19th Century

The Partition of Poland and the Long 19th Century (1772–1914)

The period between 1800 and 1914 is often called the “Long 19th Century” for a good reason.[480] It was a turbulent time, with all sorts of changes and shakeups that would lead Europe The Girl in Kherson into its bloodiest conflict yet.

We’ll begin this chapter on the Long 19th Century a little earlier with the destruction of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Partition of Poland set the tone for the changes and powerplays that would happen throughout the rest of the 19th century.

The End of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth always seemed like they were at war with someone.[481] Persistent warfare with Eastern Europe’s most powerful states, such as the Ottomans, the Swedes, and the Russians, had depleted the commonwealth’s resources. By the early 18th century, the people and the state were exhausted. Between 1708 and 1712, a plague hit Poland during the Great Northern War, killing 25 percent of the inhabitants.[482]

The Beginning of the End

Poland-Lithuania had one enemy that resided inside the state that helped lead to its downfall: the meddlesome nobility. Members of the elite held so much power that they controlled the government. At a moment’s notice, a monarch could lose their favor. The nobles would then reach out to other heads of state, inviting them to come and rule in the current king’s place as long as they favored the elite in their policies. The chance to rule another country and gain more territory was too good of an opportunity to pass up for many.

The nobility held so much power in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth that they could stop proceedings on debates and polices in Parliament simply by stating their objection.[483] This tradition, the liberum veto, greatly affected the commonwealth’s ability to become a more egalitarian society. It also left the commonwealth’s governing body open to external control. Foreign powers started bribing the nobility into passing legislation that was favorable to them and protesting the legislation that wasn’t.[484] The Russians, the Prussians, and the Austrians all had members of the Polish elite in their pockets.

At the end of the 1700s, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was ripe for the picking by its foreign enemies. The commonwealth was dismantled in three stages between 1772 and 1795, and the Partition of Poland was a dark end to a once illustrious empire.

The Partition of Poland

In the late 18th century, Russia held the most influence in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Russians held both the nobles and the king in their power, and they could manipulate the government to set favorable conditions for themselves. Catherine the Great of Russia (r. 1762–1796) placed one of her favorites, Stanislaw August Poniatowski, on the throne in 1764.[485] By making him king, she guaranteed that she would inevitably have control over the territory.

Yet, Prussia and Austria still had their own hands to play. Frederick the Great of Prussia (r. 1740–1786) and Empress Maria Theresa of Austria (r. 1740–1780) had their own designs on Poland as well. As the 1760s rambled on, some members of the Polish nobility grew fearful of the foreign powers. The seeds of rebellion were starting to grow.

Meanwhile, Catherine the Great’s puppet, Poniatowski, was actually doing his job as king—and doing it well. He initiated several reforms to modernize the country, which alarmed Catherine, Frederick, and Maria Theresa. The key to their power was destroyed if there were any major political changes.[486] They needed to be able to keep the Polish nobility at their beck and call.[487]

Members of the Polish elite united against Russia, Prussia, and Austria, forming the Bar Confederation in 1768. It went to war with the foreign powers, protesting their control over the commonwealth’s government. Despite winning several victories on the battlefield, the nobles didn’t stand a chance against the powerful armies of Russia, Prussia, and Austria.

In 1772, using the War of the Bar Confederation to their advantage, Russia, Austria, and Prussia invaded the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.[488] The three powers slowly chipped away at the commonwealth, taking the most desirable lands for themselves.

A 1773 allegorical image of Catherine the Great, Joseph II of Austria (Maria Theresa’s son and heir), and Frederick of Prussia (left to right, respectively) fighting over lands of the commonwealth.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Allegory_of_the_1st_partition_of_Poland_crop.jpg

About 30 percent of the commonwealth woke up to new masters. Austria occupied the south, adding to lands it already held. Prussia had been a collection of broken-up territories along the Baltic Sea until the First Partition of Poland. Now, they took the lands that separated their own, spreading east and occupying the coast. Finally, Russia extended its borders west, taking sections of Lithuania located in modern-day Belarus and Ukraine.

A map of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth during the War of the Bar Confederation, 1768-1772

Created by User:Mathiasrex Maciej Szczepańczyk, based on layers of User:Halibutt, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bar_Confederation_1768-1772.PNG

Heads of state across Europe screamed in protest; if Russia, Austria, and Prussia could invade the commonwealth, then no one’s lands were safe. Catherine, Frederick, and Maria Theresa had a big problem on their hands; their invasion looked like a land grab (which it undoubtedly was). However, appearances were all that mattered. The heads of state demanded that the Polish pass legislation that allowed them to take the lands.

