Through her mother’s siblings, Queen Victoria had an uncle who reigned as King Leopold I of the Belgians until 1865, he was succeeded by his son Leopold II who was first cousins to Queen Victoria. Victoria was not bereft of European connections to begin with, so it was not starting the job from scratch but instead consolidating and expanding the strength of the links which her family tree already afforded her. The Queen, as ever guided by her husband Prince Albert, did not seem to have any of those concerns about their children’s fate and assured themselves that they were playing a very personal part, a very central part in Pax Britannica by arranging these marriages for their children to the various royal courts of Europe. ![]() Instead of helping to stop the commencement of hostilities it was sometimes more likely to exacerbate them, if you add family jealousy and competition into the affairs of nations then is a fight not increasingly likely to happen since there are more antagonistic factors to deal with. She never took much notice of the fact that history was littered with examples of these unions which had done nothing to prevent conflict between rival relatives. Queen Victoria grabbed the chance to create dynastic marriages and in doing so, in her mind she would be guaranteeing a perpetual peace, because she thought that her children and grandchildren would never fight each other in war. Marrying into European dynasties had long been considered as the best way to seal the deal as it were when it came to a new diplomatic alliance, and that had still not changed by the 19 th century. For all of Britain’s global outlook, there was still one area of policy (and it was policy back then) which they had to look to Europe to satisfy, and that was the royal marriage market. ![]() Whilst the success of the British Empire was resented by some European states which envied the wealth flowing into British coffers it was reassuring to them also that Britain had no interest in power in Europe and seemed set to look to the wider world for its interplay. Major powers still found reasons to pick a fight, the Crimean War between Russia and a Franco-British Alliance, The Second Italian War of Independence in 1859, the Austro-Prussian War in 1866 and the Franco-Prussian War in 1870-71, it was after this that the continent did settle down into a much more war free existence until 1914, and this period is known as the La Belle Époque (Beautiful Era) in Europe, similar to the Gilded Age in America. At the end of the day British sea power was unable to project itself any further inland than the cannons onboard the ships were able to fire their ammunition. It would be wrong to suggest that were no major wars on the continent at all during this 100 year period. This absolute superiority in the sphere of maritime power was able to project British rule around the globe and helped to rapidly expand the size of the British Empire. A key factor in this strategy was the hegemony of the United Kingdom as the controller of world trade routes by having the Royal Navy deployed in all of the far flung corners of the world. The main aim of the policy was to establish a balance of power in Europe which would mean that no one state could again become strong and pre-eminent and attempt to dominate the others as Napoleon had done. ![]() It was essentially a policy imposed on the continent by Great Britain, a nation whose power was firmly re-established by their capturing and exiling the French Emperor, Napoleon I who had dominated the continent since 1800. Pax Britannica was the term applied to the century of “peace” in European history from the defeat of Napoleon I at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 and the beginning of the First World War in 1914. Victoria with some of her extended royal family connections.
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