Transformations in the culture of international relations around the peace of ultrech

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New Worlds?

The Peace of Utrecht (1713) was perhaps the first political treaty that had
a global impact. It not only ended a European-wide conflict, but also led to
a cessation of hostilities on the American continent and Indian subcontinent, as well as naval warfare worldwide. More than this, however – as the
chapters in this volume clearly demonstrate – the treaty marked an important step in the development of an integrated worldwide political system.
By reconsidering the preconditions, negotiations and consequences of the
Peace of Utrecht – rather than focusing on previous concerns with international relations and diplomacy – the contributions to this collection help
embed events in a richer context of diverging networks, globalising empires,
expanding media and changing identities.
Several chapters consider the preconditions and challenges to political
entities such as the British and Spanish empires and French monarchy, demonstrating that far from being nation-states these were conglomerates with
diverging forms of affiliation, which developed different modes and interests to face the needs and consequences of the Utrecht negotiations. This
“macrostructural” perspective is complemented by chapters that focus on
“microstructural” aspects, considering the personal networks and relationships that informed day-to-day actions in Utrecht. Both perspectives are
then drawn together by further contributions that examine the formation of
images and discourses that were intended to identify key individuals with
larger political entities and their assumed interests.
This approach, combining both broad and more narrowly focused case
studies, reveals much about how the diplomatic discussions were framed
with political and social contexts. In so doing the volume offers new perspectives concerning the formation of modern Europe at the beginning of
the eighteenth century, beyond and yet connected with diplomatic developments and global entanglements.
Inken Schmidt-Voges is a Full Professor for Early Modern History of Europe
at the Philipps-University of Marburg in Germany.

Ana Crespo Solana is Tenured Scientist at the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) in Spain.

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Politics and Culture in Europe, 1650–1750
Series Editors
Tony Claydon
Bangor University, UK
Hugh Dunthorne
Swansea University, UK
Charles-Édouard Levillain
Université de Lille 2, France
Esther Mijers
University of Reading, UK
David Onnekink
Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands
For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com

Focusing on the years between the end of the Thirty Years’ War and the end of the
War of the Austrian Succession, this series seeks to broaden scholarly knowledge of
this crucial period that witnessed the solidification of Europe into centralised nationstates and created a recognisably modern political map. Bridging the gap between
the early modern period of the Reformation and the eighteenth century of colonial
expansion and industrial revolution, these years provide a fascinating era of study
in which nationalism, political dogma, economic advantage, scientific development,
cultural and artistic interests and strategic concerns began to compete with religion
as the driving force of European relations and national foreign policies.
The period under investigation, the second half of the seventeenth century and
the first half of the eighteenth, corresponds with the decline of Spanish power and
the rise of French hegemony that was only to be finally broken following the defeat

of Napoleon in 1815. This shifting political power base presented opportunities and
dangers for many countries, resulting in numerous alliances between formerly hostile
nations attempting to consolidate or increase their international influence, or restrain
that of a rival. These contests of power were closely bound up with political, cultural
and economic issues: particularly the strains of state building, trade competition,
religious tension and toleration, accommodating flows of migrants and refugees,
the birth pangs of rival absolutist and representative systems of government, radical
structures of credit, and new ways in which wider publics interacted with authority.
Despite this being a formative period in the formation of the European landscape,
there has been relatively little research on it compared to the earlier Reformation,
and the later revolutionary eras. By providing a forum that encourages scholars
to engage with the forces that were shaping the continent – either in a particular
country, or taking a transnational or comparative approach – it is hoped a greater
understanding of this pivotal era will be forthcoming.

New Worlds?
Transformations in the Culture of International Relations Around
the Peace of Utrecht
Edited by Inken Schmidt-Voges and Ana Crespo Solana


New Worlds?
Transformations in the Culture of
International Relations Around
the Peace of Utrecht

Edited by Inken Schmidt-Voges
and Ana Crespo Solana

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First published 2017
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Crespo Solana; individual chapters, the contributors
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Contents

Notes on contributors
List of abbreviations
Introduction: New Worlds? Transformations in
the Culture of International Relations Around the
Peace of Utrecht

vii
x

1

INKEN SCHMIDT-VOGES AND ANA CRESPO SOLANA

PART I

Politics
1 The peace settlement and the reshaping of Spain
(to c. 1725)

19
21

CHRISTOPHER STORRS

2 The repercussions of the treaties of Utrecht for Spanish
colonial trade and the struggle to retain Spanish America

37

ANA CRESPO SOLANA

3 Continuity and change in Spanish–Dutch relations between
Westphalia (1648) and Utrecht (1714)

58

MANUEL HERRERO SÁNCHEZ

4 Disagreement over a peace agreement: The Barrier
Treaty and the conditional transfer of the
Southern Netherlands to Austria

79

KLAAS VAN GELDER

5 Savoyard representatives in Utrecht: Political–aristocratic
networks and the diplomatic modernisation of the state
PAOLA BIANCHI

96

vi

Contents

6 Ending a religious cold war: Confessional trans-state
networks and the Peace of Utrecht

113

SUGIKO NISHIKAWA

PART II

Perceptions
7 Old worlds, new worlds? Contemporary reflections upon
international relations ca. 1713

