Modernity and the intentional design of political order

A central aspect of modernity is the idea that political order can and indeed must be intentionally and instrumentally designed. In the nineteenth century, the idea that political organisation could be engineered wholesale was applied to domestic as well as international conditions. Empire-builders have always shaped conquered territories but in the late eighteenth century the idea that political organisation can be given entirely new form and purposes acquired a different quality. With the advent of modernity, rationality replaced tradition as a source of legitimacy, entailing that the future became severed from the past.Footnote ⁸ Mankind was no longer bound by historical forms of rule but could and indeed had to engage in the continuous reorganisation of political life.Footnote ⁹ Hence redesign of political institutions become possible. Modernity can be described as a period when profound social and political change takes place but it also a period where politics is organised around the idea that fundamental change is possible. Designing and engineering political order as a way to depart from the past and control the future became a hallmark of modernity.

The American and French Revolutions were the first implementations of these ideas. Napoleon later used them to restructure the European states-system by abolishing old countries, inventing new ones, and rewriting constitutions for the countries that were restructured under his rule.Footnote ¹⁰ The Congress of Vienna in 1815 sought to restore Europe to its pre-revolutionary and pre-Napoleonic shape. In their methods, however, the vanquishers of Napoleon were his heirs. For the first time political actors set out to design a European order and ways to manage the system together.Footnote ¹¹ The Vienna order rested on the idea that Austria, Britain, France, Prussia, and Russia constituted a distinct group of ‘Great Powers’ that could and should design political organisation to support a common vision of stability and legitimacy, in Europe as a whole and in specific countries. To signify that I regard Great Powers as a historically and to some extent culturally constructed category and dimension of differentiation I will throughout this article refer to it in citation marks or as the ‘Great Power group’. The Concert of Europe was not reactionary in the sense of opposing change. It was a modern programme of monitoring, coordination, planning, and transforming clothed in a self-description of traditionalism. Despite the traditionalist language, the Concert created profound change in Europe. Its participants attempted to control future developments in Europe, focusing on the prevention of war and revolutions.Footnote ¹² As a means to these ends the Congress changed constitutions, shifted borders and populations, and created new countries. Organising political order was undertaken in a context of several models of legitimate order, a critical question for organising actors was whether they conflicted or complemented each other. The nineteenth century is often portrayed as a very ordered age, a description that is close to its own self-description and ideal. It would be more correct to describe it as an ordering age characterised by a complex combination of models.

Models of political order in the nineteenth century

Nineteenth-century politics was a complex blend of several models of legitimate political order inside a territory (forms of rule) and on a systems level, that is, between forms of rule. To describe the variations of order on a systems level I will use differentiation theory as a descriptive vocabulary. Differentiation describes how people or groups are distinguished according to status. ‘Type approaches’ claim that systems can be described on the basis of a single dominant principle of organisation. A classic scheme contains three forms: Segmentary/hierarchical differentiation, stratificatory/unequal differentiation, and functional differentiation.Footnote ¹³ In contrast, dimensional approaches stress that societies are differentiated along several different dimensions. It is an empirical question whether there is a dominant dimension and how it relates to other dimensions of differentiation.Footnote ¹⁴ Forms of differentiation will be determined by content consisting of geographical and technological factors or intersubjective ones like ‘rules, roles and practices’.Footnote ¹⁵ This article follows a dimensional approach to differentiation since this matches the historical period. All complex societies are characterised by several principles of differentiation whose importance depends on issue area or situation. Issue area and ‘situations’ are, however, not objective or set in stone. Principles of differentiation may be in a state of tension with each other. Which principle will dominate actions in a given situation will be subject to political contests and contingencies. On a systemic level the combination of different principles of differentiation will be constitutive of the options open to actors.Footnote ¹⁶

Nineteenth-century Europe was characterised by a plurality of forms of rule. Firstly, the sovereign state had been firmly established in large parts of Western and Northern Europe (for example, Britain, France, Spain, and Sweden) but only partly in Central and Eastern Europe. Most studies of state-formation focus on these early developers and overlook the persistence of other forms elsewhere.Footnote ¹⁷ Similarly, IR theorists have constructed generalisations and models by focusing on sovereign states. Secondly, before 1914 world politics was not a system of ‘like units’, but also contained a wide range of non-sovereign units like principalities, protectorates, dominions, and colonies.Footnote ¹⁸ Previous research has highlighted heterogeneity of form with respect to politics outside Europe.Footnote ¹⁹ However, even within Europe many different forms of rule existed. For example, the German Confederation (1815–66) consisted of 39 members of various size and character.Footnote ²⁰ Until 1861 the Italian peninsula consisted of ten-odd kingdoms, grand duchies, and duchies. The Grand Duchy of Finland existed within tsarist Empire until 1918;Footnote ²¹ the Danish king ruled Schleswig-Holstein until 1864 as the Duke of Holstein; and the Ottoman Empire consisted of several autonomous entities under the suzerainty of the Porte until 1913. Non-sovereign forms created conditions that cannot be overlooked if we want to understand European politics before 1914 and modernity's mixed relation to principles of political organisation.

