Reassessing the Concept of Peace in the Concert of Europe: A European Model of Security Based upon Cooperation of States against People

Abstract

Concert of Europe was a system that was built for the purpose of maintaining the status quo between the European states and the means by which the system rested were constructed during the course of the Congress of Vienna. The Holy Alliance and the Quadruple Alliance (later Quintet) not only enabled Europe's Great Powers to cooperate in building and maintaining order, but also succeeded in creating common values that would keep cooperation alive. While the liberal and nationalist ideas brought by the French Revolution and spread by Napoleon's campaigns were alive both in European societies and on the political map drawn by Napoleon in 1815, the victorious major powers were aware that the peace was to be established both by the suppression of these ideas and by reformation of the map. For this reason, the absolutist values and structure before the French Revolution formed the reference points that would form the basis of the new peace. This article aims to analyze the peace on which the so-called European Harmony is based, within the framework of international relations literature.