The International System During the Long 19th Century

The cornerstones that the Industrial Revolution stood on can be summarized into three main topics: technological advance, improved production, and the redistribution of labor.

Technological advance: The introduction of new materials like iron and steel enabled people to build new machinery, and new and powerful energy resources like coal and petrol made it possible to push the limits of mechanics. There was an ever-growing interest in science and its productive uses, especially in daily life. As had already happened, these novelties widened the vision of the human mind and encouraged people to push the limits of nature.

English Civil Wars (1642–51), also called Great Rebellion, refers to the series of armed conflicts between supporters of the monarchy of Charles I and his son and successor, Charles II and supporters of the Parliament.

1775  

English Civil Wars (1642–51), also called Great Rebellion, refers to the series of armed conflicts between supporters of the monarchy of Charles I and his son and successor, Charles II and supporters of the Parliament.

1. Initially, at the Congress of Vienna, the fundamentals of peace were determined by agreement among the four major powers, be it the Holy or Quadruple Alliance. These were Austria, Britain, Russia, and Prussia. In 1818, France was also granted a great power status and accepted into the European Concert.

2. The Napoleonic map was redesigned as much as possible to pre-1789 borders by the dissolution of Napoleonic states and the restoration of European monarchies. No state was to be reformed in a nationalistic fashion.

3. Monarchism, anti-nationalism, and antiliberalism were the main fundamentals of the post-Vienna peace, while wars of conquest within Europe were now assumed to be a hostile action by the major actors and the great powers now countered the aggressive use of force to redraw borders. If war became inevitable with the failure of diplomacy, any power would first have to collectively to quarantine the belligerent power with the other Concert members.

4. The major powers agreed to reconcile matters among themselves rather than take individual action. Diplomacy was always to take precedence over the use of force, a last resort.

5. Preserving the peace by acting in concert became the major powers’ common goal, for which diplomacy became an effective instrument of action. 6. Among the great powers, Austria stood out as both the organizer and balancer of the system.

To summarize the effects of the revolutions of 1848 upon the Concert of Europe, it can be argued that:

• The revolutions of 1848 effectively destroyed the absolutist regimes in Europe (except in Russia), thus ending the very basis upon which the Holy Alliance was built. As such, monarchist, anti-liberal, and anti-nationalist characteristics became obsolete as almost every European state was transformed into a constitutional monarchy.

• As Metternich was taken out of office, the last political figure from the Congress of Vienna had departed. The signatories of the Holy Alliance and founders of the Concert system eventually ceased to exist.

• The revolutions in Austria demonstrated the weakness of the Habsburg monarchy as its empire came to the brink of dissolution. Her role as manager and balancer of the Concert system could no longer be fulfilled.

• The rise of liberalism and nationalism with the revolutionary movements and their success in establishing constitutional regimes affected the policy-making of the states. Unlike absolute monarchies, the new governments were responsible to people for legitimizing their policies. Therefore, cooperation among actors under these new circumstances was not as easy.

• The major powers found themselves in an atomized state in which each state shifted to its own individual interest rather than compromise on a common interest that promised mutual gains from the existing status quo.

Napoleon III was well aware that France needed to act according to three strategies:

• a set of nationalist ideas that reflected historical realities in places like Italy, the Rhine, and Poland;

• a perfect military machine to support any venture;

• an atomized great power structure unable to coalesce against any attempt to dominate Europe.

The conditions that Bismarck faced in 1871 can be summarized as:

• The distribution of power in Europe was equalized in a sense as France and Austria were subdued by Germany. And though Russia and Britain stood keeping their distance, both supported Germany. The system, as such, was open for the construction of a new concert.

• The main problems that stood in the way of Bismarck were the antagonism between Germany and France, and Austria’s relatively weakening position and proximity to Germany. As a result, Bismarck thought he could best protect Germany’s position by isolating France and closely monitoring Austria.

• To control both, Bismarck was aware that Germany’s whole energy needed to be oriented to Europe; he needed not only to direct German foreign policy, but European politics as a whole.

