Small states and great powers in the international system

The period bounded by the lapse of Bismarck's reinsurance treaty in 1890 and the German invasion of Denmark and Norway in 1940 was one in which the Nordic countries became enmeshed in international conflict to a degree unprecedented since the early nineteenth century. The progressive erosion of Scandinavian isolation, culminating in the traumatic years of war and occupation between 1939 and 1945 (from which only Sweden was spared), forms one of the main themes of this book. Another is the inability of the Nordic states to fulfil – either individually (apart, again, from Sweden) or collectively – one of the basic functions of any state: the protection of their citizens from external attack. There is another side to the story. Of the minor states of Europe, the Nordic countries were – and remain – among the most fortunate. They have enjoyed a large measure of internal stability and have had few rivalries among themselves. Rapid industrialisation, beginning in the nineteenth century, combined with periods of social democratic rule which were longer and more continuous than anywhere else in Europe, enabled the Nordic countries to construct societies which were, by the late twentieth century, among the most egalitarian and most prosperous in the world. Yet their very success made the Nordic countries vulnerable to external pressures.

The first half of the twentieth century was a period dominated by war and the anticipation of war. It was also a period of unprecedented ideological confrontation and economic competition among the European great powers.