Western Civilization - History Of European Society

Imperialism, War, and Revolution, 1881–1920 529

allies. He achieved both goals through a web of al-
liances collectively known as the Bismarckian system,
with which he dominated European diplomacy for
twenty years (1871–90). Bismarck’s accomplishment
radically altered European statecraft. Whereas the Met-
ternichian system had kept the peace by a delicate bal-
ance of power in which none of the great powers
became too dominant and none felt too threatened, the
Bismarckian system kept peace through the lopsided
superiority of the German alliances and the compara-
tive weakness of France.
French nationalists nonetheless dreamt of the day
of revenge—la revanche—on Germany, the day when
the republic would reclaim “the lost provinces” of Al-
sace and Lorraine, whose borders were marked on the
maps of French schools in a deep black. Realistic na-
tionalists such as the hero of 1870, Léon Gambetta, un-
derstood that Germany had become too powerful to
fight alone. The French must wait for revanche;in Gam-
betta’s words, they should “[t]hink of it always, speak of
it never.” Despite a war scare in 1875 and a tense period
during the Boulangist nationalism of the late 1880s, no
French government planned a war of revenge.
The first treaty in Bismarck’s alliance system was
the Three Emperors’ League (Dreikaiserbund) of 1873, an
outgrowth of state visits exchanged by William I of
Germany, Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary, and
Alexander II of Russia. The Dreikaiserbundrepresented an
amicable understanding (an entente) among recent ri-
vals who shared a belief in monarchical solidarity.
(France remained the only republic in monarchical Eu-
rope.) The king of Italy soon embraced this counterrev-
olutionary league, siding with Germany despite the
debt Italians owed to the French from their wars of uni-
fication. The British remained outside this league, fa-
voring a policy of continental nonalignment that came
to be called splendid isolation.
The development of the Bismarckian system accel-
erated as a result of warfare in the Balkans in 1875–78,
which convinced Bismarck to seek more formal treaties.
The provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina (see map
27.1) rebelled against Turkish rule in 1875, and the
Principality of Serbia intervened to support them.
The Serbs had won autonomous government in their
rebellion of 1817 and had become the center of Pan-
Slavism, an ardent nationalism dedicated to the unity of
the southern Slavs. The insurrection against the Ot-
toman Empire next spread to Bulgaria in 1876, and the
Turks responded with violent repression known in the
European press as “the Bulgarian horrors.” This enlarged
Balkan war forced the European powers to address a

problem that had come to be called the eastern ques-

tion. This was the question of the survival of the

Ottoman Empire—still known as “the sick man of Eu-

rope”—and the fate of territories under the control of

Constantinople. The eastern question posed the danger

of Austro-Russian conflict because both governments

coveted Ottoman territory in the Balkans. To avoid

such a confrontation, Bismarck adopted the role of “the

honest broker” of the eastern question and presided

over the Congress of Berlin (1878) to end the fighting.

The British endorsed the congress because it served

their policy of preserving the Ottoman Empire rather

than dismantling it. The Berlin settlement placated

Turkish honor by returning some territory lost in the

fighting, and it awarded Balkan territory to both the

Russians (Bessarabia) and the Austrians (Bosnia-

Herzegovina). Bismarck bought French backing with

support for colonial expansion. The Slavic nationalist

movements of the Balkans—both Serbian and Bulgar-

ian—were not satisfied: Serbs won their independence

Ottoman Empire

Bulgaria as amended by

Congress of Berlin, 1878

Ionian

Sea

Aegean

Sea

Black

Adriatic Sea Sea

Dan

ube R

.

ITALY

GREECE

BULGARIA

OTTOMAN

EMPIRE

ROMANIA

AUSTRIA-HUNGARY

GERMANY

SERBIA

BOSNIA

Trieste

Belgrade

Budapest

Vienna

Sofia

Bucharest

Salonika

Athens

Smyrna

Constantinople

MONTENEGRO

Sicily

Crete

HERZE-

GOVINA

EAST

RUMELIA

MACEDONIA

TO

SERBIA

Sarajevo

ALBANIA

Carpathian

Mts

.

Ba

lka

nM

ts.

RUSSIA

MOLDAVIA

BESSARABIA

THESSALY

0 100 200 Miles

0 100 200 300 Kilometers

MAP 27.1

The Balkans after the Congress

of Berlin, 1878