Major Steps of the European History Since 1815

Home , County of Tyrol, Free City of Danzig, Timeline of Metz, Treaty of Vienna (1606), Treaty of Vienna (1866), Treaty of Warsaw (1920)

Major steps of the European History since 1815

1815 : The congress of Vienna - a new organization of Europe.

The Congress of Vienna was a conference of ambassadors of European states chaired by Klemens Wenzel von Metternich. Metternich firmly believed that liberalism and nationalism were dangerous and that led to the Congress of Vienna which restored monarchy in every states won by France during the French Revolutionary Wars or the Napoleonic Wars.

The following topics were dealt with by the Congress : the restauration and the come back of the political situation of 1789; legitimity (Bourbon’s claims) and solidarity of legitimate princes facing revolutionary uprisings.

The ‘Four Great Powers’ were : Austria, represented by Prince Metternich, the United Kingdom, represented by Viscount Castlereagh, Russia's official delegation was led by the foreign minister, Count Karl Robert Nesselrode, Prussia represented by Prince Karl August von Hardenberg, the Chancellor, and the diplomat and scholar Wilhelm von Humboldt, France, the "fifth" power, represented by her foreign minister, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord.

The Final Act of the Treaty of Vienna, embodying a balance between the ‘Four Great Powers’, was signed on June 1815.

The Congress reduced France to its 1791 borders and the country was surrounded by a belt of small States (the United Kingdom of the Netherlands and Piedmont-Sardinia enlarged of Savoy).

Hanover and the United Kingdom had the same sovereign. The United Kingdom was confirmed in control of Malta, Ceylon and the Cape Colony in Southern Africa. They are the real winners of the negociations.

Russia was given most of the Duchy of Warsaw (Poland) with its own institutions.

REPERES – module 1-0 - explanatory notes – Major steps of the European History since 1815 – EN Auteur & © : Nadège Mougel, CVCE, 2011 English translation: Julie Gratz, Centre européen Robert Schuman 1/12

Austria gave up the Austrian Netherlands (Belgium) but received Lombardy-Venetia in Italy and Dubrovnik in Dalmatia. Austria tried to extend its political power on Italy. Former Austrian territory in Southwest Germany remained under the control of Württemberg and Baden.

Prussia was given two fifths of Saxony, parts of the Duchy of Warsaw (the Grand Duchy of Posen), Danzig, and the Rhineland/Westphalia. Prussia was split up into two parts - socially, economically and religiously different. Its role was to protect the Rhin river and also gained territory inside Germany.

The neutrality of Switzerland was guaranteed.

1830 : national and liberal uprisings in Europe.

Some political movements from the French Revolution such as liberalism and nationalism were getting more and more popular.

The July Revolution saw the hegemony of the bourgeoisie in constitutional monarchies in Western Europe.

In Central and Southern Europe, some national and liberal movements knew a rapid development.

The French Revolution of 1830, also known as the July Revolution, saw the overthrow of King Charles X of France, who departed for Great Britain after barricades had been erected throughout the city of Paris. In his place Louis Philippe of the House of Orléans was placed on the throne and he agreed to rule as a constitutional monarch.

In Belgium, riots erupted in Brussels. The town of Antwerp was bombarded. The Provisional Government and a National Congress recognized Belgian independence.

Greece also became independent.

In Italy, riots burst in Modena, Parma and Romagna in 1831, but the French army did not show up. The national revolution intensified and finally ended with the idea of a unification.

In Poland, in 1830-1831, the uprising began in Warsaw. Large segments of Polish society revolted against the Russian Army. In 1832, Poland became a russian territory.

In Austria and Hungary, both a national and social revolution was born, abolishing the seigneurial system.

European Revolutions of 1848 also known in some countries as the ‘Spring of Nations’, a series of political upheavals throughout Europe and collapse of traditional authority (Metternich).

