I don't understand. Why were they never able to unify and become a superpower in any meaningful way?

Yeah but so was Germany and France, they all had different languages and cultures, they just united them better.

But why were they stronger? Italy had everything. It had human talent. Population. Technological innovation. Access to the sea. trade routes. Religious legitimacy through the Vatican. Everything. There was no reason for Germany or France to be stronger than Italy. Even militarily.

>united them better

this board is retarded
you're retarded

explain yourself instead of calling other retarded please this is a board of peace

also we are disorganized, greedy, we always think that other's business are only their business, so we don't care about each other, and other stuff like that

>implying this isnt best italy

just a history of division and outside powers who sought to keep that division going for as long as possible.

Northern Italy was divided within the HRE by Papal Decree and so any giving out of land was mostly up to the church and the emperor, and a united Northern Italy was a direct threat to the Emperor in Austria, who sought to keep them as city-states.

Same happened with other players such as France and Spain, Spain was able to gobble up the Southern half of the peninsula through inheritance of the throne, and France spent the better part of the 1500's fighting the Hapsburg's for control of the North, with a Hapsburg victory in the end as they continued to exercise control.

It really wasn't until the House of Savoy inherited Sardinia and Piedmont was there really a fully independent Italian state outside of Venice. Napoleon played around with a Kingdom of Italy but made perfectly sure that they were subordinate to France, but the establishment of his puppet state gave birth to a new wave of Italian nationalism, which Sardinia-Piedmont was able to accomplish with help from the French, who saw an Italy under the House of Savoy as much more preferable to a Hapsburg Italy.

But by the time Italy did unite, it was very late into the Empire-building game, with all of Europe's great powers already established save for Germany, but Italy still managed to carve out a colonial empire on its own, and defeat the Hapsburg Austrians on the battlefield in WWI.

to make it simple, the major European powers made sure that Italy never united because they rightly feared that they would be a major player on the world stage, and instead sought to keep them divided for as long as possible. And were allowed to be united mostly at the mercy of the Bourbons who wanted to rip away Hapsburg influence on the Peninsula.

>Why were they never able to unify and become a superpower in any meaningful way?
Because the many regional states were but a chessboard for the actual European powers

>I am talking about literally since the fall of Rome
Many of the UNESCO world heritage sites were created after that, during the Middle Ages and Reinassance (fun fact: no country has more than Italy)

Except Italy has basically no natural resources and is entirely dependant on import, human capital is all it ever produces

too forgiving climate and living conditions made them degenerate and complacent, just as it did with spanish

>

At least the Spanish got an empire at one point

That was an empire of dirt and poverty, look at its shards now. Literally the epitome of degeneracy and squalor.

Right. No natural resources. All the more reason why it should have been an incentive to unify and work together... like their ancestors in Rome for instance

This is true, empire was a mistake for Spain and trying to get an empire was a mistake for Italy (ethiopia).

the Italians did pretty okay for themselves despite being so late to the empire building game.

>Spain was able to gobble up the Southern half of the peninsula through inheritance of the throne
Dunno if the 1442 intervention could be called dynastic inheritance

The efforts to colonize didnt pay off very much and Italy had bigger problems are home.

yeah inheritance was the wrong word, but it still ended with Naples under the house of Trastamara so hopefully the same point came across.

Trst naš, you wops

Unify whom? Longobards were all over the place in 600, it was nothing but barbarians flowing in from the north

Even the edgiest corsican nationalists dont want to be italian. Desolé Luigi

also gib val d'aosta

>Didn't pay off very much.

Well, had Gheddafi been just a dog with no bite but a big bark, Lybia would see an Italian majority and a Tuareg/Arab/Berber minority.

That, and if Bismarck hadn't convinced France to throw Sicilian colonists in the sea in Tunisia, it would have had a little more legitimacy.

>Gib Val D'Aosta

Nah. We'd rather give up Bozen to Austria, much to THEIR horror.

I think a feasible solution would be joint administration. Namely, border zones with history of plenty of regime changes could be governed by two states at once. In this example, france and italy could jointly administrate valle d'aosta, nizza, savoia and corsica; another example would be gibraltar under joint administration of uk and spain (such a proposal is already in the making, although the eternal anglo will never willingly renounce an ounce of foreign power).

>I don't understand. Why were they never able to unify and become a superpower in any meaningful way?
I know a guy who might have some thoughts as to why.

What about Malta?

Look man, we're still really upset about it. Could you guys just all stop posting about Italy in this way?

then do something about it. Prove us all wrong. You have it in you.

what did Metternich do to prevent italy from becoming a power

Italians are very sensitive and self-conscious. Don't blame us.