In 1773, the nobles reported to a meeting of Parliament; it was just a formality, as most of the nobles had capitulated, agreeing to approve the bill that authorized the invasion.[489] There was only one who protested. A member of the Polish elite, Tadeusz Rejtan, refused to go along with the plan. He collapsed on the floor, standing in front of the door and ripping his shirt open in protest of the act. The performance didn’t work, and Parliament still passed the legislation.

Tadeusz Rejtan wasn’t the only noble who protested Parliament’s decision. Many members of the elite left the commonwealth, preferring exile to living under foreign rule. Tadeusz Kosciuszko, for instance, left with hundreds of his countrymen to fight in the American Revolution.

The elite who stayed in the country tried to fix a broken commonwealth. By changing the state, they may have been able to make it strong enough again to resist foreign rule. The progressive elite passed several reforms, including drafting a new constitution. Just like before, this worried the other powers. To enforce their rule, Russia, Austria, and Prussia invaded the commonwealth again in 1792.

This time, the Polish rebelled against the invasion. Under the leadership of Tadeusz Kosciuszko, who had returned from the newly formed United States, the rebellious factions were united.[490] The rebellions were concentrated in the capitals of both Poland and Lithuania, which were Warsaw and Vilnius, respectively.

The Partition of Poland. This map shows how much territory Russia, Austria, and Prussia acquired during the Three Partitions of Poland, which took place between 1772 and 1795.

Halibutt, CC BY-SA 3.0 <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/>, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rzeczpospolita_Rozbiory_3.png

Kosciuszko attracted more allies among the population by promising serfs their freedom. The Jews, who had found sanctuary in Poland for hundreds of years, were quick to defend their adopted homeland; in Warsaw, the Jewish population formed their own armed contingent. By 1794, the rebellion was over.[491] The Polish lost their high command when Kosciuszko was captured in battle. The Russian army invaded Warsaw, massacring the population in retaliation for the rebellion.

The following year, the empires defeated the rest of the opposition. They moved in, dividing up the rest of the lands. Dismantling the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was the worst thing Russia, Prussia, and Austria could have done. No matter how direct their rule was over their new territories, they could never control their new subjects. The Poles and Lithuanians were always rebelling and conspiring against their rule. Together, the countries had taken the territory; now, they needed each other to keep the peace.

Although they didn’t have a country anymore, the Polish still played a vital role in global politics. For example, Napoleon Bonaparte was impressed by the Polish regiments. He adopted them as auxiliary troops in 1797, and he famously brought 100,000 Polish soldiers with him on his failed Russian campaign in 1812.

In 1802, he sent them to Saint-Domingue to suppress the slave revolt, but they joined the slaves in fighting for their freedom—a cause the Polish knew intimately.[492] Two years later, Saint-Domingue defeated the last of the French forces and declared its independence from France. The Poles who survived yellow fever and the war stayed behind, making their new home in Haiti. In the Haitian massacre of 1804, when the new leader of Haiti, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, purged the island of the remaining whites as punishment for centuries of abuse to African slaves, he guaranteed the Polish legions his protection. They were the only whites he didn’t have murdered, and he granted them citizenship rights as Haitians.

Back in Europe, the Polish still reeled from the loss of their homeland.[493] The Congress of Vienna—the peacekeeping meeting between the powers of Europe in the aftermath of Napoleon’s reign—gave European countries back what Napoleon had taken. It was conspicuously silent on reforming the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

The Polish never gave up, and they continued to rebel. They wanted their freedom, but more importantly, they wanted their home back. Polish intellectuals wrote and created art that celebrated their past. The Lithuanians went even further back, wishing they had never even met the Poles. The Jews of the former commonwealth had an even worse time. The Russians passed discriminatory laws that restricted their movements. Anti-Semitism was in full swing, and the Jews resented their intolerant new overlords. This was not the sanctuary they had found when they arrived in Poland after leaving persecution in Western Europe.

“The Long 19th Century”

The Long 19th Century begins with Europe dealing with the aftereffects of Napoleon.[494] His campaigns permanently altered the face of Europe. He didn’t just take territory; he tried to change the way society worked. While this may have terrified the crowned monarchs of Europe, it inspired the seed of revolution in the minds of the public.

After Napoleon’s fall from grace in 1814, the European powers didn’t want to go back to decades of war and instability.[495] So, they worked together to make sure it didn’t happen again. Representatives from Austria, Russia, and Prussia joined delegates from Great Britain and France at a series of meetings in Vienna. Led by the Austrian foreign minister, Klemens von Metternich, the Congress of Vienna reorganized power in Europe. They believed that by making sure all of the countries had the same amount of power, they would keep the peace and prevent war from breaking out again.

The nations of Europe had an opportunity at the Congress of Vienna to institute wide-sweeping reforms that would have benefited all of society.[496] The problem was, they didn’t even investigate why the people were so dissatisfied with their lives. Instead of considering the population, they worried about themselves and their own influence. The result would be a new phase of revolution.

