History Of International Relations Dersi 1. Ünite Özet

Introduction

The modern international system is based on nation-states. Ideas such as state sovereignty, independence, or international law were not established concepts before the 17th century. In the 17th and 18th centuries, however, a combination of mercantilism and colonialism boosted the power and number of absolute monarchies. A new ‘balance of power’ policy emerged, which called for increasingly sophisticated practices of diplomacy and international law to regulate the continent’s emerging state system.

History of the State System: From the Ancient Era to the Renaissance

It seeks to address the following questions: what is the state system? What did it consist of before the Peace of Westphalia? What characterized the system in the Middle Ages? According to Paul Hirst, the modern state has three additional characteristics:

• First, a modern state has a definite territory with boundaries.
• Second, a modern state has exclusive control over that territory (sovereignty).
• Third, a modern state is the superior political actor (hierarchy)

However, it was not possible to talk about sovereign states before the 17 ^th century, since no state met these criteria of modern statehood. After the defeat of the Western Roman Empire, a feudal state system came to dominate Western Europe until the 16 ^th century. Papacy played a leading role. This system was embodied in the Holy Roman Empire for centuries. To be sure, states existed in the Middle Ages, but their power was determined by different characteristics than modern states. For one, they had neither sovereignty nor independence in the modern term of the word because two kinds of hierarchy prevailed—the Holy Roman Emperor as temporal authority and the Pope as spiritual authority. Second, Medieval Europe was a mixed society of different political entities, and there was no clear line between domestic and international politics. Indeed, Medieval Europe was a complex political and social system. Within this system, security was provided by local rulers and their knights. The economy relied upon peasants more often than not tied to feudal landlords from the clergy or nobility and were bound to the land they farmed.

The Impact of the Renaissance and the Reformation on the Emergence of the Modern State System

The Renaissance

The Renaissance, which means rebirth, is one of the most important developments in Europe when it comes to understanding the changing nature of the state system. Trade routes increased international trade in the region and helped citystates create small-scale manufacturing. This also helped develop a sophisticated banking system in the city-states in the 14th and 15th centuries. Dynamic urban societies and new urban elites were more open to new ideas because of traders and immigrants. Another critical link in this development was the conquest of Istanbul in 1453. There were many consequences of this approach: first, the city-states struggled to establish their independence from both the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire from the 13 ^th through the 16th centuries; second, Italian political philosophers such as Marsiglio of Padua and Dante rediscovered many of the old Roman and Greek texts. During this time many political thinkers counseled local political leaders, of which Niccolò Machiavelli was one of the most prominent. A great interpreter of Roman ideas about civic virtue and citizenship, he believed politics was based on human action, rather than religious conviction or sentiment and did much to revive the Roman idea of virtue.

The Reformation

The Reformation was a religious, political, and cultural revolution that shattered the Catholic world in the 16th century. It first started in the German lands in 1517 when Martin Luther, a student of the Renaissance, published his ‘95 Theses,’. Though the theological doctrines he proposed would later be known as “Lutheranism” in much of Germany (and Scandinavia and eventually North America), other Protestant doctrines opposed to Catholic teaching soon emerged in the form of Calvinism in France, Switzerland, Holland, Hungary, and Scotland, among others, and Anglicanism in England. To protest many of these practices, Martin Luther nailed his ‘95 Theses’ to the door of the University of Wittenberg including the following arguments:

1. Because of the direct relationship between God and the individual, there was no need for intermediaries.
2. The Bible was the only source of faith, in contrast to the belief of the Church that tradition was also necessary.
3. Salvation was entirely in the hands of God, against which the ‘good works’ of individuals were meaningless.

Another important reformer was the Frenchman John Calvin. He believed that the sovereignty of people was supreme and that they had a right to revolt against bad government. Both reformers demanded a separation between the political and religious spheres. Not surprisingly, the following decades were wracked by civil wars between the Catholic Church, the empire, and newly Protestant German principalities. This conflict ended with the Peace of Augsburg in 1555 and the principle of cuius regio, eius religio was first mentioned.

