WI French capital isn't Paris
- Thread starter Jimbo808
- Start date
It was never discussed as far as I'm aware, but building a new capital somewhere away from the decadence of Paris would be very on-brand for the Revolutionaries. It might stick afterwards, or be readopted by future republics.
London is the UK's political capital, economic capital, media capital, financial capital, fashion capital and tourism capital.
Until the Third Republic at least, Paris was the powerbase of French republicanism though.
Bourges is a solid contestant if it doesn't burn in the Magdeleine fire: the city never really recovered. It's as central as Clermont but more accessible and has been a part of the Royal domain for a very long time
Well, it depends on who is in charge. The Jacobin aisle actually thrived on parisian support (which allowed them to gain power in the first place since the visible support of the Parisian population allowed them to gain votes from the Marsh, the centrists). The Feuillants might try to get the King and the politics out of Paris but would it work? Uuuuuh risky move. That's what caused the King to lose all of his popularity: he wanted to rule from a place a bit further from the riots (in order to use his divine right to blah blah blah so it's not just him feeling threatened it's also him feeling entitled to his veto).
In fact, I would go as far to say that it is rarer for a country to have separate economic and political capitals.
If we look at rest of (just) Europe I'd say we have a pretty good case for the following economic and political capitals being one and the same:
Portugal - Lisbon
Denmark - Copenhagen
Norway - Oslo
Sweden - Stockholm
Finland - Helsiniki
Austria - Vienna
Poland - Warsaw
Czach Republic - Prague
To name just a few....
I must be honest, I got this observation from a professor. I didn't check all over the world to see if the majority of countries have a common economic and political capital or not.
But I can also cite examples that go in my direction:
Madrid-Barcelona for Spain
Berlin-Frankfurt for Germany
Rome-Milan for Italy
Washington-New York for the United States
New Delhi-Bombay for India
etc...
I think I could find other cases if I looked for them, but the examples I gave show that having different capitals for economic and political matters is not rare either.
Does it represent the majority of the countries in the world, I thought so but finally I have doubts.
In my first message I even said that France was probably not the only country to have a common economic and political capital.
Yes. I wasn't trying to create a competition. Indeed, there are other political-economic examples; Ottawa -Toronto in Canada and Canberra-Sydney/Melbourne in Australia.
The wider point I was making was against talking in absolutes. What can seem strange to us (or commonplace) can become vica versa when compared to the world stage.
That's all very interesting Harry but do you have an opinion about the actual question of this thread?
For me, my vote is Lyon.
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I think Lyon, Toulouse, or Marseille could have been chosen in a world where the French crown became the HRE emperor's instead of the Germans under Otto. That or in a world that had the French kings keep more control over the Iberian territories as they pushed back the Umayyads.
That could have been an interesting world where France is less Paris/Channel based and more Mediterranean based and conquered the Italian and Iberian peninsulas to have a united Romance nation.
That could have been an interesting world where France is less Paris/Channel based and more Mediterranean based and conquered the Italian and Iberian peninsulas to have a united Romance nation.
Interestingly, when I did a search for Alternate capital of France the first site it directed me to was here: https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/alternate-french-capital.104893/page-2That's all very interesting Harry but do you have an opinion about the actual question of this thread?
And to actually answer the question; if the idea is to move the capital out of Paris (for similar reasons to Ottawa/Canberra/Brasilia/Wellington) then I would probably suggest Bourges - it is central enough without being too remote, fairly small without being needing a huge amount of new infrastructure and very picturesque (which always helps)
Although several of these are a rather weak counter-example.
Berlin, New Dehli and Rome became their country's capital rather late (and New Dehli was more or less founded for that very purpose), and Berlin was effectively economically strangled for almost half a century due to being split and half of it being a capitalist enclave surrounded by a socialist country which made a conscious effort to completely isolate it from its surroundings, so you can't really blame it for not having as much of an economic pull as other capitals have.
Admittedly Washington couldn't become the capital of the United States much earlier than it did but it is at least to some degree also an example of a city becoming a nation's capital somewhat late, so it might be a borderline case.
So there are indeed quite a number of examples where the capital is not an economic center of the according nation, but examples where a city has been the political capital of a nation for several centuries but has not become the economic capital as well are much rarer.
Did you read my message to the end?
At the end I said that in view of the examples I cited and the examples @Harry_Z_Trumen cited I was questioning the idea that I was taught in class at the time.
I don't see where you are going with this argument when I myself concede an error of judgment and knowledge.
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I think the more interesting idea that Harry raised was this one
More of a discussion about reasons why the capital could have been located somewhere else or reasons why it may move in the future would be more fruitful discussion than talking about how much of an economic-political capital divide there is
You could always have Melun if you want another capital on the Seine.
Vichy was a de facto, but not de jure, capital.