BLESSED

     From a biological standpoint, the life of a modern human in the industrialized world is easy. Sustenance is so easily procurable, that millions of people struggle to limit their intake and indulgences. From a social standpoint in a Western mindset, the opportunities for common people are exponentially greater than any other comparative era or empire. Men and women choose occupation, location, religion, marriage, and political commitments or shun those responsibilities completely if they prefer.
     As the imbalance of income makes the news in America as the wealthiest grow richer, as the balance of power shifts in the world from the United States and her European allies toward the populous East and expanding nations of Africa, and as the decades of world peace seems to grow tense and falter, how can a man in the West find, not contentment, but the merest smidgen of happiness in a grey and darkening world?
     Science could offer a shield from that despair. The progress in agricultural efficiency and production, the expanding capabilities of computer memory storage in carbon atoms, and the enormous potential for 3D printing all present the tantalizing promise of progress in a corroding environment. If not Science, the discovery of the past with new revelations on past empires sunk in water, sand, or mud merit a comparison of the material prosperity of the present to the wretched conditions of the past. If the future promise of science or the past comfort of history fail to sate the depression of the present, religion has been an eternal comfort to the wary, weary minds of every age. Religion offers the traditions of the past, solace in the hardships of life, and hope beyond life in a socially recognized and established method.

     Indeed, in reflections of my own life, all three of these areas have comforted me and spurred me to action, but the value of this trio can be measured only physically and intellectually. The greatest treasure in the world is the commitment of another's life.
     This is what I conclude in the mindset of a soon to be wedded man.
     How could a woman ever love a man? It is beyond comprehensible. The fairer sex has no comparison in man save that of out-doing him at every task.
     Yes, I still believe that every woman is a goddess in her own right and specialty, but mine is the queen of goddesses.

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Agatha Tyche

Steadfast Frienship

     Last month Queen Elizabeth II of England became the longest serving monarch in English history. In recognition of this achievement, long life, and astounding changes of the last sixty-three years, remembrance of and association with British success must also be paid homage. While England and the United Kingdom once ruled one of the largest, most expansion, and diverse empires in history, it is not the only one nor the oldest. While the British Empire is no more, her children still populate the globe on every continent, yet the present is similarly a child of the past.
     Before England's 1381 Peasant's Revolt, when Europe was still recovering from the Black Death, when the Byzantine Empire was on its last legs, and when the Hundred Year's War was still in force, England came into agreement with Portugal to safeguard each other regardless of the enemy. That agreement, the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance of 1373, still holds and is the oldest active alliance in the world.
     Two of the most powerful sea-faring nations of history signed an agreement to be friends to friends and enemies to enemies. The friendly terms between the two nations extends back to the beginning of the Crusades with temporary agreements before the definitive treaty centuries later.
     English-Portuguese ties became linked just before the Age of Exploration when Portugal circumnavigated Africa and boasted a proud sea-faring tradition both militarily and economically. Portugal's strength lent itself to English strength as the New World lands brought a wealth of resources and competition among the other European nations.
     While a 642 year long alliance between two powerful sea-faring nations seems remarkable, Portugal and England have been two of the most stable nations in world history. England's last invasion occurred in September 1066 while Portugal is the oldest nation-state in Europe and has had defined borders since 1139. Neither of these nations are phased by centuries of commitment, and both have heavily impacted the modern world through global enterprise and innovations.

     Portugal was the first global empire in history and extended over four continents. The first great European empire, Portugal surrendered its last colony, Macau, to China in 1999 after six centuries of global influence. Lisbon is the second oldest capitol city in Europe after Athens and is believed to have been established by the Phoenicians about 1200 B.C.
     The Anglo-Portuguese Alliance has been invoked several times over the centuries, notably during disastrous European wars. The two nations defeated France and Spain in the Seven Years War despite being outnumbered. During the Napoleonic invasion of Portugal in 1807, Britain sent its army to assist its ally, and the two nations successfully pushed Napoleon back into Spain. During World War I, Portugal sent troops to Northern France to aid England, and during World War II, Portugal provided the Azores archipelago as a naval base for the Allies and acted as an effective deterrent to keep Spain from joining the Axis nations. Most recently, the United Kingdom invoked the alliance during the Falkland War in 1982.
     Almost nothing lasts six and a half centuries. As the world continues to develop, trade and power change hands, yet for these small nations, history and friendship are inseparable regardless of threat, leadership, war, or century. Unwavering commitment and respect is nearly absent from history's annals, but to see a mutual respect and support endure the test of time and the tensions of empire, demonstrates the potential of what man is capable of when his heart is true.

