Abstract
In a vintage bookshop in Stockholm, I happened upon a book by fellow Scandinavian Konrad von Schmidt-Phiseldeck. The 1821 bestseller Europa och Amerika is an account of Europe’s place in a multipolar world.1 The book also offers insights into the idea of Europe. The book is all the more interesting since the arrangements put in place after the end of the Napoleonic wars were showing strains. To gain the gift of hindsight it helps to read Henry Kissinger’s A World Restored which covers the same period as a running commentary.2 Schmidt-Phiseldeck favoured a united Europe, but at the same time he was concerned that integration might weaken Europe’s ‘warrior spirit’, its will to power and was concerned how territories beyond Europe might affect the great power concert that guaranteed peace. Schmidt-Phiseldeck was, in addition to his many other accomplishments, a leading foreign policy thinker of his day and his analysis does not come across as quaint; on the contrary they seem highly relevant, if somewhat overly sentimental for the sensitivities of the modern reader.
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Toje, A. (2010). The European Union as a Historical Phenomenon. In: The European Union as a Small Power. Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230281813_3
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