The most optimal borders for Europe

Vitalis

Vitalis

Excluding the ethnicities from the discussion, what would the ideal borders for various European countries be? What interests me is having most of Europe as developed as it's possible. What would the optimal borders be? What about natural resources? How much of the land would they need to make the most use of it?

I'm thinking about the small states in the Balkans in particular here. Obviously Yugoslavia had the potential to truly be at least a regional power, and the various small states we have here will never rise to such importance.

Then again, which states are too large to be rich and developed? For example, is modern Russia too big? Say, if it was divided into smaller states, would they have the better chance to develop on the OTL Western European level?
 
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Atterdag

Atterdag

Most access to natural resources? Pan-european union.

Most wealth per square mile? Find the richest city and make it independent.
 

kuzux

I think I've previously written that somewhere else but, basically, Ottomans (as a constitutional monarchy) controlling Balkans up to something like their 1815 boundaries, but nothing else (nothing outside Europe). Think a mega-Yugoslavia but with even more nationalities without anybody really dominating (What if the Serbian/Croatian duality of Yugoslavia was replaced by Serbian/Croatian/Turkish/Greek/Albanian/Bulgarian/Romanian thing).
 

Jfoul

Atterdag said:
Most wealth per square mile? Find the richest city and make it independent.
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Large cities can concentrate huge wealth, but they can hardly sustain themselves in a vacuum, so them being independent would still require a surrounding area to accommodate their demand of resources, and the bigger the city, the larger the area.

Megalopoli-centric frontiers would be quite interesting.
 

BellaGerant

Uebeltank said:
A bunch of large-ish countries that aren't large enough to have any particular one dominate the rest.
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So OTL Europe until 1789?

Mind, having each of the European Powers be just large enough to balance each other out tended to lead to at least one major war every decade or so (War of the Spanish Succession, the Great Northern War, the War of the Polish Succession, the War of the Austrian Succession, 7 Year's War, etc. just from the early 18th century).

A union of states able to integrate their economies together, like with the Austro-Hungarian Empire with the agricultural and ore-rich east feeding the industrialised west which could sell manufactured goods to a larger market as a whole with the ease of a customs union, tends to have more robust industries than if each unit is wholly independent, it seems, just looking at Austria before and after WWI (losing the agriculture, mining, and markets of the rest of the Habsburg Empire did no favours for Austrian industry, once one of the largest in the world). Plus, it's less likely for union members to go to war quite as frequently as neighbors with possible border disputes.
 

Chungus Maximus

Banned
Based on the 1933 borders, with these adjustments

* Northern Ireland to Ireland, with some level of autonomy
* Belgium split on linguistic lines and annexed to the respective nations.
* Luxembourg, A-L, Danzig, Memel, Sudetenland, Austria, South Tyrol to Germany.
* Savoy, Corsica, and Nice to Italy
* Dunkirk to Holland
* Cyprus and Thrace to Greece

Essentially the principle of borders following ethnic lines, to ensure justice for all people’s.
 
Vitalis

Vitalis

Chungus Maximus said:
Essentially the principle of borders following ethnic lines, to ensure justice for all people’s.
Click to expand...

I had something different in mind. Without assuming any ethnic division. How to divide Europe in such a way, that the states, medium sized, I assume, would guarantee the most prosperous continent possible. Hell, we could set our POD before the spread of the Indo-Europeans, for all I care. I just don't see how giving Dunkirk to "Holland" makes for the best divide of land and resources.

That's why ethnicities shouldn't be an issue in this thought experiment. We should be more concerned about the population density, the borders, which can encompass more than just the ethnic lines. I'm asking something like: "Would a country encompassing the modern day France and Germany have a chance to be more developed than the one stretching through the entirety of the Balkan peninsula?"

So it's not about having lots of Monaco-like states, either, although having of them would of course guarantee the prosperity of the micro-state. But I'm looking rather for a most prosperous Europe possible, with as few countries as possible, with the borders as big as it's possible, but not too large, too. Essentially, does the country having the borders of modern day Russia, or even something like that, have a chance to be among the richest countries in the world? Is it possible? Or would it be better to have most of Europe divided into countries of the size of Belgium? Would they be sustainable?
 
AronBaron

AronBaron

Chungus Maximus said:
Based on the 1933 borders, with these adjustments

* Northern Ireland to Ireland, with some level of autonomy
* Belgium split on linguistic lines and annexed to the respective nations.
* Luxembourg, A-L, Danzig, Memel, Sudetenland, Austria, South Tyrol to Germany.
* Savoy, Corsica, and Nice to Italy
* Dunkirk to Holland
* Cyprus and Thrace to Greece

Essentially the principle of borders following ethnic lines, to ensure justice for all people’s.
Click to expand...
*Ireland to Northen Ireland/Britain
 

Arkenfolm

The Roman Empire never stops expanding and conquers all Europe and in later times is overthrown by the people and the Roman Republic reborn.
 
RMcD94

RMcD94

No states should share watersheds.

In any age with river transportation and especially after the concept of polluting only a single entity should be in charge of a river.

The same obviously applies to oceans but sadly that's only possible with a owg

Any perfect borders have to satisfy this
 

Dan Handsome

Chungus Maximus said:
Based on the 1933 borders, with these adjustments

* Northern Ireland to Ireland, with some level of autonomy
* Belgium split on linguistic lines and annexed to the respective nations.
* Luxembourg, A-L, Danzig, Memel, Sudetenland, Austria, South Tyrol to Germany.
* Savoy, Corsica, and Nice to Italy
* Dunkirk to Holland
* Cyprus and Thrace to Greece

Essentially the principle of borders following ethnic lines, to ensure justice for all people’s.
Click to expand...
France disagrees.
 
Koprulu Mustafa Pasha

Koprulu Mustafa Pasha

Gone Fishin'
- Either an surviving Ottoman State South of the Danube-Sava Rivers or a United Yugoslavia from Austria to the Black Sea including Albania as well as Western Thrace

- Moldova as a part of Romania

- Belgium divided

- Former East Prussia Independent

- Austria a part of Germany

- Carpath Ukraine part of Slovakia or Hungary

- Tatar Crimea
 
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