Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T05:36:57.190Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

EDMUND BURKE, POLAND, AND THE COMMONWEALTH OF EUROPE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 May 2020

ANNA PLASSART Open the ORCID record for ANNA PLASSART [Opens in a new window]
ANNA PLASSART*
Affiliation:
The Open University
*
History Department, The Open University, Milton Keynesmk7 6aa[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article re-examines Burke's doctrine of intervention by analysing his decades-long interest in the ‘Polish question’. Contrary to the main thrust of existing scholarship, it argues that the French Revolution did not fundamentally transform Burke's assessment of the European state system. Rather, Burke's most famous and controversial 1790s positions on the topic were rehearsed in the previous decades through his practical engagement in long-running eighteenth-century discussions about the Polish state, which acted as a lightning rod for disagreements surrounding the nature and future of European politics. Burke was interested in the Polish state because it raised fundamental questions about the nature of European civilization, the rules of progress, and the conditions for long-lasting peace. The Polish crisis of 1772 led him to reflect on the relationship between internal and external politics, and crystallized his analysis of the Balance of Power as not only the guarantor of continental peace, but also as the very source of the unique ‘spirit’ of European civil society. It was this same framework of analysis that he applied to France in the 1790s, to argue that the expansionist ambitions inherent to democratic republicanism warranted intervention because they threatened the unique nature of European civilization.

Type
Article
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 63 , Issue 4 , September 2020 , pp. 885 - 910
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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.)

Footnotes

An early version of this article was delivered in February 2018 at the conference ‘Rousseau, Poland and Europe’ held at the College of Europe in Warsaw. My thanks to the organizers and participants, and especially to Graham Clure for prompting me to think about this topic. Thanks are also due to two anonymous reviewers for their useful comments.

References

1 Bourke, Richard, ‘Edmund Burke and international conflict’, in Hill, Lisa and Hall, Ian, eds., British international thinkers from Hobbes to Namier (Basingstoke, 2009), p. 91CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The debates surrounding Burke's views of the British empire do, however, span a broader period. For two competing assessments, see O'Neill, Daniel, Edmund Burke and the conservative logic of empire (Oakland, CA, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bromwich, David, The intellectual life of Edmund Burke: from the sublime and beautiful to American independence (Cambridge, MA, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 The pioneering work is Vincent, R. J., ‘Edmund Burke and the theory of international relations’, Review of International Studies, 10 (1984), pp. 205–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Welsh, Jennifer M., Edmund Burke and international relations (Basingstoke, 1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Welsh, Jennifer M., ‘Edmund Burke and the Commonwealth of Europe: the cultural bases of international order’, in Clark, Ian and Neumann, Iver B., eds., Classical theories of international relations (Basingstoke, 1996)Google Scholar; Boucher, David, ‘The character of the history of the philosophy of international relations and the case of Edmund Burke’, Review of International Studies, 17 (1991), pp. 127–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Armitage, David, ‘Edmund Burke and reason of state’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 61 (2000), pp. 617–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bourke, ‘Edmund Burke and international conflict’; Hampsher-Monk, Ian, ‘Edmund Burke's changing justification for intervention’, Historical Journal, 48 (2005), pp. 65–100CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an argument that Burke's interventionist doctrine reflected ‘traditional Whig thinking’, see Simms, Brendan, ‘“A false principle in the law of nations”: Burke, state sovereignty, [German] liberty, and intervention in the Age of Westphalia’, in Simms, Brendan and Trim, D. J. B., eds., Humanitarian intervention: a history (Cambridge, 2011), p. 109CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Gaetano L. Vincitorio has presented Burke's views on Poland in the context of diplomatic and parliamentary history. Vincitorio, Gaetano, ‘Edmund Burke and the First Partition of Poland: Britain and the crisis of 1772 in the “Great Republic”’, in Vincitorio, Gaetano, ed., Crisis in the ‘Great Republic’: essays presented to Ross J. Hoffman (New York, NY, 1969), pp. 14–46Google Scholar.

5 Pincus, Stephen, 1688: the first modern revolution (New Haven, CT, 2009)Google Scholar; O'Brien, Patrick, ‘Fiscal exceptionalism: Great Britain and its European rivals from Civil War to triumph at Trafalgar and Waterloo’, in Winch, Donald and O'Brien, Patrick, eds., The political economy of British historical experience, 1688–1914 (Oxford, 2002), pp. 245–67Google Scholar.