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Agatha Tyche

The Frontier

     With the advents of the Industrial Revolution and Globalism, the materialism of Capitalism has spread from Europe and America around the world. These dual events have enormously changed life in every region and nation around the world whether through locomotion and medicine or through colonization and exploitation. While these effects are uncontested, the residual philosophies prior to the Industrial Revolution's impacts in the early nineteenth century have placed the world, resources, and biological population limits into new perspectives.
     With the public discovery of a New World by Christopher Columbus's expeditions in the 1490s, Europe began an expansive invasion-settlement of these newly recognized lands. European nations began sending conquers to subdue native populations and explore the lands. Later, settlers, particularly in North America, made permanent homes along the coast to enable trade with their mother European nations. With the devastation of ninety-percent of native populations, the Europeans had half the world to extract wealth and resources from to send back to Europe. The Spanish and Portuguese focused on gold, silver, and precious materials to supplement their coffers while the French, Dutch, and British turned to fur and forestry.
     The Spanish and Portuguese did not make permanent plans of colonization and instead concentrated their efforts on extraction. The North American experience was different but similarly economically-oriented; settlers hunted several animals to extinction and cut huge swathes of forests that permanently changed the landscape and soil type. Because of the required manual labor and slow trans-Atlantic shipping, the extraction of New World resources escalated slowly and seemed to be able to last forever.
     With the improvements of steam and machine and the growing populations in both Europe and these New World settlements, resource extraction became mechanized to meet industrial needs. Never before had the provisions of nature been taxed so greatly to provide materials for the incredible population boom. The seemingly endless reserves of resources in the New World began to be depleted by the mid-nineteenth century.

     As the abundance of natural resources became more difficult to find and extract, the populations of Europe began to look elsewhere to meet their new industrial might, especially toward Africa and SouthEast Asia. The inhabitants of the New World, particularly in the United States where industrial growth was increasing to match Europe's, had to live in the reality of the stripped, barren landscapes. This proximity to the destructive greed of man birthed two movements in the United States just before the turn of the twentieth century. The first group continued the practices from the decades before and moved on to new lands that were farther west and previously inaccessible. The second group began a conservationist movement that sought to protect resources and restore land usefulness after strip mining and clear cutting forests.
     The first group, known to history as the frontiersmen, miners, and cowboys of the American West, continued to exploit the immense natural wealth of the land without regard to future uses. Despite the efforts of the conversation movement and the establishment of federal government regulations like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1972 and Endangered Species Act (ESA) in 1973, the indoctrination of capitalist-consumerism of Americans and industrial countries requires escalated production to grow the economy and collect the money of consumers who buy things that they did not know they needed.
     The ecological term for the exploitation of natural resources because of their endless reserves in known as the Frontiersman Mentality or the Cowboy Mindset. While modern people might pride themselves on being green or practicing efficient, renewable business practices, the frontier's influence on the United States has not disappeared. Today Americans throw away more reusable materials than every before, especially non-degradable plastics. The Throwaway Mindset of a consumerist culture is directly related to the assumption that resources are endless and that there will always be new reserves to take from.
     This century as the global population begins to level off around eleven billion and the easiest reverses of metal, oil, and timber are used up, humanity will not be able to run away from its actions any more. Overlooking the effects of climate change, the economy, and agricultural needs, as the waste and debris of the civilized, industrial countries begins to choke the world, change will come from choice or inevitability. There is not another frontier.

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Agatha Tyche

Splintered Unity III: Blood and Iron

     With Prussia's economic ties to Northern Germany solidified through the Zollverein, Bismarck asserts Prussia as the leader of Germanic self-determination. Allying with Austria in 1864 to take control of the German-dominated Schleswig-Holstein from Denmark, Prussia added two provinces to the mass of German states dependent on Prussia for trade and military protection. Austria protested that its contribution in the victory was overlooked because all territory ceded by Denmark fell into Prussia's grasp.
     This situation further antagonized Austria in German eyes since Austria seemed to focus more on the addition of land than on the nationalism of a united Germany. With the Austrian-Prussian alliance's defeat of Danish forces in 1864, their united military strength represented an intimidating force. From an international viewpoint, Bismarck used this dispute to calm the Great Powers of Europe away from a permanent Austrio-Prussian alliance that would disrupt the balance of power. Nonetheless, this victory gave German states redeemed confidence in Prussia. Militaristic forces worked together for unity, not divided by on issues of the liberalism movement.      
     Furthermore, Prussian industrialization provided “a superior energy which swallow[ed] up [other German states].” Bismarck remarked that “the great questions of the day will not be decided by speeches and the resolutions of the majorities . . . but by iron and blood.” Much of Prussia’s prestige and conciliatory power depended on its military readiness. Political maneuvering, Bismarck’s strength, remained the largest barrier against an Austrio-Prussian war. The consequences of the Danish War in 1864 created financial problems in both Prussia and Austria and provided Bismarck with a reason for a separatory war with Austria for German unification. War could finalize Austria’s separation from the German states.