129
131

DAVID ONNEKINK

8 Empire and the Treaty of Utrecht (1713)

153

STEVEN PINCUS

9 The “balance of power” in British arguments over peace,
1697–1713

176

TONY CLAYDON

10 From the warrior king to the peaceful king: Louis
XIV’s public image and the Peace of Utrecht

194

SOLANGE RAMEIX

11 Diverging concepts of peace in German newspapers 1712/1713:
A case study of the Hamburger Relations-Courier

209

INKEN SCHMIDT-VOGES

Index

227


Notes on contributors

Paola Bianchi has a PhD in History of European Society and is currently lecturer at the University of Aosta Valley (Department of Human and Social
Sciences), where she teaches History of Europe in the Early Modern Age.
Recently (2014) she was made associate professor. Her main fields of
interest are ‘new’ military and diplomatic history, history of the courts

and their élites (XVII–XVIII centuries), social and cultural history of the
Grand Tour, in particular from Great Britain to Savoy-Piedmont. She
collaborates with several Italian scholarly reviews (in particular Rivista
storica italiana and Società e storia) and is part of the scholarly committee of the series Guerra e pace in età moderna. Annali di storia militare
europea (Milan, Franco Angali publisher).
Tony Claydon is Professor of Early Modern History at Bangor University
in Wales. He is author of William III and the Godly Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 1996), a study of government propaganda after
the 1689 revolution in England; of Europe and the Making of England,
1660–1760 (Cambridge University Press, 2007), an examination of the
sense of participation by English people in a Protestant international and
in Christendom in the century after the civil war; and of articles on various aspects of the faith and political culture of late Stuart Britain.
Ana Crespo Solana holds a PhD in Geography and History and a Masters
in Latin-American History and has worked as a research fellow in Spain,
Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands. She has been professor in the
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) in Spain from
2007. She has led several research projects on Atlantic Economic and
Social History and in Spatial Humanities (European Science Foundation,
Spanish National Endowment for Humanities and Marie Curie Actions)
and is a member of several editorial and advisory boards and scholarly
committees. She is the author of eight books and over seventy essays and
articles about Spanish colonial trade, merchant communities, European
expansion in the Atlantic and GIS tools for the study of the colonial trade
with America.


viii

Notes on contributors

Klaas van Gelder finished his PhD on the establishment of Austrian rule in

the Southern Netherlands following the War of the Spanish Succession at
Ghent University, Belgium, in 2012. From October 2012 until September 2015, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow of the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO-Vlaanderen) at the History Department of Ghent
University. His current research project aims at studying the different
reform plans for the central institutional apparatus in the Austrian Netherlands and its gradual penetration of formerly autonomous local and
regional administrations. His publications include articles in the European Review of History, the Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung and
the Revue d’Histoire moderne et contemporaine.
Manuel Herrero-Sanchez teaches at Pablo de Olavide University in Seville.
He holds a PhD from the European University Institute in Florence and
has taught as a research fellow at the Istituto Benedetto Croce of Naples,
the Leiden Center for the History of European Expansion (IGEER), the
Vrije Universiteit of Amsterdam, Liège University, Complutense University of Madrid and at the Institute of History (CSIC). A specialist in the
History of International Relations during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, his research interests focus on the comparative approach to the
history of the mercantile republics and on the complex constitution of the
Hispanic Monarchy. Other areas of research include Atlantic History and
models of European expansion.
Sugiko Nishikawa took her first degree from the Graduate School of Arts,
Rikkyo University (Tokyo, Japan), and subsequently was a research student at University College, London, where she obtained her PhD in History in 1998. From 2000 to 2005, she was Associate Professor of Western
European History at Kobe University (Kobe, Japan), and since 2005, she
has been Associate Professor at the British Section, Graduate School of
Arts and Sciences, at the University of Tokyo. She specialises in the study
of Protestant communications networks in early modern Europe, which
expanded from the British Isles to the Baltic and the Mediterranean regions.
David Onnekink is Assistant Professor in the History of International Relations section of the Department of History of the Universiteit Utrecht. He
is interested in early modern foreign policy, in particular in connection with
the Dutch Republic and England. He is the author of The Anglo-Dutch
Favourite. The career of Hans Willem Bentinck, 1st Earl of Portland (Aldershot 2007) and co-authored a monograph on the Peace of Utrecht (Hilversum 2013) (with Renger de Bruin). He has also edited and co-edited several
volumes of essays, including Ideology and foreign policy in early modern
Europe (1650–1750) (Farnham 2011) (with Gijs Rommelse).
Steve Pincus is Bradford Durfee Professor of History at Yale University. He

has published widely on the political, cultural, intellectual and economic
history of early modern Britain and its empire, most recently 1688: The


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Notes on contributors

ix

First Modern Revolution. He is now completing a history of the British
Empire c.1650–c.1784, which seeks to understand the evolution of the
British imperial state in comparative perspective.
Solange Rameix studied history at Panthéon-Sorbonne University. She completed her PhD on ‘The Language of Just War: Comparing French and
English Perspectives on the Nine Years’ War and the War of the Spanish
Succession (1688–1713)’ in 2011. She is also a fellow at the ‘Fondation
Thiers’ (CNRS) (2009–2012).
Inken Schmidt-Voges teaches early modern history at the Philipps-University
of Marburg. Her research interests cover studies on early modern peace
processes, combining political, social and cultural history for a more
encompassing understanding. In this context, she has recently finished
a major work on peace semantics and practices in domestic and matrimonial matters in the eighteenth century (Mikropolitiken des Friedens,
Berlin 2015). Furthermore, she guided studies on peace as code of political communication in Sweden c. 1600 and is currently leading a research
project on ‘media constructions of peace in Europe, 1710–1721’. Further
areas of interest are the history of Scandinavia, especially Sweden, the
history of the Holy Roman Empire, the history of houses and households
in Early Modern Europe as well as how narratives of collective identity
shaped, changed and influenced the formation of societies in Europe.
Christopher Storrs is Reader in History in the School of Humanities, University of Dundee. He has published widely on the Savoyard state, Italy and
Spain in the early modern era, including various articles and the monographs War, Diplomacy and the Rise of Savoy, 1690–1720 (Cambridge,
1999), and The Resilience of the Spanish Monarchy 1665–1700 (Oxford,

2006). He recently edited The Fiscal-Military State in Eighteenth-Century
Europe (Aldershot, 2009) and is currently preparing a monograph on
Spanish policy in the western Mediterranean and Italy in the first half of
the eighteenth century and a survey of eighteenth-century Italy.

