East (German) and West (French) Francia quarreled also the first 600 years of the divide, but not as fiercely as later. There was a buffer in between and other territorial foreign politics were going on, involving marrying more often than fighting. History of the following centuries is much more and different than just its territorial conflicts, but it is the red thread for other histories and also explains the namegiving of regions, which we are looking for. Things that happened in those first 600 years:

• a series of many of crusades to the 'Holy Land' ranging from 1092 to 1291, with later versions opposing the Ottoman Empire up to 1481,... Catholic religious orders founded as military orders, with quite some money and majestic buildings across Europe: Teutonic order, the Knights Templar, and the still existing Sovereign Military Order of Malta..
• Mongolian invasions and the pest which started in the east in 1347 and took over Western-Europe within two years,
• slow production improvements and surplus in agriculture and the development of city states with increasing political 'independence' from the higher-scale Kingdoms (of course there was interdependence between the different political entities).. from city states like Milan, Venice, Genoa, Florence/Firenze the Renaissance movement could rise.. while the Flemish cities and the Hanseatic League cities gave rise to a certain mercantilistic capitalism..
• France had been mostly focused on battling with the English resulting in the Hundred Years' War from 1337 to 1453, with figures passing by like Jeanne d'Arc from 1429 'till two years later when she was captured by the Burgundians and sold to English-serving parties,
• geopolitics was taken further as the understanding of the continent's surroundings became better understood with cartographers and explorers like Gerardus Mercator and Piri Re'is,

 



 

Cross-continental trade between cities, which were the breeding ground for innovations, art and new more self-ruling powers

 