• All of the above necessitated that Bismarck should tailor the map of Europe in a way that each unit within the system should fulfill the role that Bismarck ascribed to it. That being said, he envisioned his strategy as a reconciliatory rather than an expansionary mastery of Europe. This was opposed to the foreign policy of someone like Napoleon III, who if he managed to restore France’s fortunes, they would likely come at Germany’s expense.

Improved production: The pre-industrial world rested solely on the labor of humans and thus production depended on the size of the population. The new machinery not only decreased the need for human labor, but also increased the material produced and shortened production times. The simple outcome was mass production, which eventually made globalized trading networks possible.

Redistribution of labor: The shift from agrarian to industrial society was accompanied by a wave of urbanization that caused a massive migration from rural to urban areas. However, the new machinery and developing technology needed labor. As such, simple farmers who moved to the city were before long transformed into skilled workers. This division of labor not only made it possible to employ workers with the necessary skills, but for the latter to also organize themselves in a highly sophisticated fashion.

As such, the Napoleonic era can be interpreted in three periods: rise, stall, and fall.

The Treaty of Chaumont, signed in March 1814, was the major achievement of the anti-Napoleonic coalitions and paved the way for the conference in which post-revolutionary Europe would be forged. When Napoleon finally abdicated in May 1814, the Bourbon monarchy was restored with the Peace Treaty of Paris. However, it was the Congress that met in Vienna in November 1814 that laid the foundations of the post-war European system.

After the restoration of the French monarchy, Britain was brought into the new order in the form of the Quadruple Alliance signed on November 20, 1815 between Austria, Britain, Prussia, and Russia, which labelled France as a ‘rogue state’. Peace had been restored to Europe.

It can be argued that by introducing advanced economic dynamics into rural economies and societies, the Industrial Revolution profoundly transformed traditional societies and began the long slow emergence of the nation-state. On the other hand, the American and French revolutions showed that the emergingnation state could not be organized along older models of governance. All three paved the way for the domestic and international politics that would do so much to modernize societies and their governing regimes in the 19th century and beyond.

The dynamics of the European diplomacy after 1815 rested on the experiences of the pre-Napoleonic era. That being said, the outcome of the Napoleonic wars still dictated the peace wrought by the European monarchies, which was fragile and rested on voluntary cooperation between participating states. As Napoleon introduced liberalism and constitutionalism into continental Europe, the older major monarchies of Europe faced an existential threat, with war and revolution ever present at their door, even after 1815. As such, the major European states formed a strict hierarchical structure during their negotiations between 1815 and 1818, in which five European states took the lead. This Concert embodied the motives and efforts of all five to prevent another major European war and cooperate closely to stave off the threat of revolution on the continent.

For a system founded upon the restitution and protection of monarchy, the major powers of Europe were successfully in intervening to put down liberal revolts through 1822. The revolutions of 1830 and 1848, however, stretched the Concert to breaking point. It could be said that the liberation of Belgium in 1830 and Hungarian Revolution of 1848-1849 divided the concert into two camps, namely liberal and conservative. As the concert weakened, France also renewed its hegemonic ambitions with the ascent of Napoleon III. By this point, the Concert System rested on an aging structure of governance, and it was becoming clear that if governments failed to introduce reforms, revolution would be nigh. That said, by 1850, such pressures had replaced absolute monarchies with constitutional regimes in practically every state. To find a balance in this new mold, many have argued that war was only natural: hence the series of conflicts that broke out between 1854 and 1871.

The unification of Germany was a consequence of the deterioration of the Concert System. That being said, German Chancellor Bismarck took the opportunity to restore the concert with a new sense of cooperation. Forging a series of pacts and alliances, he transformed the older loose coalitions between the major states into bonded ties. Bismarck aimed at forging a European security system in which Germany was arbiter of each of her neighbor’s external relations. However, the system had a fatal flaw: only Bismarck could manage it. In his absence, it would collapse. In that sense, the coronation of the young Emperor Wilhelm II was quickly followed by the breakdown of Bismarck’s intricate alliance system. It is widely argued that this failure was a major cause of the First World War.

Otto von Bismarck, the founder and first Chancellor (1871-1890) of the German Empire.

Napoleon III, the first President of the second French Republic (1848-1852) and the Emperor of France (1850-1870).