Renaissance, reformation and the rise of the european international system[1]

Lucas Grassi Freire

 

I

When Wight wrote his general approach to the system of states a clear difference between suzerain state-systems (in which one could notice “a group of states having relations more or less permanent with one another, but one among them asserts unique claims which the others formally or tacitly accept”[2]) and a regular system of states (in which “not only (…) each [state] claim independence of any political superior for itself, but each (…) recognize the validity of the same claim by all the others”[3]) was stated. Wight argues that pre-Reformation Europe was not exactly a system of states, if one looks at the period from the point of view of this rigid difference among those two kinds of state-systems. A quick description of Medieval European society may show why it seems to be the case that the substitution of a more flexible approach for this early notion of states-system is theoretically desirable: in short, this is due to the division of power between the Holy Roman Empire and the Papacy. Thus there is a case neither for labelling this society as a simple system of states (because of the powers of the Empire and the Papacy), nor as suzerain state-systems (because claims formally or tacitly accepted by most of the states were not made by only one other state).[4]

More recent international theorizing has provided us – still within similar heuristic devices as Wight’s and what is usually called the ‘English School’ – a more flexible tool for the analysis of international dynamics in world history. Watson modified the classification of state-systems to study international systems operating in a broader spectrum that encompasses many forms of international organization, ranging from pure independence to pure empire. All known international configurations throughout world history lie within this broad scope. A description of the evolution of international society is in this sense a description of a pendulum’s movements over this spectrum.[5] By using such a description, we proceed to the analysis of the role of Renaissance and Reformation ideas in the historical rise of the European international system.

The denial of the medieval political system caused a strong impact on the European population and made it vulnerable to the effects of anarchy. Two key sets of ideas have influenced the international politics of that time by guiding practices which ultimately led to the constitution of an international system. Firstly, we mention several theses generated within Renaissance, particularly the ones with clear political content. Many of them were put into practice and had a great influence on the arts of domestic rule and international exchange. Secondly, Reformation contested the then-existing setting in at least two different ways: by mining the authority and the power of the Papacy and by creating a demand for safeguarding interests under the sovereign equality of states.

 

II

Several advancements towards the formation of the state and the European international system took place during the Renaissance. In Italy, a crucial process was the rise of the statos[6], which consisted, according to Watson, in a particular situation of a partially or wholly illegitimate territorial concentration of de facto power in an independent fashion by a given ruler.[7] The main shortcoming faced by such rulers was how to attain the necessary authority and legitimacy to put those statos into force and operation:

[They] all wanted to turn the real but naked power they had acquired de facto into something more legitimate, an authority which they exercised by right, de jure, and which would normally be obeyed without compulsion (...).  The central political problem of the Italian Renaissance rulers who had established the naked power of a stato was how to give the authority of legitimacy to it[8].

The ruler’s need of preserving his territory and dealing with other rulers of statos similar to his own, under an environment marked by high levels of mistrust and anarchy, led to the development of a reason of state (or ragione di stato) based on cool calculation of what was expedient for their political survival.[9] Those rulers devised a set of diplomatic rules so that dialogue would be constant and so would be the gathering of information:

An Italian ruler, at once both acquisitive and threatened, had to keep himself informed of what was going on around him: he had to ensure a regular and continuous flow of what we call intelligence. And he also had to conduct a more continuous dialogue with neighbouring rulers: a dialogue full of persuasion, veiled threats, open alliances, marriage compacts, subsidies and conspiratorial plots against third parties. He needed this intelligence in order to cope with the new Italian scene in which power had become divorced from the medieval legitimacies and was liable to be used in any direction at any time[10].

Another development in relations between statos in this context was the rise of a balance of power based on the convenience of the moment.[11] Butterfield sheds light on how effects of anarchy in Italy engendered a demand for ideas related to the balance of power practice:

In the fifteenth century it would appear that Italy provided almost ideal conditions for the formulation of the concept. Here, at the Renaissance, a number of closely interacting states formed a miniature system, within which alliances often changed, and governments seemed carefully to calculate the weights and counter-weights[12].

