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Franco-Prussian War
(19 July 1870 – 10 May 1871), was a significant conflict pitting the Second French Empire against the Kingdom of Prussia and its allies in the North German Confederation, as well as the South German states of Baden, Württemberg, Bavaria and Hesse-Darmstadt. -
Three Emperors League
an alliance between Germany, Russia and Austria-Hungary, from 1873 to 1887. Chancellor Otto von Bismarck took full charge of German foreign policy from 1870 to his dismissal in 1890. His goal was a peaceful Europe, based on the balance of power. Bismarck feared that a hostile combination of Austria, France and Russia would crush Germany. If two of them were allied, then the third would ally with Germany only if Germany conceded excessive demands. The solution was to ally with two of the three. -
Russian-Turkish War
(1877-78) A conflict between the Ottoman Empire and the Eastern Orthodox coalition led by the Russian Empire and composed of several Balkan countries. Fought in the Balkans and in the Caucasus, it originated in emerging 19th-century Balkan nationalism. Additional factors include the Russian hopes of recovering territorial losses suffered during the Crimean War, re-establishing itself in the Black Sea and supporting the political movement attempting to free Balkan nations from the Ottoman Empire. -
Dual Alliance
The Dual Alliance was a defensive alliance between Germany and Austria-Hungary, which was created by treaty on 7 October 1879 as part of Bismarck's system of alliances to prevent/limit war. In it, Germany and Austria-Hungary pledged to aid one another in case of an attack by Russia. Also, each state promised benevolent neutrality to the other if one of them was attacked by another European power (generally taken to be France, even more so after the Franco-Russian Alliance of 1894). -
Franco-Russian Alliance
The Franco-Russian Alliance was a military alliance between the French Third Republic and the Russian Empire that ran from 1892 to 1917. The alliance ended the diplomatic isolation of France and undermined the supremacy of the German Empire in Europe. France would remain the principal ally of Russia until 1917, from an economical, financial and military point of view. -
German Naval Construction
Kaiser Wilhelm II greatly expanded the Navy, and enlarged its mission. The result was a naval arms race with Britain as the German navy grew to become one of the greatest maritime forces in the world, second only to the Royal Navy. The German surface navy proved ineffective during World War I; its only major engagement, the Battle of Jutland, was indecisive. However, the submarine fleet was greatly expanded and posed a major threat to the British supply system. -
Entente Cordiale
The Entente Cordiale was a series of agreements signed on 8 April 1904 between the United Kingdom and France, marking the start of the alliance against Germany that fought the First World War. Beyond the immediate concerns of colonial expansion addressed by the agreement, the signing of the Entente Cordiale marked the end of almost a thousand years of intermittent conflict between the two nations and their predecessor states, and the formalisation of the peaceful co-existence that had existed -
First Moroccan Crisis
an international crisis between March 1905 and May 1906 over the status of Morocco. Germany attempted to use the issue of Morocco's independence to increase frictions between France and the United Kingdom, as well as to advance German commercial interests in Morocco. They succeeded in their stated goal of assuring Moroccan independence, but failed to attract diplomatic support for their positions at the resulting international conference, but worsened German relations with both France and the UK -
Dreadnought
The first of the kind, the Royal Navy's Dreadnought, made such a strong impression on people's minds when it was launched in 1906 that similar battleships built subsequently were referred to generically as "dreadnoughts", and earlier battleships became known as pre-dreadnoughts. The Dreadnought's design had two revolutionary features: an "all-big-gun" armament scheme, with an unprecedented number of heavy-calibre guns, and steam turbine propulsion. -
Bosnian Crises of 1908
The Bosnian crisis of 1908–09 erupted when, on 6 October 1908, Austria-Hungary announced the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, territories formally within the sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire. This unilateral action—timed to coincide with Bulgaria's declaration of independence (5 October) from the Ottoman Empire—sparked protestations from all the Great Powers and Austria-Hungary's Balkan neighbours, Serbia and Montenegro. In April 1909 the Treaty of Berlin was amended to end it. -
Second Moroccan Crisis
The Agadir Crisis, also called the Second Moroccan Crisis, or the Panthersprung, was the international tension sparked by the deployment of a substantial force of French troops in the interior of Morocco in April 1911. France thus broke both with the Act of Algeciras that had ended the First Moroccan Crisis, and the Franco-German Accord of 1909. Germany reacted by sending the gunboat Panther to the Moroccan port of Agadir on July 1, 1911. -
Balkan Wars
The Balkan Wars were two conflicts that took place in the Balkan Peninsula in south-eastern Europe in 1912 and 1913. Four Balkan states defeated the Ottoman Empire in the first war; one of the four, Bulgaria, was defeated in the second war. The Ottoman Empire lost nearly all of its holdings in Europe. Austria-Hungary, although not a combatant, was weakened as a much enlarged Serbia pushed for union of the South Slavic peoples. -
Assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand
On 28 June 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne, and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg, were shot dead in Sarajevo, by Gavrilo Princip, one of a group of six assassins (five Serbs and one Bosnian Muslim), coordinated by Danilo Ilić. The political objective of the assassination was to break off Austria-Hungary's south-Slav provinces so they could be combined into a Greater Serbia or a Yugoslavia. The assassination led directly to WW1