Congress of Vienna
The Congress of Vienna of 1814–1815 was an international diplomatic conference to reconstitute the European political order after the downfall of the French Emperor Napoleon I. It was a meeting of ambassadors of European states chaired by Austrian statesman Klemens von Metternich, and held in Vienna from November 1814 to June 1815. The objective of the Congress was to provide a long-term peace plan for Europe by settling critical issues arising from the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. The goal was not simply to restore old boundaries but to resize the main powers so they could balance each other and remain at peace. More fundamentally, the leaders of the Congress sought to restrain or eliminate the republicanism and revolution which had upended the constitutional order of the European old regime, and which continued to threaten it.
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Quotes edit
- Congress dances, but doesn't move forward.
- Although 50 years of European peace since the end of World War II may augur well for the future, it must be remembered that there were also more than 50 year of peace between the Congress of Vienna and the Franco-Prussian War. Moreover, contrary to the hopes and assumptions of Jean Monnet and other advocates of European integration, the devastating American Civil War shows that a formal political union is no guarantee against an intra-European war.
- Martin Feldstein, "EMU and international conflict", Foreign Affairs, vol. 76, n. 6, p. 62, November/December 1997
- The Concert of Europe, as it began to be called at the time, had ... a reality in international law, which derived from the final Act of the Vienna Congress, which stipulated that the boundaries established in 1815 could not be altered without the consent of its eight signatories.
- Soutou, Georges-Henri (November 2000). "Was There a European Order in the Twentieth Century? From the Concert of Europe to the End of the Cold War". Contemporary European History. Theme Issue: Reflections on the Twentieth Century. 9 (3): 330.