Mini State Big State

This may seem really dumb but bear with me. In Ye Old European History there are often states around which the larger state evolves from. Now I know these examples are all different, but they are generally formed due to the will and ambition of the mini states: Castile to Spain, England to Great Britain, Savoy/Piedmont-Sardinia to Italy, Prussia to Germany, Muscovy to Russia. I was wondering if a similar thing happened to countries like France, Sweden, Portugal etc. I have found nothing a la the previous examples but I'm just wondering if I'm missing something.

Please excuse me if this sounds stupid, has been asked before, and for the lack of eloquence.
 
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This may seem really dumb but bear with me. In Ye Old European History there are often states around which the larger state evolves from. Now I know these examples are all different, but they are generally formed due to the will and ambition of the mini states: Castile to Spain, England to Great Britain, Savoy to Italy, Prussia to Germany, Muscovy to Russia. I was wondering if a similar thing happened to countries like France, Sweden, Portugal etc. I have found nothing a la the previous examples but I'm just wondering if I'm missing something.

Please excuse me if this sounds stupid, has been asked before, and for the lack of eloquence.

I'm not sure what you mean by "countries like France, Sweden, Portugal, etc." But, I know that, in the early history of Scandinavia, most of the region was divided among a large number of petty kingdoms that were gradually consolidated into the three Scandinavian kingdoms we know very well.

The petty kingdoms of Svealand and Geatland are traditionally recognized as the forerunners of modern Sweden, with the former lending its name to the modern nation, presumably by conquering the latter. It's a little vague how it all happened, though.

I don't know much about France. And, although I don't know for sure, I think Portugal was one of several smaller kingdoms in Iberia, and the only one that wasn't assimilated into what we now know as Spain. Of course, I could be wrong about this.
 
I'm not sure what you mean by "countries like France, Sweden, Portugal, etc." But, I know that, in the early history of Scandinavia, most of the region was divided among a large number of petty kingdoms that were gradually consolidated into the three Scandinavian kingdoms we know very well.

The petty kingdoms of Svealand and Geatland are traditionally recognized as the forerunners of modern Sweden, with the former lending its name to the modern nation, presumably by conquering the latter. It's a little vague how it all happened, though.

I don't know much about France. And, although I don't know for sure, I think Portugal was one of several smaller kingdoms in Iberia, and the only one that wasn't assimilated into what we now know as Spain. Of course, I could be wrong about this.

Actually Portugal was originally a crusader Kingdom based around the city of Porto, thus the name. It slowly conquered southwards and stretched to its modern borders.
 
I'm not sure what you mean by "countries like France, Sweden, Portugal, etc." But, I know that, in the early history of Scandinavia, most of the region was divided among a large number of petty kingdoms that were gradually consolidated into the three Scandinavian kingdoms we know very well.

The petty kingdoms of Svealand and Geatland are traditionally recognized as the forerunners of modern Sweden, with the former lending its name to the modern nation, presumably by conquering the latter. It's a little vague how it all happened, though.

I don't know much about France. And, although I don't know for sure, I think Portugal was one of several smaller kingdoms in Iberia, and the only one that wasn't assimilated into what we now know as Spain. Of course, I could be wrong about this.

I was unaware about Svealand, thank you for that.

When I say countries like France, Sweden, Portugal etc. I mean countries who are usually not mentioned as having a forerunner unifying state.

And I guess Portugal does not fit the bill then, thank you Ain.
 
I was unaware about Svealand, thank you for that.

When I say countries like France, Sweden, Portugal etc. I mean countries who are usually not mentioned as having a forerunner unifying state.

And I guess Portugal does not fit the bill then, thank you Ain.

Portugal started off as the much smaller duchy of porto actually so it also fits the bill in a lot of ways. France is fairly unique in that it started that way but slowly centralized into being one state rather than a group of de-facto independent duchies and counties.
 
It seems like France and the HRE started out in the same boat, only one grew loser while the other grew tighter.
 
It seems like France and the HRE started out in the same boat, only one grew loser while the other grew tighter.

But France never had a state that existed before it that unified the region to become France. Germany was only unified after the HRE was dissolved.