• in 1477 Mary of Burgundy didn't marry the French king's son, but she married the Austrian archduke (from one of many royal Habsburg family lines), making Burgundy and the Burgundian Lowlands (coinciding now more or less Belgium and the Netherlands) Habsburg ruled territory, and that way also linked to the Holy Roman Empire.. Daughter of Maria of Burgundy (who soon died) and the Austrian Archduke was Margaretha of Austria who would be kidnapped by the freewheelers of Ghent, who had a history of going badass, demanding a truce with France and then even a marriage with Karel 8.. her widowed Archduke Austrian father remarried with some high aristocrat woman of Bretagne, whom the French Karel 8 wanted to marry, while she wanted to have a league of Spain, Austria and England against the French, but too bad for the French guy he was now surrounded, oh but then the French guy send in his military in Bretagne's cities and forced the new Bretagne wife of the Austrian father of his own future Austrian wife, to marry him anyway with a contract with unfavorable conditions, like soon the Bretagne wife then had to marry his successor.. the Austrian would-be wife who didn't become his wife married a Spanish guy, while her brother married a Spanish woman, making Spain become Habsburg too (two generations after Castile and Aragon marriagewise unifying into Spain).. then years later her Spanish guy died and she married a French guy once again, lobbying for peace, going to live in Mechelen.. taking care of the growing up Charles V, oldest kid of her borther and his Spanish girl.. a lot comes together here as the Burgundy dynasty of Valois lurked, and there were negotiations with the English Tudors and a beating of French troops in Normandy, becoming a war with France when Karel V was crowned in 1519.. long story short: the higher scale politics were troublesome.. then she ordered the first burnings of protestant people as to repress any opposition..
• the highest scale of political entities may have had a crucial impact on cultures with times, but the political patchwork is not at all a direct manifestation and neither a determinator for cultures which weren't confined by governance.. this could be illustrated by a map of languages in Medieval Europe, if it existed somewhere..
• instead of farfetched history, little decisions make up for big unchanged structures today, like the Archduke of Austria declaring the Thurn und Taxis family (who made a fortune in the post 'business') could be considered as aristocratic, when they imagined some blue blood with creative use of genealogy, so then they had their palace in Brussels for 200 years and then Regensburg and now this carcrazy kid is one of the largest landowners in Europe, 'owning' Mechelen and Antwerp, and vast regions of land in Swabia and in Upper-Pfalz next to Franconia, lots of which are nature. By levying taxes they accumulated more capital, which they still have and use as a leverage for more accumulation today.. it's not so farfetched as you imagine:
  • my father's father fought as a teenager in WOII..
  • his father's father was not much younger or older when he saw the advent of the German Empire and later the exploitation of Congo..
  • his father's father was 20-something when he saw the first signs of an Industrial Evolution with for instance the first railway in continental Europe, in Mechelen, and scenes only Constantin Meunier probably could show..
  • his father' father heared of the French Revolution and then saw the Brabant Revolution blow over the region, being followed by forced conscriptions to the French Army which were answered in Flanders and Brabant with a look for help of Prussia and England, and de Boerenkrijg which was answered in turn with bloody oppression and a number of civilian deaths comparable to the atrocities with which each of the later world wars took off in the region..
  • his father's father saw the results of the house of Bourbon in France opposing the Habsburgs in Austria, both wanting the power over Spain, a feud they fought out menacing the northern Dutch republic, Habsburg being backed by England and Protestant German states..
  • his father's father noticed the end of the Thirrty Year's War and the Peace of Westphalia..
  • and his father's father must have been born around the reign of Charles V..
• the Spanish were busy with executing their authority with the start of the inquistion in 1478, numbing all possible seeds of opposition, giving rise to violent 'inquisition' ghost stories put forward by their contestors and resistors, but they did make witch hunts and trials illegal... then Spain paid for a ship with an Italian capitan who ended up in the New World (1492) while also eventually reconquering the peninsula on the muslims (also 1492),.. soon the Habsburgs would marry their way into the Spanish kings' hereditary line as foreboded in the aforementioned..
• Although bookpressing existed before, Gutenberg used loose letters in 1450 and soon in Antwerp and more Northern cities in the Lowlands bookprinting developed on a more commercial scale, lifting off as a thriving industry.. in the evolution of languages now written language starts to play a role, encouraging a standardized language for the local elite.. way way later via states' education, languages of populations could become geographically delineated things more than geographic fades into each other.. though dialects today still give away the language's past.. Fact of the day: the lowland's language was named after its affinity with German (Deutsch) as the language referred to itself 'till the 1800's as Nederduytsch, making the English call it Dutch. Then Dutch and German started to refer to Dutch, referring to the state where it was spoken, the lowlands, just in the way English referred to German by referring to the accompanying nation state minus Switzerland, north-Italy and Austria.
• At the same time Renaissance humanism slowly pressed itself into the intellectual and artistic world around Europe, north of Italy (German Renaissance in today still thriving cities Strasbourg, Nürnberg and Basel; Netherlands's Renaissance; the French sponsoring people like Leonardo da Vinci and seeing the School of Fontainebleau emerge; the English with Shakespeare...). Hand in hand with this went the breaking off of many schemes of Feudalism, ending a pyramid hierarchy of lords build on eventually having heritable/marriable rights to certain lands and its production and inhabitants, reinforcing this right with violence and/or protection... authority by violence. Nonetheless, when agricultural production experienced a bad year, revolves against establishment spiked undiminishedly desperate.

After 600 years, the catholic church's power was interwoven with aristocracy's power and all were of course stubborn to keep the power balance tilting towards themselves, which led to growing tension, being met by the power with more tension or diplomacy, and then more tension, in an already divided Europe where shaky power balances made east side and west side slide away into mean opposition.

• in 1517 a societal undertow existed which grew fed up with the the excesses of power within the church.. a theological authority, Luther, materialized these by theorizing and printing 95 theses in Leipzig, Nürnberg and Bazel,

 



 

Dürer visiting Antwerp in 1520.

