the bayonets and muskets of a large crowd, finally forced to display on his head the cockade of liberty.’ If it was not immediately clear that this attack on the legitimacy of the ancien régime would also involve an attack on the diplomatic practices and conventions of the European states-system, it quickly became so.

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 15 , Issue 4 , October 1989 , pp. 297 - 307
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1989

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References

1. Quoted in, Tholfsen, Trygve R., Ideology and Revolution in Modern Europe: An Essay on the Role of Ideas in History (New York, 1984), p. 62.Google Scholar

2. Speech of Mirabeau, 20 May 1790, Archives Parlementaires de 1787 a I860, premiere serie, ed. by L. Mavidal et Laurent (Paris, 1883), quoted in Felix Gilbert, The New Diplomacy of the Eighteenth Century. World Politics, iv (1951), p. 33.

3. See, ‘Third Letter on the Proposals for Peace with the Regicide Directory of France’, in The Works of Right Honourable Edmund Burke ed. Nimmo, John C. (London, 1887).Google Scholar

4. Hampson, Norman, The French Revolution and its Historians, in Best, Geoffrey (ed.), The Permanent Revolution: The French Revolution and its Legacy, 1789–1989 (London, 1988), p. 230.Google Scholar

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6. Bull, Hedley, The Anarchical Society, A Study in World Politics (London, 1977), p. 41.Google Scholar

7. The argument here depends on Bull's distinction between system and society. An international system requires regular interaction between the states ‘sufficient to make the behaviour of each a necessary element in the calculations of the other’. An international society exists ‘when a group of states, conscious of common interests and common values, form a society in the sense that they conceive themselves to be bound by a common set of rules and share in the working of common institutions’. With this distinction international society can be treated as one approach amongst others to the international problem, whereas the system defines the problem. Ibid., pp. 9–14.

8. Tocqueville, Alexis de, The Old Regime and the French Revolution, translation by Stuart Gilbert (New York, 1955), p. 13.Google Scholar

9. Ibid., p. 12.

10. Carr, E. H., Nationalism and After (London, 1968), p. 6.Google Scholar

11. Ibid.

12. de Tocqueville, op. cit., pp. 11–12.

13. cf. Ortega Y Gasset, op. cit., p. 225. ‘Today the idea [of fundamental political rights] has been changed into a reality; not only in legislation, which is the mere framework of public life, but in the heart of every individual, whatever his ideas may be, and even if he be a reactionary in his ideas, that is to say even when he attacks and castigates institutions by which those rights are sanctioned.’

14. Best, Geoffrey, ‘The French Revolution and Human Rights’, in Best, op. cit., p. 101.Google Scholar

15. Ibid., p. 102.

16. Malraux, Andre, Antimemoires (Paris, 1967), p. 194.Google Scholar

17. I am grateful to Scott Thomas, who is currently engaged in research into the ANC's international relations, for bringing this point to my attention.

18. Best, op. cit., pp. 105–6.

19. Conor Cruise O'Brien, ‘Nationalism and the French Revolution’, in Best, op. cit., p. 44.

20. Lipset, Seymour Martin, The First New Nation: The United States in Historical and Comparative Perspective (New York, 1963).Google Scholar

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22. See Keohane, Robert O. (ed.), Neo-Realism and its Critics (New York, 1986).Google Scholar

23. Gilbert, op. cit., pp. 11–13.

24. Ibid., p. 15.

25. For the tension between liberalism and collectivism in nationalist thought see, James Mayall, Nationalism and International Society (Cambridge, forthcoming), chapter V. For a discussion of collectivist economic ideas within the French Revolution, see, Talmon, J. L., The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (New York, 1960), Part I, chapter IV, Part II, chapter V, and Part III, chapter VI.Google Scholar

26. When the Soviet government expressed an interest in joining GATT in August 1986, United States officials immediately ruled out Soviet entry on the grounds that the Soviet trade system was in ‘fundamental, practical and philosophical contradiction’ to GATT rules. Neue Zurcher Zeitung, 24–25 August 1986.

27. Pallain, G., Le Ministere de Talleyrand sous le Directoire (Correspondences Diplomatique de Talleyrand) Paris 1891, pp. xlii—Ivi, quoted in Gilbert, op. cit., pp. 34—5.Google Scholar

28. Gilbert, op. cit., p. 35.

29. Kim, Kyung-Won, Revolution and International System (New York, 1970), p. 47.Google Scholar

30. See, Mayall, op. cit., chapter IV.

31. Douglas Johnson recounts how when Malraux offered Nehru an exhibition of Norman sculpture or one on the Revolution, in exchange for an exhibition of Indian art in Paris, Nehru replied ‘France means the Revolution. When Vivakananda discovered it, he passed the day with his friends shouting Vive la Republique’! in Best, op. cit., pp. 189–90.

32. Georg Buchner, Danton's Death, Act Three, Scene IX, in The Plays o/Georg Buchner, translated with an introduction by Victor Price (London, 1971).