6 Spector, Céline, ‘Who is the author of the Abstract of Monsieur l'Abbé de Saint-Pierre's “Plan for perpetual peace”? From Saint-Pierre to Rousseau’, History of European Ideas, 39 (2013), pp. 371–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Kapossy, Bela, Nakhimovsky, Isaac, and Whatmore, Richard, eds., Commerce and peace in the Enlightenment (Cambridge, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hont, Istvan, Politics in commercial society: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith, ed. Kapossy, Bela and Sonenscher, Michael (Cambridge, MA, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Ghervas, Stella, ‘Balance of power vs. perpetual peace: paradigms of European order from Utrecht to Vienna, 1713–1815’, International History Review, 39 (2017), pp. 404–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 For Vattel's discussion of Europe as a ‘kind of republic’, see de Vattel, Emer, The law of nations, or, principles of the law of nature, applied to the conduct and affairs of nations and sovereigns (London, 1797), Book 3, para. 47Google Scholar.

9 Ibid., Book 2, para 3.

10 Welsh, ‘Edmund Burke and the commonwealth of Europe’.

11 Bourke, ‘Edmund Burke and international conflict’; Hampsher-Monk, ‘Edmund Burke's changing justification for intervention’; Simms, ‘“A false principle in the law of nations”’. On the use of Vattel by Burke and other proponents of war in the 1790s, see Whatmore, Richard, ‘Vattel, Britain and peace in Europe’, Grotiana, 31 (2010), pp. 104–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Vincitorio, ‘Edmund Burke and the First Partition of Poland’.

13 Łukowski, Jerzy, Disorderly liberty: the political culture of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in the eighteenth century (London, 2010), pp. 2–3Google Scholar; Gromelski, Tomasz, ‘Liberty and liberties in early modern Poland–Lithuania’, in Skinner, Quentin and van Gelderen, Martin, eds., Freedom and the construction of Europe (Cambridge, 2013), pp. 215–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Davis, Norman, ‘“The languor of so remote an interest”: British attitudes to Poland, 1772–1832’, in Fennell, J. L. I. and Stone, J. C., eds., Oxford Slavonic papers, xvi (Oxford, 1983), pp. 80–1Google Scholar.

15 For Burke's intellectual debt to French and Scottish theories of commercial society, see O'Neill, Daniel, The Burke–Wollstonecraft debate: savagery, civilization, and democracy (University Park, PA, 2007)Google Scholar; Bourke, Richard, Empire and revolution: the political life of Edmund Burke (Woodstock, 2015), pp. 161–4Google Scholar; Pocock, J. G. A., ‘The political economy of Burke's analysis of the French Revolution’, Historical Journal, 25 (1982), pp. 331–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Conniff, James, The useful cobbler: Edmund Burke and the politics of progress (Albany, NY, 1994), chs. 2, 3Google Scholar.

16 Charles Louis de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu, The spirit of the laws, trans. Anne Cohler, Basia Miller, and Harold Stone (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 287, 316; Wolff, Larry, Inventing Eastern Europe: the map of civilization on the mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford, CA, 1994), p. 204Google Scholar.

17 Montesquieu, The spirit of the laws, p. 156.

18 Ibid., p. 17.

19 Ibid., p. 352.

20 Charles Louis de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu, My thoughts (Mes pensées), ed. Clark, Henry C. (Indianapolis, IN, 2012), p. 132Google Scholar.

21 Burke, Edmund, ‘Abridgement of English history (c. 1757)’, in McLoughlin, T. O., Boulton, James T., and Todd, William B., eds., The writings and speeches of Edmund Burke, I: The early writings (Oxford, 2014), p. 429Google Scholar. On Montesquieu as an ‘enduring presence in the mind of Edmund Burke’, see Bourke, Empire and revolution, pp. 19–20. See also Courtney, Cecil Parker, Montesquieu and Burke (Oxford, 1963)Google Scholar; Deane, Seamus, ‘Montesquieu and Burke’, in Gargett, Graham and Sheridan, Geraldine, eds., Ireland and the French Enlightenment, 1700–1800 (London, 1999), pp. 47–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Edmund Burke, ‘A vindication of natural society (1756)’, in McLoughlin, Boulton, and Todd, eds., The writings and speeches of Edmund Burke, i, pp. 159–60.

23 Burke, ‘Abridgement of English history (c. 1757)’, p. 429; Montesquieu, The spirit of the laws, p. 15.

24 Burke, ‘A vindication of natural society (1756)’, pp. 158, 160.

25 On Burke's central role in the Annual register until at least 1763, see Copeland, Thomas W., ‘Edmund Burke's friend and the “Annual register”’, The Library, 18 (1963), pp. 29–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the likelihood that Burke wrote significant parts of the ‘Historical article’ in each issue in the 1770s, see Vincitorio, ‘Edmund Burke and the First Partition of Poland’, p. 15.

