United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in the context of "Modern Style (British Art Nouveau style)"

The aftermath of World War I saw far-reaching and wide-ranging cultural, economic, and social change across Europe, Asia, Africa, and in areas outside those that were directly involved. Four empires collapsed due to the war, old countries were abolished, new ones were formed, boundaries were redrawn, international organizations were established, and many new and old ideologies took a firm hold in people's minds. Additionally, culture in the nations involved was greatly changed. World War I also had the effect of bringing political transformation to most of the principal parties involved in the conflict, transforming them into electoral democracies by bringing near-universal suffrage for the first time in history, as in Germany (1919 German federal election), the United Kingdom (1918 United Kingdom general election), and the United States (1920 United States presidential election).

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, with a population of over 69 million in 2024. The UK includes the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, and most of the smaller islands within the British Isles, covering 94,354 square miles (244,376 km). It shares a land border with the Republic of Ireland and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the North Sea, the English Channel, the Celtic Sea and the Irish Sea, while maintaining sovereignty over the British Overseas Territories. The capital and largest city of both England and the UK is London; Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast are the national capitals of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Britain has been inhabited since the Neolithic. In AD 43 the Roman conquest of Britain began. The Roman departure between 383 and 410 was followed by Anglo-Saxon settlement beginning around 450. In 1066 the Normans conquered England. After the Wars of the Roses, the Kingdom of England began to flourish, resulting in the 16th-century annexation of Wales and the establishment of the British Empire. Over the 17th century the role of the British monarchy was reduced, particularly as a result of the English Civil War. In 1707 the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland united under the Treaty of Union to create the Kingdom of Great Britain. In the Georgian era the office of prime minister became established. The Acts of Union 1800 incorporated the Kingdom of Ireland to create the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801. Most of Ireland seceded from the UK in 1922 as the Irish Free State, and the Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act 1927 created the present United Kingdom.

The Khedivate of Egypt (Arabic: الْخُدَيْوِيَّةُ الْمِصْرِيَّةُ or خُدَيْوِيَّةُ مِصْرَ, Egyptian Arabic pronunciation: [xedeˈwejjet mɑsˤɾ]; Ottoman Turkish: خدیویت مصر Hıdiviyet-i Mısır) was an autonomous tributary state of the Ottoman Empire established and ruled by the Muhammad Ali Dynasty following the defeat and expulsion of Napoleon Bonaparte's forces, ending the short-lived French occupation of Lower Egypt. The Khedivate of Egypt had also expanded to control present-day Sudan, South Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti, northwestern Somalia, northeastern Ethiopia, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Palestine, Syria, Greece, Cyprus, southern and central Turkey, in addition to parts from Libya, Chad, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Uganda, as well as northwestern Saudi Arabia, parts of Yemen and the Kingdom of Hejaz.

The United Kingdom invaded and took control in 1882. In 1914, the Ottoman Empire connection was ended and Britain established a protectorate called the Sultanate of Egypt.

The Crimean War was fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the Ottoman Empire, the Second French Empire, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont from October 1853 to February 1856. Geopolitical causes of the war included the "Eastern question" (the decline of the Ottoman Empire), expansion of Imperial Russia in the preceding Russo-Turkish wars, and the British and French preference to preserve the Ottoman Empire to maintain the balance of power in the Concert of Europe.

The war's proximate cause was a dispute between France and Russia over the rights of Catholic and Orthodox minorities in Palestine. After the Sublime Porte refused Tsar Nicholas I's demand that the Empire's Orthodox subjects be placed under his protection, Russian troops occupied the Danubian Principalities in July 1853. The Ottomans declared war on Russia in October. Fearing the growth of Russian influence and compelled by public outrage over the annihilation of the Ottoman squadron at Sinop, Britain and France joined the war on the Ottoman side in March 1854. The Russian advance was halted at Silistria in June.

The Peninsular War (1808–1814) was fought in the Iberian Peninsula by the Iberian nations Spain and Portugal, and the United Kingdom against the invading and occupying forces of the First French Empire during the Napoleonic Wars. In Spain, it is considered to overlap with the Spanish War of Independence. It overlapped with the War of the Fifth Coalition (1809) and the War of the Sixth Coalition (1812-1814).

The war can be said to have started when the French and Spanish armies invaded and occupied Portugal in 1807 by transiting through Spain, but it escalated in 1808 after Napoleonic France occupied Spain, which had been its ally. Napoleon Bonaparte forced the abdications of Ferdinand VII and his father Charles IV and then installed his brother Joseph Bonaparte on the Spanish throne and promulgated the Bayonne Constitution. Most Spaniards rejected French rule and fought a bloody war to oust them. The war on the peninsula lasted until the Sixth Coalition defeated Napoleon in 1814, and is regarded as one of the first wars of national liberation. It is also significant for the emergence of large-scale guerrilla warfare.

The Concert of Europe was a general agreement between the great powers of 19th-century Europe to maintain the European balance of power, political boundaries, and spheres of influence. Never a perfect unity and subject to disputes and jockeying for position and influence, the Concert was an extended period of relative peace and stability in Europe following the Wars of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars which had consumed the continent since the 1790s. There is considerable scholarly dispute over the exact nature and duration of the Concert. Some scholars argue that it fell apart nearly as soon as it began in the 1820s when the great powers disagreed over the handling of liberal revolts in Italy, while others argue that it lasted until the outbreak of World War I and others for points in between. For those arguing for a longer duration, there is generally agreement that the period after the Revolutions of 1848 and the Crimean War (1853–1856) represented a different phase with different dynamics than the earlier period.

