Balance of Power

The rudimentary international law of the Middle Ages was based on the idea that there was a common superior over all States, as the Pope or Emperor, whose commands were to be obeyed in disputes between subordinate states in the family of nations. This idea originated in the universal sovereignty of Imperial Rome. The modern idea of territorial sovereignty was formulated in the great work of Hugo Grotius, De Jure Belli ac Pacis (1625), and its leading principles were formally recognized in the Peace of Westphalia (1648), from which modern international law may be said to have its origin. By this instrument the territorial character of sovereignty and the equality of States in the eye of the law were recognized. The modern doctrine of the Balance of Power has in view the preservation of territorial sovereignty by recognizing the right of interference on the part of the great European powers to check the ambitious designs of great nations which, by the acquisition of territory, would disturb the existing distributions of power among European States. It does not apply to economical and strictly internal growth, nor to colonial establishments, nor to increase in sea power. The preventive policy of this doctrine has been the pretext of the most bloody and destructive wars waged in modern times: thus the balance of power adjusted by the Peace of Westphalia was disturbed by the ambition of Louis XIV.; again by the succe ive coalitions formed by the great European monarchies against France in the revolution of 1789, in which the latter contended for the principle of non-intervention. The Holy Alliance (1815), at first indefinite in purpose. ultimately became a league a league of absolutist sovereigns for putting down by force, if nece ary, all movements in favor of political liberty among Continental States. The general ferment among the populations of Continental States in 1820 giving rise to the revolutions in Spain, Portugal, Naples and Piedmont, was suppre ed by a violation of the principles of non-intervention against which Great Britain properly protested. And the design of the Confederated Sovereigns belonging to the Holy Alliance to reconquer for Ferdinand VII. of Spain the revolted Spanish colonies in America led to the promulgation of the Monroe Doctrine (Dec. 2, 1823), by which the prevailing principle of interference in Europe was met with an opposing principle on this side of the Atlantic. The most memorable instances of the application of the principle of the balance of power in recent times have been the interposition of England, Austria, Pru ia and Ru ia in 1840, which forced Mehemet Ali to renounce the provinces of the Turkish Empire of which he held po e ion, and that of France, England and other powers in 1854 to preserve the integrity of the same empire against the designs of Ru ia.