On a systems-level, many dimensions of differentiation, material and ideational, existed in Europe and created several overlapping international orders. I will focus on three dimensions used by actors of the time to distinguish between and construct groups of polities with distinct relations and possibilities: (1) An egalitarian/segmentary dimension that, from a formal-legal perspective, characterised relations between sovereigns. Previous research has focused on this dimension of modern international politics and reduced a multidimensional ‘system’ to a singular system of sovereign states. However, two other dimensions complemented and complicated it. (2) An unequal/stratificatory dimension that formally and legally distinguished between sovereign actors and non-sovereign ones. (3) The third dimension was informal stratified/unequal differentiation between the ‘Great Powers’ group and other entities, sovereign as well as non-sovereign. This dimension rested on military and economic preponderance as well as political rules and conventions such as status and established practice. Because of their economic and military preponderance, Britain and Russia were the most important within this group. The order established at the Congress of Vienna rested on all three dimensions but the tensions and contradictions between them also made it unstable and changeable.

The systemic consequences of the second dimension of differentiation, the distinction between sovereign and non-sovereign actors have not been sufficiently recognised. Mayall has observed that while the legal structure of our current society of states is ‘radically egalitarian’ its political structure ‘remains stubbornly hierarchical’.Footnote ²² However the difference between formal-legal stratified differentiation and the ‘political’-informal one in the nineteenth century produced different effects. A sovereign actor was free to pursue a wide range of foreign policies, including being part of international alliances. In practice, the ‘Great Powers’ often restrained this freedom by arguing that a certain course of action threatened the stability of the existing European order. In contrast, an area lacking sovereign status meant being outside the group of countries that could have free relations with one another. Non-sovereign areas served as ‘buffers’ and ‘insulators’ because of their particular international legal status and constitutional traits not because of their geographical location or military capacities.Footnote ²³ The belief that non-sovereign units stabilised relations between sovereign countries can be traced to the seventeenth century. It continued to influence arguments about European security and concrete policies until late in the nineteenth century.Footnote ²⁴

This section began by describing the idea that politics can and should be intentionally organised in order to break with the past as a strong theme of modernity. A concomitant idea is that of actors as rational, autonomous, and free in their choices. Meyer calls this ‘the myth of modern actorhood’. World Polity theorists argue that this is a self-description of actors in modern politics rather than an analytically valid description. Instead, the state is a ‘fragmented reactive … [entity] taking on externally mandated practices’.Footnote ²⁵ The ideal of the rational actor permeated the self-description and constructions of the ‘Great Powers’ and their organising roles. Hence the idea of designing international order was an ambition rather than an objective description of the actions of the ‘Great Powers’. To understand the effects of this ambition we need to embed contingent factors in the analysis of these attempts.

The contingent context of acting and organising

Several contingent factors influenced the attempts of the Great Powers to design political order: (1) The scripts for political order, forms of rule, and dimensions of differentiation were associated with rules and practices that restrained the would-be architects of order; (2) transnational ideas and groups beyond the control of courts and cabinets; and (3) whether the relations of the countries of the ‘Great Powers group’ were characterised by trust or by rivalry. I will argue that the third factor played a stronger role than what has been recognised hitherto. Consequently, it requires some elaboration.

Both Luhmann and Giddens distinguish confidence from trust.Footnote ²⁶ Confidence is reliance upon a system, often technical or expertise-based, whereas trust is an interpersonal or intergroup relation. In this article I use confidence in the specific sense of confidence in the international system and trust in the sense of a deeper relation between two or more parties. Trust is a quality of relations between actors and a quality that exists in various degrees in different social systems.Footnote ²⁷

In 1815, European statesmen regarded revolution and resumed wars due to unilateral expansion as the main threats to Europe. Consultation in concert and collective action were seen as the solutions. In this perspective unilateral action was the major risk. The importance of risk to the Concert of Europe means that we have to consider levels of trust as a contingent factor upon strategies of designing order.Footnote ²⁸ The two central issues of trust in European politics in the first half of the nineteenth century were whether a specific country could be trusted to solve international politics collectively rather than unilaterally and whether an actor could be trusted not to abuse a situation where other actor had renounced individual interests.Footnote ²⁹ Trust always relates to a situation in the present but it is also a calculation on future actions.Footnote ³⁰ Based on an actor's past actions others calculate his future actions.Footnote ³¹ The future-oriented character of trust became particularly relevant, even acute, when decisions had to be taken about the future form and character of the European system. Luhmann argues that trust entails more possibilities of action of rational action. In systemic terms this means that the more trusting relations there are the more alternatives are available in the system. In the case with which this article is concerned, a high degree of trust in the system (for example, a greater number of trust-relations) entailed that more kinds of relations were possible between the political units of Europe. Trust enabled investment in a cooperative, multilateral, and self-restraining system. In sum, in this article I do not view trust in a normative way or in a social constructivist manner. Instead, I see trust as a contingent social category that is an attribute of relations and of systems. As such, it exists in degrees and it can be indirectly ‘measured’. I have chosen to do so by looking at the degree to which actors think that they have many options of collaboration or few options. The former indicates a high degree of trust and the latter indicates a low degree trust between the actors in a certain social system or relation.

