utopian state such as this in which no form of private
ownership would be allowed, produced a work in old
age entitled Philosophia universalis (1638) in which he
seconded Sully's plan for achieving peace in Europe.
WILLIAM PENN AND THE EUROPEAN PEACE PLAN
The word `Europe' became widely incorporated in
political discourse in the latter half of the seventeenth
century, as the states of Europe fought to oppose the
hegemonic strivings of France led by Louis XIV. The
opponents of France, such as the Dutch William of
Orange, regarded themselves as fighting for the
freedom of Europe. The concept of `Europe' thus
became associated in political discourse more and
more clearly with the balance-of-power policy, religious
tolerance and expanding trade of the sovereign states
(Schmidt, 1966).
All the plans so far discussed had been produced by
Frenchmen. The next major peace plans in the seventeenth
century flowed from the pens of English
Quakers. These Quakers were a radical, pacifist group
arising in England in around the 1650s and aiming at
greater political tolerance and political equilibrium.
The idea of a federation of states is a crucial element of
the Essay toward the Present and Future Peace of Europe
(1693) by William Penn (1644­1718). Penn was familiar
with the idea already put forward by Erasmus of the
destruction wrought by war which no victory could ever
make good as the outcomes of wars were always uncertain.
The achievements of Penn and the other Quakers
were to have broader consequences in the New World
than in England. For in 1681 Penn founded the colony
of Pennsylvania where the Quaker Friends tried to
apply their pacifist principles in practice.
According to the view expounded by Penn in his
Essay, the wars in Europe were not the only problem
50 Europe as an Idea
of the times; the rulers of Russia and Turkey should
therefore be included in the parliament such as he
envisaged. His primary objective was, however, to put
an end to the constant round of warfare between
the European states, and in this respect his plan does
not ultimately differ from the ideas put forward by
Crucé and Sully. Nor did Penn have any designs for
major border adjustments; the preservation of the
international status quo would be founded more on a
`European Parliament' with a weighted system of
votes. Like his predecessors, Penn argued that the
various states should abide by the decisions on international
affairs made by the parliament. And the parliament
alone would be entitled to resort to force in
the case of any disputes. Penn was optimistic about
people's sense of justice and did not believe an international
`police force' would be needed once the
national armies had been disbanded.
One particularly interesting feature of Penn's plan
was that the number of parliamentary representatives
to which each state was entitled would be determined
by economic and not by political criteria. Each country
would be represented in proportion to its revenue,
which would be estimated according to its imports and
exports, its collection of taxes and national assets. Of
the big states, Germany would thus have twelve votes in
the parliament, France ten, Italy eight and England
six. Although religious reasons also occupied a focal
position for Penn the Quaker in the avoidance of war,
the realization that peace would have material benefits
was by no means one to be overlooked. A citizen of a
naval power, England, with growing commercial and
capitalist interests, Penn had difficulty condoning the
enormous economic losses suffered by the people of
Europe through war.
At the end of his Essay Penn listed eight benefits
to be derived from a European peace alliance. First,
it would put an end to the useless bloodshed of
The Quest for Peace 51
Christians. Second, it would raise the prestige of the
Christian faith in the eyes of non-Christians, among
whom the constant wars between Christians had,
according to Penn, been cause for amazement. Third,
the implementation of the peace plan would save
both rulers' and citizens' money. Fourth, the towns
and villages would be spared the ravages and sufferings
of war. Fifth, a state of peace would make travelling
and trading easier. Sixth, if Turkey were included
in the agreement, it would cease to be a threat on
Europe's eastern border. Seventh, it would strengthen
the ties of friendship between the ruling families of
Europe and thus raise the threshold to further
warfare. And finally there was an eighth benefit: the
princes and rulers of Europe could from then
onwards choose their wives for love instead of for the
political advantages a marriage would bring; this
would in turn mean happier lives for these rulers
(Penn, 1993: 16­20).
JOHN BELLERS' PROPOSAL TO THE RULERS OF
EUROPE
William Penn was a Quaker, which partly explains
his interest in keeping the peace. The second
great European peace proponent in the earlyeighteenth
century was another Quaker, John Bellers
(1654­1725). Some Reasons for an European State
written in 1710 was dedicated to Queen Anne and
addressed to all the rulers of Europe. Bellers' plan for
a common European state was again founded on the
by now familiar idea of an annual congress to which
all states would send representatives. All the rulers
and states of Europe would, as it were, thus constitute
a single unit. A common European law affecting all
states would similarly be passed. The problem with
Bellers' plan is, however, a typical one: how to keep
52 Europe as an Idea
the balance between the sovereignty of the European
states and the broader political unit.
Extremely interesting and original in Bellers' plan
was the idea of dividing Europe into a hundred
cantons or provinces that would each elect a representative
to a joint European senate. Each canton would
have at least one representative, but for each 1000
inhabitants it would be entitled to an extra representative.
The representation of each state in the Europe
senate would thus depend on the size of its population.
Some see in Bellers' plan the seed of a `Europe of the
Regions' rather than a Europe of nation states.
