The Defining Characteristic of the Global Elite

Two hundred years ago yesterday the broken armies of Napoleon retreated off the battlefield at Waterloo. So much of the French Army fell into capture by Allied hands, especially the artillery (the means by which Napoleon had originally made a name for himself as a military tactician), that his position became completely untenable. Six days later he announced his abdication as Emperor of France.

It was the second such abdication, and thus the second end of the Napoleonic wars in less than a year. Napoleon had been defeated in 1814 but had broken out of his exile in early 1815. He had then returned to France and quickly seized the leadership of the state anew. He then took his revived armies outside France to confront the nations allied against him. His revival was very short-lived. He got only as far as Belgium, in June. The defeat there was catastrophic. As quickly as it had started, it was all over once again, and this time they would make sure Napoleon could never escape. Now the peace could begin in earnest.

Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington (1769-1852)

The Napoleonic dream was dead, it seemed. But what was this dream? Was it simply about a man's ego to dominate the world? Was it for the glory of France? One could say it was partly both of these things. But even for Napoleon, and for many who supported him, and those who have studied him since then, it was about much more than that. It was a fight over the determination of the structure of the world going forward over the next century and beyond. Napoleon, after all, was the Prince of the Revolution. He believed he consciously embodied its principles in his own being, especially in bringing Europe into an age of applied reason.

Napoleon's defeat essentially marked the dawn of the global era, in which Earth would experience a planet-wide integration of its economy and political structures like never before. It was the "new world order" of its day. The Napoleonic wars had been in a sense the conflict over how that order would be structured, including of course who would be in charge of it.

Napoleon's escape from his exile had come in the midst of the continent-wide peace conference that had begun the previous autumn after Napoleon's initial defeat, that had set about to determine the structure of the world going forward.

Just as history had seen nothing like Napoleon himself, so the congress that met in September 1814 in Vienna was in a scope that was unprecedented in European history. Nearly all the nations of Europe, large and small, empires and principalities, victors and vanquished, had representatives there, because the wars had touched upon nearly every part of the continent to some degree.

They spent long months over the fall and winter hashing out what the world (that is, Europe, her colonies, and the High Seas) would look like. It was not an easy process, of course, with so many agendas at play, and potentially dozens of sides on any particular issue. The scale and complexity of intrigue and secret deal-making was probably unlike anything the world has seen since.The conflicts between the victors gave much leverage at times to the defeated French.

Some of the delegates had nearly a free hand in their negotiations in Vienna. For example, the Russian Czar came in person to the conference (who wouldn't want a vacation from St. Petersburg?). Being pretty much an absolute monarch, he didn't have to get authorization for his decisions from anyone (although in practical terms, it was often much more complicated than that. Even Emperors need support).

Others delegates needed to report to their sovereigns in their respective capitals, using the slow communication of the day.  But sometimes that wasn't much of a restriction to the flow of diplomacy. The diplomats themselves were almost universally noblemen, highly influential among their peers. The host Austrian delegate Metternich was considered the true power in Austria. Kings got bored with governing, and needed someone else to manage things. Power devolved to the well-connected who were also competent, cunning, and interested in such matters. Back then, being foreign minister was often the real power in a kingdom.

The strongest democracy of the day, that might have complicated the process of decision-making, was the United Kingdom. Yet their delegate, the Duke of Wellington, had been also granted nearly a free hand at the conference by His Majesty George III's government (the British had a very strong position there, and they also had clear objectives, which they almost completely achieved). Wellington's stature was only enhanced when he himself took to the battlefield to defeat Napoleon in person at Waterloo. Such were the diplomats of the day.

One thing to keep in mind about this, when one imagines this grand scenario playing out in Vienna for almost a year, while even interrupted by the final campaign against Napoleon: the diplomats met behind closed doors.

Not all the negotiations were necessarily secret (although many were), but they were all private. It was a private discussion and agreement among gentlemen, until the final public treaty was signed.

There was no free press at work during the conference. Once again, only Britain had anything resembling our modern concept of one. Austria certainly did not. There were no daily statements by delegates in the paper of record. There were of course no press conferences, and thus no sound bites, and certainly no viral videos. Even if one could record such things by some means, there would have been almost no means to distribute them to the people in the various countries, even to the literate folk---certainly not in any timely manner.  In most of Europe, there was not yet an expectation that such an institution should even exist. The idea that what the delegates did was accountable to the people in their home countries would have stuck them universally as silly, at least by how we use that phrase today.

All of that had to come later for Europe, in the mid Nineteenth Century, with the rise of what came to be called Liberalism---namely, the right of individuals to free expression, free opinion, and free communication. Liberalism erupted even in places without democracy, for example in Prussia. It was such a contagious idea, and ripe for the time. Liberty. The essence of liberalism.

But it was a very rocky process, and took several great efforts to establish the right to publicly oppose the sovereign. No one likes being openly criticized. Kings certainly did not.

Thankfully for them, and the nobles who served them, in 1815 all of that was yet in the future. By today's standards, the delegates in Vienna might as well have been in a mountain retreat in the Alps, guarded by security forces, with a complete press blackout even on mentioning the existence of the conference. No wonder they could get so much done. 

If you want one defining characteristic of what can been called the Global Elite, it is in the paragraph I just wrote above. It is defined by an idea, namely that the world would be much better off if the powerful people of the world, the ones who really know how the world runs,  could get together and do what they need to do in private, without the ridiculous and pointless distraction of either a (classically) liberal press nor contemporary media reporting. Nor do they want to be bound by agreements such as  (classically) liberal Constitutions (especially ones that enforce restrictions on what sovereigns can do). They prefer their own types of contracts among themselves, with no such fetters placed on them by the masses who have no idea how things actually are.

Sometimes they don't mind a little democracy, though. They have mastered that particular speed bump that once threatened to interrupt their line of control over the centuries. It doesn't seem to bother them much at all lately.