26 The annual register, or, A view of the history, politics, and literature for the year 1763 (London, 1765), p. 45Google Scholar.

27 Ibid., p. 44.

28 Ibid., p. 44.

29 Łukowski, Disorderly liberty, p. 44.

30 Labro, Catherine, ‘Le débat Rousseau/Montesquieu dans le premier discours: réception et médiations’, Revue française d'histoire des idees politiques, 35 (2012), pp. 135–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 Květina, Jan, ‘The Polish question as a political issue within philosophical dispute: Leszczyński versus Rousseau’, Oriens Aliter, 2 (2014), pp. 22–43Google Scholar.

32 On this point, I am indebted to Graham Clure's forthcoming study of Rousseau's Considérations.

33 Květina, ‘The Polish question as a political issue within philosophical dispute: Leszczyński versus Rousseau’.

34 For a reading of Rousseau's proposals in the Considérations as a response to Montesquieu, see Clure, forthcoming monograph.

35 Spector, ‘Who is the author of the Abstract of Monsieur l'Abbé de Saint-Pierre's “Plan for perpetual peace”?’.

36 Hume, David, ‘Of refinement in the arts’, in Miller, Eugene F., ed., Essays: moral, political, and literary [1777] (Indianapolis, IN, 1987), p. 276Google Scholar.

37 Smith, Adam, Lectures on jurisprudence (Indianapolis, IN, 1982), p. 288Google Scholar.

38 Ibid., p. 189.

39 Smith, Adam, An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations (2 vols., Indianapolis, IN, 1981), i, pp. 16–17Google Scholar.

40 On Smith's engagement with the ‘rich country–poor country’ debate, see Schumacher, Reinhardt, ‘Adam Smith and the “rich country–poor country” debate: eighteenth-century views on economic progress and international trade’, European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 23 (2016), pp. 764–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Hont, Istvan, Jealousy of trade: international competition and the nation state in historical perspective (Cambridge, MA, 2005), pp. 111–24Google Scholar.

42 Burke to John Cruger, 30 June 1772, The correspondence of Edmund Burke (10 vols., Cambridge, 1967), ii, p. 310; Burke to John Stewart, 30 Oct. 1772, ibid., p. 359.

43 British Museum, Egerton MS 243, fos. 91–2, ‘Debates of the House of Commons on the East India Company’ (1772–3). Cited in Bourke, Empire and revolution, p. 909.

44 Horn, D. B., British public opinion and the First Partition of Poland (Edinburgh, 1945)Google Scholar.

45 Ibid., pp. 23, 26. Lind also published French and German versions of the letters in early 1773.

46 The four letters were given short summary reviews in the December 1772 (the same month as Burke's only public intervention in parliament), January 1773, March 1773, and April 1773 issues of the Monthly Review.

47 Lind, John, Letters concerning the present state of Poland (London, 1773), pp. 15–16, 31Google Scholar.

48 Ibid., p. 32.

49 Ibid., p. 12.

50 Ibid., p. 305.

51 Ibid., pp. 189, 303–4.

52 In addition to the thematic cross-over between Lind's Letters and the Annual register for 1772 discussed below, the next issue of the Annual register also included curious similarities in phrasings. See The annual register, or, A view of the history, politics, and literature for the year 1773 (London, 1774), p. 4Google Scholar; Lind, Letters concerning the present state of Poland, p. 179.

53 Burke to John Cruger, 16 Apr. 1773, The correspondence of Edmund Burke, ii, p. 429.

54 Ibid.

55 Mackintosh, James, ‘Partition’, Edinburgh Review, 37 (1822), p. 513Google Scholar. See also earlier attributions by Brougham, Henry, ‘Appeal of the Poles’, Edinburgh Review, 22 (1814), p. 308Google Scholar; ‘Restoration of the Emperor Napoleon’, The Critical Review: Or, Annals of Literature, 1 (1815), p. 541Google Scholar. For discussions of Burke's role in the Annual register for 1772, see Vincitorio, ‘Edmund Burke and the First Partition of Poland’, p. 15; Todd, William B., ‘A bibliographic account of the Annual register, 1758–1825’, The Library, 16 (1961), p. 104CrossRefGoogle Scholar; O'Neill, The Burke–Wollstonecraft debate, pp. 65–120, at p. 106.

56 The annual register, or, A view of the history, politics, and literature for the year 1772 (London, 1773), p. 6Google Scholar.

