European balance of power

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The European balance of power is a tenet in

World Wars of the early 20th century. By 1945, European-led global dominance and rivalry had ended and the doctrine of European balance of power was replaced by a worldwide balance of power involving the United States and the Soviet Union as the modern superpowers.[citation needed
]

History

Antiquity to Crusades

The emergence of city-states (

hellenistic kingdoms were formed.[2]

Roman Emperor (Princeps) in 27 BC.[3]

The

crisis of the third century AD and ultimately split between the Latin West and the Greek East. Both parts of the Empire abandoned pagan polytheism in order to tolerate monotheistic Christianity and finally make it the state religion. The West collapsed around 476, following centuries of attacks by Germanic and Slavic peoples and several "barbarian" kingdoms were established on its former territory. The East continued to be ruled by the Byzantine Empire for an additional thousand years.[citation needed
]

Among the successor kingdoms in the West, that of the

holy land lost to Islam and the Byzantine Empire seeking help from Turks, the Pope initiated the crusades against Muslims in an attempt to restore Christian unity following the Eastern Schism of the Orthodox from the Catholics.[6]

Most of the crusades did not achieve their objective, but some of them had a massive impact on the political and economic landscape of Europe: the

Printing Revolution. A Renaissance in art and science began in Italy and spread to the rest of the continent.[7]

Crusades to Westphalia

Main articles: European wars of religion and French–Habsburg rivalry

Portugal formed the first European colonial empire in 1415 with the

since 1531.[8][9][10]

The papacy launched the

Treaty of Westphalia and the Treaty of the Pyrenees.[12][13]

Stately quadrille

In the 16th and 17th centuries,

Louis XV of France. They often involved the English (later the British
) and Dutch paying large subsidies to European allies to finance large armies.

In the 18th century, this led to the

American War of Independence in the hope of overturning Britain's growing strength by securing the independence of the Thirteen colonies of British America.[15]

19th century

See also:
International relations of the Great Powers (1814–1919) and Pax Britannica
The national boundaries within Europe set by the Congress of Vienna

After the end of the Napoleonic Wars, during which France directly or indirectly controlled much of Europe except for Russia, and the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved, the Concert of Europe tried to maintain the balance of power. The territorial boundaries agreed to by the victorious Great Powers (Prussia, Austria, Russia and Great Britain) at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 were maintained, and even more important there was an acceptance of the theme of balance with no major aggression.[16] Otherwise the Congress system says historian Roy Bridge, "failed" by 1823.[17] In 1818, the British decided not to become involved in continental issues that did not directly affect them. They rejected the plan of Tsar Alexander I to suppress future revolutions. The Concert system fell apart as the common goals of the Great Powers were replaced by growing political and economic rivalries.[18] Artz says the Congress of Verona in 1822 "marked the end."[19] There was no Congress called to restore the old system during the great revolutionary upheavals of 1848 with their demands for revision of the Congress of Vienna's frontiers along national lines.[20]

Britain, with its naval, maritime, commercial and financial dominance, was committed to the European balance of power after 1815.[21] Between the 1830s and 1850, Britain and France were the strongest powers in Europe, but by the 1850s they had become deeply concerned by the growing power of Russia, which had expanded westward towards Central Europe, and Prussia, which was increasingly assuming greater control and influence over the German lands, aside from Austria. The Crimean War of 1854–55 and the Italian War of 1859 shattered the relations among the Great Powers in Europe.[22]

The creation in 1871 and rise of the Prussian-led German Empire (excluding Austria) as a dominant nation (Prussia had quickly defeated both Austria and France in wars) restructured the European balance of power. For the next twenty years, Otto von Bismarck managed to maintain the balance of power, by proposing treaties and creating many complex alliances between the European nations such as the Triple Alliance.[23][24][25]

World Wars

Formal and informal military and diplomatic connections in 1914
  Triple Entente
  Triple Alliance

After 1890, the German Emperor

First World War in 1914 with Germany and Austria-Hungary on one-side against Great Britain, France, Italy and Russia (until 1917) on the other.[28] One of the objectives of the Treaty of Versailles, the main post-World War I treaty, was to abolish the dominance of the 'Balance of Power' concept and replace it with the (global) League of Nations
and to form countries based mostly on ethnicity (although the diminished Austria containing only its German-speaking lands and the majority-German areas of the Czech lands were not permitted to join Germany).

This idea floundered as Europe split into three principal factions in the 1920s and 1930s:

Second World War, which led to a temporary alliance between the UK and the Soviets. The UK did not condemn the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939, but declared war on Germany. Later, they sided with the Soviet Union against Germany after the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union
.

