The Peace of Utrecht

APR 11 1713 · 12:00

Allegory on the Peace of Utrecht, 1713, ending the War of the Spanish Succession. Place: Utrecht, United Provinces of the Netherlands Figures: Louis XIV of France, defeated · Anne of Great Britain · Philip V of Spain, contested heir · the Habsburg emperor refusing to sign The War of the Spanish Succession Louis XIV's grandson takes the Spanish throne in 1700. The prospect that Bourbon France and Bourbon Spain might fuse, controlling the Iberian peninsula, the Spanish Netherlands, much of Italy, and the Spanish overseas empire, is intolerable to England, the Dutch Republic, and the Habsburg Emperor. The Grand Alliance forms; war begins in 1701. Eleven years of European-and-Atlantic war end inconclusively. France is exhausted; Philip V retains Spain but renounces his French inheritance and his heirs' French inheritance. The alliance cannot dislodge him; he cannot count on French support to expand. Balance as Treaty Principle Utrecht does something Westphalia had implied but not stated. Article II of the Anglo-French treaty formalizes balance of power as the explicit guiding principle of European peace. The signatories commit to maintain an equilibrium so that no single power can dominate the others. The Westphalian principle of sovereign equality is now operationalized as a method: alliances will form against any state that grows too strong. The cost: Spain's overseas empire begins to fragment (Gibraltar and Minorca to Britain, the asiento slave-trading monopoly to Britain, Sicily to Savoy, the Spanish Netherlands to Austria). Britain emerges as the principal maritime power. The British century begins, on terms that explicitly maintain Westphalian sovereign equality among European states while consolidating Britain's edge outside Europe. Video: The war that produced Utrecht and the explicit codification of balance-of-power as treaty principle.