Being a dedicated Quaker and envoy of the
Christian ethic, Bellers also stressed the importance of
religion as a factory uniting Europe. He reproached
former generations for disrupting the Christian faith
and proposed a general Christian meeting to prevent
the growing fragmentation of the church. According
to him, the Russians are Christians and even the
Muslims are people that cannot be pressed into obedience
by force. A better alternative would be to extend
the peace alliance such as he envisaged to take in
these regions, too. Of the two Quakers, Penn made
more allowance for the political realities in his more
systematic treatise, while Bellers had greater faith in
the constructive power of a common faith (Heater,
1992: 59).
L'ABBÉ DE SAINT-PIERRE AND LASTING PEACE IN
EUROPE
The Projet de traité pours rendre la paix perpetuelle en
Europe by the French Abbé de Saint-Pierre appeared in
1713, i.e. at around the end of the Spanish War of
Succession and the Peace of Utrecht. The plan put
forward by Saint-Pierre was based on recognition of
the status quo in Europe and made no allowance for
The Quest for Peace 53
4 Nationalism,
Federalism and the
United States of
Europe
EDMUND BURKE AND THE EUROPEAN IDEAL
In around 1790, following the outbreak of the French
Revolution, the English political thinker Edmund
Burke wrote a number of works criticizing the new revolutionary
ideals. The new revolutionary Europe was,
to him, tantamount to the downfall of Europe. For
Burke saw Europe as a body in which communal
customs and traditions counted for far more than
rational, economic-judicial factors. In his Reflections on
the Revolution in France (1790) and Thoughts on French
Affairs (1791) he observes that not even the wars
between European states had succeeded in destroying
the sense of affinity. Even at war, the states of Europe
are closer to one another than the peaceful nonEuropean
states. The reason for this, says Burke, must
be sought in the institutions fundamental to all the
nations of Europe: the Christian faith, monarchy rule,
Roman law, similar customs and education. As a consequence
of these mutual ties and way of life, `no citizen
of Europe could be altogether an exile in any part of it
... When a man travelled or resided for health, pleasure,
business or necessity, away from his country, he
never felt himself quite abroad', as his famous saying
goes (quoted in Welsh, 1995: 73).
Europe was for Burke a cultural unit moulded by a
common historical heritage. The various states of
59
Europe were so similar in their customs, morals, laws
and social structures that they could in practice be
regarded as one big nation. In Reflections he defined
religion and the gentlemanly spirit as the pillars supporting
Europe. This Europe had been travelling
towards its present manifestation ever since the downfall
of the Roman Empire. In denying all institutional
and cultural traditions, the French revolutionaries likewise
disputed the very foundations of European policy.
In this sense the Revolution should be compared not to
the political upheavals of earlier centuries in Europe
but to the Reformation, which was the last time in the
history of Europe that the fundamentals of policymaking
had been placed open to doubt. According to
Burke, the reformers of the time had confused politics
with religion and set Europe on fire with their peculiar
secular religion. In just the same way the vulgar and
brutal revolutionaries of his day were destroying the
very core of the European concept (Thompson, 1994).
Burke's picture of European unity was, though
undoubtedly aristocratic, no mere illusion. From the
sixteenth century onwards the educated circles of
Europe had with increasing momentum been envisaging
Europe as a kind of unit bearing strongly positive
value charges. Towards the beginning of the eighteenth
century this feeling of belonging together prevailing
among the European intellectuals, in the
republic of letters, had been growing stronger and
stronger. Montesquieu wrote his Réflexions sur la monarchie
universelle en Europe in 1727, and it was full of references
to European unity, joint trading, political
tolerance, Gothic origin and the like. Nor did
Rousseau, though critical of the means proposed by
l'Abbé de Saint-Pierre for achieving lasting peace in
Europe, dispute the basic fact that the states of Europe
constituted a system united by their religion, laws,
customs, literature and trade in a harmony that was
the inevitable outcome of belonging together.
60 Europe as an Idea
By 1700 the term `Europe' was, especially in the political
thinking of the Protestants, in regular use and had
almost completely replaced the earlier `Christendom'. At
around this time a sense of belonging to Europe, to a
shared continent, can be said to have germinated in at
least the educated urban population of Europe. The
same cannot, however, be said of the rural population,
where literacy was not very widespread and the unit of
identification closest at hand was the local living environment
rather than an abstract Europe shared by all
(Burke, 1980). The Europeanism of the Enlightenment
also differed in one crucial respect from the Christian
humanism represented by Erasmus in which panEuropean
values were to a great extent founded on a
common religion. The idea of a European civilization
developed by Voltaire and other philosophers of the
Enlightenment was, by contrast, fundamentally nonChristian,
and excessive reliance on the Christian tradition
was even regarded as being injurious to the
fostering of a pan-Europeanism (Chabod, 1961: 45­7).
NAPOLEON'S EUROPE AND THE LEGACY OF THE
REVOLUTION
At around the beginning of the eighteenth century, an
interesting tug-of-war was, as regards the European
ideal, waged in Europe between the pre-Revolution
ancien régime and the new Europe envisaged by the
revolutionaries. Napoleon, and others too, saw in
nationalism the spiritual seed of a new Europeanism.
After being defeated at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815
and subsequently deposed, Napoleon reported that his
aim had been to create a European system, a common
European law and supreme court of justice: a single
European people. Had he succeeded, this would
indeed have been a united state in which the traveller
would always have been at home.
The United States of Europe 61