Chapter 3 is devoted to Bolivarism, a set of doctrines of applied moral and political philosophy bearing on the Latin America of the early nineteenth century. One doctrine, authoritarian republicanism, has it that the legitimacy of any form of polity is contingent on its capacity to maximize the Enlightenment values of aggregate happiness, safety for all, and political stability of a nation. Another doctrine, the mestizaje model, contends that the collective identity of Latin Americans is not exclusively European, African, or Amerindian but a mixture of these. Bolivarism has continued to fuel ongoing populist phenomena from the nineteenth century onward, as illustrated by the “Bolivarian” revolutions of Hugo Chavez and Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. It is also a moral force behind some present-day movements that strive to obtain not only political and economic reform elsewhere in Latin America, but also recognition of the distinct racial and ethnic identity of the people of the region. The chapter also explains what is wrong with Marx’s critique of Bolívar while offering insight on what Marx should have said instead.

In 1815, France remained an autonomous state, occupied by Allied troops. The aim of the occupation was to defuse Bonapartist sympathies, and it was marked by indirect rule by the Allies. After the Battle of Waterloo, the Allies addressed the financial dimensions of peace and collective security: deliberations on restorations and compensation made the tensions between the Allies’ interests visible, as Prussia’s demands to bleed France out were weighed against Metternich’s concern about the ‘Jacobin spirit’, and the more moderate positions towards France of both Britain and Russia. Demilitarization and the restoration of the Bourbon regime were achieved by means of a systematically applied military occupation. However, the objectives of fighting Bonapartism, stabilization and the matter of reparation payments had not been settled. ‘Armed Jacobinism’ continued to be a threat to the moderate occupation of France by the Allies.

In 1818, the Allied Council had stabilized the Bourbon regime, and implemented principles of demilitarization and de-Bonapartization. However, the implementation of ‘indirect rule’ was met with increasing resistance among the French populace, and the Allies began to doubt whether the occupation of France was contributing to the security of the country, and by extension, of Europe: a worry that reached its culmination when the Duke of Wellington was attacked. Allied policies meant to discourage Bonapartist sympathies and secure Europe seemed to fuel polarization and radicalization in France instead. By exiling and imposing strict disciplinary measures against suspected Bonapartists and radicals, they had inadvertently spread revolutionary sentiment beyond France’s borders, especially to vulnerable neighbour states such as Belgium. The costs of the occupation and the humiliation of the French through reparation measures put a further heavy burden on the political and social peace of post-Napoleonic Europe.

This chapter discusses the role of diplomats at the Congress of Vienna, with a specific focus on the British Foreign Secretary, Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh. While accepting that Castlereagh, like all other diplomats, was motivated by a realist maximization of Britain’s interests, for which the talk of peace and cooperation tosome extent constituted mere rhetoric, the chapter emphasises how diplomats like Castlereagh were formed by the experiences and viewpoints they had accumulated over a long period of time. It was this political socialisation, notably shaped by the lengthy struggle against French Jacobinism and Bonapartism, that influenced Castlereagh’s beliefs about the most dangerous threats to the security of the Continent, and by implication, of Great Britain. These mixed beliefs informed his decision-making in ways that promoted both British interests and collective security and peace in the years after 1813.