In the old old days, whole Europe consisted of small kingdoms, dukedoms, shires, tribes, natives, rich families, king families and so on. And for sure the Old Holy Roman Empire. They made their politics with marriages and alliances - and also a lot of wars. So they enlarged their properties and some got mighty, some others lost their political power. In the 1800s, they started to build powerful empires, out of smaller kingdoms and areas. So Europe started to get "real political borders". The northern part of nowadays Germany built "Prussia", the South with Bavaria was still free separate states. The Austria-Hungarian Empire was also real mighty and a big area. Other regions of Europe made nearly the same, but I am not so smart on French or Spanish history. And the big British Empire was important too. With the old politics, making big empires out of different tribes, they didn't had much luck. The tribes were too different, different roots, different culture. But with a dictatorship or a powerful king one could hold together so much different peoples. After WWI, when there was nearly not any king left in Europe, the regions separated again, like Hungary and Austria, Slovenia, Slovakia, Czech, Croatia, Bosnia, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, and so on. But then WWII came and Europe was wracked and ruined. The iron curtain divided Europe in East and West. The Allied forces in West and East draw new frontiers through middle and eastern Europe. So the dictatorships in Eastern Europe had again a lot of smaller tribes and countries together in one Communistic State. Like in Yugoslavia. Till the 1970s, it was nearly not possible to travel to eastern Europe. And for east Europeans it was not possible to be in contact with west Europeans and for them traveling was completely impossible. After the cold war and the break down of the iron curtain round 1990, all the former "melted countries" wanted to separate again. Because only the dictatorships could hold them together.
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