The first phase of the 19th century was filled with ups and downs, from orchestrating peace to the outbreaks of revolution. This period of revolution would greatly impact European countries and how they related to each other. According to Tomek Jankowski, after the Revolutions of 1848, “European governments were as much focused on whether their own peoples would rise up against them as what other countries did.”[497]

In Eastern Europe, the four main powers were still in control: the Ottoman Empire, Prussia, Austria, and Russia. The first stirrings of revolution would begin in the Balkans. Their desire for self-rule led to activist groups, some with violent methods.[498] The revolutionary movements in the Balkans would inspire the rest of Eastern Europe, as they started to agitate for freedom too.

The Great Powers redrew the map of Europe, 1815.

Alexander Altenhof, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Europe_1815_map_en.png

Nationalism

A major component of independence movements is nationalism. According to Professor Vejas Liulevicius, that is when “…an ‘imagined community’ of language, ancestry, history, and customs unites a people.”[499] The 19th century brought changes in the way people related to their state. The elite believed they were the ones who could change things and that no one else mattered. Influenced by the ideas of liberty and fraternity from the American and French Revolutions, the people clamored for recognition, claiming their participation and voice were just as important as anyone else’s.[500]

Nationalism developed across Europe in three ways; these methods are found throughout all independence movements, and they speak to the power of how others recall the past. Nationalism starts with activism. Artists, scholars, and public figures refer to the past, examining the connections between people. These connections are the product of a common experience, language, and/or ethnicity. Works of literature, new and old, were written and published in local, vernacular languages, engaging the masses and inspiring national pride. Activists then use this ideology and bring it into the real world, convincing others that they are stronger together than apart.[501] When this happens, there is a challenge to the existing order, as activists show their supporters the alternative to the way things are. This challenge can turn violent, though.

Nationalism was on the rise throughout Eastern Europe, where there was no political support for it. In many places, ideas of self-rule and national identity that created these imagined communities were a threat to the status quo.[502]

Nationalist movements were influenced by Romanticism, an artistic movement that made its way through Europe. Compared to the Enlightenment’s focus on intellectual growth, the Romantic period emphasized the emotional reaction one has to life. With a focus on feelings instead of thoughts, Romantics pressed the importance of living authentically; there is freedom in living as you were meant to.

The Revolutions of 1848

The Revolutions of 1848, which spread from France to Eastern Europe, threatened the monarchical order. [503] The revolutions would reach Poland, Austria, and the German principalities (the remnants of the Holy Roman Empire, which was dismantled by Napoleon in 1806).

One could see why a revolution had appeal. After centuries under foreign domination, revolutionaries supported any rebellion against monarchies that weren’t working in their best interests. They believed people should establish democratic governments where everyone had a say in the process.

Romantic thinkers promoted the idea of a pan-revolutionary movement. They believed that if all the people throughout Europe, no matter where they were from or where they lived, rose up together against monarchies and unfair governments, the revolutions would be more effective. However, the revolutionary groups couldn’t get along well enough to form any kind of coherent global movement. For the most part, the Revolutions of 1848 didn’t work. Monarchies reclaimed their power and brutally put down revolutionary activity.

The Hungarian Revolution

While most of the 1848 rebellions were squashed before they could really get started, Hungary formed its own revolutionary government for six months. Reaching Vienna first, the revolution spread to the Hungarians. As poets and other revolutionaries mused on the events in Vienna, they suggested the same reality for Budapest. These artists recalled the days of Magyar Hungary before rule by the Ottomans and the Habsburgs.

In 1849, Hungary declared its independence from Habsburg rule. Even though the coup had been nonviolent, Polish soldiers, whose memories of their former country burned strong, came to help the Hungarians with their revolution. The new government passed a series of reforms, including voting rights for all men, the end of serfdom, and a free press.

During the 1848 Revolutions, the Hungarian Revolution was a bloodless coup that wrestled power away from Habsburg rule. The Hungarians founded a democratic government, establishing their first parliament and passing laws that guaranteed suffrage and freedom of the press. This painting shows the first meeting of the Hungarian Parliament, with its officials standing on the balcony above. August von Pettenkofen, Opening Ceremony of the Hungarian Parliament in 1848.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Orsz%C3%A1ggy%C5%B1l%C3%A9s_megnyit%C3%A1sa_1848.jpg

Habsburg Emperor Franz Josef (r. 1848–1916) knew he couldn’t put down the revolutionary government alone. He approached the emperor of Russia, Nicholas I, for help. Nicholas I (r. 1825–1855) had just as much to lose by the success of the Hungarian revolt. Just like any monarch who ruled with absolute power, he didn’t want the revolution to spread to his lands that had once been the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

