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European balance of power


European balance of power

The European balance of power is an international relations concept that applies historically and currently to the nations of Europe. It is often known by the term European State System.


  • History 1
    • 16th to 18th centuries 1.1
    • 19th century 1.2
    • World Wars 1.3
    • Post-World War II: Cold War period 1.4
    • Late 20th and 21st centuries 1.5
  • See also 2
  • Bibliography 3
  • References 4


16th to 18th centuries

In the 16th and 17th centuries, English foreign policy strove to prevent a creation of the single Universal Monarchy in Europe, which many believed France or Spain might attempt to create. To maintain the balance of power, the English made alliances with other states—including Portugal, the Ottoman Empire, and the Netherlands—to counter the perceived threat. These Grand Alliances reached their height in the wars against Louis XIV and Louis XV of France. They often involved the English (later the British) paying large subsidies to European allies to finance large armies.

In the 18th century, this led to the stately quadrille, with a number of major European powers—such as Austria, Prussia, Great Britain, and France—changing alliances multiple times to prevent the hegemony of one nation or alliance. A number of wars stemmed, at least in part, from the desire to maintain the balance of power, including the War of the Spanish Succession, War of the Austrian Succession, the Seven Years' War, the War of the Bavarian Succession and the Napoleonic Wars. Following Britain's success in the Seven Years' War, many of the other powers began to see London as a greater threat than France. Several states entered the American War of Independence in the hope of overturning Britain's growing strength by securing the independence of Thirteen of the colonies of British America.

19th century

During the 19th century, to achieve lasting peace, the Concert of Europe tried to maintain the balance of power. This policy was largely successful in averting a full-scale Europe-wide war for almost a century, until the First World War.[1] Specifically, during the first half of the 19th century, Britain and France dominated Europe, but by the 1850s they had become deeply concerned by the growing power of Russia and Prussia. The Crimean War of 1854–55 and the Italian War of 1859 shattered the relations among the Great Powers in Europe; however, the creation and rise of the German Empire as a dominant nation restructured the European balance of power.[2] For the next twenty years, Otto von Bismarck managed to maintain the balance of power, by proposing treaties and creating many complex alliances between the European nations such as the Triple Alliance.

World Wars


This idea floundered as Europe split into three principal factions in the 1920s and 1930s: Liberal Democratic states led by Britain and France, Communist states led by the Soviet Union, and authoritarian nationalists led by Germany and Italy. The failure of the Democratic states to prevent the advance of Nazi Germany ultimately led to the Second World War, which led to a temporary alliance between Britain and the Soviets.

Post-World War II: Cold War period

During the post-Second World War era the West split into two blocs, a balance of power emerged in between the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down."[3]

Late 20th and 21st centuries

In the present day the four most powerful members of the European Union— Britain, France, Italy and Germany — are referred to as the EU big four. They are the EU countries individually represented as full members of the G7, the G8 and the G20. Germany (who has the largest economy of the Eurozone) is often regarded as the EU's economic leader, such as with the on-going European sovereign debt crisis, whilst France and Britain often lead in defence and foreign policy matters, such as the intervention in Libya in 2011. This, to an extent, represents a balancing of leadership power for the Western sphere of the continent. There continues however to be a wider, strategic balance of Western and (now) Russian power, albeit with the boundary between the two pushed further east since the collapse of the Soviet Union, with many former Socialist countries in central Europe having since joined the EU and NATO.

See also




  1. ^ Strachan p.4-6
  3. ^ Reynolds 1994, p. 13.