In 1848, it was the first (and only) Europe-wide collapse of traditional authority, but within a year reactionary forces had won out and the revolutions collapsed. These revolutions led to new revolutions and to the end of the unity of a country. In Germany for example, the revolution failed in 1849 but will lead to the unification in 1871.

In Italy, the major outbreaks came in Palerma, Naples and Toscany, in the Papal States and also in Milan.

Many political leaders proposed constitutions. Thanks to french and austrian inerventions, peace is maintained almost everywhere. This is the beginning of the unification of the country through the Kingdom of Piedmont- Sardinia.

In France, on the 23, 24 and 25 February, the citizens of Paris turned their back on Louis- Philippe. During the "June Days", the petite bourgeoisie repressed the new social measures. The government was then headed by Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte. Because of the French coup d'état in 1851, staged by Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, the Second Republic was transformed into the Second Empire and monarchy was definitively abolished.

In Austria, street demonstrations broke out in Vienna on March. Bohemia was besieged in June and the capital in October. After the Austrian revolution in Vienna was beaten down, Ferdinand was forced to abdicate in favour of his nephew Franz Joseph. Austria being diminished, this encouraged Hungary and Germany to launch a revolution.

The Hungarian Diet (English: Parliament) abolished serfdom. The independence was proclaimed on April 1849, but Austria and Russia crushed the revolution.

In Germany, street demonstrations broke out in Berlin. The Frankfurt National Assembly proposed a constitution with Friedrich Wilhelhm of Prussia as monarch and facing Austria’s pressure, the previous situation came back on November 1850.

1870-1871 : The Franco-Prussian War, the complete Prussian and German victory over France and the annexion of the territory of Alsace-Lorraine.

Causes : France feared the hegemonic power of Germany. Bismarck wanted to reinforce the cohesion with the states of south Germany in a war and in a context of victory, four years after the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. The unification of Germany had to be led through and around Prussia for the ‘Little Germany’ partisans without Austria.

Pretext : The conflict was a culmination of years of tension between the two nations (Prussia and France), which finally came to a head over the issue of a Hohenzollern candidate for the vacant Spanish throne. The public release of the Ems Dispatch, which played up alleged insults between the Prussian king and the French ambassador, inflamed public opinion on both sides. France mobilized, and on 19 July 1870 declared war to Prussia. Bismarck was assured of Great Britain’s neutrality.

The Prussian General Staff developed by Helmuth von Moltke proved to be extremely effective. The armies of France which avoided to be trapped in Metz rushed to the North.

On 1 September 1870, during the Battle of Sedan, MacMahon capitulated and Napoleon III surrendered and was taken prisoner.

On 4 September 1870, headed by Gambetta, the republic was proclaimed led by a Government of National Defence.

In September, the Germans began to besiege Paris. Léon Gambetta organized new French armies - the so-called Francs-tireurs - in the countryside after escaping from besieged Paris in a balloon. Gambetta turned to General Faidherbe's Army of the North and Chanzy of the West, and both failed.

Paris surrendered on January 1871.

On February 1871, in national elections, Adolphe Thiers was elected ‘head of the executive power of the Republic’ and a preliminary treaty of Versailles was signed on 26 February 1871.

The Treaty of Frankfurt was signed on 10 Mayand gave Germany the possession of Alsace and the northern portion of Lorraine (Moselle), both of which contained 80% of French iron ore and machine shops.

France agreed to pay five-billion francs in war indemnity and areas were occupied (6 departments of the North East and Belfort) for 3 years until the war repartitions were paid.

1904-1905 : Russo-Japanese War and Russia’s come back to a European politic.

The Russians sought a warm water port on the Pacific Ocean, for their navy as well as for maritime trade.

The Japanese military attained victory over the Russian forces.

At the military level, this conflict prefigured of the wars in the 20th century by its length (one year in a half), by the use of infantry in offensive campaigns, by the number of casualties, and by the modern military technology used.

