WI: Was German unification effectively inevitable?

House of Lorraine? ;)
Well I was thinking about Vienna specifically, anyway you mean the Habsburg-Lorraine? That's just the female line of the Habsburgs and the male line of Lorraine uniting, to me it seems quite disconnected from the Wettin being moved around.
 
What a strange thing to say, OTL there was indeed something stopping the french and Russians from returning things to the status quo once Germany had united it was called the Prussian (and later German) army and it had just mopped the floor with France.


In my timeline, Germany wasn't united in 1866. In fact, there was a big war between the German states. If after the Prussians laid down their terms, the Russians and French declared that the territorial changes were unacceptable and mobilized their armies, just what would the Prussians and their allies be capable of? Not much especially as Bavaria, Baden, Saxony, Wurttemberg, Hesse and Austria would have supported them

Even in 1870, the states below the Main could have been kept neutral with skillful French diplomacy A single French victory may also have been enough to have many of the little states jump ship

Perhaps you can explain to me what happened in your timeline
 

TruthfulPanda

Gone Fishin'
By the time of the Reformation the Duchy of Saxony was in modern Saxony, a middle German area.
Saxony was up to this used for both Lower and Upper Saxony, but I imagine they would specify in this case, "Lower Saxon" in this case or possibly even Dutch(while OTL Dutch could be replaced by something else)
Well, Dutch is a corruption of Deutsch :)
I guess that it could be replaced with Vlaams/Flemish, Nederlander - or even Hollander(ic?).
 
Well I was thinking about Vienna specifically, anyway you mean the Habsburg-Lorraine? That's just the female line of the Habsburgs and the male line of Lorraine uniting, to me it seems quite disconnected from the Wettin being moved around.
THe House of Lorraine gave up their ancestral lands to France and got the Tuscany as a compensantion.
 
In my timeline, Germany wasn't united in 1866. In fact, there was a big war between the German states. If after the Prussians laid down their terms, the Russians and French declared that the territorial changes were unacceptable and mobilized their armies, just what would the Prussians and their allies be capable of? Not much especially as Bavaria, Baden, Saxony, Wurttemberg, Hesse and Austria would have supported them

Why would Russia oppose Prussia? Her main rival was Austria, and her relations with France and GB varied from cool to frigid. Prussia was the only major power with whom she had no quarrel.

Even in 1870, the states below the Main could have been kept neutral with skillful French diplomacy A single French victory may also have been enough to have many of the little states jump ship

Had French diplomacy been skilful, the war wouldn't have broken out in the first place.
 
In my timeline, Germany wasn't united in 1866. In fact, there was a big war between the German states. If after the Prussians laid down their terms, the Russians and French declared that the territorial changes were unacceptable and mobilized their armies, just what would the Prussians and their allies be capable of? Not much especially as Bavaria, Baden, Saxony, Wurttemberg, Hesse and Austria would have supported them

Even in 1870, the states below the Main could have been kept neutral with skillful French diplomacy A single French victory may also have been enough to have many of the little states jump ship

Perhaps you can explain to me what happened in your timeline
That's all well and dandy but you said OTL not ATL
 
Why would Russia oppose Prussia? Her main rival was Austria, and her relations with France and GB varied from cool to frigid. Prussia was the only major power with whom she had no quarrel.
No one likes, when their neighbours get stronger, when they don't. Russian relations with France were improving gradually after Crimean War, then January Uprising started, Prussia happily offered help to Russia (Alvensleben Convention) and Tsar in return has given green light to German unification. Otherwise unification was not good for Russia. Prussia at times was close to being Russian vassal (after Napoleonic Wars) and was not threat to Russia, even in theory. Position of German Empire vis a vis Russia was much stronger now.
 
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"But wasn't nationalism something inevitable that was going to happen sooner or later? Or can one imagine a scenario in which Prussia would still exist today?"

"[Christopher Clark:] "That's a really good question and a difficult one to answer. Although historians usually rear up in horror at the notion, I think it was probably inevitable. If you think about the other multi-national states that existed in the 19th century, Russia, for example, or the Austro-Hungarian Empire, both of them disappeared in the course of the World War I and were replaced by something radically different. It seems to me that these pre-national, multi-ethnic commonwealths that were such a feature of Europe in the early modern period were probably doomed to go under..." http://www.dw.com/en/cambridge-historian-says-prussia-gets-a-bad-rap/a-3010994

Personally, I do not think that German unification under Prussian leadership was inevitable in the eighteenth century. I think the Napoleonic Wars were the turning point. As a friend of mine once remarked in another forum: By then, German nationalism was a real force, the memory of the War of Liberation was fresh, and most German nationalists were looking specifically towards Prussia for inspiration, since Prussia had taken the leading role in that war. And of course, the peace settlement granted the Rhineland to Prussia (while giving Congress Poland to Russia) and anchored the Kingdom firmly in the emerging Germany. (Prior to that, after the Third Partition of Poland, when Warsaw and most of the Polish heartland was part of Prussia, the position of Prussia within the German nation was very detached, and the Kingdom was a de facto German-Slav state east of the Elbe. It might have very well remained as such, and consequently, played a more or less similar role to Austria-Hungary, as an odd East European anachronism. Meanwhile, the history of German unification could have taken a different course.)
 
What if in Vienna Prussia get her 1795 eastern border back? Or even better-whole Grand Duchy of Warsaw or even this + Galizia (perhaps Napoleon, instead of creating GDW allowed King od Prussia to keep his part of Poland as separate Kingdom to appease Poles). It would force Prussians in the future to create dual monarchy, northern analogue of A-H, and would distract Prussia's attention from the West.
This may piss off the Russians who were far more instrumental in Napoleon's downfall than the Prussians.
 
