NOTE: The following is intended as background for players whose characters have some interest and expertise in the area of politics. If you do not think your character would know much about politics, then you may skip this piece. Of course, if, over the course of the game, you find you need to become better informed about political matters, you need only approach your host or hostess, and one of us will be very happy to give you in-character answers to your questions.
Statesmen and political leaders thought somewhat differently about power and politics than politicians today. Priorities were different because the very terms in which statesmen thought were different. I do not intend here to deal with the specific political issues that statesmen wrangled with at the Congress of Vienna � that will be material for another posting. Rather, I hope to identify a few key areas in which the ways early-19th century politicians' thought differed from the strategic thinking of today, so that players playing political leaders or characters interested in politics might have some guidelines for accurate role-playing. As in everything that we send, the information below is intended as a guide, not a prescription � don't fret about getting all the details precisely right. This is, after all, about having fun!
What it means to be a powerful state
Today, political leaders define power in a variety of different ways � economic or cultural, as well as military. In the early 19th century, though, there was still a single simple definition of a powerful state: a state capable of winning wars. The capacity to wage successful war was the prime characteristic of a powerful state, and when national leaders talked about increasing their state's power, they really meant the ability to wage a war successfully.
What factors, then, were considered essential for a state successfully to wage war? Several factors were considered crucial: manpower for the army, gold to pay the soldiers, resources to manufacture weapons, and strategically located territory from which to launch attacks or to defend against them. The geopolitical decisions of the great powers were always informed by these needs; countries always tried to get more of all these things, while preventing their rivals from doing so.
This way of thinking had a dramatic effect on the way European states conducted their foreign policy. Since the conclusion of the Thirty Years' War in 1648, warfare in Europe had been conducted on a limited scale, for specific and concrete goals of territory. Acquiring more territory gave a state more manpower for its army. Particularly desirable territory also had natural resources on it, or a strategic position that gave a state an advantage over a rival. Thus, Napoleon was viewed with such horror by the other leaders of Europe because, in their eyes, he rejected the notion of pragmatic, limited warfare conducted by professional armies, in favor of wide-scale wars of total conquest conducted by national armies driven by patriotic fervor and with the intent, ostensibly, of overthrowing the established political order in conquered territories.
These ideas also had a dramatic effect on economic policy. Most states (England was the greatest exception, and we'll talk about them below) still followed a policy of mercantilism. That is to say, a policy of extreme protectionism that emphasized self-sufficiency and a positive balance of payments over free trade. It was considered crucial by the mercantilists to keep gold and silver in the country, so it could be used to fund wars. A state with a rich treasury was a powerful state, in this view. For these states, colonies served mainly as sources of natural resources and as protected markets for the home state.
These ideas were beginning to be challenged, though. Adam Smith, the Scottish economist, published Wealth of Nations in 1776. Smith challenged the idea that wealth was best measured by gold in the treasury. Rather, Smith argued, wealth was best measured by the state's capacity to produce goods. Production was the key to wealth. Moreover, Smith argued that production was spurred by trade and competition (the law of supply and demand, and "the invisible hand of the marketplace"), so mercantilist policies that limited trade actually hampered the growth of a state's real wealth. By the Congress of Vienna, English politicians, and the more liberal and enlightened continental statesmen, had begun to accept these ideas. England, for example, had made great use of subsidies (payments to other states in the anti-Napoleon coalitions), which its commercial interests made possible. Nonetheless, these ideas were still regarded as new and therefore suspect by the majority of conservative European statesmen.
For most politicians, the following summary served as the general guidelines of their policy-making:
A final note on nationalism
I have specifically avoided using the term "nation" above in referring to the Great Powers at the Congress of Vienna. While some of the great powers in Europe, Britain and France in particular, had developed a strong sense of patriotism and national identity, many other great powers were not, technically speaking, nations at all, but rather empires. The monarchs of both Russia and Austria, for example, ruled over vast multi-ethnic domains where loyalty was not to a particular "nation," but rather to the dynasty that ruled there. Prussia was itself an odd case � it was a German nation swimming in a larger and very disorganized group of German states. During the Napoleonic Wars, Prussia developed a very strong sense of national patriotism in reaction against French aggression against their country; but many Prussians also developed a strong sense of German ethnic identity that transcended borders. Other ethnic groups, such as the Poles, Italians, and even the Germans, had aspirations to a nation-state, but conservative leaders in the Congress (which was most of them) were strongly disinclined to give any hope to this potentially disruptive and destabilizing idea.