Join us for another 19v seminar!
Given the Enlightenment and other convergences of Russian and European development during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, why is it that Russia now sits on the political and psychological periphery of Europe? Elise Wirtschafter’s latest book, From Victory to Peace: Russian Diplomacy After Napoleon, highlights this question by focusing on a time when the empire appeared fully integrated into European society and the European political system. Study of Europe’s post-Napoleonic security system requires that Russia be imagined as European. This is certainly how Emperor Alexander I and his diplomatic agents understood their role as peacemakers. The emperor’s subjects and intimates saw in their monarch, who had spearheaded the allied coalition that defeated Napoleon in 1813-1814, nothing less than the divinely anointed savior of Europe.
Although present-day European historiography accords to Emperor Alexander his rightful place in the victory over Napoleon and the reconstruction of Europe, conceptual problems remain. The categories of analysis that emerge from European sources of the Restoration era do not always fit the Russian case. Notwithstanding the empire’s integration into the European system, the Russian perspective on international security has not been subjected to the same degree of scrutiny as that of other great powers. The trick for present-day scholars is to work within the European framework of Russian history without claiming false equivalencies or erasing painful realities.
This event will be held virtually on Zoom.
