Ideology and Foreign Policy in Early Modern Europe (1650-1750)

Gijs Rommelse, David Onnekink, Gijs Rommelse

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781409419136
• eBook ISBN: 9781317118985
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Early Modern History
• Index: History

The years 1650 to 1750 - sandwiched between an age of 'wars of religion' and an age of 'revolutionary wars' - have often been characterized as a 'de-ideologized' period. However, the essays in this collection contend that this is a mistaken assumption. For whilst international relations during this time may lack the obvious polarization between Catholic and Protestant visible in the proceeding hundred years, or the highly charged contest between monarchies and republics of the late eighteenth century, it is forcibly argued that ideology had a fundamental part to play in this crucial transformative stage of European history. Many early modernists have paid little attention to international relations theory, often taking a 'Realist' approach that emphasizes the anarchism, materialism and power-political nature of international relations. In contrast, this volume provides alternative perspectives, viewing international relations as socially constructed and influenced by ideas, ideology and identities. Building on such theoretical developments, allows international relations after 1648 to be fundamentally reconsidered, by putting political and economic ideology firmly back into the picture. By engaging with, and building upon, recent theoretical developments, this collection treads new terrain. Not only does it integrate cultural history with high politics and foreign policy, it also engages directly with themes discussed by political scientists and international relations theorists. As such it offers a fresh, and genuinely interdisciplinary approach to this complex and fundamental period in Europe's development.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• Notes on contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Response to introduction: ‘ideology’, factions and foreign politics in early modern Europe
• 1 Absolutism, ideology and English foreign policy: the ideological context of Robert Molesworth’s Account of Denmark
• 2 Partisan politics, history and the national interest (1700–1748)
• 3 From ‘jealous emulation’ to ‘cautious politics’: British foreign policy and public discourse in the mirror of ancient Athens (ca. 1730–ca. 1750)
• 4 The ideological context of the Dutch war (1672)
• 5 Ideologies of interests in English foreign policy during the reign of Charles II
• 6 Holy war and republican pacifism in the early-eighteenth-century Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania
• 7 Justifying war: churchmen and war in France and England during the Nine Years War (1688–1697)
• 8 Romeyn de Hooghe and the imagination of Dutch foreign policy
• 9 A change of ideology in Imperial Spain? Spanish commercial policy with America and the change of dynasty (1648–1740)
• 10 Mountains of iron and gold: mercantilist ideology in Anglo-Dutch relations (1650–1674)
• 11 Balancing Europe: ideas and interests in British foreign policy (c. 1700–c. 1720)
• 12 ‘To restore and preserve the liberty of Europe’: William III’s ideas on foreign policy
• Index