Metternich: Strategist and Visionary
Wolfram Siemann
Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press
928 pages
$39.95

Reviewed by Andrew Roberts

"The legacy of Prince Clemens von Metternich (1773–1859), the Austrian foreign minister from 1809 and also chancellor from 1821 until 1848, has been a hotly debated issue among historians for decades....Siemann does not fall into the common trap of hailing Metternich as the progenitor of the modern European Union. Metternich supported the Holy Roman Empire and the Rhenish Confederation, which Siemann points out were “defensive federal orders” without the territorial ambitions necessary to become a genuine empire, and which were too weak to oppress neighbors. As we have seen from the senior EU official Guy Verhofstadt’s recent statement that “The world of tomorrow is not a world order based on nation-states or countries; it is a world order that is based on empires,” the European Union has far more Napoleonic imperial ambitions than those of the latter-day Holy Roman Empire and the Rhenish Confederation. Because of Metternich’s opposition to expansionist imperial ambition and his support for judging “political constitutions according to their suitability to the state in question,” I put this book down convinced that Metternich would have been a Brexiteer. Whether he would have been or not, Siemann has greatly advanced our knowledge of and admiration for him."

https://newcriterion.com/issues/2019/11/metternichs-strength-in-law