57 Ibid., p. 2.

58 Ibid.

59 Ibid., p. 4.

60 Ibid., pp. 2, 3.

61 Ibid., p. 3.

62 See Hampsher-Monk, ‘Edmund Burke's changing justification for intervention’, p. 66.

63 Annual register for the year 1772, p. 4.

64 Armitage, ‘Edmund Burke and reason of state’, p. 629.

65 Annual register for the year 1772, p. 3.

66 Burke to Adrian Heinrich von Borcke, Jan. 1774, Burke, The correspondence of Edmund Burke, ii, p. 514.

67 Burke, Edmund, The speeches of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, in the House of Commons, and in Westminster-Hall (4 vols., London, 1816), i, p. 245Google Scholar. Cited in Vincitorio, ‘Edmund Burke and the First Partition of Poland’, p. 37.

68 Burke, Edmund, ‘Thoughts on French affairs’, in Mitchell, L. G. and Todd, William B., eds., The writings and speeches of Edmund Burke, viii (Oxford, 1989)Google Scholar.

69 Armitage, ‘Edmund Burke and reason of state’, p. 633. Armitage relates Burke's case for intervention in the Reflections to Vattelian international law. Ibid., p. 629.

70 Schumacher, ‘Adam Smith and the “rich country–poor country” debate: eighteenth-century views on economic progress and international trade’, p. 781.

71 Smith, An inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations, ii, p. 606.

72 Ibid., p. 607.

73 O'Neill, The Burke–Wollstonecraft debate, p. 79; Pocock, ‘The political economy of Burke's analysis of the French Revolution’.

74 Ibid.

75 Plassart, Anna, The Scottish Enlightenment and the French Revolution (Cambridge, 2015), p. 191CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

76 Welsh, Edmund Burke and international relations, p. 55. See also Vincitorio, ‘Edmund Burke and the First Partition of Poland’.

77 Annual register for the year 1772, p. 2. The passage has been widely attributed to Burke since the early nineteenth century. See Simms, ‘“A false principle in the law of nations”’, p. 99; Vincitorio, ‘Edmund Burke and the First Partition of Poland’; Bourke, Empire and revolution, p. 909.

78 Edmund Burke, ‘Reflections on the Revolution in France’, in Mitchell and Todd, eds., The writings and speeches of Edmund Burke, viii, p. 273.

79 Atypically and rather intriguingly, the Annual register for 1791 did reference the Considérations, to note Rousseau's gradual approach to reform in Poland – although it is unclear whether Burke remained involved in the publication at that stage. The annual register, or, A view of the history, politics, and literature for the year 1791 (London, 1795), p. 207Google Scholar. For an argument that Burke still made occasional contributions in the early 1790s, see Copeland, ‘Edmund Burke's friend and the “Annual register”’.

80 Burke, Edmund, ‘On education [June 1776]’, in Elofson, W. M., Woods, John A., and Todd, William B., eds., The writings and speeches of Edmund Burke, iii (Oxford, 1996), p. 244Google Scholar. On Burke's ambiguous fascination with Rousseau, see Bourke, Empire and revolution, pp. 756–9.

81 The pamphlet is briefly discussed in Lock, F. P., Edmund Burke, ii: 1784–1797 (Oxford, 2009), p. 359CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Thierry, Patrick, ‘Le Socrate malsain de l'Assemblée nationale: Burke et Rousseau’, Philosophiques, 21 (1994), pp. 125–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

82 The correspondence of Edmund Burke, vi, p. 214.

83 A copy of the pamphlet, held at Yale's Beinecke Library, shows the handwritten note ‘by Cpt Bentinck’ on the title page. In addition, an early twentieth-century biographer of the Bentinck family cites Bentinck's journals as evidence for his friendship with Burke, and for having written ‘a pamphlet in connection with Mr. Burke's famous one’. Le Blond, Aubrey, Charlotte Sophie, Countess Bentinck: her life and times, 1715–1800 (2 vols., London, 1912), i, p. 162Google Scholar.

84 Comparison of the opinions of Mr. Burke and Mons. Rousseau, on government reform, and strictures on the answers to Mr. Burke (London, 1791), p. 8Google Scholar.

85 Monthly Review, or Literary Journal (London, Apr. 1791), p. 455Google Scholar.

86 Cameron, David, The social thought of Rousseau and Burke (London, 1973), p. 126Google Scholar; Thierry, ‘Le Socrate malsain de l'Assemblée nationale: Burke et Rousseau’.

87 Comparison of the opinions of Mr. Burke and Mons. Rousseau, p. 39.

88 Zielińska, Zofia, ‘Poland between Prussia and Russia in the eighteenth century’, in Fiszman, Samuel, ed., Constitution and reform in eighteenth-century Poland: the constitution of 3 May 1791 (Bloomington, IN, 1997), pp. 87–111Google Scholar.