The judgment and choices of the actors calling themselves the ‘Great Powers’ were constituted by contingent factors. This does not mean that their attempts to design and order what they perceived as the European system, or systems, were unimportant. Their attempts at controlling, ordering, and designing generated substantial effects but rarely the intended ones. What follows is a story of certain actors' attempts to control international politics by creating structures, how they repeatedly lost control and repeatedly tried to regain it.

From suzerainty to sovereignty: Greece 1820–30

When the Greek Revolt broke out in 1820, European statesmen initially condemned the revolt but decided to respond when the fighting disrupted shipping in the Black Sea and the Eastern Mediterranean.Footnote ³⁵ Ottoman atrocities against Greek civilians and clergy also evoked European sympathies. The Powers feared that the conflict would spread to other parts of the Ottoman Empire. A collapse of the Empire might drag the European powers into a war over the spoils. To prevent such a scenario, the powers began to mediate and declared that they were ready to use force if any of the parties proved reluctant.Footnote ³⁶ Their response was to reorganise the areas touched by the revolt into a new, non-sovereign entity. Proposals for the reorganisation followed the models of legitimate political order existing in world politics at the time. At the time Britain, France, and Russia thought that some form of limited autonomy under the suzerainty of the Sultan and under international guarantee rather than sovereign statehood would be suitable for Greece.

Between 1823 and 1827, Austria, Britain, France, and Russia saw the non-sovereign form of Greece and the dimension of formal stratificatory differentiation as a way to preserve stability in the region and in the European states-system. From 1823 onwards, Britain pressed for a non-sovereign Greece.Footnote ³⁷ Russia's interest was preserving the Ottoman Empire, but keeping it weak and retaining a decisive influence over its affairs.Footnote ³⁸ In 1824, Alexander I proposed the establishment of three semi-autonomous principalities under the suzerainty of the Sultan.Footnote ³⁹ The St Petersburg Protocol, signed by Britain and Russia in 1826, stated that Greece should be created as a non-sovereign vassal ruled by its own leaders but paying tribute to the Ottoman Empire.Footnote ⁴⁰ Throughout most of 1827 a non-sovereign vassal ‘… under the Sultan as under a Lord paramount’ remained the plan for Greece.Footnote ⁴¹ Vassal status would create a polity formally inside the Ottoman Empire but with substantial autonomy. This autonomy would not allow Greece to conduct international relations. Its position in world politics was to be determined by the following dimensions: It was subjected to a formal-legal hierarchy under the Porte and to a de facto informal hierarchy of the ‘Great Powers group’. The historical question we need to ask is what made the leaders of Britain, France, and Russia change their minds and three years later create Greece as a sovereign state?

Several contingent factors account for this outcome that would set precedence for later cases. The Greek cause stirred sympathies. Classical romanticism fuelled British supporters of Greek statehood while the nationalist idea of championing the orthodox peoples fuelled their Russian counterparts.Footnote ⁴² Both are well-known in the historical literature. A less familiar story concerns the role played by the worsening relations between Britain and Russia, itself a contingent factor, and the way it was influenced by military events, always subject to contingency and chance, in the change in strategies that meant the creation of a sovereign Greece and the extension of the states-system based on sovereignty and formal-legal equality.

Until the early 1820s, the British-Russian relationship had been a cooperative one characterised by trust. However, during the first years of the 1820s British and Russian trust in each other as well as confidence in international cooperation within the Concert of Europe waned.Footnote ⁴³ Part of this was self-inflicted as Canning, Britain's foreign secretary, sought to break up the Concert. Russia even broke off relations with Britain in 1825 because of differences over the Eastern Question.Footnote ⁴⁴ Although cooperation resumed in late 1825 the earlier high degree of mutual trust had been damaged. Furthermore, Russian politics changed dramatically in 1825. Under Tsar Alexander I who ruled Russia during the Napoleonic Wars and the Congress of Vienna, Russian foreign policy had been one of self-restraint. With his death in 1825 and the ascension of Tsar Nicholas I, Russia began to advance its national interests with less regard to a systemic balance and to the interest of other states.Footnote ⁴⁵ Another contingent event, the failed Decembrist coup, also contributed to cementing Nicholas I's autocracy.

Still, Britain, France, and Russia had committed themselves to enforcing an armistice and to prevent Ottoman reinforcements from landing in the Peloponnese. In 1827 the powers dispatched naval forces that encountered the Ottoman-Egyptian fleet in Navarino. An unplanned naval battle began under uncertain circumstances, obliterated the Ottoman fleet and shifted the tides of war.Footnote ⁴⁶ In 1828, Russia declared war and within a year forced the Ottomans to sign the peace of Adrianople. The Porte accepted the establishment of a Greek vassal state.Footnote ⁴⁷ The peace shocked Austria and Britain who believed that it established a Russian protectorate over the Ottoman Empire.

It is difficult to say a priori what destroys trust between two parties.Footnote ⁴⁸ The destruction of trust between Britain and Russia in the 1820s was a two-step process: first Russia broke off relations with Britain in 1825 but resumed them later, second, Russia declared war – and fought it to a victor's peace in 1828 – the last event demonstrated that Russia was not to be trusted to pursue collective diplomacy (which was the main item of trust, as we saw above) or to desire a collective system in the future. Consequently, advocating a form of rule for Greece that would require collective management was not a feasible option for Austria and Britain. Time was also important; the military victories had created an urgent situation that demanded an immediate solution.

