Become a Study.com member to unlock this The Triple Entente (from French entente [ɑ̃tɑ̃t] "good will") was the name given to the alliance between France, Britain, and Russia after the signing of the Anglo-Russian Entente on August 31, 1907. 5 0 obj A statesman of unmatched astuteness, he perceived only too clearly for their own good which of his neighbors he had to humble before a tenable German Empire could be proclaimed. The age of empires, which are inherently based upon the generation of fear and the deployment of force, was gradually drawing to an end, and what was to supplant it would be a polity whose quintessence could already be discerned in the United States and the United Kingdom— democracy. Otto von Bismarck, a key person in the early days of the German nation. Great Britain, the historic rival of France and the dominant figure in whose political life from 1852-65 had been the overtly chauvinistic Palmerston, was not reassured by French imperial endeavors, which spanned the globe from Mexico to North Africa to the Far East. Moreover, the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, which had been constructed by a French company headed by a French diplomat and engineer called Ferdinand de Lesseps, was greatly resented by London (which had taken no part in either the canal’s funding or its construction) because of its geopolitical importance. Thus, with all the Continental powers keen to usher in a deflation of her ego, it is not surprising that France should have received no support in a war which, most importantly of all, she had been imperious enough to initiate herself against an ascendant Prussia. - Definition, Race & Facts, The United States in World War I: Official Position, Isolation & Intervention, The Interwar Years: Timeline, Society & Economies, Union Development During WWI: Issues & Conflict, End of WWI: the Treaty of Versailles & the League of Nations, World War One: On Land, at Sea & In the Air, AP European History: Homework Help Resource, AP US History Syllabus Resource & Lesson Plans, AP European History Syllabus Resource & Lesson Plans, Michigan Merit Exam - Social Studies: Test Prep & Practice, Biological and Biomedical You are the one fixed point in a changing age. In reality, the reason for wishing to humiliate Austria was the fact that she remained the oldest German power, far older than Prussia, in existence on the Continent, the Habsburgs having ascended the throne as long ago as 1273. And Providence favored the Teuton just then, for there arose a man whose impregnable personal convictions, filtered through his unmatched political acumen, were to forever change the course of European history. Did World War Two Japanese Kamikaze Attacks have more Impact than Nazi V-2 Rockets? In other words, what was it that made the two outcomes constants? There’s an east wind coming all the same, such a wind as never blew on England yet. <> The rearrangement of some loyalties during the war, with corresponding additions and subtractions, lies beyond the purview of this essay, the sole purpose of which is to illuminate international perceptions as they existed prior to the outbreak of war. Up to the point of its categorical defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, France had been generally perceived as being the strongest power on the Continent, and the Emperor Napoleon III as engaged in plotting machinations supposed to be as ambitious as they were surreptitious (hence his sobriquet). It seems that but for one glaring fact, the answer could have been readily given in the affirmative. At the beginning of Bismarck, however ironic it may sound, was not at all keen to orchestrate such a development, for it would have turned his whole policy upside-down. Having thus ascertained the background and context in which his feats operated, it should now be easy for us to understand how the two constants that we alluded to earlier actually came into being. Bismarck may not have been the first one to realize that a multitude of independent but moribund German kingdoms could never realize the dream of securing Great Power status for the German people, and that the course most favorable for its achievement would be a political union of all the kingdoms under the auspices of the strongest one of them, Prussia, which had become a major European power since the days of King Frederick II (1740-86); but he was certainly the one who demonstrated the veracity of that proposition beyond doubt. For this reason, the autocratic courts and chancelleries of Europe were already on edge by the time Bismarck added to their troubles with his decisive victories over a stagnant status quo and forever altered the European balance of power. From the moment that he was appointed chief minister of Prussia in 1862, Bismarck set out to accomplish this stupendous goal that he had set himself with indefatigable perseverance. But it’s God’s own wind nonetheless, and a cleaner, better, stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared.”. Bismarck’s earlier victory over the Danes had been the means for engendering this conflict, since a portion of the territory that he had gained in 1864 (Schleswig-Holstein) had been granted to Austria, subsequent allegations of maladministration against whom eventually furnished Bismarck with the pretext that he needed for going to war against her. It is beyond the scope of this essay to delve into the particulars of those wars because what concerns us here are their political effects after 1871, when the Treaty of Frankfurt concluded the Franco-Prussian War by proclaiming the birth of Imperial Germany and the simultaneous demise of the Second Empire in France. This alliance of three powers was supplemented by some agreements with Japan and Portugal and constituted a very powerful counterweight to the Triple Alliance of Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Italy. The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 remains, to date, one of the most formidable events in the entire history of mankind. Rather than being the offspring of popular sentiment alone, the German Empire, when it was eventually born in 1871, had primarily resulted from consent by all the German kings outside of Austria to unite as one under the indubitable hegemony of the Hohenzollern King of Prussia, who became the German Emperor (or Kaiser). endobj 4 0 obj Throughout the period designated by the late Professor Eric Hobsbawm as the ‘long nineteenth century’— i.e. <> And for a predominantly mercantile people like the British, the more they could reduce the costs of their shipping to and from India, the more competitive would their goods become in the world market, and thereby improve profit margins all over. To that end, he waged three specific wars— against Denmark in 1864, Austria in 1866 and, finally, France in 1870. In this article, we shall confine ourselves to a succinct examination of the new European order (and its irrefragable hallmarks) that emerged in 1871.