Concert of Europe
The Concert of Europe was a general agreement between the great powers of 19th-century Europe to maintain the European balance of power, political boundaries, and spheres of influence. Never a perfect unity and subject to disputes and jockeying for position and influence, the Concert was an extended period of relative peace and stability in Europe following the Wars of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars which had consumed the continent since the 1790s. There is considerable scholarly dispute over the exact nature and duration of the Concert. Some scholars argue that it fell apart nearly as soon as it began in the 1820s when the great powers disagreed over the handling of liberal revolts in Italy, while others argue that it lasted until the outbreak of World War I and others for points in between. For those arguing for a longer duration, there is generally agreement that the period after the Revolutions of 1848 and the Crimean War represented a different phase with different dynamics than the earlier period.
The beginnings of the Concert System, known as the Congress System or the Vienna System after the Congress of Vienna, was dominated by the five great powers of Europe: Austria, France, Prussia, Russia, and the United Kingdom. Initially envisioning regular Congresses among the great powers to resolve potential disputes, in practice, Congresses were held on an ad hoc basis and were generally successful in preventing or localizing conflicts. The more conservative members of the Concert of Europe, members of the Holy Alliance, used the system to oppose revolutionary and liberal movements and weaken the forces of nationalism. The formal Congress System fell apart in the 1820s but peace between the Great Powers continued and occasional meetings reminiscent of the Congresses continued to be held at times of crisis.
The Concert faced a major challenge in the Revolutions of 1848 which sought national independence, national unity, and liberal and democratic reforms. The 1848 Revolutions were ultimately checked without major territorial changes. However, the age of nationalism ultimately brought the first phase of the Concert to an end, as it was unable to prevent the wars leading to the Italian unification in 1861 and German unification in 1871 which remade the maps of Europe. Following German unification, German chancellor Otto von Bismarck sought to revive the Concert of Europe to protect Germany's gains and secure its leading role in European affairs. The revitalized Concert included Austria-Hungary, France, Italy, Russia, and Britain, with Germany as the driving continental power. The second phase oversaw a further period of relative peace and stability from the 1870s to 1914, and facilitated the growth of European colonial and imperial control in Africa and Asia without wars between the great powers.
The Concert of Europe certainly ended with the outbreak of World War I in 1914, when the Concert proved ultimately unable to handle the collapse of Ottoman power in the Balkans, hardening of the alliance system into two firm camps, and the feeling among many civilian and military leaders on both sides that a war was inevitable or even desirable.
Overview
The Concert of Europe describes the geopolitical order in Europe from 1814 to 1914, during which the great powers tended to act in concert to avoid wars and revolutions and generally maintain the territorial and political status quo. Particularly in the early years of the Concert, the Concert was maintained through the Congress System – sometimes called the Vienna System – which was a series of Congresses among the great powers to resolve disputes or respond to new issues.The Concert of Europe is typically viewed in two distinct phases: the first from 1814 to through the early 1860s, and the second from the 1880s to 1914. The first phase, particularly before the Revolutions of 1848, is sometimes known as the Age of Metternich, due to the influence of the Austrian chancellor's conservatism and the dominance of Austria within the German Confederation, or as the European Restoration, because of the reactionary efforts of the Congress of Vienna to restore Europe to its state before the French Revolution. The ultimate failure of the Concert of Europe, culminating in the First World War, was driven by various factors including rival alliances and the rise of nationalism. The Congress-focused approach to international affairs continued to be influential in the later League of Nations, the United Nations, the Group of Seven and other multi-lateral summits and organizations.
The Concert of Europe arose from the coalitions which had fought against revolutionary and Napoleonic France. The great powers of Austria, Prussia, Russia and the United Kingdom, had combined with a number of minor powers to defeat Napoleon for the final time in the Hundred Days. In the wake of this victory, these four great powers formalized their partnership in the Quadruple Alliance. In time, France under the Bourbon Restoration was established as a fifth member of the Concert, after the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle ended the occupation of France and established the Quintuple Alliance. The Ottoman Empire was later admitted to the Concert of Europe in 1856 when the Treaty of Paris, following the Crimean War, recognized and guaranteed Ottoman territory.
Origins
The idea of a European federation had been already raised by figures such as Immanuel Kant, Gottfried Leibniz, and Lord Grenville. The Concert of Europe drew upon their ideas and the notion of a balance of power in international relations, so that the ambitions of each great power would be restrained by the others:The Concert of Europe, as it began to be called at the time, had... a reality in international law, which derived from the final Act of the Vienna Congress, which stipulated that the boundaries established in 1815 could not be altered without the consent of its eight signatories.
