alternatehistory.com

Just wrote up another update. Will do editing and footnotes tomorrow.


Part Fifty-One: The Start of the European Wars

In order to understand the causes of the 1860s European Wars, it is necessary to examine them simultaneously rather than looking at each one separately. The reasons the Second Napoleonic War and the Grand Unification War came about and how they ended are so intertwined with each other in the general European politics of the era that some historians choose to combine them into one single war.

The French Resurgence:
The Second Napoleonic War arose as a result of French resurgence under president Louis Napoleon and the continuing rivalry between France and the British Empire. In the early 19th century, the French people possessed a desire to retaliate against the United Kingdom for the victories in the First Napoleonic War. The rebuilding of France after the First Napoleonic Wars was shaky at the start, because of the instability in the country. The July Revolution that brought Louis Philippe to the throne in 1830 saw some improvement in the economy and industry, but it took until the Midcentury Revolutions and the rise of Louis Napoleon to see a true resurgence in France.

Under Louis Napoleon, political power in France was gradually concentrated in the president rather than the National Assembly and while the new Bonaparte did not declare himself emperor like his uncle, he eventually gained almost as much power. During the 1850s, the French economy was at a local peak and Louis Napoleon used the economic boom to rapidly build up the country's army and navy, investing in several ironclads, shipyards, and armaments factories. In the late 1850s, France unveiled its new navy in the conquest of the cities in the Bab el Mendeb and forcing Egypt to grant them some trade concessions[1].

In the early 1860s, Louis Napoleon's colonial ambitions made France turn against Belgium. In a series or letters and meetings with Prussian chancellor Bismarck, an agreement was formed where Prussia guaranteed neutrality in the event France invaded either the Netherlands or Belgium. In exchange, France would support future Prussian colonial acquisitions in Africa. In April of 1865, France declared war on Belgium, violating the Treaty of London in 1839. Aside from Prussia, the Netherlands and Austria declined to join in the war against France. Britain and Spain, however, did come to Belgium's aid and declared war on France three days later.


German and Italian Nationalism:
In central Europe, the first half of the nineteenth century fostered a unifying force in both the German states and the Italian Peninsula. After the Midcentury Revolutions swept through Europe, Giuseppe Garibaldi took advantage of the nationalist feeling in many of the smaller central Italian states. Through several successful wars on the peninsula, Garibaldi united all the Italian countries except for the Papal States under the republican government he had established in the Midcentury Revolutions. In Germany, the Zollverein and the meetings of the German Confederation created stronger ties between the countries that succeeded the Holy Roman Empire. Leading the German Confederation were two rival powers; Austria and Prussia.

Since the Renaissance, Austria had been the leading German state in all aspects. However, Prussia was a rising great power in the early nineteenth century and its efforts to unseat Austria as leader of the German Confederation showed the tensions between the two. Prussia's initial attempts to gain a hold over the other German states had been through reforms of the Confederation. In 1840, Prussia attempted to bring the Dutch province of Liege into the Confederation, as it had already included the Dutch provinces of Limburg and Luxemburg. Austria and the states supporting it denied the inception of Liege as it would increase the power of the northern German states which supported Prussia. In the 1840s, Prussia also made attempts to have the executive position alternate between Austria and Prussia or implement a bicameral system with each power holding sway over a house, but both of these measured failed to pass.

The Midcentury Revolutions brought a great change in the Prussian vision of how to gain power over the German states. During the upheaval in Germany, an assembly in the Free City of Frankfurt made up of leaders from all the free cities in the German Confederation and some of the more reform-minded states wrote up a constitutional document that would have created a true parliamentary system of government in Germany with a hereditary king as figurehead[2]. The Frankfurt Convention offered the kingship to Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia but he refused as he did not want to give up any power over Prussia, even for a united Germany.

After the failure of the Frankfurt Convention, Prussia became more direct and forceful with its imperial machinations. A change in governance took place in the late 1850s when Friedrich Wilhelm IV was succeeded by his brother Wilhelm I who appointed Otto von Bismarck as Prime Minister. Soon, Bismarck began looking for ways to sway the smaller German states to Prussia's side and weaken the influence of Austria. To this aim, Bismarck began building support within Germany by supporting a revanchist and expansionist element in Bavaria that had brought king Maximilian II to power in a coup in 1850. Outside Germany, Bismarck also gave aid to Garibaldi as a counterweight to Austria's power elsewhere and sought an agreement with Russia for the latter to not intervene in affairs of the German Confederation. In 1865 with France and Britain distracted by war and Russian neutrality guaranteed, Prussia attacked Austria using debate over the succession of the Danish possessions of Schleswig and Holstein as excuse. Bavaria and Italy became the main supporters of Bismarck and Prussia, while Austria and Denmark had several of the smaller southern German states on their side against the Prussian onslaught.

[1] I'll do an update on Egypt sometime, but briefly France is building the Suez Canal and getting various tariff breaks and preference for investors.
[2] Basically the Frankfurt Assembly