The Birth of the Modern International System: The Peace of Westphalia

The Peace of Augsburg did not end the rivalry between Catholics and Protestants, and a series of vicious religious wars broke out again in 1618 in the German states. These religious wars were called the Thirty Years’ War (1618- 1648), which devastated Central Europe. The Thirty Years’ War started in Bohemia as an uprising of Protestants against the Spanish authorities. The war came to an end when the belligerents finally exhausted themselves. The congresses of Münster and Osnabrück, the first of their kind, led to the signing of the Treaties of Westphalia, the first multilateral diplomatic gathering in Europe to end a regional war and build a new order.

What did Westphalia result in? How did it influence the international political system?

First, it led to a modicum of religious toleration by reiterating the principle of cuius regio, eius religio, first annunciated at the Peace of Augsburg in 1555. Second, and more importantly, the Habsburg family which united Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, and many territories in Italy was now divided, as the emperor renounced his right to provide support to Spain.

Three important principles of the Peace of Westphalia are as follows:

1. “Rex est imperator in regno suo: the king is emperor in his own realm.
2. Cuius regio, eius religio: the ruler determines the religion of his realm.
3. Balance of power: prevent any hegemon from arising and dominating everybody else”.

The Peace of Westphalia is considered the starting point of the international system because modern International Relations derived its core principles from the peace settlements that ended the Thirty Years’ War in 1648. What made the Peace of Westphalia so crucial was that it legitimized notions of sovereignty and dynastic autonomy from the hierarchical control of the Holy Roman Empire. “The [Westphalian] model covers the period of international law from 1648 to 1945 (and some would say it still holds today). Consequently, the Peace of Westphalia changed the nature of the international state system and can be regarded as “the symbolic origin of the society of states”. This new system introduced new features: first, it consisted of states whose legitimacy and independence were mutually recognized. Second, the recognition of mutual legitimacy was only for European powers; it did not extend to outside the European continent, whose systems were seen as alien and open to subordination by European Powers. Third, international law and diplomatic practices started to be used. It was acknowledged that the concept of international law was accepted “as a set of voluntarily accepted guidelines and rules of international conduct that were appropriate to a society of sovereign states” to “establish the freedom of states as the supreme law”. Fourth, the balance of power was a key result of Westphalia. Since states accepted no higher authority, achieving a balance of power between member states was only natural to preventing any one state from establishing its hegemony.

International Law and Diplomacy

The world’s first recorded international peace treaty is generally accepted to be the Treaty of Kadesh, signed in the 13 ^th century BC between the Egyptians and the Anatolian-based Hittites, Hugo Grotius played a major role in this process, especially with his book, The Law of War and Peace (De Jure Belli ac Pacis) in 1625. A Dutch statesman, jurist, and diplomat, Grotius has also been called the ‘father of international law”.

Balance of power: “Traditionally, it refers to a state of affairs in which no one state predominates over others. Prescriptively, it refers to a policy of promoting a power equilibrium on the assumption that unbalanced power is dangerous. Diplomacy means the conduct of affairs between states by official agents through peaceful means with several ends in mind:

• First, it facilitates communication between political leaders or states and other entities of world politics.
• Second, it facilitates the negotiation of agreements.
• Third, it serves to gather intelligence or information from host countries.
• Fourth, it minimizes the effects of frictions in international relations.
• Fifth, it symbolizes the concrete existence of international society.

The International System During The 17th and 18th Century

With the Westphalian order, the conception of the ‘state’ as an independent actor in international relations grew to enjoy legal supremacy over all other actors. Within this framework, three factors have been effective in consolidating international society: diplomacy, international law, and the balance of power. The biggest milestone, of course, was the emergence of the modern state, which began with the rise of absolute monarchs competing against one another and challenging actors such as the Pope or local aristocrats.

