Phantom Terror: Political Paranoia and the Creation of the Modern State, 1789-1848

This is a book about a paranoia. After the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Era, the powers that met in Vienna the establish the settlement of 1815 tried to turn back the clock. But the conservative governments clearly lacked confidence that they had achieved a stable solution, and in hindsight they had good reason to doubt it. Adam Zamoyski tells the story of their fears, their attempts at policing and repression, and their tendency to hypnotise themselves with lurid conspiracy theories.

It is an account that strips many of the protagonists of their dignity. Metternich emerges not as a diplomatic genius, but as an increasingly irrational statesman, constantly panicking at small incidents and derided for it by his more cool-headed show more colleagues. The drift into mysticism of Czar Alexander and his growing belief in his own martyrdom is described mercilessly, and his successor does not get any clemency either. Zamoyski's study of the police archives delivers a large list of ridiculous accusations and absurd conspiracies.

Zamoyski believes that the fears of conservative governments were misguided because there was no grand international conspiracy to overthrow the existing order, nor a comité directeur in Paris to lead it. But the stark reality was that they were sitting on a volcano, or, as the British government described it to Metternich, a "pressure vessel without a safety valve", they just misjudged what the threat was. A later generation of historians and theoreticians would start to think in terms of the great impersonal forces of history and the evolution of society, which would ultimately sweep away the absolute monarchies of Europe. Most of the statesmen of 1815 had not learnt to think in these terms. Confronted with the forces of nationalism, liberalism and socialism that would ultimately defeat them, they struggled to give them a face, and in doing so they often fell victim to conspiracy theories.

For the modern reader too, the lack of clear protagonists and antagonists makes the story confusing. Zamoyski describes the ebb and flow of popular opinion, the interactions of movements and counter-movements. He occasionally devotes longer sections of text to particularly important personalities (such as Metternich and Alexander), but on the whole this is the story of a society on the boil, with its bubbles, turbulence and steam. It is hard to get a clear view and some sections of the book are, in consequence, rather dull. Others are hilarious. (I'm still inclined to recommend Mike Duncan's excellent Revolutions podcast, which among its many chapters also includes sections on the revolutions of 1830, 1848, and 1871. It's really good and very entertaining.)

Ultimately, the book is somewhat lacking in theme and conclusion. Zamoyski in his own conclusions merely argues that the climate of conservative repression that beset Europe in the late 19th century was harmful. It's hard to dispute that, but still a somewhat weak conclusion about the emerging police state. show less

This books demonstrates that political misinformation was almost as abundant 200 years ago as it is today, at least in some circles. The author describes how various notable politicians of the early 19th century - especially Metternich in Austria and tsars Alexander and Nikolai in Russia - were so deeply shaken by the French revolution that their fear of history repeating itself lasted for decades.

The most interesting part of the story is that even though no real threat actually existed, the surveillance machinery which monitored signs of new uprisings (and was incentivized to discover them) mass-produced false accusations and reports. This misinformation heightened and perpetuated the concerns of leaders which feared the empowerment show more of the people more than anything else. In the afterword of the book the author puts it nicely: "the unnecessary repression of moderate liberal tendencies arrested the natural development of European society and helped create a culture of control of the individual by the state".

So the story is certainly interesting, but the book is a bit too long at 500 pages. The narrative seems to pass around the same circles again and again. It recounts how this or that political leader was afraid of upheaval, how he collected information through a terribly incompetent and biased filter, and how he then made bad decisions which had catastrophic consequences for more or less randomly selected innocent citizens. I would have liked to see the author occasionally take a few steps back from the details of who-said-what to provide some kind of bird's-eye view of the underlying system of government. show less

A history of conservative/reactionary claims about the dangers posed by revolutionaries, or reformers who they saw as revolutionaries. Presents this as a feedback loop, where repression stems from fantasy but, almost inevitably, generates more resistance—or what looks like resistance—as the state strengthens in response.

Horrible. The author may be an eminent historian, but this book goes nowhere and proves nothing, except that governments are idiots when it comes to their own security. I have read about 130 pages of this tripe and I am done with it. The problem is that the topic does not lend itself to a normal
historical treatment, and this isn't one.