Nicholas offered Franz Josef 100,000 soldiers to overthrow the revolutionary government. The joint forces of the Russian and Austrian armies met the Hungarians in battle in July 1849. The Hungarian revolutionaries lost, and they were forced to surrender. Out of spite, they handed their weapons over to the Russian army.[504]

The next phase brought an exacting and bloody vengeance upon the Hungarians. Over the next ten years, the Austrian government sanctioned cruel repression over the Hungarian population. What was significant about this blowback is that the Habsburgs’ violent reaction was unjustified for what had caused it.[505] The overthrow of the monarchy had been a bloodless event, where the revolutionaries simply snatched control of the government. The Habsburgs responded with violence. Prince Felix Schwarzenberg, who served as the Austrian minister of foreign affairs as well as the prime minister, and Baron Julius von Haynau, the field marshal of Austrian forces on the ground in Hungary, issued a widespread order to crush any opposition to Habsburg rule.[506] They started at the top, executing army generals and members of the government. To quell any rebirth of the revolution, the Austrians terrified the Hungarians into submission, ordering massacres and forced imprisonment of civilians.

The Counter-Revolution: Conservative Monarchies Rise Again

After 1848, the main monarchies of Eastern Europe had a powder keg on their hands. More often than not, “estate or class very often overlapped with ethnicity. In such a setup, social tensions or resentments could immediately take on an ethnic charge, making nationalism even more potent.”[507] Each major power took a different approach to reestablishing its authority.[508] The common element is that they tried to make their lands ethnically homogenous; by making everyone the same, it would eliminate any sense of ethnic nationalism that was still lingering. However, this amounted to destroying cultures and identities.

Russification and Anarchy

After Russia confiscated the western lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, rebellions against its rule were common. Initially, Russia granted the former lands of the commonwealth a great degree of autonomy. Over several decades, the Russian tsars, Paul I, Alexander I, and Nicholas I, encroached on the commonwealth’s independence. This bred resentment among the population, which was relatively left to its own devices.

Marcin Zaleski, Capture of the Arsenal, 1831.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Marcin_Zaleski_-_Taking_of_the_Warsaw_Arsenal_-_MP_4797_-_National_Museum_in_Warsaw.jpg

In 1830, the November Uprising began in Poland.[509] The Polish soldiers raided the military barracks for weapons and secured control of Warsaw, winning some key victories. Unfortunately, the rebels were poorly organized and did not have effective leadership. In February 1831, Tsar Nicholas I’s army invaded former Poland-Lithuania, sparring with the revolutionaries until October. In retaliation for their disorder, the tsar passed more repressive laws against the Poles. He sent soldiers to occupy the country and placed the former commonwealth under direct rule.

The November Uprising may have lacked confident leadership, but it spawned several national heroes whose exploits are celebrated by Poles and Lithuanians. In spring 1831, a noblewoman named Emilia Plater gathered an army of peasants armed with scythes. She led them in several campaigns, earning her the nickname the “Lithuanian Joan of Arc.” Jan Rosen, Emilia Plater Conducting Polish Scythmen, ca. 19th century.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Emila_Plater_conducting_Polish_scythemen_in_1831.jpg

This was not the only act of brutal repression during Nicholas’s reign.[510] When his son, Tsar Alexander II, succeeded Nicholas in 1855, he was determined to reform society, but the seeds of discontent had been growing for decades. Alexander was not as despotic as his predecessors, and he eased the restrictions on non-Russians across his lands.[511] In turn, ideas of nationalism spread again, leading to another rebellion.

In 1863, soon after Russia had been humiliated in the Crimean War, losing to the Ottoman Empire, Great Britain, and France, the Poles rebelled again.[512] This time, the rebellion spread among students and young professionals, people who were most likely too young to remember the 1830 uprising.[513] All they knew was cruelty and repression by the Russians.

As the revolutionaries started leading demonstrations against the government, Russian official Aleksander Wielopolski instituted a draft of young men into the Russian army as a way to get rid of the revolutionaries.[514] There was a massive outcry against this conscription, and the rebels armed themselves, preparing for war with Russian forces. The rebellion quickly spread to Lithuania and made its way east into modern-day Ukraine and Belarus.

Although the revolutionaries lost several battles, they managed to stay together until the following year. Disappointed in the progress of the rebellion, many Poles left Russian-held lands. By 1864, the Russians had reclaimed their authority over Poland.

Although Alexander II had been more lenient with the Poles than his predecessors, he didn’t tolerate insurrection. He executed the leaders of the resistance in August 1864, placing Poland under military occupation. Poland was divided into smaller districts so Russia could control them better. After the leaders of the insurrection were executed, thousands of revolutionaries and their supporters were shipped to Siberia to live in exile.

