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After the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, Europe entered a period of relatively stable peace. Initiated at the Congress of Vienna, the conservative powers led by Metternich in Austria developed a European geopolitical system based on maintaining the status quo and avoiding war. This was achieved through a balance of powers that kept each other in check, ensuring that no one nation could be more powerful than the other nations united against it.
This balance of power held through 1870, with brief periods of revolution in 1830 and 1848 that were the result of class differences and clashing ideologies. While 1815-1848 is often (and not incorrectly) characterized as teetering between conservatism and liberalism, it also saw the rise and maturation of radicalism, romanticism, nationalism, and socialism. Though the 1830 and 1848 revolts were quickly suppressed by the conservative powers, they did demonstrate a general trend toward an increasingly politically active working class. In 1870 and 1871, Italy and Germany became unified nations, with Germany in particular emerging as an immediate international force.
The years between 1871 and 1914 brought liberal progress in England, social welfare in Germany, imperial expansion throughout the world, and economic strengthening of England, Germany, the United States, and Japan. Contemporaries even referred to this time as the “dawn of a new era” in scientific development, peace, economic expansion, and cultural civilization. Without war or major conflict in sight, Europe set out to perfect its home and spread its supposed perfection throughout the world.
Unfortunately, certain paternalistic policies developed overseas out of this perspective, leading to the brutal treatment of Africans and Asians during the imperial period under the false assumption that the imposition of European ideals was a necessary force of good for these societies. In this hopeful time, no one in Europe expected that, in 1914, a catastrophic war of unthinkable brutality would tear through the continent and transform Europe forever.