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Abbreviations

AGI
AHN/AHNM
ARA
BL
BNE
Bod. / Bodleian
BPR
HHStA
HRC
NA
PRO
RAA
RAG
SP
SPCK
SPG
TNA

Archivo General de Indias, Sevilla
Archivo Histórico Nacional, Madrid

Algemeen Rijksarchief, Brussels
British Library, London
Biblioteca Nacional de España
Bodleian Library, Oxford
Biblioteca del Palacio Real, Madrid
Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Wien
Hamburger Relations-Courier
Nationaal Archief, The Hague
Public Record Office, London, now the
National Archives, Kew
Rijksarchief, Anderlecht
Rijksarchief, Gent
State Papers, The National Archives, Kew
Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in
Foreign Parts
The National Archives, Kew


Introduction
New Worlds? Transformations in
the Culture of International Relations
Around the Peace of Utrecht
Inken Schmidt-Voges and Ana Crespo Solana
‘The peace will be a general peace, and in this collegio you can get a complex view of Europe’s interconnectedness.’1 With these words, the German
constitutional lawyer Nicolaus Hieronymus Gundling (1671–1729) promoted a lecture in spring 1711 in the university calendar of Halle, a leading
institution of early Enlightenment scholarship.
Though his prediction of a general peace was not borne out, the lecture provided a razor-sharp view of the politics of conflict in 1711, when
Europe’s entire political and economic relations were being renegotiated following the crisis of the Spanish succession.
When the Spanish king, Charles II, died in 1700, the European elites had

been concerned with the matter of the Spanish succession for several decades
already. As Charles II had produced no legitimate heir, two members of the
leading dynasties of Habsburg and Bourbon, Archduke Charles of Austria and
Philippe of Anjou, claimed entitlement to the heritage. This prospect alarmed
other European powers like England and the Netherlands, since inheritance
of the vast Spanish Empire with its many estates in Europe and colonial possessions abroad would thus give hitherto unknown power to one of the two
dynasties that had been competing for European leadership for two hundred
years. Several partition scenarios were contrived and fixed in treaties, but
Charles II overturned all arrangements by designating Philippe of Anjou as his
sole heir on his deathbed. By accepting this will for his grandson, Louis XIV
automatically broke the partition treaty and provoked the outbreak of the
looming war in 1701. England and the States General joined Emperor Leopold I in fighting for the succession rights of his second son Charles, but they
primarily sought to secure their own global trading interests that a fundamental change of system, in the case of a Bourbon succession, would put at risk.2
With his focus on the conflict’s background in trade issues and economic
policy, Gundling, too, emphasised the broader context of the struggle, which
only a shallow mind would assume to be mere family rivalry. In his view,
the Dutch Republic and England would support a Habsburg succession not
least because of their interest in the Spanish markets for raw materials. They
would not welcome a French successor ‘as the French would easily change


2

Inken Schmidt-Voges and Ana Crespo Solana

everything, because they are so inventieus,’ he claims. ‘Austrians are more
used to leaving things as they stand.’3 Gundling’s statement shows that contemporaries perceived the ongoing conflict as a general conflict touching
the very order of a global web of economic, political, military and confessional interests, densely woven over the preceding two hundred years. It also
reveals that contemporaries perceived these events in Europe as a time of
fundamental changes and transition, in which traditional, established concepts of seeing, doing and saying things collided with new, innovative ways

and in which the hitherto unquestioned prevalence of the ‘old’ no longer
seemed to be self-evident.4
This contemporary perception provides a conceptual basis to rethink the
impact and significance of the Peace of Utrecht in a broader context of
social and cultural transition. By broadening the perspective beyond the
field of international relations and embedding the (diplomatic) actors and
actions in a wider social, economic and cultural context, this volume seeks
to cast new light on the peace negotiations and treaties in 1714 and 1715.
Placing the peace negotiations within this phase of yet inconclusive transitions and transformations helps us understand the peace congress and treaties of Utrecht as part of an overarching process of reordering and stabilising
societies that had been on the move for various reasons. The diplomatic
achievements, stipulated in a complex of treaties, are seen not only as a result
of the parties negotiating their conflicting interests, but also in their social
and cultural entanglement. In their accords, the treaties responded to shifting
societal frameworks but could in turn impose sudden change on the respective societies. The extent to which societies and commonwealths were able to
cope with such alterations proved critical for the stability and sustainability
of such peace agreements. For example, a change of the ruling dynasty could
imply a change in the social elites with far-reaching consequences for those
who supported the defeated dynasty; access to resources, markets or trading
networks could be blocked and challenge the economic basis of a society;
changes in the confessional settings could cause domestic disturbances; so
the outcome of peace negotiations had to meet the expectations of the people
and proved crucial for the rulers’ legitimacy – peace-making thus affected
not only the small elite of the princes’ diplomats, but was vital to the development of all affected societies.
This volume responds to the state of research in two ways. First, it questions the prevailing perceptions of the Peace of Utrecht in the history of
international relations. Second, it connects this sphere of international politics and diplomacy with various studies on the social, economic and political effects of the War of the Spanish Succession and the Peace Treaties in
particular polities.
With regard to the first point, the history of international relations has
often explained the Peace of Utrecht (and the subsequent treaties of Rastatt and Baden) as a watershed that marked the end of an ‘old’ system of
pre-modern peace-making that was characterised by hegemonic concepts of