The contingencies of war led Britain to switch from trying to create a principality based on formal-legal inequality to a sovereign state based on formal-legal equality. The latter option brought a sovereign Greece into the states-system. After the Russian victories Britain and Austria now saw the establishment of non-sovereign principalities in the Balkans as a way for Russia to safeguard her own influence and to weaken the Ottomans.Footnote ⁴⁹ The British suddenly shifted their preferences to forestall Russia from unilaterally creating a large sovereign Greek state that would be de facto dependent on her. Instead, a sovereign Greece with limited territorial extent created by the Concert of Europe was a better alternative. Hence, Wellington called for the establishment of a sovereign Greek state, instead of mere vassal status.Footnote ⁵⁰ Although the Sultan now agreed to the establishment of a non-sovereign Greece under the suzerainty of the Porte, Britain, France and Russia would settle for nothing less than a sovereign Greece.Footnote ⁵¹ In 1830, the three powers signed the Treaty of London which created a new sovereign state under their guarantee.Footnote ⁵² This outcome was not the result of a coinciding of the Great Powers' interests in promoting the sovereign state but in maintaining a balance between them in a strategic region. Throughout the 1830s, Britain, France and Russia were busy competing for influence by supporting rival Greek factions.Footnote ⁵³

Contingent circumstances brought on the decision to shift to a sovereign state and the extension of the segmentary principle of differentiation. Nevertheless, it had structural consequences. A British aim was to stabilise the Levant and prevent future conflicts, in particular ones that would endanger the Ottoman Empire.Footnote ⁵⁴ If Greece had been created as a non-sovereign principality this status and an international legal guarantee of its inviolability by all European powers would have been the factors providing stability. However, because the distrustful relations between the Great Powers had caused them to settle on sovereign statehood, Greece could only deter aggressors with its own defensive capabilities and thereby stabilise the region.Footnote ⁵⁵ Palmerston argued that if it was not to lead to new conflicts between foreign parties Greece had to be capable of self-defence.Footnote ⁵⁶ Hence it had to be provided with defendable borders.Footnote ⁵⁷

The change in the buffer function of Greece demonstrates the difference between the range of options that exist within a system that is only differentiated along a formally equal/segmented dimension and the range existing in a situation characterised by several dimensions of differentiation, one of which is formally unequal. A vassal entity does not have full international legal personality and it is restricted in its range of international actions whereas a sovereign state has the full range of international instruments of diplomacy, war, and peace at its disposal. Consequently, a wider range of scenarios become possible in a system with sovereign units. In a system characterised by formal legal equality a country can only act as a buffer or insulator because it is located between rivals and because of its military capacities. Hence the buffer makes aggressive policy options of said rivals difficult or militarily costly. In a formally unequal system the buffer function consists of limits that rule out certain actions for the country in question as well as for neighbouring countries. Because of the difficulties of distinguishing between military capabilities that can be used for defensive and offensive purposes, relying on military capabilities to support systemic security is a double-edged sword: It can lead to stability but also to spiralling arms races and to escalating tensions. Hence there may be tradeoffs between sovereignty and security in the wider system. During the rest of the century there would be recurring debates whether non-sovereign or sovereign Balkan polities would lead to stability in the European states-system. In other words, whether a formal-legal stratified dimension of differentiation between sovereign countries that were able to join alliances and the non-sovereign countries that could not would benefit or threaten European stability.

A system of non-sovereign units: the Peace of Paris 1856

One of the most elaborate cases of designing political organisation according to models of legitimate order that was not based on sovereignty appeared after the Crimean war (1853–6). The Principalities Moldavia and Wallachia (present-day Rumania) had been centres of geopolitical turmoil for decades. After the peace of Adrianople in 1828 Russia had occupied the Principalities. In 1848, Russian troops invaded the Principalities to quell the Wallachian revolt and remained until 1851. In 1853, Russia re-entered the Principalities, sparking off the Crimean War in which Britain, France, and the Ottoman Empire fought Russia.Footnote ⁵⁸ One of the British and French war aims was to place the Principalities under a European guarantee rather than under Russian occupation.Footnote ⁵⁹ In 1856, Britain, France and the Ottoman Empire defeated Russia with Austrian diplomatic support.Footnote ⁶⁰ Once again a political reorganisation of the Balkans was deemed necessary to create regional and European stability. The Peace of Paris in 1856 attempted to create a permanent regional sphere in the Balkans consisting of a number of vassal principalities. Its two main characteristics were formal-legal stratification and a legally regulated separation from the European states-system. The victors, in particular Britain, regarded the two elements as beneficial to stability in the region and to the balance in the European system of states.

