Public lecture and book discussion

Isaac Nakhimovsky lecture banner
Author:
Erakogu
Monday, 19 May 2025 at 4:15-6:00pm in the rotunda at the Old Anatomical Theatre, 10 Uppsala Street (Dome Hill) Isaac Nakhimovsky (Yale University) will be in discussion with Eva Piirimäe, Pärtel Piirimäe and Hent Kalmo (University of Tartu).

The Holy Alliance is often remembered as a byword for conspiratorial reaction. But what was its original idea and how and why was it transformed over time?

Join us for a discussion of Isaac Nakhimovsky’s (Yale University) groundbreaking new book, The Holy Alliance: Liberalism and the Politics of Federation, which uncovers the Enlightenment roots of this post-Napoleonic initiative. Originally embraced by early nineteenth-century liberals as the beginning of a federated Europe and a new era of peace and prosperity, the Holy Alliance underwent a more complex history—one that helps us understand both the appeal and the pitfalls of federative visions beyond the nation-state.

Nakhimovsky's work highlights the contradictory expectations placed on Russia’s role in this process and prompts reflection on how these dynamics might appear from a Baltic perspective. He explores how the Holy Alliance intersected with constitutional thought, anti-slavery movements, and dreams of perpetual peace—and how it became both a symbol of progressive federation and reactionary entrenchment. Drawing connections from the League of Nations to Cold War geopolitics, it invites us to reconsider how past federal projects can shed light on contemporary global challenges.
Isaac Nakhimovsky is Associate Professor of History and Humanities at Yale University. He is the author of The Holy Alliance: Liberalism and the Politics of Federation (Princeton, 2024) as well as The Closed Commercial State: Perpetual Peace and Commercial Society from Rousseau to Fichte (Princeton, 2011). He has also collaborated on an edition of Fichte’s Addresses to the German Nation (Hackett, 2013) and two volumes of essays on eighteenth-century political thought and its post-revolutionary legacies: Commerce and Peace in the Enlightenment (Cambridge, 2017), and Markets, Morals, Politics: Jealousy of Trade and the History of Political Thought (Harvard, 2018).

Nakhimovsky’s public lecture and the ensuing book discussion is an event for anyone interested in political thought, international order, and the shifting boundary between emancipation and empire.

Don’t miss this opportunity to explore the past futures of Europe—and what they might mean for our own!

Additional information: Prof. Eva Piirimäe, eva.piirimae@ut.ee
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