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Abstract

* “We want to stay what we are” - Luxembourg’s national motto.

In the 1860’s, the Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg faced increasingly-dangerous crises which threatened their existence as an independent state: the 1863-1864 Schleswig Crisis, the 1866 Seven Weeks War, and the 1867 Luxembourg Crisis. As well as contributing to a greater inclusion of historical research in IR and to small state literature, this dissertation illustrates how Luxembourgish policy-makers navigated this unstable era so as to learn lessons about the experience of small states in crisis periods in the modern world. This dissertation highlights Luxembourg’s inability to achieve its goals due to their comparative lack of influence and isolation. It concludes that their survival ultimately depended on the European community taking concrete yet appropriate steps to maintain peace and the continental political system - the prior lack of which played such a major role in the situation escalating as it did. These lessons are particularly pertinent today, when the international order is again being so openly-challenged by expansionist governments in the face of whom small states find themselves vulnerable without the international community making a determined and conscious effort to maintain peace and a rules-based system, and to support the foreign policy objectives of those smaller states.

Course: International Relations - MA - P2929FTD

Date Deposited: 2024-02-02

URI/permalink: https://library.port.ac.uk/dissert/dis14354.html