     Much of the two year delay between the Danish and Austrian wars stemmed from empty Prussian coffers. Bismarck could not fight Austria until the money for war had been collected after the expenses of 1864. When ready Bismarck used provocative Prussian policies to cause Austria to mobilize troops which led to the Austrio-Prussian War. As Bismarck prepared for war, he used, “the complexity and confusion of the political and legal system, and the disagreements among the Great Powers” to isolate Austria from her traditional allies and allow a private war between Prussia and Austria over the German states.
     During his fundraising campaigns to the Federal German Parliament to expand Prussia's military budget in preparation for war, Bismarck gave a speech that revealed this resolution of German Unification at all costs. Public opinion was inconsequential since it could be controlled with propaganda, and the Great Powers of Europe could be persuaded to avoid an, essentially, German civil war.

We are too hot-blooded, we have a preference for putting on armor that is too big for our small body; and now we are actually supposed to utilize it. Germany is not looking to Prussia's liberalism, but to its power; Bavaria, Württemberg, Baden may indulge liberalism, and yet no one will assign them Prussia's role; Prussia has to coalesce and concentrate its power for the opportune moment, which has already been missed several times; Prussia's borders according to the Vienna Treaties [of 1814-15] are not favorable for a healthy, vital state; it is not by speeches and majority resolutions that the great questions of the time are decided – that was the big mistake of 1848 and 1849 – but by iron and blood.

Source: Otto von Bismarck, Reden 1847-1869 [Speeches, 1847-1869], ed., Wilhelm Schüßler, vol. 10, Bismarck: Die gesammelten Werke [Bismarck: Collected Works], ed. Hermann von Petersdorff. Berlin: Otto Stolberg, 1924-35, pp. 139-40.

     Prussia chanced war to gain the power of a united Germany. Moltke recommended that Bismarck recruit Italy as an ally to create a two-front war with Austria which succeeded in splitting Austrian forces. Prussia matched Austria’s number of troops, but better infantry and mobilization technology made substantial differences in the battles. The main pillar of Austria’s Habsburg dynasty, the army, protected the empire and functioned as an “effective instrument for indoctrinating a large body of men of every class and nationality with dynastic sentiments and the idea of imperial unity . . . To the army, the fatherland was the whole empire, not some province or region.” This unifying view in Austria negated the specific German nationalism Prussia attempted to exploit in the unification wars. Because her subjects remained loyal to Austria as a whole, Prussia did not want to entail non-Germanic cultures in its newly formed empire.

     In 1866 Bismarck transitioned Prussia from political negotiations to military action. During the Austro-Prussian War, many of the lesser German states still favored Austria in attempts to retain the dualist balance of power. A large portion of German and Prussian civilians resisted efforts of war and wrote in protest of it. By eliminating Austrian influence in the German states, Bismarck reduced anti-Prussian influences which aided in consolidation.

     In the Austro-Prussian War, Prussia had to mobilize against Austria as well as many of the Germanic states loyal to Austria. “The campaign of Prussia against Austria and her allies, who comprised most of the north German and all of the south German states, was a Blitzkrieg in the most exact sense of the word.” With Austria’s quick defeat, Bismarck accomplished Austria’s political expulsion from the German diets. No territorial gains by Prussia on Austrian territory were proposed, only consolatory holds within Germany. Bismarck claimed that “The strength of the government in relation to parliament had been enormously increased by military victory.” With victory over Austria, Prussia became the predominant continental European power. A German newspaper toted, “The quick and decisive victory . . . has indeed shocked the whole political world and thrown everybody off his balance.” Bismarck took advantage of this unsettled climate to make Prussian advances as complete as possible. Austria’s resumption in Germany would negate these political gains.

The peace terms of the Seven Weeks War permanently ended Austrian claims in Germany and dissolved the German Confederation. With this, Prussia issued a new constitution to the German states. Prussia’s victory destroyed the territorial barriers that separated her eastern and western halves.

