Dr. Sluga’s intention is “to return to the early nineteenth century as the origin of the conception of international order that shaped modern international politics” (xi), because “even a two-hundred-year-long history still matters, for getting our bearings and navigating the future, for its confirmation that peacemaking can be the mother of invention” (xi). She is particularly concerned with revealing what she sees as the overlooked hopes, expectations, and influence of women and economic actors who tried to put a liberalizing stamp on the world created through the emerging congress system. So intent is she on “historicizing” the contexts in which these actors functioned that she has “employed the present tense, when [she wants us] to understand [their] reactions and strategies” (10).

Sluga’s praise of Brian Vick’s creative approach to the cultural and popular contexts of the Congress of Vienna is encouraging. However, the reader should be en garde when she describes her attempt to get beyond the “bodice-ripping” popular portrayals of the Congress of Vienna and the “long-standing view of 1814 peacemakers preoccupied with dancing and sex” (xiii). Certainly, historians like Enno Kraehe, Paul Schroeder, Brian Vick, and Wolfram Siemann, who have dealt exhaustively with the Congress of Vienna, have fostered no such images. The latter two have given extensive attention to the roles of salonniéres and ambassadrices at the Congress of Vienna and other conferences who are the focus of Sluga’s attention in this book.

Given the author’s publications concerning Madame Germaine de Staël it is not surprising that it is the persistent presence and influence-seeking of that well-known author that is the major focus of this book. But Sluga’s enthusiasm for de Staël leads her to an extravagant assertion: “Common parlance singles her out as one of three powers crucial in the campaign against France and the remaking of Europe, alongside Britain and Russia” (29). De Staël’s efforts to have Jean-Baptist-Jules Bernadotte chosen the king of France came to naught, as did her hopes that Tsar Alexander I would become the liberalizing leader of a reconstructed Europe.

Sluga quotes from the correspondence between Count Klemens von Metternich and Duchess Wilhelmina von Sagan to suggest the influence of that lady on Metternich’s politics both before and after the defeat of Napoleon. She does admit, however, that despite Sagan’s anti-Napoleonic urging in 1813, Metternich thought war a “bloody waste of men and resources” and had Austria stall on joining the coalition against Napoleon preferring to position Austria as a neutral negotiator (60). Similarly, Sluga details the enthusiasm of ambassadrice Caroline von Humboldt for a Prussian-led Germany in her correspondence with her ambassador husband during the Congress of Vienna. Nevertheless, Sluga admits that it had no impact upon his support for Metternich’s proposed German Confederation.

Her discussion of the influence of pietistic mystic Baroness Barbara von Krüdener on the creation of Tsar Alexander’s so-called Holy Alliance is also cautious. Though the baroness may have brought the tsar to tears during their prayer sessions, Sluga admits that it is well to heed the skepticism of Krüdener’s biographers in seeing her influence as “incidental” rather than “determinative” (202). Sluga’s insistence upon the need for historians to recognize the importance of the presence and assertiveness of women during the Congress period is valid. Still, their role appears to have been more “incidental” than “determinative.” This is, indeed, Sluga’s point and her deep regret: the reason for her publishing her book. It is about what she sees as neglected choices.

The Invention of International Order: Remaking Europe after Napoleon, is less about the powerful influence of women’s “soft power” during the remaking of Europe after Napoleon than about the proposals that were on offer. Alternative futures were lost when egotistical, male diplomats neglected the ideas of prominent women. Among those ideas were liberal constitutionalism, industrial reforms, and an end to antisemitic regulations throughout Europe. Glenda Sluga wants future policymakers to avoid the mistake of not listening to alternative voices. Despite this reader’s quibbles with the author’s views of what may have been realistic alternative choices during the Congress period, her book is worth reading because it provokes us to reconsider a past that was open to different futures.