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The nineteenth century system: balance of power or political equilibrium?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2009

Paul W. Schroeder
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Students of international politics do not need to be told of the unsatisfactory state of balance of power theory. The problems are well known: the ambiguous nature of the concept and the numerous ways it has been defined, the various distinct and partly contradictory meanings given to it in practice and the divergent purposes it serves (description, analysis, prescription, and propaganda); and the apparent failure of attempts clearly to define balance of power as a system and specify its operating rules. Not surprisingly, some scholars have become sceptical about the balance of power ‘system’ and a few have even denied that balance of power politics prevailed in the nineteenth century. None of the methods generally used seems to promise much help. These have included studying the views and theories of balance of power held by individual publicists, theorists, and statesmen, making case studies of the balance of power in certain limited periods, analysing events and policies within an assumed balance of power framework, or constructing theoretical analyses comparing the supposed system of balance of power to other systems. Undoubtedly a method for operationalizing the study of the balance of power would be very valuable, and efforts to do this have yielded useful information. But the obstacles to establishing reliable indices of power and status and the problems of quantifying alignments and co-operation-conflict ratios in international affairs are formidable indeed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 15 , Special Issue 2 , April 1989 , pp. 135 - 153
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 1989

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References

1. See, for example, the opening section of Rosecrance, R., Alexandroff, A., Healy, B. and Stein, A., Power, Balance of Power, and Status in Nineteenth Century International Relations (Beverly Hills and London, 1974)Google Scholar.

2. For examples of historians' definitions, implicit and explicit, see Albrecht-Carrié, R., A Diplomatic History of Europe since the Congress of Vienna (New York, 1958)Google Scholar; Bourne, K., The Foreign Policy of Victorian England, 1830–1902 (Oxford, 1970), p. 10Google Scholar, and Palmerston; The Early Years 1784–1841 (New York, 1984), pp. 627–631Google Scholar; Cobban, A., The Nation State and National Self-Determination (rev. edn, New York, 1970), pp. 287–290Google Scholar; Davies, G., ‘English Foreign Policy’, Huntington Library Quarterly, v (1942), pp. 422–426Google Scholar, 470–1, and ‘The Pattern of British Foreign Policy, 1815–1914’, ibid., vi (1943), pp. 367–369Google Scholar; Gulick, E. V., Europe's Classical Balance of Power (Ithaca, NY, 1955)Google Scholar; Hinsley, F. H., Nationalism and the International System (Dobbs Ferry, NY, 1973), pp. 83–84Google Scholar; Lafore, L., The Long Fuse: an Interpretation of the Origins of World War I (2nd edn, Philadelphia, 1971), p. 33Google Scholar; Seaman, L. C. B., From Vienna to Versailles (pbk edn, New York, 1963), p. 130Google Scholar; Strang, W., Britain in World Affairs (New York, 1961), pp. 17–18Google Scholar; Webster, C. K., The Art and Practice of Diplomacy (London, 1961), pp. 23–27Google Scholar; Hillgruber, Andreas, ‘Politische Geschichte in Moderner Sicht’ Historische Zeitschrift, ccxvi (1973), pp. 535–538Google Scholar; and Seton-Watson, R. W., The Foundations of British Policy’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, xxix (1947), pp. 61–62Google Scholar. I have compiled an even longer list of discussions of the concept by political scientists which it seems pointless to produce; suffice it to say that the concept remains central despite various doubts about it, and that most political scientists, like historians, assume that a balance of power system prevailed in the nineteenth century.

3. Haas, E. B., ‘The Balance of Power: Prescription, Concept, or Propaganda’, World Politics, v (1953), pp. 442—477CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wight, M., ‘The Balance of Power’, Diplomatic Investigations: Essays in the Theory of International Politics, Butterfield, H. and Wight, M. (eds.), (London, 1966), pp. 149–175Google Scholar. However, Professor Wight argues in his ‘The Balance of Power and International Order’, The Bases of International Order, James, A. (ed.), (London, 1973), pp. 85–115Google Scholar, that the multiplicity of meanings concealed a basic unity; he lists fifteen propositions on the balance of power on which he claims all balance thinkers agreed.

