The Changing Dimensions of Europe

Abstract

The war which broke out in the summer of 1914 and swiftly engulfed the greater part of Europe is rightly regarded as one of the series of major disturbances which, at intervals of roughly a century following the peace of Westphalia, completely destroyed the carefully constructed equipoise of Europe and made necessary its reconstruction in substantially modified form. Compared with the situation which existed during the intervening periods between previous such disturbances, however, Europe appeared during the century following the settlement of Vienna to be relatively free from the running scourge of lesser wars, and this is the more remarkable in view of both the exceptionally explosive ideas released and widely disseminated by the French Revolution and the wars which it unleashed, and the no less significant changes which the Industrial Revolution produced in what may be called the technological foundations of political power. It was, indeed, one manifestation of the new technology, namely the shrinkage of effective distance, which, by bringing Europe into far closer contact than ever before with the extra-European world, drew off much of the pressure which these new forces were producing, and in thus allowing it to disperse, usually against almost negligible resistance, in the outer world, gave rise to an illusion of stability within Europe itself. In general, however, both historians and statesmen have given far greater attention to the creative forces of ideas and ideologies, which by tradition are their stock in trade, than to the constraints imposed by geography and technology, with which such forces must needs come to terms. But while for this reason I propose to concentrate primarily upon the latter, to do so in isolation from the former would contribute little to our understanding of events, for the two sets of factors continually inter-acted upon one another.