It is important to remember that all of the mistakes, successes, failures and crises that characterize this battle are present in every battle. Discourses of what is war and what is peace are thus complicated by their intrinsic relation, and the period following the famous Waterloo Campaign is one of the best examples of this.īattle of Waterloo, June 18 – decisive action This peace ignores the underlying social forces and tensions which culminated in World War I as if to make up for the lack of violence in Europe the previous century. This peace ignores the ruthless colonization of Africa permitted by the stability in Europe. This peace ignores the brutal repression of the Revolutions of 1848 and others in which all great powers cooperated to maintain their sovereignty. The “peace” that followed Waterloo was peace among European states and hardly even that. This is too uncritical a position to adopt for such a transformative period of history. What is the significance of this campaign? The story is that following the defeat of Napoleon the tyrant and the end of perpetual revolutionary war, Europe was relatively peaceful for a century with few major wars, involving few great powers.
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