Europe 1914

Europe 1815 to 1914: the Origins of Modernity

Though the Bourbons had been restored in France, the original causes of the Revolution, famine, starvation and economic depression, remained just as prevalent as ever. In 1830 these grievances sparked the July Revolution, immortalized in the painting Liberty Leading the People by Eugene Delacroix [link] . Eventually the French settled on a new, more liberal king, Louis Philippe, to lead the country.

By the 1840s the Industrial Revolution was causing social as well as economic change across Europe. Yet another European famine lead to the Year of Revolution in 1848 [link] . Most of the revolutions were crushed violently and the revolutionaries dispersed.

But things were different in France, the home of revolution. Louis Philippe was overthrown and a the 2nd French Republic was created. By the year’s end Louis Napoleon, nephew of Napoleon I, was elected its president. Then in 1851 he lead a coup d’état and reestablished the French Empire on December 2nd, 1852 with himself as its leader, Napoleon III.

After dodging an assassination attempt [link] Napoleon III kick started the reunification of Italy (il Risorgimento [link] ) by working with the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont to defeat the Austrian army in Lombardy. The result was the Kingdom of Italy established in 1861 [link] .

Simultaneously Otto von Bismarck began the unification of Germany in 3 wars (the Prusso-Danish War in 1864, the Austro- Prussian War in 1866 and the Franco- Prussian War in 1870 to 1871) The Kingdom of Italy benefited from Prussian success, obtaining Venice from the Austrians in 1866 [link] and Rome from the French supported Papacy in 1870 [link] . Bismarck declared the new nation of Germany to be an Empire at the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles in occupied France on the 18th of January 1871.

The story only gets more intense from here. After the Second Opium War in 1860 the Japanese were scared shitless of a European invasion. In 1866 Boshin war occurred when samurai who fought to restore the emperor clashed against samurai who fought to maintain the power of the Shogunate. The Shogunate was defeated, the Emperor was restored and the new Meiji government began a policy of rapid modernization unprecedented in world history. They would look to the German Empire as the model for Japan. In 1876 the Japanese navy forced Korea open via gunship diplomacy [link] in a manner ironically similar to that of Commodore Perry just 23 years earlier. Japan’s transformation was now complete.

It is no coincidence that the future Axis Powers of 1940 were the new powers of the 1860s and 70s. These nations came to the table of Imperialism late (the British had been sitting there for ages) and thus received only scraps. Their thirst for empire could only be satiated at the cost of already existing empires like those of Russia, China, Britain, the US or France.

Bismarck continued to steer the fate of Germany and Europe by spinning a complex web of alliances around Germany to ensure future peace. But disaster came in 1890 when the new German Emperor Wilhelm II forced him to resign [link] . Things got even worse when the French and the Russians signed a military alliance in 1894.

In 1898 the Fashoda Incident [link] almost provoked war between Britain and France. It proved that new land to conquer was becoming increasing hard to find.

The Boxer Rebellion in 1900 gave the civilized world the opportunity to fight together to save their legations in Peking. Six of the Eight-Nation Alliance [link] nations were European, because most of the world was dominated by Europeans [link] .

While there were many causes to the First World War, the main issue was the Balkans. This came to a head after the Italians declared war on the Ottomans in 1911 to obtain Libya by force. The Balkan nations soon used the opportunity to fight the First Balkan War, [link] driving the Ottomans from the region. Subsequently both Austria-Hungary and Russia wished to move in to fill the power vacuum. France supported Russia, Germany supported Austria. Both sides now looked to the British to see which side they would take.

But the British feared the victory of either side. They feared that Russian domination of the Balkans would lead to domination of Constantinople, a Russian fleet presence in the Mediterranean and the loss of the Great Game [link] . Alternatively they also feared that Austrian domination of the Balkans would lead to the completion of the Berlin-Baghdad railway [link] , a major German military threat to Suez and thus British India. The hesitation of the British to enter the conflict now made war inevitable.

For information on the war itself see [link]

-----Europe Series-----
1550 [link]
1618 [link]
1648 [link]
1765 [link]
1815 [link]
1914

2/19/12 EDIT:
map base source [link]
map base created by Alex [link]