Without a newly-minted Germany built to fend off a powerful France, maybe there’s no WWI, and no WWII. Maybe its leader becomes Austria, not Prussia, and its capital is Vienna, not Berlin. Maybe the impetus for German unification doesn’t exist, and Germany remains a loose confederation for longer. Maybe the Holy Roman Empire doesn’t get humiliated by Napoléon. Maybe it takes one more century for them to get their independence. ![]() Maybe without Napoléon´s invasion of Spain, the Spanish army isn’t as weakened and the Latin-American nobility doesn’t have a military opening for independence in the early 1800s. Without the inspiration from revolutionary France, the local Latin-American elites take much longer to develop their nationalistic ideals. Maybe Spain, without such a formidable threat to its north, is able to keep its American colonies for longer. Maybe France doesn’t sell these colonies to the US so easily in the early 1800s. Maybe some of the 13 colonies are French. Maybe it conquers a much more substantial piece of North America. ![]() Maybe Northern France focuses more on its Atlantic coast the way England and Spain did, and invests much more in its American colonies. Maybe the ideas of the Révolution don’t travel across Europe as fast. Maybe it doesn’t get a Marseillaise hymn to set fire to French hearts, or a Napoléon to lead them on the European battlegrounds (since he comes from Corsica, the Mediterranean island). In this alternative world, France doesn’t have the wealth and population to tower over its neighboring countries. You can imagine an alternate world where France (the kingdom of the Franks) stops at the Massif Central, and another country (maybe “Occitanie”?) controls the south. Without a pass between northern and southern France, these two regions would have remained as distinct as Germany is from Italy, or Poland is from Greece. And for the next 700 years, while the Midi was influenced by Mediterranean cultures, the main influence in northern France was the Germanic tribe of the Franks. ![]() Rome also occupied northern France-for about five centuries-but it was a shorter occupation. It had centuries more Roman influence than the north, centuries of Visigothic influence, Islamic influence, influence from the Crown of Aragon… It has always belonged to Mediterranean culture. The part of France that is on the Mediterranean, south of the Massif Central, is called the Midi. The ramifications have defined the power of France for a thousand years, which have in turn influenced the world for centuries. These two passes, the one through Carcassonne and the other through the Rhône Valley, are the only two flat connections between the Northern European Plain and the Mediterranean.
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