World Restored

A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh, and the Problems of Peace 1812-1822 by Henry Kissinger, 332 pages

This was future Secretary of State Kissinger's first book, an expansion of his doctoral dissertation, explicating the restoration of some concept of legitimacy after an age of revolution had cast all such claims into doubt.  It centers on the vital cooperation of Metternich, representing Austria, and Castlereagh, representing Britain, as the two statesmen undertook the delicate juggling act of competing demands: Austrian concentration on political harmony against British focus on territorial equilibrium, Napoleon's personal outlook against the Habsburgs' dynastic view, Tsar Alexander's idealism against British pragmatism, British insularity against Austrian cosmopolitanism.

It is easy to see the appeal of this study of the Congress system at the time of its publication in 1957, when the East and the West each sought security in the midst of the Cold War.  Without an established set of common assumptions governing international relations, Kissinger asserts, diplomatic solutions to conflicts are impossible and force becomes the only law.  The quest for absolute security by any party renders overall stability impossible.  Only through the acceptance of limits can a lasting peace be attained, as opposed to an uneasy truce.

Napoleon and Hitler

Napoleon and Hitler: A Comparative Biography by Desmond Seward, 303 pages

Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler are the two great "men from nowhere" in modern European history.  The parallels are obvious: born into obscurity, foreigners in the nations they ruled, they inherited states reeling from war and civil strife, conquered Europe, met disaster in Russia, and were ultimately defeated by a combination of all the other great powers against them.  There are glaring differences, too - Napoleon was an officer who won glory as a general which he then parleyed into dictatorship, Hitler an enlisted man who gained power through a later political career; Napoleon was a military genius, Hitler was not; Napoleon attempted to start a dynasty, Hitler did not; Napoleon survived to help shape his legacy, Hitler did not.  Most obviously, though millions died in the Napoleonic Wars, Bonaparte never targeted whole peoples for extermination.

According to Desmond Seward, both the differences and similarities run deeper than is generally appreciated.  Napoleon's use of military backing to seize power is paralleled by Hitler's paramilitary support.  Both leaders professed a jingoistic nationalism, but both were also deeply ambivalent about the people they ruled.  Most importantly - and damningly - both men "were incapable of rational compromise, an incapacity which meant their doom" and that of so many of their followers and foes.

Elgin Affair

The Elgin Affair: The Abduction of Antiquity's Greatest Treasures and the Passions It Aroused by Theodore Vrettos, 220 pages

In the midst of the Napoleonic Wars, the British ambassador to the Sublime Porte, Lord Elgin, acquired permission from the Ottoman Turks to conduct excavations on the Athenian Acropolis and to take various antiquities back to Britain.  In perhaps the most extensive act of vandalism in history, Lord Elgin used this permission as a blank check to strip the Parthenon of every piece of decoration his team could pry from the structure, including much of the sculpture from the pediments and roughly half of the internal frieze, as well as a column capital and a caryatid from the Erechtheum, both of which were literally sawn off in order to remove them.  Elgin answered protests with the claim that modern Greeks were unworthy of their heritage.

In Vrettos' account, all this is secondary to the Elgins' domestic woes, culminating in a high profile divorce and a lawsuit by the aggrieved husband against Lady Elgin's lover.  Aside from the identity of the actors and the suggestion that Lord Elgin's preoccupation with the marbles may have contributed to his wife's estrangement, there is no connection between the archaeological and the personal dramas.  Exasperatingly, Vrettos includes a 13 page excerpt from a letter by Lady Elgin and a 24 page trial transcript, both of which merely repeat information which is present elsewhere in the narrative.  The incorporation of this filler is sadly consistent with the superficiality of the work as a whole, which reduces "the abduction of antiquity's greatest treasures" to a subplot in favor of a not particularly passionate tale of adultery.

Metternich

Metternich: The First European by Desmond Seward, 272 pages

Wellington is the name most associated with the defeat of Napoleon, but it was Clemens von Metternich whom Bonaparte said "destroyed me systematically."  Metternich directed the foreign affairs of the Austrian Empire through the end of the Napoleonic Wars and was the chief architect of the Congress System that followed, dominating European affairs until the upheavals of 1848.

Long denigrated as a repressive reactionary, Metternich's achievement can be appreciated by comparing the results of the Congress of Vienna to the consequences of the Treaty of Versailles or the Yalta agreement.  His fear of revolution, far from being baseless paranoia, can only be seen as prophetic after the horrors of the twentieth century.

Seward's popular biography does an excellent job of describing Metternich's career without getting too entangled in political minutia.  Unfortunately, the personality of Metternich is not presented as vividly as his policy.

Revolution Against Christendom

The Revolution against Christendom by Warren H Carroll, 425 pages

The last of The History of Christendom series to be published in Carroll's lifetime, The Revolution against Christendom begins with the reign of Louis XIV and ends with Waterloo.  The revolution of the title is, of course, the French Revolution, as well as the Enlightenment that produced it and the reign of Napoleon that followed it.

Although this book covers a period nearly as long as that of the previous volume, it is barely more than half as long.  Large sections of text are quoted entirely from other works.  Some chapters are disjointed, fragmentary, or repetitive.  A few are adapted from chapters from other works by the same author.  This is deeply unfortunate, since this is clearly the climax of the series, and an area where Carroll has extensive knowledge (hence the existence of the adaptable chapters).  It is, at least, salvageable as an excellent bibliography for further reading.

(In 2013, the final volume of the series, The Crisis of Christendom, was posthumously published, taking the history up to 2005.  As I do not own it, I will not be reading it in the foreseeable future.)

Napoleon and the Birth of Modern Spain

Napoleon and the Birth of Modern Spain by Gabriel H Lovett, 850 pages (2 vols.)

There is a certain humanism that lends an added charm to some historical works, an attention to the particularities of personalities and culture that is lost in texts purporting to disclose the greater trends that supposedly determine history, or which claim to speak about that greatest of abstractions, the "common man".  This is a work in that vein.

The first volume, The Challenge to the Old Order, covers the background of the failing Bourbon monarchy, the subsequent French coup and invasion, and the establishment of a government of resistance which, secure in the citadel of Cadiz, enacted a serious of liberal reforms.  The second volume, The Struggle Without and Within tells the story of the controversies surrounding the Cadiz Regency and its policies, the nature of the French occupation and its collapse, and the conservative counterrevolution which followed.  Throughout, the concentration is on the men and women whose personalities shaped the decisions that made history, and the culture that shaped those personalities.

The author captures well the flavor of the period and shows a great understanding of the contingency of history.  Much of the conflict that would define the next hundred and fifty years of Spanish history has its roots in the Napoleonic era, from the irresolvability of the differences between conservatives and liberals to the tendency of Spaniards to "take to the hills" and wage guerilla war in times of political conflict.  As such, a work like this is vital to understanding modern Spain.