Major Dates

1770	Industrial Revolution: At about this time (give or take a decade) the vast economic shift that was to transform Europe in the nineteenth century began to gather momentum in England.
1789	French Revolution: The revolutionary government grows increasingly radical until 1794 and adopts policies of territorial expansion. In both ways the Revolution spreads a new set of political ideas and models across Europe. It also sets off decades of European turmoil and warfare, particularly after Napoleon Bonaparte takes power in France in 1799 and conquers most of Western and Central Europe.
1815	Congress of Vienna: The long Wars of Napoleon end in the Battle of Waterloo. The French defeat is sealed in the arrangements of the Congress of Vienna, where the European frontiers are redrawn more radically than at any other modern peace conference. An era of enforced conservatism (the Restoration period) ensues .
1830	July Revolution: A revolution in Paris replaces the restored Bourbon monarchy with the more modern-minded Orléans monarchy. Aftershocks in other countries include a major (unsuccessful) Polish revolt against Russian rule in 1830-31 and Britain's first parliamentary Reform Act in 1832.
1848	Revolutions of 1848: Starting in Paris, revolutions spread rapidly to cities in Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy; many are put down only with considerable bloodshed. Though the years around 1848, a time of nationalist and democratic enthusiasm, are often called the "springtime of the peoples", the revolts are unable to generate new nations or lasting democracy at that time.
1853-56	Crimean War: Britain and France defeat Russia in a local war on the Black Sea coast over issues concerning the declining Ottoman Empire. Such issues, known as the "Eastern Question", preoccupy diplomats off and on until the First World War.
1870	Franco-Prussian War: This war, won handily by Prussia and allied German states, permits to the creation of the German Empire, the first united German state in modern times. It also leads to France's long-lived Third Republic. This is the last war in Europe between Great Powers before 1914.
1878	Congress of Berlin: The Great Powers meet to try to settle the affairs of the Balkans, particularly as regards Russia and the Ottoman Empire. Many new Balkan frontiers are drawn or confirmed at the Congress.
1905	Revolution in Russia, First Morocco Crisis: A revolutionary crisis in Russia launches an era of social unrest in Europe. In this same year a diplomatic crisis over Morocco sets off a sequence of confrontations that leads to war in 1914.
1914-18	First World War: This bitter, grinding and costly war alters the face of Europe and the consciousness of its peoples. During the war the Russian Empire (badly battered) collapses and Soviet Russia is born; after the war the German Empire (defeated) collapses and is replaced by a Republic, while Austria-Hungary (defeated) disintegrates into the present states of Eastern Europe. The radically new European map drawn at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919-20 endures to the present day with few changes, but the democratic political systems created after the war prove highly unstable.
1929	Great Depression: A long, demoralizing economic depression begins in America and expands to Europe, contributing mightily to the embittered politics of the 1930s and to the return of general war in 1939. Hitler comes to power in Germany in 1933 as part of this wave of desperation.
1939-45	Second World War: This war, with the Holocaust that forms part of it, exhausts and demoralizes Europe once again. It ends in the defeat of Germany and Italy and the world dominance of the United States and the Soviet Union, soon to be rivals in the Cold War.
1948-50	European economic boom: Starting in these years European economic recovery gains momentum, later to pass over into a sustained economic boom that lasts into the early 1970s and transforms the lives of the European peoples, esp. in the Western countries. This boom, combined with welfare state policies, facilitates the consolidation of democracy in nearly all (after 1975 all) West European countries.
1959-62	Peak of the Cold War: The most dangerous Cold War confrontations occur in these years, in the form of disputes over Berlin and Cuba. After this the two sides gradually relax into détente and the preservation of the status quo (except as regards Third World conflicts).
1989-91	End of the Cold War: The collapse of the Communist political systems in Eastern Europe, followed by the disintegration of the Soviet Union itself, brings an end to the Cold War rivalry.