Franco-italian union?

Hi y'all,

An idea popped into my head. French and Italian culture are quite similar with huge ties and inter influences. Their histories have also been quite close with France owning big chunks of what is now Italy and Piemont/Savoy/Nice being a big part of what is now France.

So, is there any chance of both countries becoming one after 1820 (so no lasting Napoleonic empire)?

I would imagine it might be somehow possible during the unification phase to have a Kingdom of Italy under French protection, not sure if other powers would allow it though

Thoughts?
 
Hi y'all,

An idea popped into my head. French and Italian culture are quite similar with huge ties and inter influences. Their histories have also been quite close with France owning big chunks of what is now Italy and Piemont/Savoy/Nice being a big part of what is now France.

So, is there any chance of both countries becoming one after 1820 (so no lasting Napoleonic empire)?

I would imagine it might be somehow possible during the unification phase to have a Kingdom of Italy under French protection, not sure if other powers would allow it though

Thoughts?

Maybe Napoleon III. pushes for a united Italy some time after Solferino ? Would a Piemont king be requiered to serve as a King of Italy ? Maybe a Federation of Italy and France emerges, with the French Emperor as protector of the Kingdom of Italy but with a Italian King as co-monarch ? Maybe some sort of Romanic-Catholic brotherhood with romantic strains back to the Roman Empire ? Could we get the pope into the boat, too ? Maybe the deeply Catholic Napoleon presents himself as the protector of Catholicism and ensures, that the Pope can maintain most of his Pippinic presents ( it would be difficult question, whether the pope is allowed to keep territory in Italy. But maybe it could be a three-way monarchy: The French Emperor-The Pope-The King of Italy in one "Holy Federation". Well, Prussia would be very furious
 
The PoD would have to be either with Napoleon or his heirs, or an extremely early one with Charlemagne. I would think, at least.
 
Xgentis said:
There are similarities but not to the point of being united.
Oh I'm aware of that don't worry. I don't think it's the same thing, just that it's similar enough to be united and eventually develop a common identity.
There was a huge italian immigration in France and Algeria, in the 60's there were many coproduction for singers (Dalida...) and movies (Don Camillo) and knowing the two cultures quite well, there are no fundamental difference like with Germany or England which clearly belong to another cultural sphere.

CtrlAltHistory said:
The PoD would have to be either with Napoleon or his heirs, or an extremely early one with Charlemagne. I would think, at least.
There are quite a few PoD, with François Ier for example, Napoleon of course... The fact that Italy wasn't united until late XIXth century makes it ripe for potential conquest. But yeah, it would still have to happen before OTL unification
 
The biggest problem is that fact that both 'France' and 'Italy' are (by definition) nation-states.

A binational nation-state would be very difficult.

A French Empire/Kingdom that included northern Italy, where those northern dialects were considered to be simply variants of Occitan (Provençal) would be theoretically possible. It would help if said polity were based in the south (Avignon, Marseilles, Arles, say), rather than Paris.

Or, you could get the Neustria to swallow Lotharingia, and have a 'France' that extended down to Rome (or further).

But once you get 'France' self-identifying as a nation-state, as the land of the people who speak 'French', it's going to be really tough, so you need an early PoD. IMO,
 
Hang on, wasn't there a point in history where France claimed Sicily/southern Italy? Maybe make that happen, and France decides to conquer the rest for contiguous territory. If that's too early, I reckon Nappy III is the best bet. I wonder if you could do it so Nappy is still 'Emperor', but smaller kings exist under him like in the Second Reich.
 
The biggest problem is that fact that both 'France' and 'Italy' are (by definition) nation-states.

A binational nation-state would be very difficult.

The borders of the nations were ill-defined at the time (is the Left Bank a part of France? What about Luxembourg, Liège, Saarland?), as were the linguistic borders (France = the land of the French-speaking... and Breton, and Occitan, and some Basque, and Alsacian, and some Flemish...). On the Italian side, this diversity is even worse, between the natural border on the Alps which happens to include a few hundred thousand German and Slovenian speakers (and a few French), and of course the linguistic mess. Northern Italian was closer to Provencal than to Roman italian (this is one of the reasons of massive North Italian emigration to France, while Southern italians went to the US).

While I agree that Italy would probably be too big to bite and XIXth century is too late, there were some proposals for a «Latin Union» by Provencal romanticists. Think of the union of England and Scotland one century earlier...
 
Circonflexe said:
The borders of the nations were ill-defined at the time (is the Left Bank a part of France? What about Luxembourg, Liège, Saarland?), as were the linguistic borders (France = the land of the French-speaking... and Breton, and Occitan, and some Basque, and Alsacian, and some Flemish...). On the Italian side, this diversity is even worse, between the natural border on the Alps which happens to include a few hundred thousand German and Slovenian speakers (and a few French), and of course the linguistic mess. Northern Italian was closer to Provencal than to Roman italian (this is one of the reasons of massive North Italian emigration to France, while Southern italians went to the US).