4. The best known attempt is that of Kaplan, M., Systems and Process in International Politics (New York, 1957), pp. 22–36Google Scholar, 52–3, and 125–7. For criticisms of Kaplan's systems approach, see Aron, R., Peace and War: a Theory of International Relations (Garden City, NY, 1966), pp. 128–132Google Scholar, 146–7; Burns, A. L., Of Powers and Their Politics (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1968), pp. 112–115Google Scholar, 248–51; Riker, W. H., The Theory of Political Coalitions (New Haven, 1962), pp. 162–187Google Scholar; Deutsch, K., The Analysis of international Relations (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1968), pp. 136–140Google Scholar; Kaplan, M., Burns, A. L. and Quandt, R. M., ‘Theoretical Analysis of the “Balance of Power”’, Behavioral Science, v (1960), pp. 240–252Google Scholar; and Zinnes, D., ‘Coalition Theories and the Balance of Power’, The Study of Coalition Behavior, Groenings, S.et al. (eds.), (New York, 1970), pp. 351–368.Google Scholar

5. Some representative works are Burton, J. W., International Relations: A General Theory (Cambridge, 1965)Google Scholar, and Systems, States, Diplomacy and Rules (London, 1968); Claude, I. L. Jr., Power and International Relations (New York, 1962)Google Scholar; Haas, E. B., ‘The Balance of Power as a Guide to Policy-Making’, Journal of Politics, xv (1953), pp. 370–398CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Haas and Whiting, A., Dynamics of International Relations (New York, 1956)Google Scholar; McClelland, C. A., Theory and the International System (New York, 1966)Google Scholar; Osgood, R. E. and Tucker, R. W., Force, Order, and Justice (Baltimore, 1967)Google Scholar; Riker, op. cit.; and Doran, C. F., The Politics of Assimilation: Hegemony and its Aftermath (Baltimore, 1971).Google Scholar

6. Organski, A. F. K., World Politics (2nd edn, New York, 1968)Google Scholar; Rosecrance, R., Action and Reaction in World Politics (Boston, 1963).Google Scholar

7. For example, Holbraad, C., The Concert of Europe: a Study in German and British International Theory 1815–1914 (London, 1970)Google Scholar; Schumann, H. G., Edmund Burkes Anschauung vom Gleichge-wicht im Staat und Staatensystem (Meisenheim am Glan, 1964)Google Scholar; Stauffer, P., Die Idee des euro-paischen Gleichgewichts im politischen Denken Johannes von Mullers (Basel, 1960).Google Scholar

8. Essentially Gulick's approach inEurope's Classical Balance.

9. The best or worst example of this seems to me to be Taylor, A. J. P., The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, 1848–1914 (Oxford, 1954)Google Scholar, in most respects an outstanding book. He insists that the Balance of Power (which he often capitalizes) was the basis for European politics and operated in its purest form from 1848 to 1914. But he never defines it, and in his hands the term means variously an even distribution of power, a stable distribution of power, any distribution of power, an unequal distribution of power, hegemony, a struggle for power, the status quo, the European system, the opposite of moral principles and th e European Concert, and other variant meanings. (Paperback edn, New York, 1971, pp. 26, 30–2, 44, 61–2, 85, 99, 154–6, 159, 165, 168, 170, 173–4, 176–7, 199–200, 268, 283–4, 297, 303, 324–5, et passim.)

10. See n. 5 above.

11. For a discussion of one such major effort, see the exchange in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, xxi (1977), pp. 3–94.

12. See the Appendix for a summary of the evidence. To save space, all volumes of documents will here-after be cited only by the abbreviations used there, and individual documents will be cited only by volume number and individual document numbe r or page numbers.

13. Occasionally historians have noted this. F. R. Bridge and R. Bullen, for example, write in The Great Powers and the European States System 1815–1914 (London, 1980), p. 15: ‘The concept of the balance of power was hardly ever used except by British governments. The continental powers certainly did not consciously seek to uphold it. ‘ Bridge also remarks on 'the fraudulent balance of 1815’ which left Britain unchecked in his ‘Allied Diplomacy in Peacetime: The Failure of the Congress System, 1815–1823’, Europe's Balance of Power 1815–1848, A. Sked(ed.), (London, 1979), p. 36. But this scepticism does not extend to rejecting balance of power as the operative basis of European politics.

