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During the Napoleonic wars, when the royal family fled and didn't plan on coming back, the people got mad and eventually made them return to Portugal. He left his son Pedro to rule Brazil; he started to make some changes, declared independence, and became Emperor. Some people still supported Portugal and Portugal still had an army in Brazil which won the first war but surrendered from the second without a fight. At the same time this was happening Portugal was about to go into a civil war which led them to completely surrender and Brazil became an independent country.

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Brazilian Independence | 3 Minute History

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For many centuries modern day Germany was many states that shared a common language and during the Napoleonic wars, German speakers began to feel a sense of unity and started to volunteer to fight against France. During the wars, they began to feel more unified leading to revolutions. Later when Bismarck was appointed as chancellor in Prussia, he would allied with German states and when Prussia won against France he helped create a German Confederation. After this they declared an emperor, became a unified Germany, and were dominant power in Europe.

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The Italian peninsula was divided among a bunch of different states but with different cultures there wasn’t a huge call for unification. After the Napoleonic wars, some kingdom started wars for Italian unification, the first was unsuccessful but the second one wasn't. Later a man persuaded Giuseppe to invade Sicily where he was successful but he couldn't keep going because French troops were in Rome. But with the land he claimed, the Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed and due to other wars in France, they got Rome and Venice and declared Rome their capital. They had many problems but they were all unified and became their own nation.

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When the royal family went back to Portugal and left Pedro in charge, the people convinced him to stay for good and start making changes. Pedro became emperor and made Brazil an independent country. They were politically independent but economically dependent mostly from Great Britain. But they were still recognized as an independent nation.

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When Brazil declared its independence on September 7, 1822, it had traversed a truly unusual path. Once a conventional colony, it had evolved into the seat of the Portuguese empire by 1808, only to be declared a kingdom, equal in status with Portugal, in 1815. The Portuguese royal family, fleeing before the Napoleonic troops that had entered Portugal in late 1807, were the only European monarchs to ever see their American colony, and they were the only ones to rule their empire from the colonies. Last but not least, for much of the nineteenth century Brazil was the only American colony to have become an independent monarchy. Yet independence, declared in 1822, did not fully signify Brazilian sovereignty. The Portuguese crown had needed help in order to relocate before the advancing French troops and later to recover their throne in Portugal, help that Great Britain had agreed to provide-in return for generous commercial advantages in Brazil. Nor did independence mean freedom for slaves, the mainstay of the Brazilian labor force.

As Napoleon's troops closed in on Lisbon in late 1807, João VI, the Portuguese king, after much hesitation decided against joining France's continental blockade of Great Britain, and instead availed himself of the British offer to protect the Portuguese monarchy. Hurriedly, the entire court, including part of the army and navy, along with the royal treasury and several libraries, relocated to the most important Portuguese colony at the time, Brazil. All in all, an estimated ten to twenty thousand people moved to Brazil. Once the royal family arrived in Rio de Janeiro, it set up its court in the colonial capital, and began expanding the existing institutions to develop a functioning state in the place of a formerly dependent colony.

The royal family and particularly the prince regent (soon to become king João VI) quickly came to consider Rio de Janeiro as more than a temporary place of exile. In 1815 João VI raised Brazil to the status of a kingdom on equal footing with its former mother country, which was governed at the time by the Council of Regency and protected by the British army. The new kingdom carefully kept its distance from the turbulence of European warfare. For Brazilians, the presence of the Portuguese court in Rio meant a growing identification of royal policies with Brazilian interests. At the same time, however, it meant that Portuguese took up some of the political offices previously open to Brazilians while relying almost entirely on the Brazilian economy for government revenues. Thus the relocation of the Portuguese court produced mixed responses among the Brazilian elites. It did, however, provide the country with a recognizable and generally accepted center of power that fostered stability and thus helped Brazil maintain its territorial integrity while other Latin American nations fragmented.

Brazil's political independence was hastened by the political events in Portugal after 1820. Liberal-nationalist revolts in the cities of Oporto and Lisbon led to the establishment of a junta provisória (provisional assembly) in Portugal, replacing the Council of Regency that had been presided over by Field Marshal Beresford, an Englishman. The Junta demanded the king's return to Portugal, and began to put together a cortes (constituent congress) with the purpose of writing a constitution. When João VI and the royal court returned to Portugal in 1821 due to increasing pressure by the Cortes, João left his son, Pedro I, as prince regent in Rio de Janeiro.

