The Grouping of Powers, 1890–1907

Abstract

From 1890 it was extremely likely, if not certain, that the effects of the factors discussed in the preceding chapters would begin to create a sense of insecurity within the international system, first and most obviously because of the change in the distribution of power brought about by the rise of Germany. Indeed such a change might have been sensed before 1890. To start with, however, it was not apparent. Bismarck was always more aware of Germany’s weakness than of her strength, so much so that it apparently troubled his sleep. This weakness was primarily strategic. Germany lay in the middle of Europe, wide open to the possibility of war on two fronts; she was condemned to bad relations with her western neighbour until, if ever, the results of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 were forgotten; her two eastern neighbours were, for traditional reasons of clashing Balkan interests, at semi-permanent loggerheads. Germany herself was bound for some years to be regarded with suspicion as an unknown quantity and, when that quantity was known, to suffer the disadvantages of possessing very great power.