<P> During the 19th century, to achieve lasting peace, the Concert of Europe tried to maintain the balance of power . The territorial boundaries laid down at the Congress of Vienna were maintained, and even more important there was an acceptance of the theme of balance with no major aggression . Otherwise the Congress system says historian Roy Bridge, "failed" by 1823 . In 1818 the British decided not to become involved in continental issues that did not directly affect them . They rejected the plan of Tsar Alexander I to suppress future revolutions . The Concert system fell apart as the common goals of the Great Powers were replaced by growing political and economic rivalries . Artz says the Congress of Verona in 1822 "marked the end ." There was no Congress called to restore the old system during the great revolutionary upheavals of 1848 with their demands for revision of the Congress of Vienna's frontiers along national lines . </P> <P> Before 1850 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 . </P> <P> After 1870 the creation and rise of the German Empire as a dominant nation restructured the European balance of power . 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 such as the Triple Alliance . </P> <P> 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-World War I treaty, was to abolish the dominance of the' Balance of Power' concept and replace it with the (global) League of Nations . </P>

Which period marked the zenith of european economic growth