A question about the 1848 Revolutions.

Zioneer

Banned
I was looking over the Wikipedia articles on the Revolutions of 1848, and I thought of a TL idea, but it won't work if a certain point of information is incorrect.

Thus, I have a question (or two): In the 1848 Revolutions, would revolutionary groups attempt to join neighboring countries with the areas they controlled, if they knew that they would be suppressed and would lose in the old country?

Example: Schleswig, in OTL. They enjoyed their semi-autonomy from the Kingdom of Denmark, and sought to join with the German states, right? Would that happen with any other countries?

I'm planning (in my proposed TL) for revolutionaries from Austria, France, Italy, or Germany to ask to join Switzerland as part of a new canton, in return for respecting what the revolutionaries had fought to acquire.

I know that Switzerland had it's own problems close to this time (the Sonderbund), but it might be feasible for Switzerland to federally unite a bit faster, correct?
 
Thing is, the Swiss don't necessarily want this: they have a delicate internal balance vulnerable to upset (this caused them to turn down suggestions from Vorarlberg in 1919 OTL) and they have no desire to antagonise a bunch of much larger powers. Both these problems are exacerbated by Switzerland's internal worries.

Remember also that the 1848 revolutions were in some ways a disconnect between city and countryside. In France, the group that really lost out in the new republic was the Parisian working classes, who aren't in a position to join anyone.

And none of the revolutionary groups would be especially satisfied with Switzerland. It's not socialist, it's not a united Germany of Italy, it's just Switzerland.

Taking a wide view of "revolutionaries attempting to join countries", the abortive Greater Poland revolt and the revolutions in both Romanian principalities were both trying to create united countries as well as the Germans and Italians.
 
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