I was wondering, what would the world be like if Napoleon III had not declared war on the united states when they tried to force france out of mexico, france lost cause they thought we would fold easy so soon after the civil war. would the US have such a close realtionship with germany? would the US still gain control over Indochina?
EDIT:the title is suppose to read "DBWI no franco-american war over MEXICO"
If France had not had such a wake-up call against USA, which caused it to see the true state of it's armies, it may not have modernised them. It may stop with the half-assed Niel Reform, instead of going for full bore modernisation and automatic weapons.
In that case, would France be able to trash Prussia and it's armies so thouroughly in the *'war of Bismarcks mistake', or would it end in a bloody stalemate? In the second case, France wouldn't have integrated the Rhine and Rhur areas which made it such an industrial powerhouse in the first half of the XXth century. Also such a bloody stalemate is likely to bring red revolution to France, so instead of a liberal empire, we'd likely see a Hungarian style red dictatorship.
Then, there's the question of Germany. If, instead of being limited to the North of the old HRE and Prussia, it would have included the Ruhr and Rhinelands, would Bavaria still be independent? and if not, who would stop the red tide at the gate of Vienna? Who would come to help the austrians attacked by the hungarian revolutionaries? Certainly not Germany, as the Junkers were only too happy to see their old rivals brought down.