14. Some examples to keep this from being a naked assertion: in APP vi (1865–6), one finds the following topics discussed, some at considerable length, without connecting them to the European balance: Prussian annexation of the Elbe Duchies, a war in Germany, the loss of Venetia by Austria, a coalition against France, a possible war against France, compensations to France for Prussian gains in Germany, a French or English war against the United States, a possible war in the Near East, a possible revolution in Hungary, and the possible breakup or partition of Belgium on the death of Leopold I. OD xxi (March-August 1868) contains much evidence of French concern over Prussia's power and aggressive tendencies, but contains few references to the European equilibrium and these are contradictory in meaning and tendency (Nos. 6603, 6752 and 6807). In GP vii, the correspondence concerning the Russo-French alliance and Franco-German relations in the early 1890s contains nothing on the balance of power. GP xxvi, Parts I and II, though full of the language of power politics and the clash of rival alliances in the Bosnian Crisis of 1908–9, contain virtually no references to the European balance. Further examples could be cited almost at will.

15. For example, the British, but not the Germans, made the naval race and a possible political agreement balance of power questions, but no other issue between the two countries counted as such. BD vi, Nos. 174, 182, 187, 200, 202, 442 and 462, and pp. 310–1 3 and 626–9.

16. The British in 1900, for example, claimed that the balance in China was a critical Europoean concern. BDi, pp. 22, 24–5 and 31.

17. For samples of special balances, see DDI, ser. 2, i, Nos. 530 and 579; QDPOi, No. 93; APP ii, Pt. 2, p. 619. For local balances, see DDI, ser. 2, i, No. 91; GP xihl No. 3419; DDF ser. 1, v, No. 273; vi, Nos. 119 and 227; ser. 2, xi, Nos. 86 and 95; and ser. 3, ix, Nos. 77, 150 and 171.

18. For example, the frequent references to the Mediterranean equilibrium from the 1880s onward—BD, i, No. 248; DDF, ser. 1, Nos. 430 and 432; iv, No. 557; vi, Nos. 311 an d 325; vii, Nos. 88, 102, and 212; viii, No. 420; x, Nos. 33, 408 and 433; and xv, No. 294; DDF, ser. 2, xi, No. 172; GP iv, Nos. 836, 838 and 843; vii, Nos. 1426 and 1430; and viii, Nos. 1714–15, 1768 and 1912.

19. Some examples: DDF ser. 1, xv, No. 83; ser. 2, xi, Nos. 321, 403 and 414.

20. OD, i, No. 47; Cavour-Azeglio, i, No. 528; DDF, ser. 3, x, No. 9. The opposite usage, in which ‘European order’ or ‘European system’ stand for ‘European equilibrium’ is also common—e.g., APP, viii, No. 211; Guizot, v, p. 43.

21. Some examples: OD, xxi, No. 6752; DDF, ser. 1, vii, Nos. 42, 43 and 383; DDI, ser. 2, i, No. 538.

22. A good example is Italy's aspiration to hold the European balance while a member of the Triple Alliance (DDF, ser. 1, viii, No. 185; ser. 2, xi, No. 45; BD, i, Nos. 364 and 366; and GP xxiv, No. 8268). For other such ideas, see also DDF, ser. 1, i, No. 40; DDI, ser. 2, i, No. 523.

23. Tsar Alexander III hoped in the late 1880s to hold the balance as arbiter by staying out of any combinations and retaining a free hand (DDF, ser. 1, vi, Nos. 441,493, 552 and 665; vii, Nos. 266 and 312; and viii, Nos. 36 and 40). The British regularly believed that their insular position and lack of involvement on the Continent uniquely qualified them to hold the balance (see especially BD, vi).

