The Belle Époque floated on a class structure

The Belle Époque floated on a class structure that ensured cheap labour. The underground railway joined the omnibus and streetcar in transporting the working population, including those servants who did not live in; one result was that working-class and upper-class neighbourhoods might be separated by large distances.

The years between the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) and World War I (1914-18) were characterized by unusual political stability in western and central Europe. Although tensions between the French and German governments persisted as a result of the French loss of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany during 1871, diplomatic conferences, including the Congress of Berlin in 1878 and the Berlin Congo Conference in 1884, mediated disputes that threatened the general European peace. Indeed, for many Europeans, transnational, class-based affiliations were as important as national identities in the Belle Époque. A middle- or upper-class gentleman could travel through much of Europe without a passport and even reside abroad with minimal bureaucratic regulation. Meanwhile, the international workers' movement also reorganized itself and reinforced pan-European, class-based identities among the classes whose labour supported the Belle Époque. The most notable transnational socialist organization was the Second International.

In terms of domestic politics, there were very few regime changes in Europe, the major exception being Portugal, which experienced a republican revolution in 1910. However, tensions between working-class socialist parties, bourgeois liberal parties, and landed or aristocratic conservative parties did increase in many countries; and it has been claimed that profound political instability belied the calm surface of European politics in the era. In fact, militarism and international tensions grew considerably between 1897 and 1914, and the immediate prewar years were marked by a general armaments competition in Europe. Additionally, this era was one of massive overseas colonialism, known as the New Imperialism, or High Imperialism. The most famous portion of this imperial expansion was the Scramble for Africa.