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1 results

  • 26 - Russian foreign policy: 1815–1917

  • from Part VI - Foreign Policy and the Armed Forces
  • Edited by Dominic Lieven, London School of Economics and Political Science
  • Book:
    The Cambridge History of Russia
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    17 August 2006, pp 554-574

  • Summary

    During the final century of Romanov rule, Russian foreign policy was motivated above all by the need to preserve the empire's hard-won status as a European Great Power. The only real arena for Russian expansion after 1815 was in Asia. The Vienna Conference of 1814-15 set the European diplomatic order of the nineteenth century. Summoned in the wake of Napoleon's defeat, statesmen of the leading powers and a host of lesser monarchies assembled in the Austrian capital to rebuild the peace. The first decade of Nicholas II's rule was dominated by events on the Pacific. More than in any other era, between 1815 and 1917 Russia was firmly anchored in the European state system. During the eight decades that followed the Congress of Vienna, Russian foreign policy displayed a remarkable degree of consistency and, with two major exceptions in the Near East, and it achieved the empire's principal geopolitical objectives.