Initially, Brazilians seized on the opportunity of sending delegates to the Cortes, which they assumed would recognize Brazil's status as equal to that of Portugal, and which they hoped would incorporate Brazilian interests into Portuguese policy to a hereto-fore-unprecedented degree. Instead, the Cortes's policy toward Brazil revealed itself as an attempt to return the country to its former status as a colony. It limited the jurisdiction of Pedro I to southern Brazil, and dispatched governors to other provinces. Furthermore, in 1821, the Cortes demanded the return of prince Pedro I to Lisbon, where he was to finish his education.

By now, Brazilian nationalists had transferred their allegiance from João VI to Pedro I, and exercised pressure on the prince to remain in Brazil. On January 9, 1822, the prince officially declared his intentions of staying in Brazil. From May 1822 onwards, no decision from the Cortes was implemented in Brazil without the explicit approval of the prince regent. Following the receipt of correspondence from the Cortes reaffirming its demands, Pedro I, on the advice of Brazilian nationalists, such as José Bonifácio de Andrada e Silva, and his wife Leopoldina, declared Brazil's independence on September 7, 1822. At the banks of the river Ipiranga, he exclaimed the famous words, "Independence or Death," which, together with British navy and commercial backing, sealed Brazil's separation from Portugal. On December 1 of the same year, Pedro I was crowned "Constitutional Emperor and Perpetual Defender of Brazil." Not all provinces recognized Brazil's independence, and in northeastern and southern Brazil Pedro I had to use military force to quell several regional revolts against his rule following the declaration of independence.

Political independence for Brazil was not tantamount to economic independence. Prior to 1822, the Portuguese court in Brazil had continued the country's economic dependence on the export of primary goods to generate revenue (and thus in fact finance the royal government). This pattern continued after 1822. Moreover, in return for Britain's speedy assistance in relocating the court and protecting Portugal, King João VI, upon his arrival in Brazil, declared all Brazilian ports open to trade with friendly nations-which in reality meant Great Britain-effective January 28, 1808. While the declaration ended Portugal's colonial monopoly on trade with Brazil, it transferred, rather than ended, the former colony's commercial dependence. Great Britain quickly became the main recipient of Brazil's primary exports, at the same time that Brazil's importation of manufactured goods from England increased. In many ways, the declaration simply eliminated Portugal's role as the commercial entrepôt between Brazilian planters and British manufacturers.

In 1810 a treaty between Brazil and Great Britain cemented this shift in economic dependence. British merchants received special trading privileges, including a maximum tariff of 15 percent on their merchandise, in comparison to the 24 percent tariff levied on imports from all other nations. Moreover, the treaty granted England jurisdiction over British merchants living in Brazil. As a consequence of the favorable economic treaty and Great Britain's exclusion from the European market due to the Continental Blockade, Brazil by the 1820s had become Great Britain's third-largest export recipient. In fact, the growth of commerce between the two nations became so important that Great Britain applied diplomatic pressure on Portugal in 1825 to recognize Brazil's political independence, despite the fact that this might jeopardize British trading interests in Portugal itself. It was only in 1844, when the 1810 treaty expired and the Alves Branco Tariff more than doubled the duties on British goods, that Brazil regained a greater degree of economic independence from Great Britain.

Nor did political independence produce any fundamental changes in the structure of the Brazilian economy and society. Although manufacturing, previously forbidden in the colony, was encouraged once the royal court arrived in Brazil, the mainstay of the Brazilian economy remained the export of primary goods. Indeed, the Brazilian elite that had come to support independence by no means endorsed a more profound restructuring of the social and economic foundations of the newly independent nation. Thus slavery remained in place, and large estates focused on growing export crops such as sugar and increasingly coffee continued to dominate the economy. This left Brazil at the mercy of often unstable world market prices for its exports and dependent on the import of manufactured goods from Europe and, increasingly, from the United States.

see also Minas Gerais, Conspiracy of.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bethell, Leslie. "The Independence of Brazil." In Brazil: Empire and Republic, 1822-1930, edited by Leslie Bethell. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1989.

Boxer, C. R. The Portuguese Seaborne Empire, 1415-1825. New York: Knopf, 1969.

Burns, E. Bradford. A History of Brazil, 3rd ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.

Cavaliero, Roderick. The Independence of Brazil. London: Tauris, 1993.

Graham, Richard. Independence in Latin America: A Comparative Approach. New York: Knopf, 1972.

Russell-Wood, A. J. R., ed. From Colony to Nation: Essays on the Independence of Brazil. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975.