Familiar IR categories do not fit this sphere. It was not a system of formal equal/segmentary differentiation since it contradicted principles of the sovereign states-system such as the idea that entities are either sovereign or part of another sovereign entity.Footnote ⁶¹ The inconclusiveness of debates whether vassals have international personality demonstrate the difficulties of fitting suzerain-vassal relations into a framework based on sovereignty and a single locus of final authority.Footnote ⁶² Vassal status did not mean full statehood with access to international relations. Consequently Montenegrins, Rumanians and Serbs were not admitted to the Congress of Berlin in 1878.Footnote ⁶³

The Balkan sphere was not just an expression of hegemony or great power control, the categories of informal stratification familiar to IR. Although empire is a category of formal stratification it does quite not fit this system since most definitions centre on one society's control over the sovereignty of another.Footnote ⁶⁴ The system was not a restoration of old arrangements in the Ottoman Empire, but a new system based on older forms of order because of the elaborate and innovative ways of sealing off and connecting this sphere to the European power contained in the Treaty of Paris. Lord Palmerston, the British prime minister and chief architect of the Treaty of Paris, intended it to bring stability to the Balkans, to preserve and strengthen the Ottoman Empire and to produce stability in the European system.Footnote ⁶⁵ He even planned to unite Europe in an anti-Russian league. However, the Treaty did not strengthen the Ottoman Empire by increasing the Porte's control of the area. In fact, the contrary was done.

The Balkan vassal sphere was constructed as two sets of nested systems.Footnote ⁶⁶ The vassals were nested in the Ottoman Empire, which in turn was nested in the European system. Although the Ottoman Empire was accepted into the states-system, the vassals were isolated from it as well as from the reach of the Porte. All signatories pledged to respect ‘the independence and territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire’ and guaranteed the settlement and the status of the Balkan principalities.Footnote ⁶⁷ The Danubian Principalities (Moldavia and Wallachia), Montenegro, and Serbia were reaffirmed as part of the Ottoman Empire, restored to vassal status under the suzerainty of the Porte and were to enjoy their privileges and immunities.Footnote ⁶⁸ The Ottoman Empire was supported against encroachments from Russia and other European powers in a way that sought to immobilise, restrain, and slow down the use of power.

Formal unequal/stratificatory differentiation and systemic distinctness were the two pillars of the Balkan sphere that were supposed to produce security effects on the European states-system. The actors inside the Balkan vassal sphere could only perform a limited range of actions. Conversely, the sovereign states could only interact with the vassals in limited and formally prescribed ways. The legal boundary between the formally segmented states-system and the formally stratified vassal sphere was to fulfil the buffer function between the states in the formally segmented/equal system; and primarily between Austria, Britain, and Russia.

Because of the strategic importance of the region there was concern that unregulated relations with the Balkan principalities, that is, European powers, trying to gain influence over the Balkan polities like Russia had done in the 1830s might lead to tensions and conflicts. Hence the solution was to draw a legal boundary around the Balkan principalities and regulate all external relations with them.Footnote ⁶⁹ Sovereign states could only interact with the Balkan principalities as a collective. The Treaty of Paris stated that ‘[n]o exclusive protection shall be exercised over them by any of the Contracting Powers. There shall be no separate right of interference in their affairs.’ The contracting powers also pledged to protect the status of the principalities and Serbia. Consequently they had to refrain from any actions that might change the status quo.Footnote ⁷⁰

The Treaty limited the rights of the Porte towards its vassals since it had to consult with the other European Powers before taking any measures regarding internal order.Footnote ⁷¹ The Porte committed itself to preserve independent and national administrations in the Principalities and Serbia and their full liberties of worship, legislation, commerce, and navigation.Footnote ⁷² The Principalities would have a national armed force to uphold internal security and guard the frontiers. In agreement with the Porte these forces could be called upon to repel external aggression, and the Porte could not hinder them.Footnote ⁷³

Several powers saw a formal stratificatory dimension of differentiation as beneficial to European stability. The reorganising of the Balkans was intended to stabilise the European system as a whole and the constitutions of the vassal principalities were considered as central in producing the intended outcomes. The Earl of Derby emphasised that the ‘neutrality and their [Moldavia and Wallachia] virtual independence under the suzerainty of the Porte are of primary importance’. Reestablishing the vassal status of the Principalities was essential to the British objects of war and ‘to the maintenance of the integrity and independence of Turkey’.Footnote ⁷⁴ For his part, the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph put the return of the Balkan entities under Ottoman suzerainty as a condition for his signature of the peace.Footnote ⁷⁵ In the 1820s, Austria had pressed for a sovereign Greece but now it was adamant about constructing the Principalities as non-sovereign entities. Hence, anti-Russian policies more than anything else determined its position on matters of political organisation in the Balkans.

The vassal sphere was placed under formalised hierarchical control of the ‘Great Powers’. It was a more structured attempt to decrease uncertainty in a system in Europe's environment than the creation of sovereign Greece. The agenda of control, an intimate part of modernity, is reflected in the clauses aiming at retaining joint control over future developments and regulating their course.Footnote ⁷⁶ Future changes in the status of the Principalities had to be regulated collectively by the European Powers on the basis of the wishes of the populations. A special commission of representatives of the Powers and the Porte was to investigate the state of the Principalities and propose bases for their future organisation.Footnote ⁷⁷ The Sultan promised to convoke an assembly (Divan) to express the wishes of the people regarding the final shape of the Principalities. The Congress was to regulate the relations between the Commission and the Divans.Footnote ⁷⁸ The Commissions should transmit the opinions expressed by the Divans to the powers. The final organisation of the principalities was to be settled by the parties to the Treaty of Paris based in the agreement between the Divan and the Porte. Whatever the outcome, the signatory powers would guarantee the Principalities.Footnote ⁷⁹

Building a vassal sphere based on formal stratificatory differentiation that limited the rights of the component entities caused controversy in Britain, the chief architect of the Peace of Paris. The subject of debate was whether the formally unequal/stratificatory or the formally equal/segmentary dimension of differentiation was most efficient in preserving stability in Europe. In 1858, the Powers finalised the arrangements of the Principalities.Footnote ⁸⁰ Parliamentary debates juxtaposed Palmerston's strategy of differentiation between sovereign and non-sovereign entities and Gladstone's vision of a single system only characterised by a formally segmentary/equal dimension of differentiation.

