Concert of Europe
The Concert of Europe was the system of great-power consultation established after Napoleon's defeat, and it kept a general European war from happening for ninety-nine years. Its foundation was the Quadruple Alliance of November 1815 — Britain, Austria, Prussia and Russia — whose sixth article committed the powers to meet periodically to consider their common interests and the maintenance of peace. France was admitted in 1818. The settlement at Vienna had been built on legitimacy, compensation and balance: restore the old dynasties where possible, compensate the powers with territory, and ensure no state could dominate the continent as France had. Its distinctive feature was procedural. Rather than a treaty of guarantees, it was a habit of meeting — at Aix-la-Chapelle, Troppau, Laibach and Verona — and of treating major changes to the map as matters requiring collective consent. It divided almost immediately over what it was for. Metternich, Alexander I and the eastern courts held that the powers could intervene to suppress revolutions anywhere, and did so in Naples, Piedmont and Spain. Castlereagh and then Canning refused, holding that the alliance was against French aggression and not against constitutional change, and Britain withdrew from the congresses by 1822. The system survived the disagreement because its core function was different: it settled Greek independence, Belgian independence in 1830, and repeated Ottoman crises by conference rather than by war. It broke down in the Crimea in 1854 and again over German unification. Nothing replaced it, and July 1914 found no forum in which to meet. It is the standard case for and against great-power management of the international system.
- Year: 1815 CE
- Category: Political