Viotti da Costa, Emília. The Brazilian Empire: Myths and Histories. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.

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brazilian independencewhen brazil declared its independence on september 7

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it had traversed a truly unusual path. once a conventional colony

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it had evolved into the seat of the portuguese empire by 1808

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fleeing before the napoleonic troops that had entered portugal in late 1807

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were the only european monarchs to ever see their american colony

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and they were the only ones to rule their empire from the colonies.

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Encyclopedia of Western Colonialism since 1450

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Brazilian IndependenceWhen Brazil declared its independence on September 7, 1822, it had traversed a truly unusual path. Once a conventional colony, it had evolved into the seat of the Portuguese empire by 1808, only to be declared a kingdom, equal in status with Portugal, in 1815. The Portuguese ro…

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Italy wasn't one nation but with the rise and fall of Napoleon, a sense of unity began to grow throughout the kingdoms. People started to unify some kingdoms, then try and invade other kingdoms in Italy which worked, becoming Italy. They were only missing two parts, Venice and Rome, which eventually the conquered by taking advantage of the wars going on around them, creating Italy.

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Summary

For many centuries, the Italian peninsula was a politically fragmented conglomeration of states. This was the case when the United States announced its independence from Great Britain in 1776. When war broke out between Austria and the Revolutionary French Government in 1792, the French invaded the Italian peninsula, consolidated many of the Italian states, and established them as republics. In 1799 the Austrian and Russian armies pushed the French out of the Italian peninsula, which led to the demise of the fledgling republics.

After Napoleon's rise to power, the Italian peninsula was once again conquered by the French. Under Napoleon, the peninsula was divided into three entities: the northern parts which were annexed to the French Empire (Piedmont, Liguria, Parma, Piacenza, Tuscany, and Rome), the newly created Kingdom of Italy (Lombardy, Venice, Reggio, Modena, Romagna, and the Marshes) ruled by Napoleon himself, and the Kingdom of Naples, which was first ruled by Napoleon's brother Joseph Bonaparte, but then passed to Napoleon's brother-in-law Joachim Murat.

The period of French invasion and occupation was important in many ways. It introduced revolutionary ideas about government and society, resulting in an overthrow of the old established ruling orders and the destruction of the last vestiges of feudalism. The ideals of freedom and equality were very influential. Also of consequence, the concept of nationalism was introduced, thus sowing the seeds of Italian nationalism throughout most parts of the northern and central Italian peninsula.

With the downfall of Napoleon in 1814 and the redistribution of territory by the Congress of Vienna (1814-15), most of the Italian states were reconstituted: the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia (often referred to as Sardinia), the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the Duchy of Parma, the Papal States, and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies (fused together from the old Kingdom of Naples and Kingdom of Sicily). These were largely conservative regimes, presided over by the old social orders.

Although the Italian peninsula remained fragmented through the mid-1800s, the concept of a united Italy began to take root. Secret societies formed to oppose the conservative regimes. Several of these societies also promoted Italian nationalism and the idea of a unified Italian political state. One such society was the group Young Italy, founded in 1831 by Guiseppe Mazzini. Mazzini was an ardent advocate of the necessity for Italian unification through the desires and actions of the Italian people. Thus, the movement of Italian unification, a process referred to as the Risorgimento (resurgence) proliferated by mid-century.

The revolutions of 1848 ignited nationalist sentiment throughout the Italian peninsula. There were widespread uprisings in several Italian cities that year, mostly by the professional classes (such as doctors, lawyers, shopkeepers) as well as students. Lombardy-Venetia and Milan tried to rise up against Austrian rule. Although the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia sent troops to aid the revolt, it was crushed by the Austrians at Custoza in July 1848. The Italian uprisings were unsuccessful and by 1849 the old regimes were once again in place.

Yet, the idea of the Risorgimento continued to gain adherents after 1848. The final push for Italian unification came in 1859, led by the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia (then the wealthiest and most liberal of the Italian states), and orchestrated by Piedmont-Sardinia's Prime Minister, Count Camillo di Cavour. A skilled diplomat, Cavour secured an alliance with France. The Franco-Austrian War of 1859 was the agent that began the physical process of Italian unification. The Austrians were defeated by the French and Piedmontese at Magenta and Solferino, and thus relinquished Lombardy. By the end of the year Lombardy was added to the holdings of Piedmont-Sardinia.