There was fear that some of those Italian rulers would in fact carry out the task of turning the mosaic-shaped Italian peninsula into a single and huge stato, as desired and fostered by Machiavelli, among others. “Against such a threat, the only defence was an anti-hegemonial coalition of the threatened stati. The eyes of most rulers were fixed on the immediate threat from an existing stato”.[13] Though the practice by then would demand both strong diplomatic qualities and a fair setting of the balance of power, it is worth mentioning that apart from some exceptions (e.g. Guicciardini), few emphasis was placed on these elements in the political theory of the Italian Renaissance.[14] That is why, in a way, and from a certain point of view, it is possible to assert that power-balancing practices did not yet correspond to a general formulation, but only to needs that were suited to each moment. Generalisation would only occur later on when the influence of Renaissance spread out throughout the rest of Western Europe, either in terms of practice as of ideas.

Therefore, the western rulers of Christendom, influenced by their Italian counterparts, started thinking about their territories under such logic through which Christendom itself was vertically split into statos. “The effect of Renaissance ideas was to push the area from the loose unities of medieval Christendom towards a new European system fragmented into territorial statos that acknowledged no general authority”.[15] In Italy rulers had much more power in their hands than the context elsewhere in Europe, under the command of the Papacy and the Empire, allowed for. European rulers enjoyed legitimacy, but not de facto power, which made the Italian situation particularly attractive.[16] Yet, the shift from a Medieval Europe to a states system was gradual.

By the beginning of the 17^th century, rulers of a considerable part of northern and western statos had already transformed their territories into states. The ruler was sovereign and thus not bound to pay loyalty or obedience to others; to the contrary, his subordinates were the ones to owe him allegiance.[17]

The fragmentation of Europe into statos made France the greatest power of the continent. In a move to halt French attempts to conquer territories in Italy, the Pope organised an anti-hegemonial coalition dubbed the Holy League, formed by Spain and the Habsburgs, who were especially interested in join their kingdoms into a single stato inasmuch as they could benefit from it. The bottomline of such effort was the need for balanced power.[18] That corresponded, as a matter of fact, to simply apply the formula devised by Renaissance Italians, which ended up in a significant growth of interaction that could no longer be overlooked: “the newly formed statos in Europe impinged too much on each to dispense with co-ordination of their foreign relations”.[19] This phenomenon stands as a cornerstone to the rise of a European system, insofar as the ever-growing interaction between actors and their related actions affected the others’ calculation.

 

I II

Reformation has also played a key role in the establishment and consolidation of the European international system. More than that, it intervened directly in the demand for the interests which would crystallize afterwards in Westphalia and that represented the contractual roots of the European society of states. First of all, the schism between Catholics and Protestants allowed for national splits and contributed towards the shortening of Papal power. The breakdown of the central power of Christendom reinforced its shift to the hand of local rulers.[20]

Secondly, ideas brought to surface during Reformation, when interpreted and put into practice, led to a stasis[21] around Europe which involved not only a change in the relationship between rulers and subordinates but also the rise of an opposition against the idea of balance of power regardless of religion. Those ideas are deeply related to a notion the Protestant theological view on the origins of government and to whom the individual owes allegiance in the first place was developed upon. On this view Wight comments that

[t]he authority of kings and magistrates came from above, from God, not from below, from the people. Nevertheless by exalting the sovereignty of God he correspondingly minimized the differences of rank between men. In the eyes of God, all men are equal; and if a king or a magistrate commands something immoral or irreligious, the natural duty of obedience is transformed into the special duty of disobedience[22].

Should it be possible to point at least three stages to the development of the political ideas born from this view, we would begin with arguments employed at specific situations, as brought about by John Knox who, among others, sought to demonstrate that “[t]o promote a woman to beare rule, superioritie, dominion or empire aboue any realme, nation, or citie, is repugnant to nature, contumelie to God, a thing most contrarious to his reueled will and approued ordinance, and finallie it is the subuersion of good order, of all equitie and iustice”.[23] What Knox had in mind by then was the persecutions against the Protestants set out by Queen Mary of England and by the Regent Queen of Scotland[24]. Another example of this first stage of Protestant thought on resistance is the number of leaflets that condemned the hierarchical structure of the Roman Church and the prevalent division between clergy and laymen, considering as legitimate some kinds of resistance against those elements. The second stage, on the other hand, is comprised by more generalizing arguments, ushered in mainly by German Lutheran Protestants.