Palmerston claimed that a distinct sphere of non-sovereign units in the Balkans organised according to a dimension of formal stratification would stabilise the region and the formally equal but informally stratified European states-system. A union of the Principalities should be avoided since it would be the first step towards real independence that would weaken the Ottoman Empire and European stability.Footnote ⁸¹ An independent Balkan state might fall under the suzerainty of another power or even be annexed. Given recent events, it was likely that Palmerson feared that the potential new suzerain or annexing power would be Russia. The security, prosperity, and liberties of the Principalities were better served by being embedded in the Ottoman Empire because the Empire in turn was embedded in a European guarantee.Footnote ⁸² In Palmerston's strategy, the stabilising factors were the international guarantee and the particular legal status of the Balkan polities as autonomous but not sovereign rather than their capabilities as military and geographical buffers and deterrents. For Palmerston the combination of a formally stratified dimension of differentiation (the constitutional nature of vassal status, suzerainty), and an informal stratified dimension of differentiation (European guarantees) had intrinsic value for European security.

In contrast, Gladstone argued that extending the formally equal dimension of differentiation, dissolving the separate sphere, as well as the formally unequal/stratified dimension of differentiation would be beneficial to systemic security. He sought a union of the Principalities as a first step to independence because it would reflect the will of the inhabitants and their right to self-determination. However, Gladstone also argued that there was a connection between the formal and full independence of Wallachia and Moldavia and European security. He claimed that the disunion of the Principalities would be ‘a constant source of danger and uneasiness to European policy’.Footnote ⁸³ Instead, good relations with the Principalities best served Ottoman security. Contrary to what Palmerston argued, British failure to support the unification might result in increased Russian influence. In contrast, Gladstone argued that ‘freedom’ would make the Principalities vigorous, prosperous, and give them the strength to act as a buffer against Russia. Gladstone's general ideas and ideals were liberal and idealistic, nevertheless in his recipe for political reorganisation the buffer function of the Principalities consisted of their geographic location and their military capabilities.

Was the outcome of the Peace of Paris a sign that the victors trusted each other? High levels of trust did not characterise the relation between the victors. But the allies chiefly distrusted France's reliability not to conclude a separate peace with Russia.Footnote ⁸⁴ The situation was not one where a number of actors distrusted each other with regard to security and fundamental regional interests. Hence there was no urgent need to balance against each other and many leading statesmen, like Austria's Foreign Minister von Buol, desired a system where the Great Powers operated on the basis of trust and legality.Footnote ⁸⁵ Palmerston's attempt to build a lasting European system through the separate and constitutionally regulated Balkan sphere and a permanent anti-Russian league can be taken as indications of a willingness to trust Britain's partners Austria, France, and the Ottoman Empire to invest and stand by a common future of jointly regulated politics.

Eventually, the inter-alliance trust was wracked by subsequent policies. In the 1860s, British opinion began to reject the peace and the former Ottoman allies.Footnote ⁸⁶ Under Napoleon III, France pursued aggrandising foreign policies: intervening in Italy, going to war with Austria in 1859, renewing the French colonial Empire, and intervening in Mexico in 1867.Footnote ⁸⁷ The shift towards expansion helped create a system in which cooperative management became increasingly difficult and risky. The dissipating trust among the victors meant that the Peace of Paris had a limited due date and so had the formal alternatives to the sovereign state in Europe. None of the Powers were willing to intervene when local actors united Moldavia and Wallachia and created Rumania in 1866,Footnote ⁸⁸ when Russia unilaterally rejected the Black Sea clause in 1870, or when Russia invaded the Ottoman Empire in 1877.Footnote ⁸⁹ The main flaw of the peace was that Russia, one of the major members of the European system, was left outside the planning of the reorganisation of the Balkans. Instead it had to suffer a harshly dictated peace. Over the next decades a revision of the Peace of Paris would be a major Russian aim. In retrospect, Palmerston probably over-estimated his allies' interests in a system that required cooperation and trust.