The northern Italian states held elections in 1859 and 1860 and voted to join the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, a major step towards unification, while Piedmont-Sardinia ceded Savoy and Nice to France. Giuseppi Garibaldi, a native of Piedmont-Sardinia, was instrumental in bringing the southern Italian states into the unification process. In 1860, Garibaldi cobbled together an army (referred to as the "Thousand") to march into the southern part of the peninsula. Landing first in Sicily and then moving onwards into Naples, Garibaldi and his men overthrew the Bourbon monarchy and turned over the southern territories to Victor Emmanuel II, King of Piedmont-Sardinia. In early 1861 a national parliament convened and proclaimed the Kingdom of Italy, with Victor Emmanuel II as its king. At this point, there were only two major territories outside of the parameters of the new Kingdom of Italy: Rome and Venetia.

In 1866 Italy joined Prussia in a campaign against Austria (the 1866 Austro-Prussian War) and thus won Venetia. In 1870, taking advantage of the fact that France (the country responsible at the time for guarding the Papal States) was distracted by involvement in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71), the Italian army entered Rome. That year, Rome and the Papal States were incorporated into Italy and the Risorgimento completed. During the summer of 1871, the Italian capital moved to Rome from Florence (it was moved from Turin to Florence in 1865).

Major Events

Overall Impact upon U.S. Foreign Policy

The history of recognitions (and the establishment of relations, where applicable) between the United States and the Italian states impacted several different areas of U.S. policy, including:

Trade and Commerce. The industrialization process that swept through the northern United States in the early nineteenth century spread through the northern and central Italian states in the mid-nineteenth century. As a result, the Italian states (and after 1861, the Kingdom of Italy) and the United States both sought to cultivate trade and commercial ties for mutual benefit.

Immigration and Citizenship. By the 1870s Italian immigration to the New World (both to the United States as well as to Argentina, amongst other South American countries) began to increase. Indeed, some of the "fathers" of modern Italy spent time in the United States. Garibaldi spent enough time in the U.S. to gain a U.S. passport, and was offered a commission in the U.S. Army during the Civil War.

U.S. Civil War. The unification of the Italian states impacted the foreign policy of the United States in numerous ways. Perhaps the issue that had the most immediate impact upon U.S. foreign policy in the early 1860s was over the question of recognition of the U.S. Confederacy. The Kingdom of Italy was proclaimed just as the U.S. Civil War began. U.S. President Abraham Lincoln wanted to ensure that the new Italian state did not recognize the U.S. Confederacy. Washington also worried that, with Italy's long coastline, Confederate ships might seek shelter in Italian waters. With this in mind, the Italian government gave "strong assurances that no Confederate ship would be admitted to Italian ports unless it was a question of adverse weather conditions or other vis major."

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Unification of Italian States - Countries - Office of the Historian

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Modern day Germany, was separated by many states/kingdoms throughout Europe with a common language. So the first time the German states tried unifying, they were unsuccessful but the second time with the help of a man named Otto von Bismarck, they were successful. When they successfully defeated France and the allied with the nations around them, they proclaimed the German empire in 1871.

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Summary

When the United States announced its independence from Great Britain in 1776, Central Europe was a fragmented area of roughly 300 sovereign, independent states (kingdoms, duchies, principalities, free cities, etc.). The German states were bound together in a loose political entity known as the Holy Roman Empire, which dated to the era of Charlemagne in the 800s. By the late eighteenth century, the Holy Roman Empire was, as Voltaire remarked, "Neither holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire."

During the mid-eighteenth century, a rivalry developed between the Holy Roman Empire's two largest (and strongest) states: the Kingdom of Austria, ruled by the Habsburgs, and the Kingdom of Prussia, ruled by the Hohenzollerns. Traditionally Austria was the dominant German state, and as such the Habsburg king was elected as the Holy Roman Emperor. This influence started to change in the 1740s when Prussia, strengthened by newly acquired lands and an enlarged military, began to challenge Austria's hegemony. The Kingdom of Prussia was the first German state to officially recognize the United States in 1785 when it signed a Treaty of Amity and Commerce; Austria did not recognize the United States until 1797, when it accepted Conrad Frederick Wagner as U.S. Consul at Trieste, a city then under the jurisdiction of the Habsburg Empire.

During the early nineteenth century, Napoleon's armies occupied, moved through, or were allied with the German states. In 1806 the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved, and when the Congress of Vienna met in 1814-15, a major question was what to do with Central Europe. The solution was to consolidate the German states and to create the German Confederation, a conglomeration of 39 states, including Austria and Prussia. The members of the German Confederation pledged to come to the aid of any member who was attacked by a foreign power; however, the confederation fell short of any economic or national unity. The first effort at striking some form of economic unification between the members of the German Confederation came with the 1834 establishment of the Zollverein customs union.

