Lectures at the Institute of History

10.02. 2012.

Jean-Pierre Bois, professor emeritus at Université de Nantes, researcher of military history and international relations of early modern Europe, was the guest of the Institute and gave a lecture about the topic of his latest book “La paix ; histoire politique et militaire” (Perrin, 2011).

He outlined the long historical course during which the system of making peace gradually transformed in Europe from the 15^th century until the 19^th, changing from being the “private matter” of monarchs into a complicated process that required the cooperation of several European powers and the emergence of a “ius gentium”. He demonstrated the different notions raised as possible models to reach and maintain (that is, to guarantee) peace in Europe: the idea of the “universal monarch” (roughly in the 15-16^th centuries), then the concept of the “territorial balance” (17-18^th centuries), and after 1815 the image of the “cooperation of nations”. Professor Bois also mentioned different types of early modern theories concerning a kind of European “integration”, which remained theories, but, nonetheless, can be seen as historical “predecessors” of European integration aspirations.