The Concert of Europe was very much a response to the French Revolution. From the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars in 1792 to the exile of Napoleon to Saint Helena in 1815, Europe had been almost constantly at war. All the European powers were short of the funds, material, and manpower necessary for further fighting and therefore sought structures to avoid new conflicts. The military conquests of France had resulted in the spread of liberalism throughout much of the continent, including the adoption of the reforms such as the Napoleonic Code. Having seen how the French Revolution had begun with calls for fairly mild reforms but had quickly led to radical democratic reforms and attacks on the aristocracy, the Concert of Europe also sought to tamp down on liberal and democratic movements across the continent. Finally, the French Revolution also provided a model for nationalist movements and both sides in the Napoleonic Wars had sought to exploit nationalist sentiment when convenient to their war aims. For example, the French supported the nationalist rising in Ireland against the British in 1798 and revived hopes of a Polish state by establishing the Duchy of Warsaw in ethnically Polish lands to help fight the Prussians, Russians, and Austrians. The Allies supported nationalist movements in Spain and Germany to encourage resistance against French-established governments there. Along with the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in France, the Concert of Europe was in many ways an effort to return as closely as possible to the status quo of Europe prior to 1789.
First phase
The first phase of the Concert of Europe is typically described as beginning in 1814 with the Congress of Vienna, and ending in the early 1860s with the Prussian and Austrian invasion of Denmark. This first phase included numerous congresses, including the Congress of Paris in 1856 which some scholars argue represented the apex of the Concert of Europe in its ending of the Crimean War. At first, the leading personalities of the system were British foreign secretary Lord Castlereagh, Austrian chancellor and foreign minister Klemens von Metternich, and Emperor Alexander I of Russia. Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord of France was largely responsible for quickly returning the country to its place alongside the other major powers in international diplomacy.The Holy Alliance within the Concert
The Kingdom of Prussia, and the Austrian and Russian Empires, formed the Holy Alliance on 26 September 1815, with the express intent of preserving Christian social values and traditional monarchism. Only three notable princes did not sign: Pope Pius VII, Sultan Mahmud II of the Ottoman Empire, and the British Prince Regent because his government was a constitutional monarchy with a more liberal political philosophy and did not wish to pledge itself to the policing of continental Europe.Britain did ratify the Quadruple Alliance, signed on 20 November 1815, the same day as the Second Treaty of Paris was signed, which later became the Quintuple Alliance when France joined in 1818 with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle.
There has been much debate between historians as to which treaty was more influential in the development of international relations in Europe in the two decades following the end of the Napoleonic Wars. In the opinion of historian Tim Chapman, the differences are somewhat academic as the powers were not bound by the terms of the treaties and many of them intentionally broke the terms if it suited them.
File:Johann Peter Krafft - Der Einzug von Kaiser Franz I. in Wien nach dem Pariser Frieden am 16. Juni 1814 - 6247 - Österreichische Galerie Belvedere.jpg|thumb|The Entry of Emperor Francis I into Vienna After the Peace of Paris by Johann Peter Krafft.
The Holy Alliance was an informal alliance led by Russia, Austria, and Prussia which aimed to reduce the influence of secularism and liberalism in Europe. The brainchild of Tsar Alexander I, it gained at least nominal support from many states, partly because most European monarchs did not wish to offend the Tsar by refusing to sign it, and as it bound monarchs personally rather than their governments, it was sufficiently vague to be functionally ignored once signed. In the opinion of Lord Castlereagh, the British foreign secretary at the time of its inception, the Holy Alliance was "a piece of sublime mysticism and nonsense". Nevertheless, its influence was more long lasting than its contemporary critics expected and was revived in the 1820s as a tool of repression when Britain and France refused to embroil themselves in certain continental matters.
The Quadruple Alliance, by contrast, was a standard treaty, and the great powers did not invite any minor allies to sign it. The primary objective was to bind the signatories to support the terms of the Second Treaty of Paris for 20 years. It included a provision for the High Contracting Parties to "renew their meeting at fixed periods...for the purpose of consulting on their common interests" which were the "prosperity of the Nations, and the maintenance of peace in Europe". However, the wording Article VI of the treaty did not specify what these "fixed periods" were to be and there were no provisions in the treaty for a permanent commission to arrange and organise the conferences. This meant that instead of meeting at "fixed periods" the meetings were arranged on an ad hoc basis, to address specific threats or disputes.