Aleksander Sochaczewski, Farewell Europe! Painting, 1894.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Farewell_Europe!.PNG

The Russians then passed a series of reforms that attempted to make everyone the same. This process is called Russification. They forbade speaking or writing in any language that was not Russian. The population also could not celebrate or honor any ethnic background, history, or traditions that were not distinctly Russian.

Russification took place all over the empire. In Lithuania, the Russians tried to eliminate the Lithuanian language by making printing and speaking in Lithuanian illegal. Only Russian and the Cyrillic alphabet could be spoken or written. This law remained on the books for forty years before it was finally abolished in 1904. In defiance of the law, Lithuanian revolutionaries smuggled books into their territory. The Russians also passed legislation to eliminate the German language in their Baltic territories, namely in modern-day Latvia and Estonia.

Russification saw protests in Ukraine as well. Ukrainians saw themselves as different from the Russians, but Russians refused to acknowledge it. In the Austrian-held part of the territory, ethnic nationalism was allowed to spread on account of the Austrian government being less restrictive than the Russians. While the Ukrainians wanted their own history, territory, and identity, the Russians pushed their Russification through religion. Some Christian populations still remained in Ukraine—an inheritance from the Byzantine Empire. Russia outlawed all Christian churches, making Russian Orthodoxy the only legal state religion.

In the aftermath of the Polish rebellion, those who hadn’t joined the fighting but supported the revolution found refuge in politics. By slowly pushing laws through Parliament that benefited all members of society, they believed they could eventually overcome foreign rule. This took too long, though, and many Poles lost heart that anything would ever change. Some established an activist group called the National Democrats, which was a purely Polish group that supported resisting Russification.

Pan-Slavism in Austria and Russia

Pan-Slavism, which supports the belief that all Slavic peoples had a common background, grew among the South Slavs and the West Slavs.[515] Pan-Slav activists pushed rhetoric that all Slavs should work together to gain more political rights in their respective nations.

In 1848, as revolution rocked Vienna, the Slavs met in Prague to work out their plans for moving forward. They encouraged the study of Slavic history and language to honor their ethnic heritage, but they also wanted to gain equal rights under the Austrian government.

A drawing depicting the first Pan-Slav Congress in Prague, 1848.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Svatodu%C5%A1n%C3%AD_m%C5%A1e_12._%C4%8Dervna_1848.jpg

The Slavs of Austria turned to Russia to pressure Austria into giving them rights. Russia encouraged pan-Slavism, as it knew it couldn’t succeed at becoming a dominant power in Europe without Slavic help. But while Russia supported a pan-Slavic union, the Slavic peoples would still remain under Russian domination. By accepting Russia’s help, the Slavs of Eastern Europe would trade one set of overlords for another.

Pan-Slavism gradually waned throughout the rest of the 19th century. In the years before World War I, there was a resurgence among Eastern European Slavs, but there were too many different viewpoints to create a cohesive movement.[516]

Pan-Germanism, Prussia, and Austria-Hungary

When Napoleon reached the Rhine in 1805, he found hundreds of small dukedoms, principalities, and states with little in common other than the fact they spoke German.[517] For nearly a century and a half, they created their own traditions and cultures with no thought of uniting together. The inhabitants of these states saw themselves as a product of their land; they weren’t ethnically connected.

Napoleon’s restructuring of these areas into larger groups changed ideas of what made a state, and the events of his domination over the area helped develop feelings of pan-Germanism. The people of the Holy Roman Empire, which Napoleon would break up the following year in 1806, now began to see themselves as Germans.[518]

Prussia and Austria received these German states as part of their restored territories from the Congress of Vienna. Prussia received more of these states, but Austria still held a significant amount of them to the south. After all, Prussia had played a major role in defeating Napoleon.[519] The Prussian army was part of the invading force that took Paris in 1814, and it defeated Napoleon at Waterloo. These victories helped Prussia grow in power and influence. It became the most powerful of the German states, while Habsburg Austria ranked a close second.[520] For this reason, the two states were at war just as much as they were at peace.

Prussia and Austria still had their eye on one more state to make their control over the region complete: Schleswig-Holstein. In two wars that lasted intermittently between 1848 and 1864, Prussia and Austria gained control over these two territories; each power took one of the duchies for themselves. Schleswig-Holstein was important because it was the boundary between the German states and Denmark.

The territory of Schleswig-Holstein was the buffer state between Denmark and the German states. On this map, Schleswig is marked in light pink, and Holstein is marked in light blue.

Malte89, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Herzogt%C3%BCmer.png

Neither Prussia nor Austria could agree on what to do with Schleswig-Holstein, which ended up causing the Austro-Prussian War of 1866.[521] Austria lost against Prussia, which means it also lost its control over the German states. Prussia snatched them up, dissolving the Habsburg German Confederation (the Deutscher Bund), which was an association of German-speaking states. Prussia formed its own organization, the North German Confederation, in 1867.

