Treaty of Versailles, June 1919

A formal state of war between the two sides persisted for another seven months, until the signing of the Treaty of Versailles with Germany on 28 June 1919. However, the American public opposed ratification of the treaty, mainly because of the League of Nations the treaty created; the U.S. did not formally end its involvement in the war until the Knox–Porter Resolution was signed in 1921. After the Treaty of Versailles, treaties with Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire were signed. However, the negotiation of the latter treaty with the Ottoman Empire was followed by strife (the Turkish War of Independence), and a final peace treaty between the Allied Powers and the country that would shortly become the Republic of Turkey was not signed until 24 July 1923, at Lausanne.

Some war memorials date the end of the war as being when the Versailles Treaty was signed in 1919, which was when many of the troops serving abroad finally returned to their home countries; by contrast, most commemorations of the war's end concentrate on the armistice of 11 November 1918. Legally, the formal peace treaties were not complete until the last, the Treaty of Lausanne, was signed. Under its terms, the Allied forces divested Constantinople on 23 August 1923.

89) Changing the balance of power in Europe in the second half of 19th century.

Balance of Power, a relatively equal distribution of economic and military strength among rival countries or groups of countries. For 400 years the countries of Europe devoted much of their diplomatic and military effort to creating or maintaining such a balance. Their object was to prevent any single nation or group of nations from becoming powerful enough to dominate the continent.

As one European nation or group grew stronger, neighboring countries built up their own strength or formed alliances for mutual defense. Nations continually shifted their support as their allies or rivals changed their aims or grew stronger or weaker. The countries involved generally tried to maintain a balance through diplomacy, but when the balance was seriously disrupted, war nearly always followed.

The idea of maintaining a power equilibrium became an important influence in European politics after the rise of national states in the 16th century. An outstanding example of balance-of-power politics occurred in the Thirty Years' War (1618–48). Cardinal Richelieu, fearing the power of Austria under the Hapsburgs, sent armies of predominantly Catholic France to the aid of the Protestant nobles of Germany and Sweden. In the 18th century, England, Holland, and Austria united against Louis XIV of France when his plan for combining the French and Spanish crowns threatened the balance of power. About a century later a similar alliance ended Napoleon's ambition to dominate Europe. In the 19th century, Great Britain was a decisive influence in maintaining or restoring the balance by supporting the weaker nations. During 1854–56, for example, Britain and other European powers halted Russian expansion by aiding Turkey in the Crimean War. By the early 20th century, the balance of power in Europe had become so delicate that only a minor incident was needed to set off a major war. After World War I efforts were made to create a new balance of power through disarmament conferences and the League of Nations. These attempts failed and Germany grew to be far more powerful than its neighbors.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, English foreign policy strove to prevent creation of a single Universal Monarchy in Europe, which many believed Spain or France might attempt to create. To maintain the balance of power, the English made alliances with other states—including Portugal, the Ottoman Empire, and the Netherlands—to counter the perceived threat. These Grand Alliances reached their height in the wars against Louis XIV and Louis XV of France. They often involved the English (later the British) paying large subsidies to European allies to finance large armies.

In the 18th century, this led to the stately quadrille, with a number of major European powers—such as Austria, Prussia, Great Britain, and France—changing alliances multiple times to prevent the hegemony of one nation or alliance. A number of wars stemmed, at least in part, from the desire to maintain the balance of power, including the War of the Spanish Succession, War of the Austrian Succession, the Seven Years' War, the War of the Bavarian Succession and the Napoleonic Wars. Following Britain's success in the Seven Years' War, many of the other powers began to see London as a greater threat than France. Several states entered the American War of Independence in the hope of overturning Britain's growing strength by securing the independence ofThirteen of the colonies of British America.

Th century

During the 19th century, to achieve lasting peace, the Concert of Europe tried to maintain the balance of power. This policy was largely successful in averting a full-scale Europe-wide war for almost a century, until the First World War. Specifically, during the first half of the 19th century, Britain and France dominated Europe, but by the 1850s they had become deeply concerned by the growing power of Russia and Prussia. The Crimean War of 1854–55 and the Italian War of 1859 shattered the relations among the Great Powers in Europe; however, the creation and rise of the German Empire as a dominant nation restructured the European balance of power.^[2] For the next twenty years, Otto Von Bismarck managed to maintain the balance of power, by proposing treaties and creating many complex alliances between the European nations.

World Wars

After the resignation of Otto Von Bismarck in the 1890s, the foreign policy of the German Empire became expansionary and the newly created alliances were proven to be fragile, something that triggered the First World War in 1914. One of the objectives of the Treaty of Versailles, the main post-WWI treaty, was to abolish the dominance of the 'Balance of Power' concept and replace it with the (global) League of Nations.

This idea foundered as Europe split into three principal factions in the 1920s and 1930s: Liberal Democratic states led by Britain and France, Communist states led by the Soviet Union, and authoritarian nationalists led by Germany and Italy. The failure of the Democratic states to prevent the advance of Nazi Germany ultimately led to the Second World War, which led to a temporary alliance between Britain and the Soviets.

90) European Arts in the Modern Times.

The Renaissance is characterized by a focus on the arts of Ancient Greece and Rome, which led to many changes in both the technical aspects of painting and sculpture, as well as to their subject matter. It began in Italy, a country rich in Roman heritage as well as material prosperity to fund artists. During the Renaissance, painters began to enhance the realism of their work by using new techniques in perspective, thus representing three dimensions more authentically. Artists also began to use new techniques in the manipulation of light and darkness, such as the tone contrast evident in many of Titian's portraits and the development of sfumato and chiaroscuro by Leonardo da Vinci. Sculptors, too, began to rediscover many ancient techniques such ascontrapposto. Following with the humanist spirit of the age, art became more secular in subject matter, depicting ancient mythology in addition to Christian themes. This genre of art is often referred to as Renaissance Classicism. In the North, the most important Renaissance innovation was the widespread use of oil paints, which allowed for greater colour and intensity.

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