This chapter discusses how constitutional ideals were reconfigured through the nineteenth century. In the first instance, the democratic aspect of constitutional law was suppressed by the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Over time, however, states began to use constitutions in instrumental fashion, so that a distinct model of imperialist sensationalism took shape in the longer wake of 1848. This model was designed to extract military capacity from society without stimulating deep internal conflict. In some respects, as European expansion gained pace after 1870, this model imposed conditions of military regimentation in both metropolitan societies and colonized societies, as societies were generally structured in accordance with military imperatives. The chapter also considers how these processes were reproduced in societies exposed to European expansion, such as Japan and China.

This chapter moves to the last phases of the French occupation in parts of Germany and to the improved position of the local Jews in these regions. It then concentrates on the efforts to legalize Jewish equality in the constitution of the new German Bund, discussed in a special committee at the Congress of Vienna, and within this context, it examines the position of a number of important German politicians towards Jewish emancipation. While Wilhelm von Humboldt’s liberal approach is relatively well known, but appears to be more complex on taking a closer look, it is interesting to observe the position of another Prussian politician, Karl August von Hardenberg, and especially that of the Austrian foreign minister chairing the entire congress, Metternich. Both were much more conservative, but still supported Jewish equality, insisting it must apply to Germany as a whole. In the end, this question remained undecided, like so many other issues relating to the planned constitution, mainly because of the pressure from the presumably much more liberal bourgeoisie in the various cities of the new Bund.

Directed migrations supported the Luso-Brazilian government’s efforts to navigate the geopolitical challenges of the post-Napoleonic world. In order to correct the perceived dearth of population in the new seat of an exiled Portuguese Court, government officials went to great lengths to jumpstart migratory flows to Brazil. Peopling served many purposes, allowing the prince regent to cement royal authority through subsidies and concessions while responding to pressures to curtail slavery. Yet, as various groups made their way to Brazil, they lay bare the challenges in long-distance migrant conveyance as well as the diplomatic liabilities involved in directed migrations. The Luso-Brazilian government thus began to defer migration drives to private, mostly German, individuals gearing for profits. This chapter traces the emergence of a strategic exchange between the Joanine government in Rio and foreign petitioners who began to shape peopling as a profitable business sphere, which allowed the Luso-Brazilian administration to quell pressures stemming from Vienna and London, but opened the way for numerous unforeseen consequences.

The Congress of Vienna in 1814–1815 delineated territorial settlements, coronated several newly independent monarchs and resulted in an official declaration on the abolition of the slave trade, but it did not treat the issue of piracy. This paradox is the key concern of this chapter. Vienna’s Final Acts were the end product of these talks, and though they did not mention ‘Barbary piracy’, their conclusion would nevertheless have a great impact on the international treatment of this newly perceived threat to security. The years 1814–1815 were an important turning point because they initiated a period of transition. The congress created an international context in which North African corsairing could be reconceived as a threat to security. This new perception of threat hinged upon misconceptions of the supposed fanaticism and irrationality that allegedly characterised North African privateering. It also disregarded the long history of diplomatic and commercial contact between both sides of the Mediterranean Sea.

After the Napoleonic wars the allied powers - the crowned heads of Europe - regain control over most of Europe. The new enlightened ideas on statehood and government power have, however, taken root in their realms. Constitutions - as vehicles of these new ideas - are there to stay. A series of restorations constitutions - a third generation - reinstates strong monarchical power but does reign in its exercise to some extent (rule of law, fundamental freedoms). The days of absolute, unchecked royal power are a thing of the past.

Chapter 1 shows that the discussions which dominated intellectual and public life in the years immediately preceding the publication of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right revolved around the constitutional question as the central and definitive element of political discourse in Germany. It argues that Hegel consciously entered this constitutional debate and that his book constituted a timely intervention in the politics of the immediate post-Napoleonic period. By demonstrating the pan-German and European dimensions of contemporary constitutional concerns, Hegel’s political thought is at the same time lifted out of the exclusively Prussian context to which it has so often been confined.