 

 



 

Antwerp showing as a thriving city

 

• The Habsburg family (the name stemming from Habsburg in Switzerland) had already provided the emperor for the Holy Roman Emperor in 1273 with the count of Swabia. Flashing to 1438 another scion of Habsburg was choosen by the seven prince-electors. From then on the Habsburg family would keep the crown by heriting, outruling the prince-electors, starting a dynasty well into recent history, with lines ruling over kingdoms while at the same time providing - via the Austrian line - the emperor 'till Westphalia's peace.
• One of them, Charles V, was crowned the Holy Roman ('German') emperor in 1519, while he surrounded himself with the greatest thinkers, like Desiderius Erasmus, who lvied in Leuven and Mechelen for him. He reigned 'till in 1555 he had to stop and divide the Hausmacht over two sons. One would be king of Bohemen having the region of Spain, plus the Netherlands and Burgundy. The other one would have Hausmacht over Austria and get the emepror title on top. Suddenly there were two Habsburg lineages going there own way. So their father, Ghent-born Charles V, would prove to be the last emperor to have exercised somewhat power over most of the kingdoms and other states within the empire (already excluding the northern lowlands, Italy and Switzerland),

 



 

Charles V's inherited empires (Hausmacht) consisting of a numerous series of entities, amalgamated into generic names like the Netherlands.., while besides he was the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire which served as an umbrella unit over a series of other kingdoms.

 

• from 1529 on Habsburg had to deal with every time closer attacks by the Ottoman Empire.. catholic France saw this menacing large empire, catholic Habsburg, being attacked and made pact with the Ottomans, opposing Charles V. Also the Dutch eventually looked for a friend with the Ottomans, namely against the ruling Spanish Habsburg threat. These bonds with the Ottoman made for cultural, artistic and technological exchange and a flourishing trade.

 



 

Charles V's 'oligopoly' of crowns

 

• later in the 1500's the lowlands got into a quarrel with the Spanish who send their troops north, unpaid Spanish and German troups muted and ended Antwerp's golden age with one of the many furies, plundering the southern lowland cities.. from the seventeen united provinces, seven remained and they would form a defensive bond which would result in the centuries-later border between Belgium and the Netherlands (then paradoxically called 'Belgium Foederatum') as well as the border between a catholic and reactive calvinist population,

 



 

1565, Pieter Bruegel the Elder painted from his residence in Brussels, paid mostly by the Habsburg chief minister who lived in Mechelen.

 

 



 

1565, Bruegel painted this scene one year before famine and Beeldenstorm. A broad base of the people worked on the land while a 'surplus' of food production allowed for a 'surplus' of people.. a big part of the 'surplus people either fought or decided where would be fought.. the deciding ones choosed suffering they did not know for the non-deciding ones they did not know.. the sad gist of humanity over lots of places through time on earth. Sometimes the farmers fell victim to scorched earth strategies when opposing troops passed by or retreat. On the other hand 'surplus' people in the city were sometimes subject to plundering troops. Thousands of people would be left in blood and fire.

 

• the Habsburg dynasty then took over Reformed parts within the Holy Roman Empire,
• the emergence of protestant movements challenged the existing power distributions as well as the mass' sentiment.. in the 1520's monks who went too protestant ended at the stake.. in the 1530's German cities knew an early Beeldenstorm.. in 1562 the French Wars of Religions started, in 1566 several cities were vandalized by protestants reacting against establishment with the so-called 'Beeldenstorm' (a Dutch word internationally used), in 1572 there was St. Bartholomew's Day massacre in Paris, a violent escalation of mutual tensions and threats following a royal protestant-catholic marriage.. over the years there was a lot of bargaining between the protestant and catholic, receiving rights, independences, losing them again.. tolerant kings.. being murdered.. replaced by less tolerant.. a lot of deceit, betrayal, complots, lousy diplomacy.. marriages.. escalations.. defenestrations.. some cardinal saying they should work together against the Ottoman,...

 



 

The Protestant Union as founded in 1609, including a Pfalz (Palatinate) dynasty area in the east and in the west of the Holy Roman Empire.