This war grew out of two rival imperial ambitions.

1912 : The First Balkan War pitted the Balkan League (Serbia, Greece, Montenegro and Bulgaria) against the Ottoman Empire.

The Ottoman offensive plan failed completely and was forced to abandon Kirk Kilisse, Lüle Burgas and Adrianople (besieged by the Bulgarian Second Army), in Kumanovo (victory of Serbia).

The international context : Serbia, encouraged by Russia, struggled for an exit from the Adriatic. Italy protested. Italy wanted the annexion of Albania and the gathering of the Great Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy). Greece protested againt Italy’s occupation of the Dodecanese Islands (1912).

Austria-Hungary didn’t want Serbia or Italy to get more power and thus backed-up Bulgaria.

Russia felt theatened by Bulgaria’s pressure upon Serbia and Turkey tended to protect its last friend state in the Balkan and follow its plan in the straits. Germany and Great Britain tried to work together so as to get an official consensus in London.

The Treaty of London ended the First Balkan War on May 1913. All Ottoman territory west of the Enez-Kıyıköy line and all its islands in the Aegean sea were ceded to the Balkan League.

Despite its success and its military strenght, Bulgaria attaked Serbia.

1914 : Beginning of the first World War. Opposition of two alliances: the Allies (centred around the Triple Entente – France, Great Britain and Russia) and the Central Powers (originally centred around the Triple Alliance - Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy).

The First World War began as a clash of 20-century technology and countries modernised their weapons. The conflict followed these steps :

Assassination on 28 June 1914 of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, and his wife by a Bosnian Serb student Gavrilo Princip, following the orders of a secret army society named the ‘Black Hand’.

6 July: After Austria-Hungary received German support, an ultimatum against the Kingdom of Serbia was launched on 23 July.

20-23 July : Russia received French support.

28 July : the conflict opened with the Austro-Hungarian invasion of Serbia.

30 July : the Russian Empire ordered a partial mobilisation.

31 July : Austria-Hungary ordered mobilisation.

1 August : German mobilisation and Germany declared war on Russia.

3 August : Germany declared war on France.

The Ottoman Empire joined Germany in the war, the secret Ottoman-German Alliance having been signed on August 1914. It threatened Russia. Italy joined the Triple Entente.

6 September 1916: Bulgaria signed the Treaty for friendship and alliance with Germany.

27 August 1916 : the Romanian Army launched an attack against Austria-Hungary.

27 June 1917 : Greece joined the Allies in the war.

The Treaty of Versailles was signed on 28 June 1919 and ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers.

Negotiations between the Allied powers started on 18 at the French Foreign Ministry, on the Quai d'Orsay in Paris.

Initially, 70 delegates of 27 nations participated in the negotiations under the presidence of the French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau. Having been defeated, some nations were excluded from the negotiations.

During the negociations, which comprised the “Big Four” (Wilson, Lloyd George, Clémenceau, Orlando), it was difficult to decide on a common position about the Fourteen Points of the treaty issued by Wilson because their aims conflicted with one another.

7 May 1919 : the German delegation is presented the peace treaty text.

16 June 1919 : Ultimatum : the Allied Powers demanded the Treaty to be signed with almost no modifications.

28 June 1919 : The Treaty was signed.

Content (440 articles):

Part I of the treaty was the Covenant of the League of Nations which provided for the creation of the League of Nations, an organization intended to arbitrate international disputes and thereby avoid future wars.

Part II and III : Germany would lose a number of European territories (1/7 of its territory). Alsace and much of Lorraine were part of France. Most of the Prussian provinces were ceded to Poland. Memel became a free city.

The strategically important port of Danzig was separated from Germanyas the Freie Stadt Danzig (Free City of Danzig).

The area of Eupen-Malmedy was given to Belgium and the eastern part of Upper Silesia was assigned to Poland with ba plebiscite.

Austria was forbidden from merging with Germany.

