278 A Positive Century (1815–1914)became part of general international law. Th e accepted rule instead was that
any regime that had, de facto, eff ective control over a country was entitled to
recognition by other states, without regard to the niceties of the state’s inter-
nal law.
Another problem was that liberalism was plagued by certain internal
inconsistencies. Th e most frustrating of these was the clash between two of
its cherished principles: nonintervention and protection of vulnerable per-
sons against government oppression. In principle, liberals were at one with
positivists in supporting the principle of nonintervention. Th eir shared
commitment to pluralism ensured this. Mill, for example, was a staunch
foe of intervention— at least in principle. But liberals were also strongly
inclined to support anticolonial and national liberation movements. Th is
was so in the case of American in de pen dence in the late eigh teenth cen-
tury, as well as of the Latin American in de pen dence struggles in the early
nineteenth century. Other major liberal causes included the struggles of
the Greeks (and other nationalities) to break away from the Ottoman Em-
pire, the in de pen dence of Belgium from the Netherlands, and the revolts of
Poles against the Rus sian Empire and of Hungarians against the Austrian
Empire. Th is meant that there was a constant temptation on the part of
liberals to make exceptions to the nonintervention principle in favor of
victims of oppression.
Mill, for example, articulated two specifi c forms of intervention that were
permissible, as special exceptions to the general rule of nonintervention. One
was what might be called a right of counterintervention. Th is would occur in
a case in which a government called in some outside power to aid it in the
suppression of a rebellion. In such an event, Mill urged, other states would be
justifi ed in assisting “struggling liberalism” by any means at their disposal,
including the use of armed force. Th e archetypal case (and the one that
Mill had in mind) was Austria’s suppression of the Hungarian insurgency of
1848– 49, which was achieved by summoning Rus sian aid. Th e Hungarian
cause had captured the liberal imagination of Eu rope, and there was great
bitterness over its suppression by a foreign armed force.
Mill’s second proposed exception to the general principle of noninterven-
tion concerned civil wars— not all civil wars, but those in which the two
sides were so equally matched that neither could be reasonably expected to
prevail over the other without a great deal of protracted bloodshed. In such