547
Europe: Early Modem and Modem
Mah's book opens with the only chapter he devotes to
a single figure, J. G. Herder, since it makes the project
seem more biographical and canonical than is really
the case. But Herder does provide an excellent illustration of Mah's central point. The father of German
cultural nationalism turns out to have been deeply
preoccupied and attracted by French culture and
civilization, dreaming of himself as a wordly philosophe and bemoaning his imperfect grasp of the French
language. (The German pastor's ruminations appear
to have featured phantasies about Frenchwomen specifically.) Mah's reading of Herder and other figures in
his book is quintessentially post-structuralist: Herder's
cultural nationalism, he posits, was hardly straightforward or unsettled forged as it was by recurrent tensions in his thought between universal ism and historicism, style and substance, France and Germany.
The book develops like a piece of music, with
chapters on language, aesthetics, and history offering a
series of increasingly complex variations on the opening motif. The variations include a discussion of language and the problem of representation, culminating
with Nietzsche, in which Mah traces the ways in which
both French and German thinkers came to terms with
the representational limits of French as the language
of rational civility. There is an especially strong chapter entitled "Strange Classicism" that, ranging from
Johann Winckelmann to Mann demonstrates the selfsubverting nature of dreams of classical male subjectivity, as the masterful gaze of the artist, philosopher,
or writer/character (Aschenbach in Death in Venice) is
undermined by the resistance of its object. Germaine
de Stael's multinational preoccupations also provide
great fodder for Mah, who delivers a brilliant structuralist reading of the writer's Corinne, or Italy (1807).
The discussion culminates in Marx's dual rejection of
both French and German claims to ultimate modernity, the intellectual frustration that led him to reach
beyond both French materialistic progressivism and
German spiritualist historicism.
The book's ending with Marx may, however, leave
eighteenth-century scholars perplexed about where, if
anywhere, this all leaves "the Enlightenment." As is
often the case with this sort of reading, Mah's discussion makes stronger methodological than historiographical claims. If it is indeed foolish, as this book
elegantly demonstrates, to view Enlightenment
thought as a zero-sum game between constituencies or
nationalities, how do we eighteenth-century historians
pick up the pieces?
That question should be good fodder for graduate
seminars. In the meantime, Mah's intellectual history
provides the immense service of foregrounding the
role of imagination, desire, and fantasy in the history
of ideas. It does so, moreover, both with rigor and
without pretentiousness. In the introduction, Mah
states that he hopes "to counteract what I believe are
the wrongheaded notions that historians using theory
are necessarily proceeding unempirically and incom-
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
prehensibly" (p. 14). As far as this reviewer is concerned, he has succeeded in that goal.
SARAH MAZA
Northwestern University
JOHN D. GRAINGER. The Amiens Truce: Britain and
Bonaparte, 1801-1803. Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell. 2004.
Pp. x, 222. $85.00.
The Peace of Amiens of 1802 brought to a close the
war between Britain and revolutionary France. The
former had been victorious at sea and successful in
conquering many French colonies, but its forces had
been driven from the European mainland and its
alliance system had collapsed. This had led the government to peace. In 1803, however, war resumed, and
it continued, without a break, until Napoleon
Bonaparte was forced to abdicate in 1814. John D.
Grainger's well-researched book is a study of the
negotiation of the settlement, the period of peace, and
its breakdown. Matching the perspective of Paul Schroeder, Grainger's central thesis is that Napoleon was
unable to accept the constraints of peace and, instead,
used periods of peace to advance new claims and to
prepare for fresh conflict. Unlike systemic theories of
international relations, however, Grainger puts the
emphasis on trust.
Analyzing the negotiation of the peace preliminaries
in 1801, Grainger suggests that the French government
was only marginally interested in making peace and
was still considering invasion. In the subsequent negotiation of the Amiens settlement, French good faith is
again found wanting. As a result, the peace was not
regarded in Britain as really satisfactory, although it
was just acceptable enough to maintain Addington's
government in power. The legacy of mistrust arising
from the negotiations was such that, in Britain, it was
regarded as unlikely to last. Clashing attitudes toward
international relations and national law did not help.
The French were angered by the British failure to act
as Napoleon wished against critical emigre writers; in
turn, the British were unwilling to mold their laws to
suit the French government. The nature of Napoleonic
government, at once authoritarian and radical, greatly
increased the chance of such cultural misperceptions.
To Grainger, there is no doubt that French moves
rapidly sapped the new settlement. In particular,
French expansionism in Europe and French schemes
further afield concerned British government ministers
and led them to judge further French moves and
reports of French intentions in this light. Amiens
included provision for the French evacuation of Egypt,
but Napoleon sent Colonel Horace Sebastiani to report on the possibility of a reconquest and his positive
report was published in the official Moniteur. Efforts to
increase the French presence in Algiers and Muscat
also worried the British. But it was not only they who
were concerned. In response to Napoleon's request for
mediation of his differences with Britain, Alexander I
of Russia produced a plan that Napoleon rejected
APRIL
2005
548
Reviews of Books and Films
because it would have required France to evacuate
Hanover, Italy, Switzerland, and the United Provinces.
