Timeline

Congress of Vienna

June 1815 – June 1815

Following the turmoil of the Napoleonic Wars, the Great Powers sought an international system that would allow them to maintain peace and international stability.  The Congress of Vienna, held from November 1814 to June 1815, called for restoration of governments overthrown in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars since 1792, dynastic legitimacy, and solidarity of the Great Powers.  The resulting June Final Act attempted to establish a balance of power amongst the Great Powers, allowing future French aggression to be checked and revolutionary movements to be halted.  The Powers utilized regular meetings known as the Concert of Europe to resolve differences and to halt new threats to the European peace.  

Italian unification

March 1861 – March 1861

German unification declared at Versailles

January 1871 – January 1871

German unification resulted from a series of wars undertaken by Prussia in the 1860s, against Denmark in 1864, against Austria in 1866, and finally against France in 1870–
71.  However, while Austrian anger over the 1866 Seven Weeks’ War soon receded, the 1870–71 Franco-Prussian War resulted in long-term French hostility.  French anger arose in part from the annexation of the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine by Germany, but more generally from German assumption of the central role in the Great Power system previously played by France.  Proclamation of the German Empire in the Hall of Mirrors at the Versailles Palace only further humiliated and angered the French, and the resulting Franco-German hostility became a central feature of European international relations after 1871.