There are two ways to know something: by description and by acquaintance. What we know by description are things that we have read or heard about; what we know by acquaintance are things that we have experienced ourselves. Descriptions can only be made at a distance which acquaintance requires direct involvement. At first encounters between Europeans and non-Europeans, the parties often danced as a way to get to know each other. In Europe, kings and diplomats danced for the same reason. However, colonialism requires knowledge by description, and thereby an entirely different attitude to the world. A world described in books and in research reports is far easier to control and to exploit.

Chapter 1 offers a reappraisal of the pathbreaking efforts of the peacemakers of the Congress of Vienna (1814–15) to establish a more durable European peace order, and a new European concert, after the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. It then shows how the 19th century’s Vienna system provided novel mechanisms, rules and understandings to preserve peace and a new, more legitimate international equilibrium in and beyond Europe, thereby also creating essential conditions for the rise of the United States. Yet it also illuminates how changes in international politics and competing nationalist aspirations eventually led to the disintegration of the peace order of 1814–15 and the European concert in the aftermath of the trans-European revolutions of 1848–49 and the Crimean War of 1853–56.

Chapter 1 begins by discussing the nineteenth century as the age of internationalism, forms of which developed in various realms. International relations underwent a significant degree of legalisation and a law-based international order emerged along the lines of supposed European ‘civilisational standards’, enshrining clear hierarchies of ‘civilised’ and ‘uncivilised’ states and thereby preparing the further course of European colonialism and imperialism. In the realm of civil society, social and political reform movements began to form cross-border networks and to explore new means of exerting influence in the transnational sphere, making deliberate use of the ‘public sphere’ as a resource to rally support for their causes. Yet at the state level, too, the period following the Congress of Vienna (1814–15) saw a tremendous increase in international cooperation between the European great powers. In intense diplomatic consultation at regular conferences and meetings of ambassadors and in special committees, the ‘Concert of Europe’ tried to find joint solutions to international conflicts, civil wars and humanitarian crises. This form of cooperation and collective crisis management is often regarded as one of the first forms of international governance.

Chapter 5 begins by briefly looking at the British Slave Trade Act of 1807, which also marked the beginning of the Royal Navy’s operations off the coast of West Africa. It concentrates on the developments that led from a national ban and its unilateral military enforcement by the United Kingdom to its international and multilateral implementation. A crucial turning point is marked by the Congress of Vienna, at which the political pressure built up by the abolitionists was so great that, for the first time, the proscription of the slave trade was jointly proclaimed and enshrined as a humanitarian norm in international law. This interdict then formed the point of reference for a series of highly controversial negotiations between the European states to decide on collective measures to be taken against this border-crossing problem. A bilateral approach between Britain and the continental powers finally resulted in a mechanism for implementation to be set up, which consisted of a previously unheard of combination of military and legal measures and which, in the shape of the Mixed Commissions for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, produced one of the first forms of international jurisdiction.

The function of intervention, in this context, was to act as a corrective in international politics. Fundamental questions posed by this practice of intervention by force in the internal affairs of a sovereign state are addressed in Chapter 2, which locates them in the context of the Vienna order. What can be observed here is, first, the emergence of an anti-revolutionary paradigm of intervention, by means of which the ‘Holy Alliance’, made up of the continental powers Russia, Austria and Prussia, made a collective attempt to prevent and suppress internal unrest and revolutionary movements. Second, and in parallel to these efforts, the British struggle to suppress the Atlantic slave trade gave birth to a further-reaching conception of intervention centred on the military enforcement of an internationally agreed humanitarian norm.

Viennese social dance culture was central to the court-sponsored festivities at the Congress of Vienna (1814–15). Traditionally, the dazzling balls of the final months of 1814 have been viewed as belonging to a festive culture that merely formed a backdrop to the serious political negotiations of Congress delegates. However, Congress balls also aligned with the political aims of the Congress organisers in ways that have not yet been fully appreciated. The Habsburg court drew from established traditions in Viennese public ball culture by using dance to shape the interactions between the allied sovereigns and public in the mixed-class environment of the ballroom, particularly in the ceremonial polonaise and the equestrian figure dances at the medieval Carousel. In doing so, the Habsburg court effectively blending traditional monarchical representation with the public domain of the ballroom. Social dance was not merely a distraction from its wider political aims of the Congress; rather, it proved a particularly effective means of bringing politics to the heart of social life