After Austria lost most of its territory, it was in danger of collapsing. It struck a deal with another Habsburg territory, Hungary, granting the territory status as a full kingdom if they could form a dual monarchy. Its new name was Austria-Hungary, but both nations were still distinct entities. What they had in common was the same ruler and common goals in defense and foreign policies. Meanwhile, Prussia was stronger than ever. It became the most prominent state in the North German Confederation, and it was controlled by the “Iron Chancellor,” Otto von Bismarck (in off. 1871–1890).[522]

Austria-Hungary and Prussia embraced pan-Germanism, but they had different views on how to implement it.[523] The Austrians celebrated German culture, but Prussia saw the political potential of uniting the German states. The idea of a united Germany grew in popularity, even though it would include non-Germans.

A map of the German Empire from its founding in 1871 to its dissolution in 1918. The empire stretched from the southern coast of the Baltic Sea to the North Sea coast.

Deutsches_Reich1.png: kgbergerderivative work: Wiggy!, CC BY-SA 2.5 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5>, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Deutsches_Reich_(1871-1918)-en.png

After Prussia completed its domination over the German states, Otto von Bismarck eliminated the North German Confederation and established the German Empire in 1871.[524] This new empire was hardly homogenous. Its territories included a significant number of Poles and other ethnic minorities who didn’t respond well to Germanization. Similar to Russification, this process tried to eliminate ethnic diversity and make the whole population German.[525] The German Empire only taught German language and literature, and non-German languages and traditions were banned. The empire also ordered a reordering of populations and society, importing Germans to settle in targeted areas and pushing the non-German minorities out.

A map showing the demographics living in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Austria_Hungary_ethnic.svg

Austria-Hungary was much more ethnically diverse than the German Empire was, so they had their own unique experience with pan-Germanism. With its new dual monarchy, the country became host to Hungarians, Czechs, Poles, and Ukrainians—just to name a few. For the most part, the Hungarians were happy with their union with Austria because it gave them more power as a kingdom. However, they were not pleased by its Germanization policies because more than 50 percent of Austria-Hungary’s new residents were non-Germans.

The Ottomans vs. the Balkans

These ideas of independence especially spoke to the residents of the Balkans.[526] Throughout this book, we’ve seen how many different ethnic groups, languages, and experiences that the people of the Balkans shared. All they wanted was freedom from the Ottomans. Even though the Turks were famously tolerant of other cultures and religions, the Balkans wanted self-determination.

The Ottomans had held the Balkans for hundreds of years. When you think about it, that’s a really long time to hold a territory that is not your own. The Ottomans were horrible administrators; they were more focused on collecting lands than making sure their territories were being governed correctly.[527]

The powers of Europe started modernizing while the Ottomans lagged behind. Since other countries had better military technology and strategy, the Ottomans started losing on the battlefield. The Russians saw a great opportunity to bring more Slavic populations under their rule. Their rival in the Balkans, Austria-Hungary, didn’t care about the Slavs; however, they did care about Russia growing too powerful and themselves not being powerful enough.

In response to the Greek independence movement, the Ottomans unleashed untold atrocities on Greeks living in their empire. In Constantinople, the Ottomans executed the head of the Orthodox Church and terrorized Greek communities. Houses were burned, and people were assaulted and killed—even women and children.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1821_atrocities_Constantinople.jpg

The Balkan independence movements started in Greece.[528] In 1821, Greece rebelled against Ottoman rule. Twelve years later, the Greeks had their independence. This kickstarted a series of tumultuous events that lasted decades.[529]

While the Greeks had won their independence, it only applied to Greeks who lived in Greece. The 60 percent of Greeks who resided in the Balkans lived outside of Greece, meaning they were still under foreign rule.

The Struggle for Serbia

While the Ottomans were dealing with one rebellion, they had another on their hands. Serbia initiated two periods of independence movements from 1804 to 1830.[530] It all started in the last years of the 18th century when the Ottoman Janissaries invaded Serbia. The Janissaries had once been the valued fighting force of the Ottomans, but they had descended into corruption and greed. They took control of Serbia to make their own state, but they had to deal with the local population first.

The Janissaries brutally persecuted the Serbian Christian population for decades. Tired of the abuse that basically amounted to slavery, Serbian Christians rebelled against the Ottoman Empire in 1804. The Ottomans refused to defend Christians against Muslims, no matter what the Janissaries had done. In retaliation, the Ottomans invaded and defeated the rebellion. This experience was responsible for the birth of Serbian pride and nationalism that would result in their independence.

The Serbians had a valuable ally in Russia. Djordje Petrović led a campaign that eliminated the Ottoman presence in Serbia by 1806. The Ottomans came back in 1812 to subdue the population in a punitive campaign. The Russians were no help this time; they were distracted by Napoleon’s invasion, so the Serbians lost their support. The Ottomans regained control of Serbia the following year, and Djordje Petrović escaped to Austria-Hungary.

