Imperialism was the driving force behind European diplomacy in the nineteenth century. Peace, one of the main stated objectives of the Concert of Europe, was pursued by the main actors as a means of consolidating and securing their imperial gains and preventing further conquests by rival states. The long periods of peace celebrated as successes of the concert system occurred simply because peace between the Great Powers was what the Great Powers wanted. Later in the century, in the run-up to the First World War, this celebrated peace was, as Pim den Boer put it, an “armed peace,” with many “consciously aiming for a great European war.” Under the Concert system, the First World War was not inevitable, but the personal interests of the Great Powers. Russia, although the greatest land empire the world had ever seen, failed to dominate late-game European power politics because Russian imperialism was unmatched by Russian industrialism and was ultimately brought to its knees by rise of communism. Russian imperialism had been present since the beginning of the century: Russia, together with Prussia and Austria (the Holy Alliance), refused to allow the restoration of the Polish state at the Congress of Vienna, presumably to prevent border disputes with a strong European nation. With the Ottoman Empire as the only potential European threat, Russia was granted a period of expansion. On the Eastern Front, relations with China dated back to the Treaty of Nerchinsk of 1689, and the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway and the construction of port cities in the Pacific only served to strengthen Russian influence and imperialism in Asia. In the West, Russia had its own answer to the Eastern Question with the assistance of the Ottoman Empire in a war with Egypt in 1833 and the subsequent Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, which granted Russia and only Russia access to the Straits of the Dardanelles. Russia withdrew this access only at the behest of what Mowat called a “show of unanimity on the part of the Central and Western Powers” ​​at the Straits of London Convention in 1841. Russia had designs on an empire in the East and West through Constantinople, but it was not willing to wage a pan-European war to seize it. This desire, although slightly tamed by 1841, did not disappear entirely, with the Crimean War being fought due to Russo-Ottoman tensions and the Franco-Prussian War providing Russia with an opportunity and excuse to militarize the Black Sea. Although Napoleon's defeat in his Moscow campaign had given Russia the prestige of the leading military power of the early 19th century, their defeat in the Crimea