Introduction

3

‘universal monarchy’, confessional interests and dynastic alliances. At the
same time, it is credited with setting the scene for the rise of a ‘new’ way of
peace-making and international relations, defined as a secular system of a
‘balance of power’. It is said to recognise equally sovereign powers and seek
to integrate them into a system in which confession, traditional alliances or
actors like the pope were of merely symbolic relevance.5
Historiography has hitherto mainly treated the Peace of Utrecht as an
appendix to the War of the Spanish Succession. The analysis of the resulting
treaties has led to an important line of research into the system of postUtrecht international relations, a field that is based on the traditional idea
that the war and the treaties resulted in a modern kind of diplomacy, a
model of multilateral balance and international cooperation intended to
counteract hegemonic policies both on the Continent and in its overseas
projections. Both the model of diplomacy and the idea of ‘balance of power’
have attracted a great deal of attention in classic works.6
However, national historiographies have focussed on diverging aspects that
could be related to their countries’ role in the conflict. In Spain, for example,
particular emphasis has been laid on the domestic impact the conflict had
on a regional as well as a national level. Worth mentioning are the works
by Albareda Salvadó, Bernardo Ares and Fernández Albadalejo. The War of
Spanish Succession has been discussed from the perspective of the profound
changes it caused to the monarchy’s constitutional structure as the ensuing
treaties meant a decisive step towards a modern nation-state.7 This perspective also affected various other territories formerly under Spanish rule such
as Flanders or parts of Italy.8 Other, more recent works on the colonial and
imperial dimensions of the war have contributed to this line of research. In
Great Britain, on the other hand, the Peace of Utrecht has mainly been treated

with regard to the domestic political turmoil, the struggle between Tories and
Whigs as well as the start of the Hanoverian period and the emergence of the
British Empire.9 For the Dutch Republic, the Peace of Utrecht was seen as a
watershed in the sense that it heralded a period of long decline in the eighteenth century. The discussion has focused on the question as to whether the
state could still be ranked among the great powers.10
Earlier works used to focus on the economic dimension of the war11 or
the confessional dimension of the conflict. Open discussions are still underway with regard to the continuity of the Protestant faith, the emergence
of capitalism and the new forms of political representation.12 It is worth
highlighting that these works deal particularly with the impact this new
model of diplomacy had on the foundations of the foreign policy of the
present-day European Union.13 Much speculation and discussions concern
whether Utrecht meant a new step in the evolution of diplomatic relations
in Europe or the beginning of a new era altogether. Only recently, launched
by the Treaty’s tricentennial commemoration, have communicative and cultural aspects begun to enter the research on the Peace of Utrecht – as had
been the case with the Peace of Westphalia in 1998.14


4

Inken Schmidt-Voges and Ana Crespo Solana

New worlds? The war of the Spanish succession
and its context
The peace treaties of Utrecht (Rastatt and Baden) not only set the Spanish
succession by dividing the territories of the Spanish Empire among Charles
VI and Philip V. Great Britain gained economic control of the Atlantic
world, thus laying the basis for the British Empire; in addition, the Hanoverian Succession was recognised, putting an end to a long dynastic instability. The Dutch Republic achieved the implementation of a barrier in the
Southern Netherlands against any further French threats, while the princes
of Brandenburg and Savoy gained royal status and sovereignty among the
European powers.

The far-reaching impact of these treaties had been looming since the last
decades of the seventeenth century. The question of the Spanish succession
was not so much a problem of conflicting dynastic inheritance law but of
the immense global influence, access to resources and power over colonial
as well as European territories that was associated with the Spanish crown.
The very fact that the two dynasties with the strongest claims to the Spanish crown, Habsburg and Bourbon, had been struggling for a hegemonic
position in continental Europe for two centuries made the case only more
delicate – particularly for those polities who had gained enormous economic
power, England and the Netherlands.
Accordingly, in the last decades of the seventeenth century several schemes
had been projected as to how the Spanish heritage could be allocated without risking enhancing one or the other competitor. Archduke Charles of
Austria, later-born son of Emperor Leopold I, claimed the Spanish crown
due to a testament of Philip IV, who entitled his daughter Margarita Teresa,
married to Emperor Leopold I, and her children to succeed Charles II,
should he die without heirs. Philip, Duke of Anjou, claimed the throne due
to the right of primogeniture. His grandmother, Maria Teresa, wife of Louis
XIV, was the oldest child of Philip IV of Spain. Though she renounced her
rights of inheritance in the marriage treaty, Louis declared this renunciation
void since the dowry had never been paid.
In 1698, France and England seemed to have found a convenient solution. In the Treaty of The Hague, often called the first partition treaty,
Joseph Ferdinand of Bavaria was presented as heir and suitable compromise
candidate. He was a cousin to both pretenders, who in return received considerable bits of the Spanish European empire. Unfortunately, Joseph Ferdinand died early in 1699, and a new scheme had to be developed. The second
partition treaty, signed by France, England and the States General in 1700
in London, now favoured Archduke Charles as Spanish heir, but all Italian
parts should go to France. Unwilling to agree to a breakup of the Spanish
Empire, Charles II named Philip of Anjou as his heir in a testament shortly
before his death in November 1700. By accepting this will, Louis XIV broke
the London Treaty, and military conflict broke out in Italy. In 1702, the

Introduction

5

Grand Alliance was renewed and England, the States General and Leopold
I declared war on France. Their primary aim was to deprive France of any
possibility to inflict further war on Europe. Far from acting in unison, each
partner of the Alliance had its own, eventually conflicting motives: England
sought recognition of the Protestant succession and trading privileges in the
Atlantic, the Dutch were looking for security of their territorial integrity and
Archduke Charles was pressing his inheritance rights against the old ‘arch
enemy’, the Bourbons.
Fighting for the implementation of the London Treaty, the Alliance confronted France in various battles with shifting fortunes of war. All parties
became financially exhausted, and the first peace negotiations were conducted at Geertruidenberg near The Hague in 1709/1710. The issues that
were brought up went far beyond the succession problem and included
trading matters in Europe and overseas, territorial rearrangements for supporting dynasties, barrier forts and confessional privileges. The negotiations
failed, however, and war resumed. A new parliament in England and the
unexpected elevation of Archduke Charles as emperor in 1711 altered the
situation; England and the States General feared an overly powerful House
of Habsburg, and thus England initiated preliminary negotiations for a final
peace congress in Utrecht. It was in session from January 1712 to April
1713, when the first treaties were signed.
The respective envoys signed more than twenty treaties between 1713
and 1715 at Utrecht, Rastatt, Baden and Madrid, significantly shifting the
balance of political and economic power in Europe.
First, the Spanish empire was reorganised and divided at several levels.
Philip of Anjou, appointed as Charles II’s successor in his will, was recognised as Philip V of Spain. He ruled Spain’s colonies in America and Asia,
but in Europe he governed only a limited territory on the Iberian Peninsula,
including the long-disputed county of Barcelona. The Spanish Netherlands
and possessions in Italy came under Habsburg rule. As Philip had renounced

