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Prussia (/ ˈ p r ʌ ʃ ə /, German: Preußen [ˈpʁɔʏsn̩] ⓘ; Old Prussian: Prūsija, Prūsa [b]) was a German state centred on the North European Plain that originated from the 1525 secularization of the Prussian part of the State of the Teutonic Order.
The Kingdom of Prussia [a] (German: Königreich Preußen, pronounced [ˈkøːnɪkʁaɪç ˈpʁɔʏsn̩] ⓘ) constituted the German state of Prussia between 1701 and 1918. [5] It was the driving force behind the unification of Germany in 1866 and was the leading state of the German Empire until its dissolution in 1918. [5]
The usurper kingdom had prevailed against the European great powers and would play a vital future role in the "Concert of Europe". [8] Austria and Prussia both would fight France in the Napoleonic Wars; after their conclusion, the German states were reorganized into a more unified 37 separate states of the German Confederation.
Prussia chose not to seek Austrian territory for itself, and this made it possible for Prussia to gain an alternative to its emerging Russian alliance in the future, when Austria would feel threatened more by Italian and Pan-Slavic irredentism than by Prussia. The vanishing northern states protested against their annexation to the Hohenzollern ...
The territorial changes of Germany after World War II can be interpreted in the context of the evolution of global nationalism and European nationalism. The latter half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century saw the rise of nationalism in Europe. Previously, a country consisted largely of whatever peoples lived on the land ...
The situation did not suit either France, which unexpectedly found itself next to the militarily powerful Prussian-led North German Confederation, or Prussia, whose foremost objective was to complete the process of uniting the German states under its control. Thus, war between the two powers since 1866 was only a matter of time.
In 1866, most mid-sized German states had opposed Prussia, but by 1870 these states had been coerced and coaxed into mutually protective alliances with Prussia. If a European state declared war on one of their members, then they all would come to the defense of the attacked state.
The intermittent Germanisation of Prussia was a historical process that resulted in the region’s inclusion in various German states. Originating with the arrival of ethnically German groups in the Baltic region, it progressed sporadically with the development of the Teutonic Order and then much later under the Kingdom of Prussia, which continued to impact the region with germanising policies ...