Partnership: Non-colonial European Countries + Independent Non-European nations

In the 19th and early 20th century, Non-European countries tended to give more trust to advisors from less-colonial powers, for instance Germany and The United States. Examples I can think of include Morgan Shuster in Persia, and Sino-German Cooperation until 1941. (But both Germany and the United States turned colonial at one point in their history. )

Can official partnership/alliance be formed between one NON-COLONIAL European country and one INDEPENDENT non-European country, in which the former provide investment, military training and expertise, while the later provide market, raw material and commercial grants?

Cases I can think of for the former included Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Southern German States, Austro-Hungarian Empire, *independent Hungary, *Scotland, *A more sane Italy.

Cases I can think of for the later included Persia, Siam, *Luckier Vietnam, *China with a more competent dynasty, *surviving Indian states, *Surviving Burma.
 
TBH the Soviet Union was pretty much this. In many instances, they were VERY generous with aid to developing post-colonial nations.
 
Well, "non-colonial" does not mean "nice", or "non-expansionist", or anything that would imply being a Good Guy.

I deleted that cuz I knew I was being terribly biased. Soviet aids had a vital net benefit for some of the countries if they could resist communism, Kemalist Turkey and Sadat's Egypt were among the most prominent example.

However, this is a pre-1900 portal and I want to know whether it's possible at all European underdogs to couple up with any independent non-European country.
 
But yeah, the hard part I see here is that Most of the colonial nations of the world are also the most likely people to start something like this, I mean my initial idea here was French support for Muhammad Ali leading to a mostly co-equal relationship between the westernizing Egypt and France, but no matter when it happens in this timeline France owns coastal Algeria (and Egypt runs the Levant if you want to count that). Your best shot pre-1900 is probably Russia and Ethiopia, Russia doesn't have the power to directly take them over but it does have the resources to help them modernize their military. Also culturally Russia would find it an easy fit to support a fellow Orthodox empire against foreign aggression.
 
The problem here is that Russia IS (or was from a certen point of view) a colonialist European power. Just ask the nice Tatars in the Krim, the Kazaks, Armenians, Moldovans etc. All of this peoples land where or are colonized by russian setlers.

And acording to the author of this thread this facts disqualified the Russian state.
 
But yeah, the hard part I see here is that Most of the colonial nations of the world are also the most likely people to start something like this, I mean my initial idea here was French support for Muhammad Ali leading to a mostly co-equal relationship between the westernizing Egypt and France, but no matter when it happens in this timeline France owns coastal Algeria (and Egypt runs the Levant if you want to count that). Your best shot pre-1900 is probably Russia and Ethiopia, Russia doesn't have the power to directly take them over but it does have the resources to help them modernize their military. Also culturally Russia would find it an easy fit to support a fellow Orthodox empire against foreign aggression.

If the Russians are anything like other Europeans who find ancient heretical Christians about, they are going to be spending a lot of missionary effort bringing the Ethiopians to the "right" Orthodoxy. But then again, it's hard to match the zealotry of the Portuguese. Certainly Russia and Ethiopia do have some ties.
 
I deleted that cuz I knew I was being terribly biased. Soviet aids had a vital net benefit for some of the countries if they could resist communism, Kemalist Turkey and Sadat's Egypt were among the most prominent example.

However, this is a pre-1900 portal and I want to know whether it's possible at all European underdogs to couple up with any independent non-European country.

European underdogs are not going to be the kind of people with much to offer, sadly.
 
European underdogs are not going to be the kind of people with much to offer, sadly.

1) Sometimes the mere existence of more competitors makes the game a lot fairer.
Like what the Italian Enrico Mattei did to the oil market.

2) And sometimes, a European country could be an underdog simply because they were smaller, not that their industrial standards or education were subpar.

3) You do know that IOTL many important offices (custom officers, naval instructors, scientific institute managers, staff officers, et cetera) of countries like China, Persia, Siam and Egypt (or even Russia) were manned by Western Europeans. Make these posts manned more by the Swedes, the Swiss, Hungarians, or Bavarians... And make the employment process more formal.

It's not "much", but it might help tremendously.
 
Sweden did (and in a sense, along with other Nordic countries, still does) something similar, although they may be disqualified by their holding of St. Barts prior to 1878.
 
1) Sometimes the mere existence of more competitors makes the game a lot fairer.
Like what the Italian Enrico Mattei did to the oil market.

2) And sometimes, a European country could be an underdog simply because they were smaller, not that their industrial standards or education were subpar.

3) You do know that IOTL many important offices (custom officers, naval instructors, scientific institute managers, staff officers, et cetera) of countries like China, Persia, Siam and Egypt (or even Russia) were manned by Western Europeans. Make these posts manned more by the Swedes, the Swiss, Hungarians, or Bavarians... And make the employment process more formal.

It's not "much", but it might help tremendously.


1) The problem is that there are already competitors. Just not the ones you're looking at.

2) And countries are rarely smaller just because they decided they don't like territorial expansion.

3) You do know that they weren't manned by Western Europeans for no reason, right? What does Scotland have that enables it to compete with England here? Scotland picked as a place with a good educational tradition but still less impressive on the whole.
 
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