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Comment by Svip | Hacker News Reader

The answer is probably no. While Pan-German and Pan-Italian nationalists[0] were successful (well, the German ones partially successful, what with Austria being left out), Pan-Scandinavians were not.

I doubt many things in history were inevitable. I do feel like German re-unification were probably more likely following the Second World War than German unification was after the Congress of Vienna, even if it looked bleaker for re-unification from the outset.

[0] To be clear, Italian and in particular German unification were not the success of pan-nationalists movement but rather strong political forces (like Bismarck) exploiting a popular movement for political gains. Put another way, German unification was not for the benefit of Germans, but for the benefit of Prussia.

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I don't think those cases are really comparable. Scandinavian countries had separate state institutions (even when countries were part of the same empire or composite monarchy) in a way that didn't apply to the former Holy Roman Empire/German Confederation which were nominally part of the same political unit and saw themselves as having much closer ethnic ties. The HRE was seen as an entirely german political entity and had almost no non-german kings in its entire history. The fact that German states jealously guarded their sovereignty does not mean they did not see themselves as fundamentally german.

Similar reasons apply to Italy. Because of the geography of the Italian peninsula a unified Italian nation state would be much more successful economically than a patchwork of small entities. Once Italy's maritime commercial decline began states had less incentive to block unification.

>> Put another way, German unification was not for the benefit of Germans, but for the benefit of Prussia.

The rest of Germany not only strongly benefited economically from german unification but also supported protective tariff policies after unification that had the effect of tying their economies much closer to Prussia (and vice-versa of course). If they didn't believe it was in their interest why in the world would they do that? If anything, the rest of the German states probably engaged in free-riding off of Prussia's military support. This once again benefits both sides.

The states, sure, but the people? Some of them still felt a little betrayed after 1848.

While the discussion about why Scandinavian unification never happened, while Italian and German did, is indeed an interesting one, the broader point is that I do not believe it is reasonable to say either the Italian and German ones were inevitable.

It was by no means certain in 1820 that Prussia would be able to beat Austria over German hegemony, hence whether it was probably not inevitable. The article kind of asks whether German unification the way it happened was inevitable. It is not unreasonable to think of a timeline where Austria learns some real lessons of 1848, and becomes a political powerhouse, while Prussia withers.

>Similar reasons apply to Italy. Because of the geography of the Italian peninsula a unified Italian nation state would be much more successful economically than a patchwork of small entities. Once Italy's maritime commercial decline began states had less incentive to block unification.

Italy's largest maritime states, Genoa and Venice, never acquiesced; they were sacked by Napoleon. Modern Italy rose from the ashes. Venice never got over it.

Yeah, Italian unification has really little to do with economic forces or incentives. Largely, one kingdom exploited the fall of non-Italian powers to make territorial gains. Most of the Italian states were surviving thanks to foreign protection (Austria, France, and Spain). The Savoy administration was just very quick to stake a claim every time one of those protections had a wobble. Napoleon in particular had done a lot of the work, to then leave a void ready to be filled.

> The HRE was seen as an entirely german political entity and had almost no non-german kings in its entire history.

What about northern Italy? And Bohemia – it was part of the HRE until the end and its king was an elector.

Scandinavia was basically Sweden fighting for independence from Denmark-Norway, and Finland fighting for independence from Sweden and Russia. There was no hope for the Kalmar Union to even continue (which didn't happen anyways).

Scandinavism is much newer than the Kalmar Union: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavism

Yeah, under Bismarck it was more “one nation, under Prussia”. It’s also quite well known that there was resistance to unification from the West, due to not wanting that again.

> It’s also quite well known that there was resistance to unification from the West, due to not wanting that again.

If that was so well known, then why was it that the first thing the West did was to unify their pieces of Germany into West Germany? Surely it would have been beneficial to them to keep Germany separate if they shared your assumption.

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