The Congress of Berlin 1878: non-sovereign and sovereign forms of rule

The last attempt of the century to engineer political organisation in Europe was the Congress of Berlin in 1878. Its principal result was that the formally equal/segmented principle of differentiation and the sovereign state were established as the dominant forms of political organisation. The background of the Congress was a series of Balkan wars. Although formally part of the Ottoman Empire, Montenegro and Serbia had declared war on the Porte in 1875 and 1876. Their quick defeat and internal pressures from nationalist agitation led Russia to declare war.Footnote ⁹⁰ Soon Russia had defeated the Ottomans and dictated harsh terms, which created a large ‘Bulgaria’ and made Montenegro, Rumania, and Serbia sovereign states. The other ‘Great Powers’ were alarmed at the strengthening of Russian power through unilateral action and summoned a European conference in Berlin in 1878.Footnote ⁹¹

Full sovereignty was granted to the three former non-sovereign vassals Montenegro, Rumania, and Serbia on the condition that they guaranteed religious freedoms and political and civil rights of minorities.Footnote ⁹² Although severely limited, the formal-legal dimension of stratified differentiation was still a legitimate and stabilising model of political organisation that directed the actions of state leaders. The leaders of the ‘Great Powers group’ decided that a smaller Bulgaria and East Rumelia should be created as non-sovereign vassals to the Porte.Footnote ⁹³ Bulgaria was withdrawn from direct Ottoman rule as the Porte was forbidden to station troops in its territory and self-government and a national militia was allowed the principality. Bulgaria was to pay an annual tribute to the Porte and a part of its foreign debt. The amounts were to be decided by the signatory powers.Footnote ⁹⁴ Russian and Ottoman commissars and the consuls of the signatory powers were to oversee rule over the principality until a local assembly had drafted a constitutional document.Footnote ⁹⁵ The non-sovereign principality East Rumelia was more closely tied to the Porte that had the right to defend it against external attacks and to maintain troops in the province. However, a local gendarmerie and militia would uphold internal order.Footnote ⁹⁶ The non-sovereign status of Bulgaria proved to be temporary since the ‘Great Powers’ did not enforce it. The Bulgarian Prince Alexander's decision to unite Bulgaria with East Rumelia in 1885 caused a crisis since it violated the Treaty of Berlin. The Ottomans had the legal right intervene to prevent unification, but the ‘Great Powers’ group dissuaded them, arguing that intervention might lead to escalation.Footnote ⁹⁷ A conference of ambassadors was convened at Constantinople but it could not decide on any joint measure to prevent unification. The country declared itself independent in 1908. The lack of oversight of non-sovereign Bulgaria indicated that the lack of trust in the political relations of the ‘Great Powers’ had made interventions in support of alternatives to the sovereign state impossible.

In sum, the Congress of Berlin instituted three sovereign states and two non-sovereign principalities – which the ‘Great Powers’ proved unwilling to support. The combination of forms of rule and dimensions of differentiation shows that non-sovereign forms of rule were still considered legitimate in 1878. However, the establishment of three sovereign states and the unwillingness to support the non-sovereign ones must be explained. This outcome is explained partly by changes in the relations between the Great Powers, partly by the circumstances of the situation, and partly through changes in the conceptions of legitimate order.

The Balkan peoples were not represented at the Congress and the ‘Great Powers’ did not consult them. The main interest of the latter was European stability and their mutual relations, not principled arguments of self-determination. The relations between the powers that convened to organise the Balkans were more antagonistic and less trusting than they had been in 1856. Russia demonstrated with its unilateral response to the defeat of Serbia and Montenegro that it was oriented towards the pursuit of self-interest and potential rivalry, not restraint and multilateralism.Footnote ⁹⁸ The dictated peace after the Crimean war initiated this development by ending the partnership between Britain and Russia and making them rivals, for instance in Central Asia. The war-ridden unifications of Italy and German in 1861 and 1871 exacerbated the trend. While Britain tried to pursue a policy of European stability, other powers, with Germany in the lead, pursued policies of national interest and bilateral alliances.Footnote ⁹⁹ Multilateral management of non-sovereign areas was made impossible by the permanent Franco-German enmity after 1871, which was largely due to the growth of nationalism in both countries. German unification created a new situation characteried by insecurity and an increased need for balancing measures.Footnote ¹⁰⁰

Balkan conflicts threatened Germany since they entailed the risk of war between Austria and Russia, which might enable France to form a coalition against Germany.Footnote ¹⁰¹ Bismarck was not interested in building a system of mutual and indivisible security, self-restraint, and international law but relied on a web of bilateral alliances.Footnote ¹⁰² Germany's interest was not in ‘this or that form of the Turkish realm … but in the position in which the powers friendly to us will be brought to us and to each other’.Footnote ¹⁰³ Bismarck was not a trusting actor nor did he seek to create a system of mutual trust. Instead his system of alliances and his philosophy of Realpolitik were based on an attitude of mistrust, which France, Italy and Russia gladly reciprocated.

The development towards a system of zero-sum rivalry doomed the non-sovereign areas and renewed the eighteenth-century convention in case one power gained territory all other powers must be compensated in order to balance the system.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ Bismarck suggested a wholesale partition of the Ottoman Empire to solve the situation and to appease Germany's ally Russia. Disraeli opposed the partition plans and tried to support the Ottomans by emphasising their status as legitimate rulers. However, in line with the return of compensations as a regulatory mechanism, Austria-Hungary occupied Bosnia, in exchange for protection of the Ottoman Empire, Great Britain secured Cyprus and Russia received parts of Southern Bessarabia from Rumania.Footnote ¹⁰⁵

