German and Italian unification
Two new great powers appear in Europe within a decade.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 10 years
- Known to
- ± 1 year
- Era
- Industrial, Holocene
Italy is unified by 1861 through Garibaldi's campaigns and Piedmontese statecraft; Germany by Bismarck through three deliberately provoked wars, proclaimed in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles in 1871 after defeating France. A unified Germany with the largest industrial economy in Europe destabilises a balance of power that had held since 1815, and the manner of its founding leaves France with a grievance that shapes the next seventy years.