Early German/Italian Unifications

I recently read the novel 1632, which reminded me just how much of a mess the German (and, to be fair, Italian) lands were for most of their history; constantly squabbling amongst themselves, occasionally being manipulated and fought over by greater european powers of the time like France or Sweden or Spain or Austria, until they finally achieved Unification/Independence in the late 19th century, several centuries behind other nations like Spain, France, or the UK.

Now, I'm curious; what would history look like if Germany and/or Italy became unified nations around a similar time as France or others, strong enough to resist attempts by other powers to immediately chop them into little pieces again?

And, of course; how could this happen?

(Note that I'm not that knowledgeable about the details of medieval european history, so please don't scold me if I got things wrong, please...)

- Kelenas
 
Italy is a tricky one, not sure how you're going to get a pre-Industrial unification unless Napoleon ends up staying Italian and goes on to bring the Italian peninsula under one banner.

Germany is more doable, if Frederick Barbarossa is able to build a lasting central government and not die on Crusades that could be enough to get an early unification for Germany or at least lay the foundation for it. Another possibility would be Charles V assuming he can somehow delay or defuse the whole Martin Luther problem.
 

Eurofed

Banned
Italy is a tricky one, not sure how you're going to get a pre-Industrial unification unless Napoleon ends up staying Italian and goes on to bring the Italian peninsula under one banner.

Germany is more doable, if Frederick Barbarossa is able to build a lasting central government and not die on Crusades that could be enough to get an early unification for Germany or at least lay the foundation for it. Another possibility would be Charles V assuming he can somehow delay or defuse the whole Martin Luther problem.

Frederick Barbarossa and even more importantly his son Henry VI living longer is a very good PoD, but it would lead to the centralization of Germany and Italy together as a unitary multinational state, it would not be Germany alone.
 
Frederick Barbarossa and even more importantly his son Henry VI living longer is a very good PoD, but it would lead to the centralization of Germany and Italy together as a unitary multinational state, it would not be Germany alone.

That assumes the Germans can keep Italy in line, IIRC Barbarossa's biggest problems came from the Italians refusing to knuckle under. Maybe Henry VI faces the same continued problems from the Italians rising up, revolting, refusing to pay taxes and all that and is eventually forced by circumstance to focus on Germany instead maintaining maybe only a nominal claim over the Italian states.

A united Germany all by itself would be enough to get France to start mucking around in Italy too so that the wealthy states of Italy stay out of the now-stronger and not squabbling with itself German HRE. There is also the issue of the Pope NOT getting along with Barbarossa, that could give another center of resistance to the HRE's attempts to dominate Italy especially if the HRE keeps appointing antipopes.

If you have the Pope and France fighting against the Germans in Italy could that lead to an earlier Reformation or similar schism?
 
For Germany, there are plenty of occasions between 1000 and 1800 for central institutions of the Holy Roman Empire (needn't be the Emperor, might by the Imperial Diet, the Electors' Diet or something else) to absorb more power and constitute a state more similar to others.
Of course there are also reasons why this did not happen ...

Without discussing all possibilities, let me rephrase your question.

The self-definition of Italian or German nations was as developped as their French, Spanish, or English counterparts - in 1100, in 1600 and in 1800. However, French and English linguistic and cultural spheres happened to coincide roughly with the sphere of control of some power. (Of course, that common culture helped, but it was not a central ingredient as we would understand it today.) In Germany as well as Italy, this just didn't happen.
In other places, it did, but this development was by no means predetermined (keywords: Angevin Empire, separate kingdoms Castilia/Aragon). Also, it never was perfect (e.g. Flanders always defined itself as German/Dutch in cultural terms, but belonged to France (at least formally) for almost all of their history.)

Basically you are asking, "how could the coincidence of nation and state happen in all (Western) European regions?"
 
It strikes me that one of the best ways of doing this might be to avoid the formation of the HRE altogether, that is eliminating the Franks or at least preventing them from getting as big as they did (ie., eliminating Charlemagne). IIRC, there was a reasonably strong Lombard kingdom covering most of Italy, which could easily have evolved into a proper Italian state. I'm not sure what equivalent might have existed in Germany, though.
 

Eurofed

Banned
That assumes the Germans can keep Italy in line, IIRC Barbarossa's biggest problems came from the Italians refusing to knuckle under. Maybe Henry VI faces the same continued problems from the Italians rising up, revolting, refusing to pay taxes and all that and is eventually forced by circumstance to focus on Germany instead maintaining maybe only a nominal claim over the Italian states.

