Why Were Germany and Italy the Last European Countries to Unify?

And what that tells us about the future of nation-states

As I was writing the previous article on the end of the feudal system, I realized that feudalism had disappeared across many countries by around 1500, but not all. Spain unified in 1492 AD, Portugal in 1143, Hungary became a country around 1000 AD, and France can be considered a state since 843! This doesn’t mean feudalism had disappeared in these countries, but it shows they were on their path to becoming nation-states. Meanwhile, Italy only became a country in 1861. Germany, in 1870.

Why so many centuries later?

And what does that tell us about the future of nation-states?

Nation-States Through Geography

In general, plains unify, mountains divide. Is it true here?

Yes, it’s true that France, the Netherlands, England, Hungary, and Poland are all nation-states on plains. But Northern Germany is also a plain. So is the Po Valley in Northern Italy. Yet neither of them unified early.

Notice the Holy Roman Empire in the middle was actually a constellation of smaller states

Meanwhile, Portugal and Spain are extremely mountainous, and yet they unified very early! And the part of Italy that was the most unified was the south, which is more mountainous!

Yet look a bit deeper, and geography probably had a strong impact.

Note that the southwestern appendix of France is a bit disconnected from the rest of the country. Unsurprisingly, it was not a core part of France for centuries, as it was part of the Norman kingdom based in England.

Northern France, England, the Hungarian Plain, and even Sweden form natural countries. They are big plains that developed population centers, surrounded by mountains or seas defending them and making them natural units. Many times, they grew around river systems that provided irrigation and cheap transportation.

The Iberian Peninsula is also extremely well demarcated from its neighbors, surrounded by seas and mountains. It’s also quite compact, allowing for the power at the center to travel to the periphery reasonably fast. Its most productive agricultural areas were traditionally the Castillas, smack in the center.

Meanwhile, most of Portugal’s population is concentrated around two coastal cities, Lisbon and Porto, which are located at the two big river estuaries of the country (Tagus and Douro).

This means it’s a state made mostly of two city-states. They are probably together because the Reconquista against the Moors went from North to South, so the northerners established the southern province. Source.

Spain and Portugal could have united—and did—but a series of factors kept them apart:

• They had a common enemy with the Moors during the Reconquista.

• Before Spain unified, Portugal had already found a path to the Indies by passing south of Africa, making it rich.

• Spain also developed its foreign empire. Both countries had better things to do than to fight each other.¹

Compare that with Italy.

Italian Geography

In some ways, Italy resembles Spain: a mountainous peninsula surrounded by seas and covered in mountains. But there are a few fundamental differences:

• Spain is compact, Italy is long. That makes it much harder for the center to control the periphery and to unify the peninsula, like in Korea¸which is split to this day.

• The most fertile area, the Po Valley, is at one extreme of the peninsula.

• The mountains divide the peninsula, so the fertile plains are on the coasts, fostering peripheral states.

• It has more big islands around, which again was conducive to separate states.

You can see below the different types of Italian states:

• There’s a bunch of coastal states, usually straddling local mountains (Genoa, Venice, Pisa, Lucca, Sienna, Urbino…)

• Some states were more centered around mountains (Savoy, Trent, Perugia)

• One island is connected to the mainland (Corsica with Genoa) but the others are held by another power (Sardinia and Sicily belonged to Aragon, in present-day Spain).

• Some split the Po Valley: Milan, Modena and Ferrara…

So we can see the logic of these splits, especially Naples being an independent southern state, the islands belonging to foreign powers, or some states owning coastal plains protected by mountains, but to me, geography is not enough. There doesn’t appear to be a geographic reason why the Po Valley was not unified by 1500.² Romans had unified the peninsula centuries earlier. So what else might have caused this?

I think we can see another reason by looking at Italy’s position in Europe:

Europe in 1500. Source.

Although Italy is protected from the rest of the continent by the Alps in the north, some passes still allowed the French, Germans, and Austrians to invade. Similar pressures came from the sea: Italy is in the middle of the Mediterranean, so any naval power will see it as a prize. That’s why Aragon (later part of Spain) conquered part of it, and why the Byzantines first and the Ottomans later pressured it from the east—and that’s not counting all the Muslim pirates from the south. Being surrounded by so many foreign states with interests in your land is bad for unity, as they will chip away at your land when they’re not fostering internal dissent for their own benefit. For the state, fighting so many enemies at once is near impossible.

What about Germany?