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In 1871, the North German Confederation was transformed into the German Empire. The Empire was dominated by its largest state, the Kingdom of Prussia.The other 24 states each had varying degrees of autonomy. ‘Bundesrat’ are “Federal Council”. The Bundesrat maintained 8 permanent committees, as well as many temporary ones that popped up.

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How Did the German Empire Actually Work?

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Over 300 years, hundreds of thousands of slaves are imported to meet the needs of their European colonizers. Fueled by the ideals of the French Revolution, the Haitian revolution begins when slaves and those mixed race rise up against their oppressors. One of the largest and most successful slave rebellion's in history. January 1st, 1904, Haiti wins it's independence. Haiti becomes the first nation to be founded by former slaves.

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The Haitian Revolution - One Minute History

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Italy was invaded by Napoleon. He made a Kingdom of Italy. The Revolutions of 1848 swept across Europe. Italians had been launching insurrections for years. However, within a short period of time, the rebellions had been crushed.

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Otto von Bismarck was a conservative Prussian statesman. In the 1860's, he put together a series of wars that unified the German states. It was a powerful German Empire under Prussian Leadership. In 1871, he used balance of power diplomacy to maintain Germany's position in Europe. Despite many disputes and war scars, remained at peace.

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Otto von Bismarck and the Franco-Prussian War | History of Western Civilization II

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In the 1860s, Otto von Bismarck, then Minister President of Prussia, provoked three short, decisive wars against Denmark, Austria, and France, aligning the smaller German states behind Prussia in its defeat of France. In 1871 he unified Germany into a nation-state, forming the German Empire.

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In 1791, revolution brewed among enslaved majority. This was inspired by France's own recent revolution. He farmed his own plot of land North of an island. He ended up entering the war as a physician. He led his forces to victory over the planter class. He then created a constitution that would forever abolish slavery.

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How did Toussaint L'ouverture, born into bondage in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti) and enslaved for more than half his life, come to lead the most successful slave revolt in history-and help precipitate the downfall of European colonialism in the western hemisphere?

Saint-Domingue in the late 18 th century thrived as the wealthiest colony in the Americas. Its sugar, coffee, indigo and cotton plantations minted money, fueled by a vast enslaved labor force. A French colony since 1697, it occupied the western third of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, while the Spanish had colonized the eastern side, called Santo Domingo (now the Dominican Republic).

In 1791, revolution brewed among the island's brutally enslaved majority-inspired in part by the egalitarian ideals driving France's own recent revolution. As the island's enslaved workers organized to burn plantations and kill many owners, Toussaint initially laid low. Having been free for some 15 years, he farmed his own plot of land in the north of the island, while continuing to oversee his former owner's plantation. Eventually, wielding knowledge of African and Creole medicinal techniques, he entered the war as a physician. But he quickly distinguished himself as a canny tactician and a strategic, charismatic leader.

As a general, Toussaint led his forces to victory over the planter class-and thousands of invading French troops. But that was only the start. Navigating the complex, ever-shifting politics of dueling colonial powers, he successfully repelled the aggressions of Europe's mightiest nations (France, Spain and England), using his diplomatic guile to cannily play them off one other. He conquered the Spanish side of Hispaniola, uniting the island and establishing himself as governor. In that role, he worked to quell widespread domestic unrest and restore the island's war-battered economy. And with an education steeped in Enlightenment philosophy, he built on those humanistic ideals to create a constitution that would forever abolish slavery.

Although Toussaint died in a French jail a year before Saint-Domingue gained full independence (and rechristened itself as Haiti) in 1804, his myriad efforts set the stage for the establishment of the second sovereign nation in the western hemisphere after America-and the world's first sovereign Black state. Here's how he did it.

He Played Empire Against Empire

In 1792, France was in a dicey situation. It had recently become a republic, stoking the ire of European monarchies. Furthermore, Saint-Domingue's sustained slave rebellion had put France's wealthiest colony in the Americas at risk of falling under the control of its enemies, England and Spain. So that same year, French commissioners arrived in Saint-Domingue in the apparent spirit of compromise. Rebel leaders, including Toussaint, refused the overture, choosing to do battle instead with the 6,000-man fleet France had also sent.

Toussaint was aware of his regiment's lack of training, but he was also aware of France's desperate position in the face of Spanish and British hostility. So when it suited his needs, he joined forces with France's enemies.

Feigning outrage at the execution of King Louis XVI in 1793, he made an alliance with neighboring Santo Domingo, taking command of a Spanish auxiliary force to reclaim a swath of Saint-Domingue territory. He refused to negotiate with French commissioners until 1794, when France formally abolished slavery in its territories. Toussaint then rejoined the French forces, beat back the Spanish and began his sustained campaign against the British, who had their own designs on Saint-Domingue.

His army ousted British forces in 1798, causing them to lose more than 15,000 men and 10 million pounds in the process. Nonetheless, Toussaint continued to dangle the prospect of British influence in Saint-Domingue as a check against French complacency and to spur trade with Britain's neighboring colony of Jamaica. Toussaint entered into a secret agreement with the British army that eased their naval blockade of imported goods.

He went a step further in 1799, opening diplomatic talks with the Americans to renew commercial ties that would benefit both economies-a major coup for Toussaint. In just two years, American exports to the colony rose more than 260 percent, to $7.1 million. The alliance with the Americans also afforded naval protection on trading vessels destined for Saint-Domingue, an important buffer against British aggressions.