Possible but quite unlikely. During the tailend of his reign Barbarossa, and even more so, Henry VI during his own reign had managed to bring both German nobles and Italian city-states to heel, to the degree that Henry VI almost managed to reform the HRE hereditary. The untimely death of Henry, the power vacuum, interregnum, and civil war during Frederick II's minority, and the fact that Frederick II was left to be raised as a Sicilian king that happened to own the HRE crown rather than the other way around, undid almost all the good centralization work that late Barbarossa and Henry had done north and south of the Alps.

If Barbarossa had lived slightly longer and came back from the Crusades with the aura of the liberator of Jerusalem, Henry had lived much longer and kept building up progress at centralization of the HRE and getting the Erbkaisertum reform passed, educated Frederick to be a HRE Emperor that was also king of Sicily, and left his son to continue his work without having to start again from square two, the most likely outcome is that by the end of the 13th century, the HRE+Sicily monarchy would have enjoyed the same kind of centralization as England and France, and keeping on the same evolution path as the western monarchies. Of course, there is no guarantee that the German-Italian multinational state would have thrived and entrenched to the present. But the analogy examples of Britain and Spain indicate that it is certainly quite possible and even likely.

A united Germany all by itself would be enough to get France to start mucking around in Italy too so that the wealthy states of Italy stay out of the now-stronger and not squabbling with itself German HRE.

In the 13th and 14th centuries, France is still far too busy fighting the Angevin Empire and later Hundred Years War English bid for hegemony to afford making an ongoing major bid for Italy against a strong HRE. They could of course try it, much like they could do it on Flanders and Burgundy, but it is quite possible that with England on one side, and a strong HRE on the other, they would overreach and it would end up in the unification process of France being wrecked, and France and Germany-Italy switching their historical roles.

This may be the right opening to shamelessly pimp my "Successful HRE-Angevin-Iberia" TL scenario. :D

There is also the issue of the Pope NOT getting along with Barbarossa, that could give another center of resistance to the HRE's attempts to dominate Italy especially if the HRE keeps appointing antipopes.

If a strong HRE can bring the German nobles and Italian city-states to heel, it also in all likelihood has the power to quash the theocratic popes' bid for supremacy.
 
For Germany, there are plenty of occasions between 1000 and 1800 for central institutions of the Holy Roman Empire (needn't be the Emperor, might by the Imperial Diet, the Electors' Diet or something else) to absorb more power and constitute a state more similar to others.
Of course there are also reasons why this did not happen ...

Getting back on to the practicalities of how...

Of the institutions and people running around the most likely candidate, especially in the period we're talking about, would have been the Emperor. Unless you end up with a change to the Imperial Diet or Elector's Diet that gave them control over Imperial forces the guy with the most pointy objects and people to wave around said pointy objects is going to have the best shot at imposing their will during at least the Medieval periods for unification. After that you would need to avoid the Reformation completely if you don't have an Emperor doing it for either Diet to amass enough power to make the HRE more than just a name with a nice title, with the Reformation you have the effective division of Germany between the Catholic south and Protestant north which up until you hit the modern period with Bismark is going to trump any attempts at a nationalistic unification.

Italy is a bit more tricky especially since for extended periods the southern chunk of the peninsula was often a foreign possession with the central regions more or less under the sway of the Pope and the north cut up between a number of city-states. Even if you can unite the north you need someone to lose a lot of power before the southern half of the peninsula comes together or the Pope is weak enough that northern Italy can get away with invading the Papal States and conquering Rome. The best pre-industrial shot you really have would be preserving the Ostrogothic Kingdom in Italy or having the Byzantines manage to conquer all of it without turning everything into a total mess.
 
Napoleon had a good hunk of Northern Italy unified at one point, under the Kingdom of Italy. Of course that was a French puppet state and didn't include Naples.
 
Possible but quite unlikely. During the tailend of his reign Barbarossa, and even more so, Henry VI during his own reign had managed to bring both German nobles and Italian city-states to heel, to the degree that Henry VI almost managed to reform the HRE hereditary. The untimely death of Henry, the power vacuum, interregnum, and civil war during Frederick II's minority, and the fact that Frederick II was left to be raised as a Sicilian king that happened to own the HRE crown rather than the other way around, undid almost all the good centralization work that late Barbarossa and Henry had done north and south of the Alps.

If Barbarossa had lived slightly longer and came back from the Crusades with the aura of the liberator of Jerusalem, Henry had lived much longer and kept building up progress at centralization of the HRE and getting the Erbkaisertum reform passed, educated Frederick to be a HRE Emperor that was also king of Sicily, and left his son to continue his work without having to start again from square two, the most likely outcome is that by the end of the 13th century, the HRE+Sicily monarchy would have enjoyed the same kind of centralization as England and France, and keeping on the same evolution path as the western monarchies. Of course, there is no guarantee that the German-Italian multinational state would have thrived and entrenched to the present. But the analogy examples of Britain and Spain indicate that it is certainly quite possible and even likely.

