Order in the Age of Great Power Politics
Chapter 4 (“Order in the Age of Great Power Politics”) assesses the first three cases of order change opportunity. In two of these instances—the Westphalian settlements after the Thirty Years’ War in 1648 and the peace of Utrecht following the War of the Spanish Succession in 1713—the great power victors of these conflicts seized their opportunity to reshape order, while in one—the end of the Seven Years’ War in 1763—they did not. The chapter demonstrates that the logic of excluding introduced in chapter 3 best explains dominant-actors’ preferences and behaviors in these moments. When these states perceived no major threats on the horizon—in 1763—they were content to focus on the particularities of the recent war and its peace settlement rather than recasting larger order principles. But in the presence of looming threatening forces, the dominant actors of 1648 and 1713 sought larger and more fundamental order changes that went far beyond the particular issues of the day.