The changed relations between the ‘Great Powers’ made multilateral management of non-sovereign areas impossible. Under conditions of rivalry non-sovereign areas were no longer seen as assets to the European system. New states could serve as alliance partners but non-sovereign countries with limited freedom of action and whose systemic purpose was to restrain balance of power dynamics had no purpose. British parliamentary debates reflected a changed calculus of the lack of sovereignty and systemic security. Liberals argued that a belt of ‘free and independent States’ between Russia and the Ottomans in fact could serve as a buffer for Ottomans and impede Russian expansion.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ It was crucial that the new countries would be strong and prosperous by free institutions. Independent Slav states would stabilise the Balkans and act as buffers and Russia would have no reason to intervene.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ Bad governance in the non-sovereign Ottoman territories was beginning to be seen as a risk to European security as it could create revolts that in turn could draw in foreign powers.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ Non-sovereign countries were liabilities since they could cause competition among the powers for influence in return for independence.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Hence, contrary to what sometimes appears as a self-evident truth, non-sovereign alternatives did not disappear from Europe only because they could not defend themselves from external and internal challengers.Footnote ¹¹⁰ This description might be valid for the disappearance of some, but not all, non-sovereign entities in European history.Footnote ¹¹¹

However, the ‘Great Powers’ were not supreme designers but their actions were constrained by time pressures, the need for quick decisions, and short-term perspectives on the part of their leaders. Just like in 1828, when the leaders of Britain shifted from advocating a non-sovereign vassal form for Greece to advocating a sovereign state, military contingencies had created an acute situation in which Russia threatened to achieve disproportionate influence that urgently had to be prevented. In 1878, Austria and Britain sought to avoid immediate negative consequences. In addition, the short-term task of positioning within the ‘Great Powers group’ dominated the agendas of several members. Hence, short-term decisions relating to contingent circumstances influenced the political organisation of Europe in the long-run. Furthermore, long-term societal factors beyond the control of the governments of the powers that tried to ‘engineer’ territorial change weighted in on their decisions. The dominant views of legitimacy were changing. In the 1870s, there was a greater acceptance of the legitimacy of nationalism. Public opinion in Britain had shifted against the Ottomans after Gladstone's agitation about Ottoman atrocities. Since the Italian and German unifications had been granted at least retroactive legitimacy, it would have been difficult to deny the same rights to the Balkan peoples.

Confrontation or trust?

Since all cases in this article contain an element of military confrontation it is relevant to ask if confrontation, and not trust, was the main cause. This objection is important because it highlights the benefits of using trust as an analytical lens. First, an element of confrontation was present but not immediately between the ordering powers. Although the Russian acts of war in 1828 and 1877–8 did not entail direct confrontation with Austria, Britain, or France they signaled an increased risk of future confrontation. The 1856 case may seem like an exception but confrontation had already taken place when the project of ordering was launched. In all three cases, the Russian actions created a crisis by destroying trust that their future actions would be multilateral and not unilateral. The alternatives of political order in the Balkans demanded different degrees of future collaboration and trust. When one actor demonstrated that he could not be trusted to participate in an order demanding multilateral cooperation, the others decided that an order that would demand less of future cooperation and trust entailed fewer risks and chose it. Second, trust captures how the relevant actors viewed each other in a more precise way than confrontation does because trust is intimately linked to cooperation and to expectations about the future. The idea of engineering political organisation was and still is strongly linked to the attempt to control the future by creating preconditions for certain types of action and blocking others. Furthermore, the ambition to avoid certain risks was central to the strivings to engineer international order during the nineteenth century. These risks brought cooperation and trust to the forefront.

Degrees of trust explain why the ordering powers did not follow a consistent line or fixed preferences concerning appropriate and legitimate order. Rather than confronting each other directly, the powers cooperated but with different goals each time and with different calculations regarding the future. People who do not trust each other can cooperate but only for a result that does not demand a high degree of future trust.Footnote ¹¹² However, actors that do trust each other can cooperate around more complex common projects that demand more future cooperation and mutual trust. In sum, we can infer that trust was central to the decisions of political order on each occasion because the actions of the organising powers were consistent with different theories of trust, expectations about the future, risk, and how degrees of trust related to the number of options in the system.

The nineteenth-century system in world history

The development of political order in south-east Europe is often seen as a game of whether to support or undermine, even dismantle the domains of the Ottomans but the narrative of a positional struggle is not the whole story. Differentiation as a descriptive tool demonstrates that a greater drama was being played out than the survival of a specific member of the European system. In retrospect we can see that the theme of this drama was whether modernity's configuration of political forms would harbour several different scripts of legitimate order or just a single one. The outcome was that sovereignty was incorporated in modernity as the only form of legitimate political order. The struggle was whether Europe would have one or two principles of differentiation and whether formally non-sovereign units could be considered assets to international security. It was about the shape of world politics.

The ebbs and flows of trust offer an interpretation of these events as well as of the broader development of international politics in the nineteenth century. Decreasing trust reduced the range of possible actions because the possibilities of collective action shrank. Consequently, the range of forms of rule available in the system was also reduced, ultimately to a single one. Luhmann asserts that one may have confidence in a system without necessarily having trusting relations to the other members of the system. This distinction helps us to understand why the international system functioned in the latter part of the century, even though its actors did not have trusting relations. However, the lack of trust-relations entails that confidence in the system will decline. A solution that may seem simpler because it does not require trust also decreases the need for trust. The disaster of World War I can be interpreted as a complete breakdown of the major actors' confidence in the international system.