![]() SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LEAGUE OF THREE EMPERORS 1873 SERIESIn a series of three victorious wars, Prussia had forged the economically and militarily strong German Empire, which now held a particularly powerful position on the continent. With the creation of nation states in Germany and Italy completed, 1871 marked a turning point in the development of Europe’s international order. The creation of Germany under Prussian leadership and the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine was the most obvious shift in the balance of power. They also left the Habsburg Monarchy and France in a much weaker position. The so-called Wars of Italian Independence and of German Unification changed the map of Europe by creating new nation states. Secret treaties between France and Sardinia and Italy and Prussia, respectively, were crucial in the preparation for the wars of 18, and Prussia’s treaties with the southern German states came to bear in 1870-1871. Alliances became important tools in the ensuing transformation of Europe. It left Russia reeling from defeat and encouraged further revision of the international system. The Crimean War was a decisive blow to the Vienna Settlement, although the peace treaty of Paris in 1856 reiterated the idea of a Concert of Europe. His nephew, Napoleon III, Emperor of the French (1808-1873), was instrumental in the formation of an anti-Russian war coalition in 1853-1854. It was this Eastern Question that sparked the first war between Europe’s Great Powers after the defeat of Napoleon I, Emperor of the French (1769-1821). With regard to the decline of the Ottoman Empire and its geopolitical consequences, different patterns of alignment emerged in 1840. The latter was perceived as a bulwark anti-revolutionary policy, the former as a cooperation of more liberal-minded cabinets. New alliances were forged between Britain and France and between the conservative monarchies of Russia, Prussia, and Austria. In the 1820s, with disputes over the future of Spain and her former colonies in Latin America and divergent intentions in the Eastern Question, Great Power relations were transformed. Īt its heyday, in the first years after the Congress of Vienna, the new consensus among the Great Powers was strong enough to make separate alliance treaties between some of them seem irrelevant. Although conflicts among the Great Powers would set limits to their close cooperation in the following decades, the Concert of Europe was still at play in the debates about Balkan crises in the years and months prior to the outbreak of war in 1914. The Pentarchy discussed problems related to the situation of smaller states and decided on solutions to them, a de-facto privilege of the Great Powers in a Europe of sovereign states with different level of strategic clout. With France co-opted in 1818, the five Great Powers became known as the Pentarchy. According to Schroeder, traditional balance of power policy gave way to a collective effort among the Great Powers to defend the rights and mutual obligations of all sovereign states, big or small. The Quadruple Alliance was meant to guarantee the peace of Europe by keeping a watchful eye on France and to cooperate closely to thwart any threat to international stability on the continent, while the Holy Alliance (originally consisting of Russia, Austria and Prussia) added glamorous rhetoric to this idea. Schroeder has argued that the anti-Napoleonic coalition of 1813-1814 proved to be a turning point in international relations, because the four major coalition partners - Great Britain, Russia, Austria, and Prussia - decided to put their alliance on a peace footing after the end of war in 1814 and the Vienna Settlement of 1815. ![]() ![]() The French Revolutionary Wars (1792-1802) and Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) put Great Britain and France in the role of perennial adversaries, both of them forging alliances with other powers if useful and possible. However, with religious and ideological issues only of marginal relevance to the cabinets of Europe, war-time alliances could be overturned quite easily. ![]() The patterns of cooperation in the first half of the 18 th century had become so familiar that switching strategic partners in preparation for the Seven Years War was dubbed as “ renversement des alliances”. Introduction: Alliances and Great Power relations in Europe, 1815-1871 ↑Īlliances were nothing new to international relations in modern Europe. ![]()
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