The meeting of magistrates and pastors in Magdeburg in 1550 provides a clear picture of this moment. There, the chief argument brought about was that “inferior magistrates such as the elected officials governing Magdeburg had an obligation to resist imperial law”.[25] Rulers were subject to some laws which are inherent to all human society. To posit laws against natural law was illegitimate, and when it did occur, as in Magdeburg, resistance should be put up against the government. The third and final stage has developed mostly in places where Calvinists were persecuted, such as France. The thought generated with influence from earlier resistance theories was innovative inasmuch as it considered as legitimate the intervention of external rulers to topple a domestic tyrannical government.[26]

            Those ideas were a “recipe for stasis”.[27] Both aforementioned effects, the one on the relationship between rulers and subjects and the other on the setting of balance of power, become clear under a brief assessment if we consider those elements as part of the theories of resistance brought by the Reformation.

“Where the conscience of a subject differed from that of his ruler, the political effect”, says Watson, “was to weaken if not destroy the subject’s acceptance of that ruler’s authority and his unquestioning solidarity with his fellow subjects”.[28] Besides, “[f]or both Protestants and Catholics agreed that adherence to the true faith transcended all other loyalties”.[29] What would apparently be logical to assume about this stasis that took place precisely when rulers in Europe were attempting to transform their political units into statos is that it would have weakened that process. Nevertheless, “[t]he breaking of the unity of Christendom, and especially of that most horizontal of all medieval institutions, the universal church, reinforced rather than diminished the concentration of power into the hands of the rulers of states”.[30] This is due to the rise of Reformation as an antithesis of two of the greatest hindrances to Europe’s transformation into several statos: the power of the Papacy, almost by definition; and the power of the Empire, owing to the circumstantial close bonds between the in-charge House of the Habsburgs and the Roman faith.[31]

At this point we are already talking about a European international system. A glance at its core features would reveal that, first off, its values were fundamentally Christian[32]; secondly, natural law prevailed over international positive law; and, finally, this states system had not devised a set of institutions whose roots laid in cooperation among states. One must bear in mind that existing institutions were the Empire and the Roman Church, in a more supranational than international fashion. Cooperation between actors was essentially defined by convenience, as no general rules managed balance of power, even if the idea of a balance did exist, except for the ones related to the Habsburgs.[33]

 

 

REFERENCE

BUTTERFIELD, Herbert. Balance of Power. In: WIENER, Philip P (ed.) Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1974, v.1, p.180-189.

KINGDON, Robert M. Calvinism and Resistance Theory, 1550-1580. In: J. H. Burns (ed.) The Cambridge History of Political Thought: 1450-1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Cap.7, p.193-218.

KNOX, John. The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrvovs Regiment of Women. [s.l.], 1558. (Disponível em: http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext06/8trmp10h.htm).

NICHOLS, Robert H. História da Igreja Cristã. 12.ed. São Paulo: Cultura Cristã, 2004.

RIEMER, Andrea K. The Arrival of the European International Society in the Ottoman Empire. ISA Annual Meeting, New Orleans: 23-27 mar. 2002. Mimeo. 42ff.

STIVACHTIS, Yannis A. The Distinction between an International System and an International Society, the Treaty of Westphalia and the Evolution of International Society. ISA Convention, Minneapolis: 17-21 mar. 1998. Mimeo. 59ff.

WATSON, Adam. Diplomacy: The Dialogue between States. New York: New Press: McGraw-Hill Co., 1983.

WATSON, Adam. The Evolution of International Society. London: Routledge, 1992.

WATSON, Adam. The Limits of Independence: Relations between States in the Modern World. London: Routledge, 1997.

WIGHT, Martin. De Systematibus Civitatum. In: LINKLATER, Andrew (ed.) International Relations: Critical Concepts in Political Science. London: Routledge, 2000 [1997]. Cap.51, p.1253-1273 (v.4).

WIGHT, Martin. International Theory: The Three Traditions. New York: Holmes & Meier, 1992.