4 The nineteenth century, I
A strategic view
Introduction: the reach of strategic history
The twentieth century was dominated by wars, general and local, regular and irregular,
to register an incontestable claim. It is less well appreciated that the international
relations of the nineteenth century similarly were shaped and reshaped decisively by
wars. Moreover, that reshaping critically contributed to the outbreak and character
of what the British victory medal proclaimed to be the Great War for Civilization, or
World War I. The Concert of Europe, so called, contrived in 1 8 14–15 with its initial flurry
of congresses, was a response to the wars of the French Revolution and Empire, their
consequences and implications. In mid-century the succession of wars between great
powers from 1 8 54 to 1 8 71 entirely restructured the balance of power in Europe. Those
conflicts yielded a political context of enduring rivalries that enabled and eventually
triggered the catastrophe of 1914. To extend the argument geopolitically, the outcome
of the American Civil War of 1 8 61–5 created the modern United States, and ensured
that that country would be a giant among nations. This is not to claim inevitability to
the events just cited. The point, simply, is that the strategic history of the nineteenth
century, though less dramatic and obvious in its consequences than the like history of the
twentieth, was just as influential over the course of events.
The master narrative of the nineteenth century has to be the Industrial Revolution,
but for this book an even bigger story reposes in the strategic consequences of that
protracted process. In company with historian Paul Schroeder, one might be tempted to
argue that the biggest story of the century was what he discerns to have been a benign
transformation of international politics away from the habits and practices of the previous
century, most especially the readiness with which states resorted to war (Schroeder,
1994). Schroeder and his legion of predecessors have been seduced by the fallacy of
benign transformation. They note, accurately enough, some encouraging change in the
assumptions and practices of international relations. Also, they identify what they see as