16.1: The Congress of Vienna

At its simplest, 19th-Century European politics can be seen as a series of struggles and compromises between different political ideologies and their corresponding movements, normally pitting conservatives against liberals and nationalists. A series of revolutions shook much of Europe in 1848. But, in their aftermath, conservative monarchs regained control almost everywhere. After 1848, conservatism slowly adopted liberal and nationalistic traits, culminating in the conservative-led national unifications of Italy and Germany. Of the new political movements considered in the last chapter, only socialism failed to achieve its stated goals at least somewhere in Europe, instead becoming an increasingly militant movement opposed not just to conservatives, but its occasional former allies: liberals and nationalists.

After the Napoleonic wars, the great powers of Europe deliberately crafted a new political arrangement whose purpose was, in part, to maintain peace between them. Starting 1853, that peace was broken occasionally. But, the subsequent wars were shorter, less bloody, and less frequent than those of any previous century. According to historians, the nineteenth century technically ended in 1900, but in terms of its prevailing political, social, and cultural patterns, it really ended in 1914, with the advent of the horrendous bloodshed and destruction of World War I.

Congress of Vienna (revisited)

When Napoleon was first defeated in 1814, representatives from the victorious states gathered in the Austrian capital of Vienna to establish what was to be done in the aftermath of his conquests. Napoleon’s escape from Elba and inconvenient attempts to re-establish his empire forced the representatives to suspend their meeting. The Congress of Vienna finally concluded in 1815. While various states in Europe, including the Ottoman Empire, sent representatives, the Congress was dominated by the five “great powers”: the Austrian Empire, Great Britain, Prussia, Russia, and (by the end) France.

At its conclusion, the Congress of Vienna had redrawn the map of Europe with the goal of preventing France from threatening the balance of power again. Louis XVIII, the younger brother of the executed Louis XVI, was placed on the throne of France, and the "great powers" had the good sense to avoid punishing the French (not least because the French might opt to have yet another revolution in response). Much of the credit was due to a wily diplomat, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, a former official under Napoleon, who convinced the other representatives to include France as an equal partner rather than an enemy. Instead, the victors deprived the French of their conquests and imposed a modest indemnity, but they did not dismember the country. They did, however, redraw the map of Europe.

The powers had a few specific goals at the conference.

• Create lasting conservative order in France.
• Restrain French ambition and stave off the threat of another revolution.
• Reward themselves with territory taken from weaker states like Poland and the formerly independent territories of northern Italy.
• Suppress future revolutionary movements.

The political order that emerged became known as the Congress System (also known as the Concert of Europe): a conservative international political network maintained by the five great powers.

The Congress System was devoted to peace, stability, and order. While Great Britain was content with any political arrangement that prevented a disruption like the Napoleonic wars from occurring again, the more conservative states were not. Led by the Russian Tsar Alexander I, Russia, Austria, Prussia, and France (the latter under its new Bourbon monarch Louis XVIII) joined in a “Holy Alliance” that promised to put down revolutions wherever they might occur. Now, war would be waged in the name of dynastic sovereignty and the conservative political order, not territorial ambition. In other words, the next time France invaded Spain and Russia invaded Hungary, they did so in the name of restoring foreign conservative monarchs to their “rightful” position of power, not in order to enrich themselves.

Source: Wikipedia