Well I was thinking about Vienna specifically, anyway you mean the Habsburg-Lorraine? That's just the female line of the Habsburgs and the male line of Lorraine uniting, to me it seems quite disconnected from the Wettin being moved around.

the entire German Mediatization scheme was in order to get land to give to the west bank Rhineland houses dispossessed by France
 
Which Houses were given land for example?

off the top of my head the Principality of Aschaffenburg was created for the Bishop-Elector of Mainz when the French took that...Ferdinand was given the Electorate of Salzburg when it was secularized in return for his loss of Tuscany
 
No one likes, when their neighbours get stronger, when they don't. Russian relations with France were improving gradually after Crimean War, then January Uprising started, Prussia happily offered help to Russia (Alvensleben Convention) and Tsar in return has given green light to German unification. Otherwise unification was not good for Russia. Prussia at times was close to being Russian vassal (after Napoleonic Wars) and was not threat to Russia, even in theory. Position of German Empire vis a vis Russia was much stronger now.


Yet it was a quarter of a century before they could accept a French alliance.

In the 1860s Russia's main concerns were

1) The security of her Polish provinces
2) Her rivalry with Austria in the Balkans
3) Her desire to get rid of the Black Sea clauses in the 1856 Treaty of Paris.

Prussia was no threat to her on any of these issues. Indeed on the first two a strong Prussia, cutting Austria down to size and keeping the Poles in their place, was to her advantage, and on the third Prussia didn't figure at all. Russia had no concerns about Prussian aggrandisement, and wouldn't have until the Dual Alliance of 1879. Even then it took her another fifteen years to respond with a French one.

Prussia simply wasn't on the radar as a threat. Had she still been flirting with liberalism as in 1848, things might have been different, but there was no danger of Bismarck's Prussia doing that.

Had France attacked Prussia, Russia would have been far more likely to take the Prussian side.
 
THe House of Lorraine gave up their ancestral lands to France and got the Tuscany as a compensantion.

That and of course, no renunciation no archduchess.... Tuscany certainly sweetened the deal, but real big price was the marriage with the Habsburg heiress.
 
No. It's a logical conclusion of the idea that ethnicity and not kings made a nation For example when the royalists won a plurality in the 3rd Republic they ran into a problem selling their agenda when their desired Legitamist king refused to use the French tricolors or call himself "king of the French" instead of "King of France" and they didn't consider the Orleanist candidate until the next election which they lost. However the German counterpart wasn't inevitable
 
That's all well and dandy but you said OTL not ATL

Still waiting: Are you claiming that there was no German war in 1866 for Russia and France to intervene in? Because in my history books there is. What timeline are you living in without it
Why would Russia oppose Prussia? Her main rival was Austria, and her relations with France and GB varied from cool to frigid. Prussia was the only major power with whom she had no quarrel.



Had French diplomacy been skilful, the war wouldn't have broken out in the first place.

That it didn't happen in OTl doesn't mean it can't. A different Russian calculation is possible especially as it was the minor German princes that suffered and not Austria from the treaty. Prussia took no territory from Austria but did annex Hanover. The deposing of a Divine Right monarch struck deep at the political foundations of Russia. So yes, a different Russian calculation is possible

As for relations between France and Russia at the time: countries have interests. When those interests agree they cooperate

Your right: France could have avoided the 1870 war. And if she does, the unification of Germany doesn't happen
 
Still waiting: Are you claiming that there was no German war in 1866 for Russia and France to intervene in? Because in my history books there is. What timeline are you living in without it


That it didn't happen in OTl doesn't mean it can't. A different Russian calculation is possible especially as it was the minor German princes that suffered and not Austria from the treaty. Prussia took no territory from Austria but did annex Hanover. The deposing of a Divine Right monarch struck deep at the political foundations of Russia. So yes, a different Russian calculation is possible

As for relations between France and Russia at the time: countries have interests. When those interests agree they cooperate

Your right: France could have avoided the 1870 war. And if she does, the unification of Germany doesn't happen
With the North German Federation 2/3 of Germany were already unified and the rest was tied economically and politically with it, even if France doesn't declare war(possibly leaving a Hohenzollern in Spain) I think the 2 parts would converge more and more together.

Also the push for unification wouldn't stay underground forever, if Prussian led unification fails the people in the south wouldn't just stop wanting a united Germany like most did in 1848, it would surely change the dynamics though.
 
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By the time of the Reformation the Duchy of Saxony was in modern Saxony, a middle German area.

Saxony was up to this used for both Lower and Upper Saxony, but I imagine they would specify in this case, "Lower Saxon" in this case or possibly even Dutch(while OTL Dutch could be replaced by something else)
According to the Wikipedia:
In Germany, native speakers of Low German call their language Platt, Plattdüütsch or Nedderdüütsch. In the Netherlands, native speakers refer to their language as dialect, plat, nedersaksies, or the name of their village, town or district.

Officially, Low German is called Niederdeutsch(Nether or Low German) by the German authorities and Nedersaksisch (Nether or Low Saxon) by the Dutch authorities. Plattdeutsch, Niederdeutsch and Platduits, Nedersaksischare seen in linguistic texts from the German and Dutch linguistic communities respectively.
So we're talking Low/Nether German, Low/Nether Saxon, or Platt (German).
 
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