ABSTRACT
The last decade of the nineteenth century was the last period when the scale on which Europe’s affairs were conducted was still small. The twentieth century, when the scale was the scale of massed populations, mass production in industry and global distances, seems in retrospect further away from the nineties than the nineties seem from the age of the French Revolution. But the scale was already changing. There will, therefore, be much to say in this chapter of population growth, of industrialisation, of railways. There will also be much to say of a new theme which connects the nineteenth century with the world wars of the twentieth century: political instability. This is why Russia comes first in this chapter. She was the first state to experience revolution—in 1905—in the twentieth century. So that the instability of the autocracy was really important though not particularly striking to contemporary observers. France comes next, by way of contrast. She was taken by observers as the very type of a politically instable country, because of her constant change of Ministers. The reality was different from the appearance, because below the surface important stabilising factors operated. Germany and Austria-Hungary come next, because they too form a pair of contrasting states. Germany was powerful, dynamic and assertive, but directed on an uncertain course. Austria-Hungary was internally paralysed because the Ausgleich was coming under pressure from new forces which did not fit into the structure of the Monarchy made by it, but the direction of her external policy was steady. Britain will not figure in this chapter and Italy will take up little space, because the changes being dealt with have worked themselves out earlier in Britain and will happen later in Italy. This grouping of the states also corresponds with the two armed camps into which Europe by 1907 was divided, but the chapter will stop before the division has been completed. It has been shown how Russia and France came together and will be shown in the next chapter how Britain and France reached an understanding but not Russia and Britain. On the other side, Austria and Germany and Italy stand together as they had stood since the Treaties of 1879 and 1882. But Italy’s independence of the Triple Alliance is already marked.