89 Butterwick, Richard, Poland's last king and English culture: Stanisław August Poniatowski 1732–1798 (Oxford, 1998), p. 142Google Scholar.

90 29 July 1792, to Richard Burke, The correspondence of Edmund Burke, vii, p. 158.

91 Burke, Edmund, ‘Appeal from the new to the old whigs’, in Marshall, P. J. and Bryant, Donald C., eds., The writings and speeches of Edmund Burke, iv (Oxford, 2015), p. 464Google Scholar.

92 Ibid., p. 464.

93 Ibid., p. 462. The same arguments and comparison with the French Revolution were later echoed in the Annual register for 1791 (published in 1795). Annual register for the year 1791, pp. 204–7.

94 Ibid., p. 462.

95 On Vaughan, see Richard Whatmore, ‘Benjamin Vaughan and the consequences of anonymity: an introduction to Carpenter's, Kenneth E. “Benjamin Vaughan's contributions unveiled: a bibliography”’, History of European Ideas, 44 (2018), pp. 292–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

96 The letters were republished later that year as the Letters on the subject of the Concert of Princes, and the dismemberment of Poland and France. The work was widely noticed at the time, reaching a 4th edition in 1794 and receiving French and German translations. McLean, Thomas, The other East and nineteenth-century British literature: imagining Poland and the Russian Empire (New York, NY, 2012), pp. 25–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

97 Burke to Richard Burke, 29 July 1792, The correspondence of Edmund Burke, vii, p. 159.

98 Edmund Burke, ‘Observations on the conduct of the minority’, in Mitchell and Todd, eds., The writings and speeches of Edmund Burke, viii, p. 423.

99 Vaughan, Benjamin, Letters, on the subject of the Concert of Princes, and the dismemberment of Poland and France (London, 1793), p. 45Google Scholar. Vaughan had been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh on Dugald Stewart's proposal.

100 Ibid., pp. 35, 40.

101 Ibid., pp. 31–2.

102 Sorel, Albert, Europe and the French Revolution: the political traditions of the Old Régime (New York, NY, 1971), p. 27Google Scholar. For a similar argument, see also Millar, John, Letters of Crito, on the causes, objects, and consequences, of the present war (Edinburgh, 1796)Google Scholar.

103 Boucher, ‘The character of the history of the philosophy of international relations and the case of Edmund Burke’; Welsh, Edmund Burke and international relations, pp. 36–7, 55.

104 Welsh, Edmund Burke and international relations, pp. 227, 155.

105 Bourke, ‘Edmund Burke and international conflict’.

106 Burke to Richard Burke, 29 July 1792, The correspondence of Edmund Burke, vii, p. 158.

107 Burke, ‘Observations on the conduct of the minority’, p. 423.

108 Debate on Mr Fox's motion, 17 June 1793. Cited in Vincitorio, ‘Edmund Burke and the First Partition of Poland’, p. 45.

109 Hampsher-Monk, ‘Edmund Burke's changing justification for intervention’, p. 93.

110 Hampsher-Monk recognizes that Burke had a conception of Europe as a ‘community of states’, but also identifies his use of the language of manners to ‘dispense with the constraints on intervention so firmly embedded in the principles of international law’ as a radically new argumentative strategy. Ibid., p. 97.

111 See for instance Millar, Letters of Crito; Brougham, ‘Appeal of the Poles’.

112 Mackintosh, James, ‘Vindiciae Gallicae’, in Winch, Donald, ed., ‘Vindiciae Gallicae’ and other writings on the French Revolution (Indianapolis, IN, 2006), pp. 1–165, at p. 158Google Scholar.

113 Ibid., p. 88.

114 Ibid., p. 86.

115 Mackintosh, James, ‘Burke “on a regicide peace”, ctnd’, Monthly Review, 21 (1796), pp. 430–51, at p. 441Google Scholar.

116 James Mackintosh, ‘A discourse on the law of nature and nations’, in Winch, ed., ‘Vindiciae Gallicae’ and other writings on the French Revolution, p. 211.

117 Hampsher-Monk points out Mackintosh's and Burke's similar conceptions of the international order, but interprets the ‘surprising’ similarities in terms of Mackintosh recanting previous views to rejoin Burke. Hampsher-Monk, ‘Edmund Burke's changing justification for intervention’, p. 99.

118 Bela Kapossy, Isaac Nakhimovsky, and Richard Whatmore, ‘Introduction: power, prosperity, and peace in Enlightenment thought’, in Kapossy, Nakhimovsky, and Whatmore, eds., Commerce and peace in the Enlightenment, pp. 4–6.

119 Ghervas, ‘Balance of power’, p. 417.