Revolution.

6 The idea of a states-system was originally developed as part

of the attempt to justify certain normative principles as the authentic basis
for order in modern world politics; for all the merits of the concept
as a way of highlighting genuinely important dimensions of modern and
contemporary international relations, its initial purpose was to stigmatize
the French Revolution, and especially the Napoleonic imperial system,
as unlawful in terms of the traditional principles of European public
law and order. Like all good propaganda, the historical concept of the
states-system contained a substantial kernel of truth, but presented in a
distorted way. It exaggerated the significance of some aspects of modern
world politics, while down-playing or even ignoring others that were
not so helpful to the counter-revolutionary cause. Such distortions may
well be inherent in any historical narrative, and the reactionaries were no
less scrupulous than their opponents, but I submit that it is unacceptable
to take their history for granted as an objective description of order in
modern world politics.
Although several scholars have complained about the problems that
flow from conceptualizing modern world history in terms of the idea
of a states-system,7 the reasons why the orthodox perspective is a distorted
one are not fully appreciated at present because far too little attention
has been paid to the sources that the counter-revolutionaries used
to construct their account of the modern states-system. It is therefore
impossible to understand what they were including and, just as importantly,
what they were leaving out. The trouble here is that most scholarship
on pre-revolutionary thought has concentrated overwhelmingly
on speculation about natural law and the law of nations as the root
of modern thinking about the European political system, usually tracing
a path from Hugo Grotius, through Samuel Pufendorf, to Emerich
de Vattel. Certainly, Pufendorf was one of the first to use the idea of
a states-system, although he meant something completely different by
that term from the way it is now understood. It must also be acknowledged
that Vattels description of the European political system looks
remarkably like the orthodox conception of international society in use
today:
The constant attention of sovereigns to all that goes on, the custom of resident
ministers, the continual negotiations that take place, make of modern Europe a
sort of Republic, whose members each independent, but all bound together by
a common interest unite for the maintenance of order and the preservation of
Bull, The Anarchical Society, p. 12.
For a recent discussion of this point, and in my view a very perceptive one, see the
introduction to James Muldoon, Empire and Order: The Concept of Empire, 8001800
(London:Macmillan, 2000).
6
7