Austria held territory in northern Italy and he worked to crush revolts/independence movements there famously stating that Italy is a geographic expression.

Every region gets one good empire. Italy already had theirs.

t. Gli Schiavi

But China has empires all the time.

Italy is a spook
t. Metternich

Have you been to rome latley?
t.guy from milan(o)

>Dalmazia
Vidi budale!

is he right? how strong is national identity in Italy?

Only good post in this thread.

dont be a goon. I want real answers

italy was so disunified that unifying it, and it became such an effort in bringing all the former individual governments peoples to speed and unifying them in any meaningful way, that to this day many places in italy are still not fully up to speed with full blown modernization

during the formation of italy, in some places you had literal serfs, and in others you had trains and telegraph, and in other the bishops still owned land, and dont forget the landed papacy and what a clusterfuck that was or the rediculous cultural differences between sicilians and italians

literacy in the south is still a rare commodity to this day

tldr, germany was an exception, not the rule

I also find it hilarious when people are amazed that the Italian peninsula is so diverse and they never had any inclination to to unify. The comparisons between Italy and Germany are incredibly superficial as well.

I mean the best example is how the South has never ever ruled itself. Even with the unification, the Piemontese saw the South as more of a colony rather than an extension of itself.

Italy was never able to unify due to a number of reasons.

1) cultural and language difference
2) huge difference in wealth and economies
3) differences in the goals between local elites and aristocracies
4) lack of bourgeoisie political power
5) foreign powers (vital point)
6) the Catholic Church

Is this why it's so damn hard to unite Italy and elevate it to a Great Power in Victoria II?

>good

Bring back the Han.

wut
nigga i did it as malta
it is not hard

I think you may just suck.

>not the Qin

>that Tuscany blobbing into Umbria
why?

>gib val d'aosta
they want nothing to do with France actually.
At the end of WW2, french agents even tried to stir up Valdotan sentiments against Italians to try and get them to join France, but they got rebuked pretty hard by the Valdotan elite.
Nowdays, they know they'd have to give up their much treasured autonomy if they were to join France

Spain has a higher GDP per capita than Italy

Only PPP, because everything is so fucking overpriced in Italy

Italians were always bad at war. The Romans relied on Iberian units during the Punic wars as their Italian units were always stomped by Hannibal. All the good commanders and Emperors of Rome were from Hispania or had Iberian ancestry. The Italian is weak by nature and falls to easily to Hedonism that is why they needed the more austere and manly Iberians in positions of power and in the military. When the Romans gave Hispania to the Visigoths their main supply of soldiers and competent people disappeared and Italians got GERMANED. After that the Italian peninsula became the Pope's bitch. And only brave Spaniards stopped the French and the Pope under the command of Cesar Borgia (A spaniard) to unify Italy under France or the Pope. At the end Italians are prone to weakness and female attributes like loving art or dancing which made them weak and needed more manly and austere people to guide them (mostly Spaniards).Italy is a land made for women and effiminate boys. And you can't become a strong state with that kind of people.

>because everything is so fucking overpriced in Italy
>Expensive shit
>Shit wages
Oh yeah so great. Spain will surprass Italy in nominal GDP per capita soon as well. PM

>Napoleon was Italian
His father's family emigrated from Tuscany like 200 years before his birth and his mother was full Corsican. Beside, Corsica was already french in 1769 (He was born 3 month after the corsican defeat at Ponte Novo) and he fully embraced France destiny and identified as a Frenchman, rejecting his corsicans origins by becoming emperor.
t. Corsican.

>Spinoza
He was a Portuguese jew living in the Netherlands, how can you say he was italian ?

This. The PPP meme was invented to make third world shitholes feel better about themselves. In PPP value, fucking Equatorial Guinea of all countries has a higher GDP per capita than Spain and Italy. Real countries use nominal value.

>PPP value, fucking Equatorial Guinea of all countries has a higher GDP per capita than Spain and Italy
Because in reality Equatorial Guinea is wealthy as fuck.The wealth is just hold by few people so the country is shit.They have the GDP of Portugal with 3 million people

>WE WUZ ROMANS
t. Spain

He meant Spinola an Spanish commander with some Italian ancestry (Genovese mostly) as Genova was a puppet state of Castille since the XIV century as Italians need strong and austere Spaniards for guidance.Even a Spanish women is more austere and strong minded than effimanate Italians

"Wealth" doesn't mean shit in PPP value. It's not real. A country's actual wealth and economic strength is measured on the nominal value.