In the meantime, the effects of the First Industrial Revolution (1750-1850) began to take hold in Central Europe and North America. During this time there was increased emigration by Germans to the United States in search of greater economic opportunities as well as political, religious, and personal freedom. The combination of these two events propelled the first official acts of recognition between the United States and various smaller German states as they negotiated and signed treaties, conventions, and agreements to regulate trade, commerce, navigation, naturalization, and inheritance rights. In a few cases, the United States established diplomatic relations, such as with the Hanseatic League (the Free Cities of Lübeck, Bremen, and Hamburg) and the Kingdom of Baden.

The main issue that confronted the idea of German unification by the mid-nineteenth century was the idea of a "greater" Germany versus a "smaller" Germany. The concept of a "smaller" Germany was that a unified German entity should exclude Austria, while the idea of "greater" Germany was that Germany should include the Kingdom of Austria. Proponents of "smaller" Germany argued that Austria's inclusion would only cause difficulties for German policy, as the Kingdom of Austria was part of the greater Austrian Empire, which included large swaths of land in Central and Southeastern Europe that was composed of nearly 15 different minorities. Those who favored "greater" Germany pointed to the traditional role played by Austria, which was mostly composed of Germans, and the Habsburg rulers in German affairs.

The first effort at unifying the German states came in the revolutionary year 1848. Once news of the February 1848 revolution in Paris spread, many felt that the time was finally at hand for German unification. Rural riots broke out in the weeks after February 1848 and spread to the urban areas. Throughout the German states revolutionaries advocated for freedom of the press, a national militia, a national German parliament, and trial by jury. Other ideas that were championed during the heady days of 1848 were the abolition of privilege of the aristocracy, the creation of constitutions in several of the German states, a more fair system of taxation, and freedom of religion.

On May 18, 1848, the German National Assembly met at Frankfurt am Main, representing the first assembly to be freely elected by the German people. Yet, despite the election of an imperial vice regent (Reichsverweser), the government was flawed from the beginning by its lack of a strong executive power. By the autumn of 1849 the revolution disintegrated and hope of fully unifying the German states was extinguished for the time being.

The next attempt at German unification, a successful one, was undertaken by Otto von Bismarck, the Prime Minister of Prussia. Bismarck was a proponent of "smaller" Germany, not to mention a master at the game of real-politik. German unification was achieved by the force of Prussia, and enforced from the top-down, meaning that it was not an organic movement that was fully supported and spread by the popular classes but instead was a product of Prussian royal policies.

The first war of German unification was the 1862 Danish War, begun over the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. Bismarck allied with Austria to fight the Danes in a war to protect the interests of Holstein, a member of the German Confederation.

The second war of German unification was the 1866 Austro-Prussian War, which settled the question of "smaller" versus "greater" Germany. This brief war (fought over the course of mere weeks) pitted Prussia and her allies against Austria and other German states. Prussia won and directly annexed some of the German states that had sided with Austria (such as Hanover and Nassau). In an act of leniency, Prussia allowed some of the larger Austrian allies to maintain their independence, such as Baden and Bavaria. In 1867 Bismarck created the North German Confederation, a union of the northern German states under the hegemony of Prussia. Several other German states joined, and the North German Confederation served as a model for the future German Empire.

The third and final act of German unification was the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, orchestrated by Bismarck to draw the western German states into alliance with the North German Confederation. With the French defeat, the German Empire was proclaimed in January 1871 in the Palace at Versailles, France. From this point forward, foreign policy of the German Empire was made in Berlin, with the German Kaiser (who was also the King of Prussia) accrediting ambassadors of foreign nations. Relations were severed when the U.S. declared war upon Imperial Germany in 1917.

Major Events

United States' Recognition of the Federal German Republic, .

On July 8, 1848, Secretary of State John M. Middleton informed U.S. Minister to Prussia Andrew J. Donelson, that the United States was prepared to recognize any unified, de facto German Government that "appeared capable of maintaining its power." On August 9, 1848, Donelson was appointed as U.S. Minister to the German Federal Parliament at Frankfurt, and presented his credentials on September 13, 1848. However, the failure of this first experiment of German unification led to the U.S. recalling Donelson from service to the Federal German Republic on November 2, 1849. Donelson resumed his previous appointment as U.S. Minister to Prussia.

United States' Recognition of the North German Union, .