Following that path yes it is likely but long-term survival is another matter. One major issue later Emperors would run into would be the divide between the two by geography, culture, and language and balancing the two. The Italian states, at least in the time of Barbarossa, were definitely the wealthier of the two chunks of the empire but they also were smaller and would have been less able to contribute substantial bodies of troops like the Germans did or be as agriculturally productive. It would take a pretty solid balancing act to keep the Empire in one piece to avoid being perceived as favoring one half too much at the expense of the other. The Angevin Empire, for example, was a pretty considerable power in its day and had a rock-solid administrative system but even with that it was still unable to keep it. It could definitely be possible for revolts or foreign invasion of Italy for the HRE to lose that territory if nothing else due to the fun of logistics across the Alps.



In the 13th and 14th centuries, France is still far too busy fighting the Angevin Empire and later Hundred Years War English bid for hegemony to afford making an ongoing major bid for Italy against a strong HRE. They could of course try it, much like they could do it on Flanders and Burgundy, but it is quite possible that with England on one side, and a strong HRE on the other, they would overreach and it would end up in the unification process of France being wrecked, and France and Germany-Italy switching their historical roles.

Not by the early 13th century they weren't, they had just beaten John Lackland under Philip Augustus and by the end of the Cathar Crusade were in control of all of France. By the mid or late 13th century France would be in a solid enough position that they could muck around with the Italian states or find other ways to cause trouble for the HRE instead of locking horns with England. While the English were a problem and constant thorn in France's side the threat of a strong, united HRE with the resources, population, and power given by holding Germany and Italy would have given the French enough incentive to make nice with England (which they did manage to do a few times during the 13th century) and find ways to upset the HRE's applecart before it gets too solid. There is also the question of cost for France vs. cost for Germany. If all the French are doing is loaning some money, selling weapons, and playing politics with the different local grandees (which wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility, France applied a similar policy with Scotland during Edward's invasion) that doesn't cost anywhere near as much as sending down armies to suppress rebellion. If the cost of keeping Italy exceeds the benefits the HRE might end up letting it go adrift and focus on its core in the north.


If a strong HRE can bring the German nobles and Italian city-states to heel, it also in all likelihood has the power to quash the theocratic popes' bid for supremacy.

Yes they definitely could but it would have considerable long-term consequences. If, for example, the Pope manages to escape one jump ahead of Imperial troops he could continue to cause trouble threatening excommunication, interdicts, and all those other nasty tricks the Papacy used for dealing with recalcitrant monarchs. The Pope might not have much political power but he does have a lot of spiritual and moral authority that can prove problematic to any ambitious European monarch. If you have a weaker Emperor this could end with capitulation, a stronger one and you could see the Great Schism happening early.
 

Eurofed

Banned
Following that path yes it is likely but long-term survival is another matter. One major issue later Emperors would run into would be the divide between the two by geography, culture, and language and balancing the two. The Italian states, at least in the time of Barbarossa, were definitely the wealthier of the two chunks of the empire but they also were smaller and would have been less able to contribute substantial bodies of troops like the Germans did or be as agriculturally productive. It would take a pretty solid balancing act to keep the Empire in one piece to avoid being perceived as favoring one half too much at the expense of the other. The Angevin Empire, for example, was a pretty considerable power in its day and had a rock-solid administrative system but even with that it was still unable to keep it. It could definitely be possible for revolts or foreign invasion of Italy for the HRE to lose that territory if nothing else due to the fun of logistics across the Alps.

The balancing act you speak of would definitely be a major requirement in order to ensure the long-term survival and thriving of the Empire. It would be far from unmanageable, however. As you point out, Germany and Italy would end up being complementary halves of the HRE to a degree, and they may end up being recognized as such by HRE elites at large as the state progresses toward centralization. I would only add that the manpower and agricultural productivity of Italy, once properly harnessed by the end of feudal and city-state Balkanization, would be considerable, too, and the economic strongholds of a successful Hohenstaufen HRE would be several, in Germany and Italy alike: the trade centers of Flanders, northern Germany, Franconia and Palatinate, Bohemia, northern Italy, and Sicily. I would also add that a successful HRE would easily rely on the revitalized Imperial Roman/Carolingian mystique for building its cultural and political cohesion, and Latin would be an handy lingua franca. Heck, a successful HRE might just as likely lead to the revitalization of Latin as a spoken common language in the modern Empire, as much as becoming a giant Switzerland bilingual state.

As for losing Italy to rebels or foreign invaders, that could of course happen, if the HRE keeps having the short end of the stick as military talent and luck go, or a dynastic crisis strikes at the wrong moment. Just don't overestimate Alps logistic issues. Having particularist political instability on both sides of the Alps at the same time was much more the bane of the HRE Emperors than the logistic issues of moving troops through them.