24. Some apparent examples: QDPO, i, No. 62; BGW, iii, No. 90; APP. iii, No. 715; Schwertfeger, v, Nos. 9 and 55; DDF, ser. 3, x, No. 307; IB, ii, No. 215.

25. While the clearest instances of the term ‘European equilibrium’ being used to mean hegemony or control by a dominant coalition are theEntente powers' concept of a desirable European balance or Russia's of a Balkan balance just before World War I, proposals to establish equilibrium in Europe through a dominant alliance of the strongest continental powers (France, Russia and Prussia) or the most progressive ones (France, Prussia and Italy) were common in the 1860s.

26. Palmerston, for example, believed that the liberal West should check the autocratic East, and Cavour suggested to Prussia that it ought to make Germany the European centre of gravity between the Latins and Slavs (APP, ii, Pt. 2, p. 47).

27. See Metternich, i, pp. 33–5, 130 (note), and 330–1; ii, pp. 26–7, 34–5, 289–90, 478–9, 486–7, 492–5, 502–3, and 510–11; iii, pp. 166–9; Talleyrand, Corr., iii, 4–7, 18, 49, 200–3, 206–9, 290–1, 376–7, 414; GP, xxiv, No. 8215.

28. BGW, viB, Nos. 1344 and 1363. Bismarck also met Austrian or French complaints that Prussia's gains were threatening the equilibrium with a similar proposal which had good eighteenth century credentials, viz. balanced compensations for the great powers at the expense of smaller ones. APP, v, No. 436; OD, vii, Nos. 1570 and 1574; OD, xi, No. 3143.

29. Even Bismarck, usually sceptical about balance of power arguments, insisted in his later years that Austria was essential to the European equilibrium (e.g., GP, iv, Nos. 883, 889, 900 and 925). But one must keep in mind what kind of Austria Bismarck was willing to sustain, and how far. Austria was not allowed to ally with, or even lean toward, any other state but Germany. Bismarck reacted violently whenever he thought Austria was following too pro-Slav a domestic course of policy. More than once in the late 1880s, moreover, he seriously considered letting Austria go in favour of an understanding with Russia, Excellent discussions of Bismarck's policy are in Hillgruber, A., Bismarck's Aussenpolitik (Freiburg, 1972)Google Scholar and Gall, L., Bismarck der weisse Revolutiondr (Frankfurt, 1984).Google Scholar

30. Schroeder, P. W., Austria, Great Britain and the Crimean War: the Destruction of the European Concert (Ithaca, 1972)Google Scholar; Rich, N., Why the Crimean War? A Cautionary Tale (Hanover NH and London, 1985).Google Scholar

31. Saitta, i and ii, contain many arguments on this score.

32. See, for example, Oncken, iii, Nos. 661 and 666.

33. GP, xiii, No. 350; xvii, Nos. 5001, 5005–7, 5009–10; DDF. ser. 1, xv, Nos. 48, 53, 72, 115, 255, and 258.

34. Gulick, Europe's Classical Balance, pp. 30–1.

35. See, for example, BD, vi. Nos. 176–8, especially Sir Eyre Crowe's arguments.

36. For the documents, see above, note 18.

37. If one asks why this has not been widely seen, at least in the English-speaking world, the answer seems to me to be that British statesmen never worried about any concept of European equilibrium other than their own, British scholars by and large have not challenged the reigning British-Whig interpretations of foreign policy, and Americans have adopted a balance of power ideology from the British.

38. The development can be easily traced in Metternich, i-iii; Talleyrand, Corr.; and Polovstov, i-iii. For general analyses of the period, see Gulick, Europe's Classical Balance; Kissinger, H. A., A World Restored (Boston, 1957)Google Scholar; and Kraehe, Enno, Metternich's German Policy, vols. i and ii (Princeton, 1963, 1983).Google Scholar

39. I counted 37 references to the European equilibrium in the first half of APP, i—an extremely high number. Their meaning was almost invariably conservative-equilibrist, calling for the maintenance of existing treaties, great power intervention to prevent a war or control its outcome, and the preservation of Austria's position in northern Italy as vital to the balance. After Solferino, there were only four references to equilibrium in the rest of the volume, three being colourless, and the other (pp. 680–3) advocating a new equilibrium in Europe to replace the 1815 system, based on satisfying the forces of nationalism, freeing Italy and pushing Austria south-east to check Russia.

