The British and French had hoped to conclude proceedings before the next year's military campaign got underway. When this failed to happen, owing to Imperial intransigence, Bolingbroke ordered British troops to withdraw from the alliance, and obligingly provided this news, along with the plan of the allied campaign, to the French. The resulting allied catastrophe at Denain on July 24, 1712, finally persuaded the emperor of the need for a peace.
The Peace of Utrecht consists of eleven separate bilateral treaties.1 That it represented a constitutional convention of the kind that had met at Osnabrück and Münster was well recognized by the parties. In his correspondence during the treaty process, Bolingbroke repeatedly referred to negotiations about the “système général des affaires de l'Europe” and to a “system for a future settlement of Europe.”2 In fact, in the eighth of his “Letters on History,” which deals with Utrecht, he writes that the object of the congress was to achieve a “constitution of Europe.”3
There was a general distinction drawn by the statesmen at the congress between the “private” interests of the states involved in the negotiations and the “public” interests of the society of the states of Europe as a whole.4 Bolingbroke wrote to Torcy, his French counterpart, that “[t]he queen's ministers are far from wishing that the king should act contrary to his word and his honour; but Sir… something must be done for the sake of the peace and the interest of one individual must yield to the general interest of Europe.”5
The ability to put forward a state's arguments in terms of a society of territorial states—a society, that is, characterized by a concern for the territorial stability of the whole—bedeviled and eluded some of the actors at Utrecht. The emperor, for example, “showed little aptitude for putting his case persuasively, neglecting to couch it in the idiom of international consensus…. Charles was quite literally unable to communicate on the international level [and] found himself increasingly isolated.”6 The language of this new consensus was reflected in four striking contrasts with the idiom it superseded.
First, the language of “interests” replaced that of “rights.” “Rights” were something that kings might assert against each other; “interests” were something that states might have in common. Whereas the Westphalian monarchs had been concerned to establish the rights of the kingly states—the legal status of dynastic descent; the absolute right of the king over his subjects, including especially control over the religious liberties of the persons within his realm; and the perfect sovereignty of each kingly state unfettered by any external authority—the society of territorial states was concerned instead with the mutual relationships among states, specifically with maintaining a balance of power within that society itself. At one point Bolingbroke observed explicitly that “enough has been said concerning right, which was in truth little regarded by any of the parties concerned… in the whole course of the proceedings. Particular interests were alone regarded.”7
Second, aggrandizement—so integral to the stature of the kingly state—was replaced by the goal of secure “barriers” to such a degree that claims for new accessions were universally clothed in the language of defensive barriers. Aggrandizement per se was frowned upon and even regarded as illegitimate.
Third, the word state underwent a change.8 A “state” became the name of a territory, not a people, as would occur later when state-nations began to appear, nor a dynastic house, as was the case at Westphalia. Bolingbroke, characteristically, swiftly picked up on the difference. When commenting on the dilemma facing Louis over Carlos's will, Bolingbroke wrote that “adhering to the partitions seemed the cause of France, [whereas] accepting the will [seemed] that of the House of Bourbon.”9
Fourth, whereas the kingly states had seen a balance of power as little more than a temptation for hegemonic ambition to upset, the territorial states viewed the balance of power as the fundamental structure of the constitutional system itself. “The concept was no longer applied simply as a procedural rule (‘counteract any power if and when it threatens to become dominant‘), but as a device for controlling and planning—in advance, on this occasion—the structure of the system as a whole.”10
At Utrecht, a new conception of the balance of power made its historic debut. Its novelty arose from the change the states of Europe were undergoing in their domestic constitutional orders. As the territorial state replaced the kingly state, the idea of the “balance of power” moved from providing the occasions for sovereign action to animating a constitutional structure for collective security itself. Consider this passage from one of the renunciation documents produced by the Congress and signed by Louis XIV's grandson, the Duke de Berry:
All the powers of Europe finding themselves almost ruined on account of the present wars, which have brought desolation to the frontiers, and several other parts of the richest monarchies among states, it has been agreed in the conferences and peace negotiations being held with Great Britain, to establish an equilibrium, and political limits between the kingdoms whose interests have been, and still are the sad subject of a bloody dispute; and to consider it to be the basic principle of the preservation of this peace that it must be ensured that the strength of these kingdoms give reasons neither for fear nor for any jealousies. It has been thought that the surest way of achieving this is to prevent them from expanding, and to maintain a certain proportion, in order that the weakest ones united might defend themselves against more powerful ones, and support one another against their equals.11
All of these developments are evident in the exchanges between the two principal negotiators at Utrecht, Bolingbroke and Torcy.
The immediate problem lay in persuading Philip V, king of Spain and prince of the French royal line, to give up one kingdom or the other in order to forestall the situation in which he, through a series of deaths in his family, might unite the two crowns in one person. This diplomatic objective underscored the preventive nature of the territorial states' concept of the balance of power, and the structural role of this concept. The issue was given new intensity in 1711–1712 – 1712 by the deaths of three heirs to the throne of France. When in March 1712, Torcy told Bolingbroke of the death two days earlier of the Duke of Brittany, only his younger brother—a child of two who was suffering from the same disease as the little duke who had just died—stood between Philip and the French crown. There immediately ensued an exchange of proposals between Bolingbroke and Torcy that unmistakably disclose the changed world of the territorial state confronting the world of the kingly state that it would supplant.