Before 1866 Prussia could only claim the desires of a great European power. With Austria’s poor performance in the Crimean War and subsequent defeat ten years later by Prussia at the Battle of Königgrätz, it fell from the European stage. Prussia’s political ambitions desired full recognition for its new zenith. By disassociating Austrian influence in Germany, Prussia could proudly declare the new strength to be from its own establishments, not Austria’s. “[Bismarck] had only one idea, the idea summed up by the term Realpolitik, the exaltation of the Staatsrecht, the right and duty of the state to pursue its own advantage regardless of any other consideration and by whatever means comes to hand . . . The state above all morality.” The Prussian drive for dominance combined with growing German nationalism provided the foundation for the new empire, the Second Reich.

     The progressive outlook took hold of the German populace. After the Franco-Prussian war in 1871, Emperor Wilhelm I said, “What is past is past! . . . Nothing can be brought back; may every attempt to do so be abandoned! It is now the ‘duty of every patriot’ to ‘help build the new Prussia’.” As Prussia’s power increased through the nineteenth century, Austria’s waned. While Bismarck could have allowed Austria to remain as a secondary power in a united Germany and lend its historic prestige, this would have undermined Prussia’s new political strength over the German parliament. There was no need to share the new with the old.

     The Southern German Confederation resisted Prussian efforts because of continued Austrian political and economic ties. To finalize a complete consolidation of German states, Bismarck provoked France into another war that allowed Southern Germany to be allied with a victorious Prussia  and gain a sense of unity. Prussia’s emperor, Wilhelm I, and parliamentary body, the Reichstag, dominated the new confederation. The new Confederation of Prussia and Germany “had to satisfy the Prussian king and the king’s party and his royal cousins on the smaller thrones of northern Germany, [the] populace, and it had to prove attractive to the South Germans.” Bismarck desired material hegemony over Germany before political hegemony since economics would encourage loyalties more directly. In the end, his efforts were successful, and Prussia came to integrate all the German duchies into her political and industrial military might.

     The unification of Germany seemed inevitable as early as the 1840s, but the power behind the process did not exist prior to 1866. Austria’s exclusion from the unification process, especially its German population, later proved unnecessary due to Prussia's incredible military.

     The political competition between Austria and Germany began at the Treaty of Vienna in 1815. By the 1860s Prussia’s political ambitions desired full recognition for its new zenith. By disassociating Austrian influence in Germany, Prussia could proudly declare the new power to be from her establishments. One of these establishments, the Zollverein, gave Prussia a huge economic advantage over her competitor. After the Austro-Prussian war, many Germans retained favorable Austrian views. By removing Austria from a united Germany, Prussia negated Austria’s stance in favor of cultivating Prussian interests. Single power dominance aided in consolidation efforts because of a single power base. To speed this process, war propaganda purposefully created a negative public perception of Austria to encourage war tensions in the public, and Bismarck continued to use this intentional division between Prussia and Austria after the war.

     Internal and external forces also combined to exclude Austria from the new German empire. A unified Germany with both Prussia and Austria would incite a European war to maintain the balance of power like the Crimean War in 1853-1856. After the Danish defeat in 1864, the Austrian-Prussian military alliance represented an intimidating force. Thus, Bismarck rejected retention of the alliance since a united German nation would be just as unstoppable as the alliance but would solely represent Prussian interests.

     Domestically, nationalism, initiated with Napoleon’s invasion at the beginning of the century, excited the great German dream of unification. Once the balance of power within Germany between Prussia and Austria upset, the largest obstacle to unification vanished. Prussia saw itself as a pure German state while Austria’s mixed population was impure. The German empire, inspired by German nationalism, would be a German country.

     Prussia’s unification of Germany required Austria’s exclusion because of the divisive nature of the dualist approach that prevented the unification in the 1840s-1850s. Austria’s exclusion from the Zollverein weakened their influence in the Frankfurt Diet and allowed Prussian military and economic strength to dominate the German states. The nationalist tendencies remained so strong as to disregard the balance of power in Europe, remove Austrian influence, and form a single Germanic nation: Germany.

     Prussia's careful, methodical manipulation of the Germanic states and the international European political alliances of the time allowed for an economically vigorous, rapidly industrializing, militarily focused nation to rise in the center of the European continent. Despite hundreds of years of insoluble fractures, a Prussian-spurred union based off of popular nationalist ideals solidified a fearsome new power who had transformed from slag into the "guns of August."

