19 - A Europe of 'little states'

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One last map by Leopold Kohr, also an addendum to his book ‘The Breakdown of Nations’ (1957). Kohr probably realised that dividing Europe into rectangular, US-style states would clash with the ‘tribal’ makeup of the Old Continent’s culturally diverse peoples. So he modified that idea to propose a European federation of ‘little states’: still too small to cause harm, but more in line with Europe’s ethnic composition.

Some states are small enough to continue undivided: Eire, Portugal, all 5 Scandinavian countries, the 3 Baltic countries (which weren’t yet independent at that time), the Netherlands and Belgium (is Luxembourg too small for this map, or has it been absorbed by Belgium?), Austria, Hungary, Albania, Greece, Bulgaria and Switzerland. The bigger European states are divvied up along not unfamiliar lines:

The UK is disestablished in favour of its constituent nations: England, Scotland, Wales, (Northern) Ireland.

Spain disintegrates into Asturia, Castillia, Andalusia, Catalonia and Aragón.

France falls apart into Aquitaine, Brittany, Normandy, Isle de France, Alsace-Lorraine, Burgundy, Languedoc, the Midi and Corsica.

Italy is replaced by successor states Savoy, Lombardy, Tuscany, the Papal States (!), Naples, Sicily and Sardinia.

Yugoslavia breaks up into Croatia, Dalmatia, Bosnia, Serbia and Macedonia.

Romaniabecomes Transylvania and Wallachia.

Czechoslovakia is divided among Bohemia and Slovakia.

Germany, the pivotal power in Central Europe (in a bad way, historically) disintegrates into Bavaria, Saxony, Hanover, the Rhineland, Baden-Württemberg, Brandenburg, Prussia, Silesia and one more state the name of which I can’t quite make out – but which would have to be Mecklenburg.

Poland becomes Posen, Galicia and Warsaw.

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