The tsar and his ministers were offended by the
contemptuous way in which they were treated and
concerned by the onward march of French policy.
In March 1803, there was a serious war panic, as
France's ability to mount an invasion and talk of an
expedition from Flushing led to a mobilization of the
British navy and militia, which increased British governmental confidence. In turn, this helped to boost
French invasion preparations. As both sides increasingly saw war as inevitable, so French diplomatic
efforts were devoted to trying to cast Britain in the role
of aggressor and treaty breaker. Grainger suggests that
it is unlikely that any of the late French diplomacy had
an effect on the British government. Instead, French
policy insured that the British government declared
war with a relatively united country at its back,
whereas there had been considerable division at the
time of the negotiation of the peace. An important side
effect of Napoleon's attitudes was the French decision
to sell Louisiana to the United States. Grainger's
scope indeed is global, with French policy in Haiti and
India being among his themes. Two months after
Britain declared war, General DeCaen, governor of
the lie de France, arrived off Pondicherry with 1,250
men mostly intended to train sepoys with whom to
challenge British rule in India. Finding the British
already in control, however, he sailed back to France.
Diplomatic history is often unduly neglected. The
wide-ranging resonance of this work makes it of particular interest.
JEREMY BLACK
University of Exeter
PATRICIA A. WEITSMAN. Dangerous Alliances: Proponents of Peace, Weapons of War. Stanford: Stanford
University Press. 2004. Pp. xii, 244. $49.50.
The author of this book is a political scientist, and she
has written a monograph that is part theory and part
history. Patricia A. Weitsman wants to apply a new set
of categories to alliance formation, evolution, and
disintegration, and she takes as her case studies the
various associations or alliances that preceded World
War I, particularly the Three Emperors' League (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia), the Triple Alliance
(Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy), and the Triple
Entente (France, Russia, Britain).
Weitsman's theory is this: alliances are formed not
only for "capability aggregation" or increased security
against potential adversaries, but also for ally/adversary management or neutralization. She likes the old
epigram that it is wise to keep allies close, but wiser
still to keep potential adversaries even closer. The
author also suggests new terminology to describe her
main theoretical ideas. For example, she proposes the
concepts of "hedging" and "tethering." Hedging
means the formation of "low commitment" relationships with states that are "neither entirely friend nor
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
foe" (p. 20). Basically, the hedging state tries to keep
a foot in all camps, committing itself to little but
seeking advantage from all sides to pursue its own
agenda. Tethering is a more developed form of hedging where hostile states make agreements with one
another to neutralize or control conflicts of interest or
threats to each other's security. Finally, there is "balancing" where states, because of "high threat levels"
(p. 30), seek to form alliances with other states to
improve their security. Weitsman notes that there are
varying degrees of commitment in these bilateral or
multilateral relationships and that over time the relationships may evolve from managing "internal conflicts
of interest" (p. 135) to countering external threats.
The author is trying to formulate concepts beyond the
"realist" view of international relationships based on
perceptions of interest and power.
Having established her theoretical principles, Weitsman goes about applying them to the various European relationships which developed between the 1870s
and 1918. For example, in the first Three Emperors'
League (1873-1878), Austria-Hungary wanted to
tether Russia and Germany, while Russia wanted to
tether Austria-Hungary. Germany, however, wanted to
hedge between Russia and Austria-Hungary and balance against France. The Franco-Russian alliance
(1891-1894) "was the first exclusively balancing alliance" (p. 101). Thus, Russia wanted to balance Austria-Hungary, Britain, and Germany, while France
wanted to balance Germany and Britain.
Weitsman depends on research from Italian, British,
and French archives in order to establish her various
positions, mainly in chapters four and five, but she also
relies heavily on secondary sources. There are some
good quotations; for example, in 1879 Otto von Bismarck tried to have his waywith the Austro-Hungarian
foreign minister by saying "Accept my proposal, I
advise you well, for otherwise, I'll have to accept
yours" (p. 73).
All of this is well and good, although one has to
wonder just how much is new. And the author has
some irritating habits, perhaps explained by her overarching interest in theory as opposed to a more
empirical approach based on archival evidence. The
evidence she presents seems to go in the traditional
realist direction of state interests and state power.
Sure, states tether and hedge, but is this a revelation?
And the author likes to use jargon like "curvilinear"
(frequently) or "dyadic" (less frequently), and other
terminology more redolent of a contemporary American think tank.
Weitsman's knowledge of the events of World War I
seems a little eccentric. The Allies were scarcely
"anticipat[ing] victory" (p. 153) at the end of 1916.The
French had staved off defeat at Verdun; the Somme
had been a bloody catastrophe with 57,000 British
dead and wounded on the first day of action. Romania
entered the war only to be decisively defeated. By the
end of 1916, events in Russia were going in the wrong
direction for the Allies, although Rasputin, the cor-
APRIL
2005