The topsy-turvy and complicated revolutionary politics of the late eighteenth century is nowhere better illustrated than in the history of Geneva. Intermittent popular rebellion erupted in 1707, the 1730s, the 1760s, the early 1780s and 1790s. This led to speculation about whether the Protestant Rome would meet its end through civil war. Alternatively, one of its rapacious and imperially-minded neighbors, the monarchies of France or Savoy, might devour the republic, ensuring that Geneva followed so many of the continent’s lesser states into oblivion. This chapter provides an overview of the history of Geneva and explains its role in the Age of Revolutions especially through the events of 1782, which saw a popular rebellion put down by invading troops from France, Savoy, and Bern. A significant exile diaspora followed. Some of the exiles who advocated republicanism at Geneva opposed it in France. Although revolution could be attempted at Geneva, this did not mean it would work elsewhere. The age of revolutions was full of fractures, with political stances complicated by the legacy of small state failure and the inability of revolutionaries to establish stable states capable of defending themselves militarily.

The relevance of history

Nick Rengger had a vision of the practice of international relations (IR) transformed by engagement with intellectual historians and political philosophers. What this entailed in full never became clear because of his early death. That there was a mission and a vision is clear from the chapters here collected. How would Rengger have responded to them? ‘My goodness,’ he can be heard saying, ‘I had no idea I was so interesting.’ Unquestionably, he would have been delighted, honoured, and stimulated, the latter especially because of the critical tone taken by so many of the engagements with his work. He might well have asserted, in response to negative commentary upon his last book The Anti-Pelagian Imagination, that it needed to be seen in the same way that Jean-Jacques Rousseau saw his Contrat social of 1762, which is to say that it was altogether unfinished, part of a longer work entitled Institutions politiques, and that therefore readers needed to wait for the culminating volume tying everything together. The tragedy of course, in the case of both Rousseau and Rengger, is that neither work will ever be completed.

What would Rengger most have appreciated? First, the engagement with his own claims with a view to their refinement through the work of fellowtravelling luminaries, such as Gillian Rose; texts Rengger was committed to but rarely cited, such as Max Weber’s ‘Politics as a vocation’; and work he would have drawn much from, such as the New Right theorist Alain de Benoist. Second, the attempts to work out how far perceived holes in his argument were due to a mis-reading of the greatest influence upon him, Michael Oakeshott, or indeed mistaken evaluations of the work of those he ultimately termed Pelagians and anti-Pelagians alike. Third, the making of his own philosophy and its practical implications both plainer and sharper as a potential research tool, specifically by developing Rengger’s ideas about prudence and judgement. Finally, working out more clearly what he was actually arguing and what the implications of his arguments might be.

If Rengger would have acknowledged these chapters as a fitting tribute to the work he had undertaken, admired the scholarship in evidence and the eminence of the commentators, he would part-jokingly have asked what a mere intellectual historian was doing in their midst.

Burke’s Fears for the Future of Europe.

Scholars of Burke’s writings have sometimes seen his engagement with the French Revolution, towards the end of his life, to have been an ‘unkindness of fate’, on the grounds that a person ‘who has all his life surrounded himself with a mental paradise of order and equilibrium and belief’ was forced to confront its antithesis. Such an interpretation correlates with a view of the eighteenth century, and of Britain above any other country, as being characterised largely by equipoise, calm, and order. Burke was laying the foundations for Victorian self-confidence, and was on the side of progress in defining and defending the British constitution, and more particularly the manners it rested upon, as the great bastion against immoderation and excess, whether in the form of atheistic or democratical enthusiasm. Yet Burke’s fears about the future, and the future of Europe especially, antedated 1789. Like Gibbon too, he had long been worried about the instability of Europe, because of the gap between the military strength of small and large states, which rested in turn upon the economic ability of bigger states to exploit large markets and to create a public debt, on the basis of anticipated income from taxation, that provided revenues for war. Aspiring imperial powers, always likened to Rome, germinated in such soil, and explained events like the partition of Poland by Prussia, Russia, and Austria in 1772. The event had exercised Burke in a letter to the scion of a prominent Prussian family in 1774, and represented one of many laments for the prospects of Europe’s small states. Burke called Poland ‘but a breakfast’ (C, II: 512–14).

Providing an intellectual identity for William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne and his Bowood Circle, has become something of a parlour game for interested historians. The first problem is Shelburne's character. How could someone with such an antagonizing personality sustain a coherent group of any kind? Edmund Burke's comments about Shelburne's character in public and in private were vitriolic, but widely seconded by many who came into contact with him. Shelburne was likened to Gabriel Malagrida, the plot- ting Portuguese Jesuit who was found guilty of involvement in a plot to assassinate King Jose I at Lisbon in 1758. It is significant that such a characterization was traced back to Shelburne's sometime friend John Wilkes. The second problem is that when the range of possible members is considered, it becomes easy to find divisions. A further difficulty is that members of Shelburne's entourage often themselves had interests in other political groupings of the time, and sometimes in consequence supplied conflicting advice concerning political conduct. A final difficulty is that Shelburne was notoriously vague in self-expression. The best-known example concerned British relations with North America. Shelburne considered himself a friend to North America but avowed on numerous occasions his opposition to the independence of the United States. When he finally accepted the inevitability of separation his self-justifications and tortuous claims to have been consistent amused his enemies and confused his friends.