Europe comprised of small countries and City States

Green Painting · Mar 7, 2014

IOTL, the general trend of European history was that countries became larger and larger, and larger kingdoms finally integrated into nation-states. Due to competition from the Nation-States, smaller dukedoms and city states were either annexed or forced to seek union with each other.

Can we reverse this trend? Can we make smaller communities more prosperous, so that the larger kingdoms like England and France split into smaller ones due to internal pressure because their subordinates see the benefits of small states?

POD no later than 1000AD.

iori · Mar 7, 2014

You can create more Austria sized states, however without some sort of ASB intervention you can't make all of Europe comprised of countries Switzerland and Smaller sized; there is a major reason that polities grow larger, it's simply not possible for them to all remain small politically, economically, demographically or resource-wise.

Fabius Maximus · Mar 7, 2014

Germany and Italy were made up of small states for most of the last thousand years, so it shouldn't be impossible to keep them that way. As for France, if the French crown fails to centralise the country you could well see the various counties and dukedoms being de facto independent, if not necessarily de jure.

iori · Mar 7, 2014

Fabius Maximus said:
Germany and Italy were made up of small states for most of the last thousand years, so it shouldn't be impossible to keep them that way. As for France, if the French crown fails to centralise the country you could well see the various counties and dukedoms being de facto independent, if not necessarily de jure.

Except they really have'nt been, their were long periods where they were split into multiple states, but even then there were always one or two medium to large (for Europe that is) states as well.

Pio2013 · Mar 7, 2014

There would be a lot of tax heavens

Mikestone8 · Mar 7, 2014

Get rid of Philip Augustus.

The Angevin Empire continues a while, but at some point Acquitaine is hived off for a younger son, and maybe at some point gets into a personal union with Aragon or Castile. Something like the Comuneros revolt still comes in the 16C, and TTL it succeeds, so that most of France and Spain have little in the way of central government. So most states west of Poland are smallish ones.

Green Painting · Mar 7, 2014

Pio2013 said:
There would be a lot of tax heavens

If Europe survived such a fragmentation, there might be more effective measures against things such as tax haven.

Marc Pasquin · Mar 7, 2014

maybe have the idea of automatically splitting off polities between the sons upon the fathers become widespread amongst European nobles. Problably some standardise way of doing so would be developed so that for example the land would be divided by 2 more shares then the number of sons with the eldest getting 3 shares and the others an equal number or else it could be divided equaly.

Because a share would revert back to the family in the event of death without heir and because some sons might trade their share for a monetary settlement or an example of territory, polities would be kept small but not static and wouldn't always become smaller.

Umbral · Mar 7, 2014

I have been considering some way of setting up a Europe of city-states. I've been more concerned with how to make such setup stable, in the face of the far greater power of nation-states.

I have been considering a guildbased setup, where transnational (transpolisial?) guilds hold power over resources, transport and trade, and sees their power challenged by entities that grow large enough to become more self-reliant.

Faeelin · Mar 7, 2014

I don't know if I buy the greater power of nation states. The Holy Roman Empire managed to avoid being conquered or unified into a major power; Italy was mostly a collection of city states; etc.

Natte · Mar 7, 2014

To be fair, compared to the rest of the world modern Europe DOES consist of mainly small countries (and some city states) with the exception of Russia and possibly Turkey and Germany could count as medium sized. If we look at the size of Europe it's very balkanized in comparison to other regions. Central America and coastal West Africa are the only comparable regions I can see, discounting archipelagos.

As to how to make it happen I don't know, wouldn't smaller states easily fall prey to larger entities in bordering regions? Like how would we make Russian city states hold off larger Tartar and Turkic nations? Anatolian city states hold of Arabic/Syrian/Persian states? Iberian city states hold of North African states? etc etc.

Or would it need to be a modern development? And in that case how in the world would that happen?

Faeelin · Mar 7, 2014

Venice and the other Italian city-states held off the ottomans.

Marc Pasquin · Mar 7, 2014

Natte said:
As to how to make it happen I don't know, wouldn't smaller states easily fall prey to larger entities in bordering regions? Like how would we make Russian city states hold off larger Tartar and Turkic nations? Anatolian city states hold of Arabic/Syrian/Persian states? Iberian city states hold of North African states? etc etc.

could be a combination of diplomacy, strong defensive alliance and economical clout.

Or would it need to be a modern development? And in that case how in the world would that happen?

maybe the idea of decolonisation extends to ethnic minority within nation-states or Maybe you have the 2 superpowers encouraging the splintering off to keep them weak.

Abdominalz · Mar 7, 2014

No English unification would be a start

ScrewySqrl · Mar 7, 2014

Abdominalz said:
No English unification would be a start

as in, what we call England remains 7 independent kingdoms, plus scotland and Wales?

Abdominalz · Mar 7, 2014

ScrewySqrl said:
as in, what we call England remains 7 independent kingdoms, plus scotland and Wales?

Exactly

Uhura's Mazda · Mar 7, 2014

ScrewySqrl said:
as in, what we call England remains 7 independent kingdoms, plus scotland and Wales?

And Moray was basically independent from Scotland until at least the aftermath of Macbeth. The less said about pre-Norman Wales in this context the better.

Plus, the Heptarchy was really a sort of proto-Whiggish idea that simplified historical fact. Hwicce existed well into the 7th century while Sussex... didn't. Taking an early POD (say 500 AD) every little town in Britain could be its own private Idaho and everywhere west of the Oder could be fragmented into tiny polities. Then we've got the Balkans, Italy, etc. It would be really cool if the OTL Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth still arose in this scenario and became a legit world power.

ScrewySqrl · Mar 8, 2014

Uhura's Mazda said:
And Moray was basically independent from Scotland until at least the aftermath of Macbeth. The less said about pre-Norman Wales in this context the better.

Plus, the Heptarchy was really a sort of proto-Whiggish idea that simplified historical fact. Hwicce existed well into the 7th century while Sussex... didn't. Taking an early POD (say 500 AD) every little town in Britain could be its own private Idaho and everywhere west of the Oder could be fragmented into tiny polities. Then we've got the Balkans, Italy, etc. It would be really cool if the OTL Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth still arose in this scenario and became a legit world power.

probkem with that is as soon as you have ONE such state, others will rise, or it absorbs all the litte statelets eventually. See every ancient empire from Assyria to Rome to China. Or just OTL's England (1300), France (1400) and Spain (1500)

Marc Pasquin · Mar 8, 2014

ScrewySqrl said:
probkem with that is as soon as you have ONE such state, others will rise, or it absorbs all the litte statelets eventually. See every ancient empire from Assyria to Rome to China. Or just OTL's England (1300), France (1400) and Spain (1500)

Maybe if you manage to have a number of empire similar to the Roman Empire with everyone technically giving aliegeance to the emperor/king but being decentralised and having enough autonomy to allow independent foreign policy.