Making Peace around 1815

Description

"Le congrès ne marche pas, il danse" as the Prince de Ligne mocked the Congress of Vienna (October 1814 to June 1815). This legend of the "dancing congress" as a whirlwind of festivities has stuck to the common memory of the congress, as much as the one depicted in various caricatures of the sharing of the " remains " of the Napoleonic empire. The "restored" monarchs shared the "cake of kings". According to the black legend, instead of making peace, the Congress of Vienna paved the way for future wars by failing to take national aspirations into account. By contrast, the work of a large number of historians over the last ten years has emphasized the contributions of the Congress for a lasting “spirit of peace” (Ghervas 2021). Historians have pointed out "the invention of international order" (Sluga 2022), the emergence of "a European security culture" (De Graaf 2019, 2020) or the innovations of "the congress system" and the "European concert" (Lentz 2013, Jarrett 2014, Vick 2014) as an original diplomatic instrument for the maintenance of peace and security. This conference aims to revisit the 1815 moment by examining contemporary histories of congress and caricatures from a transnational perspective.

Periode	13 dec 2023
Gehouden op	Justus Liebig University Giessen, Germany
Mate van erkenning	International