ABSTRACT
Europe's political arena during the eighteenth century was characterized by power competition. By the close of the century Russia had advanced across the Urals all the way into Siberia, recovered West Russia from Poland, obtained much of the former state of Poland, acquired Kiev and the middle Dnieper lands, wrested Livonia and Estonia from Sweden, and gained control of the Black Sea's north shores. The Austrian Habsburgs, because of their need to cope with potential foes on a number of fronts, limited their imperial aspirations to the surrounding areas. They ruled Austria, Bohemia, Silesia, Moravia, Hungary, Naples, Milan, Sicily, and the southern Netherlands after 1714. Prussia and the Ottoman Empire faced distinct challenges. Though the Peace of Westphalia fragmented Germany into three hundred impoverished principalities, it also enabled Prussia to emerge as their dominant entity. Its aspirations did not transcend its region's borders and were more defensive than imperialist. With the support of a highly efficient and well-financed Junker-officered army, Prussia made the most of new opportunities. It seized Silesia, a significant industrial center in the east, in 1742; it secured its status as a power to be reckoned with after it defeated Austria in 1763; and it created a continuous Prussian territory stretching from Memel in the Baltic Sea's eastern coast and Magdeburg in the western side when it gained control over one of Poland's areas in the 1770s.
