Plausibility check: Prussian-Russian minority exchange

Eurofed

Banned
If, after the Congress of Vienna Prussia and Russia had gotten their way about Poland and Saxony (and much else besides, but that's irrelevant here) and Russia had got Posen, Prussia only keeping West Prussia, is it plausible and in period that the Tsar and the King of Prussia could have set up an exchange of their Polish and German minorities, West Prussian and Silesian Poles for Posen and Lodz Germans, to lessen their mutual minorities problem ? Let assume that ITTL Congress of Vienna Prussia got Bohemia-Moravia plus a lot of other stuff , so it's going to have a sizable Slav minority nonetheless.
 

I Blame Communism

Banned
Eurofed said:
If, after the Congress of Vienna Prussia and Russia had gotten their way about Poland and Saxony (and much else besides, but that's irrelevant here) and Russia had got Posen, Prussia only keeping West Prussia, is it plausible and in period that the Tsar and the King of Prussia could have set up an exchange of their Polish and German minorities, West Prussian and Silesian Poles for Posen and Lodz Germans, to lessen their mutual minorities problem ? Let assume that ITTL Congress of Vienna Prussia got Bohemia-Moravia plus a lot of other stuff , so it's going to have a sizable Slav minority nonetheless.
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1) Bohemia and Moravia? Did Metternich go braindead?

2) Ahem, the point. No: Russia and Prussia, as coservative monarchies, are actively against the national principal, yet alone a highly anachronistic and logistically difficult implementation of it. Even leaving aside, it's a largely agrarian Polish population vs important merchant communities in Russian Poland who the Russians have no reaosn to suspect of disloyalty. Nesselrode was, of course, a German. And if you're willing to stretch the term, so was the Tsar.
 
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Valdemar II

Banned
Eurofed said:
If, after the Congress of Vienna Prussia and Russia had gotten their way about Poland and Saxony (and much else besides, but that's irrelevant here) and Russia had got Posen, Prussia only keeping West Prussia, is it plausible and in period that the Tsar and the King of Prussia could have set up an exchange of their Polish and German minorities, West Prussian and Silesian Poles for Posen and Lodz Germans, to lessen their mutual minorities problem ? Let assume that ITTL Congress of Vienna Prussia got Bohemia-Moravia plus a lot of other stuff , so it's going to have a sizable Slav minority nonetheless.
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No, first of people didn't think like that at the time. Beside that what minority problems? Linguistic identity meant a lot less at this time, hell the creators of modern Czech nationalism was German speaking, much of German aristrocracy spoke better French than German, millions of people whom identified as Germans spoke other languages. You try to put a 1914 way of thinking down over 1814 people it don't works.
 

I Blame Communism

Banned
Valdemar II said:
No, first of people didn't think like that at the time. Beside that what minority problems? Linguistic identity meant a lot less at this time, hell the creators of modern Czech nationalism was German speaking, much of German aristrocracy spoke better French than German, millions of people whom identified as Germans spoke other languages. You try to put a 1914 way of thinking down over 1814 people it don't works.
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Exactly, and in the former Commonwealth nationality was a nightmare to puzzle out. Even in late Tsarist times, whether somebody was Polish, Lithuanian, or Belarusian could be largely a matter of circumstance.
 

Extrasolar Angel

Banned
to lessen their mutual minorities problem ?
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What minorities problem in 1815 ? A significant portion of Polish nobility in 1815 was supportive of Congress Poland and Tsar's promises.
And why would Russia expell its German-speaking colonists that it itself invited ?
Lodz Germans
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In 1815 Lodz counted 800 people and was a village. Do a little research please before asking your usual questions how to get Germany to have 1914 borders again;)
 

Abdul Hadi Pasha

Banned
This would never have occurred to anyone at the time, and if it had, they would have been told to go sit in the corner if they voiced it.
 

Grimm Reaper

Why would the Prussians wish to remove what might someday be a potential claim on new territory or the Russians to turn their Polish territories into a purely Polish enclave, instead of a more divided region, even ignoring that the Poles were obviously not happy about being Russian subjects?
 

Eurofed

Banned
Ok, I was just making a plausibility check on a random idea, I suspected it was anachronistic all the way along, but making a check with the forum's collective wisdom doesn't harm anyone. ;) Thanks everyone for the advice.

