ABSTRACT
The European world between the Italian Renaissance and the First World War was very different from our contemporary international society. The reader will understand the context and achievement of European diplomacy more clearly if he keeps the differences well in mind, and does not let himself be unduly distracted by the family resemblance between the present global system and the European one out of which it grew. The ‘Europe’ into which Latin Christendom slowly developed was a much more integrated entity than our diverse world. It shared a common civilization and common values. In the Middle Ages a real spiritual unity existed alongside lay authority that was very diffused in practice. In post-medieval Europe this political fragmentation took another form: the fluid hierarchical system we call feudalism crystallized into a number of states of varying sizes, from the extensive and elective Holy Roman Empire and great kingdoms such as France and Spain to city states such as Venice and Lübeck. These states were still based partly on the hereditary right of the ruler to specific territories or lordships, and partly on what power and skill were able to acquire. Latin Christendom, though divided by the Reformation, continued to think of itself as an entity, now called under humanist influence the res publica christiana, the common-wealth of Christendom and increasingly also Europe. By the eighteenth century Burke could refer to Europe as ‘a federative society, or in other words a diplomatic republic’, and Voltaire could describe it as ‘une grande république partagée en plusieurs états’. And as we saw in the last chapter, during the Napoleonic wars the Hanoverian Heeren looked nostalgically back and hopefully foward to the states system of Europe as a ‘union of several contiguous states cemented together by a reciprocity of interests’.