In 1814, another Serbian uprising would run through the country and successfully push the Ottomans out. The leader of this uprising was Miloš Obrenović. Petrović tried to come back and start another rebellion, but Obrenović assassinated him before he could do anything.

Mór Than, The Assassination of Karadjordje, 1863. Djordje Petrović was known by the name Karadjordje. When he returned to Serbia to launch another rebellion, his rival, Miloš Obrenović, had him executed.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Assassination_of_Karadjordje,_1863._National_Museum,_Belgrade.jpg

While Obrenović commanded a substantial defense, the Russians reappeared. Having dealt with Napoleon, they strong-armed the Ottomans into backing off and giving Serbia its independence.[531] In 1830, the Ottomans finally capitulated, and they evacuated the country and allowed the Serbians to govern themselves.

The Serbians spent the next forty-five years building themselves up into a regional power.[532] Until 1875, Serbian nationalists wanted to recreate medieval Serbia, rejoining all its lands back together. Serbia would make many enemies in its goal of rebuilding the medieval Serbian empire. Other Christian nations in Europe didn’t have a problem with this reordering of states, as long as the Serbians were confiscating lands in the Ottomans’ possession. The problem came when Serbia had designs on its former lands that were now part of other Christian nations.

Serbia was also occupied by internal struggles. Once the Congress of Berlin forced the Ottomans to formally recognize Serbian independence, the country descended into a decades-long rivalry between the successors of both Miloš Obrenović and Djordje Petrović.[533] In 1903, members of the Serbian Army stormed the royal residence, murdering everyone they found.

In 1903, King Alexander I of Serbia (Alexander Obrenović) and his wife, Queen Draga, were executed, along with most of their royal court.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:King_Alexander_I_Obrenovi%C4%87_of_Serbia_and_Queen_Draga,_ca._1900.jpg

Among the dead were King Alexander Obrenović of Serbia, the queen, and their family members and close advisors. A new dynasty came to the Serbian throne, but the country would soon join with other Balkan states to push the Ottomans out once and for all.

The Ottoman Target

The next major challenge for the Ottomans was the Crimean War (1853–1856).[534] By the mid-19th century, religious tensions between Russia and the Ottoman Empire exploded into conflict.[535] Russia wanted a foothold in the Middle East and to its sacred sites, which were under Ottoman control. When the Ottomans refused to grant access to the Russians, Tsar Nicholas I invaded and captured Wallachia and Moldavia.[536] The Ottomans declared war, and they found allies in Britain and France. While the war was a victory for the Ottomans (and a terrible loss for the Russians), the win was barely by the skin of their teeth.

In the mid-19th century, Russia, Great Britain, and France had been wondering what to do with the foundering Ottoman Empire.[537] The fall of the empire would leave an opening to command Eastern Europe, and all three wanted a piece of the action. The British and the French worried about Russia’s expansionist designs, so they preferred having the Ottoman Balkans as a buffer zone.

The Russo-Turkish War and the Congress of Berlin

The end of the 19th century brought more war and revolutions. Restless populations in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Bulgaria rose in rebellion against the Ottoman Empire in 1875.[538] The Ottomans had had enough; they moved into Bulgaria, slaughtering the population. About twelve thousand Bulgarians died at Ottoman hands.[539]

A map showing the provinces of the Ottoman Empire, 1900.

Julieta39, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2b/Map-of-Ottoman-Empire-1900.png

The Russians were appalled at the Ottomans’ behavior in Bulgaria.[540] They formed an alliance with Bulgaria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Serbia, and they declared war on the Ottoman Empire. The Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878) ended with an Ottoman defeat. The Treaty of San Stefano forced the Ottomans to relinquish Bulgaria to Russia. That same year, Otto von Bismarck hosted the Congress of Berlin. This conference attempted to settle the disputes in the Balkans.[541] Bismarck forced the Ottomans to declare Serbia, Montenegro, Wallachia, and Moldavia (the latter of the two joined together to form Romania) as independent states, while Austria-Hungary obtained Bosnia-Herzegovina.

By the 1890s, the Ottomans were hanging on by a thread, and tensions throughout Europe simmered for several years. They no longer controlled the Balkans, and their British and French allies soon joined forces with Russia to combat the growth of the German Empire’s armed forces and weapons. More trouble was coming. The Ottomans would soon be pushed out of Eastern Europe completely by the Balkan Wars (1912–1913).[542]

The Balkan Wars

In 1908, the Bosnian Crisis seemed to be the fuse that would make the Balkans explode. Austria-Hungary officially annexed Bosnia-Herzegovina after controlling it for three decades.[543] This outraged Serbia because it wanted Bosnia-Herzegovina too. Serbia’s reasoning for wanting this territory was both personal and political. Bosnia-Herzegovina would allow Serbia to reach the Adriatic Sea, but it couldn’t do that with Austria-Hungary in control of it. As a compromise, the powers agreed to carve out another state that granted coastal access: Albania.

