The Holy Alliance - Liberalism and the Politics of Federation

New Work In Intellectual History

In this episode, Seungeun Lee speaks with Isaac Nakhimovsky about his new book The Holy Alliance: Liberalism and the Politics of Federation (Princeton, 2024). The book challenges the prevailing view of the Holy Alliance as a reactionary and illusory endeavor, as well as the idea of a linear progression of liberalism in opposition to such deviations. Nakhimovsky reconstructs the discourse around a liberal vision of a European federation, where reformers and patriots from smaller European states, as well as abolitionists beyond Europe, looked to Russia as the potential guarantor of a peaceful order.