Circassia wasn't fully under Russian control and British and the Ottomans were very interested in keeping Circassia independent, also neighbouring Principality of Abhazia accepted Ottoman suzerainty and troops during the Crimean war too, since the allied navies controlled the Black Sea they could easily bypass Georgia which was more firmly under Russian control.
Proposals and War Aims That Didn't Happen Map Thread
- Thread starter Beedok
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Thats true, but keep its independence, while being surrounded by Russia from three sides, with no land connection with anyone else seem as quite hard task to me...
But you are right about Black sea. Most support would go this way anyway rather than by land (Caucasus...), I think. However, I would still expect attempt for some sort of "land corridor" to Ottoman territories...
yes they would love to have some land connection I'm sure, i think that's why the wanted to control Abkhazia too, which isn't shown on the map I think, but just to give some context about the importance of the sea routes in 19th century, even in 1914 only 4 percent of the foreign trade of ottoman empire was conducted on land routes and it was still cheaper to buy the wheat for istanbul from france or even america then to try to transfer it from anatolia by land, trade and armies always moved on sea routes because there were hardly any proper roads especially in eastern anatolia, those were very different times
Henry Tandey - Wikipedia
Yeah, but it's not particularly good sea access... I'd imagine if Transvaal somehow managed to maintain its independence, most sea trade would go through the Portuguese at Lourenzo Marques...
Not particularly good sea access is always better than no sea access.
Today, I learned about this:
Francois Mitterrand and his "Great European Design".
Francois Mitterrand and his "Great European Design".
Herad for first time about this...
(but as far as I know, saxony elector/king wasn´t that eager about new territories, given by France at that time - no source for it, possibly read it on wikipedia or some discussion there...)
Apparently this was Napoleon's plans to partition Prussia in 1807, albeit this deleted user never provided a source
Edit: I found two sources speaking of this proposal: Cambridge Modern History, pages 306-307 and The Duchy of Warsaw, 1807-1815: A Napoleonic Outpost in Central Europe, page 4. The latter also mentions a proposal by Prince Antoni Radziwiłł (Yes, same family as Bogusław, the guy that worked with the Swedes to attempt a partition of Poland-Lithuania in 1656) saying that Fredrick William III would become king of Poland in exchange for Polish volunteers being included in the Prussian Army.
Edit: I found two sources speaking of this proposal: Cambridge Modern History, pages 306-307 and The Duchy of Warsaw, 1807-1815: A Napoleonic Outpost in Central Europe, page 4. The latter also mentions a proposal by Prince Antoni Radziwiłł (Yes, same family as Bogusław, the guy that worked with the Swedes to attempt a partition of Poland-Lithuania in 1656) saying that Fredrick William III would become king of Poland in exchange for Polish volunteers being included in the Prussian Army.
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To quickly describe it as I understand it:
- The Inner Six (Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, West Germany), would form a politically integrated federalist European Union with a common currency, social policies, and unified market. This EU would be a future superpower to rival the United States in the Western Bloc, in a similar manner as China for the Soviet Union.
- The rest of Europe would form part of the European Confederation as a common market with individual national currencies, not integrated with the European Union but cooperating on trade.
- The Soviet Union would form a security partner with the European Union in order to ensure stability within Europe.
- A free trade area created that encompassed both Europe (including the reformed Soviet Union) and Africa, with France acting as a middle-man for West European investment in Africa, funded by West Germany, and providing materiel, training, and logistical support for an inter-African security force. Initially focusing on the countries of former French West and Central Africa, where the currencies were pegged to the French Franc and would later be pegged to the Euro.