Diplomatic History of Europe 1500-2000

Lecture 10: This lecture, which covers the period 1740–1795, explores how the paradoxes of the Age of Enlightenment affected international relations. Did new ideas produce a more rational and harmonious diplomatic order, as well as increased respect for human rights? On the one hand, thinkers of the Enlightenment crafted plans for a permanent international peace based on reason, tolerance, and international law, while at the same time, military and diplomatic competition achieved a new level of cut-throat intensity and cynicism. This was most evident in the War of the Austrian Succession (1740–1748), with Frederick “the Great” of Prussia attacking the Austria of Maria Theresa without provocation. This conflict was followed by a diplomatic revolution engineered by Maria Theresa and her ministers, the global Seven Years’ War (1756–1763), and the brutal carving up of an independent country, the partitions of Poland-Lithuania by Russia, Prussia, and Austria. Ironically, precisely this period of rivalry also enshrined new patterns of diplomatic practice. Essential Reading: M. S. Anderson, The Rise of Modern Diplomacy 1450–1919, pp. 41–102 and 163–74. Supplementary Reading: Gerhard Ritter, Frederick the Great.

War, Peace, and Power: Diplomatic History of Europe, 1500–2000 36 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture Taught by Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius University of Tennessee Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania For much of the past five centuries, the history of the European continent has been a history of chaos, its civilization thrown into turmoil by ferocious wars or bitter religious conflicts—sometimes in combination—that have made and remade borders, created and eliminated entire nations, and left a legacy that is still influencing our world. Is there an explanation for this chaos that goes beyond the obvious: political ambition, religious intolerance, the pursuit of state power, or the fear of another state's aspirations? Can we discover a hidden logic that could possibly explain the Thirty Years' War, the Napoleonic Wars, two World Wars, and other examples of national bloodletting? Is it possible to formulate a meaningful rationale against which to order a history as tumultuous as Europe's, gaining insights that enrich our understanding of Europe's past and future, and perhaps even of ours as well? In War, Peace, and Power: Diplomatic History of Europe, 1500–2000, Professor Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius answers these questions and more as he offers everyone interested in the "why" of history a remarkable look into the evolution of the European continent and the modern state system. In 36 provocative lectures, he allows us to peer through the revealing lens of statecraft to show us its impact on war, peace, and power and how that impact may well be felt in the future—an approach that historians have been using for thousands of years. Lecture 1: This first lecture lays the essential groundwork for our exploration of European diplomatic history by introducing key concepts and debates in international history. We seek first of all definitions for important terms of the debate, such as “power,” “reason of state,” and the “balance of power.” Next, important debates are presented that will later recur in historically specific situations: primacy of foreign policy versus primacy of domestic policy, Realism versus Idealism as competing schools of thinking about diplomacy, and the question of who or what (leaders, elites, public opinion, ideologies, or other imperatives) steers states in the foreign policy choices they inevitably must make.

Lecture 2: With this lecture, we set the historical stage of early modern Europe in 1500. Europeans were on the move, encountering a wider world. These encounters took the form of trade and diplomacy, clashes with the brilliant and expanding Ottoman Empire in the south and east, and voyages of exploration to the distant Americas. In the political realm, change came in the form of “New Monarchies” establishing more efficient centralized kingdoms in France, Spain, and England and challenging older authority, especially in the form of the venerable, centuries-old Holy Roman Empire, with its claims to universal rule. We also chart the changing fortunes of important states in the east: Hungary, Poland-Lithuania, and far-off Muscovy. We outline the embryonic state of diplomacy evolving between these competing states, blending older traditions with innovations. Essential Reading: M. S. Anderson, The Rise of Modern Diplomacy, pp. 1–40. Supplementary Reading: Jonathan Wright, The Ambassadors: From Ancient Greece to Renaissance Europe, The Men Who Introduced the World to Itself.

Lecture 3: The sparkling city-states of Renaissance Italy saw not only a rebirth of culture and the arts but also pioneered patterns of modern diplomacy that were of lasting significance down to our times, including representation by resident ambassadors. The complicated rivalries between Milan, Venice, Florence, the Papal States, and Naples produced a key example of the balance of power until the disaster of 1494, when invasions by other outside powers battered the Italian system. The controversial political teachings of diplomat Niccolò Machiavelli sought to restore what had been lost, and in the process paradoxically broke with earlier doctrines of international politics and morality. Essential Reading: Machiavelli, The Prince. Supplementary Reading: Garrett Mattingly, Renaissance Diplomacy. Maurizio Viroli, Niccolò’s Smile: A Biography of Machiavelli.

