Russia, the concert of Europe and the Near East, 1821--1841: A status quo state in the Vienna system

What explains the era of European peace and cooperation after 1815? My dissertation examines a key case: Russia's moderate policy during the Greek revolution of 1821--29 and the Egyptian crises of 1832--33 and 1838--41. I evaluate these competing explanations for the post-Vienna peace through a detailed analysis of Russian Near Eastern policy in 182--41, drawing on both published sources and Moscow's archives. Russia is often seen as immutably expansionist. But after expanding at Turkey's expense in the 18th century, Petersburg now sought to preserve the Ottoman empire. Why?; Deriving predictions from four influential explanations of the post-Vienna peace, I test them against fine-grained historical evidence. I find that neither lessons from the revolutionary and Napoleonic eras nor the Concert of Europe greatly restrained Russian officials after 1825. Western deterrence mattered more, but it too fails to explain Russian moderation at key junctures. Russia's new restraint also reflected its rulers' conservatism and contentment with the status quo. Earlier conquests in the 18th century had made security-motivated expansion less attractive, and neither Alexander I nor Nicholas I shared their predecessors' dreams of imperialist glory.; My findings thus bear out Henry Kissinger's thesis that the post-Vienna peace rested on both a balance of power and the great powers' contentment. The offensive realist notion that all states practice opportunistic expansion is wrong. There are status quo states, and in post-Vienna Europe Russia was one of them. My findings indicate the need for an international order that all great powers consider reasonably satisfactory, and suggest that the West may be acting foolishly in running roughshod over Russia today.