his rights of succession in France, other European sovereigns’ fears of a
Bourbon or Habsburg hegemony were dispelled for the first time. France
achieved the installation of the Bourbon dynasty on the Spanish throne and
maintained a powerful political and economic position in Europe.
Apart from these questions, which related directly to territorial aspects
of the Spanish succession and thus to the causes of the war, the treaties
included many provisions concerning side-effects of the division of the Spanish empire to meet the demands of coalition partners. The Dutch Republic
essentially sought to secure its long-term territorial integrity using the ‘barrier’, a series of fortresses on the Southern Netherlands’ border with France.
As a reward for leaving France for the Grand Alliance in 1703, the Duchy of
Savoy received Sardinia, giving it a stronger territorial presence in Italy and,
as a kingdom, a greater role on the international stage. Likewise, as a partner in the Grand Alliance, the Prince-Elector of Brandenburg-Prussia won
perhaps only minor territorial gains but experienced a considerable growth


6

Inken Schmidt-Voges and Ana Crespo Solana

of prestige due to his military achievements and in the final recognition as
‘King in Prussia’, making him a sovereign in Europe’s political landscape.
However, the Treaties of Utrecht had the most far-reaching consequences
for England, which took a different path. Its main objective was not so
much to expand its dominions as to secure and control access to central
positions in the Atlantic economy. These included significant trading privileges in the Spanish colonies (most prominently, if not most importantly, the
asiento de negros) and in the Southern Netherlands under the Guarantee
Treaty, at the Netherlands’ expense. Apart from these economic interests,
the recognition of the Hanoverian succession was Great Britain’s central
objective in the negotiations with France. In the negotiators’ view, political
stability in Britain was possible only if France renounced its support for the
Stuart princes.

To understand how these diverging processes interacted, affected each
other and influenced the further emergence of international relations, it is
necessary to consider them embedded in a ‘culture of international relations’
that encompasses the mentioned social, cultural and economic contexts.

The culture of international relations
Despite considerable methodological discussions and new approaches in
the history of diplomacy, the narratives of the history of international
relations have hitherto largely been based on a (neo-)realistic paradigm
that regards states and powers as ontological, broadly identical groupings pursuing a specific set of interests. Many political scientists, however, have adopted a constructivist perspective, regarding international
relations not as an anarchic model but as a network of relationships
developed in interactions between state and non-state actors.15 The
decline of the state as a homogenous, sovereign entity in recent decades
has raised two conceptual issues in contemporary debates that lead us to
revisit international relations and peace processes in a time prior to the
existence of nation-states.
First, an actor-and-practice-centred perspective intertwines international relations on different levels in order to analyse the specific dynamics of their interactions: political entities and their representatives play
an important part in the development of international relations, but so
do the economic connections, interests and networks between the actors
involved.16
Second, an analysis of domestic social processes can highlight factors in
the transformation of international political goals and interests, taking into
account long-term cultural and social change and, at the short-term level, a
general contesting of authority in the heterogeneous political cultures and
publics.17 As a result, interests and identities are no longer seen as given
quantities but rather as fluid concepts that continually adapt to the actual
situation. As cognitive patterns, those aspects are vital to all communicative


Introduction

7

processes, whose analysis offers the opportunity to pinpoint the linkages
between events, practices, perceptions and discourses in international
relations.18
Transferred to the early modern period, when the nation-state was as
yet unknown and in which policy-making relied largely on personal networks, patronage and concepts of rule and sovereignty still rooted in the
body and person of the prince, a ‘culture of international relations’ can
be depicted. Based on the concept of political culture, it is understood as
a set of attitudes, beliefs and sentiments that gives order and meaning to a
political process, provides the underlying rules and assumptions governing
interaction between political entities, and encompasses both the political
ideals and operational norms of international relations. It is the product of
the collective history of its constituent political systems and the biographies
of its actors and is thus rooted equally in collective events and individual
experience and habitus.19
Of course, these approaches and theoretical debates are not new: they
have long been a part of the canon of social and cultural sciences integrated in general historical research. However, historians of early modern
international relations only recently have begun to adopt such methodological realignments.20 But the prevailing narratives of those interactions
that in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries became what we normally describe as ‘international relations’ still implicitly rely on modern
state-concepts.
Looking at the Peace of Utrecht from such a perspective of a ‘culture
of international relations’, we find a large number of actors at different
levels whose legitimate entitlement to act (‘sovereignty’)21 was part of
the complex processes of negotiating rather than a clearly defined power.
Though there were many forms of institutional and territorial consolidation around 1700 that embodied important features of the later concept of statehood,22 loyalties, offices, functions and responsibilities of the
actors remained much more fluid and heterogeneous than is assumed for
officeholders in nation-states. For example, those who acted as residents,
envoys and ambassadors were at the beginning far from forming a specially trained, professional group with fixed and reliable salaries. They

often grew into their function through family networks, successful court
careers and patronage. To fulfil their political missions, they depended
on a considerable economic basis in their own households as landlords
or merchants and often typically on early modern mixed economies with
different sources of income, based on wide-ranging, transnational kin and
family networks. Those networks indeed made them attractive for princes
to select as envoys.23 Thus, not only loyalty to the employer but the
envoys’ own networks and vital interests have to be taken into account
when analysing actors in international relations. And this perspective
sheds new light on what Nicolaus Gundling meant when he contended
that ‘all of Europe is connected’.


