Why are there small countries?

Factual Questions
62

Go back far enough, and the present-day Benelux countries were lands of the Dukes of Burgundy (and there were several iterations/variants of “Burgundy”, taking in parts of Switzerland and Germany). By dynastic marriage and the politics of the Holy Roman Empire, they passed to the Emperor Charles V, and then to Spain when he divided the Spanish and Austrian parts of the Empire between his sons.

The southern provinces of the Netherlands stayed under Spanish rule when the northern provinces won independence, finally recognised in the resolution of the Thirty Years’ War. But barely 60 years later, the accidents of infertility in the Spanish monarchy led to war in the Netherlands, as Louis XIV tried to impose his candidate for the Spanish monarchy. In the eventual settlement of that war, what is now Belgium became the Austrian Netherlands - and hence a base for the powers resisting the French revolution (and Britain got Gibraltar, but that’s another story).

Come the Napoleonic wars, the final settlement gave Belgium to a reunited Netherlands (whose new king also became Grand Duke of Luxembourg, but that too is another story). That settlement lasted less than twenty years, till the risings of 1830 and the subsequent short war before Belgian independence was recognised, and dynastic definitions of a country really started giving way to civic and/or ethnic nationalism.

You can see why they called it the “cockpit of Europe” - and geography made it so again in 1914 and 1940, as the backdoor to France.

63

Horum omnium fortissimi sunt Belgae…

64

It amazed me to learn that at the time of Voltaire, only 20% of people living in France spoke French. Historians really concentrate on Paris rather than the country proper.

Also, during the time of Voltron, the country often split into five territories of roughly equal size.

65

How do you arrive at the 20% figure? Obviously, Basque, Breton, and German are not French, and I can see eliminating Occitan, Franco-Provençal, and Catalan. But surely all the langues d’oïl would be French. Strassbourg and Lyon could then count as non-French-speaking cities, but the population was densest in the northwest of the country, and Paris (French), Nantes (Gallo), Lille (No idea), and Rouen (Normand) would all be French-speaking, if different dialects.

66

Did it split into five territories due to robots battling it out?

67

The 20% figure presumably derives from the 1794 report by the Abbé Grégoire. But he very definitely had a political agenda.

68

Thank you! That’s exactly where it comes from:

On peut assurer sans exagération qu’au moins six millions de Français, sur-tout dans les campagnes, ignorent la langue nationale ; qu’un nombre égal est à-peu-près incapable de soutenir une conversation suivie ; qu’en dernier résultat, le nombre de ceux qui la parlent purement n’excède pas trois millions ; & probablement le nombre de ceux qui l’écrivent correctement est encore moindre. (Rapport sur la nécessité et les moyens d’anéantir les patois et d’universaliser l’usage de la langue française - Wikisource )

1794: Six million don’t speak French; six million more are barely able to hold a conversation in it; the number who speak it “purely” won’t exceed three million (20% of 6 mill. + 6 mill. + 3 mill.).

However, the population of France in that era is not 15 million, but somewhere on the order of 29–45 million, depending on your source. So he was excluding a middle to begin with. If we’re to believe his 6 million number, then, something like 80% of France spoke French, but most of them not up to his standards. That’s rather more believable to me.

69

I read it somewhere, and that might be the source. If it is wrong, so be it, but I’m not sure you could assume much about any uninvolved cohorts.

70

Voltaire died in 1788, 11 years before the French Revolution. I found this in Wikipedia…the primary source is linky no worky but they were citing a source at Yale.

It is estimated that at the time of the French Revolution in 1789, only half of the population of France could speak French, and as late as 1871 only a quarter spoke French as their native language.[6]

So only 25% spoke it as their native language. More spoke it as a second language but is that a few words and phrases or…?

71

  1. I would assume (I know, I know) that they would be fairly fluent in French, at least able to do business and serve in the bureaucracy/army.

  2. By the standards of my 8th Grade English teacher, only about 10% of United Statesians speak English. The rest speak American, which is an inferior language, don’t you know?

72

This really comes down to whether you are counting other langue d’oïl dialects or not. I think the “only 25%” figure must be excluding these dialects, which is tantamount to saying that people in Venice don’t speak Italian or people in Aberdeen don’t speak English.

I assume—the reference in the Wikipedia article quoted is a dead link.

73

Actually, 1778.

74

Weellll… https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doric_dialect_(Scotland)

75

Little correction here: the breakup of Czechoslovakia, which occurred on 1 January 1993, is known as the Velvet Divorce. The Velvet Revolution refers to the time when popular protests brought about the end of Communism. The key date of the latter was 17 November 1989.

I am a naturalized Czech citizen. On Wednesday next week, we will be celebrating the anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, as the 17th is a public holiday.

76

I defer.

My mother’ family, albeit Jewish, lived in what is now Slovakia for many generations, and some are still there (though, none in my direct lineage), gawd knows how they survived the war, but they did (any who left Slovakia for what is now the Czech Republic did not survive, but a few others, who went to Hungary, did).

My mother had a PhD in linguistics, her first language was Slovak, though she spoke English before she started kindergarten, and understood Yiddish. She learned Czech and Russian in college. Her Czech and Slovak were good enough as an adult, that everyone we encountered in Czechoslovakia assumed she was a native Slovak, by which I assume they meant she spoke Czech with a Slovak accent, not an American one (probably Russian, too). She wrote and published original articles in Czech and Slovak (and English, about Czech and Slovak), as well as translating to and from Czech, Slovak and English, and from Russian. She also wrote the first reference grammar of Slovak for English speakers.

She was actually in Czechoslovakia when it split (as my father, who was an expert on oligarchies and Soviet history, and spoke perfect Russian, had been in Moscow at the fall of the Soviet Union).

My mother spent a lot of time in Prague, which was the best place for her research, but also in Bratislava, and in Jablonica and Smrdaky, where our remaining extended family (save the one in Prague) lived. And after my brother and I had left home, and then my father died, she spent at least four months of every year there. So I’m sure I knew the correct terms at one time, I just forget after enough years.

I was in Czechoslvakia twice, and met all that family, but have not been back since the “divorce.” I was actually planning a trip when COVID put an end to travel. My mother died in 2017, and I was going to visit family, and her colleagues in Prague. If I could manage, also some of both my parents friends in Moscow, a place I have not seen since 1977. Don’t know if that trip will happen-- life with COVID has depleted my savings.

Something I do remember is my mother saying that Slavs (and on a DNA level, moja rodina is probably as Slavic as we are Jewish, after a few centuries in the area) would “fight a revolution until the last drop of ink was shed.” I have a feeling she was quoting something, but I never confirmed that. Is it familiar to you?

Sorry for the hijack. That just brought up a lot of feelings.

Returning you to your regularly scheduled thread.

77

Typo, my bad.

78

Depending on the poll and how you figure it, statehood and status quo have been roughly evenly divided. But independence has never polled more than a few percentage points.

79

bump wrote:

Some nations are basically historical remnants that never got completely assimilated into the surrounding larger countries- Vatican City, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Andorra, San Marino, Monaco, etc…

Italy was fractured into smaller states for most of its post-Roman Empire history. Vatican City was assimilated with the rest of Italy in 1870 (and had spent the prior 1100 years as part of the Papal States, a substantial chunk of the Italian peninsula), and became an independent country in 1929 under the Lateran Treaty. It has all the characteristics of a freak medieval holdout except for actually being one.