William Penn’s Plan for a United Europe

Towards the end of the 17th century the political landscape of Europe was dominated by France. England was still recovering from its civil wars and the upheaval that followed Cromwell’s Protectorate. The Restoration of 1660 had ultimately failed to keep the Stuarts on the throne and, with William of Orange’s accession and the beginning of the Nine Years’ War in 1688, Europe again faced conflict. The previous wars fought under Louis XIV were aimed at French expansion, but in 1688 the tables turned for the Sun King as the Nine Years’ War became a struggle to reinforce French security and the status quo rather than a war of conquest. 

It was at the height of this conflict, in 1693, that William Penn (1644-1718) wrote An Essay towards the Present and Future Peace of Europe by the Establishment of an European Dyet, Parliament, or Estates. He sought an alternative to the existing, unstable balance of power system and the constant struggle between the different dynastic claims.

Penn’s Essay draws a parallel between the lawless state of nature described by Thomas Hobbes and interstate relations. Both scenarios require an arbiter or sovereign who would be able to resolve conflicts or enforce laws. Penn argued that the sovereign princes of Europe should, for the love of peace and order: 

Agree to meet by their stated deputies in a General Dyet, Estates or Parliament, and there Establish Rules of Justice for Soveraign Princes to observe one to another; and ... before which Soveraign Assembly, should be brought all Differences depending between one Soveraign and another ... Europe would quietly obtain the so much desired and needed Peace. 

Penn addressed the structural problem that can, according to Hobbesian logic, be resolved only by the creation of sovereign power, but this time on an international level. The question was not whether European states would be prepared to renounce a considerable degree of their sovereignty. For him, this was a necessity in their own interest. Penn’s main point was that without a federal structure that creates and legitimises a sovereign power on a higher level, there can be no reliable peace in Europe.

For Penn it was a given that such a federation should be established. Retaining full sovereignty at the state level and refusing to delegate powers would perpetuate conflict to the detriment of future prosperity in Europe, of which he considered England an essential part. His commitment to the creation of a new sovereign body is a radical early modern plan for European union. According to Penn, it should have the authority to compel members of the association who might not accept its ruling on potential conflicts. The envisaged union would even allow the use of force against non-compliant member states. 

Penn described in detail the different institutions he envisaged in order to make a unified Europe work. There was no special deal for any of the associated states which, as far as Penn was concerned, was the only realistic way forward to avoid future conflicts and to ensure political and economic prosperity in Europe. It was an Englishman who formulated such far-reaching plans for unifying Europe by establishing a constitutional framework.

Two apparently similar proposals, Some Reasons for an European State, proposed to the Powers of Europe by John Bellers (1654-1725) and the Projet pour rendre la Paix perpétuelle en Europe (‘Project for Settling an Everlasting Peace in Europe’) by the Abbé de Saint-Pierre (1658-1743), were written towards the end of the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-14) and can be seen as closely related to the concerns raised by Penn. Like his friend Penn, Bellers was a Quaker. Unlike Penn’s and the Abbé’s writings, though, his short pamphlet does not engage in a systematic evaluation of how to organise a federative constitution for Europe and neither does it spell out the different institutions. He only drew the parallel to the English union with Scotland, which in his mind demonstrated sufficiently that Europe could achieve the same unity. According to Bellers, Queen Anne should ‘use Her endeavours for Uniting the Powers of Europe in one peaceable Settlement’. Although he also touched upon the need for a federal jurisdiction and arbitration between the European states, his argument seems to lack the institutional details and persuasive force of both Penn and the Abbé. 

Bellers tried to influence the war aims of the allied powers ranged against France. His appeal to interest and utility is mixed with ethical and moral claims but, like Penn and later the Abbé, his proposal was that: 

At the next General Peace, there should be settled an Universal Guarantee, an Annual Congress, Senate, Dyet, or Parliament, by all the Princes and States of Europe, as well Enemies, as Neuters, joyned as one State, with the renouncing of all Claims upon each other, with such Articles of Agreement as may be needful for a Standing European Law.

When the Abbé’s Projet first appeared in English translation in 1714, Bellers commented: ‘The many Advantages of an European State and Senate, are excellently well discoursed of, by the Abbot St. Pierre, of the French Academy’. Facing the dilemma that the sovereigns of the European states jealously guarded their prerogatives, the Abbé reformulated the problems already identified by Penn and Bellers. The main concern was to make the European heads of state realise that there was no alternative to a federal European structure, which would only work if it were endowed with a fair amount of power-sharing and working institutions able to arbitrate conflicts between its members. 

As to an arbiter for this system of European states under the rule of law, the Abbé envisaged a European union or federation with representative institutions in the form of a permanent congress and law court. The arbiter was, therefore, not conceived as a single person or individual sovereign. European monarchs were asked to give up some of their power:

It is absolutely necessary that they [the states] agree to provide sufficient means to give arbitration sufficient strength to execute the general laws and particular judgements. The sword is no less necessary for justice, than the scales, laws and judgements ... which would be useless if arbitration had not the power to execute them. We have to make sure that no one could be tempted to resist the force of arbitration. 

The challenge was, on the one hand, to establish an arbiter empowered with sufficient authority and powers of coercion and, on the other hand, to ensure that such an arbiter would not misuse this power and thus threaten the liberties of the contracting states. A federative structure of states was the Abbé’s answer to this challenge. A political body based on federative principles would allow for the establishment of a sufficiently strong arbiter but still respect the rights and liberties of the contracting parties. 

Faced with the demand to share their political privileges with newly established political institutions, the European heads of state preferred instead to continue their pursuit of dynastic and increasingly national interest. Penn and Bellers had little influence on English political and intellectual life. Even the Abbé’s own detailed plan for peace was for a long time considered an eccentric and unrealistic idea. Voltaire’s acid criticism exemplifies this negative view. Under the telling pseudonym of Dr Goodheart, Voltaire published his De la Paix perpétuelle in 1769 in which he attacked the Abbé:

The peace imagined by a Frenchman named Abbé de Saint-Pierre is a chimera which will never survive between princes any more than between elephants and rhinoceroses, between wolves and dogs. Carnivorous animals always tear each other apart at the first opportunity.

Criticism of a European union aimed at creating a federal structure in order to provide a constitutional framework for peace and prosperity is nothing new. What seems to have been forgotten is that these ideas were formulated in England some time before they gained traction in Continental Europe.

Peter Schröder is Senior Lecturer in History at University College London.