This story appears in the March/April 2017 issue of National Geographic History magazine. Throughout history, small states have come out of nowhere, and rapidly become great powers. This was the ...
In the last decade of the 18th century, Napoleon’s forces were strong enough to conquer and control the whole of mainland Europe, including the numerous German states. He reorganised the ...
Prussia's development as a successful, modern industrial state gave hope to German nationalists. Economically, unification through the Zollverein economic alliance of 1834 had been a success.