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Agatha Tyche

Splintered Unity II: Minds and Money

     With the dissemination of the Holy Roman emperor's power to localized tribal princes and the polarizing of Reformed and Catholic factions during the Reformation, the lands of Germany were segmented into isolating parcels that impeded trade and political unity. It was these factors of the fractured power structure in the leading German families that initially decimated the German countryside in the Thirty-Years War, but primed the German people with a longing for shared greatness through their lands. Napoleon's invasion of the Germanic states in the early nineteenth century seeded the the concept of nationalist ideals that anchored Germans into a popular movement that cried out for peace among brethren, for it was better to have one, mighty Germany than hundreds of castle with thousands of guards.
     As German unity became more prominent both to the subjects of the duchies and to the politicians in various assemblies across the region, two powers strove to be the catalyst of unification. Austria, the prominent empire, ruled much of southern and eastern Europe, held considerable influence within the German parliaments, and had a significant German population; its size was one of its detraction since Austira's composition also included many other peoples and cultures that weakened the appeal of a Greater Germany under Austria's divided interests. The second contender was a powerful German state that had received recognition for its military prowess during the wars of Austrian succession in the eighteenth century and for its part in the coalition that defeated Napoleon. Prussia did not have the political weight or monetary resources of Austria, but under Bismarck and Wilhelm I, Prussia used its tenacity and efficient military to become the adhesive of German unification.
     One of Prussia's weapons against Austria during the decades-long maneuverings of German unification was the tariff-free trade agreement between Prussia and an increasing number of lesser states. The Zollverein acted to secure Prussian interests by expanding its sphere of influence within the Germanic people and excluding Austria from the economic ties. As the benefits of the Zollverein  became apparent within member states, Prussian political gains garnered attention across Europe. In the quest for a Greater Germany, the three leading minds of Prussia, Bismarck, Moltke, and Wilhelm, sought to gain the support of other German provinces through trade, propaganda, political manipulations in the parliaments, and, most famously, through war.
     The pivotal points in Austrio-Prussian relations occurred in the early to mid 1860s. Moltke’s promotion to Chief of Staff in 1857, Wilhelm I’s assumption of the throne in 1861, and Bismarck’s appointment to First Chancellor in 1862 set the stage for the establishment of the Second Reich. Prussia offered new, expanding strength amidst the political indecision of the political diets and shifting Austrian interests. In regards to a united Germany, Julius Frobel, a German writer, said, “The German nation is sick of principles and doctrines, of literacy greatness and of theoretical existence. What it wants is power, power, power! And whoever gives it power, to him it will give honor, more honor than he can [imagine.]”

     The reversal of fortune in Prussia also timely occurred in Austria. Bismarck’s visit to Vienna in 1862 caused him to express “an almost superstitious dislike to being entangled with the fortunes of Austria” since its wide ethnic basis seemed too dissimilar to the interests of the Saxon populations of Prussia. Bismarck claimed that Austrian desires did not align with the larger portion of the German population. Bismarck sought to associate German nationalism with Prussia to help exclude Austria's mixed ethnic populations. Considering these issues, Bismarck began to overthrow Austrian influence in the Frankfurt Diet and the minor German states by 1863.

     Political maneuvering, Bismarck’s strength, remained the largest barrier against an Austrio-Prussian war because of increasing tensions in the German parliaments, the increasing strength of the Zollverein, and disputes over certain German areas. Austria petitioned Prussia for entrance into the Zollverein in 1865 but was rejected, creating further economic and political tension. War with Denmark in 1864 had drained Prussian coffers, but Austria also functioned through financial troubles in 1864-1866 and hoped membership in the Zollverein would alleviate some of the trouble. Countering this, Bismarck attempted to raise funds for the Prussian army through the Frankfurt Diet from the Germanic states while denying any funds to Austria.

     Although Bismarck and leading Prussian officials had a desire for war with Austria to consolidate their power over the German states, large numbers of Germans remained indecisive. Prussia noticed that “While the masses remained by and large loyal to the established system of particularism, the sympathies of the materially and intellectually decisive classes of society were increasingly attracted to Prussia. The great military victories of the Hohenzollern armies in 1866 consummated a process of coalescence in trade and manufacture which had been going on for a generation.” Berlin became the leading city of the Zollverein and a legitimate contender for unification, especially in northern and western Germany while southern Germans looked to Vienna and the federal parliament.
     With the long history of contested control between Austria and Prussia over German states after the Vienna Treaties in 1815,  Prussia decisively eliminated Austria from its Germanic allies as soon as politically possible in 1866. Isolation of Austria had been attempted throughout the 1850s,  but many Germanic states constantly switched support to the weaker of the two dominant German states to retain the balance of power for as long as possible and so preserve their own sovereignty.