Russia was Serbia’s ally, so it promised to come to Serbia’s aid if war broke out. It also had its own designs on Bosnia-Herzegovina. Control over the territory would give expansionist Russia the foothold in Eastern Europe it desperately wanted, plus it would really needle their long-standing enemy in Europe, Austria-Hungary. As it was, all sides prepared for a conflict. To avoid war in the Balkans, the German Empire stepped in and made Russia back off.

Over the next several years, conflicts broke out across the Balkans. This stemmed from political instability in the Ottoman Empire that reverberated throughout Eastern Europe.[544] Since the 1870s, the Young Turks, members of a movement that sought to update Ottoman social and political institutions, were the real power of the Ottoman state.[545] The sultan was forced to make several compromises, including heading a constitutional monarchy (instead of an absolute monarchy) and answering to a parliament.[546] The Young Turk movement was too immovable to rule over a multi-ethnic empire.[547] They stripped Christians and other non-Muslim communities of their rights, which was a far cry from how the empire had handled things.

Revolutionary groups rose in Ottoman lands with Christian communities, including Macedonia, Bulgaria, and Serbia.[548] These organizations didn’t have a common goal; each was devoted to their own nationalist movements. By 1911, however, they all realized that they could work together to completely free themselves from Ottoman hold. In 1912, with Russian backing, Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, and Serbia joined forces and created the Balkan League to crush Ottoman rule over Macedonia.[549] The Ottoman Empire was distracted by another war, so the Balkan League was successful in the First Balkan War (1912–1913). The members of the league managed to amass an army of three-quarters of a million soldiers, which they used to conquer Ottoman-controlled lands in modern-day North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey, and Albania. By December, the Balkan League’s efforts forced the Ottoman Empire to capitulate.

As a result of the complete failure in the First Balkan War, the Young Turks led a coup and overran the Ottoman government in January 1913. They also went to war with the Balkan League again.[550] The Balkan League was successful once more, capturing more lands in Greece and Turkey.[551] The war was over by May; the resulting peace treaty divided Macedonia among the powers of the Balkan League. The Ottoman Empire was stripped of the rest of their lands in Eastern Europe except for their lands in Thrace, which was northeast of the Aegean Sea.[552]

This postcard from 1912 shows the alliance of the Balkan League, showing soldiers from each country—Bulgaria, Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece—holding hands in friendship. Postcards like these were used as recruitment tools during the Balkan Wars.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Balkan_League_and_Hagia_Sophia.jpg

The end of the First Balkan War in 1913 proved to the Ottomans that their days were numbered.[553] Their former colonies had succeeded in defeating them, which was a huge blow to Ottoman power in Europe. The empire itself still survived but only barely. The Young Turks established a dictatorship, which would dominate Ottoman affairs until the end of World War I. The status of the Ottoman emperor, a figure who once inspired fear into the hearts of Europeans, was now only a ceremonial role.

The Balkan League would soon fall apart. Although the Balkan League worked together to push the Ottomans out of their territory, they couldn’t get along well enough to make any real progress.[554] The Balkan League squabbled over how to break up Macedonia, which brought the members of the league into a war of their own!

The Second Balkan War (1913) resulted from the Balkan League’s inability to agree on how to allocate the lands won in the First Balkan War. Greece, Romania, and Serbia fought over how much of Macedonia each of them would get. In June 1913, Greece and Serbia allied against Bulgaria. The king of Bulgaria went on the offensive, attacking Greek- and Serbian-occupied Macedonia. Bulgaria was victorious in its initial battles against the Serbian forces. The Second Balkan War drew in other powers such as Romania and the fledgling Ottoman Empire. Each invaded territories and staked their own claims. Bulgaria was completely surrounded by its enemies, so it ceased hostilities, and the war ended. The members of the Balkan League came to terms in August 1913; Serbia and Greece split Macedonia among themselves, granting Bulgaria a small piece of it.

The lands of Thrace were the only part of Eastern Europe under Ottoman control at the end of the Balkan Wars. After the end of World War I and the fall of the Ottoman Empire, this historical region would be divided between Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey.

Пакко, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Thrace_and_present-day_state_borderlines.png

The Balkan Wars would directly contribute to the events that sparked World War I. Serbian gains in the Balkan Wars exacerbated the tensions with Austria-Hungary (who held Bosnia-Herzegovina), which would violently escalate the following year. The powers of Europe knew a war was coming. It was just a matter of when.