Embarrassing Paranoia: Review of Phantom Terror

Book Review of Phantom Terror: Political Paranoia and the Creation of the Modern State by Adam Zamoyski

Napoleon banished to St. Helena. The House of Bourbon restored to the throne of France. By the end of 1815 it seemed the forces of reaction had won. Ever since the French Revolution was inaugurated in 1789, Europe had been gripped by Revolution, the thrones and alters of Europe struggling for their very survival. Now after over two decades of unprecedented conflict, the ancien regime looked to have triumphed against all odds.

But the Victory was only a phantom.

The Hundred Days had more than proved it and all the thrones and alters of Europe knew it. The Revolution had been defeated on the battlefield, but this meant it only receded into the shadows. A new terror swept Europe, one of secret societies and hidden networks bent on bloody Revolution.

To stop these malevolent forces from initiating another two decades of bloodshed, the forces of Reaction, embodied by men like Metternich and Tsar Alexander, established the edifice of modern police states.

This period of reactionary ascendency from 1815-1848 is what Adam Zamoyski, British historian and Polish noble, primarily covers in Phantom Terror: Political Paranoia and the Creation of the Modern State 1789-1848. A sprawling work, Zamoyski covers the repressive steps taken by governments in not only historical favorites of Great Britain, France and the German states, but includes in his sweep Spain, the Italian States, Austria Hungary and most importantly to the period, Russia.

We see in his work, how the Concert of Europe, inaugurated at the Congress of Vienna, took shape and functioned in its first decades, not necessarily as a tool to balance material national interests via diplomacy, but as a Holy Alliance of Thrones to crush pan-European Revolutionaries. Zamoyski remains relatively even keeled throughout his work, but it is clear his sympathies lay with the liberal principles espoused by the early 19th Century Revolutionaries.

He regularly labels repressive measures, such as monitoring mail or the formation of secret police, as the result of a demented almost fanatic paranoia which saw any criticism of government as seditious and originating from secret societies hell bent on inaugurating another Reign of Terror. It is true that many fears of seditious secret societies were overblown and often did lead to darkly comical, even cartoonish, situations, such as when Metternich dragged an emaciated run of the mill Italian political prisoner into his personal office for interrogation regarding a secret Pan-European Revolutionary sect headquartered in Paris; equivalent today of the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom interrogating an Israeli student activist on the Elder Protocols of Zion.

But for every spectacle of buffoonery to illustrate the “over” reaction of Europe, there was a legitimate and clear threat to legitimize the worst fears of European forces of order. In 1820, a year of Revolution would kick off, with the governments of Spain, the Kingdom of Two Sicilies and Portugal all collapsing before liberal coups. In all three cases, the coups were organized by clandestine elements in the military and to their credit were largely bloodless, but the French Revolution had started off initially bloodless as well, and like the French example, events in Spain looked to be spiraling out of control as radical agitation continued. No sovereign of Europe could feel their neck secure as events in Spain continued to unfold.

The forces of Reaction would see more of their fears unfold when the absolute monarchy of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies would collapse in the summer of that year due to the direct machinations of a the Italian Carbonari - a secret free masonic esque society with lodges of loose affiliation throughout the peninsula. With Revolution in Portugal launched in the waning months, a clear pattern was formed: secret Revolutionaries were working in concert to plunge Europe in bloodshed and chaos.

Zamoyski is right to call the Thrones and Alters of Europe as overly paranoid for viewing the Revolutions of 1820 as the work of a single well organized Revolutionary Committee. However, it cannot be denied, that this paranoia was based on the astonishing success of limited and well organized cabals. Adam Zamoyski repeatedly downplays the threat of these conspiracies often portraying them in an incompetently comedic light in order to over dramatize the repressive tactics deployed by governments in this era.

How could Tsar Nicholas I be justified in creating a secret police if the Decembrists were so embarrassingly incompetent? He does not of course explicitly argue the reactionary point: if the Decembrists had been competent, then Tsar Nicholas I may have lost his head before he took the throne.

Still, on whole, the author doesn’t overplay his hand. Phantom Terror: Political Paranoia and the Creation of the Modern State 1789-1848 despite being broadly sympathetic to the forces of Liberalism is not heavy handed. Explicit arguments for the forces of order, though largely absent still come forward implicitly from the narrative itself. The question of privacy vs state security is the recurring theme of the book and one cannot help but slowly realize that the early 19th Century in many ways resembles the early 21st in these matters.