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Brexit in history : sovereignty or a European Union? /

Are Europeans hard-wired for conflict? Given the enmities that wracked the Greek city-states, or the Valois, Bourbons and Habsburgs, it seems undeniable. The Holy Roman Empire promised peace, but collapsed before it could deliver it, while rival rulers counterbalanced its power by stressing their ow...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Heuser, Beatrice, 1961- (Author)
Format: Book
Language:English
Published: London : Hurst & Company, [2019]
Subjects:
European Union > Great Britain.
European Union > Membership.
Great Britain > Foreign relations > European Union countries.
European Union countries > Foreign relations > Great Britain.
Table of Contents:
  • Acknowledgements
  • 1. Introduction: The dialectic of empire, sovereignty, and co-operative syntheses. State systems: Neglected dimension of international relations theory
  • 2. Inter-'national' relations? Problems of terminology and basic assumptions. The evolution of words and ideas
  • Prescriptions for inter-polity relations
  • Geography, geopolitics and geostrategy
  • Demography and identities
  • 3. Ideas inherited from antiquity. One people, one God: The Israelites
  • Fighting for liberty, and rival Autarkic polities: Ancient Greece
  • Alexander's empire: Liberator or tyrant?
  • Rome: Imperium becomes empire and Pax Roman
  • 4. The middle ages: The Christian universe. The restoration of the Roman Empire and peace through the Universal empire
  • Three forms of war vs Pax Dei and Landrieden
  • The outsiders' bid for independence: Sovereignty and competition
  • Arbitration and mediation
  • Dynastic ambitions and proto-nationalism
  • How Europe came to rule the world
  • The medieval system
  • 5. Early modern history: The break-down of the Universal Republic of Christendom. The reformation
  • Imperium and global competition
  • The Holy Roman Empire vs Bodin's sovereign state
  • Liberties vs universality
  • The Turkish threat
  • Raison d'état, dynastic competition and balance-of-power wars
  • 6. The quest for a peace system or a European Union, 1305-1796. Pierre Dubois and King George Podiebrad
  • Crucé, Sully and Penn
  • Nijmegen 1678 to Utrecht 1713: Balance of power and common good over dynastic interest
  • The Abbé de Saint-Pierre and Jeremy Bentham
  • Guibert, the French Revolution, and Kant
  • Napoleon's succession to the (Holy Roman) Empire
  • Gentz's critique of the confederative proposals
  • 7. From great-power oligarchy to nationalism competition, 1813-1918. The congress system: Concert of great powers
  • Bluntschli vs Moltke
  • Colonial empires for all and the growth of nationalism
  • 8. Recreating a universal order I: The league of nations. A European alternative?
  • The 1929 financial crisis, the return of national interests, and drift to war
  • 9. Recreating a universal order II: The United Nations in the Cold War. Western defence co-operation: WU, WEU and NATO
  • 10. European integration: Between Confederation and federation. Defence integration or a Europe of the Fatherlands?
  • 11. From the renewed UN concert to the new cold war. The 'new world order' or the hope that the pentarchy will finally work
  • Cold War II and the return to sovereigntism
  • Notes
  • Index.