David Kirby

Book Review: Converging World Views: The European Expansion and Early Nineteenth-Century Anglo-Swedish Contacts

and then reject both monarchical constitutions and any form of co-operation with rulers? To answer such questions requires a deeper analysis than is presented here of the fundamental reasons why early nineteenth-century constitutional projects foundered in Russia and of the fate of constitutionalism abroad. In the simplest sense, Pestel was right, in that rulers and landowners never relinquish their powers willingly, even if the solution he proposed created a dilemma for opposition at the time and thereafter. A fuller discussion of later assessments of Pestel, particularly in the Soviet period, would also have put Pestel’s ideas and limitations into broader perspective.