Part IV and V : German colonies were divided with the determination not to see any of them returned to Germany.

Part VI to VII : decisions were taken about prisoners of war.

Part VIII : set out the reparations that Germany would pay to the Allies (132 billion Reichsmarks).

Part IX to XIV : deals with financial content.

1919 - 1923 : Europe and the Peace Treaties.

The Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, was signed on 10 September 1919 by the new Republic of Austria, which recognized the independence of Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs. Austria was reduced by the cession of the Southern half of the County of Tyrol, Trieste, Istria and several Dalmatian islands to Italy.

The Treaty of Neuilly-sur-Seine, dealing with Bulgaria was signed on 27 November 1919. The treaty required Bulgaria to cede Western Thrace to Greece.

The Treaty of Trianon was signed of 4 June 1919 with Hungary. The treaty greatly redefined and reduced Hungary's borders. The principal beneficiaries of territorial adjustment

were Romania (part of Transylvania came under the control of Romania), Czechoslovakia (Slovakia became part of Czechoslovakia), and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.

10 August 1920 : Treaty of Sèvres with Turkey.

The turkish parliament refused to ratify the Treaty.

The Treaty thus led to the internationalization of the waters. Moreover, Greece received Thrace (with Gallipoli), Aegean Sea Islands and Smyma, Syria and Cilicia were declared a zone of French influence, and Palestine and Irak officially fell under the Bristish Mandate. The Kingdom of Hejaz was granted international recognition. Italy was confirmed in the possession of the Dodecanese Islands, Rhodes and the Tripolitan. Armenia became independent.

Extermination of approximately six million European Jews during World War II and hundreds of thousands of civilans deported by the Nazis.

Deportation and repression casulaties :

For the large majority of European countries under the German annexion or occupation, the estimated death toll, which does not count the number of deported civilians being part of the ‘Final Solution’, vary greatly. Estimates range from 550 000 à 650 000. In France, in the fifties or sixties, the survey related to deportation conducted by the Committee for the History of the Second World War established a number of 66 000 deported civilians, among these only one-third survived the deportation. In 2004, the Memorial-Book, edited by the Foundation for the memory of the Deportation (FMD), established the number of “people deported as an effect of the nazi repression” at 86 000 (political resistants, hostages, Spanish Republicans), among these, 40% of them died in prison or in Nazi camps.

Among the deported :

-7 000 Republican Spaniards sought refuge in France and were sent to the Nazis by the Vichy regime and 5 000 resistants were deported after that the decree ‘Night and Fog’ was promulgated.

Estimates for Holocaust deaths is about 5 100 0000 :

- dead of ‘ghettoisation’ and starvation : 800 000. - dead of public executions, shot by Einsatzgruppen : 1 300 000. - dead in the camps : 3 000 000 (about 1 000 000 in Auschwitz).

Geographical repartition of casualties :

- Eastern Europe : more than 3 400 000 (3 000 000 in Poland). - USSR : more than 700 000. - Central Europe and the Balkan: about 730 000. - Western Europe : about 210 000.

In France, 76 000 Jews total were deported to Nazi camps, therefore one quarter of the jewish population living in France in 1940.

Even though sources differ on statistics, at the beginning of the Second World War, estimated Jews living in France stand at approximately 330 000 and about half of them were foreigners.

Only 2 500 deported jews escaped the extermination.

With a total of about 3 000 Jews killed in the french internment camps and a thousand of Jews executed or shot as hostage, the estimated death toll stands at 80 000 casualties.

Most estimates of Roma (Gypsies) victims is 250 000, hence 1/3 of the Romani population. In France, 15 000 Gypsies were deported and only a very few survived.

About 162 000 total deported civilans of repression or persecution were sent from France to concentration and extermination camps.

12 February 1946 - 29 August 1949 : Civil war in Greece.

Immediately after the end of the Second World War, civil war erupts in Greece and leads to British troops being deployed on the streets of Athens.

