Fav small nation in history that had a chance for greatness but didnt

[GauchoBadger]

Korea could have pulled a Meiji, just like Japan, but it did it too late and ended up being first in chinese orbit, then in russian orbit, then under japanese domination, then divided between an american ally in the south and a lunatic quasi-orwellian dictatorship in the north.

There's the Song dynasty. Had they never been conquered by mongols, they could have turned into a maritime power and possibly even pulled off an early industrial revolution.

Bosnia. Had Tvrtko I won the Battle of Kosovo or something, he could have conquered the serbian despotate and estabilished a new player power in the balkans for centuries to come. The bosniaks could even stall the ottoman advance.

The Kingdom of Sicily -- i have an odd idea in which the hohenstaufens split between a german branch and a sicilian branch, and then the sicilians go forward to pry northern Italy out of the HRE's influence and create an earlier united peninsula, with the papal states as an autonomous province.

Texas?

There's also Pisa. I feel bad for it being bullied and eclipsed by Genoa and Venice.

 

[James XI]

Aragon.

Because, I mean, it's called Aragon FFS. Added bonus: you can have your capital in Barcelona!

Otherwise, always had a thing for ahead-of-the-curve multi cultures like Sicily, Alexandria, Flanders, Córdoba, etc. Or places that combined aesthetic and geo-strategic attractions, like Tuscany, Arles/Provence/Burgundy, Corinth, Milan, Cumbria, Omi, Antioch, Illyria, etc.

Btw, this thread is like designed for CK2 gamers.

 

[CaliGuy]

Aragon.

Because, I mean, it's called Aragon FFS. Added bonus: you can have your capital in Barcelona!

Otherwise, always had a thing for ahead-of-the-curve multi cultures like Sicily, Alexandria, Flanders, Córdoba, etc. Or places that combined aesthetic and geo-strategic attractions, like Tuscany, Arles/Provence/Burgundy, Corinth, Milan, Cumbria, Omi, Antioch, Illyria, etc.

Btw, this thread is like designed for CK2 gamers.

Isn't Catalonia (true, not independent yet!) essentially a modern-day version of Aragon, though?

 

[CaliGuy]

Milan counts as "got really close, but then collapsed".

When exactly did Milan get really close to doing this?

 

[WeissRaben]

When exactly did Milan get really close to doing this?

Reign of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, died of something (likely malaria) days before Florence surrendered to the Milanese siege. The day of his death, the Milanese domains looked like this:

The Visconti domains disintegrated in mere years; one century later, Milan wasn't even independent anymore, and Lombardy wouldn't have been stably Italian until Risorgimento.

 

[CaliGuy]

Reign of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, died of something (likely malaria) days before Florence surrendered to the Milanese siege. The day of his death, the Milanese domains looked like this:

The Visconti domains disintegrated in mere years; one century later, Milan wasn't even independent anymore, and Lombardy wouldn't have been stably Italian until Risorgimento.

Thanks for sharing this information!

 

[Faeelin]

Isn't Catalonia (true, not independent yet!) essentially a modern-day version of Aragon, though?

Ish. The Catalans don't see Aragon as a Catalan state.

 

[Napoleonrules]

Isn't Catalonia (true, not independent yet!) essentially a modern-day version of Aragon, though?

Catalonia is the coastline. Aragon is separate and only has Catalans in the eastern border areas with Catalonia. Aragonese is even a separate language from both Spanish and Catalan. They became United when the crown of Aragon also became the count of Barcelona, and also the Kingdom of Valencia. The Crown of Aragon included all those things, but the actual Kingdom of Aragon was inland and administered separately. The capital was Zaragoza and not Barcelona.

 

[Emperor RyRy]

Andorra

 

[Galba Otho Vitelius]

Every time someone unified China, that means there was one or more competing states or dynasties that could have unified China. In some cases these were real states which had decades, or in the case of the Warring States, decades of existence. Any one of these could have been contenders.

You have similar examples in India, notably Kosala and Kalinga. And in the west, the big nation states were all unified by one smaller state, Moscovy, Brandenburg-Prussia, France (originally a duchy, the country took its name from it), Wessex, Castille-Leon, Piedmont-Sardinia. In every one of these instances, some rival small state could have been the unifier.

Some of the more interesting European fragments include Guyenne or Aquitaine, Toulouse, Burgundy, Naples-Sicily, Milan-Lombardy, and Bavaria. Two that got away and did do great things are Austria and Portugal.

The post-colonial American states include five really big ones, the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina that could have been broken up. With Mexico there is a problem because so much of the population is concentrated in the Valley of Mexico, and with Canada there is a problem with keeping the US from absorbing the fragments. But Buenos Aires would have done better without the rest of Argentina in all likelihood, and you can say the same for a "confederation of the south" involving Sao Paulo and Rio Grande de Sul. A combination of Rio Grande de Sul and Uruguay would have been interesting.

Also Paraguay's bid for greatness.

Pakistan is a big, recently formed country, but it wouldn't be difficult to do a "wank Pakistan" TL.

 

[water123]

Indus Valley Civ?

 

[Kome]

I was going to say Switzerland but they actually had a pretty good run.

 

[Londinium]

Perhaps Navarre? It seemed to spend most of its existence playing off other Iberian territories and France against each other before finally being overwhelmed by Castile but it actually wound up putting its own offshoot on the French throne which, in just a few generations, managed to have direct descendants ruling Spain! Could it have somehow been more aggressive and somehow openly conquered both nations openly via playing them off each other then reaping the spoils?

 

[Emperor RyRy]

Indus Valley Civ?

Not really small for its time, though.

 

[aegis03florin]

France.... seriosly, with its potential she could do way much with some luck/visionary rulers/better decisions or at least avoid some very great setbacks and disasters.

 

[Revachah]

Kilwa

 

[Stolengood]

Wallachia.

 

[Cornelis]

France.... seriosly, with its potential she could do way much with some luck/visionary rulers/better decisions or at least avoid some very great setbacks and disasters.

That is true of all countries of the world, great or not. France had its time as one of the greatest powers in Europe and the World for some centuries.

 

[Yanez de Gomera]

- Hungary and Poland (although in various periods of their respective histories they were far from "small").

- Medieval Serbia under Stefan Dusan

- Periclean Athens

 

[Neoteros]

What about a surviving independent Breton state that, sharing a land border with the much more powerful French monarchy, pulled a Portugal and turned to the sea, conquering and colonizing vast chunks of Africa, the Americas and Asia, or a hypothetical independent Irish state doing the same to avoid being gobbled up by England? Maybe, if England had retained Normandy and kept meddling in the affairs of the European continent in general and those of France in particular, both Brittany and Ireland could've avoided their OTL fate, the world's lingua franca would be by now a Celtic one, and Gaelic football and hurling would be everywhere.

I doubt Korea could've done the same, since it's sandwiched between China (China) and Japan, but maybe if Goguryeo had unified the peninsula instead of Silla, Korea could've kept those territories that are now in China and Russia, maybe even expanding northwards into the mostly empty (if compared with Korea proper) lands of Siberia and the Russian Far East. All those natural resources... and since the capital of Goguryeo was Pyongyang, it counts as a Best Korea wank.