Now, If you people would be double nice and provid informed advice on the Belgium issue, too ? :)

IBC, Metternich is not braindead. He picked up a war with Prussia and Russia about the Poland-Saxony issue that Austria totally lost (thanks to better Prussian armies, huge Russian armies, and Napoleon coming back, starting a merry three-way war, and kicking Wellington's butt just when Austria needed Britain's and Bourbon France's support to win this war). Metternich retired in ignominy when the Tsar and the King of Prussia sat down in occupied Vienna to dictate peace terms after vanquishing Napoleon with overwhelming numbers.
 
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I Blame Communism

Banned
[Yes, I know, I'm ignored. I've made it my mission to protect the innocent, from my position of safety, against Hurgansolar Angel's monomaniacal nonsense.]

Extrasolar Angel said:
What minorities problem in 1815 ? A significant portion of Polish nobility in 1815 was supportive of Congress Poland and Tsar's promises.
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And he's not talking about the Tsar kicking Poles out, but bringing them in. Reda threads.

Extrasolar Angel said:
And why would Russia expell its German-speaking colonists that it itself invited ?
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To the territories it had gaine dthe same year? The Russians have invited Germans to the Volga or New Russia, but German-speaking merchant communities in western Polish towns like Torun went back a lot further.

Extrasolar Angel said:
In 1815 Lodz counted 800 people and was a village. Do a little research please before asking your usual questions how to get Germany to have 1914 borders again;)
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Except that he's asking how to give Germany its 1807 borders and expell the Germans from beyond them. Please do a little reading before replying to threads with your usual monomaniacal victim complex.

I restate my thesis: ESA is Hurgan, but has learned enough about the forum to avoid saying anything bannable, which explains why he has repeatedly abandoned threads which had got to me asking "So would you endorse this ethnic cleansing which a logical extension of your arguments requires?", even after being reminded of them multiple times.
 
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Eurofed

Banned
IBC, never mind. I have put ESA on ignore list since when I realized the extent of his unreasoning Germanophobia. Later I also acknowledged that he's your typical Polonophile chauvinist which thinks dastardly Germans and Russians have been planning the destruction of Poles, God's Chosen People, since 800 AD or so.

:rolleyes::eek:
 

I Blame Communism

Banned
Extrasolar Angel said:
And points out that Lodz has 800 inhabitants in 1815 :p No doubt an evil plot of the Poles against Eurofed.;)
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I for one don't suspect any evil plots, but rather a small-minded and obsessive way of thinking in which the world becomes a battle between Us and Them for prestige. History is distorted, inconvenient facts are ignored, and anything can be justified if "we" do it. The whole sordid system is documented by Orwell in the essay linked in my signature.

As well as pointing out that Lodz was a village, ESA also pointed out that the German inhabitants of western Polish towns had been settled there at the behest of the Russian Tsars, which was a pretty silly thing to point out given how obviously untrue it is.
 

Susano

Banned
Eurofed vs ESA? The two deserve each other :D

But yes. Prussia and Russia were both principally opposed to thinking in national concepts at that point in time, hence there would be no such population exchange. It would also cause quite some economic havoc as in the ethncially mixed areas Germans and Poles usually filled different economical niches, with the cities being mostly German and the landside mostly Polish...
 

I Blame Communism

Banned
Zyzzyva said:
I was going to say! Cage-match! Cage-match!
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To quote the Nostalgia Critic "And it is ay beeeee-YOOT-iful day for intelligence to be insulted!"

I'm almost sad that Hurgan is going to be banned as soon as Ian sees the tactful, thoughtful, balanced, contemplative thread about how the Germans are STILL NAZIS!

I say, its remarkable appropriate that you've switched your sig from me to UA just when we referenced eachother in our sigs...
 

CanadianGoose

Banned
Susano said:
Prussia and Russia were both principally opposed to thinking in national concepts at that point in time, hence there would be no such population exchange.
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I wouldn't be so sure about Russia. After all, "Official Nationality" was to be declared in under 20 years, and this way of thinking was there by 1815, if in less articulated form. However, I see this exchange as impossible, as Germans were actually considered the most loyal non-Orthodox element of the empire and Poles were "a nation of traitors", fighting for Napoleon just recently. Why would Alexander want more of troublemaking worthless szlachta and uneducated farmers, when he needed every educated and industrious German he could lay his hands on?
 
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