As it concerns the Angevin Empire, I would say that much like the Ottonian and Hohenstaufen HRE, most of its failure was related to dynastic troubles happening at the wrong time, i.e. getting a couple of really sucky rulers in a critical moment for its evolution, at the turn of the 12th-13th century, rather than to its multinational character crippling it in an age when such issues were relatively minor anyway and its successful entrenchment since 12th-13th century might easily have sent European nationalism on a wholly different development path.

Not by the early 13th century they weren't, they had just beaten John Lackland under Philip Augustus and by the end of the Cathar Crusade were in control of all of France. By the mid or late 13th century France would be in a solid enough position that they could muck around with the Italian states or find other ways to cause trouble for the HRE instead of locking horns with England. While the English were a problem and constant thorn in France's side the threat of a strong, united HRE with the resources, population, and power given by holding Germany and Italy would have given the French enough incentive to make nice with England (which they did manage to do a few times during the 13th century) and find ways to upset the HRE's applecart before it gets too solid. There is also the question of cost for France vs. cost for Germany. If all the French are doing is loaning some money, selling weapons, and playing politics with the different local grandees (which wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility, France applied a similar policy with Scotland during Edward's invasion) that doesn't cost anywhere near as much as sending down armies to suppress rebellion. If the cost of keeping Italy exceeds the benefits the HRE might end up letting it go adrift and focus on its core in the north.

Again, of course all of this is quite possible in a best case for France, worst case for HRE scenario. If we reverse the terms, it is just as possible that an increasingly stable and successful HRE in early 13th century may spare some of its resources (quite possibly through the low-cost means you quote) to screw with France during the confrontation with the Angevins or the Cathar Crusade, so that the Capetingian monarchy enters mid-late 13th century considerably weaker than OTL. It would not be too difficult for a strong HRE to cast influence so that Lackland defeats or scores a draw with Philip Augustus, or so that Aragon, not Capetingian France, ends up the main winner of the Cathar Crusade.

Whether or not that happens, if France proves increasingly hostile to the HRE in mid-late 13th century, the HRE may be solid enough already to resist it, and it may react by forming an alliance with England and/or Aragon against France, an enemy coalition that France may find itself hard-pressed to counter, to the point of suffering crippling and irreversible damage in a Hundred Years War equivalent. A possible scenario that might develop from this could be a HRE-England-Aragon alliance facing a France-Castille-Scotland one.

Last but not least, let's not just fixate too much on Italy as the flashpoint of hostility between France and the successful HRE. Flanders, Burgundy, Italy, or any combo thereof, could be just as plausible flashpoints.

Yes they definitely could but it would have considerable long-term consequences. If, for example, the Pope manages to escape one jump ahead of Imperial troops he could continue to cause trouble threatening excommunication, interdicts, and all those other nasty tricks the Papacy used for dealing with recalcitrant monarchs. The Pope might not have much political power but he does have a lot of spiritual and moral authority that can prove problematic to any ambitious European monarch. If you have a weaker Emperor this could end with capitulation, a stronger one and you could see the Great Schism happening early.

The spiritual and moral authority of the Pope would carry real teeth against the Emperor only as long as it can rely on particularist opposition to Imperial rule in Germany and Italy being strong and successful. If the Emperor has sufficient backing of the German-Italian elites, but an hostile Pope escapes capture and forcible removal, he could and would easily counter excommunication and interdicts by raising up an Antipope, and one with the backing of the HRE at large would carry so much authority and influence over the Church that a true major schism would indeed emerge, if the Pope may get some serious support by some other major European monarchies in turn. So indeed with a strong HRE an early Great Schism is a very likely possiblity during the power struggles with the Popes.

Of course, the religious feud would become even more entwined with the secular power rivalry between the major European monarchies over time. In such a TL, unless either the HRE bloc or the French bloc win a quick and decisive victory in their struggle, I foresee the entrenchment of the *Great Schism and its ultimate outcome in the effective destruction of the Papacy and the Church evolving in a much more decentralized structure and politically cowed attitude, with most ordinary authority in religious issues being in the hand of the various national episcopal councils (under the watchful oversight of the local monarchs of course) and occasional ecumenic councils being the ultimate authority over the Church at large. The Church would thus evolve on a path much resembling the Orthodox and/or the Anglicans. Quite likely, this would butterfly away the Reform and/or reshape it to resemble the Anglican model at large, the various kings and emperors pushing religious reform to entrench even more secular supremacy and decentralization on national churches. It could also lead to an healing of the Eastern Schism, since Papal authority always was the main cause of the Latin-Greek split and stumbling block to a reconciliation.
 
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