Come for the Victoria 3 gameplay, stay for the impressive history lesson.

I've never seen a more informative and entertaining video.

The issue of the Rhine as a natural border of France is really interesting. Victor Hugo wrote a ton about it and had some pretty radical ideas about the geopolitical future of Europe. An example from a poem by him called “Hymne pour l'inauguration de la colonne de Napoléon à Boulogne” (1841): “Dieu veut la grande France et la grande Allemagne. Il fit Napoléon comme il fit Charlemagne, Pour donner à l'Europe un centre souverain. Que Stamboul meure, alors vers l'orient tournée, Teutonia, de gloire et de paix couronnée, Reprendra le Danube et nous rendra le Rhin!” So Victor Hugo wanted a Franco-Prussian (con)federation in which France would get the Left Bank of the Rhine, while Prussia would unite Germany and be free to expand in Eastern Europe. Hugo Victor also wrote in Le Rhine (1842): “L'alliance de la France et de l'Allemagne, c'est la constitution de l'Europe. L'Allemagne adossée à la France arrête la Russie; la France amicalement adossée à l'Allemagne arrête l'Angleterre” He wanted a united Europe in which France would counter Britain and Prussia/Germany would counter Russia. France would, of course, be the first among nations, and the Rhine as the border of France was non-negotiable. The French government, like you said, wanted to improve relations with Britain, so they didn’t approve of these notions of an European superstate. That most countries but France were against this is logical (balance of power), but I always liked the argument of Michael Heilprin against the Rhine as a natural border: “We call it a delusion, for the Rhine is not a natural boundary of France in a rational sense of the word. Nor are rivers, in general, the natural boundaries of countries. Rivers, it is true, form excellent geographical lines of demarcation between provinces or other divisions of one and the same empire, kingdom, or confederation, such as are the lines of the Ohio and the Mississippi, which bound some of our non-original States. But they are no more real lines of separation than are the meridians of longitude or parallels of latitude which have been selected to bound other States of our Union. For rivers, especially navigable rivers, far from being separating barriers, are natural channels of intercourse and intermingling, of coalescence and union, the world over. [...] Watersheds, not rivers, form natural boundaries. Mountain ranges separate nationalities. The same nationality almost everywhere flourishes on both banks of every navigable river.” From NATURAL BOUNDARIES (1870). The idea of the Rhine as a natural border largely died off after the Franco-Prussian War and was briefly revived during World War 1, but it is still interesting to see how important this issue was in France during this period.

Thanks for these videos. Entertaining and I learn a lot!

Great video - economic history is the greatest

been getting into reading history for fun lately and this channel is really cool

Can you play as Portugal and talk about Portugal's situation at the time?

youre a great lecturer, really great stuff here.

I love this, thank you.

My highest commendation for trying to teach a little history through playing Vic 3. I'm a trained historian myself and I thought I must be the only person in the world to play this game in this particular way 😅 However, I have to make one important correction. In your narration you say, or you leave the impression, that France went into Algeria because of the aftermath of the 1840 crisis. In fact France was already in Algeria when Louis Philippe assumed the throne in 1830. The July Monarchy inherited the French presence there and was not thrilled with colonizing Algeria, but went on with it for fear of angering public opinion and appearing "less patriotic" than the recently ousted Restoration regime. Algeria served as a pressure clamp for ambitious young officers of the lower ranks looking for career advancement, who were also usually unhappy with the government.

Do you have a link for the "modern battles" series that you referred to a few weeks ago? You mentioned it was an essay anthology

France, branding, luxury goods, champagne, that sound familiar....... oh: LVMH

Chasing prestige as an end in and of itself has never worked out well for anyone. Prestige either comes naturally or it doesn't. You can't fake it. It's like when Russia lost the Russo-Japanese war due to gross corruption and eventual revolution at home that needed to be suppressed. The Russian leadership thought that they must recover their prestige via any means necessary and were very gung-ho about going into war with Austria over Serbia for that reason. Meanwhile if they listened to Pyotr Stolypin and just stayed at peace and focussed on industrializing and liberalising they could have made a superpower peacefully and got more prestige in 20 years than Russia ever dreamt to. They threw all that away for insecurity.