Stardate 20031123.1325

(Captain's log): Brian writes:

Our great-grandfather (Joseph Kuhn) grew up right on The Netherlands/Germany border in the mid to late 1800s. There was a border dispute between the two countries and Germany started to "draft" young men into the military in preparation for war. Old Joe took the next ship to America. "I don't fight for land," Joseph said (according to a conversation my grandfather had with his dad, which he passed on to me). "My friends were there, just across a pasture, and I fight them for that pasture? No. I come to America. I change my last name to sound "Quen" instead of "Koon." Sounded more American, I think."

Yep. Some people are just born American.

My knowledge of European history is sadly lacking. Were Germany and The Netherlands called Prussia and Holland in the late 1800s? That's how my grandfather related the story to me - saying his father "lived on the Prussia and Holland border."

"Germany" as we think of it now is a very recent creation, the grand achievement of Otto von Bismarck. Until about 1870, the area we now think of as Germany was many nations, some large, some small, some microscopic. The largest was Prussia, whose capital was Berlin.

The area we now think of as Germany (Deutschland) had had the same kind of city-state political arrangement as had previously existed in France and Italy, but various wars in those nations had resulted in incorporation of those city-states into larger pieces long since. In Germany they survived, in the form of principalities like Bavaria and Westphalia. They had long been part of a confederation called "The Holy Roman Empire" (which, as wags have long observed, was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire) but that was a pretty loose confederation for most of its history and ceased to exist even in name after conquest by Napoleon, who instead created "The Confederation of the Rhine", as a nominal ally of France but in practice as a subservient state. This page provides a list of the states involved:

The members of the Confederation included large kingdoms and duchies, together with smaller principalities and city states.

The key ones were Bavaria (3.5 million subjects), Saxony (2 million), Westphalia (2 million), Wurttemburg (1.5 million) Baden (1 million) and the Duchy of Warsaw (4 million).

The others were Cleve-Berg, Hesse-Darmstadt, Anhalt-Bernburg, Anhalt-Dessau, Anhalt-Kothen, Hohenzollern-Hechingen, Hohernzoller-Sigmaringen, Isenburg, Leyen, Leichtenstein, Mecklinburg-Schwerin, Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Ebersdorf, Gera, Gtreiz, Lobenstein, Schleiz, Saxe-Coburg-Saalfield, Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, Saxe-Hildburghausen, Saxe-Meningen, Saxe-Weimar, Schaumburg-Lippe, Schwarburg-Rudolstadt, Schwarzburg-Sonderhausen, Waldeck, Wurzburg, Erfurt and Frankfurt.

The ones whose names start "Saxe-..." were parts of Saxony which at the time remained independent. Hesse-Darmstadt and Hesse-Kassel (not listed) were the Hessians, whose mercenaries were so loathed by the Americans during the Revolution.

After the final defeat of Napoleon in 1815, these minor states were independent, surrounded by big and powerful nations: France, Austria, Russia, the UK, and Prussia. Of those, Austria and Prussia spoke German, and they had been political competitors for a long time and jockied constantly for influence with these small states, mostly nullifying one another. And the other great powers also tried to maintain influence, most notably the French with the more southern German states. So as central as that area was, and financially important as it was, and with so many outsiders interested in it, there was a balance of power which worked to keep it in pieces and keep it independent.

Bismarck was the one who really set out to change it all. Bismarck was the Chancellor of Prussia, more or less its prime minister. Bismarck set out to bring them all together under a single roof, said roof belonging to his master, Kaiser Wilhelm of Prussia (of House Hohenzollern). By about 1870 that process had been completed, and in 1870 there was a border war between Germany and France which is known to history as the "Franco-Prussian War", even though the border of France came nowhere near the formal border of "Prussia" as such.

But at the time, "Germany" as we now think of it was more like a coalition led by the Prussians, rather than a single nation in the modern sense. That war was between France and Prussia, which is why it has that name. It was fought by Prussian troops, who operated in southern Germany.

"Unification" is formally dated to 1871, but I think as a practical matter it was more gradual. In the 1870's it really wasn't a fact. By WWI it was.

The low countries went through a similar process of coalescing, and what we now think of as "The Netherlands" is made up of Holland, Friesland, Groningen, and several other areas which historically had been more independent. A lot of those historical names survive as the names of provinces, and there are provinces named "Holland" and "Friesland" which more or less coincide with historic borders. For the most part those who lived in what became the Netherlands spoke Dutch, though the Frisians had their own language, and some who spoke Dutch ended up in Belgium instead (where the language is referred to as "Flemish").