Towards the end of the nineteenth century the European great powers began to take a more active interest in Scandinavian affairs. Changes in military technology and in the balance of power in Europe as a whole, as well as within Scandinavia itself, heightened the strategic importance of northern Europe and raised questions about both the capacity and the willingness of the Scandinavian states to preserve their neutrality in the event of war. For much of the century Scandinavia and the Baltic had been of strategic interest only in the context of a war between Great Britain and Russia. The Crimean war showed that the Baltic was one of the few regions where British naval power could be brought to bear effectively against Russia, and its lessons were not entirely forgotten in the second half of the nineteenth century. Moreover, ‘the epoch in which an Anglo-Russian conflict seemed the most likely outcome of international relations’ did not come to an end until the peaceful resolution of the Dogger Bank affair in 1904. Already, however, Scandinavia and the Baltic had been profoundly affected by the revolution in the European balance of power brought about by the creation of the German empire in 1871.

The destabilising effects of this creation, limited until 1890 by Bismarck's conservatism and diplomatic skill, began to be revealed under his successors. Following the lapse of the Reinsurance treaty, the Scandinavian states began to feel the repercussions of the increasing polarisation of international relations between Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy on the one hand, and France and Russia on the other.