 

 

the 0th World War

• the 30 year's war raged on over the whole continent from 1618 to 1648, mostly concerning the Holy Roman Empire which had lost central control after Charles V (let's call it 'Germany', not for historical correctness but for convenience).. it started with calvinist Bohemians getting an extremely catholic king, they reacted violently.. charged southwards.. Bavaria and lutherian Saxony resisted.. catholic Austria and Spain came up north and halted the reformed states in the north of the fading Holy Roman Empire.. the 'Dutch' provided military support to the Austrian Habsburgs and the Spanish Habsburgs, hoping the short peace truce with them would be lenghtened.. it became a genocide and expulsion of Bohemians.. the Dutch were attacked anyway by the Spanish.. the Swedish and Danish lutherians didn't like the territorial developments of (Austrian Habsburger) Ferdinand II closing in and made this quickly clear.. catholic France weighed in on the domestic protestant movement, stopping the Hugenot movement (Calvinist rather than Lutherian) in its tracks with the siege of La Rochelle in 1627.. the catholic power in France was ironcially helped by the calvinist Netherlands, being surrounded at home, where they were desperate for a serious ally..,

 



 

• at the same time France had a secret agreement with the lutherian Swedish.. the lutherian city of Maagdeburg vowed to support the Swedish, so the catholic league of German states came to take and massacre the city, suddenly making the whole of Saxony reject the catholic liga.. the catholic troops were driven south to southern Bavaria.. in Wallonia and Lotharingen coal ovens were developed.. the Dutch took this technology siding with Sweden.. Sweden and the catholic Habsburgs had enough and stopped fighting..
• so cardinal Richelieu of catholic France, having helped the lutherian Swedisch before, now went to war against Spain to stop being more and more surrounded by fellow catholics of Habsburg.. this battle deployed in the southern Netherlands (later Belgium), being Habsburg territory.. then the Catalonians sided with the French instead of the Spanish.. England watched from over the canal at these Europeans sharing a continent and fighting all over (ok, they were fighting themselves in the English Civil War between Parliamentarians ("Roundheads") and Royalists ("Cavaliers") principally over the manner of England's governance).. in 1648 it is said that 6 of 20 million inhabitants of the German kingdoms died of famine, violence and disease.. Austrian Habsburg, Spanish Habsburg and Bavaria lost against France, Sweden, the Dutch and a Protestant coalition of German states.. at the same time this meaned the end of the Eighty Year's War for the Dutch. Peace. France got Elzas and gazed at the divided lands, more seeds for long lasting territorial disputes,
• Thomas Hobbes, English thinker, among other things demonstrated a certain necessity for a strong central authority to avoid the evil of discord and civil war.. he proposes the civil society.. the idea of government takes form.. the capacity of the government, he argued, was to maintain peace, protection, justice and wellbeing in a manner that ensures the continuation of society and civil life. 100 years earlier we already had the ideas of Thomas More who illustrated that, for being free, one needs a lot of rules..

 



 

Allegory of the Peace of Westphalia, by Flemish Antwerp painter Jacob Jordaens in 1654

 

After the 0th World War

• Austrian Habsburg would soon again be approached by an Ottoman offense. The Siege of Vienna was triumphantically ended two months later in the summer of 1683,..

 



 

• in the Northern lowlands things stabilised, Amsterdam thrived and even Tsar Peter The Great, having serious authority over probably 1/7 of the world's land surface, went to live in Holland incognito as an apprentice shipbuilder.
• later France joined forces with Habsburg and Russia, opposing the thriving German state of Prussia,

 



 

• the English were eager to oppose the French again together with the Prussians, Prussia withstood,
• over the sea, where the United States of America were on the verge of emerging, the French didn't pass the chance to screw over the English once again,

 



 

The French Revolution was an abrupt signal of evolving ideas and power relations. The catholic church was put outside at the door in already complex international politics. The outcome was yet again an absolute rule, inequality manipulated by another new elite and militaristic governments.

