Congress of Power

The Congress of Vienna changed the entire post Napoleon landscape of Europe. But because of this radical transformation of the continent a major question is raised; What should people in power do when their power is threatened? In small groups during class we created small "congresses" where we had to decide what to do in a given situation that was related to the congress of Vienna.


One of the major things that the congress of Vienna created was the "Principal of Intervention" this was the idea that gave the major powers the right to send troops into other countries to stop revolutions. The idea of this was that if a group of people in a country started to revolt then the major powers could immediately stop it before it gained traction. This idea was one of the major ideas that was discussed in our groups and there was a big divide over wether it was ethical to not let people in a country revolt against what they saw was wrong; without being slaughtered in the name of the safety of power. The leader of the congress of Vienna, Metternich of Prussia used the concept of Principal Intervention to strike fear into potential revolters as well as to crush revolters. By doing this there was a small amount of Revolutions and turmoil in Europe for a long period of time. The concept of Principal Intervention strongly helped countries keep their power from being taken over and was a big reason why Europe remained peaceful for a long period of time. The Conference of Vienna was a huge turning point in the start of a new European age.

Metternich,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klemens_von_Metternich

The Conference of Vienna made crucial and controversial choices in their pursuit to retain power. By doing this they helped shape Europe into a more peaceful place while still letting countries retain all of their old power. While I do agree with the overall idea of trying to create a more peaceful place instead of having constant huge scale revolutions; the overall idea of letting the huge world powers retain all of their power didn't sit with me well. There should of been a better way of handling revolutions instead of immediately extinguishing them before they could get out of hand. People should have the human right of fighting for what they believe is right without being massacred for their beliefs. Power easily could of been managed better had the world powers agreed to allow power to be dispersed equally instead of letting the world powers keep their insane power, even if in the end it led to relative and long lasting peace.