Julius Landesberger on Michele di Gisira’s L’equilibrio europeo (1890)

Julius Landesberger’s brief scholarly review examines Gisira’s habilitation study of the European balance of power in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century treaties. He presents its central question as the role of equilibrium both in prompting treaties and in determining their contents. The underlying distinction is between establishing legal foundations for international relations and advancing dynastic interests: the strengthening absolutist state pursued chiefly the latter.

The review moves from the study’s academic purpose and limited treatment of international law to its historical interpretation, omissions, and overall value. Gisira identifies treaties, alliances, and leagues that count as sources of international law, but concentrates on political change from the late fifteenth century through the age of Louis XIV. Landesberger characterizes this cabinet politics as a reduction of European political life to a mechanical balance among ruling houses: each dynasty’s bid for supremacy provoked the coalition of the others.

His praise for the study’s interpretive novelty is specific but undeveloped:

Es bietet das Werkehen diesfalls einige interessante neue Gesichtspunkte, vornehmlich für das Zeitalter Karl's V.

English translation: In this respect the little work offers some interesting new points of view, chiefly for the age of Charles V.

Landesberger does not explain these new perspectives. His substantive reservation instead concerns what the balance-of-power framework leaves insufficiently explored:

Zu bedauern wäre blos, dass der Verfasser auf hochbedeutsame Triebfedern der europäischen Politik, so insbesondere die Hoffnungen des Hauses Oesterreich auf die spanische Erbschaft und dessen damit zusammenhängende, weltgeschichtliche Stellung zu den religiösen Fragen, nicht genügend Bedacht nahm und von seinem Standpunkt aus vielleicht nicht nehmen konnte.

English translation: It would only be regrettable that the author did not take sufficient account of highly significant mainsprings of European politics, in particular the hopes of the House of Austria for the Spanish inheritance and its connected, world-historical position on the religious questions, and from his standpoint perhaps could not take account of them.

This criticism links dynastic succession to religious politics, suggesting that Gisira’s standpoint may itself constrain the explanation. Landesberger thus values the organizing clarity of equilibrium while questioning its adequacy to the historical forces operating through it. His concluding judgment remains favorable: historians gain useful material, scholars of public law a stimulating reading, and both benefit from concise prose that makes a dense body of events intelligible. The review’s significance lies in this measured distinction between a clear account of diplomatic alignments and a fuller explanation of their dynastic and religious motives.