 

• gradually industrial became a concept.. the coal evolution made for a few accelerations in England and then Wallonia and Elzas..
• then with Napoleon's revolutionary wars from 1803 'till 1815 France was eventually opposed to all of the aforementioned together (though Bavaria tended to the French), he had some successes, exporting revolutionary principles, bringing the opponents closer together.. The wars are often categorised into five conflicts, each termed after the coalition that fought Napoleon: the Third Coalition (1805), the Fourth (1806–07), the Fifth (1809), Russia and allies in the Sixth (1813), exile of Napoleon to Elba but he escaped, being responded with the Seventh Coalition consisting of the Netherlands (in which the battle unfolded on the fields of Waterloo), England, Prussia and three German states (1815)..
• In 1815 the Congress of Vienna was ratified. Then, within the same year, Mr. comeback Napoleon lost decisively at Waterloo. The French were defeated by the British and Prussians.
  Fastforward.. By 1870 France was determined to restore its dominant position in continental Europe. On the opposite side Prussian chancellor Otto von Bismarck saw the chance to join forces with southern Germanic kingdoms.  After a series of diplomatic last-minute saves, eventually, France declared war, starting the 5-month Franco-Prussian War.
  Quickly the French were overrun. The Prussians and Germanic allies won, resulting in 1) the Old Empire's re-emergence as a German nation state., starting to consolidate like the other upcoming nation states, glueing people together into a central authority with history-rewriting, big statues and tales, of national pride, 2)  France losing territory, strategic transport nodes and natural resources, with losing most of Alsace-Lorraine (Reichsland Elsaß-Lothringen).
  This shift upset the European balance of power. French determination to regain Alsace-Lorraine and fear of another Franco-German war, along with British apprehension about the balance of power, became factors in the causes of World War I, among other factors concerning political, territorial and economic competition; militarism, a complex web of alliances and alignments, arms races of the previous decades, and military planning; imperialism, the growth of nationalism going hand in hand with colonialism; and the power vacuum created by the decline of the Ottoman Empire with convoluted and fragmented governance.
• with growing trade and new capitalisms, societies changed in enthralling ways, which inspired Ferdinand Tönnies to propose the concept of 'Gemeinschaft' (direct ties and bonds with people) and of 'Gesellschaft' (a set of rules, a more rational and opportunistic way of connecting to people, further away also, without judging if that's good or bad)... capitalism is consequently investigated by Thüringer Max Weber..


 

Evolution of estimated GDP per capita at purchasing power parity in 1990 international dollars

 

• Recapitulating, in 1871 the French (under Napoleon III) were defeated at Sedan, near the young southern split off from the Netherlands, given the elusive name of Belgium for reasons of nation creation,
 
Prussian artillery parades through Paris

 

• Paris was sieged, the German empire was proclaimed in Versailles and Bismarck took the lead of unifying a bunch of states, in the era in which nation states emerged, followed by mutual political tension build-up all the way to a first world war (the Great War) culminating into frustrations, trouble and strives leading to seizes of power and a second world war, when a total of about 13.6 million soldiers served in the German Army.

 



 

  

 



 

Around the fin de siècle Paris constructed metro lines while the former capital of Prussia, Berlin, gave rise to the idea of the metropolis and big-city life, as thought upon by Georg Simmel.

 

 



 

Possible list of cities reaching one million inhabitants.. There is a lot of discussion possible.. the pre-Islam city of Baghdad in Persia could be in there in 800 already.. The Khmer capital Angkor exercised central authority over a broader area raising questions of where to delineate the city.. Anyway soon the city would collapse socially as they couldn't adapt to the changed/changing environment adequately.

 

• Then this happened:


 

Evolution of the population of several large states in the world, notice worldwide growth from 1950

 



 

Worldwide growth from 1950 as explained by demographic transitions

 



 

Demographic transitions

 



 

How there was an evolution in the share populations had in the world's (market-compatible) wealth

 



 

Current world population

 



 

How there were as many people in the last decades as did ever live before those decades

 



 

Population number projection

 



 

East coast of the USA as seen from the ISS