Bolingbroke began by urging that Philip simply renounce his right of succession to the crown of France, and retain the kingdom of Spain he was at present governing. Torcy demurred; succession was a matter of divine will—a principle of the kingly state—and could not be lawfully altered. Torcy proposed that if Philip became king of France, he could at that point abdicate the throne of Spain in favor of his brother, the Duke of Berry, another of Louis's grandsons.
Bolingbroke took this counterproposal as evidence that a renunciation document could be effective: on the premise of Torcy's counterproposal, if Philip's “right to the crown of France comes to take place, he is not to enjoy both [crowns]; [but] how can he choose if he cannot renounce either? And can he renounce the crown of France, and not the right of it?”12 Bolingbroke wrote Torcy:
We are happy to believe that you in France are persuaded that God alone can abolish the law upon which your right of succession is founded, but you will allow us to be persuaded in Great Britain that a prince can relinquish his right by a voluntary cession and that he, in favour of whom the renunciation is made, may be justly supported in his pretensions by the powers who become guarantors of the treaty.
In this passage are the characteristic markers of the society of territorial states: the downgrading of the dynastic principle; the willingness to subordinate the rights of sovereigns to the interests of the states involved; and the use of collective security guarantees to ensure the balance of power itself.
When Torcy countered with a proposal that Philip commit himself at Utrecht to renounce one crown or the other in the event of a potential union, Bolingbroke underlined this essentially structural goal, and its difference from the Westphalian model of intervention: “You will say, all the powers are guarantors of this agreement; such a guarantee may really form a powerful alliance to wage war against the prince who would violate this condition of the treaty; but our object is rather to find out the means to prevent, than to support, new wars…”13
Accordingly, Bolingbroke argued, Philip must make his renunciation now: then the guarantee of “the powers of Europe” only had to prevent Philip from reversing his word and seizing one of the two states, as opposed to forcing him to give up a state which he had already invested. Torcy replied: “A rapprochement is easily brought about… [Philip V] must remove the disquietude of Europe by an immediate declaration of the part he will take should the succession be ever open to him.”
Torcy spoke from a perspective that sought to preserve the sovereign scope of action for Philip. All of his concessions amounted to promises to take a course of action in the event a certain situation arises; they were “promises to make a promise.” By contrast, Bolingbroke sought a decision that would foreclose Philip's freedom of action. He justified this on the basis of an appeal to the balance of power and the good of the society of states. This difference in perspective—kingly versus territorial state—put the two men on different wavelengths. Bolingbroke at this point exasperatedly remarked:
The French have undoubtedly a great advantage in treating in their own language, and I can easily believe that some of the expressions in my letter to Monsieur de Torcy may have been either faint, improper or ambiguous; but surely the whole tenor of them makes it plain that we never intended to separate the option and the execution of the option.*
Now the British put a new proposal on the table. Through a complicated set of contingencies, France was to receive Savoy and Piedmont if Philip agreed to stand down from the Spanish throne immediately, the Duke of Savoy replacing him. Having swapped titles with the duke, Philip would then carry Savoy with him when he inherited the French throne. If, on the other hand, Philip chose to remain king of Spain, he would renounce the French crown at once, and the House of Savoy, not Bourbon, would inherit the Spanish crown if Philip's line were to die out.
This scheme had the virtue of enlisting the energies of Louis because it promised an enlargement of his holdings. To this extent it was a Westphalian solution deployed for Utrechtian goals, as the balance of power would be maintained by separating the French and Spanish dynasties. Once he learned of the British offer, Louis pressed his grandson to give up Spain. Louis wrote Philip: “Should gratitude and affection for your [Spanish] subjects be strong inducements with you to adhere to them, I can tell you that you owe those same sentiments to me, to your family, and to [France]… I now call upon you to show me their effects.”14
Philip complied, though he surprised his grandfather by choosing to renounce the throne of France and remain in Madrid. He had acquiesced to a plea from the old world of kingly states, but the effect was to ensure the success of the new world of territorial states. The treaty process now proceeded to a conclusion in the series of agreements known as the Peace of Utrecht. The elaborate French rituals of precedence that had so bedeviled sessions at Westphalia were dispensed with; it was agreed that the delegates would enter the meeting rooms in no fixed order and sit where they liked. As at Westphalia, the constitutional role of the congress was indicated by its power to recognize new states as members of the society of states. At Utrecht, Brandenburg appealed for such recognition and received it; henceforth the kingdom of Prussia was a member of the society of states, entirely apart from Brandenburg's role in the empire. The acquisition of defensive barriers15 dominated the negotiations (in contrast to the rights to “compensations” at Westphalia). These arguments were necessarily clothed in the language of a systemic balance of power, even if the motives of the negotiators were sometimes indistinguishable from simple aggrandizement.
The Utrecht settlement and the regime it created brought about a major transformation of the international system… After Utrecht—with its emphasis upon, and indeed development of, the “Public Law of Europe”—there was a greater collective concern for preserving stability. Policymakers were therefore functioning in a new decision-making environment after Utrecht, basing their policies upon assumptions and interests quite different from the years before 1713.16
This assessment reflects a consensus among historians about the significance of Utrecht; that this significance lies in its constitutional aspects is less generally emphasized.