Beatrice de Graaf: ‘Fighting Terror After Napoleon: How Europe Became Secure After 1815’

This month, Cambridge University Press published Fighting Terror after Napoleon: How Europe Became Secure after 1815. This book is an English translation of the book Tegen de terreur: Hoe Europa veilig werd na Napoleon by Beatrice de Graaf that was published in 2018.

The aftermath

After twenty-six years of revolutions and fighting, the victorious powers craved stability after Napoleon’s defeat in 1815 and launched an unprecedented experiment to re-establish European security. With over one million troops remaining in France, they established the Allied Council to mitigate the threat of war and terror and to design and consolidate a system of deterrence. The Council transformed the norm of interstate relations into the first, modern system of collective security in Europe.

Fighting Terror after Napoleon

Drawing on the records of the Council and the correspondence of key figures such as Metternich, Castlereagh, Wellington and Alexander I, De Graaf tells the story of Europe’s transition from concluding a war to consolidating a new order. She reveals how the common denominator behind this first impulse for a unification of Europe in norms and institutions was the collective fight against terror.

• Title: Fighting Terror after Napoleon: How Europe Became Secure after 1815
• Author: Beatrice de Graaf
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• ISBN: 9781108895873