Towards the end of the war against Napoleon, the Allies declared that they were fighting a ‘noble war’, to restore European equilibrium. They presented themselves in stark contrast to Napoleon’s hegemonic ambitions. The Allies agreed on the need to create a ‘just equilibrium’ by curtailing French imperialism, but also harboured imperial ambitions to further their own respective interests in Europe as they negotiated for peace. When the First Treaty of Paris was signed on 30 May 1814, the French constitution was revised to be more liberal. The resulting Charte Constitutionelle, adopted on 4 June 1814, was an important instrument in the fight against terror. Finally, the Congress of Vienna was marked by Napoleon’s return to France: as he marched towards Paris, the Allies confirmed the statutes and treaties that would shape the occupation of France and ensure the ‘safety of Europe’. The final battle against Napoleon saw the Duke of Wellington at the helm of the alliance. The Allied sense of communality and solidarity in the name of Europe’s safety would see Napoleon defeated, but it would also invite tensions and inconsistencies in times of peace and the Allied occupation of France.

After Napoleon was defeated by the Allies in 1815, a new European security culture emerged out of the remnants of war. The Allied occupation of France and a number of ambassadorial conferences brought forward a collective security system, implemented by the Allied Council and aimed at fighting terror in peacetime. The four great powers of Europe – the United Kingdom, Prussia, Austria and Russia – institutionalized and standardized a new form of security management during peace negotiations at the Congress of Vienna and the Paris Conference, exemplified by the efforts of the ministers of the four great powers to debate, transform and implement their security practices across Europe. In the fight against terror, state interest, new fortifications, police reforms and military strategies went hand in hand with diplomacy and international relations on a scale never seen before. This chapter describes how the history of the tumultuous time of post-Napoleonic peace is reconstructed in this book, considering not only the institutional history, but also the emotional aspects, as voiced by the main protagonists as they tackled the subject of terror and security in Europe and beyond.

This chapter looks at how contemporaries understood changes occurring in the structure and practices of the European security regime emerging around 1815, and how we can understand its ordering functions in international society today from a broader historical perspective by applying theoretical notions developed in regime and governance theory. By highlighting not only the innovations but also the deficiencies of the Vienna security regime, this chapter questions its 'model' character. Yet the experiences and practice of the normative order emerging from the Vienna regime contributed to later forms of international governance in the League of Nations, the United Nations and the Security Council.

The notion of a European security culture is introduced here to analyse the political constellation emerging after the Congress of Vienna. As an alternative to the focus on international diplomacy and high politics defined by interests of state, the notion of security culture serves to identify the institutional structures within which interests are defined; the culturally conditioned perceptions of threats and security; and the identity of the agents trained to monitor and interpret threats and interests, and to mediate challenges and opportunities of international (dis)order. From this perspective, the chapters in this volume are introduced as contributions to the historicisation of the security culture emerging in Europe from the early nineteenth century onwards.

A crucial moment in the establishment of a European security culture was the bombardment of Algiers in 1816 by an Anglo-Dutch fleet, after which the Regent of Algiers was forced to sign a declaration renouncing the age-old practice of keeping captured Christian sailors for ransom. Against the dominant depiction of the Anglo-Dutch cooperation as a coincidence, this chapter argues that it was a carefully planned engagement based on shared security concerns. The Vienna settlement provided the context and main incentives for the Anglo-Dutch attack on Algiers. As such, this study of the connections between the Congress and the 1816 bombardment illustrates how peace in Europe fostered cooperative security practices that could bring about violence and destruction beyond the continent.

Ambassadorial conferences formed a primary mechanism of the Vienna system of international relations and of the related European security culture that emerged after 1815. These gatherings offered more flexible opportunities for multilateral consultation and negotiation than did the rarer congress summit meetings. The London conferences of 1816–19 were the first to be planned, as part of British Foreign Secretary Castlereagh's efforts to internationalise abolition of the African slave trade, and they ultimately also took up interdiction of the Barbary corsairs of North Africa. The conferences established connections between these issues that are crucial to understanding European policies toward both abolition and the corsairs, and which reveal how these questions were matters of European – and African – security as well as of humanitarian intervention. As the Vienna settlement extended beyond Europe into the Atlantic and Islamic worlds, the projection of European power overseas to protect security of persons and property could at the same time bring violence in its wake.