De prijs van de vrede: De Nederlandse inbreng in het Europees Concert, 1815-1818

Abstract

After the Vienna Congress in 1815, the Allied ministers did not return home, but continued their negotiations in Paris. They deliberated on the measure of reparation payments and arrear payments that France owed to the other European states. The new peace also rested on financial securities. The United Kingdom of the Netherlands assumed a large part in these conferences, since through the mass of private claims it was France’s largest creditor. In this article we demonstrate how, as one of the essentials of the new concert diplomacy of 1815, smaller powers such as the Netherlands were allowed to weigh in on the Four Powers’ deliberations in Paris. The political conundrums regarding these financial securities and reparationshave not been charted and analysed before. Through previously unstudied sources,such as the minutes of the Paris Ministerial Conference, we discuss the influence a secondary power could exert provided they deployed smart financial experts. Under that condition large political and financial gains could be made.