2016/11/08 by Stella Ghervas · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #European Political History Analysis #American Constitutional Law and Politics #Political Theory and Influence #Alliance #Treaty #Power (physics) #League #Balance (ability) #Monarchy #Law #Doctrine #SAINT #Politics #Political science #Order (exchange) #Great power #Classics #Law and economics #Sociology #History #Art history #Economics
paper · doi:10.1080/07075332.2016.1214613
openalex publication_date 2016/11/08 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Over the course of the eighteenth century, two major models of European international order emerged as alternatives to universal monarchy: one was based on the balance of power; the other centred on the idea of perpetual peace. This article traces each back to its origins in debates around the moment of the Peace of Utrecht in 1713. In particular, it examines the evolution of the doctrine of balance of power in early eighteenth-century English political thought and then as a legal principle incorporated into the Treaty of Utrecht, before proceeding to the counter-proposal in the form of the Abbé de Saint-Pierre's Plan of Perpetual Peace and the objections it raised. It then shows how Saint-Pierre's paradigm of a league of European states found (albeit in altered form) its way into the Treaty of the Holy Alliance (1815) proposed by Tsar Alexander I after the defeat of Napoleon. It concludes by highlighting the fundamental soundness of the idea of European league, as well as the flaws inherent in the early model of Saint-Pierre.