He Played to Multiple Bases

To revitalize a local economy torn by conflict, Toussaint had to leverage his considerable political skills to reconcile the conflicting interests of Saint-Domingue's racial, class, religious and cultural orders. Judging the resources of the merchant and planter classes as integral to rebuilding Saint-Domingue, Toussaint extended generous restitution policies in the name of republican fraternity, going so far as to punish any acts of retribution against former slaveholders. This ensured him a loyal base of allies who did his bidding at regional and international levels. Under his stewardship, Saint-Domingue initiated a robust civic overhaul and public-works projects that created roads, widened canals and improved public sanitation.

That extensive leniency to white citizens, alongside his increasingly autocratic measures to compel Black citizens to work on plantations, corroded his standing among the Black majority. Still, through much of his tenure as governor, he worked vigorously to safeguard their interests and ensure they were now paid for their labor. He traveled extensively to quell internal unrest, relying on his deep cultural ties and Afro-spiritualist cues to reinforce his image as their defender. Under his stewardship, thanks in large part to the efforts of the black masses, the island's agricultural cultivation was restored up to two-thirds to what it had been prior to the 1791 uprisings, according to Toussaint's biographer C.L.R. James.

He Cultivated His Legend

The secret to Toussaint's impact lay also in the trait common to history's greatest heroes-the forging of a persona that verged on the superhuman. James writes that Toussaint saw himself in the avenger role described by Enlightenment thinker Abbé Raynal: as a figure who rises up to eradicate human bondage. Toussaint led charges into battle, and survived numerous brushes with death, lending him a supernatural aura that he cultivated to enrapture followers and enemies alike.

His legend grew. One French official in Saint Domingue credited Toussaint's ability to be in several places at once to his vitality and unmatched understanding of the terrain. And after Napoleon sent 20,000 French troops in 1802 to regain control of Saint-Domingue, a secretary in the expedition described Toussaint as like a tiger: visible where he wasn't and invisible where he was. In time, for his unprecedented achievements, he would be hailed as the Black George Washington and the Napoleon Bonaparte of the Caribbean.

But these honorifics fail to capture the measure of Toussaint Louverture and his far-reaching impact. He was a singular leader who helped charter a revolution extraordinary in its insistence that any declaration of "inalienable liberties" rings hollow when constrained by notions of color or creed. His was a revolution that carried far wider geopolitical implications: Historians credit it with spooking France from further colonial endeavors in the hemisphere and inspiring Napoleon to offload the Louisiana territory to the United States, effectively doubling the young republic in size.

Toussaint would not live to see his country's eventual independence. Captured during Napoleon's 1802 expedition to subdue the colony, he was transported to a French jail, where he died a year later. While it was his radical deputy, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, who would outlast the French assault and declare Haiti's independence in 1804, it is Toussaint's leadership that laid the groundwork for that extraordinary achievement.

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How Toussaint L'ouverture Rose from Slavery to Lead the Haitian Revolution | HISTORY

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Pushing back aggressions by Europe's greatest powers, Haiti's 'founding father' set the stage for the world's first sovereign Black state.

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After the revolution of 1848, when war broke out with Austria, Victor was given command of a division. At the decisive battles of Magenta and Solferino, he commands corps in prison. He led his Piedmontite army into into a territory to link up with Garibaldi. He then started to play a more direct role in government. Victor passed away January 9, 1878.

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Victor Emmanuel II, (born March 14, 1820, Turin, Piedmont, Kingdom of Sardinia-died January 9, 1878, Rome, Italy), king of Sardinia-Piedmont who became the first king of a united Italy.

Brought up in the court of his father, Charles Albert, and given a conventional monarchical education emphasizing religious and military training, he was married to his cousin Maria Adelaide, daughter of an Austrian archduke. After the Revolution of 1848, when war broke out with Austria, Victor Emmanuel was given command of a division. In the luckless campaign that followed he proved a brave soldier but an indifferent general.

Ascending the throne on his father's abdication, he consolidated his position by suppressing the republican left and paying an indemnity to Austria, which brought him considerable opprobrium in Italy. In November 1852 he made the momentous decision to turn the government over to the able, determined Count Cavour, whose skillful manoeuvres over the next few years made him king of Italy. At the decisive battles of Magenta and Solferino, he commanded the Piedmontese corps in person, and following the armistice of Villafranca, he exercised a valuable restraint on Cavour, who wanted to continue the war alone. The following year Victor Emmanuel secretly encouraged Garibaldi in the conquest of Sicily and Naples; he then led his Piedmontese army into papal territory to link up with Garibaldi in the face of an excommunication by Pius IX.

Following Cavour's death in 1861, Victor Emmanuel played a more direct role in government and despite setbacks achieved two notable triumphs: the acquisition of Venetia through war on the side of Bismarck's Prussia in 1866, and of Rome after the withdrawal of the French garrison in 1870. The occupation of Rome as the national capital so antagonized Pius IX that he refused all overtures toward reconciliation, and no meeting ever took place between the two sovereigns; nevertheless, on Victor Emmanuel's death in 1878 Pius permitted his burial in the Pantheon.

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Victor Emmanuel II | Unification of Italy, Risorgimento, Savoy Dynasty

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Victor Emmanuel II, king of Sardinia-Piedmont who became the first king of a united Italy. Brought up in the court of his father, Charles Albert, and given a conventional monarchical education emphasizing religious and military training, he was married to his cousin Maria Adelaide, daughter of an