Depending on the perspective of analysis, the size of the relevant parameters adjust appropriately. To study the social relations within a family, family hierarchy, culture, individual personalities need to be considered. For analysis of the trade relations between two cities, location, resources, production, population, trade routes, and political alliances are added to the small scale structure of personal interaction between leaders and diplomats and the history of the cities' relations. To once again expand investigations into the working of a nation, analysis must incorporate as many known variables as possible to accurately understand the processes of interaction. The largest stage in our world is the interaction between nation-states. For most of history, the only restrictions on a nation-state was the threat of destruction for its actions by more powerful states or by internal divisions. Not until the twentieth century did large-scale cooperation between countries seek to define the legality of international actions. That international union of nations came about as a method of limiting the destructive capabilities of Europe, specifically Germany.
Despite its recent reputation as the incredible war machine of World War I, the harbinger of World War II, and the center of tensions for the Cold War, Germany has a long history of unity and bringing together interaction.
After the strength had leaked out of the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and the Reformation of the Catholic Church splintered German communities between Lutheran and Catholic religious doctrines, the German region of the Holy Roman Empire splintered into thousands of small domains. The next several centuries saw wars waged both to create more fractures and to reunite the disparate fringes.
After the Napoleonic invasions in the
early nineteenth century seeded nationalism, the Germanic states sought unification. Two empires held significant swathes of German land and people: the western, small Prussia and the large, diverse, historic Austria-Hungary. In
the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Prussia desired a dualist
organization of German states through which Austria and Prussia could
share influence equally but the governmental organization favored Austria. The Prussians began incorporating industrial technology and railroad
mobilization into military applications in the 1830s. These
adaptations gave Prussia new political strength and aided in the establishment of a tariff-free trade union between member German states. With suggestions of Prussia’s potential to match Austria and
unification in sight, many Germans enthusiastically supported Prussia
and encouraged the consolidation of German states to form around the
Prussian-German national identity.
While Austria’s political and military
might surpassed Prussia’s for the first half of the century, the German unification process,
completed in 1871, represented the rise of Prussia at the expense of
Austria’s German influence. German nationalism found a father in the purity of Prussia,
not the mixed cultures of the Austrian Empire. The Zollverein, the trade union between Prussia and other German states, aided in this exclusion with the creation of
Prussian-German trade routes that left Austria out of economic relations as the German industrial revolution took hold. To avoid disassembly by the other European powers for rapidly expanding, Prussia excluded
Austria from the new Germany. A unified Germany with both Prussia and
Austria would incite a European war to maintain the balance of
power similar to the Crimean War.
Bismarck’s political maneuvering prior to the Austrio-Prussian War aimed at unifying
Germany. After the war, Prussia sought to maintain Germany as a
single nation, but Austria’s inclusion in this nation would risk
Germany’s internal stability with political and economic division
and externally with the threat of an encompassing European war for
power.
The rise of Prussia
and unification of Germany required a weakened Austria. Political,
economic, and military complications provided the destabilizing
forces that Prussia used eliminated Austria’s influence.
Political
revolution in 1848 accompanied by and prompting the resignation of Metternich, who had orchestrated the Congress of Vienna, saw the beginning of Austria’s decline. The revolutions discredited the Austrian-influenced Germanic
Confederation’s ability to govern the Germanic states, but Prussia’s
maintenance of power during 1848 led to a favorable shift in German confederate government. The 1850 remodeling of the German constitution placed German
unification hopes in Prussia and Austria, not on a German
federation of balanced powers.
The economic depression of the 1850s
stirred up political agitation that encouraged German unification
through confederate diets. Military force alone could not effect German unity; national federations and councils attempted unification with
religion, social reform, and common law. With the example of Italian unification in 1859, several German
states intensified their calls for a united Germany. Despite the increasing pro-Prussian sentiments, Austria used old German allies to form the Confederate Diet amidst the tension over the
Electorate of Hesse-Kassel in the later 1850s. The residing president
of the diet, an Austrian, countered the increasing economic power of
the Prussians in the middle Germanic states. However this dualist
arrangement threatened war, and the two dominant powers reworked the
diet as “coequals.”
