Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T19:17:11.243Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

7 - Where Would We Be without the Fog Lifting in Austerlitz?

Ruminations on the Uses of History and Sociology in IR

from Part I - The Imperial Past and Present in International Politics and IR

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 June 2023

By
Mathias Albert
Edited by
Klaus Schlichte  and
Stephan Stetter
Klaus Schlichte
Affiliation:
Universität Bremen
Stephan Stetter
Affiliation:
Universität der Bundeswehr München
Get access

Summary

The chapter looks at the long-term structural importance associated with Napoleon’s win in Austerlitz and the ensuing formal end of the Holy Roman Empire. It defines modes of transformation but rather as evolutionary dynamics that pave the way for historical trajectories in which new social forms – such as European global empires or even the notion of global empire – borrow from previous forms, such as the way of organizing political authority in the Holy Roman Empire. In doing so, it identifies two pertinent modes of historicity, namely the presence of several temporal layers in social and political phenomena (‘complex temporalities’), as well as an evolutionary account of non-linear change. In this sense, the chapter is not only about the presence of a specific past in the contemporary structures of the system of world politics, but also to provide a methodological input into contemporary debates about global historical sociology.

Keywords

Holy Roman EmpireNapoleonglobal expansionempiressystem of world politics
Type
Chapter
Information
The Historicity of International Politics
Imperialism and the Presence of the Past
 , pp. 138 - 156
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Albert, M. (2016). A Theory of World Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Albert, M. & Stichweh, R. (2007). Weltstaat und Weltstaatlichkeit: Beobachtungen globaler politischer Strukturbildung, Wiesbaden: VS Verlag.Google Scholar
Albert, M., Brunkhorst, H., Neumann, I.B. & Stetter, S. (2023). The Social Evolution of World Politics, Bielefeld: transcript.Google Scholar
Aydin, C. (2016). Regionen und Reiche in der politischen Geschichte des langen 19. Jahrhunderts (1750–1924), in Conrad, S. & Osterhammel, J. (eds.). Geschichte der Welt: Wege zur modernen Welt 1750–1870, 35–253, Munich: C.H. Beck.Google Scholar
Berger, S. & Miller, A. (2015). Building Nations in and with Empires: A Reassessment, in Berger, S. & Miller, A. (eds.). Nationalizing Empires, Budapest: CEU Press.Google Scholar
Brunkhorst, H. (2014). Critical Theory of Legal Revolutions: Evolutionary Perspectives, New York: Bloomsbury Academic.Google Scholar
Bull, H. & Watson, A. (eds.) (1984). The Expansion of International Society, Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Dunne, T. & Reus-Smit, C. (eds.) (2017). The Globalization of International Society, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hardt, M. & Negri, A. (2000). Empire, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Krajewski, M. (2006). Restlosigkeit: Weltprojekte um 1900, Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag.Google Scholar
Meyer, J. W., Boli, J., Thomas, G. M. & Ramirez, F. O. (1997). World Society and the Nation-State, American Journal of Sociology, 103(1), 144–81.Google Scholar
Münkler, H. (2007). Empires: The Logic of World Domination from Ancient Rome to the United States, Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Münkler, H. (2019). Imperiale Ordnung. Die Governance-Leistung von Imperien, in Hausteiner, E. M. & Huhnholz, S. (eds.). Imperien verstehen. Theorien, Typen, Transformationen, 71–99, Baden-Baden: Nomos.Google Scholar
Neumann, I. B. & Nexon, D. H. (2018). Hegemonic-Order Theory: A Field-Theoretic Account, European Journal of International Relations, 24(3), 662–86.Google Scholar
Nipperdey, T. (1983). Deutsche Geschichte 1800–1866: Bürgerwelt und starker Staat, Munich: C.H. Beck.Google Scholar
Osiander, A. (2001). Sovereignty, International Relations, and the Westphalian Myth, International Organization, 55(2), 251–87.Google Scholar
Reinhart, W. (2015). Introduction, in Reinhart, W. (ed.). Empires and Encounters: 1350–1750, 30–52, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Schlichte, K. (1998). La Françafrique: Postkolonialer Habitus und Klientelismus in der französischen Afrikapolitik, Zeitschrift für Internationale Beziehungen, 5(2), 309–43.Google Scholar
Sewell, W. H. Jr. (2005). Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shaw, M. (2000). Theory of the Global State: Globality as Unfinished Revolution, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Singer, J. D. (1961). The Level-of-Analysis Problem in International Relations, World Politics, 14(1), 77–92.Google Scholar
Stetter, S. (2019). Das Imperium schlägt (immer wieder) zurück: Imperien, Kolonialismus und Postkolonialismus im politischen System der Weltgesellschaft, in Hausteiner, E. M. & Huhnholz, S. (eds.). Imperien verstehen. Theorien, Typen, Transformationen, 255–77, Baden-Baden: Nomos.Google Scholar
Werner, M. & Zimmermann, B. (2002). Vergleich, Transfer, Verflechtung. Der Ansatz der Histoire croisée und die Herausforderung des Transnationalen, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 28(4), 607–36.Google Scholar
Wilson, P. H. (2016). The Holy Roman Empire: A Thousand Years of Europe’s History, London: Allen Lane.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×