The beginnings of the Concert System, known as the Congress System or the Vienna System after the Congress of Vienna (1814–1815), was dominated by the five great powers of Europe: Austria, France, Prussia, Russia, and the United Kingdom. Initially envisioning regular Congresses among the great powers to resolve potential disputes, in practice, Congresses were held on an ad hoc basis and were generally successful in preventing or localizing conflicts. The more conservative members of the Concert of Europe, members of the Holy Alliance (Russia, Austria, and Prussia), used the system to oppose revolutionary and liberal movements and weaken the forces of nationalism. The formal Congress System fell apart in the 1820s but peace between the Great Powers continued and occasional meetings reminiscent of the Congresses continued to be held at times of crisis.

The unequal treaties were a series of agreements made between Asian countries—most notably Qing China, Tokugawa Japan and Joseon Korea—and Western countries—most notably the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy, the United States and Russia—during the 19th and early 20th centuries. They were often signed following a military defeat suffered by the Asian party, or amid military threats made by the Western party. The terms specified obligations to be borne almost exclusively by the Asian party and included provisions such as the cession of territory, payment of reparations, opening of treaty ports, relinquishment of the right to control tariffs and imports, and granting of extraterritoriality to foreign citizens.

With the rise of Chinese nationalism and anti-imperialism in the 1920s, both the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party used the concept to characterize the Chinese experience of losing sovereignty between roughly 1840 to 1950. The term "unequal treaty" became associated with the concept of China's "century of humiliation", especially the concessions to foreign powers and the loss of tariff autonomy through treaty ports, and continues to serve as a major impetus for the foreign policy of China today.

Sun Yat-sen (/ˈsʊnˈjɑːtˈsɛn/; 12 November 1866 – 12 March 1925) was a Chinese physician, revolutionary, statesman, and political philosopher who founded the Republic of China (ROC) and its first political party, the Kuomintang (KMT). As the paramount leader of the 1911 Revolution, Sun is credited with overthrowing the Qing dynasty and served as the first president of the Provisional Government of the Republic of China (1912) and as the inaugural premier of the Kuomintang.

Born to a peasant family in Guangdong, Sun was educated overseas in Hawaii and returned to China to graduate from medical school in Hong Kong. He led underground anti-Qing revolutionaries in South China, the United Kingdom, and Japan as one of the Four Bandits and rose to prominence as the founder of multiple resistance movements, including the Revive China Society and the Tongmenghui. He is considered one of the most important figures of modern China, and his political life campaigning against Manchu rule in favor of a Chinese republic featured constant struggles and frequent periods of exile.

The Corn Laws were tariffs and other trade restrictions on imported food and corn enforced in the United Kingdom between 1815 and 1846. The word corn in British English denotes all cereal grains, including wheat, oats and barley. The laws were designed to keep corn prices high to favour domestic farmers, and represented British mercantilism. The Corn Laws blocked the import of cheap corn, initially by simply forbidding importation below a set price, and later by imposing steep import duties, making it too expensive to import it from abroad, even when food supplies were short. The House of Commons passed the corn law bill on 10 March 1815, the House of Lords on 20 March and the bill received royal assent on 23 March 1815.

The Corn Laws enhanced the profits and political power associated with land ownership. The laws raised food prices and the costs of living for the British public, and hampered the growth of other British economic sectors, such as manufacturing, by reducing the disposable income of the British public.

The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a global series of conflicts fought by a fluctuating array of European coalitions against the French First Republic (1803–1804) under the First Consul followed by the First French Empire (1804–1815) under the Emperor of the French, Napoleon Bonaparte. The wars originated in political forces arising from the French Revolution (1789–1799) and from the French Revolutionary Wars (1792–1802) and produced a period of French domination over Continental Europe. The wars are categorised as seven conflicts, five named after the coalitions that fought Napoleon, plus two named for their respective theatres: the War of the Third Coalition, War of the Fourth Coalition, War of the Fifth Coalition, War of the Sixth Coalition, War of the Seventh Coalition, the Peninsular War, and the French invasion of Russia.

The first stage of the war broke out when Britain declared war on France on 18 May 1803. After some minor campaigns, Britain allied with Austria, Russia, and several minor powers to form the Third Coalition in April 1805. Napoleon defeated the allied Russo-Austrian armies in the subsequent war which climaxed in French victories at Ulm and at Austerlitz, leading to the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire and Austria being forced to make peace by the end of the year. Britain and Russia remained at war with France. Concerned about increasing French power, Prussia joined Britain and Russia in the Fourth Coalition, which resumed war in October 1806. Napoleon defeated the Prussians at Jena-Auerstedt and the Russians at Friedland, bringing an uneasy peace to the continent by July 1807, and again leaving Britain as France's sole major enemy. Britain was unable to dispute French dominance on the continent but obtained hegemony over the seas after a string of victories including Trafalgar. Russia used the interim peace to resolve wars with the Ottomans, Swedes, and Iranians.