It is undeniable that the heart of the Carthaginian and Roman empire was in Spain.When the Iberian soldiers allied with the Romans the second punic war was over as the bulk of Carthage's army were brave Iberian soldiers and Rome needed real men and not sissy Italians to end the comflict.That is why the most important theatre of the Punic wars was Spain.It took the Romans 200 years to annex Spain as they had fewer Iberian troops than the Iberian tribes.It took time to gather another Iberian army bigger than the ones of the tribes to defeat the brave and manly Spaniards.This Iberian soldiers became the elite in Rome and the most important Romans were mostly Iberians genetically.This is scientific

>Italians have to pay German tier prices for everything
>while having Spanish tier wages
>Buttt we earned 1,5 euros more nominally!
Whatever faggot.Effimanate Italians love to get into pointless rhetoric and sophism when they are in trouble.

Trying to argue for PPP legitimacy is something a butthurt third worlder would do.

>Spain confirmed for third world.

No

Dovreste morire tutti

Sissy Italian falling for pointless sophism again.How surprising. You need to man up even if it is against your effiminate nature.Italians can't keep acting like women forever as when there is no Iberians ruling your kin your country falls into a spiral of weakness

>Spanish tier wages
>Spanish
>wages
You need to have a job to have a wage, Paco Manoco Al Arabon

We have jobs. Again the sissy Italian falling in pointless rhetoric. You girly Italians have the most fertile land in Europe and still managed to suck without our guidance.Your only solution would be to create breeding camps for your women to get impregnated by our superior seed

>Spanish superior seed
>Spanish superior anything
>Look at the other side of the ocean
>See pic related
No thanks, you can keep that seed for yourself

>No thanks, you can keep that seed for yourself
Have you seen natives without the iberian seed? Italians are too girly to rule a country.

>Implying Spaniards know how to run a country
>Look at the state of their former empire
>Look at Spain itself. It was a shithole just 40 years ago, before EU monies
>Separatism everywhere. Every weekend Zubizarreta Echeverria and his friends blow up a train station
Damn, the Spanish sure as hell KNOW how to run a country. You must be insane to NOT want to be under Spanish domination. Isn't that right, Joao? Isn't that right, Montezuma Viracocha? Isn't that right, Goicoetxea?

>>Look at the state of their former empire
It wasgreat.Mexico city had a higher GDP per capita than PAris
>>Look at Spain itself. It was a shithole just 40 years ago, before EU monies
Spain was better than Italy 40 years ago

Okay, Paco, let's talk about glorious Spanish engineering, look at their cars, how can Italians even compete

Austere and efficient.Unlike Girly italians that spend years designing ugly cars for women and effeminate men (Italians).

Spain's GDP has never exceeded Italy's

My understanding is limited but from what I picked up it was mainly due to cultural differences between the city states that developed in the middle ages.

I should probably brush up on it.

>Spain
>Austere and efficient
Here's your (You)

>Austere
>Efficient

Two words that should never be used to describe Spain.

>Spanish """"men"""
>can hold a candle to Italian men

that car is german with a spanish built body.

prior to the 80s SEAT were rebadged FIATS.

show me an indigenous spanish engineered car please.

>Italian
>men
Nice meme.Italian """"men"""""""""""" are girls with dicks

Sounds hot desu

The two breeds of Spanish men. One an androgynous girly boy, the other a mixed race monkey.

The only difference is that the guy on the left is skinny and the one on right is fat. Otherwise, both are equally brown. I don't know what you are trying to prove. That Spanish men exercise more?

>equally brown
t.deluded Mexican

Most Spanish are brown, Manolo. Face the facts. Don't even start with cherrypicking. There are blond blue eyed Mexicans too.

>There are blond blue eyed Mexicans too.
0.5% does not count as a meaningful population group.

Because they place family first, then their town, then their area, then their province, then their region and then their country. They dont believe in Italy themselves.

Dude, the Spanish rule in Southern Italy is one of the chief reasons Two Sicilies was a feudal shithole well into the XIX century, and by extent the entire reason the Mafia was a thing ever, how the fuck can you say Spaniards ruler Italy well?

Also, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany and Vernice say "hi".

Pablo, being a strict Catholic because that's the only reason the country was even formed does not make you any more austere.

>It is fine to expect nothing from the Irish people or the Albanian people.
Such unnecessary rudeness. You're a bad person, OP.

Tell me, how does this painting make you feel?

He was and idiot. He understood the importance of the artillery and of machine guns, but somehow any new tactics went over his head.

Good thing Diaz replaced him afterwards, sending the gulasch packing by boosting morale in the correct way and not wasting time in assault grazie at random.

God, I hope so.
Going to Italy next week, wish me luck.