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A great power typically possesses military, economic, and diplomatic strength that it can wield to influence the actions of middle or small powers. In a modern context, recognized great powers first arose in Europe during the post-Napoleonic era. [1]
The European balance of power is a tenet in international relations that no single power should be allowed to achieve hegemony over a substantial part of Europe. During much of the Modern Age, the balance was achieved by having a small number of ever-changing alliances contending for power, [1] which culminated in the World Wars of the early 20th century.
Portrait of Prince Metternich by Thomas Lawrence. Prince Metternich, Austrian chancellor and foreign minister, as well as an influential leader in the Concert of Europe. The Concert of Europe describes the geopolitical order in Europe from 1814 to 1914, during which the great powers tended to act in concert to avoid wars and revolutions and generally maintain the territorial and political ...
1815 1878 1900 1919 1939 1945 c. 2000 Austria [nb 1] Austria-Hungary [nb 2] Austria-Hungary [nb 3] British Empire [nb 4] British Empire [nb 5] British Empire [nb 6] British Empire [nb 7]
Early modern Europe was dominated by the Wars of Religion, notably the Thirty Years' War, during which the major European monarchies developed into centralised great powers sustained by their colonial empires. The main European monarchical powers in the early modern period were: [citation needed] the Kingdom of France with its colonial empire
After the defeat of revolutionary France, the great powers tried to restore the situation which existed before 1789. The 1815 Congress of Vienna produced a peaceful balance of power among the European empires, known as the Metternich system. The powerbase of their support was the aristocracy. [131]
The formalization of the division between small powers and great powers came with the signing of the Treaty of Chaumont in 1814. A great power is a nation or state that, through economic, political and military strength, is able to exert power and influence over not only its own region, but beyond to others.
Between the 1830s and 1850, France and the United Kingdom were the strongest powers in Europe, but by the 1850s they had become deeply concerned by the growing power of Imperial Russia, which had expanded westward towards Central Europe, and the Kingdom of Prussia, which was increasingly assuming greater control and influence over the German ...