     By 1866 Bismarck felt political maneuvering had been sufficiently exhausted. At the risk of all the prestige gained through the Zollverein and popular German sentiment, Prussia sought to determinedly eliminate the threat of Austrian power on the escalating issue of German unification. Thus, the diplomatic, political Otto von Bismarck transitioned Prussia from political negotiations to war

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Agatha Tyche

Splintered Unity I: Zollverein

     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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Agatha Tyche

Rise and Fall of Timbuktu

     Before American parents threatened to send disobedient children to Siberia, the farthest reaches of the European man's geographical mind rested at the southern end of the largest desert of the world. Timbuktu, a land of trade, education, and wealth captured the fascination of the West centuries before the colonization of Africa. Situated at the northernmost curve of the Niger River, Timbuktu provided a trade point for trans-Saharan caravans with access into central Africa and the western African coast.
     Established as a city by Muslim traders in the 1200s, Timbuktu grew notoriously prosperous with trade in ivory, slaves, salt, and, famously, gold. This city's importance made it prominent in several consecutive empires until gradual diminishment of the political power and wealth of North Africa and large-scale trade disruption after the Battle of Tondibi in 1591 ended the supreme importance of Timbuktu as a central trade hub south of the Sahara.

     Location allowed the city to become a prominent trader during the Muslim dominance of Africa with most Saharan trade routes connecting Timbuktu to the other major cities of North Africa. Salt miners in the desert brought their wares to the city to ship south along the river while gold from the hills to the east gave Timbuktu an unrepeatable monopoly on gold production. Other typical trade items of Africa like ivory and slaves flushed out the economy of a city whose population is estimated at 100,000 while Europeans were dying of plague.
     At the peak of its wealth, Emperor Mansa Musa I went on a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324. While his travels and lavish, gold-fueled gifts caught the attention of the rest of the world, that same pilgrimage crippled the wealth of the empire that it never fully recovered. Such vast quantities of gold were gifted and spent to feed the 60,000 man caravan that Egyptian and Arabian gold prices were inflated for a decade. At the time of the pilgrimage two-thirds of global gold production was controlled by the Malian Empire, but those techniques for gold extraction in thick clay and mud have not changed in a thousand years. Malian villages mine gold in the same method as their ancestors which does not allow for Mali to be a significant producer on the global market.
     Mansa Musa's leadership stabilized the empire both economically and militarily during his life. So successful was the empire at securing the safety of trade routes that even twelve years after Musa's death, crime remained minimal. This wealth and security allowed travelers, merchants, ambassadors, and scholars to reach Timbuktu safely and spread stories of it abroad.
     Often overlooked in the legacy of the city was the knowledge center that it maintained. Trade record keeping created a learned atmosphere that led to the establishment of a university and made Timbuktu a leader in the African and Muslim worlds for education. Traders brought books to the city and sold knowledge for prices higher than any other marketplace goods because of the demand for books and competition between scholars.
     The city could not retain its reputation as the global monopolizer in gold and as trans-Saharan trade weakened from Portugese and Spanish trans-African shipping, Timbuktu's dynasty began to fade. African trade continued to flow from the desert to the Niger River and from the gold mines to the North, but with civil wars and conquest, the disruption of the local trade created market hubs in distant cities. The dominance of Timbuktu was over, but its legend had only begun.
     In more recent times after the French colonization of Africa and the post-colonization establishment of the nation of Mali, Timbuktu became a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1988. When Islamic extremist militants invaded the city in 2012 and 2013, the cultural and historical wealth of the city was threatened and much of it was destroyed. In a remarkable, heroic effort to preserve the ancient Islamic writings, librarians and ledgers smuggled over 28,000 records and hundreds of thousands of pages out of library stores while the city was under Islamic-rebel control. The triumph of these efforts were more fully realized when the retreating rebels burned the library before fleeing the city as French-Mali joint forces retook the city.
     Timbuktu has been many things to many men. The capitol of one of the richest men to ever live, the trade hub for millions of Africans for centuries, a city of mystery, a culture of music, and the core of a legacy that spans the continents and centuries to capture the awe and imagination of every culture it contacts.

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Agatha Tyche