2012/11/26 by Maartje Abbenhuis · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #European Political History Analysis #American Constitutional Law and Politics #World Wars: History, Literature, and Impact #Neutrality #Diplomacy #Geopolitics #Politics #Great power #Political science #Law #Economic history #Power (physics) #International relations #History
paper · doi:10.1080/07075332.2012.737350
openalex publication_date 2012/11/26 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Rarely do historians analyse the functions of neutrality in the history of Europe in the ‘long’ nineteenth century. Yet between 1815 and 1914, neutrality played a key part in international developments: it was central to the rise of international law, was negotiated repeatedly by the Great Powers and was used by them to isolate key regions in Europe. In all the conflicts fought in these hundred years or so, there were always more neutrals than belligerents, including most of the Great Powers. This article charts the uses made of neutrality and argues that neutrality was a vibrant and frequently utilised tool of diplomacy and statecraft by great and small European states alike. It asks readers to reconsider the flexibility of the nineteenth-century international system and to refocus their attention on the ways in which the European states - Great Britain foremost among them - avoided war to benefit their globalising political, economic, and imperial interests.