Challenge: These as eventual nation-states

[Thande]

One often finds maps from the 1790s and 1800s which describe cultural/linguistic rather than politically based regions.

Some of these coincide with nation states, while others (such as 'Germany') do not.

Your challenge is to have a map like this (from 1808) reflect the political situation in Europe of, say, 1860.

 

[The Federation]

For Sicily independent of Italy: Say the Byzantine Empire (under an emperor I forget) succeeded in conquering the Kingdom of Sicily, but Constantinople and all the Eastern provinces were still captured by the Turks in 1453, and the imperial family fled to Palermo. While the peninsular Italian provinces were eventually lost, the new Byzantium retained Sicily, where an influx of refugees created a Sicily more Greek than Italian.

 

[The Sicilian]

The butterflies of that would skew everything else on the map. Plus, it would take ASBish Deus Ex Machina to pull that kind of a stunt after the Arabs had solidified their hold over the island.