While I agree that Italy would probably be too big to bite and XIXth century is too late, there were some proposals for a «Latin Union» by Provencal romanticists. Think of the union of England and Scotland one century earlier...
Plus the intellectual framework exists for such a (at least partial) union. If you check "What is a nation?" by Ernest Renan, he states that a nation was constituted of a past experience and culture rather than geographical lines or purely linguistic criterias.

Italy and France have a fairly linked history (at least the Northern regions of Italy). France also has an history in the late XIXth century of smoothing out differences and integrating different cultures under the French umbrella (Bretons, basques, corses...).
What could happen is maybe the North of Italy joins France as a "Super protectorate", a state whose existence is guaranteed by France.
This is advantageous for France as this encircles Prussia. This is also advantageous for Italy as French colonies can soak up Italy's excess population (like it did marginally in Maghreb). The south would maybe join after or limp along as a backward state.

Now, this probably wouldn't include Venise which would stay under Austrian control as France probably wouldn't want war with them
 
Hang on, wasn't there a point in history where France claimed Sicily/southern Italy? Maybe make that happen, and France decides to conquer the rest for contiguous territory. If that's too early, I reckon Nappy III is the best bet. I wonder if you could do it so Nappy is still 'Emperor', but smaller kings exist under him like in the Second Reich.

Thats an interesting thought. I suggested something similiar above in this thread. A pan-Romanic Catholic dual-monarchy with the Pope as the spiritual leader. Basically a triple-Monarchy. I like this, also in an age of growing nationalism it s questionable, but monarchs still are the major players.
 
Weirder unions have happened, such as Poland-Lithuania, Hungary-Croatia, and Austria-Hungary. The politics of European marriage alliances often makes for strange bedfellows:cool:.
 
Anything workable, IMHO, has to begin much, much earlier than 1820. It must at least begin either before the actual "French" and "Italian" identities come into existence, or at the time when dynastic unions were a fad (that is not in 1820, unless you also change the whole history of the world).
 
Anything workable, IMHO, has to begin much, much earlier than 1820. It must at least begin either before the actual "French" and "Italian" identities come into existence, or at the time when dynastic unions were a fad (that is not in 1820, unless you also change the whole history of the world).

Then we have to go back to the day the Frankish Empire split. We have the Italian Peninsula never become a part of the HRE later on. It has to become part of the Western Frankish Empire. Maybe we have to rewrite Pippin´s gift to the Pope in order to secure Middle Italy + Rome for the secular authorities and reduce the Pope to a spiritual leader without massive territory .
 
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Then we have to go back to the day the Frankish Empire split. We have the Italian Peninsula never become a part of the HRE later on. It has to become part of the Western Frankish Empire. Maybe we have to rewrite Pippin´s gift to the Pope in order to secure Middle Italy + Rome for the secular authorities and reduce the Pope to a spiritual leader without massive territory .

Yes. Something like that.
 
Anything workable, IMHO, has to begin much, much earlier than 1820. It must at least begin either before the actual "French" and "Italian" identities come into existence, or at the time when dynastic unions were a fad (that is not in 1820, unless you also change the whole history of the world).

I suggest one century earlier, where the French lose the Spanish succession war in Spain, but win it in Italy and acquire Piedmont (POD could be: prinz Eugen of Savoy does not have a row with Louis XIV and remains on the French payroll). I could see a French Piedmont-Lombardia-Tuscania. (Venetia is too threateningly close to Austria, but I think Lombardia is doable; after all, the French did tolerate the presence of an Austrian-aligned kingdom of Savoy on their border). Earlier, they could also do slightly better in the Italian wars of the XVth-XVIth century (preventing the gendarmes from charging into the field of fire of the artillery at Pavia?).

Anyway, if the Bourbons do not inherit the Spanish colonies, then the English will not be so rabidly opposed to the unification of the thrones. If one of the Bourbon lines fails (as happened IOTL in 1831, but butterflies of course!) then a personal union is possible (after all, it happened in the same time frame between Austria and Hungary, with a much more explosive mix of different cultures; meanwhile, at the beginning of XVIIth century, French and Italian were almost mutually intelligible - Italian things being the latest fashion in Paris!).
 
I suggest one century earlier, where the French lose the Spanish succession war in Spain, but win it in Italy and acquire Piedmont (POD could be: prinz Eugen of Savoy does not have a row with Louis XIV and remains on the French payroll). I could see a French Piedmont-Lombardia-Tuscania...

I'm no expert of that time, but that sounds way more doable than anything in the 1830s.
 
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