Lecture 4: This lecture examines the period of 1500–1618, and the battle to rule the European continent that started to shape the modern European state system and its diplomacy. Key features of this contest were the intense rivalry between the Habsburg dynasty of Austria and Spain and the Valois royal family of France, as well as the challenge of the Protestant Reformation. We examine the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and his bid for universal empire under the Habsburgs, which was ultimately frustrated by converging factors, internal and external. King Philip II of Spain renewed the bid for supremacy, but likewise failed. The French kingdom itself also underwent a crisis and then a remarkable renewal, setting itself on a new path, with the talented Cardinal Richelieu as chief minister and diplomatic architect of shocking alliances. Essential Reading: Ludwig Dehio, The Precarious Balance: Four Centuries of the European Power Struggle, pp. 19–42. Supplementary Reading: M. S. Anderson, The Rise of Modern Diplomacy 1450–1919, pp. 149–54.

Lecture 5: The trauma of the Thirty Years’ War from 1618 to 1648 was profound. Intertwining explosive elements of religion and politics, the conflict (touched off by a diplomatic incident in Bohemia) raged for a generation across the center of Europe, devastating and depopulating many German lands. When it seemed that the Holy Roman Emperor might establish durable power, the war was internationalized and drew in even more major European powers, with intervention by Denmark, Sweden, and France. Even as the war raged, ongoing diplomatic negotiations changed its character, and political imperatives soon displaced original religious loyalties. The result of this devastation was ultimately exhaustion, which would produce an epochal change in how international politics was understood and practiced. Essential Reading: Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, pp. 31–72 Supplementary Reading: Stephen J. Lee, The Thirty Years War.

Lecture 6: The pivotal 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, closing the ordeal of the Thirty Years’ War, is the first of the great diplomatic peace conferences of modern times, negotiated in two cities in western Germany. One of its results was the creation of the European system of sovereign states asserting their independent status, overthrowing earlier ideals and claims of universal authority. A practical outcome of the new realities was also the rise of France as a superpower, displacing Spain’s preeminent status in Europe by the 1659 Peace of the Pyrenees. In the realm of ideas, important new concepts of international law set out to codify the new power politics, establishing a legacy that lasts down to our own times. Essential Reading: Philip Bobbitt, The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History, pp. 502–19. Supplementary Reading: Treaty of Westphalia online at www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/westphal.htm.

Lecture 7: Displacing earlier Spanish primacy, the kingdom of France now took on the role of the strongest European power, in turn worrying neighboring kingdoms, who seized on coalition diplomacy to contain French power. This lecture covers the period from 1648 to the death of the preeminent figure of the age, “the Sun King,” Louis XIV, in 1715. We examine the vast claims of absolutism as an ideology of royal power in the Baroque age. We consider the skilled diplomatic maneuverings of the successor to Cardinal Richelieu, Cardinal Mazarin and survey the endless wars of Louis XIV in search of glory for himself and his realms. Finally, we study how coalitions of powers, led by Britain, sought to hem in France in order to assert a European balance of power, ratified in the important 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, the second of the great peace conferences of the age. Essential Reading: Ludwig Dehio, The Precarious Balance: Four Centuries of the European Power Struggle, pp. 65–90. Supplementary Reading: M. S. Anderson, The Rise of Modern Diplomacy 1450–1919, pp. 154–63.

Lecture 8: In this lecture, spanning 1648 to 1740, we survey the development and diplomatic interaction of the other Great Powers of the day, having examined French superpower in the previous lecture. First we focus on the evolving profession of the diplomat. Next we consider in turn the Dutch Republic and its Golden Age of commerce; Great Britain and its rise to naval supremacy; Austria and the new power base the resilient Habsburgs constructed for themselves in Europe’s southeast (in battle against the Ottoman Empire); the spirited smaller German kingdom of Prussia, a military prodigy; and finally the decline of once-mighty Spain. In the process, we also trace the distinctive styles and approaches of each of these states to the dangerous international scene of the time. Essential Reading: Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, pp. 73–139. Supplementary Reading: M. S. Anderson, The Rise of Modern Diplomacy 1450-1919, pp. 41–102 and 163–174.

Lecture 9: In the period from 1648 to the 1770s, tremendous seismic political convulsions took place in northern and eastern Europe, bringing new dynamic players into the European state system as new factors in diplomatic calculation. We examine the “Baltic Question”: Which power or powers would dominate the commercially important Baltic Sea? Our lecture then surveys the rise and fall of Sweden as a great empire, led by the “Lion of the North,” Gustavus Adolphus, and then Charles XII. We trace the decline of the once mighty Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania and the linked phenomenon of the rise of Russia with an expansive imperial identity from the Great Northern War (1700–1721) under Tsar Peter “the Great” and later the formidable Empress Catherine “the Great”. Essential Reading: Ludwig Dehio, The Precarious Balance: Four Centuries of the European Power Struggle, pp. 93–131. Supplementary Reading: H. M. Scott, The Emergence of the Eastern Powers, 1756–1775.