Journal Article

From the Vienna to the Paris System: International Politics and the Entangled Histories of Human Rights, Forced Deportations, and Civilizing Missions

Weitz, Eric D.

2008

Overview

Weitz argues for a fundamental shift in political conceptions in the last third of the nineteenth century: from traditional diplomacy to population politics, from mere territorial adjustments to the handling of entire population groups defined in terms of ethnicity, nationality, or race--in short, from the Vienna to the Paris system. He examines two transnational regions, the borderlands of Eastern Europe and Africa, as the main sites of this transition. The history he recounts shows that the origins of new standards of human rights were more problematic than one normally assumes, for thinking about populations in terms of protecting threatened groups and their rights also entailed the very same kinds of thinking that enabled and indeed promoted forced deportations. He concludes that while post-World War II human rights have largely been individualistic in orientation, the widely touted notion of self-determination, based on the concept of population homogeneity, points to the aftereffects of the Paris system continuing into the twenty-first century.

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press,The University of Chicago Press,Oxford University Press
• Subject: 19th century / Area studies / Austria / Borders / Citizenship / Deportation / Diplomacy / Ethnicity / France / Genocide / Historical analysis / Historical perspectives / Historiography / History / Homogeneity / Human rights / International agreements / International politics / Ottoman Empire / Peace treaties / Politics / Post World War II period / Race / Self concept / Self determination / Social history / Sovereignty / Treaties / World wars