The Civil war in Greece is the first (quite unknown) episode of the Cold war, in which more than 100 000 people died between 1946 and 1949. This war thus marked the beginning of an era of conflicts between the two blocs - the East and the West. The Greeks were profoundly traumatised.

October-November 1956 : The Suez Crisis.

The United States refused to fund the building of the Aswan Dam. So as to finance the project itself, Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal in July 1956 and stockholders (mainly Bristish and French) would be paid the price of their shares.

After the failure of 3 meetings in London between the users of the canal , India and the USSR eventually approved the Egyptian mesure.

The American administration, which was outraged at the tripartite aggression (Israel, UK and France), publicly condemned it and supported United Nations resolutions demanding withdrawal in November. Forces had totally withdrawn from Egyptian territory under the Soviet threat. UN forces were thus stationed around the canal zone.

Consequences : This is a big defeat for the Western world but the Soviet Union gained a real prestige.

USSR played an active role in the Middle East thanks to its military and economic aid to Egypt (the Aswan Dam).

The UK, France, and Israel colluded in a secret agreement (Protocol of Sèvres) to take over the Suez Canal. The Europeans countries had several aims (political, economic and commercial) of controlling the Canal zone and Israel needed attaining freedom of navigation.

1967-1974: "The Regime of the Colonels" in Greece.

It refers to a series of right-wing military governments that ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974. Ruled by the Greek military, who pushed the King Constantine II to flee into exile, it started in the morning of 21 April 1967 with a coup d'état led by a group of colonels, headed by Papadopoulos, and ended in July 1974.

The physical collapse of the junta as a government was immediately caused by the Cyprus debacle of 1974.

1969 : beginning of the Ostpolitik.

Neue Ostpolitik (German for "new eastern policy"), implemented with Willy Brandt, refers to the normalization of relations between the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, or West Germany) and Eastern Europe, particularly the German Democratic Republic (GDR, or East Germany) beginning on 28 ocotober 1969. It led to give up the Hallstein Doctrine so as to to undermine the communist regime or even lighten the situation of the Germans in the GDR..

Ostpolitik was influenced and implemented by Brandt's right hand Egon Bahr. Some members of NATO feared that the Federal Republic of Germany would become too indulgent towards the communist government and its allies of the Warshaw Pact. Ostpolitik highlighted the easing of tensions between the East and the West. The Treaty of Moscow signed on 12 August 1970 and the Treaty of Warsaw signed on 17 May 1972 were considered as the first steps of the Ostpolitik.

A seminal moment came in December 1970 with the famous Warschauer Kniefall in which Brandt, apparently spontaneously, knelt down at the monument to victims of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, guaranteeing German acceptance of the new borders of Poland (Oder-Neisse line). The Quadripartite Agreement on Berlin signed on 3 September 1971 marked a relaxation of tension in East-West relations. in particular since it guaranteed civil communications between West Berlin and the Federal Republic of Germany. Soviet Union improved travel and communications between the two parts of the city. On 21 December 1972, in East Berlin, the two Germanys signed the Basic Treaty in which the two States recognised one another and established normal political and trade relations. The diplomatic status quo and the inviolability of the border dividing the two German States were recognised, although reunification remained a long-term goal. This opened the way for recognition of the GDR by the Western countries, and both Germanys were admitted to the United Nations (UN) in September 1973. The same year, within the framework of the Ostpolitik, the Treaty of Prague was signed by the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) and Czechoslovakia,

5.- TERMS OF USE:

Teaching is first and foremost about sharing, transferring and exchanging knowledge. This presentation may be used freely in conjunction with school-based and extra- curricular training conducted on a not-for-profit basis. Please cite the source!

Note: this project has been funded with the support of the European Commission. This document reflects only the views of the author. Neither the partners nor the Commission may be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained herein.

With the cooperation of the following National Agencies:

