7.3 National Unification and Diplomatic Tensions

In 1850 Italy was divided among Austria (which ruled Lombardy and Venetia), the pope (central Italy), small duchies, the Bourbon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in the south, and Piedmont-Sardinia, the only Italian state with a constitution and an Italian dynasty.

Count Camillo di Cavour, Piedmont's prime minister from 1852, modernized its economy and army, then looked for a great-power ally. Joining the Crimean War earned Piedmont goodwill. In 1858 he secretly arranged with Napoleon III to fight Austria together. In the 1859 war, French and Piedmontese armies won at Magenta and Solferino, and Piedmont gained Lombardy, though Napoleon III made peace early. In 1860 the central Italian states voted to join Piedmont, and France received Nice and Savoy as payment.

Giuseppe Garibaldi, a nationalist and republican, then landed in Sicily with about a thousand volunteer Redshirts, conquered the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and handed it to King Victor Emmanuel II rather than start a civil war. The Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed in 1861. Venetia came in 1866, when Italy sided with Prussia against Austria, and Rome in 1870, when French troops protecting the pope left to fight Prussia. The pope refused to accept the loss, and deep differences between the industrial north and poor, rural south remained.

Otto von Bismarck became Prussia's minister-president in 1862 during a clash with liberals in parliament over army funding. He declared that the great questions of the day would be decided by “iron and blood,” not speeches and majority votes, and simply collected taxes without parliament's approval. He modernized the army with railroads to move troops quickly, the breech-loading needle gun and Krupp steel artillery, and he manipulated democratic tools, granting universal male suffrage for the new national parliament to win popular support around liberal opponents.

He then fought the three short wars shown in the table. Each one had a clear, limited goal, and each time Bismarck made sure the enemy stood alone. For the last war he provoked France by editing the Ems Dispatch (1870), a telegram about the Prussian king's meeting with the French ambassador, to make it sound insulting. France declared war, and the southern German states joined Prussia as he had planned.

The new German Empire had a Reichstag elected by universal male suffrage, but real power lay with the Kaiser and his appointed chancellor. Many liberals accepted this because unification fulfilled their nationalist hopes.

After 1871 Bismarck tried to preserve a balance of power. He called Germany satisfied and worked to keep France, which wanted Alsace-Lorraine back, isolated. He formed the Three Emperors' League with Austria-Hungary and Russia (1873), hosted the Congress of Berlin (1878) to settle a Balkan crisis after a Russo-Turkish war, signed the Dual Alliance with Austria-Hungary (1879), expanded it to the Triple Alliance with Italy (1882), and signed the secret Reinsurance Treaty with Russia (1887).

Kaiser Wilhelm II, who took the throne in 1888, dismissed Bismarck in 1890 and let the Reinsurance Treaty lapse. Russia turned to France, forming the Franco-Russian Alliance (1894). Wilhelm's ambitious world policy and naval building alarmed Britain, which ended its isolation: the Entente Cordiale with France (1904) and an agreement with Russia (1907) created the Triple Entente. Britain's launch of HMS Dreadnought (1906) sped up the naval arms race.

As the Ottoman Empire weakened, Austria-Hungary and Russia competed in the Balkans. In 1908 Austria-Hungary annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina, which it had occupied since 1878, infuriating Serbia and Russia; Russia backed down under German pressure but vowed not to be humiliated again. In the First Balkan War (1912–1913), Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece and Montenegro took almost all of the Ottomans' remaining European lands, then fought each other in the Second Balkan War (1913). Serbia emerged larger and more ambitious, and Austria-Hungary saw it as a mortal threat.