40. Count Albrecht von Bernstorff, ambassador to Britain who became Bismarck's predecessor as foreign minister, illustrates this well. In 1859 he attacked the British for refusing to help save the 1815 system in Italy (APP, i, No. 395). In March 1860 he still agreed with the Austrian contention that it made no sense for Britain to attack France for upsetting the European balance by annexing Nice and Savoy while the British ignored Sardinia's far greater expansion and wholesale violation of treaties (APP, ii, Pt. 1, Nos. 27 and-115). But by May 1861 he viewed a possible Austrian recovery of its place in the European balance as a grave threat to Prussian interests (APP, ii, Pt. 2, No. 383), and by early 1862 he advocated a policy of pure state interests (ibid., No. 587). After Bismarck took office in September, Bernstorff urged him to wage war immediately on Denmark for Prussian gains (APP, iii, No. 45).

41. The evidence for this is too vast to summarize, much less cite in detail. The documentary sources are: OD, i, iv, vii, x-xii, xv, xviii, xxi, xxiv and xxvii; Oncken, i-iii; BGW, iii—viB; Problema Veneto, iii; QDPO, i, iv and vi; APP, i-vi, viii and x; and Thiers, x-xiii. On Thiers, see Bury, J. P. T., Thiers 1797–1877 (London, 1986).Google Scholar

42. Some examples of the argument are in Problema Veneto, iii, nos. 141, 173 and 191; APP, ii, Pt. 1, No. 2994; and OD, xi, Nos. 2994, 3177 and 3195, and xii, No. 3409. See also Beyrau, Dietrich, Russische Orientpolitik und die Entstehung des deutschen Kaiserreiches 1865—1870/71 (Munich, 1974), pp. 56–57Google Scholar and 230–1, and Saitta, ii, pp. 336–43 and 350–7.

43. APP, ii, Pt. 1, Nos. 9, 48, 81, 84, 89, 95–6, 111, 114, 175 and 268.

44. Guizot, v, pp. 34–5, 40–1, 70–1, 224–5, 234–5, 242–3, 320–1, 336–7, 340–1, 368–9, 470–2, 487ff., 502–5 and 506–9.

45. Schroeder, P. W., ‘Alliances, 1815–1945: Weapons of Power and Tools of Management’, Historical Dimensions of National Security Problems, Knorr, K. (ed.), (Lawrence, Kan., 1976), pp. 227–256Google Scholar. For a concrete instance of a pact of restraint serving as guarantor of equilibrium, see DDF, ser. 1, v, No. 225.

46. See, for example, Cavour-Azeglio, i, Nos. 212, 234, 282, 337, 462, 502 and 553.

47. The clash between conceptions of equilibrium is brought out clearly in Saitta—the pro-Italian view in i, pp. 27, 29, 50–1, 88–91 and 267; the anti-Italian in ii, pp. 250 and 276–83.

48. Of 18 specific references to equilibrium in DDF, ser. 3, vii, 16 refer to the Balkan balance, and every one calls either for preventing Bulgaria from becoming too powerful, or, after its defeat and drastic weakening in the Second Balkan War, preventing its recovery. The same thing is true in vols. ix and x. For striking examples of what a Balkan ‘equilibrium’ meant to French, Russian and Serb statesmen, see ibid., vii, No. 319; x, Nos. 80 and 560; and IB, ii, Nos. 159 and 169 (annex).

49. GP, xxii, chap. 159; Holstein, iv, p. 401.

50. DDF, ser. 3, x, Nos. 20, 23–5, 101–2 and 155.

51. Schroeder, P. W., ‘World War I as Galloping Gertie’, Journal of Modern History, xliv (1972), pp. 319–345Google Scholar. For documentary evidence, see DDF, ser. 3, vii, Nos. 41, 194 and 315; ix, Nos. 281, 336, 355, 363 and 370–1; x, 141, 173, 229 and 286; and IB, ii, No. 146.