Following the establishment of the North German Confederation on July 1, 1867, on November 20, 1867, the U.S. Minister to Prussia, George Bancroft, informed Secretary of State William H. Seward that he had attended the opening of the North German Parliament. He requested, however, that the Secretary formally notify him of the intentions of the U.S. Government concerning the question of the recognition of the North German Confederation. On December 9, 1867, Secretary Seward approved of Bancroft's decision to attend the opening of the North German Parliament since he was the officially-accredited U.S. Minister to the Prussian King Wilhelm I, who was also the hereditary President of the North German Confederation. Furthermore, Seward informed Bancroft that he would disseminate a description of the Confederation's flag so that its ships would be welcomed in American waters. This exchange between Seward and Bancroft implicitly signified a formal recognition of the North German Confederation by the United States.

United States' Recognition of the German Empire and Establishment of Diplomatic Relations, .

Following the establishment of the German Empire on January 18, 1871, the United States recognized the new German Empire by changing the accreditation of its Minister to Prussia to become Minister to the German Empire. On April 8, 1871, U.S. Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Prussia George Bancroft presented the new German Emperor Wilhelm I (who was concurrently King of Prussia) with a letter from U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant dated March 16, 1871. The letter from the President congratulated the Emperor on his assumption of the German throne and recognized him as the head-of-state of a federal Germany.

Termination of Relations During the First World War, .

Germany's resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare in early 1917 led to the termination of diplomatic relations between Imperial Germany and the United States. On February 3, 1917, U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing informed the German Ambassador in Washington, D.C., Count Johann von Bernstorff, that U.S. President Woodrow Wilson had severed diplomatic relations with Germany, that the U.S. Ambassador in Berlin (James W. Gerrard) had been withdrawn, and that the U.S. Government would be returning von Bernstorff's passports.

U.S. Declaration of War Against Imperial Germany, .

Following a series of attacks against American merchant ships on the high seas by German U-boats, on February, 24, 1917, the U.S. Ambassador in London, Walter Hines Pages, received the infamous "Zimmerman telegram" from British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour. This led to the decision to abandon the plan to adopt "armed neutrality" by placing U.S. naval personnel on civilian ships to guard them against German attacks. On April 2, U.S. President Wilson went before Congress to ask for a declaration of war against Germany in order to make the world "safe for democracy." Following the passage of a Joint Resolution by Congress on April 6, President Wilson issued on the same day a proclamation to the effect that a state of war existed between Germany and the United States.

Overall Impact upon U.S. Foreign Policy

The history of the establishment of recognitions (and relations, where applicable) between the United States and the German states impacted several different areas of policy, including:

Trade and Commerce. Although the Napoleonic period stunted the growth of industrialization in the German states during the early nineteenth century, by the 1820s and 1830s the industrialization process was underway, especially in areas such as Westphalia, the Rhineland, and Upper Silesia. It was also during this time that the first railways were built in the German lands, thus facilitating the transportation of goods to and from the main ports of Hamburg and Bremen. As a result, the German states (and after 1871, the German Empire) and the United States both sought to cultivate trade and commercial ties for mutual benefit.

Emigration, Citizenship, and Naturalization. In the nineteenth century, most German states (and later, the German Empire) had mandatory military service for all male subjects/citizens, whereas the United States did not have any such policy. One point of contention between the U.S. and some of the German states was whether German citizens were emigrating to the U.S. to obtain citizenship and then return to Central Europe and thus eschew military service. In 1868 U.S. Minister to Prussia and the North German Union George Bancroft negotiated a series of naturalization treaties that sought to close this loophole. See Bancroft Treaties for further information.

After the creation of the Second Reich in 1871 there were questions as to whether U.S. officials should abide by treaties concluded with individual states or with Prussia (the German Empire was considered the successor state to Prussia) in dealing with issues of trade, citizenship, or extradition. Two major principles guided U.S. foreign policy towards the German states. First, "where a State has lost its separate existence, as in the case of Hanover and Nassau, no questions can arise." Second, "where no treaty has been negotiated with the Empire, the treaties with the various States which have preserved a separate existence have been resorted to."

Although the Constitution of the German Empire of 1871 stipulated that the Empire was responsible for treaties, alliances, and representing the Empire, the smaller states still retained the right of legation. This included the right to legislate, to grant exequators to foreign consuls in their territories (though not to send German consuls abroad), and to enter into conventions with foreign nations as long as they did not concern matters already within the jurisdiction of the Empire or the Emperor.

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Unification of German States - Countries - Office of the Historian