Post-World War II: Cold War period

During the post-Second World War era, the Allies split into two blocs, a balance of power emerged among the Eastern Bloc (affiliated with the Soviet Union and the Socialist nations of Central and Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Caucasus), the Western Bloc (affiliated with the Western democracies, particularly France, the United States, and the United Kingdom), and neutral or non-aligned countries (including Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, Austria, and Yugoslavia), with German lands divided up between them respectively as East Germany and West Germany until 1989. Most Western Bloc countries came together under the military alliance of NATO, while the Eastern Bloc countries formed the Warsaw Pact. The first NATO Secretary General, the British Lord Ismay, famously stated the organization's initial goal was "to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down."[29]

Post-Cold War era

NATO Quint leaders discussing with Petro Poroshenko the Russo-Ukrainian War

The three most powerful members of the

NATO Quint is made up by the United States
and the Big Four.

The term

UNSC) often lead in defence and foreign policy matters, such as the intervention in Libya in 2011. This, to an extent, represents a balancing of leadership power for the Western sphere of the continent.[citation needed] How this balance will change after the Brexit vote in 2016 and the UK's exit from the European Union in 2020 is still an open matter.[30]

However, there continues to be a wider, strategic balance of Western and (now) Russian power, albeit with the boundary between the two pushed further east since the

collapse of the Soviet Union, with many former Communist countries in Central Europe having since joined the EU and NATO.[citation needed
]

See also

References

  1. ^ René Albrecht-Carrié, A Diplomatic History of Europe Since the Congress of Vienna (1958), 736pp; a basic introduction, online free to borrow
  2. S2CID 145419574
    .
  3. ^ Daniel Deudney, "'A Republic for Expansion': The Roman Constitution and Empire and Balance-of-Power Theory." The Balance of Power in World History (Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2007) pp. 148–175. online
  4. ^ Collins 1989, p. 147; Reilly 1993, pp. 75–76; Deyermond 1985, p. 346; Hillgarth 2009, p. 66 n. 28
  5. ^ "Balance of power INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS". Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved June 8, 2019.
  6. ^ Bryce Lyon, Medieval Constitutionalism: A Balance of Power (1961).
  7. ^ "Renaissance | Definition, Meaning, History, Artists, Art, & Facts | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved 2023-08-12.
  8. ISBN 978-1789017182
    .
  9. ISBN 978-1440848568
    – via Google Books.
  10. ISBN 978-1137069771. Archived from the original
    on 7 April 2022.
  11. ^ Parker 1984, p. 189.
  12. ^ Éric Schnakenbourg, Fabrice Jesne. "The European Balance of Power". EHNE. Retrieved June 8, 2019.
  13. ^ "Balance of power INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS". Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved June 8, 2019.
  14. ^ MacKenzie, Philip (1996). Equilibrium: An Analysis of the Balance of Power Between European Nations. New York: Granger Press. p. 275.
  15. ^ John R. Davis, "Britain and the European balance of power." A companion to nineteenth-century Britain (2004): 34+ online
  16. ^ Gordon Craig, "The System of Alliances and the Balance of Power." in J.P.T. Bury, ed., The New Cambridge Modern History, Vol. 10: The Zenith of European Power, 1830–70 (1960) p 266.
  17. ^ Roy Bridge, "Allied Diplomacy in Peacetime: The Failure of the Congress 'System,' 1815–23" in Alan Sked, ed., Europe's Balance of Power, 1815–1848 (1979), pp 34–53
  18. ^ C.W. Crawley, "International Relations, 1815–1830" in C.W. Crawley, ed., The New Cambridge Modern History: Volume 9, War and Peace in an Age of Upheaval, 1793–1830. Vol. 9 (1965) pp 669–71, 676–77, 683–86.
  19. ^ Frederick B. Artz, Reaction & Revolution: 1814–1832 (1934) p 170.
  20. ^ Paul W. Schroeder, The Transformation of European Politics: 1763–1848 (1996) p 800.
  21. ^ John R. Davis, "Britain and the European Balance of Power," in Chris Williams, ed., A Companion to Nineteenth‐Century Britain (2004) pp 34–52.
  22. ^ René Albrecht-Carrié, A diplomatic history of Europe since the Congress of Vienna (1958) pp 65–68, 84–106.
  23. ^ Erich Eyck, Bismarck and the German Empire (1964) pp 58–68
  24. ^ René Albrecht-Carrié, A diplomatic history of Europe since the Congress of Vienna (1958) pp 163–206.
  25. ^ The Balance of Power. A System of Peace in European International Politics Case Example: Congress of Vienna 1814/1815. GRIN. 2 December 2016. Retrieved June 8, 2019.
  26. ^ Christopher Clark, Kaiser Wilhelm II (2000) pp 35–47
  27. ^ John C.G. Wilhelm II: the Kaiser's personal monarchy, 1888–1900 (2004).
  28. ^ Raff, Diethher (1988), History of Germany from the Medieval Empire to the Present, pp. 34–55, 202–206
  29. ^ Reynolds 1994, p. 13.
  30. ^ "Brexit, Germany, and the European Balance of Power". Blogactiv. October 23, 2018. Archived from the original on June 8, 2019. Retrieved June 8, 2019.

Bibliography

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