Throughout the nineteenth century, international relations in Europe were dominated by five great powers - Britain, France, Russia, Austria and Prussia. The creation of this system has been located traditionally in the long struggle with revolutionary and Napoleonic France. By contrast, this study demonstrates that its origins lie half a century earlier. During the third quarter of the eighteenth century, the European states-system was transformed by the military rise of Russia and Prussia in the Seven Years War of 1756–63. Eastern Europe became pre-eminent, and during the 1770s Poland was partitioned for the first time, while Russia and Austria also seized territory from the Ottoman empire. Europe's centre of gravity moved sharply eastwards, and by the later 1770s Russia was emerging as the leading continental power. This study, based upon manuscript and printed sources from six countries, provides a comprehensive analysis of these crucial events.
Eighteenth-century Prussia has been a byword for aggression and militarism. Her most celebrated king, Frederick the Great (1740-86), set in motion one major conflict, that of the Austrian Succession (1740-8), by seizing the Habsburg province of Silesia and began another, the continental Seven Years War (175& 63), by invading Saxony. Prussian government was dominated by the army's needs and even Prussian society was shaped by its demands. At the end of Frederick's life, one observer noted, with pardonable exaggeration, that ' the Prussian monarchy is not a country which has an army, but an army which has a country, in which, as it were, it is just billetted'. 1 It is instructive, therefore, to compare the Prussian and British experiences of war during Frederick the Great's reign. Prussia was fighting for some twelve years out of forty-six; Britain for almost twenty-four. For the eighteenth century as a whole, the contrast is even more striking: the British state was formally engaged in hostilities for considerably more than half the entire period between 1688 and 1815.* A comparable figure for Prussia is difficult to calculate with precision, since in certain wars she furnished mercenaries but did not fight as a principal, but it would appear to be around one-third of the British total. Britain's principal adversary throughout this period was France. This has led historians to describe the decades from 1688 to 1815 as the Second 'Hundred Years War', recalling the long period of conflict between the two states during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The precise applicability of this label to the eighteenth century can be contested. The generation after the Peace of Utrecht (1713) saw good relations and perhaps even a suspension of hostility: 'Seventy Years War', to denote the almost continual fighting from the 1740s to 1815, or even ' Eighty Years War', to describe the period of unbroken rivalry from the breakdown of the Anglo-French entente in 1730-1, might be more accurate. Nevertheless, the sheer continuity and intensity of Anglo-French rivalry, from 1688 to 1815 and even beyond, are striking. Britain's extended struggle with France is a dominant theme in eighteenth-century European history, since it helped to shape continental alignments and alliances. Until quite recently, however, war and its consequences were not prominent on the historical agenda for the Hanoverian period. Even J. C. D. Clark, in his portrayal of eighteenthcentury England as an anden regime state, gave next to no attention to the consequences of international rivalry, though this preoccupied the leading continental powers at this time.* The established picture of eighteenth-century Britain found little space for the 1 For this quotation and its correct attribution see T. C. W. Blanning,' Frederick the Great and enlightened absolutism', in H. M. Scott, ed., Enlightened absolutism: reform and reformers in later eighteenth-century Europe (London, 1990), p. 270 and n. 24, p. 368. * The precise figure would depend on what is defined as a ...
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