AHC: Neapolitan Wank.

The challenge is to wank the Kingdom Of Naples as much as possible. Give them independence, wealth, a colonial empire and all with the capital remaining at Naples. The POD must be after the Sicilian Vespers rebellion of 1282.:)
 
AH.com wiki said:
In the original version of it, a single country is always successful, steadily expands, and generally does way better than is plausible.

Wank seems quite contradictory with plausibility at first glance.

The problem with South Italy it's its position : too dry to became a demographic power, but at crossroads of paths for trade roads making it both valubale and vulnerable to commercial crisis (by exemple, the general decline of Italian trade domination in the XVI).

Being quite poor in ressources, and unable to have a great hydroelectric power to compensate this, I doubt that an independent Southern Italy (that is itself doable, admitting it get rid of foreign takeover) would be much more than a peninsular Greece in the XIX century (critically without northern Italian investments).

So, independence could be obtained relativly easily : let's have Murat being quiet and no Italian unification as it happened OTL (maybe more like a confederation, Garibaldi meeting an earlier end or turning even more republican and/or Nappie the third having a more decisive influence on Sardinia).
Naples taking over Sicily in the XIX could hardly count as colonial empire, but more than that isn't going to be that doable.

No way to bring glory to Naples it seems. How sad.
À l'impossible, nul n'est tenu.
 
Thanks. :)
This is why I love it here. Anything I don't know will be answered by someone else.
I seem to learn something new here everyday.:D
 
With a POD this far back, well, under the Durazzo dynasty Naples had a fair chance at becoming a larger power and possibly unify Italy. The catch is that in this event, the capital is unlikely to remain at Naples.
However, I don't think that, with a suitable Late Medieval POD, some sort of dominance over much of modern Tunisia, Albania and Greece is out of question (of course this requires a severe curtailing of Ottoman power in its cradle, possible with the given time limits). Of course, if this is achieved by, say, 1500, is extremely unlikely to last to the present day.
 
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