For the hundreds of international delegates gathered at Vienna two hundred years ago, the focus of attention was, understandably, (as we have heard so many times,) the reconstitution of the European political frontiers severely altered during the French Revolutionary military campaigns between 1794 and 1814. The Napoleonic changes affected far more than just geographical boundaries and nominal administrations. There was also a major change in general mentality and political discourse, reflected in the comments of the English-Jamaican planter Bryan Edwards to his colleagues in the British Parliament in 1798: The times in which we live will constitute an awful period in the history of the world; for a spirit of subversion has gone forth, which sets at nought the wisdom of our ancestors and the lessons of experience. Edwards was obviously bemoaning threats to his comfortable way of life, but his lament would become relevant for all societies from that time
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