From the Herzegovinа Uprising to the Berlin Congress and the similarities with today’s international relations: Why do revolutions arise, and how is the European order transformed?

Proroković, Dušan (2025) From the Herzegovinа Uprising to the Berlin Congress and the similarities with today’s international relations: Why do revolutions arise, and how is the European order transformed? In: 150 years since the Herzegovina Uprising: impact on regional security and European geopolitics. Institut za međunarodnu politiku i privredu, Beograd, pp. 9-21. ISBN 978-86-7067-368-7

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Abstract

The Herzegovina Uprising of 1875 marked a historical epoch and was therefore important for the establishment of the European order at the end of the 19th century. The Herzegovina Uprising was a multifaceted revolution with several dimensions: anti-bureaucratic, social, economic and ideological. It was a revolution that was encouraged and given a new meaning by large-scale geopolitical strategies and foreign policy tactics. Therefore, the research on this event is hyper-relevant even today, not only when analysing regional Balkan relations but also when discussing transformations in international relations and the establishment of a new European order. In this paper, despite all limitations and differences, some parallels between the two historical periods are explained. Similarities are observed, among other things, in geopolitical constants that were the causes of the crises in both cases (they had a decisive influence on the creation of foreign policies of Western European states towards Russia), as well as in the intersection of various factors that produced destabilisation and created the conditions for revolution. From the perspective of geopolitics and foreign policy, it seems that today’s crisis in Europe can only be resolved by a new “Berlin Congress”, i.e., a dialogue at the highest possible level between the most significant actors in international relations, which will agree on long-term solutions that will determine a new continental order. From the perspective of the intersection of continuous crises – institutional, economic, and ideological – as well as the accelerated affirmation of the concept of re-sovereignization, it can also be said that conditions for a new revolution in Europe are being created. In fact, conditions for a new revolution, which will inevitably follow if there is no new “Berlin Congress”, may already have been created.

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