sovereignty of that state, not acts of surrender. Construe them as such, and all the foundation for their future authority is destroyed. What the state has done is to perform a permanent action of sovereign power, to achieve a perpetual act of sovereignty, as when an individual chooses to become a lawyer or teacher or member of some other profession or association. Other states have done the same thing, and these simultaneous acts bring into existence as a joint product a federal league wherein are funded and exercised for the future the united sovereign powers of all the constituent states.

At times it appears that it is precisely this process of practical coöperation which is really opposed by the supporters of the doctrine of state sovereignty; sometimes it seems that the doctrine is used merely to cloak with an ideal moral value a policy of opposition to international coöperation, of national action for immediate and exclusive national advantage. For this reason it has seemed necessary to argue the case on the issue of national sovereignty. It might occur to some students of the problem that if the advantages and benefits of international organization in the concrete are such as to justify its adoption, then any conflict which is apparent between such a step and the preservation of national sovereignty shows that the latter is a useless, and even harmful, doctrine. As we have seen, however, neither the violation of national sovereignty by others nor the voluntary surrender of sovereignty by the state itself is involved in the creation of a federal union. The original agreement, on the contrary, preserves, during the term of its life, the sovereignty of the state which enters the league.

CHAPTER XXIV

EMPIRE, DEFENSIVE ALLIANCES, AND THE BALANCE OF POWER

A

T the beginning of this study the development of the European state-system previous to 1648 was reviewed and the state-system of 1648 was described as the foundation for the slow growth of international organization from that time onward. It is now desirable to review briefly the principal events in the development of the modern state-system between 1648 and 1918, as a foundation for a study of attempts to create a new and more elaborate international organization for the future. We shall begin with a review of attempts at empire since the Renaissance.

During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, as has been seen, there was a lull in the story. The Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire had been shattered, and no other imperial structures had risen to take their places. The new national states of Western Europe were still busy consolidating, or attempting to consolidate, their internal strength for the new age. England was passing through the Wars of the Roses, after having been forced, as a result of the Hundred Years War, to withdraw from her continental possessions in France. France herself was slowly recuperating from the long struggle with England, and Louis XI was engaged in the final attempt to exclude Charles of Burgundy from interference in the kingdom. Germany was in a state of anarchy. The historic effort to erect imperial structures by military force was left to be resumed anew by other states in other quarters of Europe.2

Chaps. II-IV, above.

'On the state-system of Europe in this period see Schevill, 11-24.

From the ancient seat of the Eastern Roman Empire came the first modern imperial movement, under the leadership of the Ottoman Turks. Capturing Constantinople in 1453, the Turks added to their older possessions in Asia Minor new conquests in Syria and Northern Africa and great stretches of Southeastern Europe up to the very gates of Vienna. The Ottoman Empire did, indeed, begin to lose ground after the great period of Sulieman the Magnificent (1520-1566). Various territories were lost to foreign powers,-Hungary to Austria in 1699, Tripoli to Italy in 1912, Egypt to Great Britain in 1914. Others were lost as the result of movements for national independence -Greece in 1830, Serbia in 1878, and so on. Nevertheless, in 1918 the Ottoman state was still great in its extent and of the typical imperial form.1

To the north of the Turkish domains rose the Russian Empire, beginning at Moscow, the ancient seat of the family of Romanoff, as a center, and spreading gradually in all directions, partly by the process of natural growth, but also largely by means of military conquest. As Byzantium had claimed to succeed Rome after the barbarian invasions in the West, so Russia claimed to succeed Byzantium, after the Turkish conquest, as the legitimate seat of the Church and the Empire. Ivan IV, "the Terrible," formally took the imperial title of Tsar (Cæsar) in 1547. Bordering peoples in Finland, Poland, Ukrania, Georgia, and central Asia were brought under subjection to a despotic imperial power which stretched over vast areas of territory and millions of subjects until well into 1918.2

The only other empire in existence in 1918 of a similar type was the British. Having recovered her power in the later sixteenth century, Britain began to establish herself

On the rise and development of the Turkish Empire see Thorndike, 554559, Schevill, 13, 14 (note 1), 42, 43, 59, 64-65, and Maps Nos. 1, 4-8, and Shepherd, 93, 124, 164.

'On the development of the Russian Empire see Schevill, 215-229, 400-407, and Shepherd, 138, 170.

in America, in India, in Africa and Australasia. Long before the Congress of Vienna, and reaching down to our own day, her power extended into all the five continents and all the seven seas. It must be clearly noted, however, that Britain differed greatly from Turkey and Russia in the methods pursued in achieving empire, although, superficially, the result was the same. In a few cases-South Africa and Ireland among them-the method of conquest was employed. But the bulk of the British imperial dominions came by movements of exploration and settlement of not only an innocent but an admirable type. More important, so far as the result is concerned, Great Britain had, in 1918, gone far to develop schemes of local autonomy within the Empire calculated ultimately to destroy the normal effect of empire upon the state system of the world. Finally, the British Empire has been a maritime empire, composed, not of subject continental states, but of transoceanic colonies, and has thereby constituted less of a threat to the European state-system than would otherwise have been the case.1

Another empire of the same type was that of Spain prior to the time of Charles V. As a result of the work of her explorers and colonizers, Spain gained dominion over vast areas in the Americas and in further Asia. These she held more or less firmly until well into the nineteenth century. But it was not for her transmaritime colonies that Spain was regarded as a threat to the liberties of European states. In the last century even those colonies were lost, to take their places in the modern state-system in their own names.2

The real dangers to the liberties of the European states in the past four centuries have come principally from two

On the development of the British Empire see Schevill, 163-199, 248-263, and Shepherd, 128, 136, 170. On devolution in the Empire with reappearance of independent states see Keith, Imperial Unity, entire, especially 510-529; also works cited, below, Appendix B, § 24.

On the Spanish Empire see Schevill, 21-22, 59-67, 102-116, and Shepherd, 128, 136.

other sources. Russia and Turkey threatened and subjugated only peoples who were, relatively, backward in their growth and who dwelt upon the fringes of Europe. Britain and Spain built empires beyond the seas. In the main, it was not these, but other, imperial efforts which were the objects of resistance on the part of the nations seeking to preserve their freedom. The imperial menace in the heart of Europe in recent times came from Austria, from Germany, and from France.

The Hapsburg Charles I of Spain, heir to the domains of Ferdinand and Isabella, was chosen in 1519, as Charles V, to rule over the Holy Roman Empire.1 The Empire had recovered some unity and power under his immediate predecessors, and Charles claimed to rule over not only Spain and her world-wide colonies, but the Empire in Central Europe, the Netherlands, Naples, and Sicily. From this time onward for four centuries the house of Hapsburg maintained its claim to imperial power. The Protestant Reformation in Germany made upon the imperial unity deep inroads which ended only in the Peace of Augsburg and the failure and abdication of Charles in 1555 and 1556; but his son Philip II of Spain took up the task in Spain, and his brother Ferdinand in Central Europe. Until the defeat of the Armada the Spanish effort threatened to be successful, and the Austrian Hapsburgs built up an empire in the valley of the Danube which held in subjection Poles and Czechs, Magyars and Rumanians, Italians and Southern Slavs, down to the end of 1918.2

The French threats to European national liberty were made under two great rulers, Louis XIV and Napoleon. The former, during the years from 1667 to 1714, attempted to conquer additional dominions for France in the Netherlands and in the valley of the Rhine. More important still,

1 See table in Schevill, 435.

"On the Hapsburg Empire see Schevill, 40-41, 43-46, 141-160, and elsewhere, and Shepherd, 119, 131, 155, 167.