Romania (But that was not founded by Wallachia or Moldavia conquering the other) and Turkey work. Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Finland, Lithuania, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Hungary, Austria, and Belarus are opposites of this.
 
But France never had a state that existed before it that unified the region to become France. Germany was only unified after the HRE was dissolved.

I was talking about how the HRE went from a state to dozens of states, while in France the feudal lords seemed to be slowly made to submit, rather than going rogue.
 
I was talking about how the HRE went from a state to dozens of states, while in France the feudal lords seemed to be slowly made to submit, rather than going rogue.

Pretty much. The Capets gradually established a true hereditary monarchy whilst the HRE wasn't.
 
I'm glad to see y'all are getting what I'm saying here. We can expand this to the rest of the globe if applicable.

Also, do you think that states that were unified by a smaller state have different traits then another country that was not unified but centralized and aggrandized. For example, would Italy and Germany having been unified by a forerunner state have similar traits than their neighbor France. Or Spain and Great Britain and so on, any grouping or pairs or general similarities.
 
Let's see:

Norway was unified by Harald Fairhair from the petty kingdom of Vestfold.

Denmark was brought together by Gorm the Old, who seems to have originated in either a petty kingdom around the island of Zealand or the town of Jelling on Jutland.

Sweden came from Svearland, of course.

England from Wessex.

Scotland from Dalriada (and to a lesser extent, Pictavia).

Japan from Yamato.
 
Ahh, I am not well-versed with Swiss history, I'll take your word on that one.

And I guess it went Wessex to England to Great Britain
 
But France never had a state that existed before it that unified the region to become France. Germany was only unified after the HRE was dissolved.

Actually the Holy Roman Empire had similar levels of statehood to France, but the Investiture Controversy screwed its central authority over. Both had the same origins in Charlemagne's empire, evolving from East Francia and West Francia respectively.

If you want to trace back Charlemagne's Empire to a small state, the original Kingdom of the Franks would do it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Politically_divided_Gaul,_481.jpg
 
Ahh we be getting technical up in this biCENSORED.

I am not capable of offering a good definition of what I am looking for here, only examples. Muscovy to Russia definitely works.
 
I think every state that currently exists can be put into one of these categories:
1) Small state / entity conquers its neighbours and grows into its current state. Sometimes this happened so far back, that it's not much in the cultural consciousness of the people (e.g. Denmark, Sweden, England re Wessex), sometimes it's not so long ago and there are regions that till harken back to their old independence (the U.K. based on England, with Scotland, Ireland and Wales still feeling -ahem- "differently" about the Union; Russia & Muscovy; Modern Germany and Prussia; Italy and Sardinia-Piedmont; Spain & Castilia).
2) Part of a pre-existing state gains independence; this part may have been a sovereign state before (e.g. the Baltic Republics) or simply have gained a separate identity over time (e.g. Belarus) or they may be administrative constructs of the former imperial power (e.g. most African countries). Such countries often define themselves in relation to the country to which they belonged before, especially if the struggle for independence was long and bloody and happened relatively recently.

France is a case of 2) - like the HRE, it's a successor state to the Kingdom of the Franks (and BTW, the French start counting their kings from Clovis, and count Charlemagne as one of the French kings - they see themselves as the successor of the Frankish kingdom); in the early Middle Ages, there was a period when the power of the French kings didn't reach far beyond Paris, and later they consolidated their kingdom from that point - which is similar to the way the Svear united Sweden or the Piasts united Poland, only the areas united already owed allegiance to the king of France before they were united politically.
 
If one wanted to trace France all the way back to the Merovingian dynasty, one could argue that its earliest predecessor is whatever earlier Germanic tribe ended up dominating during the amalgamation of the Salian Franks. This is possibly the Sicambri.
 
For Ethiopia, we could look back to Aksum, which probably existed as a city-state before expanding to become the powerful Aksumite kingdom that was contemporary with Rome. We could also look at D'mt, the first polity known to have emerged as a power around Ethiopia and Eritrea. D'mt collapsed and fell into obscurity, but may have continued to existed as a small remnant state centered around its capital of Yeha until the formation of the Aksumite empire.

Thailand can be traced back to either Sukhothai or Lavo.
 
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