The Congress of Vienna: Power and Politics after Napoleon by Brian E. Vick (review)

This engaging work provides an innovative approach to the Congress of Vienna by placing its deliberations in a wider political, cultural, and social context. The author, Brian E. Vick, construes both diplomacy and the Congress in broad terms that encompass the festivals, publications, marketing, salons, and other influences on the Congress’ work. His emphasis on “the embeddedness of diplomacy and its actors in the wider and deeper culture and political culture” (330) of the time affords both a better understanding of the Congress’ decisions and an opportunity to see a set of issues that have previously evaded the historian’s gaze. The result is a fresh account that skillfully historicizes the world of the Congress while also identifying a significant role for diverse historical actors, not least of all women.

The book begins with a deft analysis of the broader political field of the Congress era before turning to a series of specific diplomatic battles that Vick presents in a new light. The first three chapters — on festivity and display, the press and the market for memorabilia and entertainment, and salon culture and elite networks — rest on the proposition that neither diplomats nor diplomacy were “set apart from broader society, culture, and ideas” (1). Rather, Vick underscores the utility of opening up the analysis to “the second rank of political actors,” including not only diplomats and statesmen but also “the wider society of politically engaged individuals with potential influence on political discourse or political decisions” (7). Vick’s exploration of festivals, merchandising, and salon cultures allows us to perceive how the preoccupations of this larger society were crucial in shaping the political settlement that emerged. Here we see a curious combination of the military and the religious, the sublime and the crassly commercial, the courtly and the popular, the medieval and the modern — all shaped by the agency of women as well as men. The intents of those who organized festivities or published pamphlets were often subverted or otherwise altered as their consumers invested those products with their own interpretations. Patriotism and religiosity were not merely sentiments to be cultivated and expressed but also became cultural commodities and multimedia entertainment, with entrepreneurs stepping in to promote forms of politics that still repelled established regimes. Salons brought statesmen and rulers into direct contact with broader publics whose influence on politics proved significant.

Turning to specific diplomatic issues, Vick departs from general histories in important ways, though at points he seems more concerned with filling holes than with fundamentally reinterpreting the Congress. He devotes an entire chapter to religious politics, focusing above all on the Jewish question but also exploring the reconstruction of the Catholic Church and the development of religious liberty. Vick detects in these discussions humanitarian arguments and a universalizing language of human rights more developed than one might expect. Vick also discerns more European engagement with the wider world than do most histories, with humanitarian politics again emerging prominently, for example, in efforts to end the slave trade and to counteract the Barbary corsairs. Though forged over resistance from Spain and Portugal, in particular, the Congress’ joint declaration condemning the slave trade represents “a landmark decision” as the “first truly humanitarian measure cast in universalist terms to emerge from a diplomatic gathering” (204). Vick likewise denies the reactionary or even unequivocally conservative character of Vienna’s political settlement, discerning instead “an interweaving of liberal and conservative projects” (233). Indeed, he notes that 1814–1815 saw a striking wave of constitutional establishments and that, far from ignoring the national idea, the Congress sought to reconcile it with regional allegiances and supranational loyalties. Here Vick skillfully reconstructs a political reality peculiar to its time, and in the book’s final chapter, on Poland and Saxony, he shows how these patterns of thought influenced “even the Congress’s highest-level and most interest-driven negotiations” (277).

There is much to recommend in this book...