8

Inken Schmidt-Voges and Ana Crespo Solana

The Peace of Utrecht: Transformations in the
‘culture of international relations’
Adapting this wider, rather constructive approach to the Peace of Utrecht,
the exploratory contributions in this volume focus on four aspects that in
our view were crucial to transformations to which the Peace of Utrecht
responded and formed the background basis of the ‘culture of international
relations’. These aspects are diplomacy, social networks, economic structures and the expanding role of the media. Though each chapter deals with
a main topic related to one of these areas, it nevertheless touches other
aspects as well. This is why we will not introduce each chapter in turn but
will describe the four areas of transformation and their mutual entanglement, as well as the ways in which the chapters provide new insights and
research perspectives.
a)

Diplomacy

European diplomacy had become increasingly professionalised and differentiated as a result of the negotiations to end the Thirty Years’ War. It had
developed into a generally recognised system of rules for communication
between the courts and governments of Europe. Lucien Bély has examined
these aspects with respect to diplomats’ education, communication patterns
and knowledge frameworks that institutionalised the forms and processes
of peace negotiations that were further developed and adapted on a caseby-case basis. But specific diplomatic techniques designed to maintain longterm peace and security, such as articles and formulas for an assecuratio
pacis, acquired significant impetus in the late seventeenth century.24
Diplomatic history regards the Peace of Utrecht as an abrupt break with
tradition, as it marked the first time that extensive peace negotiations took
place without an official intermediary, ceremonial was reduced to a minimum, and it was axiomatic that participants had equal status.25 The use
of preventive diplomacy26 in the assecuratio agreements and the Cambrai
and Soissons congresses of 1724 and 1728–1729 represented a new form
of peace-making, although it was only partially successful in the eighteenth
century. For the diplomats involved, it was essential to keep pace with
events and to develop a nose for new forms of communication. We know
that the failure of the emperor’s negotiation strategies was due partly to the
inexperience of the advisers and diplomats of the newly crowned Charles
VI. In her contribution on Savoyard diplomats in Utrecht, Paola Bianchi
shows that the professionalisation of diplomacy had a lasting effect both
on international events and on the processes of institutionalisation and
bureaucratisation in the diplomats’ home countries. Increasingly flexible
social hierarchies and new educational structures created the basis for a successful negotiating team that earned significant territorial gains and royal
status for Savoy. Their experiences and European networks enabled them


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Introduction

9

to build a more centralised and structured administration after the peace
treaty, and this was crucial to Savoy’s territorial expansion and increased
political importance. Bianchi uses three biographies to show that these networks, and the resources they used during the Utrecht negotiations, were
far more important in Savoy’s rise to political power than the personal
traits of Vittorio Amadeo II that had previously been cited as a factor.
We already know that the diplomats’ social networks were vital to their
political success; this is one of the basic assumptions of early modern diplomatic history. However, there have not been any studies focusing on their
connections with other networks, even though their activation exercised a
decisive influence on diplomatic events. This is apparent in Sugiko Nishikawa’s examination of the networks used by the Huguenots, which helped
to secure their existential and political future and deliberately made use of
their connections with other groups (we would call them NGOs today) such
as the London-based Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, to tackle
the issues of persecuted Protestants in France and elsewhere in Europe and
of countless galley slaves. It was largely as a result of their influence that the
causes of religious conflict in Europe were dealt with in a series of additional
treaties and other agreements, undermining the common contention that the
treaties were non-religious.
In their articles, Ana Crespo Solana, Manuel Herrero Sánchez and Steven Pincus repeatedly discuss the importance of economic networks that
deliberately maintained close contacts with courts and diplomats in order to
influence the negotiating parties’ political decisions. These are particularly
apparent in the new macroeconomic emphasis of the debates on the purpose
and benefits of peace negotiations.
David Onnekink’s study of the political language of two Dutch foreign
policy advisers shows that, contrary to previous research assumptions, they
did not adopt a new vocabulary but used different political semantics to
describe a changing world. Although both belonged to the same generation
and had similar social, educational and religious backgrounds, one wrote
reports and memoranda from a strongly religious perspective, while the

other employed arguments from natural law and came to different conclusions. The two approaches could co-exist, and the traditional Christian view
of politics and the world was not rejected as old or outdated. It was taken
very seriously, and its exponent was later to determine the Netherlands’
foreign policy as its grand pensionary. This comparison reveals the openness and inclusiveness of the trend but does not imply a break with the past.
b)

Social networks

The decades around 1700 were characterised by ongoing changes not only in
the field of international relations, but also with regard to state-building processes. Experience of religious strife and civil wars in many European societies had created a widespread tendency towards centralised government,

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10 Inken Schmidt-Voges and Ana Crespo Solana
ideally in the form of a king with potestas absoluta.27 This brought about an
increased emphasis on dynasties as ruling elites, and a challenge to the different social networks of political and economic elites.28 The ongoing shift
in polity from a personal relationship between ruler and ruled to a more
abstract understanding of authority and citizenship was affected by the subsequent change of rulers in some realms. Traditional loyalties of the nobility,
their own family and kinship ties, were torn and had to be recreated. Often,
compromise peace solutions achieved with great effort proved difficult to
put into practice within the community in a constructive and integrated
manner. Christopher Storrs demonstrates this dilemma using the example
of the Spanish monarchy, which experienced a phase of forced institutional
centralisation and systematisation as a result of dynastic changes and losses
of territory following the peace congress. This institutional change was the
work of a new social and political elite. Central government posts previously
occupied by supporters of the Habsburgs were now held by minor members
of the aristocracy and the up-and-coming middle classes, reflecting the deepseated political and social consequences of a process of change that began
in the seventeenth century and gained new impetus as a result of the peace.