Mercantilism and Colonialism

Mercantilism refers to an “economic theory and practice common in Europe from the 16th to the 18th century that promoted governmental regulation of a nation’s economy for the purpose of augmenting state power at the expense of rival national powers”. In its simplest sense, colonialism means “control by one power over a dependent area or people. The purposes of colonialism include economic exploitation of the colony’s natural resources, the creation of new markets for the colonizer, and the extension of the colonizer’s way of life beyond its national borders”. The concept of ‘colonialism’ is mostly associated with the history of Europe, particularly from the 15th-19th centuries when Portugal, Spain, Holland, France, and Britain came to rule much of the planet. Spain and Portugal were the first colonizers in the Western Hemisphere in the 15th and 16th centuries, but they were soon followed by Holland, which colonized Indonesia and parts of America in the 16 ^th century.

Absolute Monarchies

Absolutism refers to a “political doctrine and the practice of unlimited centralized authority and absolute sovereignty of a monarch. The age of absolutism is generally between 1660 and 1789, starting with the restoration of the English monarchy after the English Civil War and the personal rule of Louis XIV of France until the French Revolution. The transition from feudalism to absolutism changed many of the dynamics of the state system, while also being influenced by it. Feudalism, as discussed previously, represents a pyramidal social formation built upon personal ties of loyalty in which power-holders at any level depend on their capacity to mobilize resources, including military power.

How absolute monarchy co-opted the nobles: “Louis XIV deprived the French nobility of political power in the provinces while increasing their social prestige by requiring them to reside at his own lavish court at Versailles. Peter the Great of Russia (1689-1725) forced all his nobles into lifelong government service. In eighteenth-century Austria, the emperor Joseph II (1765- 1790) adopted a policy of confrontation rather than accommodation by denying the nobility exemption from taxation and deliberately blurring the distinctions between nobles and commoners”. This centralization of power was also sustained by mercantilism and colonialism. In the 17 ^th and 18 ^th centuries, Europe was shaped by commerce, war, and a steadily growing population. These factors only encouraged further overseas colonization, worldwide trade, and the establishment of new markets for European industry. As French King Louis XIV (1643-1715), the symbolic figure of absolutism, famously put it, “I am the state.”

Louis XIV of France

French diplomacy under Louis XIV tried to play the Portuguese off Spain, the Magyars, Turks, and German princes off Austria, and the English off the Dutch, each of which helped him consolidate his rule at home. During the reign of Louis XIV, royal government became more centralized and bureaucratic. Louis XIV also gave impetus to various French colonial policies. The period of Louis XIV also involved major wars: the War of Devolution (1667-68), the FrancoDutch War (1672-78), the War of the League of Augsburg (1688-97), and the War of the Spanish Succession (1702-1713) (Nolan, 2008: 513-14, 119-129, 320-330, 516-527). In 1667-1668 he attacked the Spanish Netherlands and captured the city of Lille. His final conflict, the War of Spanish Succession, was just as crucial to the future of Western Europe.

The War of the Spanish Succession

King Carlos II of Spain’s death in 1700 was followed by thirteen long years of war, involving at one point or another France, England, Spain, Holland, Austria, Portugal, Bavaria, and Savoy (Falkner, 2016: 213). Lasting from 1702-1713, it soon took on a global dimension. Following the death of the Spanish King, Louis XIV’s grandson Philip V entered Madrid and ascended the throne on February 18, 1701 as Spain’s first Bourbon king, a development that changed the dynamics of European politics. The Peace of Utrecht (1713) formally ended the war and codified this “just equilibrium of power” as the “best and most solid basis of mutual friendship and durable harmony”.

1713 Utrecht Peace

The Peace of Utrecht refers to a series of treaties that ended the War of the Spanish Succession. These were:

Utrecht 11 April 1713 – Treaty between France, Great Britain, Holland, Prussia, Portugal, and Savoy 13 July 1713 – Treaty between Spain and Great Britain 13 August 1713 – Treaty between Spain and Savoy 26 June 1714 – Treaty between Spain and Holland

Rastad and Baden 6 March / 7 September 1714 – Treaty between France and Austria

Madrid 6 February 1715 – Treaty between Spain and Portugal 15 November 1715 – Barrier Treaty between Holland, France and Austria (Spain and Austria finally concluded a treaty at The Hague in February 1720).