< reF > Title The Wars of Afghanistan: Messianic Terrorism, Tribal Conflicts, and the Failures of Great Powers Peter Tomsen, PublicAffairs, 2011 </ reF >

No territorial changes were made to either country, but the Bulgarian unification was recognized by the Great Powers.

The Great Powers, most notably France and Austria-Hungary, reacted to this diplomatic sensation by trying to dissuade the League from going to war, but failed.

* Kennedy, Paul, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, Random House, ASIN B000O2NJSO.

Austria called attention to Serbia's March 1909 declaration committing to the Great Powers to respect Austria-Hungary's sovereignty over Bosnia-Herzegovina and committing Serbia to maintain good neighborly relations with Austria-Hungary.

The Secret Treaty of 1892 required both Russia and France to mobilize immediately followed by a commencement of action against the Triple Alliance if any member of the Triplice mobilized, and so, soon all the Great Powers of Europe were at war except Italy.

Throughout the 19th century, the Great Powers shared different aims over the " Eastern Question " and the integrity of the Ottoman Empire.

The Greeks of the autonomous Cretan State proclaimed unification with Greece, though the opposition of the Great Powers prevented the latter action from taking practical effect.

This alliance between Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Montenegro became known as the Balkan League ; its existence was undesirable for all the Great Powers.

The developments that led to the First Balkan War did not go unnoticed by the Great Powers, but although there was an official consensus between the European Powers over the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire, which led to a stern warning to the Balkan states, unofficially each of them took a different diplomatic approach due to their conflicting interests in the area.

But it was unaware of the Bulgarian plans over Thrace and Constantinople, territories on which it had long-held ambitions, and on which it had just secured a secret agreement of expansion from its allies France and Britain, as a reward for participating in the upcoming Great War against the Central Powers.

The Great Powers, defined in the 1815 Congress of Vienna as the United Kingdom, Habsburg Austria, Prussia, France, and Russia, would frequently coordinate interventions in other nations ' civil wars, nearly always on the side of the incumbent government.

Given the military strength of the Great Powers, these interventions were nearly always decisive and quickly ended the civil wars.

* Ashbrook W. & Powers H. Puccini's Turandot: The End of the Great Tradition, Princeton Univ.

The outbreak of the First World War was precipitated by a series of struggles among the Great Powers.

Germany led the Central Powers in the First World War ( 1914 – 1918 ) against France, Great Britain, Russia and ( by 1917 ) the United States.

The History of Modern Greece covers the history of Greece from the recognition of its autonomy from the Ottoman Empire by the Great Powers ( the United Kingdom, France, and Russia ) in 1828, after the Greek War of Independence, to the present day.

Following a protracted struggle, the autonomy of Greece was first recognized by the Great Powers ( the United Kingdom, France, and Russia ) in 1828.

Kapodistrias negotiated with the Great Powers and the Ottoman Empire the borders and the degree of independence of the Greek state and signed the peace treaty that ended the War of Independence with the Ottomans ; introduced the phoenix, the first modern Greek currency ; organised local administration ; and, in an effort to raise the living standards of the population, introduced the cultivation of the potato into Greece.

The borders of the Kingdom were reiterated in the London Protocol of 30 August 1832 signed by the Great Powers, which ratified the terms of the Constantinople Arrangement in connection with the border between Greece and the Ottoman Empire and marked the end of the Greek War of Independence creating modern Greece as an independent state free of the Ottoman Empire.

Through the intervention of the Great Powers however, Greece lost only a little territory along the border to Turkey, while Crete was established as an autonomous state under Prince George of Greece.

In supporting the independence of Albania, the Great Powers were assisted by Aubrey Herbert, a British MP who passionately advocated the Albanian cause in London.

The Great Powers selected Prince William of Wied, a nephew of Queen Elisabeth of Romania to become the sovereign of the newly independent Albania.

The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers ( 1989 )

The Industrial Revolution in Western Europe and North America, but perhaps most especially in Great Britain and in New England, led to a proliferation of manufacturing and invention.

This collection of short Latin verse texts and accompanying woodcuts created an entire European genre, the emblem book, which attained enormous popularity in continental Europe and Great Britain.

* United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, a sovereign state in western Europe

* Great Britain, the largest island in the British Isles and the largest island in Europe

Though the Scottish Great Highland Bagpipe and Irish uilleann pipes have the greatest international visibility, bagpipes have been played for centuries throughout large parts of Europe, the Caucasus, around the Persian Gulf and in Northern Africa.

In Europe, the major source for tin was Great Britain's deposits of ore in Cornwall, which were traded as far as Phoenicia in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Barge and canal systems were nonetheless of great, perhaps even primary, economic importance until after World War I in Europe, particularly in the more developed nations of the Low Countries, France, Germany, Poland, and especially Great Britain which more or less made the system characteristically its own.

There is some controversy over the identity of the disease, but in its virulent form, after the Great Plague of Marseille in 1720 – 1722, the Great Plague of 1738 ( which hit Eastern Europe ), and the Russian plague of 1770-1772, it seems to have gradually disappeared from Europe.

In the years 1315 to 1317, a catastrophic famine, known as the Great Famine, struck much of northwest Europe.

It also created the opportunity to redevelop the vacant space in Robert Smirke's 19th-century central quadrangle into the Queen Elizabeth II Great Court – the largest covered square in Europe – which opened in 2000.

The Great Court opened in December 2000 and is the largest covered square in Europe.

However, according to Justinus, 38. 3. 6, more than a decade later, at some time in 90-88 BCE, Mithridates the Great sent ambassadors to the Cimbri to request military aid ; judging from the context they must have been living in North Eastern Europe at the time.

In the 1920s democracy flourished, but the Great Depression brought disenchantment, and most of the countries of Europe, Latin America, and Asia turned to strong-man rule or dictatorships.

Widespread decrease in elm pollen across Europe between 8400 – 8300 BC and 7200 – 7000 BC, starting in southern Europe and gradually moving north to Great Britain, may represent land clearing by fire at the onset of Neolithic agriculture.

The medieval universities of Western Christendom were well-integrated across all of Western Europe, encouraged freedom of enquiry and produced a great variety of fine scholars and natural philosophers, including Thomas Aquinas of the University of Naples, Robert Grosseteste of the University of Oxford, an early expositor of a systematic method of scientific experimentation ; and Saint Albert the Great, a pioneer of biological field research The University of Bologne is considered the oldest continually operating university.

The movement became even more significant in the United States during the series of Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th centuries, where it drew far more members than in Europe.

In February 1793 a major war broke out between conservative Great Britain and its allies and revolutionary France, launching an era of large-scale warfare that engulfed Europe until 1815.

The rookeries of the Great Auk were found from Baffin Bay down to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, across the far northern Atlantic, including Iceland, and in Norway and the British Isles in Europe.

* 1315 – 1317: The Great Famine of 1315 – 1317 in Northern Europe

But despite the progress, it continued to lag in the political and mercantile developments then transforming other parts of Europe, most notably in Great Britain, the Low Countries, and France.