A similar point is made by Ana Crespo Solana, who examines changing policies with respect to the incorporation of American colonies into the Spanish
empire, highlighting the potential for innovation that resulted from the need to
deal with changing circumstances. Klaas van Gelder uses the establishment of
the new Austrian Habsburgs’ dominions in the Southern Netherlands to show
the delicate balancing act required, despite the somewhat unfavourable results
of the peace negotiations, to maintain the support of the social and political
elites and create a broad basis for the recognition of their rule.
A royal will or treaty was not sufficient to establish a new framework of
sovereignty, and monarchs were always well advised to obtain the recognition and support of the ruling elite, as Manuel Herrero Sánchez shows. His
analysis of the outcome of Utrecht in the context of the long-term relationship between Spain and the Netherlands shows the profound connections
between internal, external and trade strategy. As far as economic productivity is concerned, he also shows that the supposedly old-fashioned regions
ruled from multiple centres, such as the Netherlands or the Italian territories, had lost little of their prosperity. The economic benefits of the peace
highlight the limitations of the state paradigm of organisational and political development during the eighteenth century, and more recent research
has shown that the entities were more like empires than developing states.29
c)

Economic structures

The economic interests of the various European governments and trading
companies gained unprecedented importance during the Utrecht negotiations, making them almost the central driver of political decisions. This


Introduction

11

development shows how intertwined Europe’s economies had already
become and clearly highlights the growing importance of the political
economy as a frame of reference for governments’ actions. The domestic markets were expanding as a result of increased production and consumption, and this was closely related to important political questions,
such as securing access to raw materials, markets and transport routes.

It is particularly apparent in the significant changes that occurred in the
Atlantic world as a result of the Peace of Utrecht. The ensuing reordering of American markets and flows of goods had resulted in a wide range
of strategies and objectives that are discussed in several articles. Steven
Pincus presents the differing views of the structure and foundations of a
British trading hegemony, distinguishing between the Whigs’ ‘integrative’
empire and the Tories’ territorial one, as a core area of conflict in the two
parties’ political programmes. In the press, this conflict was expressed in
terms of a polarity between ‘old’ and ‘new’, with one side claiming that
the other was trapped in an outmoded system and in turn being accused of
fomenting social revolution.
The contributions by Klaas van Gelder, Ana Crespo Solana and Manuel Herrero Sánchez highlight the immense importance of economic
issues for political and social development in the eighteenth century and
of the Utrecht treaties in paving the way for the coming decades. Their
analysis of the economic context, the networks on which it was based
and their close connection with the political elites clearly shows that
the concept of the balance of power was not invented in the context
of Utrecht, nor was it limited to states’ ambitions for political power.
Instead, it was a much more complex system of kings, republics, dynasties, trading companies and empires. An actor-centred perspective on
the economic background and consequences of peace treaties sheds light
on the shadowy version of history inspired by national historiography
and neorealism and increases our understanding of early modern peace
processes.
The radical changes that took place in Europe as a result of the Utrecht
treaties are most clearly apparent in the way they were perceived and represented by the press. As the War of Spanish Succession had done before, the
peace negotiations of 1709 onwards unleashed a vast flood of pamphlets,
flyers and tracts across Europe. These, together with detailed coverage in
all European newspapers, provided a rich flow of information that was
used strategically to influence public opinion to an unprecedented extent.
This phenomenon emphasises the controversy surrounding the various
options available in the peace negotiations and the reading public’s close

interest in the outcome, which exerted a strong politicising impetus. European publishers were intensely market focused, producing large quantities
of material to meet the need for information and guidance in an increasingly complex world.30


12 Inken Schmidt-Voges and Ana Crespo Solana
d)

Print media

All of the contributions show the importance of the print media in disseminating news and opinions, and without them the intense debate on the many
political decisions of principle would not have achieved such complexity.
The Utrecht negotiations took place at a time in which society and public
opinion were undergoing profound change, with early Enlightenment social
concepts questioning the arcana imperii and demanding to know whether
the political elite was acting for the common good.31 Closer international
ties between publishers created a tension between governments’ efforts to
manage information and opinions, on the one hand, and, on the other, an
independent publishing industry subject to varying degrees of censorship
depending on the government involved.
The diversity of the European publishing landscape is clearly reflected in
the different ways in which it reported on the peace process. Steven Pincus
and Tony Claydon reconstruct the discourse underlying the clashes between
the British political parties in the newspapers, pointing out the provisional
and controversial nature of their strategies during the peace negotiations,
particularly during the abrupt changes in peace policy that occurred in
1710 through the involvement of other actors with different networks and
discourses.
The peace talks offered the ideal stage for governments to demonstrate,
through foreign policy and its domestic implications, their own hegemony,
legitimacy and conformity with current values. Government policy was

often criticised as being out of line with society’s expectations of peace. We
see this in Inken Schmidt-Voges’ analysis of how a German newspaper’s
coverage of the Utrecht negotiations mirrored both war reporting and its
readers’ own experiences of conflict. The published reports ensured that the
wider public knew what politicians were doing and could decide whether
these actions were in the public interest; many were unhappy with their
governments’ continued insistence on the preservation of dynasties and willingness to cede territories.
Solange Rameix adopts a different emphasis in her examination of Louis
XIV’s image policy. As a result of serious domestic crises – looming national
bankruptcy, poor harvests and a winter of hunger – official propaganda
quickly and seamlessly transformed his reputation from warrior king to
peacemaker, trumpeting his role in the forthcoming peace talks in response
to growing public disquiet.
Contrary to the assumption that Utrecht resulted in a more rational, secular European order, the discourse, semantics and metaphors used clearly
show that religious views of politics and the world remained the height of
fashion. Louis XIV’s revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 was a major
event for the media, and slavery and the persecution of the Huguenots were
common themes. In England, domestic debate between Hanoverians and
Jacobites was polarised religiously, while in the Holy Roman Empire the


