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Even today, the debate continues between advocates of national sovereignty and those of a deeper European Union. In this inaugural lecture, we will go back well beyond the birth of nation-states, to the intellectual sources of the twin ideas of Peace and Europe, to lay down the vocabulary and grammar of a remarkable philosophical and political controversy. It was during the 18th century that two distinct models of European international order emerged, as an alternative to universal monarchy and as a solution to the fratricidal wars between the continent's states: the balance of power and perpetual peace. This lecture will take us back to the lively debates that preceded and followed the Peace of Utrecht in 1713. In particular, we will examine the emergence of the balance of power doctrine in English political thought at the turn of the 18th century, and how it became a legal clause incorporated into the Peace of Utrecht. We then turn to counter-proposals for perpetual peace projects, from the Abbé de Saint-Pierre to Immanuel Kant, with their key arguments and the objections they raised. We conclude with an examination, based on our own experience, of the soundness of the fundamental intuition that had linked the idea of peace to that of continental unification, noting the questions that had remained unanswered.
