Kleinstaaterei, a German word for 'the occurence of (many) petty states' is a polyvalent term, mainly used for the internal state of Germany (and neighbouring regions) during the Holy Roman Empire, especially in its late phase, when it was officially known as Heiliges Römisches Reich Deutscher Nation. This page is about the Germanic empire. ... This page is about the Germanic empire. ...

Unlike most European states, especially France, the Neuzeit's tendancy to political concentration failed within the Holy Roman Empire to produce any truly coherent imperial state. On the contrary, the hundreds of (mostly minor, even tiny) principalities -mainly resulting from successive dynastic splits, sometimes refleted in compound names such as Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha- were the ones to modernise their military, judicial, customs and domanial administrations, which were virtualy non-existant at the imperial level, which thus was little more than an in effect almost confederal feudal top level without political or military clout, and during the religious wars fundamentally split between Catholic and Protestant dynasties. This article needs cleanup. ... Feudalism comes from the Late Latin word feudum, itself borrowed from a Germanic root *fehu, a commonly used term in the Middle Ages which means fief, or land held under certain obligations by feodati. ...

After French Emperor Napoleon I toppled the Empire in 1806, Kleinstaaterei was not eliminated - he shortly imposed a relative concentration into over two dozen states in the Confederation of the Rhine, Bonaparte's hegemonic vehicle that didn't survive his military defeat, and the victorious allies (including Prussia and Austria, the only major German powers, neither part of that Rheinbund) decided at the Vienna Congress (1814-1815) on massive dynastic restorations, be it with some exceptions and compensations for some redrawing of the map, resulting in an only modestly more concentrated re-edition of the pre-Napoleontic Kleinstaaterei. For other uses, see Napoleon (disambiguation). ... The Confederation of the Rhine or Rhine Confederation (Rheinbund in German; in French officially États confédérés du Rhin but in practice Confédération du Rhin) lasted from 1806 to 1813 and was formed from sixeteen German states by Napoleon after he defeated Habsburgs Francis II... Of Corsican origin, the Bonaparte (originally Buonaparte) family is the family of Napoleon I, who was elected as first consul of France on November 10, 1799 with the help of his brother, Lucien Bonaparte, president of the Council of Five Hundred at Saint-Cloud. ... The coat of arms of the Kingdom of Prussia, 1701-1918 The word Prussia (Old Prussian: Prūsa, German: Preußen, Polish: Prusy, Lithuanian: Prūsai, Latin: Borussia) has had various (often contradictory) meanings: The land of the Baltic Prussians (in what is now parts of southern Lithuania, the Kaliningrad... The Congress of Vienna (October 1, 1814 - June 9, 1815) was a conference between ambassadors from the major powers in Europe that was chaired by the Austrian statesman Klemens Wenzel von Metternich and held in Vienna, Austria. ...

The rise in all Europe of Nationalism in the sense of striving for a 'nation-state' governing an entire (etnho-cultural) people, had to make progrssive forces insist an a unified Germany, reflected in the pejorative use of the word "Kleinstaaterei". It was one of the central demands of the March 1848 revolutions, but the ruling houses still managed to resist then. // Nationalism is an ideology which holds that the nation, ethnicity or national identity is a fundamental unit of human social life, and makes certain cultural and political claims based upon that belief; in particular, the claim that the nation is the only legitimate basis for the state, and that each...

Only Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck's policy to gradually construct a politically real German Empire under the Prussian royal house of Hohenzolern would in 1871 end Kleinstaaterei (except in some peripheral regions, e.g. Luxemburg, Liechtenstein) in favor of a 'strictly German' Nationalstaat (without Austria(-Hungary), the Habsburg empire), putting Germany back on the map as a major European power (be it too late to became a major colonial power).

On the positive side, the decentralised nature of the Kleinstaaterei did contribute to cultural diversity within Germany, and the numerous, rivaling courts were very important in mecenate.

• By analogy "Kleinstaaterei" equally applies to similar cases, especially, until its Risorgimento (reunification as a kingdom 1861-1870), to the Italian peninsula, where many city states of widely varying sizes have coexisted with numerous, often petty, monarchies, though in time several regions had seen significant concentrations resulting in a few major powers, actual stronger then their size suggests since they were among Europe's richest states: the Papal States in the centre, the dogal Venetian Republic, the duchy of Milan's hold on roughly the present Lombardy region, Piedmont-Sardinia (which would achieve the unification from its Turin-based home territories), and the largest, covering nearly the southern half: the Neapolitan' kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

Italian unification, also known as Risorgimento (resurrection), was a historical process by which the Kingdom of Sardinia (ruled by the Savoy dynasty with Turin as its capital) gradually conquered the Italian peninsula, including the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, the Duchy of Modena, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the Duchy... The Papal States (Gli Stati della Chiesa or Stati Pontificii, States of the Church) was one of the major historical states of Italy before the boot-shaped peninsula was unified under the Piedmontese crown of Savoy (later a republic). ... The Republic of Venice was a city-state in Venetia in Northeastern Italy, based around the city of Venice. ... The Duchy of Milan was a state in northern Italy from 1395 to 1797. ... Kingdom of Sardinia, in 1839: Mainland Piedmont, with Savoia upper left (pink) and Nizza (Nice) lower left (brown) both now French, and Sardinia in the inset The Kingdom of Sardinia is a former kingdom in Italy. ... The Two Sicilies The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was the new name that the Bourbon king Ferdinand IV of Naples gave to his domain (including Southern Italy and Sicily) after the end of the Napoleonic Era and the full restoration of his power in 1816. ...

See also

• Balkanisation

Balkanization is a geopolitical term used to describe the process of fragmentation or division of a region into many smaller regions that are often hostile or non-cooperative with each other. ...

Sources and References

• [The German Wikipedia article (unsourced when consulted, February 2006)]