Introduction

13

religious debate over the Rijswijk clause and its revocation led to a fundamental constitutional conflict.32
The prominent role played by religion in the additional treaties, mentioned
above, shows the importance of this cognitive worldview at the time of the
Peace of Utrecht. David Onnekink’s political analysis shows that policymakers were guided by religious principles, on the one hand, and early Enlightenment values and natural law, on the other. And yet, the printing business of
the SPCK formed a central financial and informational basis for the political

and social work of the society, as Sugiko Nishikawa shows in her article.
The brief summary of these four areas of diplomacy, economic interest,
social networks and media has shown that in order adequately to understand the background, events and outcomes of the Peace of Utrecht as a
moment of transformation in early modern society, we must take account
of its political, social, economic and cultural contexts. If we focus on the
actors, networks, practices and discourses involved, the givens of international relations recede into the background and a different and more complex pattern of European and global interdependence emerges, comprising
processes that were often incomplete and that occurred in different ways in
different places but were also very closely related. The nature and meaning of these connections were very specific to the early modern period and
must be seen in the context of a culture of international relations that goes
beyond concepts of national states and the interactions between them.
So did the Peace of Utrecht herald a new world? No, but it did presage
a wide range of new and old models of response to change, all of them the
subject of heated debate. Each contribution in this volume deals with several
of these models with respect to one specific theme and brings out the connections between them. Strictly speaking, therefore, it would be wrong to
suggest an order in which they should be read.
However, the editors thought it advisable to begin the book with a discussion of the new and old models, the role of networks and their influence
on specific political decisions. The first three essays therefore deal with the
protagonist of the peace: Spain, an empire in transition, the causes and consequences of the Peace of Utrecht, and the developments on which it built.
This is followed by two papers on territories that were previously Spanish
or that profited from the breakup: the Austrian Netherlands and Savoy. The
first section, dealing with politics, ends with a contribution on the Huguenot networks, emphasising the importance of transnational connections and
their influence on the negotiations.
Perceptions are inextricably connected with politics, particularly when
we take account of the importance of speech in the constitution of reality.
This is the subject of David Onnekink’s study of the world views of Dutch
political advisers and of Steven Pincus’s chapter on Whigs and Tories’ differing concepts of the British Empire and the importance of underlying knowledge to political decisions and strategy.


14 Inken Schmidt-Voges and Ana Crespo Solana
The book ends with three essays focusing on different views of peace.

Tony Claydon analyses the development of the Tory peace discourse, while
Solange Rameix traces Louis XIV’s transition from warrior king to peacemaker and shows how, despite his supposed omnipotence, his legitimacy
was dependent on his subjects’ consent. Finally, Inken Schmidt-Voges shows
how news reporting provided an opportunity for criticism of the ruling
classes and divergent concepts of peace in the Holy Roman Empire.
The book adopts a new approach to early modern peace negotiations
and treaties. Rather than limiting itself to the history of diplomacy and
international relations, it makes diplomatic achievements understandable
by placing them in a wider social context. The book shows how, in the years
before and after 1700, the Peace of Utrecht bore out Nicolaus Hieronymus
Gundling’s contention that ‘all of Europe is connected’.

Notes
1 ‘Der zukünfftige Friede wird ein General-Friede werden, und also kann man in
diesem Collegio die Connexion von gantz Europa begreiffen.’ Nicolaus Hieronymus Gundling, Vorbereitungs-Discours zu dem Utrecht-Baadischen Frieden
(Frankfurt: Frantz Varrentrapp, 1736), 1 (Prolegomena). The work was published posthumously, based on Gundling’s statement and numerous transcripts
of the lecture.
2 A number of surveys of the War of the Spanish Succession have been published
recently, see for example: Matthias Schnettger, Der spanische Erbfolgekrieg
(München: Beck Verlag, 2014); Joaquim Albareda Salvadó, La guerra de successión de España (1700–1714) (Barcelona: Critica, 2012); Daniel Defoe, Memorias de Guerra del Capitán George Carleton: Los españoles vistos por un oficial
inglés durante la Guerra de Sucesión (Alicante: Universidad de Alicante, 2003);
Duque de Berwick, Memorias, ed. Pere Molas Ribalta (Alicante: Universidad de
Alicante, 2007); and others.
3 ‘Der Frantzose würde leichtlich alles verändern, weil er sehr inventieus ist,
dahingegen die Österreicher mehr gewohnt sind eine Sache in ihrem alten
Zustande zu lassen’. Gundling, Vorbereitungs-Discours, 76.
4 See for example: Christoph Kampmann, Katharina Krause, Eva-Bettina Krems
and Anuschka Tischer, eds., Neue Modelle im Alten Europa. Traditionsbruch
und Innovation als Herausforderung in der Frühen Neuzeit (Köln: Böhlau,
2011).

5 A general overview in recent publications: Antonio Álvarez-Ossorio, Bernardo J.
García García and Virginia León Sanz, eds., La pérdida de Europa. La Guerra de
Sucesión por la Monarquía de España (Madrid: Fundación Carlos de Amberes
y Sociedad Estatal de Conmemoraciones Culturales, 2007); Peace Was Made
Here: The Treaties of Utrecht, Rastatt en Baden 1713–1714, Catalogue of Exhibition, ed. Renger de Bruin and Maarten Brinkman (Petersberg: Imhof, 2013).
6 H. G. Pitt, ‘The Pacification of Utrecht’, in The New Cambridge Modern
History, vol. 6, ed. J. S. Bromley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1971), 446–479; Heinz Duchhardt, Gleichgewicht der Kräfte, Convenance,
Europäisches Konzert. Friedenskongresse und Friedensschlüsse vom Zeitalter
Ludwigs XIV. bis zum Wiener Kongress (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1976), 41–89; Agustín Guimerá and Víctor Peralta, eds., El equilibrio
de los imperios: de Utrecht a Trafalgar (Madrid: Fundación Española de Historia Moderna, 2005).