The Crimean War further escalated
tensions. Prussia remained uncommitted during the war which allowed
it to continue advancing its military technologies, learn from the
techniques of other major powers, and avoid any negligible
entanglements that war would bring. The Crimean War gave Prussia a final boost in its modernization that
allowed it to draw militarily equal with the other major European
powers. By the 1860s, European powers realized that “the most
permanent result of the Crimean War was the disruption of the Concert
of Europe. Forty years of peace were now followed by four [Prussian]
wars that revolutionized the power structure of the Continent.” Austria did not consider Prussia a reckonable power in 1854 at the
beginning of the Crimean War because Prussia had not yet placed herself into
a strong position to gain influence in Europe and upset the balance
of power. With the wars end, Austria shifted focused to limiting Prussian political
influence within the German states. Austria also began testing Prussia’s
new strength and resolve as early as 1857 with the construction of
defensive forts in Holstein and some of their other major Germanic
state allies.
As the tension between the two great
German powers mounted, independent German states realized that the
balance between Austria and Prussia was the only force granting
sovereignty to lesser governments. One of the two Greater Powers
would have to succumb in order to unite Germany. The controlling
force of this balance, the Frankfurt Diet, acted slowly, and with support from Prussian propaganda, most voters saw the diet as
retrogressive. Instead, the populace concluded that new social structure and relations could not be
accommodated into the outdated views of independent German states. The confederation parliaments of Germany slowed unification because
of split alliances between Prussian and Austrian spheres of
influence.
Attempting to
overcome the limitations of confederate political control, Prussia
sought economic unification to aid in its political influence
throughout Germany. Austrian inclusion in this economic state would
eliminate its unifying capabilities because the two great powers
would remain equals and prolong the stalemate.
While Prussia
sought material economic success through commercial liberalism,
Austria attempted to reunite Germany with cultural customs. Bismarck, chancellor, did not trust Austria. In 1862 he said, “I cannot keep
myself from suspicion. I am convinced that [Austria] is proceeding in
no straightforward fashion towards us. She will use us as she needs,
without giving anything in return, and then cast us aside.” Despite the previous irresolution of the dualist approach, the middle German states did not
desire sole control by either power since independent sovereignty would dethrone families in power.
The Zollverein,
the German Customs Union, formed in pre-war Germany and included most
German territory outside Austria. Economic influence became Prussia’s
strength against Austria in the German parliaments. Its strength grew continuously. The Congress of German Economics, begun by Prussia in Berlin in 1858,
played a key role in the Zollverein’s effectiveness. It
economically united Germany and eased the transition to political
unity. By ostracizing Austrian economic involvement by refusing to
allow its participation in the Zollverein, Prussia dominated
German trade. Because of Austria’s powerful influence on the
European political world, Prussia used the Zollverein to
undercut Austrian influence in Germany. Austria feared that the Zollverein would create a de facto
Prussian state through economic ties. That fear was realized.
In 1862 Austria’s response to the
Zollverein in the German states nearest the Austrian border
was complete compensation for any trade loss of quitting the economic
pact with Prussia. Some sentiments in the southern states, however,
favored Prussia. “Prussophiles” combined German nationalism with
policies of unrestricted trade.
The financial freedom espoused by the
Zollverein eliminated all trade restrictions and created an
economic boom in Prussia by the end of the 1850s. German states aligned with Prussia agreed to the tariff-free Zollverein for
economic gain while being drawn into Prussian influence and economic ties. As a newspaper
editor mentioned, “Berlin proved adept at combining friendly
appeals to enlightened self-interest with arm-twisting and naked
blackmail. Small adjacent states that refused to enter the
Prussian-Hessian union were subjected to hard-hitting counter
measures . . . in which new transport routes were used to suck the
flow of trade away from target territories.”
The Zollverein gave Prussia the lead on German unification at
the cost of Austria’s entire economy.
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