The collapse of the Metternich System

• 1815 – 1853  No great power wars in four decades • 1853- 56  The Crimean War • 1859         Austro-Italian War • 1866         Austro – Prussian War • 1870         Franco- Prussian War • Jan. 18, 1871     Germany unified

• Crimean War (1853-56) instigated by French Emperor Napoleon III •Austria allied with France, Great Britain and Ottoman Empire against Russia

•The most important effect of the Crimean War was that it splitted apart Russia and Austria

• The Crimean War disintegrated the moral conservative unity among Russia and Austria (i.e. the Holy Alliance)

•After the Crimean War, balance of power in Europe was not sustained any more by common values

• After the Crimean War, Austria is not going to have any more Russian support in suppressing the nationalist movements within its empire, especially Italian & German nationalism

•1859 Austro-Italian War  - Austria was defeated and expelled from North Italy

•1866 Austro-Prussian War – Austria was defeated and Prussia got most of the territories in the German Confederation

• German Confederation disintegrated after the 1866 Austro-Prussian War

Napoleon III: The erratic emperor

Napoleon III was one of the two destroyers of the «Concert of Europe»

He perceived himself as the inspiration of European nationalist and liberal movements

•The irony about Napoleon III was that he was much more able in domestic rather than foreign policy

• Napoleon III brought Industrial Revolution to France and gave Paris the modern form it has today

•However in foreign policy, Napoleon III made moves that were completely against the national interest of France   •1. Napoleon III instigated the Crimean War that eventually split Austria and Russia apart

• 2.  Napoleon III fueled Italian nationalism against Austria and helped Italy defeat Austria in the 1859 war

• 3. Napoleon III did nothing to prevent Austrian defeat in the 1866 Prussian – Austrian War

• Napoleon III’s foreign policy moves paved the way for the unification of Germany; Napoleon III was the antithesis of Richelieu in foreign policy

• Adolphe Thiers   «France had struggled for two centuries to destroy this colossus»

Bismarck & Realpolitik

Bismarck did not support Austria during the 1859 Austro-Italian War

• Equally important, Bismarck ensured Napoleon III’s neutrality during the 1866 Austro-Prussian War (when it would have been in French national interest to support Austria against Prussia in this war)

•Bismarck only fought a limited war against Austria in 1866 and at the end convinced his military generals not to march on Vienna

• For Bismarck, national interest took precedence over ideological considerations  (Realpolitik)

• Bismarck was the German counterpart of Richelieu (raison d’état)

• Lastly, Prussia smashed France in 1870 in a quick and decisive victory

• Prussia annexed Alsace-Lorraine (one of France’s most important industrial centers)

• 18 January 1871  German Empire proclaimed in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles in Paris (a great humiliation for France)

Otto von Bismarck had been Prussia’s ambassador to Russia, France, and the German Confederation up until 1862 when he became Prussian Chancellor

•Even though Bismarck was a conservative, he well understood that Austria was an obstacle to the unification of Germany under Prussian leadership

•Bismarck understood that it is in Prussia’s national interest to split Austria and Russia apart; Thus, Bismarck welcomed the Crimean War; Bismarck even urged Prussia to attack Austria during the Crimean War

• Bismarck had a fierce domestic clash with Prussian conservatives (his mentor Leopold von Gerlach) over whether or not to support Austria

•Bismarck considered the Crimean War and the ensuing Austrian-Russian split as a «diplomatic revolution»

Unified Germany

“from a potential victim of French aggression (1618-1815) • to a threat to the European balance of power (1871-1945)”

• weak & strong Germany are both not good for peace & stability in Europe

• Richelieu’s raison d’état kept Germany divided for more than 2 centuries

• Bismarck’s Realpolitik brought about the unification of Germany

• Bismarck’s legacy: «unassimilable greatness»

•Benjamin Disraeli was the Tory/conservative British prime minister (1874 – 80)

• Disraeli was the stateman who most quickly grasped the importance of German unification for European peace and stability

• Disraeli considered the 1870 Franco-Prussian War the  «German Revolution»

•For Disraeli, the unification of Germany was «a greater event than French Revolution»

• «the balance of power has been entirely destroyed»

WEEK 10

Bismarck’s Germany was not designed as the nation-state of all ethnic Germans

•Catholic Germans in the Austrian Empire were deliberately excluded

•Bismarck’s Germany was designed as a «Greater Prussian» state

• supremacy of Protestant Prussia in the new united Germany

• The constitution Bismarck established for Germany had many flaws in it: the government and the Prime Minister were not controlled by the parliament; they were instead appointed by the emperor and could be removed only by him

Bismarckian diplomacy (1871-1890

•The unification of Germany generated two great schisms in Europe:

• 1) Franco-German enmity   &   2) growing Austro-Russian hostility

• After its expulsion from Italy and the German Confederation, the Austrian Empire had no other place to expand except into the Balkans; However, Austria’s territorial ambitions in the Balkans put it into a direct collision course with Russia

• Two overriding goals of Bismarck’s diplomacy AFTER the unification of Germany (1871 – 1890):

•1. preserve the Austro-Hungarian Empire at all costs; for this Bismarck had to mediate between Russia and Austria and try to prevent any war between them • 2. prevent the formation of a Franco-Russian alliance against Germany (to protect Germany from a two-front war) • What could Bismarck do to achieve both these goals?

Manage Austro-Russian hostility and bring them together to a treaty with Germany

First DreikaiserBund (1873-1877)

Three Emperors’ League – alliance of the three eastern conservative empires (Austria-Hungary, Germany, Russia)

• The First Dreikaiserbund disintegrated quickly due to the «Eastern Question»

• «Eastern Question» - (A). Austro-Russian rivalry over the Balkan territories of the decaying Ottoman Empire

(A). British attempts to stop Russian expansionism towards the Straits (Bosphorus & Dardanelles)

•In Britain, the Tory / Conservative Party, which was the party of imperialism, was very anti-Russian; Tory governments ruled Britain for most of the time from 1874 up to 1905 (The two main Tory Prime Ministers during this time were Benjamin Disraeli and Lord Salisbury)

•Tory foreign policy towards the Ottoman Empire: the Ottoman Empire had to be preserved for it was a bulwark against Russian expansionism in the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East

Tory British Prime Minister (1885-1902)

1. Benjamin Disraeli (1874 – 1880)

2. Robert Arthur Gascoyne-Cecil, Lord Salisbury.